The problem with the Yahoo publishing Network (YPN) affects Yahoo sponsored search too. If you have used YPN to monetize your site you know how poor the ad matching is to the content. Very often you get extremely generic ads that have nothing to do with your content, which makes the click through percentage extremely low. This also means your ads in Yahoo Search aren’t hitting the most relevant sites out there if they are getting out at all.
Many of my ads groups get some content clicks, but I’ve noticed a few that get tremendous amounts. It turns out they are ones with one word keywords. This makes sense because of course one word is much broader than two or more, but with the poor targeting of YPN it magnifies the effect greatly. Their algorithm is so primitive that you have to have a bunch of one word or very broad terms in your ad groups. The issue here is then if you want to spend money on the broad targeting, probably poor converting keywords. Probably not in many cases.
Instead, since you can separate bids between content and search, you make a separate ad group for their content network. In this separate group, keep your bids lower, but get as much cheap traffic as possible by having a ton of one word keywords in the same general topic of your niche.
I went to SES last week in New York. I attended Wednesday and Thursday sessions and hung out at the bars Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. I am going to list some of the interesting and notable aspects to my experience.
The most interesting session I attended was Danny Sullivan’s forum. He not only knows the industry, but is great with the crowd and knows and references other experts in the crowd if there are questions more suited to those experts. He answered everyone’s questions, and for the bad questions, he handled well and moved on without wasting too much time. I can’t say this about a lot of the speakers. Many had lectures that were dry and regurgitated material you could read in an SEOBook. Beyond that their speaking skills were often poor and they never really gave out much in the way of tips.
The conference is mostly solo SEO’s and agencies. Although more and more companies are showing up, the conference is still mostly made up of people in the industry. The ratio of brick and mortar companies to others is not very high. You can tell by the clothes. Suit and ties, or even business casual clothes are rare. There are mostly street clothes in the crowds.
Hanging out afterwards is a big (maybe bigger) part of the conference. Networking in the hotel bar and attending the parties and dinners may be more fun, but could also be more rewarding for your bank account. You run across experts and talk to people about what they do and it’s a great way to build relationships.
The click fraud session was heated. I hear it was much more so in the last conferences, and this tame it was tame in comparison, but it still had a lot of life compared to many of the other sessions. The panel is well versed in the issues and although I actually slept through Shuman’s initial lecture, the Q&A got pretty interesting…
The location was a good fit. The conference was held in midtown on 6th Ave in the Hilton. The Hilton has many many conferences and handles them pretty well. I hear next time they will be doing it at the Javits Center which is bigger, but far away from the restaurants, bars, and everything else. I hope this isn’t the case.
Overall, I should say it was a good experience. It was my first SES and it opened my eyes up to the industry a bit more. If the conference comes to your area and you don’t want to spend a lot of money, even walking around the exhibit hall for a day talking to people is rewarding. There are a lot of people that just go and party with other SEO’s to have fun, but if you are serious about the industry, I would recommend attending the whole thing at least once if you haven’t already.
For an SEO, living in New York City seems like a dilemma. It is expensive. If you work on the internet, why would you need to live in a city, particularly the most expensive city in the country? Just in the United States, you could live in many different less expensive places and get an apartment in good condition for just a few hundred dollars per month where the cost of living all around is much lower.
Living in NYC has many social, cultural, and practical advantages, but is it worth it if you don’t need to commute to a building and work in an office? The answer is yes. Living in an area that has a lot of professionals in your industry, and people in general, is extremely valuable. I have met people who help me with my workload for my websites, clients, other SEOs that are a big reason for some of my success, as well as high profile people in the industry.
The food and drinks were paid for by TextLinkAds, so the guys from there attended. Bloggers came from all over the the New York area, and any area within a tolerable train ride of New York. Talking to them and hearing about their experiences is enlightening. You pick up tips, learn about other niches, and most importantly build contacts.
Many factors influence where people choose to live, but if you are in the internet marketing industry, and are looking for a place don’t rule out places just because they are expensive. New York, as well as other places, can give you advantages you wouldn’t get anywhere else.
