Online Marketing Blog

Earlier today Yahoo Search Marketing announced they will now provide free, open access to the “Panama” search marketing application program interfaces (APIs) through the launch of the Commercial API Program. Commercial clients (big agencies) will also be offered optional fee-based, value-added services that come in three flavors: basic, advanced and elite.

Yahoo’s been busy today, because this evening I got the heads up Y!SM is rolling out quality based pricing across it’s paid search and contextual advertising networks.

Here’s the lowdown on quality based pricing from Yahoo:

Day two of the Search Insider Summit was full of great presentations and commentary, so be sure to read the frequently updated MediaPost Raw blog.

Since many of the attendees of the Summit are the kinds of companies, marketers and agencies that employ various types of marketing channels, both on and offline, the opportunity to present examples and case studies of integration with search was ideal.

Some of the high level takeaways from this session include the importance for company marketers to set expectations when enegaging in an integrated campaign as well as the importance of coordination. Larger agencies that are capable of managing multi channel programs including search may have an easier time than a situation where a company uses multiple agencies to manage their various marketing programs.

I was able to do just two video interviews before my camera got dropped in a glass of water. I’ll have to explain that in another post.

Here’s Michael Gray, aka graywolf, just before our session with Todd Mailicoat and Neil Patel on “Social Bookmark Strategies” where he talks about tips for conference goers. Coverage of that session can be found at The Lisa, Search Engine Roundtable, Small Business SEM and CenterNetworks.

I also caught up with Mona Elesseily from Page Zero where she talks about Yahoo Panama pros and cons. Also two new Panama enhancements: Quality based bidding and being able to opt out of Yahoo’s content network.

Due to the Australia distraction we skipped last week’s update of the search marketing blogs list. We’re still holding a few blogs in queue to accumulate more content for those that might be wondering. Thanks to Amie Krone for helping out this week!

• SLI Systems - Dr. Shaun Ryan comments on the search industry from a site search vendor’s perspective.

• Michael Visser - The Australian blogger.

• Metaverse Business Blog - A blog about Second Life marketing.

• Web Analytic Matt - Simple solutions for a complex world from Matt Hopkins.

• The Online Marketing Guy - In-house SEM advice from a co-chair at SEMPO.

By now the High Rankings SEM Seminar team has infiltrated our city of melting snow and is preparing for the all-out assault on SEO, PPC, Analytics and more for the benefit of the local marketers wise enough or fortunate enough to attend.

The fun begins around 7:45 am or so for registrations at the Crown Plaza downtown Minneapolis and the ball gets rolling around 8:30. It looks to be a very good sized group. Actually, it’s an ideal size - small enough to be able to interact with all the other attendees and speakers over two days and large enough for a variety of interactions, comments and feedback.

Threaded email discussion lists are a bit old school communications in contrast to the rise in popularity of blogs and RSS. However, there are several of these channels that serve as a sort of digital watering hole for some of the most experienced search marketers who dispel invaluable insights.

For large segments of the internet community, email remains a preferred discussion tool. The platforms most often used for such lists these days seem to be Google Groups and Yahoo Groups.

One of the things that often happens with people in the search marketing industry is that after being in the business for a while and attaining a certain level of expertise, it becomes easy to take for granted that not everyone in marketing and business is consuming and digesting as much information. References to strategies and certain tactics do not have the same meaning, because of the dependencies on previous knowledge.

This week brings several more very useful and interesting search engine marketing blogs to our list with a nice smattering of blogs from the UK. Here is the updaed OPML file and plain text list.

• Beyond the Paid - Melissa Mackey who is a Search Marketing Director for MagazineLine and recent winner of a free pass to Search Marketing Expo blogs about search engine marketing.
• 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog - Online marketing articles on blogs / blogging, internet advertising, search engine marketing, social media, and web design / development.

Search marketing moves fast. Keeping up to date can be a full time job so finding quality resources of information is critical to stay ahead of the game. Books (print) are often outdated by the time they hit the shelves and conferences are expensive.

Many newbies and experienced search marketers turn to forums as a way to share knowledge, speculation and socialize. But which forums provide good info and which are full of tin hats?

Which leads me to this week’s reader’s poll:

Update: I rarely add updates but this is important. Regrettably, I did not include Crea8asite Forums, which was purely an oversight.

Wow, this week went fast! It’s time for the search engine marketing blogs update. Below are blogs that we’ve come across in our travels across the web. Also, here is the updated OPML file and the plain text list for use with custom search engines.

• SEO Critique - Thomas Schmitz’s Seattle based blog about search engine optimization.
• Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search - The title of this blog by Mike Blumenthal says it all.
• Cape Cod SEO - Small business SEO and PPC plus a little about Cape Cod from Derek J Edmond.

The winds of change are blowing in the search marketing conference scene this year with more offerings than ever. The big conferences persist, while new challengers as well as smaller and more practical seminars emerging.

SEO and Paid Search education is not limited to conferences with the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification and the SEMPO Institute launching recently. However, conferences and seminars offer the added benefit of networking, prospecting and the kind of after hours education on topics that simply are not publicly available.

Which leads me to this week’s Reader Poll on conferences or seminars that offer search engine optimization and/or paid search marketing content.

I assure you it’s worth the wait for this week’s list of blogs added to the big list of search engine marketing blogs. Here is the updated OPML file and the text file for you CSE junkies out here.

The overall list is now around 380 blogs, but we’ll be trimming that down in the next week or two as we audit the list for those that are not posting regularly.

• Market Position - A group blog about search marketing from WebTrends, owners of Web Position Gold.
• The PPC Book - Jeff Hudson, who works as a client side search marketer, blogs about Pay Per Click marketing.