Yahoo! helps LendingTree test the benefits of combining paid and organic search   Who: LendingTree, LLC, an online lending exchange that connects consumers with multiple lenders who compete for their business. Objective: Yahoo! and LendingTree wanted to quantify how using sponsored search ads and paid inclusion listings together increases traffic. Products Used: Sponsored Search and Search Submit Pro Results: During the study,

How treating a web page like a research paper can help you in search listings You should always keep your audience in mind when you're writing landing page text. But what do you when you're optimizing pages for search engines and your audience isn't even human? According to search engine optimization expert Jessica Bowman of SEM Inhouse , it may help to think of search engines as your college professor . Jessica recently gave a workshop at Yahoo!

How much traffic do you really want, and can your budget afford it? Before iPods enabled teens to retreat into their music at any volume they like without disrupting the rest of the household, parents employed a three-word mantra that both parties quickly grew tired of: "Turn it down!" It's a generational power struggle that probably echoed the world over. As adults, our musical tastes may have changed,

Arrange your keywords and ads properly to help you achieve better results This is advice taken from Yahoo!'s Smart Start guide , which is packed with helpful content to assist you in making your campaigns as effective as possible. Whether you're an expert search marketer or just starting out, the tips from Yahoo!'s "Sharon Goodsense" offer practical search marketing insights. Download Smart Start . You probably know by now that your account is made up of campaigns,

Get a personalized campaign optimization session from Yahoo! If you're heading to Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose next week in search of free tsotchkes, you may also want to try something considerably more valuable â€" one of our free personalized campaign optimization. You have to be there in person though because this is not an online session. The half-hour one-on-one optimization session, with a Yahoo! Search Marketing content specialist,

Now you have more ways to keep tabs on your account You shouldn't be intimidated by reports"whether it's a report card, a weather report or the cover sheet for a TPS report . Our Ad Performance Reports, located under the Reports tab in your Sponsored Search account, help you understand how your ads are performing. You should use this report to help identify the ads that most effectively generate leads, conversions and revenue.

Five reasons your revenue could be fluctuating The famous Roman philosopher Seneca once said, "It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness." While he couldn't fathom the realities of today's Internet society, he still had the right idea â€" "hard work will pay off" â€" and with Yahoo! Publisher Network, the same holds true. Our publishers often ask why their revenue is fluctuating. Many times, upon investigating,

Publisher news bits from the blogosphere Earlier this week, Yahoo! announced a partnership with HP and Intel to create a "global, multi-datacenter research testbed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education." What's cloud computing ? Well, we had to look it up, too, but the simple way to describe it is as a way for customers to tap into computing resources that can be anywhere, and only pay for what they use. "Here at Yahoo!,

And 5 factors that can help you get users' attention The question "What's a good click-through rate?" is a little bit like asking "What's your favorite movie?", in that it really comes down to personal preference. Just as some people might lean toward "The Godfather," as their fave flick, others might prefer something a little more low-brow, say "Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

How our Ad Profiling Program Can Help Your Keyword Performance Think of your Yahoo! Search Marketing account as a garden â€" without careful maintenance, it can grow wild. The wilder it grows, the more difficult it is to maintain. Our goal here at Yahoo! Search Marketing is to lend a hand in the garden, which is why we've started a program called Ad Profiling. With Ad Profiling, we analyze high-impression keywords within an account that are performing poorly,

Selected publisher-related tidbits from the blogosphere Are you a publisher who is constantly looking for the right image to post on your site? Well, we may not know what the best image is, but we can steer you to some free ones. The folks on the Flickr blog recently announced that Flickr is teaming up with Getty Images to create a collection of royalty-free, rights-ready and rights-managed photographs.

Why we have rules for your search marketing accounts Here at Yahoo! Search Marketing, we try to bring users and advertisers together by creating relevant, effective search listings. To help us create a high-quality search experience, we have a set of editorial guidelines and best practices. Think of them as the "instruction manual" for your account: The more closely you follow them, the better your account works.

Create your own version of Yahoo! Search Yahoo! has been saying for a while that search should be open , and it's tough to imagine it getting much more open than our new Web services platform â€" Yahoo! Search BOSS . BOSS, or Build your Own Search Service, is just that â€" a programming interface that lets you create your own version of the Yahoo! algorithmic search experience. This is something that might could help you strengthen your content as a publisher.

Create your own version of Yahoo! Search Yahoo! has been saying for a while that search should be open , and it's tough to imagine it getting much more open than our new Web services platform â€" Yahoo! Search BOSS . BOSS, or Build your Own Search Service, is just that â€" a programming interface that lets you create your own version of the Yahoo! algorithmic search experience. If your Web site also generates content, this is something that might be useful to you.

Three tips to muster, monitor and maintain your conversions In the offline world, a "conversion" could happen in the metric system, the adoption of a new religion or an exchange of currency. But for search marketing advertisers, a conversion is a completed transaction event on a website. Apart from the most obvious conversion"a customer completes a sale"conversions can include a visitor registering at your site, requesting a price quote,

A Mid-Summer's News Catch-Up Our colleagues at the Right Media Blog recently posted an article about the Interactive Advertising Bureau )IAB( and their efforts to broaden the coalition of publishers on the web. According to the IAB's post " Small Publishers Unite! You Have Nothing To Save But Your Business ," the IAB is trying to "mobilize to stop politicians from unfairly and inappropriately regulating digital advertising." Check it out for yourself.

Why your ads may disappear, and how to give them more time in the spotlight You've probably felt a certain thump of pride when you do a search on your product and see your ad pop up in the Sponsored Results. But at other times, you might have experienced a "where did it go?" moment. This occurs when your ad is nowhere to be found, and yet you know there's still money in your budget. One answer to the question might be what we refer to as "budget smoothing.

The latest round-up of articles from the blogosphere Are you the sharing type? Well, one of the best ways to share your ideas and content is with widgets. And you wouldn't be alone â€" marketers and publishers are expected to spend about $40 million on web widgets this year, according to the Marketing Vox news site. Marketing Vox recently published a beginner's guide to widgets , which are anything that can be embedded in an HTML web page.

High gas prices could pump up your site traffic and sales With the cost of gas climbing and consumers looking to save money by driving less, introducing new targeted ads could not only save consumers some gas but also fuel a lot of additional sales for online advertisers this summer. More and more consumers are looking to take the pedal off the metal and avoid getting behind the wheel when possible. According to a recent study by the National Retail Federation,

Five guidelines to help keep you in YPN compliance When reviewing YPN publisher sites for guideline compliance, I see the same "problem areas" over and over that prevent sites from passing the guidelines. Here are a few things to avoid in order to keep your site in compliance with YPN. 1. Competing Ads Be sure that Yahoo! ads do not appear on the same page as contextual ads from other companies. It's okay to rotate these ads along with Yahoo!