Archive for February, 2011
February 28th, 2011 | 
Author: Protecting Your Trademarks In Paid Search
Protecting your trademarks in the paid search channel is critical to maximizing the value of your brand. Here is a complete guide with links submitting trademark paperwork to the major engines plus strategies for dealing with affiliates and trademark bidding.
Topics Covered in This Article:
Why Protect Trademarks?
Search Engine Policies on Trademarks
What about Affiliates and My Trademarks?
What to Do Next
Why Should I Protect My Trademark?
Your trademarked names or brand names are the most valuable keywords in your paid search arsenal. As you build your business gain customers send out press releases buy media and acquire traffic more and more people will enter your brand name or URL into search engines to find you. These terms almost always convert the best regardless of what your conversion metric is.
Because of this your trademark can be under attack by competitors uncontrolled affiliates and companies illegally using our products more on this later. It is imperative that you understand your options recognize the threats and have a course of action to protect your brand.
Search Engine Policies on Trademarks
From the search engine company standpoint refereeing the use of trademarks is a difficult and thankless task. Everyone who has a trademark thinks that they are special lawyers get involved and search engine employees spend hours working through the issues protecting the rights of their advertising clients from illegitimate and illegal use of the trademark.
Additional considerations from the engines include whether the trademark violation is in the organic or sponsored area. If someone is improperly using your trademark and they show up in the organic area of the search engine results page SERP then you are out of luck from any recourse from the search engine companies. If it shows up in the sponsored paid area of the SERP then you have some recourse.
There are also specific procedures for whether your trademark is secured in the US Canada North America or Other. Most engines have a different process for Trademarks in different countries making both the problem and the solution more complex.
Ideally for the Search Engines they would remain neutral in the use of trademarks and simply collect the money when people buy a trademark and use a trademark. However in order to appease advertisers aka trademark holders the different engines have implemented different levels of trademark protection.
Google Trademark Policy:
Google is the most lazesfaire of the engines with regards to trademarks. It used to be permissible to buy and use other people’s trademarks in the sponsored link area. Today’s rules help in terms of
protecting the trademark holder but don’t go as far as the other major search engines. Here are some of the rules:
With the submission of the proper trademark paperwork see link below Google will block nontrademark owners from using the trademark in the copy of the advertisement.
A nontrademark owner can BUY the trademarked keyword but the editorial filtering will restrict the use of the trademark in the copy
EXCEPT for the display URL.
I personally find this last bit concerning as testing has proven that the display URL is an important part of the copy. I haven’t gotten a good answer on why the display URLis not included in the trademark protection. More specific information and the complaint form is available at: http://www.google.com/tm_complaint_adwords.html
Yahoo! Search Trademark Policy
Yahoo! has taken a stronger stand on trademark protection than Google which has also evolved over the years. You used to be able to buy competitor terms as long as you sent the traffic to a comparison page of products or services. That allowance has been eliminated if you are a competing site. Here is what they do allow:
If you are a retailer and are legitimately selling the trademarked good or service you can buy the trademark keyword and use in your copy.
If you are a noncompetitive site that is providing comparison content you are allowed to buy and use the trademarked item.
In addition to trademark protection Yahoo! offers an additional level of complaints based on Copyrights Infringement and alse/Misleading Claims. We’ve had some success going after sites that are illegally using free software to acquire credit card numbers and email addresses using these complaints as the foundation. More specific information available here: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/legal/trademarks.php
MSN Trademark Protection Policy
The MSN policy is very similar to the Yahoo! policy. No buying of someone’s trademark unless it is one of the following situations:
You are a retailer
You have a legitimate information site
You are clearly using the trademark in an ordinary dictionary manner Kleenex for example
Both Yahoo! and MSN are more lenient towards advertisers with trademarks and don’t require as rigorous paper trail as does Google.Here is the MSN policy link:http://advertising.microsoft.com/Home/Article.aspx?pageid=708Adv_Articleid=3216
What Do I Do About My Affiliates?
The decision to allow or not allow affiliates to buy your trademarked keywords in paid search is a difficult one. Here are the pro’s and con’s to allowing this:
Pro’s for letting affiliates buy trademarked/branded keywords:
Increases the number of slots taken up by your brand on the brand search thus freezing out competitors particularly important in Google because competitors can still buy the keyword without using it in their copy
If structured properly these high value keywords can be used as a carrot to expand the nonbranded keyword programs your affiliates are using to drive traffic/sales to your site
If for some reason your SEO efforts aren’t effective for your keywords then you have more options for end users to click on a placement that leads to your site.
