WebmasterWorld.com review

Webmaster World takes all the ease of use from a vBulletin forum and throws it out the window in favour of a board powered by BestBBS. It’s quite obvious that the owners of the site are trying to appeal to a different audience in their approach, and upon first impressions, they’ve succeeded.

Webmaster World looks more like an article resource site than a buzzing community housing thousands of members. But a forum it is, and for those who prefer content over appearance, this is a site which will rapidly feel like home. As you’d guess by the name, Webmaster World offers discussion for those looking to start-up or improve their websites. It could be an online business, a hobbyist site or just about anything in between.

It is presented rather simply with a list of selected topics down the left hand side, and an overview of the forums on the right. The selected topics are titled as “Highlighted Posts”, which essentially means the discussions that are elected worthy of inclusion by the staff team. You’ll typically find two or three of these per day, so it helps to get an immediate idea of what’s going on – whether you’re new to the board, or returning to check up on what you’ve missed.

So what are the main selling points of Webmaster World? Anybody who has dabbled in the arts of E-Commerce will be well aware that the field is literally seething in sub-topics and new technologies. Webmaster World, in a bid to provide a comprehensive coverage of the entire industry, has opted to include just about every forum imaginable on its site.

We have categories for the basic languages of development, in HTML, CSS, PHP, XML and AJAX. We also have an area dedicated to the so called Web 2.0 movement. As the Internet swings towards a new generation of development, you’ll find all the latest discussion on mobile technology, scaled down application and multimedia design.

Perhaps the most useful area of the site is the forum for marketing on the Net. Whether it is link baiting, PPC programmes, Google Adwords, Yahoo…you’ll find just about every noteworthy topic under the sun in this section of the board.

Given the huge breakdown of forums that we’re talking about, it’s quite surprising to browse through each area and see that almost every topic has a reply of some kind. The member-base is clearly large, and the experts are active in providing help for the troubled members. Despite that, the forums aren’t overflowing with information. You can enter a sub-category and track topics dating back a couple of months in the first page.

If you post a thread today, it won’t be buried under four pages by tomorrow morning!

Under each topic is a neat little line which describes more about the subject at hand. This makes it much easier to locate noteworthy threads, and you’ll spend less time tapping at the search function.

Webmaster World should be commended for sticking to its guns and offering a board that relies on unique content rather than tidy presentation. If you prefer this kind of approach, drop by and see what you think. There’s enough relevant content to be reading for days!

Compete.com site analytics – review

Compete.com was established in 2000 by Bill Gross, the very same man who founded Yahoo’s inaugural paid search facility. The knock-on effect of his invention has been quite astonishing. Advertising and publishing on the web is now a major business.

But as the web landscape shifted towards pay-per-click advertising, a new concern was addressed. Somebody had to develop a tool which would help us understand what the web audience is doing. After all, marketing and advertising are both ridiculously expensive affairs if you have no representation of how your ads or websites are performing.

Compete.com has been replicated by several other web businesses, but through it all, the site remains refreshingly simple and easy to use right from the first click.

The concept is derided from what is known as click sharing. It is the sharing of information about what our web visitors are up to. What links are they clicking? What websites are they visiting? Are there patterns? Are there trends?

Without this information, search engine marketing would be redundant. Nobody wants to spend money on guesswork. And for that reason, Compete is offering a service which we should all be taking an interest in.

The site offers a very Google-esque search function which can be used to search for a site domain (i.e. YouTube.com). Upon searching, you will be presented with a visual representation of the site’s traffic statistics. The most striking stat is the gross traffic graph. This provides a monthly evaluation of a website’s traffic and is great for determining whether a business is on an upward curve or cursing a one-way ticket to the cyber scrapheap.

Further demographics are available, although you will have to register for free to enjoy site comparison and specific breakdowns of the traffic.

Where Compete breaks the mould is in its willingness to offer more than the SEM guru’s favourite collection of traffic numbers and unique visitor graphs. There is consumer friendly information which would appeal to all of us.

For example, each website profile has a panel of current offers. What can you expect to find in the offers window? Well, it depends on the subject matter. It might be a special discounted hosting price or a clearance sale for a major retailer. Either way, the deals portal is an interesting window in to the best offers that you can expect on a given website. It’s like a catalogue of the best deals around the web.

If you are the owner of a given website, you can add a deal to your profile. Otherwise the trusted Compete staff will crawl painstakingly through thousands of popular websites to keep us all updated on special offers.

Compete.com also offers a handy toolbar which can be downloaded for free. It offers the “Compete Snapshot”, which is basically a stripped down traffic analysis of a website, easily accessible by Internet Explorer as you browse.

You will also find site voting, to get a good appreciation of where the consumer popularity lies.

Compete, affiliated with ISPs and several security services, works tirelessly to compile a safety ranking of every website that it checks. They check the security certificates, past history and content. If the site is trusted, it will be marked as safe. 

Ultimately, Bill Gross will be remembered for his vision of a pay-per-click web advertising future. But in Compete.com, he has given us the perfect tool to keep an accurate eye on the status of a website. It might not have the advanced features of other analytical products, but Compete’s clean friendly approach makes it a great resource for webmasters, experienced or not.

PPC bidding wars causing CPC inflation and ROI decline

PPC advertisers continue to report a decline in ROI on PPC spending. This phenomena is caused mainly by increased competition between bidders, driving keyword cost per click up and reducing profit margins for Search Engine advertisers. The proliferation of quality keyword databases such as Spyfu  - which continuously crawl search engines and expose advertisers’ long tail keyword lists to competing advertisers cause ultimately  additional competition on Google Adwords,  a higher average CPC, lower conversions and a lower ROI. The winners of increased advertiser competition on sponsored links are obviously the Search Engines themselves.

Kenshoo launches Kazaam SEM platfrom

Kenshoo  search marketing technology start-up from Israel are launching their innovative PPC management platform - Kazaam. 

Yesterday I met Andrey Shirben of Kenshoo.com and had the opportunity to see the system in Real time action. As many other SEM advertisers, I became used to spending hours on keyword research and manual bid management. Checking campaign stats is something I do several times a day. Adding keywords, changing bids and deleting non performing keywords is something that I do - manually - on a daily basis.

The Kenshoo concept is that their platform will change all that and make everything run on autopilot. The idea is that everything is automatically managed through the API from one central HQ - i.e. no more separate log-ins to Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter or YSM Panama.

 Kazaam has the ability to compose a relevant long tail keyword list from multiple sources,  Locate competitor ads and combine the good part of them to make a new ad, detect click fraud IPs in real time via its proxy server, and - most importantly - manage bids dynamically according to predefined bidding rules. 

For example: A conversion transaction value is set at $30 – the system can be set to lower particular keyword bids by $0.05 as soon as the spend on such keyword has reached $10. Lower it again by another $0.03 as soon as  spending has reached $25, and – either increase bid back to par if a conversion has been registered - or delete the keyword completely if no conversion has been made. A single Campaign Manager can use the platform to do this across fifty campaigns with thousands of keywords in each simultaneously.

The Kazaam reporting module has all standard reports as well as some unique innovations – e.g. Geo ROI report (using each click’s IP origin) - providing the ability to see which countries or regions turn a profit and which actually lose money – still not possible on Google Adwords itself.

According to Andrey, Kazaam was built for heavy duty users such as leading agencies and large affiliates or affiliate junctions. It is a cross channel flexible platform capable to adopt and accomodate any Search Engine Marketing operation. 

Kenshoo itself is a global company with a foothold in the US, Europe and China. The system is already used by several leading Agencies – McCann Erickson (Digital) and Adler Chomsky – a Grey Interactive Affiliate, as well as by several undisclosed leading internet merchants all with complex multi channel PPC campaigns. Rumors suggest that Kenshoo is planning a white label operation – which is under negotiations these days.

Kenshoo will be in Ad:tech San Francisco (Boot 6476) on April 24-26, 2007. Agencies in need of a cutting edge platform solution should contact them via email to set a meeting to test their system.

YSM Panama traffic stabalizes after February 5th ranking formula change

YSM paid search traffic back to ‘normal’ levels in the 48 hours- following several days of lower traffic as the system got to grips with the new ad quality ranking formula (CTR x CPC).

Google PPC vs. Yahoo CPM

An interesting article on why Google’s pay per click paid search (Adwords – Sponsored Links) business model has overtaken Yahoo’s “real estate” banner ads based model.

YSM ad ranking formula changed

YSM has announced that “Bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results beginning February 5, 2007 in the U.S.”. This effectively means an end to its former bid-to-position policy where CPC bid alone has affected ads ranking against competition.