If you could find out what competitors’ conversion rates are and you can estimate the traffic value to your competition? Surely the PPC pros could use that conversion data…

Well, it turns out you can get a pretty good idea about competitors’ conversion rates.

At SMX Advanced, Addie Connor shared the tip that you could bid for traffic to your competitors’ pages. Why do that? To find out their quality scores.

The catch is that such a technique won’t tell you what they’re converting at. You still can’t access their analytics.

Let’s think about this critically.

(I’m writing a little book on advanced search marketing (mostly SEO but some PPC too), and one of the main themes is that you can get really creative if you think logically and break things down into manageable pieces of logic.)

The argument we have is as follows.

We don’t control competitors’ pages. Therefore we don’t control what analytics code is on those pages. And if you don’t place your own analytics, on the page, you can’t read the reports!

Suppose we did control the pages. We could then place our code on them, right? And we could read the reports, right?

Now I’m going to share a little secret.

Don’t go sharing it with everyone, because this is really just an inner-circle thing among elite programmers.

…

The secret’s called “View Source.”

Right click, and select “view source,” to view your competitors’ html. Then duplicate your competitors’ page and host it yourself, with your own analytics embedded.

Caveats with finding competitors’ conversion rates in this way

1) For Trademark law reasons, you can’t duplicate competitors’ branding. This obviously affects conversion rate.

2) Similarly, you can’t use their domain name in the display URL (legally), or in the destination. This affects CTR and consequently conversion rate (since the mix of traffic is different).

3) This would be a hell of a lot of work for any sizeable ecommerce competitor. It’s easier to do this with simple landing pages or paths.

SEO ROI » Find Competitors’ Conversion Rates.

(CNN) — As 2009 draws to a close, the Web’s attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010?

While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:

Real-time ramps up

Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time trend has been to the latter part of 2009 what “Web 2.0″ was to 2007. The term represents the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions. Immediacy is compelling, engaging, highly addictive … it’s a sense of living in the now.

Read more on 10 Web trends to watch in 2010…

The Web Marketing Association judges will select the best email advertising campaign of 2009 in 86 industries as part of their 8th annual Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards. The IAC Awards are the first and only industry-based advertising award competition dedicated exclusively to online advertising. Companies or agencies wishing to nominate their work for consideration may do so at www.IACAward.org before the deadline of January 29, 2010.

“Email marketing is the workhorse of online marketing for many companies trying to maintain an ongoing relationship with customers and prospects,” said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association. “The creative used in an email marketing campaign has gone from text only to highly personalized ads targeting highly segmented lists. Each email advertisement and campaign will be judged on creativity, innovation, impact, design, copywriting, and use of the medium. The IAC Awards provides an opportunity to find out who is doing an outstanding job creating email advertising. It’s also a great marketing opportunity for the winners to promote their work to senior management, customers and prospects their outstanding work”.

Read more on Best Email Advertising Campaign to Be Named by Web Marketing Association…

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Bing has a long way to go to catch Google, but six months after the site’s launch, the numbers show it’s heading in the right direction. The question is: Will its gains last once the ubiquitous, $100 million TV and web advertising stops?

Microsoft’s search share was up to 9.9%, a record high, in October, according to ComScore. However, Google’s market share has also never been higher, at 65.4% in the U.S. that month. And both stole from Yahoo, whose share slid to 18%, from 20% last year. Yahoo’s slide means it and Microsoft combined still have less than 30% share, a figure that doesn’t bode well as they plan to merge their search businesses — with Bing powering Yahoo search — over the next two years.
Read more on Microsoft’s Bing Gets ‘Stickier,’ Grabs More Local Ad Dollars…

Advertising on Craigslist is worthwhile for just about any business offering products or services. Whether these products are offered through ecommerce websites or physical stores, the business owners can see financial gains through advertising on Craigslist. Firstly unlike other advertising opportunities there is very little risk involved in posting on Craigslist. With the exception of job postings and housing postings in specific markets, advertising is free on Craigslist. Users are asked to agree to the terms of service of the community and are expected to follow specific guidelines when posting advertisements but there are no financial obligations to those placing advertisements on Craigslist. This means those who post advertisements do not have to be concerned with whether or not the advertisement they place will meet their expectations in terms of sales generated.

Reaching Potential Customers on Craigslist
Another reason why posting advertisements for products or services on Craigslist is so worthwhile is the likelihood of reaching a large audience of potential customers. A review of the Craigslist fact sheet reveals pertinent information regarding the amount of traffic the website receives. According to this information Craigslist receives approximately four billion page views each month with ten million people using Craigslist each month. From these statistics it is clear that advertisements placed on Craiglist are likely to receive at least some attention from potential clients.

