I was doing some searches for a problem I’m having with Firefox 3 randomly logging me out of AdWords when I came across this article.

From the article:

Stevens bought the drive-by-download.info domain, set up a server to display a “Thank you for your visit” message and to log the requests. No PCs were harmed in this experiment, he emphasizes. Then he started the Google Adwords campaign, using combinations of the words “drive-by download” along with the ad. His ad was viewed 259,723 times and clicked on 409 times, for a click-through rate of about 0.16%. The experiment cost him $23, or 6 cents per click/potentially infected machine.

What some people don’t understand about the AdWords system is that the primary traffic sources are not (as was the case in the late 90’s, early 00’s) banner advertising seen by an equal cross-section of tech-enabled humanity. The giveaway to the “success” of this experiment is revealed in two facts from the above paragraph: “combinations of the words ‘drive-by download’” and “6 cents per click.”

Because of the way AdWords works, his ad would only have been seen by those searching for “drive by download” or those reading content about “drive by downloads” (or, more recently, content related to those topics). Given that the only people searching for or reading about that type of activity are those who are already somewhat informed, or are becoming more informed, I would guess that had an actual virus or other malware been installed, there would be very limited damage overall.

And factoring in the 0.16% CTR, and low CPC, I’d say his ad was more than likely running alongside tech articles on the content network, where it would primarily be seen only by tech-savvy users on both sides of the fence.

Certainly, in my younger days when I was first exploring the world of hacking, if I saw someone advertising the download of this type of software, I would take them up on it just to capture their methods and code. Most of the “advanced users” I knew back then not only sat behind fortresses of firewalls and virus checkers, but many of us also browsed via ‘bottles’ where viruses could be trapped. Of the 409 clicks achieved by the experimenter, I’m guessing only a handful of those would have resulted in successful infections, and only a subset of those would have real results.

These type of misunderstandings are what lead to so many small business owners opening their wallets to AdWords and getting taken to the bank. I can’t count the number of times I have tried to dissuade people from adding keywords like “weather” to the keyword list for their golf club, dating, or business portal site in order to get more eyeballs.

The world of online marketing requires more lateral-thinking than any other advertising medium ever invented. If you don’t have the time (or the ability) to answer “Why?” 100 times a day, then you should seek assistance with your Web Marketing efforts.

To be good at any job, you need to like doing it.  Not just the ivory-tower, CEO-stuff.  But the boots-on, factory floor part, too.

An SEO should always be conscious of search.  Trying to find a new restaurant, looking for a specific book, or in the case of my next example: looking through an online help guide.

I was busy converting some old Overture campaigns to the new Panama system recently.  I was using their online help system to find out what [match type] meant (in the relative terminology of the system).  I found the information I was looking for in the 3rd result, titled: “Importing Campaigns”, which contained a concise definition for every field name used in the importing process.

Every time I needed to refer to that information, I searched for [match type].  But eventually, I realized how stupid it was to keep using that term, despite the fact that I knew the title of the article I wanted was “Importing Campaigns”.

So, the next time I needed that information I used the search term [importing campaigns].  It took me about 3 times as long to find the information I needed because my first expectation was that the page I was looking for would be SERP #1.  Nope.

Well, it couldn’t be any lower than #3.  Nope.

Result #6 was the page I was used to seeing.  So I went back to using [match type] to find the information I needed on importing.

What’s the takeaway? Well, if someone at Yahoo! was watching the logfiles, they’d probably see me importing campaigns, and searching over and over for [match type].   They’d think to themselves: “Wow, this guy is sure having trouble understanding match types.  But he’s must be having a pretty easy time with importing, because he only searched for it once.”  They might then conclude that I am new-ish to the SEM world, and that I don’t undertsand match types.

The course of action then is to improve the information on match types, and neglect the information on importing campaigns.  When all I really needed was for someone to rearrange the SERPs for the latter.

It’s subtle, but it’s something to think about.

So it turns out the article I submitted to the MarketingPilgrim SEO Scholarship Contest was chosen as a finalist. This means my article will also be judged by a panel of professionals for the grand prize.

I had hesitated to enter the contest, but I’m glad that I did. I wanted to go a different direction than the previous entries, and talk less about why SEO is important and general, and tackle a specific issue that I had noticed causing problems for people. As I say in the article, I talked about the same thing at an AdWords conference and I had the whole table listening intently.

Anyway, if you’re arriving here for the first time, please be aware that I’ve recently taken down much of the content on this site and I’m gradually replacing it with better, more informational articles. I decided that since the guys over at MP were good enough to give me a big fat link to this site, I’d better make it worthwhile to visit. Bookmark my site and stop by later.

Or you might see me again in future articles!

Update: So I tied for second in the final round. One of the judges had this to say of my work:

I’ve got to give it up for the direct, hands-on learning and image integration shown by Ryan Bell in Instant PPC Success.

Thanks for a fun contest guys!

You’ve just completed your site. You have a unique offering to the public, but how are you going to get the word out?

If you’re going to get the maximum benefit from your future SEO activity you need to lay the proper foundation. Step one in the process is getting the proper URL structure set up.

The first decision you need to make is to decide whether you want your site to appear as www.mysite.com or just mysite.com in search results. There isn’t necessarily a difference, and it’s a matter of personal choice.

One factor that might help you make your decision is that less computer-savvy folks might be more inclined to add the www. before your address, whereas “techie” types will be more likely to use just mysite.com.

If your website is hosted on an Apache server, you can add this code to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}  !^www.example.net$       [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)         http://www.example.net/$1  [L,R]

For an IIS server (with isapi_rewrite), you can use the following code:

Add this to your httpd.ini file:

RewriteCond Host: ^mysite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mysite.com$1 [I,RP]

If you want to rewrite your URL to the non-www version your Apache code would like:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mysite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Next up, creating the proper URL structure for your navigation.