On April 24, 2008 a sizable army of Apogeeans – the Apogee Army of Altruism –set off for the southern most tip of Austin to volunteer at the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas (CAFB).
The eighteen or so of us arrived at CAFB and made our way to the holding area to sign in […]

Much has been made about yesterday’s forecast of the SEM Industry. Long story short: things are pretty good, or in the words of Larry David: “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.” According to Radar Research and SEMPO the SEM industry was projected to grow to an $11.6 billion industry in 2007, […]

The Paid Search world was in a tizzy last week over the announcement of Google’s beta testing for its new Automatic Matching (AM) feature for AdWords. Below is Google’s explanation of the tools’ functions, and just for fun, see if you can guess what two words triggered the uproar.
“Automatic Matching automatically extends your campaign’s reach […]

Apogee recently had the privilege of visiting and studying SEO in Taipei, Taiwan over the last few weeks. Our intention was to study the role SEO plays in Asia and how it differs, if at all, from SEO in the United States. Despite the obvious language barrier, we were able to gain some insight into […]

After more and more evidence that an economic downturn is coming, marketing departments and firms everywhere are bracing for a hit. Marketing has historically been on the receiving end of lay offs once a recession kicks in, but will this ring true for those in search engine marketing? Withstanding the dot com bust, SEM has […]

Recently Yahoo enlisted the help of Mike Moran author of Do it Wrong Quickly to do an extremely poignant blog about the most common pitfalls of SEM. These ideas are perfectly on target. Yahoo is suggesting not to target by position, not to focus on clicks, and giving advice about quality landing pages. Maybe it’s […]

Dart throwing, names in a hat, coin tosses, and binge drinking are all accepted formulas for devising a list of keywords for an SEM campaign. There is however differences in creating paid search keywords versus natural search keywords.
The main difference paid search keywords have in comparison to natural search is the breadth of generated […]

While the majority of other blogs would have you read the top trends of 2007 I’ve decided to bring you the trends that are either in limbo awaiting their fate, or have moved from limbo to a fiery eternity. What happened? Where did these trends go wrong? Could we have seen this coming? Is there […]

There is no real science to paid search copy, especially during the holidays. It’s more of an art form than anything; at least that’s what I tell family members that think they’re better than me. The following are a few things that I have noticed help a paid search ad’s position and clickthrough rate during […]

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the new release of self service ad platforms embedded inside the social networks, Myspace and Facebook. Several months ago Facebook launched its Flyers interface, which offered advertisers the opportunity to embed their ads within members’ pages on a cost per click basis. Facebook recently upgraded this system […]