The netbusinessblog recently posted about the ever-debated topic of duplicate content and asked readers to weigh-in.

Check it out here.

Google as posted the transcript from their JuneTune live chat, plus the recording, and the presentations on Personalized Search and Case Sensitivity in Web Search.

According to some accounts, there were over 400 webmasters participating.

This is a must-read and a must-listen. You WILL learn a lot, I promise!

Transcript - Recording - Personalized Search Presentation - Case Sensitivity Presentation

We all know we need to TEST our landing pages, ad copy, well, essentially everything that people will ever see about us on the internet. What converts best? That is the ultimate question.

Many of us are overwhelmed by testing though. Split testing your ads is the best way to get moving and Derek Salyers posted a great article last week that should be a good start for many of you.

Click here to read Five Things to Test When Split Testing Ads

As Jeremy Schoemaker pointed out on his blog Saturday, Google Trends now has web site traffic data!

And as he points out, more people have the Google Toolbar installed than all others (Alexa, Quantcast, Compete.com, etc.) combined probably.

Check it out here.

Amit Mehta provided a great post last week about Long Tail Keywords entitled: Are Long Tail Keywords the Holy Grail of Search?

Here are some excerpts and comments about how they relate to insurance.

A long tail keywords is a highly specific keyword containing 4 words or more.

Here’s an example :

buy nike tennis shoes size 10

As you can imagine someone typing in a keywords like : “buy nike tennis shoes size 10″ is READY TO BUY! In other words an effective long tail keywords will have a very high conversion rate.

In insurance, you find specific keywords also convert much better! Try these and consider similar keywords:

• Chicago Illinois Homeowners Insurance (replace Chicago with any city, including small cities, state, or location) - Location-specific keywords usually mean a person is moving to an area or looking for a local agent, which we provide. These convert very high! Similar phrases: Homeowners Insurance in Chicago Illinois, Auto Insurance Agents Chicago, etc.
• Affordable Auto Insurance Quotes - adding a definition of what type of insurance (affordable) is always good. Other examples: Best Auto Insurance Coverage, Compare Multiple Health Insurance Quotes, etc.
• Senior Citizens Auto Insurance - Age-specific (avoid teens, they don’t convert as well), gender-specific, and other qualifiers work great. Other examples: Car Insurance for Women, Life Insurance for Single Mothers, Small Family Health Insurance.

But here’s the thing, a 4+ word keyword will not get a lot of traffic, maybe 1-2 clicks a month. So the trick is to bid on 30k,50k, even a 100k long tails. You can do the math, the traffic will add up.

When I mean long tail, I mean REALLY long tail. C2C bids on several million long tail keywords per merchant. And you thought managing your 10k keyword campaign was intimidating!?!

This means lots of work! But the cost will be lower and the conversions higher. Play with it and see what works for you!

Ann Smarty with Search Engine Journal wrote a good FAQ post this week about Google XML Sitemaps.I often get asked the million dollar question: Will Google Sitemaps help or hurt my site?

Well, the short answer in my opinion is help…or at least NOT hurt it. It will not make you #1 on Google for your primary keyword overnight. But it will help index some of those lower tier pages, which are often the pages with the best content after all, right?

Ann answers many more questions in her post, so give it a read here. And have a GREAT weekend!

From Jonathan Volk, a primer for you newbies and some reminders for the veterans out there. My comments, with specifics about HometownQuotes and insurance are in bold italics

Here are some good tips to get you started with your Google Adwords campaigns.

• 1. Don’t start a campaign with broad matching. Use phrase and exact. This really helps to narrow down profitable keywords which you can then use as a model for expansion. Turn broad match keywords on once you are making a profit and ready to start expanding your volume.

Additional Notes: The plural version of quote (quotes) converts better than the singular. Also, consider running ads only at certain times of the day based on conversions. Contact Matt for details on conversions by day and hour.

• 2. Turn off content network and search network. Get comfortable with the conversions from straight search results before turning on the methods that can really hurt or help your campaign. The content network is really for advanced users only in my opinion. (Of course this is all my opinion haha)
• 3. Geotarget. Make sure you’re targeting your Ads directly to the audience you are wanting. If your campaign allows for Canadian traffic, make sure you target it! Many people seem to forget that there is traffic outside of the United States and let publishers like me make extra money with a lot less work.

