I’m obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo’s share is declining, while Bing’s is gaining. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway.

Do you take Bing into account when optimizing your site? Comment here.

We don’t hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has Google+Reader”>shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for honoring Bing’s policy, does not differ too much from advice that Google would give you. It is, however, still always nice to see how they feel, just to clear up any possible confusion.

Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. "Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," says DeJarnette. "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time."

What Not To Do

DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:

1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time

2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites

3. Using hidden links in your pages

4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known "bad neighborhoods" on the Web

5. Linking out to known web spam sites

"When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction," says DeJarnette. "If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index."

What To Do

DeJarnette also shared some tips for getting more quality links. Following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased):

1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently

2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content

3. Publish concise, informative press releases online

4. Publish expert articles to online article directories

5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable

6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)

7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content

8. Launch a blog/forum on your site

9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
  
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site

Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any savvy search marketer is not already aware of. That said, there are clearly plenty of online (and offline for that matter) businesses out there that don’t have savvy search marketers on the payroll. It can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and what not to do to help webmasters get better rankings.

Related Articles:

> What Bing, Twitter, and Facebook Mean for SEO

> Don’t Lose Yahoo Traffic By Not Optimizing for Bing

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

"While it can’t predict the future, the bid simulator allows you to explore what could have happened if you had set different keyword-level bids," says Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords crew.

The Bid Simulator uses data from the past week to re-calculate the number of impressions for which your ad could’ve shown if you chose a different maximum CPC, how many clicks your ad could’ve gotten for those impression, and how much those clicks could’ve cost. 

"The feature provides increased transparency into the AdWords auction and gives you the insight to make more informed bidding decisions to meet your advertising objectives," says Friedman.

Advertisers can take advantage of the information they obtain from the Bid Simulator and apply changes to their campaigns in the future, should they choose to do so. As Friedman notes, however, past performance does not guarantee future results.

To use the Bid Simulator, go to the "keywords" tab in your AdWords Account, click the bid simulator icon in the Max. CPC column next to the bid of any keyword.

comScore shares some rather interesting data showing that the number of paid clicks has grown 3 times slower than the total number of queries in the US since January 2007. Look at these graphs:

The percentage of SERPS (search engine results pages) that actually feature paid ads appears to be on the decline according to comScore.

"An analysis of comScore data shows that search queries are actually getting longer and that as searchers become more experienced they are using more words per search query," explains comScore’s Gian Fulgoni. "And this apparently reduces the likelihood that an advertiser has bid to have his/her ad included in the results page from these longer queries, due to paid search advertising strategies that limit ad coverage, such as Exact Match, Negative Match, and bid management software campaign optimization."

The data makes me wonder if we might start to see a trend in longer query keywords being bid upon. This could make the game much more tricky, because obviously the longer the query, the more combinations of keywords. It would really require a lot analysis of search trends and thinking from inside the customer’s shoes.

The event is pretty heavily weighted toward SEM and I asked what turned out, to those in attendance, to be a bit of a dopey question. I asked "How many here are interested purely in SEM?" then when only a couple of hands were raised, I was encouraged to think it may be more of an SEO crowd, so I asked "How many are interested purely in SEO?" and saw only another sprinkling of raised hands.

So, based on one of my previous experiences at a major company where the team was half SEM and half SEO, and my current position, which is entirely SEO team with no SEM – I assumed a similar situation would be true of most in-house teams at substantially sized companies.

My assumption was apparently skewed. It seems that most do double-duty on in-house teams. When I asked "What’s the balance here?" a few people said, (a few with emotion) "Both!"

That surprised me, based on what I knew before asking that question. But now I know that, at least among the crowd attending Search Insider Summit, that the oft joined SEM/SEO label applies to most. Well I suppose that was a gaff then, but…

Later in the day, I overheard a conversation on a shuttle bus which makes me wonder if SEO is being best served by in-house SEM/SEO’s. After two strangers from the conference exchanged greetings & pleasantries, the inevitable "What do you do?" came up from one.

The answer, "SEM and I’ve been tasked with learning SEO for our team." (emphasis mine) Then the response from an ill-informed questioner was short-sighted and probably simplistic thinking from those who THINK they understand SEO – "So you’re learning about meta tags and H1′s?"

I’d like to argue that the two disciplines should be divided and I’d wager that many SEM’s who love what they do will agree. The skill-set is completely different. Both SEM’s and SEO’s deal with keywords, and target search engine results pages, but that is where the similarity ends.

Having recently worked day-to-day with an SEM team in-house and being separated only by a cubicle wall for 18 months. I recall the SEO team only dealing with the SEM team during our bi-weekly online marketing group meetings.

So if someone who loves SEM is "tasked with learning SEO," (like that overheard conversation I mentioned above) they are not likely to understand or fully invest themselves in truly learning an important aspect of the Search Marketing business. They’ll learn a couple of things and not all aspects of the work. They’ll continue to do a great job of SEM and start doing a poor job of SEO.

I’ll also argue that if that role is reversed and an SEO is "tasked with learning SEM for the team" then they will learn a few things, but not all of the elements of good SEM and not do a complete and thorough job of SEM but will continue to do a good job of SEO.

