Pay per click search engine advertising is one of the most popular ways to promote a website.
With Overture and Google leading the pack, the industry as a whole has grown immensely in the past few years. According to a report by PriceWaterHouseCoopers, they estimate that Internet Advertising brought in more than $9 billion in 2004 alone.

With PPC advertising you choose “keywords/phrases,” then bid how much you’d like to pay for each click. When a searcher goes to a search engine and types in one of your keyphrases, your short text ad appears, and if they click on it your account is then charged. In a “perfect world” this is the way it would work, but thanks to unscrupulous people, there’s a dirty little secret known as “click fraud.”

Click fraud is simply the act of clicking on ads for the direct purpose of costing the advertiser money. It’s similar to paying out cash for false leads. According to InternetWeek.com, 60% of those who responded to a survey conducted by the “Search Engine Professional Organization” had stated that fraud is a problem when it comes to PPC advertising.

So where does click fraud come from? Well, there are actually a few different sources:

1) AdSense Users: Google AdWords has a program called “AdSense” that pays website owners to run their AdWords ads and compensates them per click. Google does monitor this and it’s against their terms of service to click on any of the ads on your own site. If they find publishers doing this, they will lose their accounts, but some may still be clicking under the radar.

2) Your Competitors: Your competitors could be clicking on your ads over a period of several days in order to deplete your ad budget.

3) Software: There are those who use automated clicking tools, such as robot programs, to click on PPC listings.

In some Asian countries, people are often paid to click on PPC ads for hours. Many don’t know why they do it, and don’t care, only that they’ll be well rewarded for their efforts. If you do a search on any search engine you’ll see plenty of sites looking to hire people for just this purpose. For more on this see…http://tinyurl.com/2ka5g

Most PPC networks have measures in place to protect you against click fraud. Overture tracks more than 50 data points, including IP addresses, browser info, users’ session info and what they call “pattern recognition.” They have a “proprietary system” in place for detecting fraud and a specialized team that monitors things and works with the advertisers to stop it.

Google offers suggestions to avoid click thru fraud, such as “using negative keywords” to keep your ads from showing up for products and services that are unrelated. They also suggest adding tracking url’s to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google. An easy way to do this is to add a ? to your links along with the identifier. For example, a tracking link to identify Google would look like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/?referer-google

If you go through your log files, you’ll be able to see your Google traffic at a glance.

If you suspect fraud, Google asks that you contact them right away, as they have a team of researchers that will investigate. They also take action to block future impressions from anyone they identify as committing click fraud. Like Overture, they also have “proprietary technology” that distinguishes between normal clicks and invalid ones. Google never bills you for any “bad clicks” that are caught by their system.

So what’s an honest website owner to do? You need to be alert to any “suspicious activity” by researching your server logs or stats. If you’re experiencing a lot of clicks and no sales you’ll also want to take a closer look. You need to watch for any spikes in traffic, usually on one keyword or phrase and coming from only one PPC source. You need to measure and track all of your PPC accounts closely.

If this sounds like too much work, you may want to look at an outside service to take care of it for you. A variety of new services have opened recently to help combat the click fraud problem.

1) Keyword Max: http://www.KeyWordMax.com
Offers up a service called “Click Auditor,” which monitors the activity on your PPC accounts and alerts you to any suspicious activity. You can request a free demo at the site.

2) Click Detective: http://ClickDetective.net
A website monitoring service that uses sophisticated tracking mechanisms to determine whether “visitor behaviour” is normal or not. Offering a 15 day free trial. Easy to use, you just copy and paste a snippet of code on your page and add a campaign ID by logging into your account.

3) Click Assurance: http://ClickAssurance.com
An Internet Security Firm that specializes in click fraud. They will audit your PPC accounts and go after any refunds you are due because of fraud.

4) Who’s Clicking Who: http://WhosClickingWho.com
An independent auditing service that tracks individual users for fraud. Can also detect abuse coming from proxy servers. A one month subscription is $79.00, which includes free installation and up to 50,000 transactions per month.

5) ClickLab: http://ClickLab.com/products/click-fraud

This service isolates bad clicks with a scorecard based detection system. Pricing starts at $50.00 per month and is based on the number of sites you need to track and their page views.

ClickLab also has a nice white paper you should download while visiting: “How to Defend Your Website against Click Fraud.”

Click fraud isn’t going away anytime soon. If anything, it will probably get worse before it gets any better. It’s up to you as a vigilant website owner to do what you can to keep your PPC advertising costs down. You can’t stop it, but with the right tracking in place, it can be managed and controlled, and hopefully kept to a minimum.

