Occasionally, friends of mine ask me if they should consider buying lots and lots of domain names as a marketing strategy to drive more traffic to their web sites. They theorize that many domains names will cast a wider net on the web for prospective site visitors. Is this an effective online marketing strategy? In most cases, no.

Having dozens of domains is like having dozens of wives. It may seem like a good idea, but it’s not nearly as satisfying as one truly rich and rewarding relationship.

People who register tons of domains seem to be working from the assumption that they’ll cover more online real estate. However, online real estate doesn’t work like offline real estate. There is nearly an unlimited amount of available property online in the form of domain names compared to the finite amount of real estate on Earth. The online version of a land grab is limited to only the most obvious domains, which do indeed fetch serious cash.

Take a moment to think about how people generally find web sites. In the vast majority of cases, people find web sites through:

1. Searches on Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN
   
2. Links from other web sites
3. Typing in a domain they saw in a print ad

Where does randomly typing addresses into the location bar fall on this list? It doesn’t.

A much better investment of online marketing time and money comes from focusing on strategies that address #1 and #2. It turns out that addressing #2 helps increase your visibility for #1, as described in my previous post, Top Three Search Engine Optimization Tips. It really comes down to link popularity.

Having dozens of sites with no inbound links (or only links from other sites in the same network of sites) will lead to dozens of virtually invisible online properties. Taking the same resources and applying them to the marketing of one site through link building, improved sales copy, and some pay per click advertising, will lead to upward movement in search engine results, more people finding the site useful, more bookmarks, more people emailing the site to friends, and more leads or sales.

When to buy additional domain names: If you stumble across an available domain that people may type directly into search engines, should you buy it? Sure, they’re cheap. Also, buy any common typos of your primary domain name.
PS: While writing this post, I stumbled across a splog (A blog that is set up to redirect people to another site but has no value of its own. Considered to be spam.) called get-a-domain-name.blogspot.com. The irony of that domain kills me. It looks like this particular spammer also uses good-domain-names.blogspot.com, domains-cheap.blogspot.com, and nu-domains.blogspot.com. Frank Gruber of SomeWhatFrank.com is working to rid the blogosphere of splogs through his take-action site, SplogReporter.com.

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Yahoo recent quarterly results disappointed investors when their net income only rose 32% over a year ago. The market punished their stock, taking billions off their market cap.

Will the same thing happen to Google? I’m no Jim Cramer, but I do know a few things about the two ad platforms that generate the bulk of each company’s profits. Here are a few key differences I’ve noticed that influence revenue. All are related to their Pay Per Click platforms (Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing):

1. Search Term Wildcarding: AdWords offers more - and easier to use - options for controlling when your search terms will be displayed. This allows me to easily bid on a large number of relevant search terms without displaying my ads on terms that are not relevant enough to warrant advertising. For example, if I was setting up a campaign for a golf store, I may bid on the term “golf clubs” in quotes, causing the ad to show every time a person searches for a term including those two words in that exact order. That covers a LOT of terms, but maybe too many if the shop doesn’t carry used clubs, or the Nike brand. Qualifiers like this are easily excluded using negative keywords (adding [-Nike and -used to the campaign) on Google. The same process on Yahoo is more tedious and limiting, so I tend to bid more cautiously.

2. Reporting: The biggest difference between Google and Yahoo’s reporting is Google’s actually works. The reporting is faster, easier to navigate, easier to export, and easier to save/schedule. I’ll spend more money when I can spend it with confidence.
   
   
3. Site Targeted Advertising: I recently ran a site targeted ad campaign on Google during the CES show advertising our HD video coverage where rather than paying by the click, we were charged by the the impression to run ads on sites of my choosing, including Digg and Technorati. This was very easy to set up, went live quickly, and provided very fast feedback on the traffic generated through each site. I was able to quickly improve the quality of the campaign by dropping underperforming sites. I’ll explain why some sites underperformed in a future post. The key here is Google has found a way to get more money out of me through the same platform. And it works.

4. Ad Scoring Systems: Over the past few years, if I found a search term with no ads posted I saw an opportunity for some cheap traffic. Cheap, as in 10 cents per click on Yahoo and 5 cents on Google. This changed when Google switched to a quality scoring system that changes the minimum bids based on a term’s, “click through rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of your ad’s landing page, and other relevancy factors.” In some cases, I’ve experienced minimum bids as high as $1.00/click on terms with no ads displayed. That’s on heck of a jump from a nickel. A #1 position on Yahoo for the same term costs only $0.14. Traffick’s Andrew Goodman knows what Google did last fall to bump up their minimums and has a theory on why they did it worth checking out.
5. More advertisers = More Relevant Ads: If you’re an RSS user like me, you’ve probably seen thousands of ads from Vonage over the past few months. The Vonage reps at the CES Show mentioned that they were making a significant investment in online advertising, and that is certainly supported by the large volume of ads I’ve seen. However, if Yahoo is showing Vonage ads on blog posts that have nothing to do with VoIP, Yahoo has a problem. Why? Because they’re not going to receive many clicks, and they’re going to train people to ignore their ads.
6. Make Publishers Money: Darren Rowse of Problogger.com has been testing Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network ads on his site and has found that Google receives more clicks and makes him more money. The average cost per click was actually higher on Yahoo. The higher click through rate was probably due to Google’s better ad relevancy - an advantage of having a larger advertiser network. The higher cost per click on Yahoo tells me that Google is providing a better value to their advertisers. If Darren’s results are consistent with other publisher’s results, why would any publisher switch to YPN ads from AdSense on their sites? Where will advertisers put their money first?