I recall a couple of job interviews about 5 years ago where in both cases, I was talking with an SEM manager who had convinced their boss that they needed a full-time SEO on staff to handle things they weren’t able to continue doing as the company grew. Rather than evenly split SEM and SEO tasks among two staffers, they were dividing the two. That’s the smart way to go.

I didn’t take either of those jobs, and I’m quite happy about that now. I also walked away from a job that would have required me to significantly sharpen my SEM skills so that I could handle both. I didn’t doubt that I could do it, but love SEO and very likely wouldn’t have done as well with the SEM piece.

So I’d like to ask the question of those SEM/SEO dual purpose people – are you doing both because you love both or are you doing both because you were "tasked to learn" one of those pieces because your company won’t increase the budget enough for a new head on the payroll? Would you rather focus on one or continue doing both?

Comments

Danny Sullivan

Earlier this week, big media (New York Times, Disney, BusinessWeek, Hearst) lodged a bit of a tantrum because they felt Google wasn’t treating them special enough and was giving too much credit to scrapers and aggregators. Sullivan strides to the other, more populist side, saying Google seems to dote on Web-celebs like Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and Jason Calacanis.

Sullivan’s main target was Kawasaki’s new Alltop venture, which is essentially a categorized news aggregator. (Kawasaki calls it an “online magazine rack.”) Users can select categories of interest that lead to lists of subdomains where articles on those topics are brought together. It’s not exactly a new idea, but it does have Kawasaki’s former Apple evangelist weight behind it.

We were unable to duplicate what Sullivan was seeing in his Google search results for keywords like “economic news,” “food news,” etc., but Sullivan’s good reputation precedes him, and we have no reason to doubt what he saw. Google may have corrected, or it could be a regional result variance—from here, older Topix.com, with subfolders instead of subdomains, appears high up the list. (Subfolders, unless I’m mistaken, have been traditionally more SEO friendly.)

We know that in its effort to produce fresher results, a slight tweak to the algorithm was allowing cybercrooks to follow Google Trends, parasite host on trusted sites, and gain high rankings redirecting to scareware (bogus alerts warning a user’s computer is infected to scare them into buying fake anti-virus phishing programs). That glitch appears to have been addressed, and it may have affected Alltop. 

But it still leaves the question about whether in Google’s pursuit of fast, relevant, recent, and trustworthy search results they company has unduly weighted new ventures of star players. Sullivan presents the classic class struggle flipside:

“If Joe Schmoe SEO dude came along and rolled out hundreds of domains like this, worked it on Twitter, who wants to say Google wouldn’t be down on them like a ton of bricks?”

Chris Pirillo

He then brings up Chris Pirillo’s ill-fated Gada.be, whose subdomains got the site banned in Google. The site was eventually unbanned. Meanwhile, Sullivan suggests Godin’s Squidoo received a spam-pass from Google until Calacanis torpedoed it. To top it off, Calacanis’ Mahalo, despite Google’s decree it would drop search engine results from other search engines in its index, still gets quite a bit of Google love.

“You kind of feel sorry for Joe Schmoe,” writes Sullivan. “Build a name by once having worked for Apple or by having written a few marketing books, and you seem to get much better treatment than Joe would get if he pulled the same SEO play stunts.

”Alltop, Mahalo, Squidoo — none of them dominate Google. But seriously, Squidoo has a PR8 home page? Alltop has a PR7? Search Engine Land, which actually produces original content, sits with a PR6 — but these guys that simply compile content from others get a big fat PR kiss on the lips?”

It seems likely those who’ve been used as examples already know the online marketing game very well and also carry with them loyal armies willing to link to any new venture they launch, which gives them an automatic advantage over Joe Schmoe. But it could also be that Google’s constant struggle to balance trust and relevance could also be a player.

Google Japan, according to its apology, was apparently unaware of the company’s own terms of service. Paying a Japanese pay-per-post promotion company to pimp its new Hot Keywords blog widget caused the website to be busted down from PR 9 to PR 5.

Many thanks goes out to blogger Akky Akimoto for discovery and English translation of what might described as a big, corporate party foul. When searching for (in Japanese) Google Hot Keywords Ranking  + “Blog Widget” + “CyberBuzz,” Akimoto found over 30 posts writing about the widget, all of them acknowledging being paid by CyberBuzz.

Akimoto says CyberBuzz pays pretty handsomely for blog posts—up to $100 per post. Small ads were present at the bottom as well.

The apology issued from Google Japan is priceless since it suggests Google Japan is just now learning of Google’s search guidelines:

“Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.

"It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google’s search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.”

Hopefully no form of seppuku will be required and a simple gomenasai (or, if you’re a real Samurai: katajiganai on all fours with head bowed low) and Matt Cutts tweeted policy of treating all sites the same will suffice. Cutts tweets that he expects Google Japan’s new PR5 to remain as is for a while.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Horling spoke to a crowd looking to get a better understanding of personalized search and Google’s SearchWiki, launched last November, which allows users to customize and comment on Google search results. When logged into their personal accounts, users can move results up or down or remove them altogether.