With so many visitors using Craigslist each month the advertising possibilities are limitless, however, there are no guarantee any of these visitors will be interested in your products or services. Like any marketing campaign, your advertisements on Craigslist must be intriguing, informative and in a location where you will reach your target audience.

Finding Your Target Audience on Craigslist
We’ve already discussed the number of visitors using Craigslist each month but the key to taking advantage of these numbers is to target your advertising in a way aimed at reaching your target audience as opposed to a wide audience of individuals who have no specific interest in your products or services. It is much more worthwhile to reach a small audience of those with a keen interest in your products or services than to reach a much larger audience of those who are not interested. Those who have an interest in your products or services are your target audience.

The key to reaching your target audience on Craigslist is placing your advertisement in the most appropriate locations. Craigslist has a specific section for businesses to advertise their services. This section is broken down into a number of categories. Those who are in the business of computer repair would be wise to place their advertisement in the computer section as opposed to the automotive section because individuals looking for computer help will naturally migrate to the computer section. It may sometimes be appropriate to place an advertisement in more than one section. This is acceptable as long as it does not cross the line to spamming the section.

If there is not a specific section for the products or services offered by your business there are a couple of options. Business owners can place an advertisement in the section for small business advertisements where it might be found by those doing a search in this section. Alternately the business owner can contact Craigslist to suggest the addition of a new category. They might be willing to oblige if they believe this category warrants an addition.

The Difference between Advertising and Spamming
Advertising on Craigslist is one thing but spamming is quite another. Placing an advertisement in an appropriate section of Craigslist is acceptable; however, placing the same advertisement in nearly every section of Craigslist websites for a number of different geographical regions is considered spam. Spam is ineffective for a number of reasons. First of all potential customers who see a particular advertisement in a number of different locations are likely to recognize the spamming techniques and be less inclined to patronize this business. Also, if Craigslist detects the practice of spamming they may delete all of the postings and could potentially ban advertisements from the individual in the future.

In the new Google CPA (Cost-Per-Action) offering, Google charges the advertiser with a % markup on the cpa…just like traditional cpa networks. And, it’s obvious they are using their adsense network to get distribution.

However, I see some initial weaknesses in their ability to compete with the traditional CPA or affiliate networks like cj.com, linkshare, azoogle, etc. The traditional CPA networks let the advertiser have more control and relationships with the actual affiialtes (sending promotions, optimization tips, newsletters, contests, etc). That relationship has a direct correlation to performance metrics for both the advertiser and the affiliate.
Read more on Google’s CPA Network vs. Affiliate Networks…

Clickfraud cost an estimated $800 million for advertisers in false hits last year, reports the Financial Times today, based on study by a media firm called Outsell.

And “more than a quarter of them have reduced their spending as a result…” Google, Yahoo and MSN, “have avoided putting a number on the incidence of click fraud but Outsell said it averaged 14.6 per cent of all clicks billed to advertisers, even after Google and others had filtered out those ones they believed to be invalid. The 14.6 per cent equates to $800m of the $5.5bn US search engine market in 2005.”

However the number could be off by magnitudes in either direction, Danny Sullivan points out that “half the advertisers in the survey also reported they do nothing to audit whether they have click fraud happening or not. So Outsell asked them to estimate the percentage of clicks that are fraudulant, and half of them essentially guessed — and that’s making up this industry stat? It could be far less or far more than this guesswork is stating.”

from John Battelle’s Searchblog

How To Make Money with Google’s Adsense

Instead of trying to copy or leech ideas and articles off of other websites when trying find an idea for niche marketing try this instead to increase your Adsense money business.

Keep a small notebook and pen with you today and write down your entire life. You will be surprised at what you really are an expert at and have vast information concerning subjects that you can create for your niche marketing online income concerns.

You will find there is more pay per click income in the everyday and offline procedures in life – There are millions if not billions of Adsense niche sites out there – The one thing that you may have on your side if you break down your life and write about it is: Unique, Passionate, and Evergreen content that will be usable for years to come.

Read more on Niche Marketing for Google Adsense…

Adsense Money – Food and Blogs

If you are one of the “Calculator Billionaires” (someone who sits on the toilet with a handheld calculator trying figure out how to become rich) then this post is for you.

Step 1: Just create a blog about recipes.

Step 2: Raid the personal cookbooks of all family and friends and get about a hundred or so recipes. Talking about personal recipes – not the copyrighted type.

Read more on Niche Marketing For the Totally Brain Dead Slacker…