That’s what I’m seeing. How about you?

It appears to me that Google is growing faster than Yahoo because they have a superior platform and a larger number of advertisers and publishers. Is it enough to support the stock price? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Disclosure: I do not have a financial interest in YHOO or GOOG.

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Yahoo recent quarterly results disappointed investors when their net income only rose 32% over a year ago. The market punished their stock, taking billions off their market cap.

Will the same thing happen to Google? I’m no Jim Cramer, but I do know a few things about the two ad platforms that generate the bulk of each company’s profits. Here are a few key differences I’ve noticed that influence revenue. All are related to their Pay Per Click platforms (Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing):

1. Search Term Wildcarding: AdWords offers more - and easier to use - options for controlling when your search terms will be displayed. This allows me to easily bid on a large number of relevant search terms without displaying my ads on terms that are not relevant enough to warrant advertising. For example, if I was setting up a campaign for a golf store, I may bid on the term “golf clubs” in quotes, causing the ad to show every time a person searches for a term including those two words in that exact order. That covers a LOT of terms, but maybe too many if the shop doesn’t carry used clubs, or the Nike brand. Qualifiers like this are easily excluded using negative keywords (adding [-Nike and -used to the campaign) on Google. The same process on Yahoo is more tedious and limiting, so I tend to bid more cautiously.

2. Reporting: The biggest difference between Google and Yahoo’s reporting is Google’s actually works. The reporting is faster, easier to navigate, easier to export, and easier to save/schedule. I’ll spend more money when I can spend it with confidence.
   
   
3. Site Targeted Advertising: I recently ran a site targeted ad campaign on Google during the CES show advertising our HD video coverage where rather than paying by the click, we were charged by the the impression to run ads on sites of my choosing, including Digg and Technorati. This was very easy to set up, went live quickly, and provided very fast feedback on the traffic generated through each site. I was able to quickly improve the quality of the campaign by dropping underperforming sites. I’ll explain why some sites underperformed in a future post. The key here is Google has found a way to get more money out of me through the same platform. And it works.

4. Ad Scoring Systems: Over the past few years, if I found a search term with no ads posted I saw an opportunity for some cheap traffic. Cheap, as in 10 cents per click on Yahoo and 5 cents on Google. This changed when Google switched to a quality scoring system that changes the minimum bids based on a term’s, “click through rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of your ad’s landing page, and other relevancy factors.” In some cases, I’ve experienced minimum bids as high as $1.00/click on terms with no ads displayed. That’s on heck of a jump from a nickel. A #1 position on Yahoo for the same term costs only $0.14. Traffick’s Andrew Goodman knows what Google did last fall to bump up their minimums and has a theory on why they did it worth checking out.
5. More advertisers = More Relevant Ads: If you’re an RSS user like me, you’ve probably seen thousands of ads from Vonage over the past few months. The Vonage reps at the CES Show mentioned that they were making a significant investment in online advertising, and that is certainly supported by the large volume of ads I’ve seen. However, if Yahoo is showing Vonage ads on blog posts that have nothing to do with VoIP, Yahoo has a problem. Why? Because they’re not going to receive many clicks, and they’re going to train people to ignore their ads.
6. Make Publishers Money: Darren Rowse of Problogger.com has been testing Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network ads on his site and has found that Google receives more clicks and makes him more money. The average cost per click was actually higher on Yahoo. The higher click through rate was probably due to Google’s better ad relevancy - an advantage of having a larger advertiser network. The higher cost per click on Yahoo tells me that Google is providing a better value to their advertisers. If Darren’s results are consistent with other publisher’s results, why would any publisher switch to YPN ads from AdSense on their sites? Where will advertisers put their money first?

That’s what I’m seeing. How about you?

It appears to me that Google is growing faster than Yahoo because they have a superior platform and a larger number of advertisers and publishers. Is it enough to support the stock price? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Disclosure: I do not have a financial interest in YHOO or GOOG.

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Yahoo recent quarterly results disappointed investors when their net income only rose 32% over a year ago. The market punished their stock, taking billions off their market cap.

