Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

~ Kevin Lee (Author), (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“A remarkable book that eases you into the important world of search engine advertising. Read it before your competitors do!”
—Danny Sullivan, Editor SearchEngineWatch.com

Nothing delivers high-quality traffic like the search engines, but if you’re not showing up prominently in the results for your desired keywords, that means your competition is. The way to gain control and maximize profit is to take advantage of paid search results. Paid search engine listings can deliver site visitors who want to buy what you sell. And they can pinpoint exactly the right landing pages using not only keywords, but also geography, time of day, and more. With a little education and pre-planning, any company can launch a profitable search engine advertising program.

Key features in this book include learning how to:
• Buy top positions on the major search engines profitably
• Transform poor ad copy into ads that deliver results
• Increase visitor-to-buyer conversions
• Begin paid search advertising now, even if you’re a novice
• Use advanced techniques to evaluate and improve your results
• Leverage successes from Google into Yahoo, Microsoft, and more
• Leave the unprofitable clicks to your competition while grabbing the most profitable ones

About the Author

Kevin Lee Didit,Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, has been an acknowledged Search Engine Marketing expert since 1995. Kevin's years of SEM expertise provide the foundation for Didit's proprietary Maestro search campaign technology. A founding board member of SEMPO and its first elected Chairman Kevin is also active on the speaking circuit at top conferences. Kevin earned his MBA from Yale School of Management in 1992 and lives in Manhattan with his wife (a New York Psychologist) and two kids.  Kevin was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award Finalist in the Metro New York Area for both 2008 and 2009, and received the 2008 Direct Marketing Club of New York, Mal Dunn Leadership Award.

Catherine Seda, Internet marketing strategist,has helped companies leverage the Internet as a marketing tool since 1995. She is currently an Entrepreneur magazine columnist and eBay University instructor. She is also author of the best-selling book How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders: Boosting Your Business & Buzz on the Web and, as one of the leading experts on search marketing, has been quoted in eWeek.com, C/Net News, The E-Commerce Times, The NonProfit Times, and other publications.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 2 edition (May 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321495993
• ISBN-13: 978-0321495990
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,315 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent companion to "Search Engine Visibility", May 30, 2004

By	Manny Hernandez "Author of Ning For Dummies" (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (Paperback)

Catherine Seda's excellent book "Search Engine Advertising" is the perfect complement to Shari Thurow's "Search Engine Visibility" from which includes an excerpt toward the end. Where Thurow's book, the best one in terms of accomplishing high rankins in 'organic' (read unpaid) search results, Seda's book brings along the whole other side of the equation: that of paid options to accomplish high rankings. In doing so, one of her key points is that Search Engine Advertising doesn't end when the customer arrives at your site (visits), but it really is about conversions (getting the customer to make a purchase, subscribe or whatever your web site's purpose is when s/he arrives to it).

The book is very well structured around six parts:
i) Planning: the key (yet sometimes overlooked) part of the process, to ensure you know who you are targetting and how, before jumping into the paid options.
ii) Paid Placement Programs: she presents the differences (pros and cons) of the most important fixed placement and pay-for-placement programs available.
iii) Paid Inclusion Programs: directories are presented here in all their splendor, along with what you can do to enhance your possibilities before submitting your site, and how to manage a large number of simultaneous submissions. Web site optimization is touched upon briefly at this point, but in no way substituting Thurow's book on the topic: you simply have to have both, if you're serious about Online Marketing at all.

iv) Specialized Search Engines: comparison shopping engines, vertical market search engines and international search engines are discussed in some detail, to get you started with them.
v) Tracking ROI: normally just as overlooked as the planning stage, the tracking of the results of paid advertising campaigns are discussed in extensive detail to ensure that you are able to steer the boat in the right direction if your ROI data shows that you're putting money on the wrong key terms, your copy is not doing what it should to engage customers, or your landing pages are not taking customers where you want them to go once they get to your site.
vi) Protecting profits: topics such as click fraud, trademark infringement and affilate networks are discussed, as things to keep an eye on.

All in all, this is not a book you'd want to sit down and read in one afternoon (nor would you be able to). This is a hands-on book to work through and use as a reference as you're getting your feet wet with this whole other animal that is paid advertising on the Web. It has done a ton for me in the two months I've been applying the concepts contained in it, since it summarizes very well all the options available to you, their pros/cons and how to best take advantage of them, considering your size and budget. I highly recommend it without reserves for eMarketers that have not had too much exposure to paid options, as well as those who have some experience in the area, since it provides a wealth of tips and insights that most people in the field can benefit from.

Disclosure: I received a copy for review from the publisher.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Information on The Paid Side of Search Engine Marketing, March 16, 2004

By	A. M Wall "SEO Junkie..." (state college, pa United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (Paperback)

Catherine primarily focuses this book on the paid side of search engine marketing. I am a search engine marketer and have generally worked on the "free" or optimization side of search engine marketing for the past year. I also have read at least a dozen books or ebooks on this subject.

Generally I think the return on the optimization side is much greater than on the paid side, but if you are a savy marketer using paid search engine marketing can bring rapid distributions and returns. I personally have been amazed at some of the high profile, high frequency search words which have few competitors on the market (even today.)

There is much to know about search engine marketing, and much of the info that is out there on either side (paid or optimization) is chuck full of misinformation. This book is new and kept general enough (covering a rapidly changing environment) to where there is not a bunch of misinformation. She even predicted that paid inclusion would go to a PPC model right before Yahoo! put the new system in place.

If you have enough money to be participating in paid search then this book could help you save some of it.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, outdated, outdated, April 3, 2006

By	R. McDaniel (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (Paperback)

I'm sure this book was cutting edge when it was first published in February of 2004, but now it's for the most part outdated. For the absolute beginner to this area, there are some good general points, but references to long-since defunct or consolidated web companies (Urchin, Inktomi,etc) make it difficult to understand just what's still relevant. Google and Yahoo (and soon Microsoft) are defining the new landscape of this field as we speak...Try the new book from IBM press, "Search Engine Marketing"....chock full of the latest (as late as can be in this field) info.