The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Microsoft has released a new tool for use by advertisers on its search engine - adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007. Microsoft describes it as:

"...a keyword research and optimization tool that can help you understand keyword popularity and trends, and gain valuable insight on the demographic and geographic information of actual searches."

Now, we are all the time doing keyword research in various tools, exporting the data, and opening up it up in Excel to do whatever type of sorting and filtering we need to get down to a list of keywords we can use for our purposes. So we were very interested in a tool that would allow us to do keyword research directly from Excel, even if all the data comes Microsoft's own search network.

To download the tool, go here:

http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter_addin

It is easy to install and it even worked the first time we tried it. One disadvantage is that you have to have Excel 2007, which a lot of people probably don't have yet. Obviously Microsoft would like everyone in the world to upgrade to their latest version of Office, which may be one reason it only works in the 2007 version. But it did not seem to cause any problems with Excel's functionality, so if you have Excel 2007 and have need to do keyword research, you should definitely try it out.

After installing it, it places a new tab on Excel's main menu labeled "Ad Intelligence". Clicking the Ad Intelligence tab reveals a whole new sub-menu of really big, colorful buttons:

Keyword Wizard - generates a keyword list from seed keywords.
Keyword Extraction - generates a keyword list based on the copy in a particular web site.
Keyword Suggestion - suggests keywords based on three possible criteria: advertiser bidding behavior, keywords which contain the original keywords, and by keyword category similarity.
Search Buzz - suggests keywords based on top spikiness or frequency.
Monthly Traffic - provides historical and forecast traffic for selected keywords.
Keyword Categorization - identifies categories for selected keywords.
Geographic - provides location information for keywords.
Demographic - provides demographic information for keywords.
Monetization - provides keyword monetization data, such as CPC, CTR, impressions, etc.
Advanced Algorithm - lets you customize the parameters used to create keyword lists.
Options - lets you set system options for the keyword tool.

To try it out, we typed in three seed keywords in successive cells, clicked the Keyword Wizard button, selected the cells, selected the algorithms to use (campaign association, keywords that contain the seed keywords, or keywords that are similar - we selected all three options to bring back the most keywords), set the maximum results to return and the minimum confidence, and then let it run. It returned a list of keywords directly in our Excel workbook that contained lots of traffic-related data for each one.

The whole problem with Microsoft's search platform is that it just doesn't have enough keyword inventory. We recently gave up on Microsoft for a search campaign we were running because we were actually doing much better generating traffic in second tier search engines like Miva (and of course, Google and Yahoo!). But purely for purposes of generating keyword data to be tried in various search engines, Microsoft's adCenter Add-in for Excel is a very cool tool.

If you need help running paid search ads in Microsoft or any other search platform, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, MSN Labs, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web marketing

We have been doing a lot of pay-per-click campaign management that spans all three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. We've always done Google, but with the newness of the Yahoo and MSN ad interfaces, it has given us the opportunity to learn some new things. Of the three, MSN has the nicest interface. You're probably going to be shocked to hear this, but it has some bugs (WHAT? Microsoft release something with some bugs?), but they are fairly minor.

One feature of Microsoft adCenter we really like is its keyword research tool. To access it, after logging in to adCenter, just click the Research tab on the main menu. You can then have Microsoft generate a list of keywords based on a single keyword, or based on a URL. The returned keywords are sorted by the number of searches performed for each keyword in the previous month. You can generate keywords that contain the specified keyword, or that are similar to the specified keyword.

But what really sets the MSN keyword generation tool apart from other similar tools is its ability to generate a demographic profile for a set of keywords.

Here is an example:

Let's say you are in the business of copywriting. Typing "copywriting service" in the search box returns the following results (in the "Contains Term" box) in order of previous month's searches:

seo copywriting service
copywriting service
website copywriting service
copywriting service web
complete copywriting service

This in itself is interesting data, because we can see that more people are searching on MSN for copywriting services related to search engine optimization than anything else.

If we select each of the keywords and then click "View Profile", MSN generates a tabbed box of charts, divided into five sections:

Traffic Trends
Age and Gender
Geography
Wealth Index
Lifestyle

Below is a screenshot of the chart displayed if we click the Geography tab.



Very interesting. We would have expected cities like New York and Chicago to appear high on the list, but they are nowhere to be found. By far, the number one geographical location for MSN searchers searching for copywriting services is London. So what does this mean? Well, you don't want to draw any wild conclusions, but it looks like if you could get your marketing message to web sites and forums based in or focusing on the U.K., you might find yourself a very active market. This information is also useful in targeting specific cities with your pay-per-click ads.

The above demonstration is just a simple example, but we suggest that you give it a try and see what insites you can glean about your target market.