Con’s for letting affiliates buy trademarked/branded keywords:
Affiliates care only about making money and will do say just about anything to reduce costs and improve conversion regardless of the reflection on your brand.
Competitive affiliate bidding on branded keywords drives up the CPC of your branded terms increasing the cost per action of that keyword category.
Branded keywords are “easy money” for affiliates and unless managed appropriately will only spend energy on these terms vs.expanding your overall program.There are three options for working with affiliates with regards to branded keywords:
Do not pay for any sales service or leads generated from your branded keyword list. The trend in the industry is to move more towards this position in order to reduce costs and have more control over the brand messaging.
Give affiliates unfettered permission to use branded keywords in their paid search programs. This will result in the most sales and the happiest affiliates but at higher costs and risks to the brand.
Establish a set of messaging and bidcap rules for affiliates with regard to using branded keywords including:
1.The maximum cost per click they are allowed to bid in the engines. This is a hard rule to monitor as none of the major engines give you exact data on what the affiliates max bid is. However you can closely monitor your CPC for the category and ensure that you are in the 1 position. If your CPC for the 1 position goes over the max bid cap you have reason to “talk” to the affiliates.
2.Stipulate a of sales leads etc. that can come from branded keywords. Do this by using a unique linking URL for branded keywords by affiliate. This will let you see how much traffic/business is being generated by each affiliate.
3.Have a clear list of do’s and don’ts with regards to the messaging and copy that can be used with the branded keywords. Make sure to give the affiliates lots of examples of what they CAN say in conjunction with very strict guidelines of loaded keywords numbersamounts discounts etc. that are off limits.
4.Set aside time on a regular basis to monitor the affiliates. Engage your top affiliates to help monitor the rules as well so that you have more eyes keeping the playing field level.
5.Have strict two strikes rules on your affiliates. You can give an affiliate especially a new one one strike with regards to these rules. Second strike should be an immediate restriction of those keywords and/or exclusion from the program. Do not waffle on this or your will get into issues of “fairness” with the broader affiliate group.
What to Do Next
1.Get the trademark documents from your or your clients legal department for as many countries as you have trademark rights for. These should be in a PDF form that you can submit with the paperwork to the engines.
2.Decide what you are going to do with affiliates. If you submit trademark paperwork to the engines and do not give them an exclusion list for the affiliates you will shut out your affiliates from the branded keywords inadvertently.
3.Assemble a list of “approved” affiliates/vendors that can use your trademarks. Get URLs official email addresses and account numbers for each engine for each approved affiliate/vendor to use your trademarks.
4.Alert your account managers for the various engines with regards to what you are doing so they can help. Many account managers can help smooth the flow of decision making to get these rules in place more quickly.
5.Visit the URLs listed above to submit trademark protection concerns. You can also see the URLs on the Brand Digital Resource page at http://www.branddigital.net/internetmarketingresources.htm
6.Persevere. This is not an easy or smooth process for anyone. Lots of questions will arise lots of people can get involved and there needs to be lots of communication to all parties to be effective.
7.Monitor monitor monitor. Just putting rules out there without a consistent vigilance to monitor is wasted energy. You have to set aside time and stay on top of your terms and who is saying what with regards to them in paid search and online for that matter a different article.
8.Send this email to someone you care about and want to help.
9.Send me feedback on what you liked/didn’t understand about this issue. scottbranddigital.net.
About the writer: Scott is the founder and Chief Digital Strategist of Brand Digital Inc. a digital marketing agency focused on helping small and start up organizations make their business vision a reality online. With over 11 years experience working in the digital space from games to music to hardware and ecommerce Scott has a wide range of expertise in what it takes to assemble a program and ensure it’s success online.
Social Media Marketing And Facebook
Why You Need A Facebook “Profile” If You Don’t Have One Already
Over the past few years social networking sites enabled by Web 2.0 technologies have dramatically changed the way we use the Internet. What was once a oneway connection has transformed into a dynamic connective medium allowing users to share a wide range of content including blogs photos videos and much more.
Yet how have social networking sites like Facebook changed the way online marketers advertise online? For one they’ve made our jobs much easier. Facebook is the ideal medium for advertising within an environment that’s viral by nature. These online social directories use an interactive format that allows users to create a personal profile connect to other users and share content.
In a sense these users have already effectively segmented themselves coming together through like interest groups and connecting through content. These behaviors which are inherent to social media and enabled by Web 2.0 create valuable networks of targeted and specific demographic groups. Now more than ever the “Net Generation” is becoming involved in social media and presenting online marketers with the chance to market to predefined segments of online users positioning branded messages on sites where these users spend time online.
