Finally Yahoo Search Marketing & Microsoft Adcenter are too Merge their Paid Search Networks

Yahoo! and Microsoft have now officially received regulatory clearance for their search transaction. This is a significant milestone and an exciting first step in their combined efforts to help Paid Search users reach even more customers with greater ease and efficiency.

How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Will Benefit Advertisers

Once implemented, the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will enable advertisers to:

Save valuable time and effort.

• Advertisers will use a single platform–Microsoft’s adCenter–to manage online ad campaigns, giving advertisers greater efficiency and a better ROI.
• With just one buy from one sales force, advertisers will reach users on Yahoo! and Microsoft sites, as well as other premium partner sites.
Benefit from rapid innovation.

• Yahoo! will deliver new features and innovations to the world’s favourite online destinations, content and web products, used by hundreds of millions of consumers to connect to the people and things that matter to them most.
• Microsoft will innovate the underlying technologies that drive high quality algorithmic and paid search results.

Reach more customers.

• Search ad inventory from both the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks will be joined in a new, unified search marketplace with the aim of giving advertisers access to search volume increases in the UK and French marketplaces, and is predicted to give advertisers up to 40% more search volume on a global basis than on Yahoo! alone.
• To help drive future growth in search volume, Yahoo! will continue to significantly enhance the search experience on their leading web properties.

So What’s Ahead? in this paid search network merger?

There will be no immediate changes to advertisers Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts. Both companies are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial to its advertisers as possible. Their aim is a high quality transition for advertisers and partners in at least the U.S. prior to the Christmas holiday season – So over here in the UK we may have to wait until 2011 to see the merger in operation and we may have to wait wait until late 2011 to see the benefits.

Sharp Darts are pleased with this annoucement as this paid search provider merger should enable us to offer better value to our clients. Click prices should be lower and Adwords should become more competitive as they is a new force in the market now and with one less paid search platform to deal we can save ourselves time and our clients money so achieving a better ROI.

In the more information please refer to the websites below:

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance website

The Client

Formed in 2006 Medical Supply UK are one of the leading online suppliers of alternative pain relief products, well-being equipment and personal beauty products.

The Brief

Medical Supply UK were currently running a Pay Per Click Marketing campaign with the Google Adwords network in-house and approached Sharp Darts to initially audit, and then take over the campaign, as they were spending a lot of resources but without they success they had hoped for.

Our Solution

Sharp Darts firstly carried out a full audit on the existing Google Adwords pay per click marketing campaign being run in-house by Medical Supply UK. The Audit showed that there were a number of issues that could easily be resolved to produce a positive return on the marketing investment made in this online discipline.

The structure of the campaigns keywords was poor, the Adwords tracking code had not been implemented, and cost per click prices were far too high. We also suggested and then implemented the running of the same campaign on the Yahoo Search Marketing & Microsoft Adcenter networks to gain increased exposure and better value from the click costs. There were also a number of other problems with the campaign which were rectified.

Main Tasks Undertaken in this ongoing Pay Per Click Marketing Campaign

• Improved campaign structure
• Reduced cost per click prices
• Added multiple adverts per ad group
• Added more targeted keywords
• Reduced use of expensive generic keywords
• Added negative keywords to campaign & ad groups
• Ran Campaign on Yahoo Search Marketing Network
• Ran Campaign on Microsoft Adcenter

The Results

Medical Supply UK saw an upturn in impressions and click throughs of their pay per click adverts, as well as reduction in the overall campaign click costs and a massivly improved conversion rates.

Impressions Increased by: 84%
Click Through Rate Increased by: 112%
Click Cost Reduced By: 96%
Monthly Budget PPC Spend reduced by: 35%
Sales increased by: 242%
Cost per sale decreased by: 130%

See other online marketing discipline case studies below:

Search Engine Optimisation Case Study | Ethical Link Building Case Study | Website Marketing Management Case Study | E-Commerce Website Solution Case Study | Search Engine Friendly Website Case Study

The first and most important factor of website design is to get your content indexed and listed in the major search engines. No listings means no free traffic! You can still buy the traffic, but at what cost? Better to use search engine optimised website design. So, how do you do that?

Below are the 10 rules for successful search engine friendly website design.

1. Use a search engine optimized template. Using a great template makes your life easier because all your pages will have the same lay-out which makes adding and updating websites a breeze. Templates will save you tons of time maintaining your websites.

2. Use Meta Tags. I know, the keyword meta tag isn’t that important any more. But the Title tag IS! In fact, it’s the most important meta tag and so many websites don’t use it. Search engines use the title tag to see what your page is all about and list it in their result pages.

Also, they use your description tag as added information. It’s a great way to entice searchers to click on your webpage when they find it.

3. Use CSS. With CSS, abreviation for Cascading Style Sheets, you can control the style and layout of multiple web pages all at once. In other words, your website layout and style design is defined in one place and one place only. Change your css file and your complete website will be updated.