By John Borthwick

Whenever I speak on e-mail marketing, there’s always at least one question about frequency. People want to know how often they should mail to their house lists. Simple enough.
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Often, there’s another issue they’re trying to solve: control of the house list. You know what I’m talking about: everyone in the organization wants to use the e-mail list to get her own message out, without considering how much e-mail list members are receiving.
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Here are some quick tips to determine the right e-mail frequency for your organization, and to create a situation whereby you control the list and protect recipients from being bombarded.
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Frequency
There’s no quick answer to the frequency question. It depends on the goals for your e-mail and the type of content you send. Some rough guidelines:
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• Mail at least once a month. Mail less often than this, and you risk being forgotten by recipients. Monthly is the bare minimum if you want to keep your brand or company name top of mind (a common e-mail goal).
• Let content be your guide. Look at what you provide readers and you’ll get a feel for proper frequency. Analyze how often the information changes and how quickly readers must receive it to act on it.
• Take the lead from your readers. Some organizations offer daily e-mail newsletters as well as weekly summaries of the same content (as ClickZ does) to give readers a choice. Always tell potential readers how often you mail at sign-up, so they can decide if the frequency works for them.
• Work within your resources. A daily e-mail requires many more resources than a monthly. Better a well-done monthly e-mail than a shoddy weekly or daily. I usually recommend clients start with a monthly. Once that’s going smoothly, they can think about moving to weekly. You need to walk before you can run!
• Watch for trends. Declining response, open, and click-through rates can be signs of list fatigue. Though some decrease is normal, watch carefully and cut back frequency if you see a problem. Don’t assume if the unsubscribe rate is stable you’re OK. Many people prefer to forward e-mail directly to their delete folder rather than unsubscribe.

Controlling Your List
If you work in a large corporation or association, you may notice every internal group wants to send to the entire e-mail list all the time. These folks mean well. But they often don’t consider the big picture.
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For any organization, a house list is an asset. As such, you want to protect it for use over the long term. Using frequency as a way to maintain control isn’t bad, but why not address the control issue right up front?
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Here’s an exercise I use with clients to protect their lists:
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1. Get input from all internal groups. Learn what types of content they want to send and how often. Get as much detail as possible:
• Who. The entire list? A certain segment?
• What. Is it an e-mail newsletter? A promotion? What type of content is it? What products/services will be promoted?
• When. Does it need to coincide with offline promotions? With monthly events?
• Why. What’s the call to action? What’s the e-mail’s goal (quantitative, if possible)?

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2. Sort it out. Here’s the real work. After you’ve compiled an e-mail communications wish list, look for ways to consolidate. One organization I worked with had two groups producing almost identical industry news summaries. By combining them into a single e-mail, we saved time on content development. And saved our readers from getting e-mail messages with redundant information.

You may also find different groups’ promotions may be lumped together or a single enterprise-wide e-newsletter is the best vehicle for content from multiple groups.
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3. Create a master calendar. Develop a set schedule to follow each month. You may need some flexibility for breaking news or other very timely information. Otherwise, groups should stick to the schedule. This should alleviate last-minute “gotta sends,” which often cause over-mailing.

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4. Appoint a gatekeeper. This person has the power to veto any e-mail communications that are, for any reason, not appropriate. This person is an advocate for list members. You need someone tuned in, who understands what list members opted in to receive.

I once had to veto a promotional e-mail for a home product an internal group wanted to send on behalf of an advertiser to my client’s entire list of top business-to-business (B2B) executives. That group’s position was these were successful people who all probably owned homes. Therefore, it was a fit. My point: these people signed up to get industry information from us, not consumer good promotions. Using the list in this matter would not only have been inappropriate, it would have hurt our credibility.
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5. Consider segmentation and dynamic content. Most high-end e-mail service providers (ESPs) offer these tools, which are often underutilized. By targeting messages better, you can help keep list fatigue at bay. You’ll also see better response, open, and click-through rates.

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6. Watch performance. E-mail is an evolving process. If one group’s e-mail consistently falls short of stated goals, work with the group on it. If it still doesn’t perform, consider removing it from the calendar. Continuing to send e-mail that’s doesn’t accomplish its mission makes no sense.

I hope these tips help you to better control your list and maintain one of your organization’s most valuable assets.

