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Tomaso Pozzi, Product Manager, Core Model & Optimization, Yahoo Search Marketing, said his company defines ad quality as the measure of the relevance of an ad to a user.

Yahoo looks at ad campaigns, the data, and keywords. It matches this data with performance data like impressions and clicks. Keywords, ad copies and user queries are key to analyzing ad quality.

The Yahoo Quality Index is a representation of your Ad Quality. It tells advertisers how well their ad is performing for all the keywords in an ad group.

Use relevant keywords or else you will pull down the quality index for your ad. You should split ad groups so that lower quality keywords don’t bring down the quality score of your higher rate keywords.

Summary
- Ad quality is the relevance of an advertiser ad to a user
- Campaigns, users and performance affect ad quality
- Keywords, ad copies and queries a the key areas.
- Quality index can help you raise your quality score and improve ad relevance.

Richard Simms, Anchor Intelligence, said there is a quality score for both advertisers and publishers. There are limitations with quality scores fore search marketers.

Anchor quality scores focus on the value of each click along a continuous spectrum. Some traffic is high quality because it has a high probability of performing, meaning it is likely to lead to conversions.

Anchor helps advertisers manage spend when there is little data about conversion. By aggregating traffic scores at the keyword level advertisers can manage spend for keywords where performance data is virtually unavailable. Conversion for ads is only 1-2 percent but this data can improve that leading to better performing campaigns and higher return on investment.

Jonathan Alferness
Group Product Manager
Google

Jonathan Alferness, Group Product Manager, Google, said the company is seeking to drive value back to its advertisers, meaning a greater return on investment. It is crucial that search is separate from advertising.

Alferness says the better ROI Google can give its publishers the more publishers it will have which leads to better ads and more advertisers.

Like Yahoo, relevancy is the key for quality scores at Google. Google uses the wisdom of the crowds to determine relevance. It’s all about clicks, queries and click through rate and ultimately ROI.

Quality Score Misconceptions:

1.Match types don’t affect quality score
2.Ad position does not impact quality score
3.Quality score is not impacted if the ad is not shown
4.Conversion rate does not affect quality score
5. A few days of bad performance will not ruin your quality score

If your ad is not displayed on the first page Google now will tell you what your bid would need to be to get you there. You should change your ad to improve your quality score to lower their minimum cost to get your ad to appear on the front page of the results for a keyword search.

Google has recently released Bid Simulator that allows you to experiment without spending any money.

Remember, it all comes back to your users and your customers.

Tom Cuthbert
President and Founder
ClickForensics

Tom Cuthbert, President & Founder, Click Forensics, good quality is all relative. You need to understand what is good for you the advertiser not just what is good for Google and Yahoo. Click Forensics thinks about quality all the way through to conversion.

Getting good quality:

1. Know what "good" means to you. What is the value of a click? Is it the right traffic?
2. Leverage all ad provider tools.
3. Find third party tools that compliment.
4. Monitor traffic quality metrics and ROAS.
5. Identify invalid traffic and submit for credit.
6. Block bad traffic sources (block lists)
7 Optimize, optimize and Optimize!

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Amanda Watlington, who’s the owner of Searching for Profit, suggested integrating blogging into your marketing efforts.  She warned that you can’t view this as a tactical SEO project, and "me too" positioning and content won’t do the trick.  Instead, think about the long term.

Watlington recommended creating an editorial battle plan to maintain quality and sustain readers’ interest over a period of time.  Try to treat every post like a miniature campaign, too, using social media to announce your posts and extend your reach.  And show that you value your readers by responding to their comments in a timely manner, and perhaps highlighting popular posts.

As for some SEO-specific tips, she proposed leveraging the SEO benefits of the blog by customizing the templates, and using a keyword list when building content.

Dixon Jones, the managing director of Receptional LTD, then said his piece.  He started by pointing out that blogs can be pretty significant; Dave Naylor’s blog has ties to more than 6,000 referring domains, for example.  People who are just getting started may want to know that Jones favors Drupal over WordPress, as well, and believes it’s important to use multiple bloggers.

With regards to RSS feeds, Jones also added that RSS feed widgets can confer SEO benefits.

And that brings us to Sally Falkow, who’s the president of PRESSfeed.  She emphasized that search engines pay attention to sites with RSS feeds.  "Share this" links are also helpful in a strictly human sense, since people will be able to drive new audiences to your website.

Next, the subject of blogging came up again thanks to Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing.  Odden named a full eight blog link tips, starting with "quality in, quality out."  "Link out" was his second recommendation, since links are often seen as a currency among bloggers.  Tips three and four are then rather reciprocal: make a big list, and get on other big lists.

Recommendation five is trickier, but make a killer tool if possible.  Spread goodwill (and your name) by writing guest posts, too.  Power up retweets, and don’t forget to network offline.

