Dear Valued Customer,
Serious advertising strategies + Serious business success =
One hot NetSearch Direct summer.

We really missed the vacation memo. This month we’re watching our newest products roll out and take flight, and we’re working on a few more behind-the-scenes. We’re monitoring the latest PPC trends and always working our organic you-know-what’s off helping businesses climb with SEO rankings. So much has been happening that we couldn’t tell you about just one thing in the PPC or SEO departments so we’re sending you juicy bits of search online marketing goodness delivered in the form of SEM Bytes. Sink your teeth into these advertising goodies and you’ll be rewarded with the latest trends in online marketing.

Did you happen to catch our latest webinar? Or were you able to sit in at our seminar? If you missed us, you can catch us in action at the Retail Marketing Expo on August 4th. Come see why those who know us call us a real “circus act”.

PPC Bytes: The Latest in Best Practices (The Short List!)

Pay-per-Click advertising is one complex beast. The keywords, ad copy, landing pages, quality score, conversion path – and don’t even get us started on the analytics! Working a PPC account is all about carefully piecing together variables of one giant puzzle with the focus and dedication that rely on industry knowledge and time-tested experience. Making the right decisions is crucial to business success, and the best defense against wasteful spending. Here are the latest trends in PPC:

1. Keyword Trendspotting. We’ve said it before; trendspotting with keywords is all about knowing which of your campaign’s keywords work best during particular times of the year, and maximizing your campaign’s budget accordingly. Trendspotting combines campaign, competitor, and audience behavior research with PPC best practices, and the end product is always success. While that’s great for your core keywords, this summer the industry is all abuzz about in-depth keyword trends with the launch of some cool products from Google that allow campaign managers to drill down the data by data, region, category, and more. The end result is even more behavior targeting data for campaigns and extra insight into search trends that may have been overlooked; for businesses that means maximum exposure to the “now” audience, and better budget management. It was a fine day when we noticed that Google had taken an interest in keyword trendspotting as much as we do.

1. Keyword Trendspotting. We don’t mean to sound like a broken record here, but identifying keyword trends within SEO campaigns is just as important as with PPC campaigns, and the SEM industry is all excited about the Google trend labs this summer. Companies are recognizing its true value by combining like search terms to see which one outperforms the other in search popularity. By realizing keyword trends, businesses in every vertical can capitalize on what’s popular within their own industries and serve their customers the right products for the moment. Keyword trendspotting will also give you an insight into keywords which have increasing popularity so you can prepare your website and campaigns appropriately.

2. Integrate With PPC. We know that paid search advertising should always reflect our basic SEO keywords – making the two advertising mediums work in tandem means better organic rankings. PPC campaigns can be optimized enough from the backend, but organic listings are becoming extremely competitive across every vertical – you’ll want to play those cards you’ve been hiding up your sleeve.

National Statistics

SEM Bytes for Local Business: The Supporting Actor Steals the Show

Local Business Listings
NetSearch Direct has been shaping marketing products especially geared towards local businesses since it began. We always stuck up for the little guy in business, and we recognize that local businesses are not only cornerstones of the community but cornerstones of the marketplace too. We see you small business owners and we won’t turn our back on you.

As it happens, the biggest and best of advertisers are finally recognizing the value in promoting smaller businesses and have finally turned their attention to designing marketable products aimed specifically for local businesses and their searching customers. Enter Google’s Local Business Center. You may have seen the map display when you perform a search, and noticed a few business listings to the right of the map. This is Google’s way of geo-targeting your IP address and cross-referencing that information with businesses in your area. However, if you dive into the listings you’ll notice a seemingly random order of businesses. We’re here to tell you that list of companies is not as random as it seems and businesses are working hard to climb the rankings by category.