Before we figured out how to do this we tried researching with Google and couldn't find the solution anywhere.  So here is how you do it:

1.  Login to your Yahoo! Store
2. Enter your Yahoo! security key
3. You should now be on the dashboard page.  On the far right under "Site Settings" click "Domain Name"
4. Under "Domain Redirect Settings" click the box for "Redirect all host names to my domain."
5. This is where you choose your primary URL whether you want www.example.com or just example.com
6. That's it, you're done.

One thing to note before you decide you want the www.example.com version or the example.com as the primary url.  Check the search engines to see which version of your URL has the most indexed pages.  If you have a lot of pages indexed under the non-www version of your site you may want to consider using that as your primary URL.  You can view your number of indexed pages under each version by typing "site:example.com" or "site:www.example.com" into any of the search engines. "YOU'RE WELCOME!" - Nick Burns

We were reading the May 2008 issue of Internet Retailer and came across an article that outlines 20 questions you should ask when shopping around for the right company to manage your search engine marketing:

1. Is your paid search solution full-service? If yes, define full-service.
2. What technology supports your full-service solution? How often is it updated?
3. Does your technology have direct API integration with the top engines?
4. Do you use API data or referral data for reporting purposes?
5. Is the technical support team separate from my account team? Is support 24/7?
6. Who will manage my account on a daily basis?
7. Is the account manager responsible for bid, keyword, copy and landing page management or do separate teams manage these efforts?
8. What is your methodology for search campaigns including bid management strategy?
9. What resources does my account manager have?
10. Do the account managers have vertical expertise? What verticals?
11. What is the typical launch time line?
12. How do you optimize my campaign once it is launched?
13. Which metrics do you use to define success?
14. What is the typical account manager's background?
15. Is your search team certified by the engines?
16. What is your relationship with the top search engines?
17. How has your company shown leadership in the search marketing space?
18. Will I have opportunities to network with other clients?
19. How will you align my search campaigns with other online marketing efforts?
20. What other digital marketing solutions do you offer?

Most of the questions are geared towards budgets north of $10,000 a month. If you are looking to spend under 10k you probably won't be able to find a firm that can answer most of these questions. A smaller firm or a freelancer might be better suited for your campaign.

The guys over at Parker Web interviewed us on their new show about Internet marketing for small businesses the other day. It was our first time doing something like this so a little rough at first but pretty cool nonetheless. Click below for the audio: (14:30 long)

 

Here's a simple Pay Per Click tip. If you're offering a high end product or premium service you can easily achieve lower cost per conversions by screening customers who already know they don't want to spend over a certain dollar amount. Simply display the price your products start from in the ads. You'll probably get a lower click through rate but the end benefit is a higher ROI and lower cost per conversion. Here's an example ad you might find on Google, Yahoo, etc.: Blue Widgets From $1,999.95 - Premium Quality Find Rare Blue Widgets Here! www.sweetbluewidgets.com Throw out some more...

We've had a flurry of activity lately--8 new sites up in a month. One thing we've noticed with new sites is that simply putting Google Analytics on them will result in Googlebot making a visit within 24 hours and your site will appear in the index (use the site: command) in about 48. With ZoomGiftBaskets.com, we uploaded the site yesterday, put Google Analytics on it around 5PM, and Googlebot was on the site this morning. No links, completely separate IPs, no Webmaster Central, nada--just Google Analytics installed on every page. We've thought this for a while but putting sites up back to back has really made it more obvious. This would make sense as Google's goal is to index the world's data and their analytics code is installed on all over which makes their job of discovering information a whole lot easier. We didn't take the time to put together a bunch of statistical data so this is just a theory based on our observations at this point. Has anyone noticed any evidence to either support or debunk this?