The map pushes all ads on the right rail down. At the end of the day, this means it’s more important than ever to show up in the top yellow bar. Otherwise, your ad will get a significantly lower CTRs. Google is supposed to normalize CTRs for position for purposes of quality score, but I wonder if they are factoring in this new map feature. The lower CTRs of right rail advertisers could be a vicious cycle if Google is not taking this new map feature into account.

My advice: Work on your CTRs, landing pages, and overall account structure/efficiency to make sure you show up in that top yellow bar! It’s becoming more important than ever to avoid the right rail, if possible, and show up in the yellow bar.

Screenshot of Google search results © Google

It’s always exciting to do guest posts because it’s a great opportunity to get in front of new audiences. You may recall that I did a Guest Post on Acquisio’s Blog back in December. Today marks my first guest post of 2012, the first of many. I highly recommend heading on over to the PPC Associates Blog and checking out both my guest post and their other amazing posts. Thanks PPC Associates for the great opportunity!

Image in this post © PPCAssociates.com

I’m always searching Yahoo! Finance looking for new opportunities. Recently, I found a stock called R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company. R.R. Donnelley (Ticker: RRD) provides printing and corporate communications services for businesses. They’ve been in business since 1864 and employ 58,700 employees. When it comes to print (newspapers, magazines, direct mail, and even investment materials), R.R. Donnelley does it all.

Over the last few weeks, RRD stock has taken quite a hit. There are a number of reasons the stock is going down, but one is certainly the belief that the printing industry is going under. It’s all about digital media these days. This is certainly good news for those of us in the pay per click search engine marketing career path. That said, it’s also sad to see an old company under such pressure.

When a dividend-paying stock goes down, dividend yield goes up (that is, assuming the dividend does not get cut). Right now, RRD is yielding an impressive 9%. It’s quite difficult to find any large cap companies yielding this amount. As such, RRD looks to many like quite the promising investment. That said, the dividend is only secure if the print industry is around for the long haul.

What do you think? Do you think that the print industry is going under? Do you think RRD could follow a similar fate to Eastman Kodak (recently filed for bankruptcy)? Or, do you feel that the print industry will always have a presence, despite the growing popularity of digital media? While the 9% dividend yield is enticing, I’m staying away for now. There’s enough uncertainty that this risk averse investor is going to wait and see. In any event, it’s quite interesting to see the trends we all know (more online media consumption) playing out in the stock market (both via the popularity of Internet stocks and the unpopularity of print stocks such as RRD).

Disclosure: I don’t own stock in R.R. Donnelley and do not anticipate opening a position in the next 72 hours.
Image of stock market © iStockPhoto – ahlobystov

• I hit the 200 post milestone here on PPC Ian. This post is actually number 202. My post about Epik, The Most Comprehensive Registrar Around was number 200. Now that I’m blogging more frequently than ever, I’m going to hit 300 and then 400 posts before I know it!
• Lending Club (affiliate link) is awesome. As you may know from my 2012 Goals, this is my year to save money, invest wisely, and also give back to others. Part of my savings and investing strategy involves Lending Club and I can’t wait to write an entire post about my strategy next week. Quick preview: I’m now invested in 140 notes with a net annualized return of 13.08%. Also, this is a great way to help and give back. I’m lending money to people who need it, and I’m offering a much better interest rate than they can get at the bank.
• VaultPress is a really great WordPress plugin. I was reading about the best WordPress Plugins For 2012 over on my friend Morgan Linton’s blog, and noticed VaultPress on the list. I had been thinking about getting this plugin for a while, and finally went ahead and did it after reading Morgan’s post. My HostGator VPS Hosting already has me covered, they do regular backups of my site. However, I like the extra peace of mind VaultPress offers. For $15/month, it’s great to know that my blog is being backed up continuously.
• When you think your pay per click accounts are fully optimized, think again! Even the oldest and most refined AdWords and adCenter accounts have more room for optimization. Sometimes I feel like I’ve looked at an account for so long that it’s perfect. However, when I take a step back I always end up finding more opportunity.
• I got a lot done in the last week. My strategy: Focus on completing one major task each day. I have an overwhelming number of projects on my plate. By staying focused, I’m thankfully making some serious progress on my list.
• I’m super excited about my Twitter Advertising Challenge. I’m basically challenging myself to take my Twitter account to the next level. I’ve already made great progress and can’t wait to finish this project. So far, I’ve reduced the number of people I’m following by 3,000+ and have been working with my designer on a new background (it looks amazing so far). After my Twitter Challenge, I’m going to do the same thing on Facebook. I already have some really great ideas to take my Facebook Fan Page to the next level.
• It’s taking a lot of time to update the copyright notices on my 120+ websites to reflect the new year (2012). I haven’t gotten through all of them yet, but have updated my most important sites to include 2012 in the copyright notice.

Image of Break © shirhan

Initiative One: Follow No More Than 200 People

Right now, I have 17,060 followers but am following 16,826. My Twitter stream is basically unusable. I want to be able to log in to my Twitter account and make sense of things, only seeing tweets that are relevant and interesting to me. If I am following no more than 200 people, I’ll be able to use Twitter once again.