Moreover these social networking sites are growing at an exponential rate adding more and more users from more diverse backgrounds. Initially Facebook was created only for college students but last year it was opened to anyone with an email address. According to Microsoft Facebook is the sixth most trafficked site in the U.S. and now has over 73 million registered users in 40000 different collegiate high school workrelated and geographic networks. This represents a 530 growth rate over one year alone.
The tactic through which advertisers communicate with these segmented online audiences is known as Social Media Marketing SMM. SMM has become a popular tool for search engine optimization SEO thanks to its unique ability to improve website visibility name recognition and brand awareness among specific online audiences through the acquisition of a network of relevant links.
So what opportunities does Facebook present for targeted online marketing efforts? Among Internet users ages 1824 Facebook placed first on the list of favorite sites in Youth Trends most recent survey. Over 70 of females ages 1725 indicated that Facebook was their favorite site in terms of time spent online. For males this figure was still a powerful 56. These demographic is clearly technologydriven thanks to their growing up in a culture that considers time online an integral aspect of daily life. More than half of those surveyed visited Facebook at least once a day logging an average of 35 minutes on the site.
Furthermore these users are familiar with online environments and are adept at seeking out and finding specific pieces of content they’re interested in. Thus social networking sites especially Facebook present online marketers with the opportunity to engage users with advertising messages at critical moments of relevance.
So how can we utilize social media marketing to effectively engage these elusive audiences of young adults? Below are several ideas on how to utilize social media marketing on Facebook.
Connect Through Groups:
Facebook has an infinite number of shared interest groups which users join for a myriad of reasons. These groups cover an unlimited number of subjects and interests from marine biology to snowboarding to politics to rap music to Italian food. No matter what your interest or target market there is a group for you. Take it from me. I’ve been a registered Facebook user or “Facebooker” since 2003 and I’ve seen a group for everything literally. Many even have a local focus like Denver Broncos fan groups or Denver Chinese Students Group. Each of these groups has its own page with a forum discussion board photo gallery etc. This is the best place to position messages meant for specific niche audiences as you’re almost guaranteed everyone who sees it fits your target profile. In the past when I was trying to drive traffic to a video site I was working for I placed descriptive and enticing links to relevant videos on the group’s “wall” or discussion board. I saw great results as many of the members of this particular group which was devoted to skiing followed these links to watch videos about their favorite sport skiing.
Connect Through Applications:
Recently Facebook has opened up its platform to outside developers who have created innumerable applications ranging from fantasy stock picking simulators to video games of “beer pong” to world maps marking desired travel destinations. Users can add as many of these applications as they like to their profiles creating opportunities for marketers and developers alike to subtly integrate marketing messages into these applications and their functions. Many developers have already done so and are not doubt reaping some major benefits not only through increased brand awareness but through traffic driven from Facebook which many have bridged to their own sites.
Connect Through Content:
Because Facebook allows users to post videos images links photos and more advertisers can seamlessly utilize social media marketing strategies to connect with these groups through content. By positioning your content where your target audience is you can be assured your brand will be right in front of their eyes as they interact with your message. Facebook is a repository for an endless amount of consumer data what many experts have dubbed “a community in a box.” So why not leverage this data by getting involved? Connect through content.
Connect Through Events:
As Facebook has grown it has added an “Events” section where users can post information about upcoming events and then invite their Facebook friends to attend. The entire section of events is searchable and users can quickly locate events they’re interested in find the host’s name location time and even a description of the event. What’s more Facebook gives each event its own page where users can RSVP decline to attend or even post information on the event page’s public discussion wall like what to wear what to bring etc. This presents social media marketers with a valuable opportunity to post events and then invite people that are most likely interested in attending. In my own experience with this medium I’ve created events for clients and then posted information and invites within groups that align. For example when promoting an upcoming reggae concert or college football game find as many groups related to reggae music college football music and sports that you can and post the event information on their group discussion boards to ensure that anyone who’s interested now knows and attends.
Connect Through Mobile Devices:
Just this week Facebook announced that it has partnered with RIM or Research In Motion and their BlackBerry device. In addition to BlackBerrys Facebook is accessible to a wide range of other mobile devices. This presents valuable opportunities for advertisers to reach potential customers on a local level positioning their company presence at the moment of relevance.