Finally, we have Jim Hedger, Webmaster Radio‘s lead blogger.  Hedger mentioned that he assigns each show a unique RSS feed, title, tags, and descriptive text.  But Hedger stressed that, whatever approach you take, you must know your audience.  From there, you can tackle the fine art of narrow-casting to a wide audience or wide-casting to a narrow one.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Sarah Smith

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open. Facebook has over 250 million users globally and has open registration.

Facebook allows you to target your exact audience. With other ad options you are not able to target your exact audience.

Targeting capabilities structured and unstructured. Structured includes: location, age/birthday, gender, education, workplace, relationship and language.

Unstructured (keywords): activities, interests, music, TV, movies, and books.

Keywords are generated because users actually put these words in their profile.

Tips to top ROI on Facebook ads:

- Experiment with multiple ads
- Target relevant audiences
- Design and refresh compelling creative
- Create and optimize socially enabled landing pages
- Use Facebook reporting
- Become a fan of Facebook Ad page

Users can decide what they think of Facebook ads by giving them thumbs up or thumbs down. This can help advertisers refine their approach.

Consumers can become fans of your page via Facebook ads using links to the page.

Best practices to boost CTR:

1. Keep ads short and simple
2. Ask questions in ad text
3. Avoid overcapitalization
4. Strong call to action "ACT NOW!"
5. Mention offers or discount code

Design ads that demand attention
    -target the right people and find success

Refresh creative with simple changes
    -color of the image…

Exploit pockets of opportunity
Adjust landing pages for engagement
Build a fan base to connect with customers
Optimize with Facebook ad manager
Dig into Facebook reports
 Report type
Set up a test with Facebook ads
 Use unique tracking links to measure ROI
 Experiment
 Mix targeting

Question & Answer:
Are ads currently being approved only in English?

Ad approval process is being built out in Facebook to cater to other languages.

How do we use CTR versus thumbs up/thumbs down? What’s the correlation?

Not sure. Both the CTR and thumbs up/thumbs down both weigh equally.

How do you know what clickthrough rate to expect?

Advised that you bid on the high end and adjust later on. Facebook doesn’t have any benchmark right now but says that you shouldn’t expect same CTR on Google AdWords on Facebook Ads. Seen ads with high ROI and be successful with a .04 CTR.

Why do I want to target those people who are already of my page?

May not necessarily be customers yet.

What is the definition of a fan in the sense of the sales funnel?

Example is Maria Smith (?) – you get more exposure by that free exposure. A fan is a potential customer or evangelist of your business. Can also be influencers. Companies can also use it as a CRM tool to get feedback on their products.
 

Will Facebook be implementing tracking codes to monitor conversions?

They are looking at it – it’s a huge value for advertisers but it’s difficult for Facebook right now.

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Gary Milner, who’s the global marketing director of Lenovo‘s Interactive and Teleweb Marketing division, was the first presenter to speak.  He brought up the old John Wanamaker quote about wasted advertising money, and emphasized that businesses need to start working towards attribution models now in order to make better marketing decisions in the future.

Robin Smith, the global search marketing manager at Life Technologies, then stepped up to introduce a couple of points about the complexity of doing so.  After doing some investigating, she found that her company had missed roughly 80 percent of the touch points leading to conversions.

Next, Mark Grote, who’s a senior search manager at Microsoft, issued some statements about his company’s stance on last click attribution.  He claimed that search overdelivers and is over-credited in terms of campaign performance.  SEO ties more to the awareness and consideration phase of a purchase than to sales, according to Grote.

Finally, Adam Goldberg, ClearSaleing‘s chief innovation officer, wrapped up the session’s formal presentations.  He made the point that banners can be extremely useful in influencing the types of searches that are done.  Otherwise, Goldberg stated that the last click model is not as effective as the attribution model, and that you can’t do attribution just by guessing.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Gregg Stewart, SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing, said 21 percent of consumers have conducted a local search on their mobile device and another 22 percent said they have tried directory assistance.

Usage significantly varies based on the sophistication of the phone. Even directory assistance is impacted by this.

Advertisers hold the basic requirements for mobile ad buys, the same as they do on the web or search ad buys. Leverage online media buys wit integrated mobile applications.

Maps and driving directions are key. Consumers are looking to purchase based on proximity.

Basics for getting it right:
No one size fits all strategy
Requires planning
Do your homework

Steve Espinosa
VP of Innovation
eLocal Listing, LLC

Steve Espinosa, VP of Innovation, eLocal Listing, said with local mobile search aim to be in the first 3 local results. Only 3 listings are displayed on the first page of mobile search results. If you target local ads to iPhones in AdWords you see much better results. You can afford to increase the bid to get better traction.

