Bounce rate is a great way to measure the quality of traffic coming to your website. Why?
- It is almost instantly accessible in any web analytics tool.
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We use geo-targeting quite a bit on Google with our higher volume campaigns. If you have the volume, tracking and technical ability to manage a highly decentralized campaign, you can achieve better results through discrete geo targeting, improved positioning and lower CPCs (I’ll cover this in-depth in a future Internet Marketing Review Newsletter).

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Outsell, Inc. recently released a report based on a survey of 1,000 U.S. advertisers stating that online advertising as a whole will grow 17.9% in 2007 with Internet search advertising driving the engine with a 39% growth rate. According to Outsell, Inc. advertising on TV and Radio will decline 3.5% while print media will grow 2.7%.

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Interesting article on a study by Canadian Researchers posted at wired online. The study was published in the Behaviour & Technology Information Journal (I had no idea there was such a thing!) and shows that design drives the first impression reaction in terms of trust within the first 1/20th of a second. As the internet speeds up (broadband adoption is over 50% in the home and higher in businesses), the need for a page to load quickly, be clean and be trustworthy in even more important.

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AOL Labs recently released the search results log of 650,000 members for research and educational purposes. The 30 million line database includes an anonymous ID, the search query, the click through URL, the date of the search (not the time unfortunately) and the item rank for the url they clicked on. It does not appear to include paid search items. You can search the entire DB at this link http://czern.homeip.net/aolsearch/ and dig in to look at individual user searches. I’ve been using it for keyword analysis (how many ways can you spell CRM?), search funnel analysis (type in your brand keyword, the click on a user id who typed that keyword in to see what other words in your category they have used and when) and general interest (there are a lot of depressed/sick people out there looking for answers to very specific questions). It is extremely interesting and the first time I’ve seen an exposed DB like this. Check it out.

I’m going through a review process for one of my clients on Search Engine Marketing companies that can assist with very large paid search campaigns. One of the things that is clear to me is there are two approaches: strategic with tools/technology to support and technology centric with strategy to feed the optimization machine. Both approaches have merit and fit different company types. However, I tend to think of paid search as a complex process that at the highest levels requires advanced technology to gain the most efficiency and leverage the strategy/knowledge to the max. The following is an example of how many decision points are available to manipulate for a single keyword within a single year - the math is astounding:

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The following is from a Guerilla Marketing Newsletter I receive. It outlines 20 steps to boost direct mail profits, but can be applied to just about any direct marketing campaign.

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