Lori Weiman
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About Lori Weiman

Lori Weiman is CEO and co-founder of The Search Monitor, which provides marketing intelligence to SEM, SEO, and Affiliate Marketers. Prior to TSM, Lori developed real-time bidding and tracking products for paid search and affiliate marketing. Lori is a frequent speaker at conferences such as SES, SMX, Search Insider Summit, and Affiliate Summit.

Lori Weiman's latest articles

PPC

2017 SEM growth hacks: Monster growth from brand protection

Are your competitors bidding on your branded terms and driving up your CPCs? If so, what can you do? In part 1 of her multi-part series on brand protection, columnist Lori Weiman provides some advice on how to make your brand terms work for you, even when the competition is fierce.

Bing

How A PPC Fraud Ring Impersonated 300+ Advertisers In May 2014

Did you know that your paid search ads are susceptible to the same type of fraud that affects other forms of digital advertising? And we’re not just talking about click fraud here.  The fraudulent tactic affecting PPC the most dramatically these days is a fairly insidious one that can be hard to detect. It’s called […]

PPC

Staying Competitive In PPC: Learning From Black Friday’s Most Popular Offers

The five-day Black Friday weekend from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday provided an insightful glimpse into how retailers are running their PPC strategies for the holidays. Particularly interesting are the variety of offer types run by retailers, ranging from the expected free shipping to 2-in-1 offers which include two offers in the same ad. Since shoppers […]

SEO

Why Affiliate Direct Linking Activity Has Doubled

Direct linking, sometimes also referred to as ‘URL Hijacking’, occurs on paid search when affiliate marketers assume the identity in paid ads of the represented merchant. Direct linking occurs when the affiliate uses the merchant’s website as the display URL, with an affiliate link as the destination URL. The effect of this tactic is that […]

SEO

Top 5 Ways To Use Search For Branding

Search is typically thought of exclusively as a direct response medium with the objectives of driving traffic and customer acquisition. Direct response channels are measured in terms of things like response rates, purchases, and consumer action. These metrics fit in neatly with search because it is measurable media that can be directly correlated to response […]

SEO

Brands Beware: Affiliate Tricks Used In Email

Less than two years ago, I wrote an article for Brand Aid about display URL tricks used by affiliates and other brand hijackers in paid search ads. In that article, one of the tactics discussed, ‘tactic # 2’, was a misdirected display URL – where the display URL of the paid ad shows one domain, […]

SEO

Putting Your Brand On A Diet

Dieting is one of the most popular new year’s resolutions for us humans. It should be. Nearly 34% of adults are considered to be overweight (source: CDC). After receiving the barrage of emails from brands this holiday season, some who I have done business with before and some I have not, I started to wonder:  […]

SEO

Top 5 Reasons Why Affiliates Are Our “Dumb” Marketing Channel

Did I just say that affiliates are “dumb?” You bet I did. I am referring to the definition of “dumb” which means “lacking some usual attribute or accompaniment; especially having no means of self-propulsion like a dumb barge.” What I mean is that affiliate marketers do not have the same advantages that your other marketing […]

SEO

Is The “Last Click Wins” Model Best For Your Affiliates?

The “last click wins” method of awarding affiliate commissions means that whichever affiliate is responsible for placing the most recent cookie on a user’s machine is awarded 100% commission for the sale. In this model, affiliates responsible for earlier cookies or impressions do not prevail financially—they get nothing. The question is does the “last click […]

SEO

Brand Challenges & Opportunities With Social Media & Mobile

Headaches for brands—and the people who manage them—are increasingly common when it comes to search results. More are on the way thanks to social media and the proliferation of smart phones. You should be aware of the impact on your brand because both social media and the use of smart phones to express opinions are […]

SEO

A Battle To Avoid: Search Team Vs. Affiliate Team

Lack of coordination between your search and affiliate marketing efforts can create internal revenue wars. Keywords that contain your brand are extremely valuable both because conversion rates are typically higher due to the high relevance between queries using brand terms and search results, and costs-per-click are often less expensive than those for generic keywords. Your […]

SEO

Are Your Competitors Purposely Bidding On Your Brand?

If you have agreements with advertisers who sponsor your brand on paid search, it’s important to monitor them to make sure they are using your brand or trademark terms according to your agreement. If they advertise using keywords containing no other words but your trademark or slogan, it’s easy to recognize that as a violation. […]

SEO

Watch Out For These Unsavory Affiliate Tactics

Many affiliates offer an honest additional marketing channel that is necessary for your marketing mix. However, there are affiliates who are looking for ways to beat your system, beat the search system and hide when you try to find them. Here are specific things you should watch out for: Direct linking. Direct linking in paid […]

SEO

Be Careful When Your Affiliates Practice Link Cloaking

If you run an affiliate program you may have noticed that some of your affiliates use a practice known as “link cloaking.” Link cloaking is a method used to make a long affiliate URL link into a shorter and prettier one—often to the detriment of a brand. One of the most common forms of link […]

SEO

Protecting Yourself From Your Affiliates’ Bad Actions

Many search marketers work with affiliates but fail to ask the question: Can your affiliates’ bad actions cause you legal trouble? The answer is probably. Among other things, your affiliates might get you into trouble for bidding on competitors’ brand name trademarks or making false offers, claims or endorsements without complying with FTC guidelines. Let’s […]

SEO

Using Affiliates To Protect Your Brand With Paid Search

If brand advertising using paid search is hotly competitive for you, think about using your affiliates to help you win in the market. To determine if this strategy is right for you, evaluate the competitive landscape on your brand terms. A quick test: Do any of these statements apply to you?

Google Shopping

The 4 Most Siginficant Changes To Paid Search In 2009

I’m writing this on January 1, 2010, and I’m reminiscing about the changes to paid search that emerged in 2009 which will impact your brand and affect how you execute your brand strategies on paid search in 2010 and beyond. Here are the top four big changes, in my mind: Google changes its trademark policy […]

SEO

Protect Your Brand From Dead Affiliate Links

Direct linking is the practice where an affiliate buys paid search advertising using your URL as the display URL in an ad, yet actually linking from the ad to the affiliate’s own landing page. These links will often go through multiple levels of redirects before finally landing on your web site. The redirects may contain […]

SEO

Protecting Your Brand On The Online Yellow Pages

Why should you care about Online Yellow Pages when Google is most likely your primary source of traffic and ROI? The simple answer is because local search is on the rise, and with it so are opportunities for other advertisers to exploit your corporate name or brand, possibly to your detriment. Lets take a look […]

SEO

Managing Your Brand To Perform In Universal Search Results

Achieving and sustaining top ranking visibility for your brand on important organic terms is increasingly getting tougher. This is because natural text listings no longer rule on the search result page. There are many other elements that appear sometimes ahead of or intertwined with the natural results, including local listings with a map, shopping listings, […]

SEO

Search, Video & Your Brand: Hello YouTube!

I often write about what you can do to protect your brands when it comes to the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. But did you know that the second most popular search engine today is YouTube? (according to Hitwise, ranking ahead of Yahoo search). You can buy self-service advertising on YouTube through its […]

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