Make sure you take over your listing. Reviews also play a huge factor. Results with reviews get 1.4 times more calls. On Bing, you really need a Yellow Page ad to perform well.

With Yahoo they only show the top 2 local mobile search results.  Reviews matter and local numbers matter vs. 1-800. Add photos to push down competition.

Yahoo Search Monkey:
Create a listing in Yelp
Gather positive reviews
Link to your Yelp listing
Higher rankings
1.2 times more calls for Yahoo

Josh Siegel, Product Manager, Mobile Local Search, Google, said the company is trying to make searching in the physical world as easy as searching the web.

Google is starting to integrate your location into search with your permission. The objective is if you want something around you just search for it. This will be your mobile default if you opt in.
They are going this with a technology called Google Gears. Google Gears is pushing forward standards like geo location API’s.

Google does a lot of side by sides to evaluate its results.  Siegel stressed Google always asks first for consumer’s permission.

Search for Google Local Business Center and claim your business address. Make your listing as comprehensive as possible.

Justin Jed, Group Product Manager, Bing Mobile, said smartphones have high queries per user, but feature phones have more users. The advanced feature phone users are also doing mobile search. Don’t forget them in your strategies to reach consumers.

Mobile tasks are shorter and more time sensitive than PC tasks. Mobile searchers are very specific and very direct in what they want.

Most searches with mobile devices are not really local in nature. Web search accounts for 70 percent of mobile searches. Make sure your site is optimized for the mobile experience.

Bing mobile browser is task-oriented.

Instant Answers on the go!

Bing also focuses on great relevant local results. We also click for 1-click directions even for people who haven’t setup GPS on their phone.

Bing is optimized for mobile and adapts its rendering for specific devices.

Bing is a better way to search on mobile. Bing Help allows you to accomplish key tasks more easily.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Tim Kendall, Facebook‘s director of monetization, began the session by saying that, while a lot of people fixate on the clickthrough rate, this shouldn’t be an issue with customers paying based on the cost per click.  Facebook delivers so many millions of impressions, he argued, that a low clickthrough rate is natural.

Sean Heywood, Managing Partner at the MR Barber Shop & Urban Lounge, then picked up the "go Facebook" thread by sharing a success story.  Facebook ads allow his small business to experiment for as little as $5 per day.  He said that he’s seen a quick, impressive ROI from this, and indeed, that Facebook works better than search for his company.

Performics, a much larger firm, is also fond of Facebook.  Claudia Virgilio, one of its vice presidents, even reported a victory on the clickthrough front.  Apparently the budget for one client’s ad campaign was split equally between Facebook and search, and Facebook delivered 58 percent of impressions and 52 percent of clicks.  What’s more, the ROI ended up being 42 percent higher for Facebook ads versus search ads.

Finally, Rogelio (Ro) Choy, RockYou‘s chief revenue officer, shared some thoughts.  He’s a huge proponent of fan pages versus website marketing, and he stated that the value of fan pages is the multiplier effect.  Things will often spread between friends with similar tastes, increasing clickthrough rates.  To not make the investment in marketing your Facebook fan page is ludicrous, according to Choy.

As for how to promote things, he suggested pointing people to an activity.  Don’t just drive brand exposure in social media; drive brand engagement.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Gregory Markel
Founder/President
Infuse Creative, LLC

Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, said video search optimization is not enough anymore. Video has gone social and mobile. A good strategy implements both.

Consider all the elements surrounding ranking on YouTube, including view counts, frequency, rating, sharing, favoriting, playlists, flagging, comments and thumbs up and down. There is a lot of speculation that Google is using Google analytics to influence website ranking. It makes sense that this would apply to YouTube as well.

Additional YouTube ranking factors are whether you have been awarded an authority channel (one box results), links, embeds video responses, subscribers, channel views and annotation usage.

Optimization keywords and tags:

- Research the competition at YouTube for your related keywords, tags and description. Learn from them but don’t copy.

- Use YouTube’s keyword suggestions. Or Google’s keyword tool. Simply type a keyword slowing into YouTube search and you can see what YouTube suggests.

–

Also use YouTube public insight data to help you optimize.

