Hope you are warm and toasty - it's pretty chilly here. Below are some things to check out. We hope you enjoy your weekend. My daughter is out of school starting next week for the holidays - actually she is out today because the roads are icy - so we'll be on a limited posting schedule (read that as maybe no posts) till Jan 2nd. During this time try to find some other ways to piggy back your ads. We'll do the same and post our thoughts in January.

We hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and Happy and Prosperous New Year. Thank you for letting us be a small part of your lives.

There seems to be a battle going on between Yahoo and Google over paid links.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002955.html
http://battellemedia.com/archives/002123.php


A recap of the recent Chi town Search Engine Conference

http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchbrief/senews/006339.html

Ratings on the search engines - no surprise Google leads - interesting though more people are searching which is good news for everyone.

Click here

Top 99 search terms with 9 letters from A9.... hmmm

http://blog.a9.com/blog/2005/12/14/the-99-top-9/

Tim and Lisa

So did you come up with something you could use -

First an example of some good marketing - If you search for Auto Tape Measure in Google -

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=auto+tape+measure

Who do you see at the top of the list.... Black and Decker - excellent marketing. So what you want to find is someone that isn't doing it.

What do you get if you search for home depot elf... one result. If you had something related to hardware / gifts for me you could plug your ad in there and get some unexpected traffic.

If you search for Bud Light Venus - there are no results in the ad box - so probably for ten cents or so a click you could drive some traffic.

Hopefully this gets some creative juices flowing. The main thing is to think of things for your target market - and it doesn't have to be commercials it can be topics within a show. If it is a show topic you need to try and get the ads setup the day of the show. People have very short memories. Commercials usually run more than once.

Stuff you can use -

Tax time is coming soon - check this article out.
http://www.sbtimes.com/articles/05/12/2.shtml

Speaking of taxes this site gives some good info on mileage deductions.

http://smallbusinesstaxcenter.com/records/mileage1.php

So the commercials I found were -

Pre Game -

Fed Ex
Ford F 150 BCS
Comcast HDTV
GMC

1st Quarter
Budlight / Venus
King Kong
Energizer
Cardiezem HBP
Home Depot - Elf
--
Nissan Z
Best Buy (Games)
According to Jim
--
Dominos 5 buck deal
Nissan Frontier - shift offroad
Diet Pepsi - Vending Machine
Hope and Faith - Christmas Freak
--
Nissan Frontier - compact trucks
Michelob Ultra
Subway - Chicken Bacon Ranch
Auto Tape - Black and Decker
--
Fedex
Phillips - sense and sensability
In Justice
--
Subway - Chicken and Bacon
Visa Check Card
Snickers

So what do those commercials have to do with anything - these people spend huge amounts of money on their campaigns - I have found though that many don't branch out to the web. Let's face it, many people watch TV and surf. What stops them from searching Google for some keywords they find in ads. Using the commercials above try and find some searches where there are no Adwords - don't worry if it's not your niche - just use if for practice. I'll give you my results tomorrow.

Did you have a chance to do your homework from last night - if not don't worry I did. We're running behind schedule today and have some obligations later today so we'll talk about it more tomorrow.

I did find an interesting thing this morning - MSN may pay you to search - would you switch if someone did this???

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2649

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - we had a pretty good weekend more on that in a bit - first some posts from the weekend.

A nice way to get out of the sandbox from Google -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=57368

I watched two excellent football games on Sunday and it got me to thinking that I probably hadn't shared with you a good (cheap) way to promote your site and bring more traffic... which in turn brings more sales. It does take some work and some money - so if either of these are in short supply for you then you may not want check out the blog in a week or two.

To help learn about the concept you need to do a little work - tonight watch the first quarter of Monday night football. Even if you don't like football one quarter shouldn't be too much for you to wade through. As you watch the game write down all the commercials that you see - as well as any advertisements you may see. Even if your audience would hate football just bear with me. We'll talk some about those commercials tomorrow.

A Danny Sullivan Q and A from the Chicago conference -

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20051208DannySullivanCuttsUp.html

Enjoy your weekend.

Google's Ten Rules for business -

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051206-114834

Search engine strategies is going on in the big C - here's a place to catch some updates on whats going on.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051205-141249

The latest issue of our Ezine can be found here -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz256-DEC05.htm

Enjoy your day.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Some things that may get your tractor cranking this morning.

Google has now made it possible to seperate content bids and "normal" bids. Instructions can be found here -
http://perrymarshall.com/google/separate.htm

Some excellent info on creating niche sites -
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18376

Matt Cutts has some good advice in his blog on software -

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-software-mistakes/

We hope you enjoy your weekend - hopefully we'll get some Christmas shopping done today.

Can "good" content and grammar help with Google - check this article -

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1874