Today I am officially one year older than yesterday. So, unlike most days, don’t expect to get me on the phone or email today, because I will be taking most of the day off! Naturally, I find birthdays a great time for reflection on the past year; where I have been, where I am, and where I am going.

We recently had a celebration at HometownQuotes thanking our employees, their families, and our families for their hard work, their faith in us, and for buying into the vision of our company.

And so on this day, I want to thank all of you, our hard-working affiliates, for making this past year of my life an amazing one.

We are so blessed to have such great people here in the office and all around the world helping to make this one unbelievable company to be a part of.

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

Shawn Collins answers a common question and provides hope for all of you
I have been trying the affiliate thing for about six months now, and I am not seeing any kind of progress. And I have this fear that I am going to be stagnant and never really break out and make some more money to really support myself. Should I give up?

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!

This is something I am asked often. Should I incorporate? If so, how and which way?

I believe that Jonathan Volk has written a post that is both concise and definitive in determining those answers.

His recent post entitled “Best Corporate Structure for Affiliates” is absolutely great!

Ultimately, the decision rests with you and it is always a good idea to get some advice from a trained lawyer or CPA before doing anything, but this post should help steer you in the right direction!

Read more here!

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

Google Street View driver ticketed in San Francisco

Read all about it here

I stumbled upon an oldie but goodie today.

If ancient Rome had the internet…

• The destruction of Pompeii in 79AD is the most viewed video at YouTube. The first comment is…”OMG so cool! Volcanos ROCK!”
• Attila the Hun has his own MySpace page. Nobody ever rejects his “invite a friend” emails.
• The soothsayer’s “Ides of March” email fails to get Caesar’s proper attention as it’s inadvertently filtered into his junk folder.
• But at least Caesar’s “Et tu Brute?” comment is available as a free ringtone download.
• The owner of hadriansucks.rome is compelled to hand over both the domain name and selected body parts by an independent domain tribunal chaired by…Emperor Hadrian.
• “Naked Cleopatra” is the top search term on Google.
• Unfortunately, the Queen of Egypt dies an early death after misunderstanding IT’s call to embrace an ASP solution.
• Hannibal blogs his way across the Alps with posts like, “Whoops, lost another elephant today.”
• But he runs out of money when his PPC budget is plundered by an iberian click scam organized by Publius Cornelius Scipio.
• Tiber.com opens, initially selling scrolls and tablets before expanding to include togas, pottery, and do-it-yourself mosaic kits.
• Websites like handsome-literate-male-british-slave.com pollute the search listings thanks to generous commissions at the slaves.co.rome affiliate program.
• Roman programmers moan about projects outsourced to cheap coders in Mesopotamia.
• The Colosseum is renamed the eBay Colosseum, with free wireless hotspots outside the lark’s tongue restaurant.
• The volume of spam collapses when the penalty for not providing a working opt-out mechanism becomes equal billing with the lions at the eBay Colosseum.
• But we still get emails featuring Brunhilda, the lonely Visigoth, and hot deals on cheap peacock livers from Gaul.
• Nobody invents a spam filter good enough for the House of the Vestals.
• Classical geeks wear t-shirts proclaiming, “there’s no place like CXXVII.0.0.I” (bonus points if you get that one)
• Finally, Rome burns to the ground while Emperor Nero battles online with Hakkar the Soulflayer in World of Warcraft.

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

But we still suggest referring people to our site to save money on their insurance!