Additional Notes: State specific keywords are GREAT - Kansas Home Insurance (for example) - If you do this make sure the title of the ad is Kansas Home Insurance not “Home Insurance Quotes” or something generic.

Same goes for city specific - Chicago Auto Insurance - San Diego Renters Insurance (for example)

Geotarget out traditionally low-converting areas (feel free to ask Matt for this list)

• 4. Group Your Keywords. Group your keywords into tight groups that are all related to both your ad and landing page. The better the quality score, the happier you’ll be, trust me, it’s worth the time it takes
• 5. Look at what others are doing. Yahoo has a tool that you can view other people’s ads while writing your own by clicking a keyword. Google doesn’t have a tool like this but a simple Google search is fine. See what ads are good performing ads and which seem to suck. The higher they are, the better that ads probably are.
• 6. Be smart! Track your results. I’ve tried setting up Prosper202 and had some trouble getting it to work but maybe you won’t have the same issues as me. It looks like a good app either way.
• 7. Buy an Adwords Voucher if your account is under 14 days old. Buy the biggest one you can get! I find Digitalpoint forums are a great place to buy these vouchers.

Additional Suggestions

• 8. Use the negative keyword lists to filter out the low converting keywords
• 9. Use the budget cap but not the budget optimizer

So those are probably the MAIN things I would tell any person looking to start advertising in Adwords. These things can really mean the difference between making a lot of money and flopping so do it right the first time so you won’t have to lose money!

More great advice on AdWords, affiliate marketing, and more at Jonathan Volk’s blog

From Sam Harrelson, a recap of the link-buying debate between SEO Expert, Wil Reynolds and Mahalo CEO, Jason Calacanis, complete with video of the “throwdown.”

The question, should you buy links?

Click here to read the post and view more

Anik Singal, with Affiliate Classroom, one of our recommended resources, wrote a great article about article marketing. For some, this is new information, for others a review and a reminder. Either way, it’s a quick read and definitely should nudge you to do article marketing…if you are not already!

Click here to read the article

If you missed this (and I did admittedly) you missed an important announcement from Google.

Load time is now a large factor in determining your landing page quality score for AdWords.

This effects everything from the design of your pages to the hosting company you choose. Ultimately, in this department, you have to choose between quality and price. Saving $20 a month on hosting could end up costing you much more in the long run if your quality score drops and your marketing costs go up.

It’s something to think about!

Google has a lot of information here (this is a direct link to the part about load time and quality score)

Yahoo! announced last week that it is changing the minimum bid for Sponsored Search from $0.10 to…well not $0.10.

They go into an explanation that somehow involves Van Gogh and hog auctions, but the long story short is that some minimum bids will be lower and some higher.

The objective, according to Yahoo!, is to reward advertisers for better ad quality by allowing lower entry points for certain keywords.

While this move is likely to hurt some affiliates and advertisers, I believe that overall it will help those that are willing to put in a little effort and will go after QUALITY!

You can read the full post at the YSM Blog here

Enjoy!

OK so this post is quite tongue in cheek, but it is so true and worth a quick read.

The Sleepy Surfer shares his 7 tips that was given by an Affiliate Marketing Loser who just got dumped by his girlfriend.

According to many sources, MSN will cease to give out the $50 credits for new account promotion on February 29th of this year! Previously they had said April 15. So, if you have not yet set up a new account for you…or your best friend…or dog (if you get my drift), NOW is the time!

Click here for the MSN $50 New Account Credit

Many of you have heard this I am sure, but man have things been busy. Anyway, I am back as much as possible!So Google is killing paid links. This is bad news for some of you and great news for others. Long story short, is this proves once again that Google is doing the right things and is out to get the best search results. WebProNews began speculating on it back in September (article here) and recently the “rumors” have been confirmed. Affiliate forums (like ABestWeb) , SEO forums, webmaster forums, probably even recipe forums, are buzzing about it!

For all the conspiracy theorists and those who feel like they got caught by surprise…

Google has never hid that this was inevitable. They even tell you here, here in their guidelines, here, and here.

That all being said, I do feel for those hurt by this but I hope the lesson learned is to follow the rules…there is no substitute for just being really good at doing things the way they tell you to!

From the Affiliate Summit Blog comes this post.

Affiliate Summit has some great videos - (here) of the sessions.

Here is a clip of one all about conversion rates and persuasion techniques for your visitors.