–

Tips for optimizing community factors:

- Make great and unique videos.
-Add subscribe, favorite and rate prompts/ calls to action to your videos either at editing stage or via YouTube Annotations.
- Post a video response on the most popular and relevant video at YouTube that day.
= Add comments prompting people to watch your video on the video watch pages of popular videos.
- Use some but not all the same keyword’s as your competition in your titles as the ones related to popular videos that are using in their titles, descriptions and tags to wind up in the related videos arena of their pages.
- Post new videos on Thursdays or Fridays to get visibility on the weekend.
- Join the YouTube partner program if you can qualify.
- Important: Use social media and web sites to submit/post your video links and imbeds and get the word out about the video to build links and embeds. Target affinity groups/users and automate this effort with tools like tweetdeck and Tweetlater.
- Submit your videos to multiple video sites using tubemogul.com and link to the YouTube video within each description page.
- Link your videos together
- Create Playlists.
- Monitor YouTube Insight and Google Analytics for your channel and videos
- Issue free and or paid press releases to trumpet your video.
- Adwords – advertise your video.
- YouTube Direct Sales. Buy brand channel, homepage and network placement $$$$
- Buy or lease a popular channel at YouTube

——-

The iPhone 3G S has a built in ability to upload video to YouTube
1 shoot a video on your iPhone
2 add keyword optimized title, description and tags.
3. Upload to YouTube.

Erin Bouchier, Business Lead, Google/YouTube Advertising, said online video is the fastest growing medium in the history of the world. Your customers are there and you should be too.

Ways to connect with your audience:

- Know your audience by using YouTube Insight tool.
- Be Proactive: Promote Your Video using PPC tools similar to search. This can significantly increase viewership of your videos.
- Create a brand channel on YouTube. YouTube can post all of your videos on one place branded to your site for free.
- Don’t forget about the content. You can run TV style ads within videos in 15-30 second spot preroll or midroll.

Mark Robertson, Founder, ReelSEO, said YouTube is now the second largest search engine in terms of search queries. In July 2009 there were 3.6 million search queries on YouTube.

- Social media + video working together
- More efforts into video discovery and retrieval.
- Mobile video is going crazy. There is a 1700 % increase from Jan July 2009 in this area.

The next wave in video SEO:

- Html 5 and open video — Firefox 3.5, safari, chrome beta

- There is a lot of progress with advanced recognition technologies such as speech to texts, object recognition and facial recognition.

Tip: How to get a thumbnail in universal search…

- Allow direct link to video file,
- Submit MRSS and or XML sitemap to Google
- Add relevant video to existing ranked pages.

David Burch, Director of Marketing, TubeMogul, said videos are mostly discovered through YouTube searches. The next most common source is referred videos, but not single source dominates. Search engines only refer about 11 percent of referred traffic.

A view only means someone clicked paly. On average most people don’t watch much of a video. Within 30 seconds over 66 percent of initial viewers have already clicked away.

The life cycle of a video peaks very early. So you want to have call to action early in videos and you also want to have a lot of videos to fight these two trends.

YouTube dominates in terms of average views per video. However, if you syndicate to just 6 more video sites you can double your viewership.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Lieutenant Robert H. Rahn (retired), who used to work as a homicide detective and is now the president and director of investigations at Management Resources, started things off.  He pointed out that making the public aware of missing persons cases is extremely important because fresh interest can often translate into new leads.

Kathleen Fealy, the president of KF Multimedia & Web, Inc., later agreed.  But she highlighted the many problems that people who want to help can face.  Consider the lack of a common portal, for instance; this makes it hard to know where to upload or look for information.  On Facebook alone, folks create causes, fan pages, and groups.

Then, Lisa Buyer, who’s the president and CEO of The Buyer Group, wrapped up the session by talking about an admirably coordinated effort.  A website featuring optimized content was created for Tiffany Sessions, along with a Facebook fan page, a blog, and Twitter and YouTube accounts.  This has resulted in the show "48 Hours" covering her story, and lots of new information has surfaced.

On a related note, we’d like to remind you about the search for Robert Botts, which is taking some similar turns.

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Carla Borsoi
VP, Research & Analytics
Ask.com

Carla Borsoi, VP, Research & Analytics, Ask.com, spoke about search and user intent. You should focus on what the user is actually looking for and find new ways to answer questions. Keep in mind what the searcher really wants.

Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts, said to look at the last five years in search and how it has changed. Spencer said what happens in the next five years in search will be exciting. He expects more with voice and mobile search.

Heather Dougherty
Research Director
Hitwise

Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist, comScore, said search activity is judged by intent, not destination.  Search will continue to grow as a branding vehicle. Search growth will be driven by increased intensity and increasing searcher base.

Heather Dougherty, Research Director, Hitwise, said companies need to be looking at their optimization and the content of searches.  The actual content for every search is different with different angles.  Twitter, Google, YouTube, Facebook all have different approaches.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Fetherstonhaugh said, "CMOs need a new platform.  We grew up with the four Ps of marketing: product, place, price, promotion. . . .  The evolution of marketing must move on, from product to experience.  From place to everyplace.  From price to exchange.  From promotion to evangelism."

As an example of this, he cited a video produced by Ogilvy Toronto for Dove.  Called "Evolution," it’s racked up over nine million views, and as Fetherstonhaugh observed, "cost zero dollars to market" and "helped cause Dove sales to increase by $500 million."