Why am I following so many people right now? It was actually part of my initial strategy. I went out there and followed a ton of people knowing that a certain portion would reciprocate and follow me back. I would then unfollow those who did not follow me back. I did this many times and was able to drive a significant number of followers with this strategy. It’s a great strategy I still recommend for building out your initial base of followers. More followers equals more social proof and brand equity.

How am I going to remove 16,500+ followers? I’m going to go through all my @ messages and find out who I’ve interacted with. Then, I’m going to put them on my Tweet Adder white list. (Tweet Adder is a really helpful Twitter utility that I recommend purchasing if you’re serious about advertising on Twitter.) After my white list is loaded with my favorite people, I’m going to remove 1,000 people each day (who are not on my white list) until I’m done. Sure, I’m going to remove some good people by accident, but I can always add them back later.

Will I lose followers with this strategy? Absolutely. That said, I don’t think I’m going to lose more than 5,000 followers. I’m ok with this, and believe that I’ll retain most followers.

Initiative Two: Redesign My Twitter Background

My Twitter background has not been updated in years. It still looks ok, but could be a lot better. I’ve decided to engage the same designer who designed and built IJL.net for me. I’m sure the results will be great. Also, I’m sure my new background will help drive even more followers in the future.

Initiative Three: Advertise and Gain More Followers

After I reduce the list of people I’m following, I’m sure to lose a few followers. I’m going to partially make up for this by running a paid advertising campaign on Twitter. I’ve had phenomenal results running Paid Like Campaigns on Facebook. I have not tried this yet on Twitter, but am quite excited. At the very least, I’ll get that cool “Verified Account” badge by signing up as an advertiser. Also, I hope to gain some serious experience that I can then leverage at my job. In my opinion, it’s critical for all PPC professionals to master Facebook and Twitter in addition to AdWords and adCenter.

Stay tuned, I’m hoping to have some interesting findings in my journey to optimize my Twitter account. Want to connect on Twitter? Please don’t hesitate to reach out, my Twitter handle is ianlopuch.

Image of PPC Ian’s Twitter Count © PPCIan.com and Twitter

Epik Is Now A Full Service Registrar

In July, 2011 Epik acquired its very own registrar, IntrustDomains. You can read all about Epik’s acquisition in this post on the Epik blog. Long story short, the acquisition on Intrust completed Epik’s dream of becoming the most comprehensive domain asset management platform on the Internet. We’re talking about the whole domain name lifecycle here: Acquire, build, manage, and divest. Epik is my registrar of choice and next I will show you how I’m leveraging Epik every single day to manage my domain/website portfolio.

All Domains From All Accounts In One Place

Check out the screenshot below, this is what it looks like when I log into my registrar account at Epik. You’ll quickly notice that there’s a world of functionality at your fingertips (I’ll get into that a bit later). First, however, I wanted to underscore an amazing feature that is really helping me out: Epik displays all of my domain names from all of my registrars. I’m able to manage all of my GoDaddy, Moniker, and Epik domains in one convenient location. Recently, I did a quick sort by expiration date and noticed that I had a good 30 domains at Moniker expiring in February. Last night, I leveraged this intelligence and logged into my Moniker account to renew all of the domains. Also, I noticed that I have a few GoDaddy domains expiring on the horizon and will take care of those shortly.

A World of Functionality At Your Fingertips

Epik makes my life easy. The screenshot below illustrates the menu that appears when I hover over a domain click the “manage” button on the main control panel (previous screenshot). Whether I’m looking to update whois info (such as toggling between public/private registration), forward a domain name, transfer domains in/out of my Epik account, renew domains, organize my portfolio, or virtually anything else I want to do, it’s all in one convenient location. Even better: I can select multiple domains at once and manage them in one bulk update. In short, Epik is one of the most user friendly registrars around. Even better, domain registration fees at Epik are cheap ($10/year) and you get all of this amazing functionality (including domain privacy and domain forwarding, if you want it) for free.

An Amazing Selection of Development Options

In the screenshot below, you can see Epik’s suite of domain development packages. I personally developed 60 of my own domains on Epik’s Product Portal Platform. However, you can quickly see that Epik offers much more than Product Portals. I’m talking about lightening fast web hosting (several different hosting packages), SiteBuilder, LeadGen Portals, Recipe Portals, and Video Portals. When it comes to making money online, Epik has you covered!

Offer Your Domains and Websites For Sale

Looking back at the first screenshot in this account, you can see that all of my domains have an “on sale” price tag next to them. I have listed many of my domains and websites for sale on the Epik Marketplace. I’m in the domain game to make money. Most of my money comes via passive income from developed websites and I’m holding onto most sites for the long term. That said, I’m definitely exploring the idea of selling domains and websites in 2012. If I’m able to earn cash by selling virtual assets, I can funnel those earnings into other passive income instruments (dividend-paying stocks or even the development of more websites). Epik owns over 20,000 domains in their own portfolio so they know all about selling domains. Leverage their expertise and platform to sell your domains/websites today.

