SEM Rock Stars
by Craig Danuloff @ ClickEquations
 Bidding is the magic elixer of paid search.
It's the solution to any problem, the driver of all success and the cause of all failure. Once you have the right keywords, bidding is the main activity of paid search management.
It's critical to get your bids right. If your bids aren't properly set, intelligently managed, and constantly cultivated it's effectively impossible to succeed at paid search.
This all is common knowledge.
And it's all untrue.
The idea that bidding is important/critical/central to paid search is based on several assumptions:
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by Amber Speer @ PPC Hero
Over the course of the past several years, many old PPC tactics have become dated and are no longer considered best practice. There have also been many PPC strategies that have been developed bloggers and so-called PPC advertisers without solid evidence of increased ROI and, to no one's surprise, may damage your account's profitability rather than help.
After reading Search Engine Land's excellent take on 36 persistent SEO myths we were inspired to create a similar list for PPC- check them out, see if you're falling prey to any, and figure out how to get over them if you are!
1. Being in position #1 will make you most profitable. This is absolutely not true. Sometimes being in position #1 will be profitable, but most of the time you'll end up spending more cash than what you're generating. Being in position #1 gives you great visibility and is great for branding purposes. However it also draws in a lot of ‘searchers' who are not yet ready to buy, but are still researching. Experimenting with ad position will allow you to determine the positions in which you achieve the right balance of cost vs. value.
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by Patrick Altoft @ Blogstorm
The single most useful way to find high value keywords has always been to look at the exact search keywords driving sales via AdWords and copy them. Looking at the keywords you are bidding on is useless, looking at the keywords that people are actually searching for is very important.
This month Google is finally going to add a report to Analytics which shows the exact search keywords for AdWords campaigns in your reports, previously this was only available via AdWords (great if you have access, not so great otherwise) and by a filter which was quite hard to implement.
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IQ Workforce Blog
by Corry Prohens
 Until recently, the only credentialing / certification that was available to web analytics professionals was through the vendors and was obviously product-specific.
The Web Analytics Association has been working on a community-wide certification program for a while. A few weeks ago they launched the Web Analyst Certification Program. The program is broken down into three components / areas of expertise:
1. Site Optimization:
- Persona development
- Visitor activity analysis
- On-Site Search
- Navigation and Site Analysis
- Content Analysis
- Site technology
- Optimizing for Conversion
- Tracking visitor behavior and value over time
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Recent Industry Buzz
David Szetela is a leader in search engine marketing, active in the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization and the author of two lessons in ...
Kristine C. Hailey and PB Marketing, both experts in the internet online engine internet marketing optimization search industry, will be joining forces with an already impact lineup of online entrepreneurs in the CarbonCopyPRO family.
Have you ever heard these complaints? Nonsense. If this is happening to you, its your own fault, not the fault of your affiliate channel. Marketers who think that affiliate marketing and search marketing cant peacefully co-exist are kidding themselves and need to be stopped. Believe me.
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