For help running an effective pay-per-click campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4827 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, MSN Labs, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem

We've spent the last couple of blog posts discussing the MSN AdCenter Labs beta tools and how you might use them for marketing purposes. Today we are going to finalize that discussion by looking at one more of the tools, the Online Commercial Intention Director. This tool gives a value for a search query or a web site from 0 to 1 that is an indication of the degree of the visitor's intention to purchase products or acquire information. For queries, it returns a single value. For URL's, it returns three values for three different OCI (Online Commercial Intent) types: NonCommercial, Commercial-Informational, and Commercial-Transactional.

There is little information about how this tool works, but it's an interesting idea that could be a valuable research tool. For instance, you could type in different search terms and use the result (the Probability for Commercial Query) to get an indication of how strong each search term is in terms of intent to make a purchase.

For example, let's say you sell wool clothing on your web site, such as sweaters. Typing in "wool" returns a Probability for Commercial Query of .65227. Buy typing in "wool sweaters" returns a Probability for Commercial Query of .79378. So the wool sweaters search indicates a greater chance that the person performing the search will engage in a transaction.

In testing the tool for URL's, I tried my own web site: http://workmedia.net, and got the following results:

Probabilities for Each OCI Type:
NonCommercial: 0.82111
Commercial-Informational: 0.1572
Commercial-Transactional: 2.1683e-002

Our site is a commercial site since we use it to represent our business and services, but it is also very information-heavy, which perhaps is why it ranks so high for "NonCommercial". When I ran the test with the URL "walmart.com", it still only showed a Commercial-Transactional value of 0.32238. So the tool doesn't seem to be all that accurate yet at guaging the commercial intent of web sites, as opposed to search queries.

For help implementing a state-of-the-art search engine marketing campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, sponsored search

Yesterday we began our discussion of MSN AdCenter Labs beta tools for Internet marketing purposes. Today we continue that discussion by looking at a couple more of the tools, the Keyword Forecast tool and Demographics Prediction tool.

Here is the URL: http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx

The Keyword Forecast tool is interesting because it shows the past traffic for a particular keyword as well as expected traffic for the next couple of months (although, the forecast time period is actually in the last couple of months, which I assume is related to the age of the data). You can also chart more than one keyword at a time and view them on the same chart. In addition to past and forecast traffic, the tools shows age and gender distribution for each search term.

For instance, I ran a chart using the terms "internet marketing", "search engine marketing", and "search marketing". Based on the chart created by the Keyword Forecast tool, the term "internet marketing" is used far more often than the other two terms and is expected to continue rising in popularity. Traffic for the term "search marketing" is flat and not expected to see any significant increase.

Looking at the demographics, all of the search terms are used heaviest by people over the age of 50. In addition, the term "search engine marketing" is used much more often by men than women. And in general, it looks like men perform about 50% more Internet marketing-related searches than women. One thing you have to keep in mind, however, is that the data is likely skewed based on the particular demographics of MSN.com.

The Demographics Prediction tool predicts your customer's age, gender, and other demographic information based on a URL of keyword. For example, I ran the tool with the search term "internet marketing", and it returned the following information:

• Male: 63%
• Female: 37%
• Age: 25 - 34

Interestingly, the Keyword Forecast tool indicated that the greatest number of people using this search term were over 50, but the Demographics Prediction tool indicates they are between the ages of 25 and 34. So you will definitely need to use some judgement when trying to use these tools to determine demographic data for your prospective customers.

If you would like some help implementing your own Internet marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, marketing, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

As an aggressive Internet marketer, you need to use every tool at your disposal that might give you an edge on your competition. One such set of tools that my brother and I (this is Jerry) have been looking into is Microsoft AdCenter Labs. Here is the URL:

http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx

The tools are divided into four categories:

• Paid Search
• Contextual Advertising
• Behavioral Targeting
• Emerging Markets

We're going to start by looking at the Paid Search tools. Some of the tools are fairly conventional in nature, such as the Keyword Group Detection tool, which is basically just a keyword tool (although a good one), and the Keyword Mutation Detection tool, which helps you discover alternate or misspellings of keywords from search logs.

But one tool that's really interesting is the Search Funnel tool, which helps you visualize and analyze search behaviors. You type in a search phrase related to your product or service, and the tool will show you a funnell representing either the search phrases that had been used before arriving at your search phrase, or search phrases that were used after using your search phrase.

For example, I typed in the search phrase"Gibson Guitars", and it showed me a funnel with the following 5 search phrases (because I had set it to a filter of only showing the top 5):

• guitars
• www.gibsonguitars.com
• ebay
• fender guitars
• gibson

So those are the top 5 search phrases that were used before conducting a search for "Gibson Guitars" (based on the data that MSN has compiled - I would assume based on on MSN.com searches). You can do the same thing to find searches conducted after our test phrase. That results in the following list:

• fender guitars
• ebay
• martin guitars
• epiphone guitars
• guitars

This is very interesting data. If you have a really good idea of the searches people are conducting to arrive at your or your competitors' web sites, then that should give you all kinds of ideas for search phrases to target for SEO, PPC, articles to write, etc. etc. etc. Think about it.

If you need help with your search marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, marketing, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing