Keeping an eye on the recent goings on within the search marketing world you cannot fail to notice what is currently going on with Yahoo!. With the recent takeover bids from Microsoft, the latest being $44.6 billion, Yahoo! has been trying to find a path away from being enveloped by the software giant. Last week’s announcement that the company had entered into a 2 week experiment with Google to use Google Adsense on 3% of their search results seems to be a stalling tactic and one which is not appreciated by Microsoft. Yahoo! in the meantime are exploring the possibility of merging with AOL, whilst Microsoft are potentially seeking additional partners for the deal (with News Corp, who own MySpace, being rumoured to be joining the bid).

This raises many questions as to what the future holds for Yahoo! and sites such as Flickr and delicious, which they own. If Yahoo! are to merge with any of the options that are being rumoured at the moment then what position does this leave them in? Any merger with Google will be instantly reviewed under monopoly guidelines so it just doesn’t seem likely that this is the right way to go for Yahoo!. However, combining with AOL will hopefully maintain their company identity and allow them to continue business as they are doing, but in a more financially protected position. As for the Microsoft bid, which on the face of it is probably the best option for the Yahoo! shareholders, would Yahoo! just be swallowed up by the software giant or would it be allowed to operate as a partner with both MSN Live and MySpace (if News Corp do join in).

With all the current speculation going on it’s very hard to see which way this is going, the only constant seems to be that Yahoo! is in a precarious position and is going to have to fight hard to maintain it’s identity and brand.

Google is now one of the world’s best known brands, and has become Hoover has to vacuum cleaners and JCBs to diggers.

To help demystify some of the considerations of the ranking system and most importantly, to explain what you should and shouldn’t be doing, Red Koala are holding a half-day seminar on the 1st of April for senior managers in any business sector.

There has never been a more important time to ensure that your organization is ranked prominently for search terms relating to your business and the best way to do this is to put your users and their requirements first. This seminar will show you how to do that and what shortcuts and cheats to avoid in order to avoid being removed from Google altogether.

The seminar runs between 9:30am and 1pm at the Holiday Inn, Kirkstall Road, Leeds, and costs £25 + VAT and includes a buffet lunch.

To book your place please contact Mike Osolinski at Red Koala on 0845 279 9815 or email mike@red-koala.co.uk

So remember, this April 1st, don’t be a Google fool.

On the 27th February Microsoft released both Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 into the world, a community technology preview (CTP) version of SQL Server 2008 will also be made available now with the full release to manafucturing (RTM) to happen in the 3rd quarter of the year.

Looking at the news over recent weeks you may have noticed that the recent decline in numbers of people checking on social networks seems to be a popular subject. Now many people are saying that this could be bad news for advertisers and that it spells the end for the likes of Facebook and Myspace. However some people only ever see the bad from a situation without thinking of the advantages that can be gained. With careful thought and application of certain ideas and techniques then you can focus your campaigns and articles to engage readers and increase your number of visitors.

What appears to be happening at the moment is that casual users of the sites are logging on less frequently leading to a downturn in numbers, simply getting bored and moving on to the next big thing. But you should not forget the people who still use the site on a daily basis, these are your core audience and they are not as fickle as some people would like you to believe. Like most products, the majority of people tend to remain devoted to one particular brand and if you can find a way of targeting your campaigns to them then you have a loyal audience for your products and services.

Now the question is, how to make your campaign and related articles stand out compared to the competition. Your first call is to make sure that you have done your background research, consider what your content will be and whether there are associated words and terms to be search on or looked into. The content of your articles are paramount to engaging your audience and is the first step into convincing them to return to you in the future. This is where you can utilise the broad amount of media available for you to use through social media sites. You can bring a visual aspect into your articles, helping people to visualise what you are saying and helping them to associate words with pictures.