By Jeanne Jennings

As a search engine marketer who’s optimized Web sites for over 10 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of companies: business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), SMBs (define), and big brands. With search engine marketing (SEM) around for such a long time, you might think large companies and big brands thoroughly comprehend the SEO (define) process.
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An SEO process should be a key element in any online marketing plan, especially for big-brand companies, right? Wrong. In fact, SMBs outperform many big-brand companies.
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“We’re getting an increasing number of calls from vice presidents and directors of marketing at big companies with big brands who curiously type in their brand name at Google and are shocked to see that they are not number one,” said Doug Ausbury, cofounder of Intrapromote LLC. “They assume their brand name is strong enough to catapult them to number one at Google. Some of them are losing so convincingly to small business competitor sites and blog sites that they’ve had to launch aggressive, big-budget paid search campaigns just to get their site on page one at Google.”
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“Search is the great marketing equalizer,” said Anthony Iaffaldano, Reprise Media’s marketing director. “Customers are won or lost one at a time, with costs per lead rarely exceeding a dollar. At that rate, any business can compete with any other, regardless of their size. A local store can suddenly afford premium placement right along side Wal-Mart (and in some cases even higher).”
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Why are SMBs outperforming big brands in the SEO arena? Below, some possible answers.
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Big-Brand Egos
Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of big-brand companies’ key decision-makers don’t have enormous egos. Yet it’s often a big-brand ego that interferes with the keyword research process. Reason? Many big brands mistakenly assume their brands will automatically carry a Web site from search visibility to final sale.
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“Big-brand companies need to stop resting on the laurels of their brand,” said Iaffaldano, “and start offering users strong content and a compelling online experience.
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“Searchers don’t care how much you spent building your brand. They don’t care if you’re the biggest company in your space, or if you’ve got the cutest mascot or the funniest marketing campaign,” he continued. “All they care about is finding the answers to their questions. And if you’re not making sure that your brand is at the top of the search results when they’re looking? Game over.”
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By refusing to acknowledge their interpretation of user experience is somewhat skewed, big-brand companies give smaller competitors more SEO opportunities. Big-brand companies will be consistently outperformed in the search arena by smaller companies that genuinely understand what a target audience is searching for, give that audience the information they seek, and present the information in an easy-to-find, easy-to-navigate, and easy-to scan manner.
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“Most often when we analyze the company’s site, we find a great looking site that is very un-search-engine friendly,” said Ausbury. “Eventually, we end up in a meeting with their development team and you can hear a pin drop after we explain why their great-looking, very expensive site is being outperformed at search engines by companies that are much smaller and who’ve built attractive, search-friendly sites.”
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A little sign above my desk reads, “Get over yourself.” It reminds me to constantly focus on my clients’ needs. Maybe big-brand staffers should do the same.
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Flexibility and Turnaround Time
I’m sure many of you have experienced the bureaucracy of a large firm, educational institution, ad agency, or government agency. It’s a wonder any work is accomplished at all with all the staff meetings, politicking, and the like. When working with big-brand firms, I sometimes feel like I’m in the middle of a Dilbert cartoon.
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Although smaller companies certainly can have as much politicking and bureaucracy as large firms, I often find smaller firms get better search engine visibility by minimizing the bureaucracy. They don’t create overly complicated site designs. They don’t have a copywriter; marketing director, brand manager, legal counsel, and CEO approve all copy.
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“Small businesses can be incredibly nimble and make changes, such as creating unique landing pages or making changes to site content, on a moment’s notice,” said Iaffaldano. “Compare that with large, bureaucratic organizations that typically need a whole series of approval processes before site/campaign changes can be made. Because they have so many people involved in these processes, they have a very difficult time coordinating everyone’s efforts.”
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As full SEO implementation often takes one to three months for the full effect, big brands lose out to smaller firms with smaller budgets and faster turnaround times. Result? Higher search engine advertising costs for the big brand.
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Cross-Training
With a smaller firm, cross-training is often a necessity for business survival. A Web developer often has graphic design skills and must write title-tag and meta-tag content for a site. Marketing staff might have enough technical skills to change XHTML content.
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Why does cross-training aid search engine visibility?
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Simply put, with smaller firms I don’t see information hording. Marketing staffers share Web analytics data with developers and designers so they can continually improve page and template designs. Developers and marketers work with usability professionals to ensure the site meets business and user goals.
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A marketer may never be able to build a complete Web site as a developer does, and a developer may not be the best copywriter. But cross-training can make a small business staff far more educated and useful than a large firm’s teams.
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Conclusion
Here’s a situation I frequently encounter: A big-brand company sees a smaller firm’s site outperform its own in terms of search engine visibility and overall conversions. The big-brand company purchases the smaller firm. Instead of garnering the smaller firm’s knowledge, the large company ruins the smaller firm’s site and overall search engine traffic. No one wins.
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But there’s hope. As the Web evolves, companies of all sizes will recognize the need for cross-training and knowledge-sharing. In this respect, the search industry is a great catalyst for change.

By Shari Thurow