Still Facebook’s explosive growth hasn’t been without challenges. In response to criticism from a plethora of groups Facebook recently added additional security measures in an effort to better protect private information. In addition to assuaging privacy fears this is sure to encourage more users to join the site and share more information about themselves. Yet this will also force social media marketers to be more innovative and creative when identifying and locating target audiences.
As you can see Facebook users have taken care of the segmentation process connecting themselves through content and shared interests. These behaviors which are inherent to social media and enabled by Web 2.0 create valuable networks of targeted and specific demographic groups. Now more than ever the “Net Generation” is becoming involved in social media and presenting online marketers with the chance to market to predefined segments of online users positioning branded messages on sites where these users spend time online.
The company I work for Fusionbox uses social media marketing to combine the objectives of Internet marketing with the capabilities of social media sites and Web 2.0 technologies. Click here for more information on social media marketing.
Essentially our SMM services create powerful forms of viral marketing that leverage the large audiences and user communities of social media sites. Whether on MySpace YouTube Digg Facebook Del.icio.us Flickr or any number of others SMM revolves around the creation and connection of users to companies through unique content.
For this reason SMM can be utilized to build a network of links spread brand messages increase visibility and awareness and even manage your company’s reputation online. After all these social media sites each have millions of registered users grouped into likeinterest communities. Now all you have to do is discern where your target audience is congregating online. What more could a marketer ask for? No other channel allows companies to declare their identity service offerings value proposition and location within such a targeted environment.
Our team of experienced and innovative social media marketers will effectively position your website content in a targeted digital space where it will be seen by those you want to see it.
Fusionbox is a leader in applying Web 2.0 technologies to the Internet marketing domain. Our services have been aptly deemed Web Marketing 2.0 because of our ability to connect clients to customers by engaging the market and initiating conversations through social media.
About the writer: Nick Yorchak is an SEO expert and Search Engine Marketing Specialist at Fusionbox a fullservice Denver Internet marketing web design and web development company. He can be reached at his Fusionbox email or at 3039527490. Click here to check out his expert SEO blog.
Making Minisites With Joomla Cms
While almost everyone has heard of minisites by now if you know anything about internet marketing very few people have considered using an open source and free CMS or content managment system like Mambo or Joomla which is based on Mambo code to produce minisites.
What are the advantages of using a CMS like Joomla to rapidly make and deploy minisites on the internet?
1. Joomla is easy to use and you can use thousands of free CSS based templates that support the latest standards and have a site up in hours not days.
2. Joomla support easy wysiwyg or what you see is what you get visual editors that allow you to set up and add content to a site as easily as using a word processor on your desktop computer. What this means is that your site supports the latest web 2.0 standards and can grow in content easily and quickly without redeveloping your website from scratch.
3. Joomla has thousands of extensions and you can easily produce websites that rival sites costing tens of thousands of dollars for nothing. You can easily add membership sites photo galleries streaming video audio chat and forums as well as rich blogs. In short everything to make your site “sticky” and keep bringing back those visitors over and over again.
4. Joomla makes changing the look of your site a snap since you can change your template and quickly change the look and feel of your website in just minutes allowing you to freshen up your site every once in a while.
5. Joomla is continuously updated and is now releasing a beta version called 1.5. Most people are still working on 1.03 or so but it is nice to know that future upgrades are available.
6. Joomla is well supported by many Hosting services now and is able to be installed by Fantastico scripts with just one click. There is a user manual and several video packages that show you how to make templates and set up membership sites for profit.
7. Joomla and most of it’s extensions or add ons are free and open source so it is cheap to get a very professional web presence on the internet.
For all the advantages it will take a few weeks to get used to the new methodology of using a CMS to manage and deploy your websites unless you are used to making websites from your browser. Once you get the hang of it however you never want to go back to the slow laborious system of desktop website creation and uploading.
I recommend you go to one of the sites called Joomlatutorials.com and go through the tutorials right after installing Joomla and before you do any work on your own site. Basically you start with a template that you get for free at the largest free site template repository called www.joomla24.com. They have over 1500 free templates you can start with. Alternatively you can go with one of the many commercial template companies that offer a variety of paid templates that you can modify and make into your site.
Once you select the template you must change the permissions on your template and media areas of your template section in Joomla under your public html directory so that you can make changes to the appropriate template and files.
You do this either within joomla or most often from cpanel using your file manager functions and set the file permissions to 777 for the folders and 666 for files.
You must get a log in from your hosting company after installation so that you can go into the administrators section that you manage and build the site from and make changes and add content to the site.
After you log in you go to the templates section in the site manager and click on new.