That’s potentially bad news for webmasters who’ve earned or gamed their way to the top of the results, and probably very good news for those unable to crack the result that gets the vast majority of click-throughs and visibility.

The reasoning behind the feature is fairly obvious: Not one result works for everybody. This SMX session was opened with a Google search for “smx,” a prime example of the ambiguity associated with search. Results bring back the conference at the top of course—this is an SEO/SEM conference—and even the second result, but some users may be looking for the Santa Maria Airport (SMX on their ticket), or for Smithway Motor Xpress for freight trucking.

Bryan Horling

SearchWiki manager Corey Anderson says there are other reasons Google was interested in personalized search. SearchWiki allows the search giant to conduct user studies in the field and crunch user feedback. After a few months of operation, Google has discovered that a large fraction of users are attempting to re-find websites previously visited, Anderson said. They also discovered users liked the ability to add, delete, re-rank and comment on search results.

“Many searches are inherently ambiguous,” added Horling. “Getting the right results sometimes calls for information about the user.”

There are positive and negative aspects of personalized results for the search engine marketing industry. On the negative side, personalized search makes it harder to collect metrics—personalized results are password protected, after all.

On the positive side, it makes it easier for users to find websites they like and match their intent. And that’s good for return business/visits, and, presumably, for conversions.  
 

In addition to that, the retail sector saw an increase of nine percent in spending year over year. Despite grabbing up to 72 percent of the searching populace, that’s pretty much the end of the good news.

Small advertisers are spending less on search ads than larger brands, causing eMarketer to project a search advertising growth rate of just under 15 percent in 2009, compared to 2008’s 21 percent growth rate. Advertisers spending less than $50,000 on search ads cut spending by 23 percent last quarter, and those spending over $200,000 cut their budgets by nine percent.

Automotive, finance, travel and entertainment sectors all cut search ad spending by 15, 20, and 24 percent respectively, thanks to less consumer demand. Travel and entertainment saw an 18 percent decline in website traffic as consumers tighten their belts.

There’s still hope for Google’s bottom line. In addition to increased share on both sides of the search engine—among searchers and advertisers—analysts have been lowering their expectations while still predicting revenue growth in the double digits.

There’s also hope in the economic philosophy that a recession is the worst time to cut one’s advertising budget. Advertisers looking to gain new customers might find now is the best time to be aggressive. Not only are competitors cutting their marketing budgets and thereby decreasing their exposure to potential business, new, out-of-sector competition pops up vying for depleted discretionary spending cash.

In short, when times are bad, businesses probably should invest in grabbing more customers, not fewer. 
 

The new tools are the Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool and SEMToolBar. Both tools aggregate select data from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and provide relevant SEO information.

"We are excited to offer new tools to help webmasters and search engine optimization professionals alike conquer today’s complex search engine environment," said Bruce Clay, president of Bruce Clay, Inc.

The Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool offers marketing centric keyword statistics. A user can enter up to 12 keyword phrases at a time and see search counts from major search engines, click-throughs and CPC rates, categories, searcher demographics and more for each keyword.

The SEMToolBar installs in-browser to provide the data and tools that are most relevant for search engine optimization. The toolbar supports more than 20 languages, offers proxy searches, customized search interfaces, search result annotation, domain highlighting, keyword demographic data and page statistics.

The toolbar can be installed in Internet Explorer and a version for Firefox will be available shortly.

"These two tools are just a taste of what’s to come," said Clay. "We are working hard on a series of very significant updates for our Web site and our entire SEOToolSet product, which are scheduled to launch in 2009."
 

That’s why Dr. Sharan Jagpal, of Rutgers University and author of Fusion for Profit: How Marketing & Finance Can Work Together to Create Value, says bad times are the worst times to cut the marketing budget. "In a recession, it’s harder to gain new customers, to convince existing customers to buy more, and to win back customers who have left," he said. "So companies often need to be spending more money, not less. They just need to be smart about it."

For example, notes Jagpal, when times are good, the vacation and video game industries are not in direct competition. "In a bad economy, consumers may have no option but to forgo vacations. But to compensate for this loss, they may reward themselves with a small, affordable purchase such as a videogame. And that’s why it’s important to pay attention to shifts in consumer spending—if you’re a videogame maker, you may well benefit from a dramatic increase in your marketing right now."

So in the end it’s about marketing strategy, not marketing cuts. The vacation industry, during trying times, probably shouldn’t focus on growing their customer base, but instead should focus on retention of customers unaffected or minimally affected.

Likely one won’t hear an objection to an increased marketing budget from the marketing department, but rather from finance. Jagpal suggests that the distance between marketing and finance, the tendency for finance to regard the marketing department as a money pit with uncertain return are old-world corporate structure thinking.

"When these two groups stop talking at each other, when they get out of their functional silos and start working together, they can create marketing strategies that help an organization thrive even in the grimmest economy. But that means Finance must squelch its knee-jerk reaction to cut the marketing budget, and Marketing must learn to create metrics that demonstrate the bottom-line impact of their ideas."