So, there you have it, the most comprehensive registrar around! The crazy thing: I barely scratched the surface of the Epik platform with this post. If you’re looking to acquire, build, manage, and divest domain names, Epik has the entire lifecycle covered. Open your account at Epik today!

Images in this post © Epik and PPCIan.com

Below, you will see two screenshots. The first is the search engine results on Google when I type in “askew”. As you can see, Google Instant technology actually makes the page go askew for the word askew, how cool is that!

The second screenshot shows the search results for the search term “do a barrel roll”. This one is so crazy, you just have to see it for yourself. Type in “do a barrel roll” on Google Instant and the entire page does a barrel roll. Obviously, my screenshot is just a moment in time during the barrel roll process.

Bring these into work on Monday and you’ll be the hero of your SEM team. Do you know any hidden tricks with Google Instant? There just have to be more. I have not yet taken the time to search for other Google tricks, but definitely looking forward to uncovering more of them!

Screenshots in this post © Google search results

When it comes to pay per click, how do you get solid benchmark data? You can gather some high level information from services like Compete, Hitwise, and Quantcast. Also, you can request benchmark data from your Google and Yahoo! account management teams. I highly recommend both of these strategies.

Now, there is a third way to get benchmark data, one that’s low work on your end but super high leverage. I’m talking about benchmark reports published by SEM platforms such as Marin Software. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you Marin Software’s Q4 US Online Advertising Report. I just downloaded this report (it’s free) and can say without a doubt that you do not want to pass this one up! Following are some of my favorite highlights…

• Marin’s whitepaper offers 13 pages of outstanding data
• Marin compiles data from over 1,000 advertisers and agencies who spend a collective 2.7 billion in annual spend
• The whitepaper features some really interesting CPC and match type trends (we’re talking about specific and actionable PPC statistics)
• It breaks down trends by industry: auto, B2B, education, finance, healthcare, retail, and travel
• In addition to computers, Marin covers smartphones and tablets
• In addition to discussing AdWords and adCenter, Marin covers Facebook trends too

Download Marin’s Q4 US Online Advertising Report tonight and go into work tomorrow as a PPC industry trend guru!

Image in this post © Marin Software

Last night, I made the mistake of checking my email right before bed. After a really long day at work and a long weekend (I worked most of last weekend), I was not in the frame of mind to deal with the email. However, I checked my email and found one that worried me. It was not a worked-related email, but rather a personal one. Upon reading this email, my mind went racing and I lost some serious sleep. Moreover, my day today got off to a rocky start. I missed out on sleep and more importantly had not “solved” the dilemma presented via the email.

However, after thinking about the email throughout the day today, the “solution” came to me. I’m really proud of the solution and feel like it’s a great one. At the end of the day, I think the solution would have come to me quicker and I would have gotten much more sleep had I not checked my email right before going to bed.

Going forward, I am going to resist checking my email right before going to bed. I hope to get more sleep this way and also make optimal decisions in life. Of course, this does not mean I will avoid checking my work and personal email at night. It just means I will have a cutoff time when I stop looking (probably around 9:00 pm or 10:00 pm at night). Today was definitely a learning lesson for me and I hope this tip helps you out too!

Image of Email © iStockPhoto – barisonal

• It’s really hard for me to say “no”. Sometimes I wish I did a better job at this. That said, I’m an ambitious guy and want to do it all. If you’re waiting on my for something, hang tight, I will get through everything. So many amazing things to get through in 2012!
• I Worked This Weekend again! I didn’t work all day Sunday, but worked all day and night Saturday. It honestly felt like all weekend, however, because I slept half the day today recovering from my big day yesterday. I had an important deadline that I just had to hit (others depended on me). It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m trying to start the year aggressively. I don’t plan on doing this every weekend, but the beginning of the year is a good time to invest the extra hours, in my opinion (since you enjoy the benefits of the work all year and beyond).
• I really enjoy working on SEO, as much as paid search. The project I worked on all weekend was actually an on-page SEO one which is quite fun. My advice to those in the PPC career path: Explore related fields such as SEO, display, email, and affiliate marketing. You don’t have to spend a ton of time, but even a small amount cross-channel experience will add greatly to your perspective.
• Posts about commentating get a lot of interest. I decided to write my post about how Blogs With Top Commentators Are Now Rare as a follow-up to my very popular Blog Commentating Strategy. My new post got a lot of comments and interest. This just goes to show that I’m not the only one who’s passionate about commentating.
• I’m starting to see Six Sitelinks show up on my paid search ads, not only for trademark/brand keywords but for generic keywords too. Make sure you have at least six sitelinks deployed in each of your Google AdWords campaigns.
• SMX West San Jose is coming up in late February. If you haven’t registered yet, I highly recommend doing so. Here’s my recap of SMX West 2011. I’m particularly excited about joining my friends at Marin Software for a San Jose Sharks game after the conference.
• Hip hop is the best. I keep discovering great tracks. I’m listening to this Slum Village track right now called “Hold Tight” that features Q-Tip. I really want to see Q-Tip / A Tribe Called Quest in concert one of these days.

Image of TGIF © iStockPhoto – KLH49