Then you are presented with a dialog that asks you to browse on your computer and pick the site template which must be in zip format and you upload the template on your site. After a few minutes if it is successful and it tells you so and then you click on continue. Then your site template will be listed with the other default templates. You click the radio button to make the template you installed the default template.
Then you click on the radio button to select the default template and then you click on html to edit the html for the template page. You will be checking for the image files on the page. They usually start with the word As you can see you need to study html and I would especially study CSS or cascading style sheets and tables so that you know how to place things on the page. In any event you need to look for the header graphic and replace it with a graphic header of your logo or a header image for your site.
You must be sure the graphic is slightly smaller than the size given so that the header graphic or logo will show up without messing up the format of the template or page. You must upload using an ftp program like Transmit or Filezilla the image file that you want to use for your logo or header image. Once you find the joomla folder in the public html folder you must click on it to find the templates folder. Inside that there is an images folder. You must upload your chosen image to that folder. It should be a .jpg or .gif file in the same format as that used in the template if possible. Once the image shows up in the file your next job is to change the html in the html file and replace it with the name of the image you uploaded. Then when you pull up your www.sitename/joomla your front page should show your graphic logo or header file.
Next you need to unpublish those buttons on the front page that you don’t need. You go to the main menu section and unpublish everything but the home button. You will need to go to joomla extensions page and go to menu section and find a menu extension that will allow you to use images or other files to set up your menus. Then you will have the appropriate file extension ready when it is time to link your menus which is the last step in setting up your website.
One thing you can do now is figure out what extensions or extras you will need on your website. You can just have a straight minisite but you will do better in the search engines and in the eyes of your visitors if you have a theme based content site and not just a sales page. If you add a chat client a forum and a blog to your site then you will find that your visitors become involved with the site and keep returning. The more they are on your site the greater the chance they will buy what you have to offer be it an affiliate offer an ebook or a membership.
Check each section of the extensions. Especially the graphics section where all the banner advertising extensions are. You can monetize the site with banners and/or text ads that will bring additional money onto the site. It is true that if you use adsense on your site your site will show up in the search engines sooner. There are several adsense modules. You will need to add docman or Remository if you will be setting up files for download on your site. Community builder or AEC will serve you well if you are setting up a membership site. You will need One of the wsiwyg content editors in the content and news section so that you can edit your pages easily and quickly. You must set up your wysiwyg editor as your default editor for Joomla. Then when you go to add content you can easily and quickly edit your pages. You should go to the Blog section and add XBlogg for editing your blog offline and download one of the blog programs for easily setting up and running a blog from your site. You will need to add one of the payment processors and/or a shopping cart for your site if you will be selling products from your site. Once you have added all the extensions be it a component module or mambot you are ready to go to the next step.
Next you will start adding the sections you will need in your site. Then you will add categories to the sections until you have divided your site into an organized entity. Then you will edit the front page using the content editor and the wysiwyg editor you have made the default content editor. You will add images and add articles so that everything is done to your satisfaction. Use Polls banners and the Adsense or other text ads for your affiliate programs to the front page on a rotating Banner or rotating ad schedule. That way you can track where most of your sales are coming from . Keep adding articles and other sections to your site until it is finished. Don’t forget to add sales pages for each of the products or affiliate opportunities you are promoting. Then you will add a Thank You page for any downloads you need to offer or ebooks or software. You will have to set up the extension and add any thumbnails or links you need to download products for.
Once that is all set up check all your images and your spelling for all your articles. Check your links and make sure that everything is in order. Make sure your shopping Cart is working properly by adding a sample products and ordering them. Make sure that any forms are working properly to add your visitors to your opt in list.
Add your newsletter buttons and set up your mailings. Set up your autoresponders for any orders or requests for you newsletters. I suggest you set up your newsletters in an archive section on your site so that people can download them from the site in case their email Spam filter eats your newsletter.
Once everything looks good publish your pages.
Congratulations your site is now live. Write two articles in your area of expertise a day and you will have over 100 articles in a years time circulating all over the net earning you money. You just submit the articles to article directories and you will add a signature file mentioning your experience and your main web site. As I said if you do this to hundreds of sites you will soon see a flood of traffic to your site and the money will follow! Joomla Greetings for the holidays!
About the writer: Kathy Elliott is a 25 year computer programmer and consultant who specializes in showing people how to make money with their computers from her sites that she made with Joomla at www.getcomputergold.com www.getcomputergold.com/joomla and www.minisitegold.net and www.minisitegold.net/joomla.