4. Delete all the crap and focus on your content. Flash and (java)scripts are funny, but very often they don’t serve a purpose. Instead, they fill up your visitors’ computer memory and make them run slow. Dump it. Using as little code as possible is the best way to guarantee good search engine positioning.

5. Have simple and clear navigation. You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

6. Reduce the number of images on your website. Yes, I know a picture can say more than a thousand words, but many pictures don’t. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. And, if you have an image that says more than a thousand words, make sure you optimize it to a minimum file size and offer a larger version as an option.

7. Use a sitemap. Site maps are a great way to take search engine robots by the hand and show them all the pages of your site and also help them understand what each page is about, which means it makes your site more search engine friendly and helps get a higher ranking.

8. Write crisp HTML that will validate. When they arrive at your site search engine robots only see a bunch of HTML codes. No fancy images, no colored text, nothing of that kind. So to make search engines understand what your website is about and show them that it deserves to have a high ranking, you need to speak to them in their own language: crisp HTML coding that will validate!

Don’t use deprecated HTML coding, make sure your website complies to w3 org web standards and make sure it is cross-browser compatible.

9. Write one page for one keyphrase and use the keyphrase as the page name. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. Without doubt you have researched the keywords and keyphrases you want to get listed for. Now, use them as the name of these blocks and individual pages at your website. Use synonyms inside the pages, so the search engines will get a good idea what your website is all about.

10. Keep your content limited to 500 pixels. For optimal reading convenience, a width of 500 pixels is recommended with a font size of 11 or 12 pixels. It’s the easiest way for our eyes to read the text. Use dark text on a light background.

Article by well known seo expert Case Stevens.

New Website Design, CMS, Search Engine Optimisation & PPC Marketing Services Provided.

Small & Co, The Multi-million pound turnover Shipping & Engineering firm, who are the main contractors on the globally renowned Trident Energy renewable Wave energy project, have appointed Sharp Darts to handle all online marketing activities.

We were naturally pleased to win such as large client contract especially with some large london based agencies pitching as well. We set our online marketing strategy in motion with the launch of Small & Co’s new search engine friendly website, with content managed system. Since launch, traffic has increased by 950% from the old site’s traffic levels and big contracts have already been won on the back of Small & Co’s exposure acrross the main search egnines.

We have also launched a small, but highly targetted pay per click campaign on the Google & Yahoo networks which has also proved to be a very viable and profitable form of online advertising for small & Co.

Launch Of Red Herring Restaurants New Pre-Optimised Website With Content Management System

Red Herring Restaurant | New Pre-Optimised Website With Content Management System Launched

New Website Design With Content Management System Project Overview

The Red Herring, one of Suffolk’s finest restuarants approached Sharp Darts to undertake the design and search engine marketing of their new website.

The design focussed on setting the same feeling that guests would get when entering the restaurant as they would when visitng the website. Key features were the downloadable menus so guests can view and pre-order from the current seasonal menu and that all content, including menus were able to be changed and updated by the management from within the Content Management System.

The website was fully optimed for search engines prior to launch to ensure that the website stood the best possible chance of being indexed in the search engine results Pages.

Sharp Darts completed the project on-time, within budget and, as always well optimised for targetted organic visability, meaning that this was an excellent marketing investment for another of our clients.

Clients Thoughts…

“We were totally satisfied with the new website design. We have found the content management system is simple to use, yet very robust and the optimisation and ongoing search engine marketing has resulted in the internet being our main marketing resource”

Jeff, Red Herring Restaurant, Suffolk

Web Design & Internet Marketing Services Provided

• Search Engine Friendly Web Design
• Search Engine Optimisation Services
• Pay Per Click Marketing
• Content Management System

Project Cost £500-£1000

Revival Plaster, one of UK’s finest heritage building restoration companies approached Sharp Darts to undertake the new web design and search engine marketing projects.

The design focussed on displaying the quality of work that Revival Produce and showing as many examples of their prevous work as possible as well as Revival’s large range of services and products offered.

New Website Design With Flash Player & Content Management System Project Overview

Key features were that the site be non-flashed based as the prevous site design had been made totally in flash, so organic traffic being generaed from the search engines was limited. The new website also had to have a content management system, as Revival were fed up with paying their prevous agency for minor site updates.

The website was designed with search engine’s in mind, with keyword research taking place before launch to ensure that the website stood the best possible chance of being indexed in the search engine results pages for relevant search terms.

Sharp Darts completed the project on-time, within budget and, as always well optimised for targetted organic visability. Meaning that this was an excellent marketing investment for another of our clients.

Clients Thoughts…

“We are very pleased with the new site design. We came to Sharp Darts as our old site was totally flashed based so we wanted to have a search engine friendly website to gain organic traffic. We are more than satisfied with the end results and we have found the content management system is very simple to operate”

Ed Waller, Revival Plaster, Bedfordshire

Web Design & Internet Marketing Services Provided

• Search Engine Friendly Web Design
• Search Engine Optimisation Services
• Pay Per Click Marketing
• Content Management System

Project Cost £500-£1000