Will the same thing happen to Google? I’m no Jim Cramer, but I do know a few things about the two ad platforms that generate the bulk of each company’s profits. Here are a few key differences I’ve noticed that influence revenue. All are related to their Pay Per Click platforms (Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing):

1. Search Term Wildcarding: AdWords offers more - and easier to use - options for controlling when your search terms will be displayed. This allows me to easily bid on a large number of relevant search terms without displaying my ads on terms that are not relevant enough to warrant advertising. For example, if I was setting up a campaign for a golf store, I may bid on the term “golf clubs” in quotes, causing the ad to show every time a person searches for a term including those two words in that exact order. That covers a LOT of terms, but maybe too many if the shop doesn’t carry used clubs, or the Nike brand. Qualifiers like this are easily excluded using negative keywords (adding [-Nike and -used to the campaign) on Google. The same process on Yahoo is more tedious and limiting, so I tend to bid more cautiously.

2. Reporting: The biggest difference between Google and Yahoo’s reporting is Google’s actually works. The reporting is faster, easier to navigate, easier to export, and easier to save/schedule. I’ll spend more money when I can spend it with confidence.
   
   
3. Site Targeted Advertising: I recently ran a site targeted ad campaign on Google during the CES show advertising our HD video coverage where rather than paying by the click, we were charged by the the impression to run ads on sites of my choosing, including Digg and Technorati. This was very easy to set up, went live quickly, and provided very fast feedback on the traffic generated through each site. I was able to quickly improve the quality of the campaign by dropping underperforming sites. I’ll explain why some sites underperformed in a future post. The key here is Google has found a way to get more money out of me through the same platform. And it works.

4. Ad Scoring Systems: Over the past few years, if I found a search term with no ads posted I saw an opportunity for some cheap traffic. Cheap, as in 10 cents per click on Yahoo and 5 cents on Google. This changed when Google switched to a quality scoring system that changes the minimum bids based on a term’s, “click through rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of your ad’s landing page, and other relevancy factors.” In some cases, I’ve experienced minimum bids as high as $1.00/click on terms with no ads displayed. That’s on heck of a jump from a nickel. A #1 position on Yahoo for the same term costs only $0.14. Traffick’s Andrew Goodman knows what Google did last fall to bump up their minimums and has a theory on why they did it worth checking out.
5. More advertisers = More Relevant Ads: If you’re an RSS user like me, you’ve probably seen thousands of ads from Vonage over the past few months. The Vonage reps at the CES Show mentioned that they were making a significant investment in online advertising, and that is certainly supported by the large volume of ads I’ve seen. However, if Yahoo is showing Vonage ads on blog posts that have nothing to do with VoIP, Yahoo has a problem. Why? Because they’re not going to receive many clicks, and they’re going to train people to ignore their ads.
6. Make Publishers Money: Darren Rowse of Problogger.com has been testing Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network ads on his site and has found that Google receives more clicks and makes him more money. The average cost per click was actually higher on Yahoo. The higher click through rate was probably due to Google’s better ad relevancy - an advantage of having a larger advertiser network. The higher cost per click on Yahoo tells me that Google is providing a better value to their advertisers. If Darren’s results are consistent with other publisher’s results, why would any publisher switch to YPN ads from AdSense on their sites? Where will advertisers put their money first?

That’s what I’m seeing. How about you?

It appears to me that Google is growing faster than Yahoo because they have a superior platform and a larger number of advertisers and publishers. Is it enough to support the stock price? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Disclosure: I do not have a financial interest in YHOO or GOOG.

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Google’s Gmail program offers a lot of storage. So much storage, in fact, that they assumed you’d never delete anything. So sure were they of this, they hid the delete button in a drop down menu, forcing you to work way to click twice to delete a message:

While it may be true that you don’t need to delete anything, ever, what’s the point in keeping emails that have no historical value?

Clearly, users want to easily delete emails they no longer need. Firefox took things into their own hands by figuring out a way to add their own delete button using a Greasemonkey script, making up for Gmail’s shortcoming. It’s good to see Google listening and learning from their users, by adding this common sense feature to their application.

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Isn’t it nice to be able to learn something about the author of a blog post you found particularly brilliant or idiotic? We think so, so that’s what we’ve done on Technology Evangelist. To find out a few things about any of the other authors on this site, just click on our hyperlinked names in the by-lines of our posts. Or, visit our About Us page where you can find links to all of our profile pages.

What do you think?

• Do you visit About Us and author profile pages? When, and why?
• What information do you expect (or would like) to find on an author’s profile page?
• How does personalizing a blog change your perspective of the content?
  
• Are authors with photos and bios just full of themselves?

We would like to see more sites offer easy access like this to author bios, so we’re publishing how we did it below.