When writing your content try to put yourself in the shoes of a person reading your work, try to answer any questions that you would ask in that position. Most importantly you need to make your content engaging and of course should try to use the key terms and phrases you are using in related ad campaigns so that when people choose to search further into a subject your pages will be some of the first they find on the search engines. Once this is up on the web you need to ensure that it can be easily linked to and sourced, a simple paragraph covering the main points of your article at the start is a good way of doing this.

In a recent report published by The Kelsey Group it has been predicted that interactive advertising in the United Kingdom will grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 23.4%. In figures this means that the current spend of £2.7 billion is set to increase to around £5 billion by 2012. In recent years the industry has seen some fantastic growth figures since 2003 where the market spend was £407.8 million, in some years the growth in expenditure on the previous year has hit over 60%. At this rate the advertising spent online will be comparable to that spent on television within 10 years, with the current market share of expenditure on internet advertising being 15% and TV at 22%.

With this in mind what does it mean for businesses, for some it definitely means more expenditure. However you can also see that it will more than likely lead to an increase in competition as more people find that they will benefit from a solid online advertising campaign.

With search engine optimisation (SEO) starting to become an integral part of a company’s advertising spend as well as a solid pay-per-click (PPC) campaign a company will need to figure out what they require from their budgets. Choosing the right SEO company will be an important part of this as you may want a more personal, responsive approach to your campaign and one that is as free of jargon as possible.

The online marketing world need not be a confusing environment to enter and should be embraced to ensure that you receive the maximum exposure for your budget. With a carefullly researched online marketing campaign and the right SEO company on board you should see a significant return on investment and be able to take advantage of the current boom in the market. You should of course be wary of companies offering instant results and guaranteed positions as the search term algorithms are continually being refined to aid a searcher to find what they are looking for, this is where an online marketer will be able to provide you with the correct information and advice. Although this can take time to see results a good SEO company will be able to start you in more informed and prepared position.

Information sourced from The Kelsey Group and The Internet Advertising Bureau

It has been a very busy week in the field of online advertising, with the ongoing attempts from Microsoft to purchase Yahoo and Yahoo’s subsequent rejection of the offer, you would have thought that both parties would have been pre-occupied with their current wranglings. Yet, both Yahoo and Microsoft have made annoucements this week relating to pay-per-click advertising.

Microsoft unveiled plans to beta test (from the 1st of March) a new way of measuring online advertising effectiveness. Instead of the traditional “last ad-clicked” approach of todays current search advertising platforms, they are looking into what they are terming “engagement mapping”. This will provide an overview of which adverts a person has seen over a specific length of time and the influence that it has had in a person’s decision to purchase a product. How Microsoft intend to do this is vague at the moment but hopefully we will be able to see results of this beta fairly soon after the start and should be able to gain an idea of how Microsoft are logging this.

Yahoo on the other hand are set to remove the $0.10 price fix on the current minimum bid on their search advertising. Now this could be a big bonus for some search engine optimisations (SEO) companies and their pay per click (PPC) campaigns but could also lead to bidding wars driving up prices on particularly competitive keywords and phrases. If you have chosen your keywords carefully then you could find that you have hit upon a potential goldmine as your return on investment increases as your costs decrease.

As with all new implementations it will take time to see tangible results for both of these ideas, but they certainly should be followed closely for the near future.

Although many people are happy just to type in a query and click on the search button, many people might not know of the functions that are now being applied to today’s search engines. Firstly we’ll cover the basics and some of the additional commands that can help refine your search.

Google are currently accepting sign-ups for the new demographic targetting feature of their Adwords facility. This will enable you to focus your campaigns more tightly on your selected audience and can provide more of an insight into your ads performance for those groups.

We are extremely pleased to announce that, having gone through a Dragons Den style application process, we have recently won business premises within the Unit business incubation centre at Park Lane House in Leeds.

The Unit provides a huge range of support and facilities for small and growing businesses in the Leeds area. The success rate for new businesses is estimated to be 47% in the first three years of trading. For businesses that go through an incubation period this rises to 80% and this statistic alone demonstrates the massive value of the opportunity we have won.