How to Create About Us and Author Pages

If you blog using Movable Type, you may find this interesting. If not, you probably won’t:

1. Copy the Main Index Template and strip out the body code. (everything from [and including] <mtentries> to </mtentries>)

2. Make note of the style tags in the code so you can keep your formatting consistent.
3. Create new page called aboutus.html Index Template. Add copy to that page.
4. Create additional pages for each author using the same blank template.
5. Link About Us page to author pages.
6. Now that you’ve created the author pages, the next step is to link to those pages from individual posts. Set each author’s Author URL (under System Overview > Authors) to their profile page.
   
7. Now add the links to the author names by replacing this tag <$MTEntryAuthorDisplayName$> on the following pages: Main Index, Category Archive, Date Based Archive, and Individual Archive, with this:

   <a href=”<$MTEntryAuthorURL$>”><$MTEntryAuthorDisplayName$></a>

8. Save and rebuild each template.
9. Done

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Ebay is a great place to find deals, but it’s important to remember that what you’ve really won the right to pay more than anyone else for the auction. And this is not always a good deal. For example, back on December 19th , I picked up a Belkin Pre-N Router from Amazon.com for my in-laws to replace the one my brother in law took when he finally moved out of the house. Before I had a chance to install it, my in-laws cancelled their home internet connection (the motivation for this post). Since the no longer needed the yet-to-be-installed router, I decided to sell in on Ebay. And sell it did. In fact, it sold for more on Ebay than it currently sells for on Amazon with shipping!

After shipping that one to the “lucky” winner, I remembered that Ebay has a second chance offer feature that lets me send emails to losing bidders asking them if they’re interested in buying the product at their losing bid price. Second chances are a great way to move multiples because you only need to create one auction. I haven’t tested this, but I imagine the competition and pricing would go higher if you listed one of something rather than listing two simultaneous auctions for the same product. Anyone know for sure?

I only had one router, so how could I make a second chance offers to losing bidders? By drop shipping additional Pre-N routers from Amazon! In fact, that’s exactly what happened.

It’s not every day that I use a retail web site as a drop shipper for an online auction.

So, what will happen when they receive their new routers from Amazon? Will they be impressed by the 2-day shipping? Or will they have a sour taste in their mouth when they see what I paid for their router on the packing slip? They didn’t pay a penny more than they were comfortable paying at the time. However, knowing they could have gotten a better deal had they simply not gotten into a bidding war may lead to buyer’s remorse.

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Ranking high is search engine results is one of the most rewarding web marketing strategies available. But how is it actually done?

1. Unique Title Tags - The title tag of a web page should describe what is on the page. Why? Because search engines use that copy to determine what the web page is about, and it’s what search engines display as blue hyperlinked text in their search results. People tend to click on the search results that are aligned with that they searched for. Make it easy for search engines to understand what your site is about by using appropriate title tags.

2. Use Search Terms in Body of Page - It’s amazing how many people would like to rank competively for a given search term, but haven’t actually used that search term on their web site. Search engines are amazing but they’re not mind readers. Throw them a bone by actually using the terms you’d like to rank competitively for within your site’s copy.

3. Link Popularity - Assuming you’ve covered steps #1 and #2, search engines should now understand what your web pages are trying to communicate. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll consider your site to be the most important site on the internet for those terms. When it comes to determining importance, nothing is more important than having links to your site from other web sites. The more links you have compared to other sites trying to rank high for the same terms, the higher your site will rank in search results.

That’s it. Cover those three steps, and you’ll capture a ton of free and relevant traffic through search engines.

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The web is abuzz today with a theory that businesses are painting logos on their rooftops in order to gain exposure on Google Maps. Interesting theory. Considering how old the Google Maps photo data is in Minneapolis (2-3 years?), businesses would have needed to lay paint before Google Maps was born.

 
Castle Metals Rooftop Logo near O’Hare Airport

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch explains that this probably has more to do with airplane flight paths than Google Maps, and supports his theory by citing a rooftop painting service’s web site that positions itself solely for marketing to air travelers. Of course, the painter’s sales pitch may change now that businesses realize their roof is being viewed virtually.

Here are a few rooftop painting examples:

• Target near Chicago O’Hare
• Castle Metals near Chicago O’Hare
• Compaq Center near Mineta San Jose
• Target new Boston Logan

The Minneapolis/St Paul (MSP) airport recently completed a new North-South runway that takes travelers right past the Mall of America on approach. I didn’t find any advertising, but wouldn’t be surprised to see something once Google updates their photo data.

An IKEA has popped up on the empty lot to the North of the MOA. Will IKEA put their gigantic rooftop to work?

UPS and Fed Ex both have recognizable logos and large buildings near almost every airport in the US, if not the world, so are perfectly positioned to take advantage of this advertising medium.

How many people see this type of advertising?

Using 2004 passenger statistics for MSP, I came up with the following estimate: