Marketing on the Web
I have been participating in Microsoft's AdCenter beta program. This type of desktop PPC management tool is essential to managing PPC programs. I have participated in, and managed several beta programs in my career and you expect things to be a clunky at first. if you have used the early releases, I am sure you would agree, there was room to improve. A Little History We were once satisfied to manage out PPC campaigns in an excel spreadsheet. Tabbing, cutting, pasting, searching and replaci...
MoreGoogle Releases Google Analytics Updates
I thought Avinash Kaushik prepared an especially good article on new features coming to GA. Google updated their java-script about a year ago to support more features and this update starts to float some of those changes to the surface. If you haven’t moved to the new (non urchin) code, you should do so as soon as possible. How can you tell which code you have? In a browser window surf to your website and do a “view source” on any web page, then search for google-analytics.com. The old urchi...
MoreHow Google AdWords Bidding Works – Quality Score
Great article that explains Google's AdWords auction process. No real insight into Quality Score here, but it does explain how it figures in the mix. Google Quality Scores and Ad Auctions Added 11/08/2008 More on Quality Score woes here: The Account Quality Score: Money Pit for the Uninformed Google's Ever-Evolving Quality Score Added 11/11/08 Google AdWords Quality Score -- That's Old-School for SEO
MoreGoogle Stats Logo No longer Manditory
I have always felt that conversion tracking was an absolute necessity if you are running Adwords Campaigns. The Google AdWords team just announced that displaying the AdWords Site Stats logo is no longer mandatory. This is good news as I always felt the logo was unattractive and distracting for customers/prospects coming in through AdWords campaigns.
MoreLanding Pages to Improve Quality Score
I have been on a mission with several of my clients to establish good landing pages. Good landing pages can improve Quality Score and your rank for key phrases. A good Quality Score means Google considers your page to be relevant to the phrases used in your ad campaigns and directly impacts what you pay Google for your ads. This test demonstrates the real dollar impact (savings), when it’s done right. see: Landing Pages to Improve Quality Score Google suggests: Improve the quality of you...
MoreBuilding National Campaigns for Local Business
I attended an Advanced AdWords seminar last week and am revisiting the topic of Building National Ads for Local Needs . This seminar was sponsored by Google and lead by Brad Geddes of BG theory . While most of the Advanced Class was more a refresher than anything new, it has prompted me to make a change in my national campaign strategy for local business. In addition to the negative terms I use (listed in the original article), I now also use exclude cities, regions and metro areas in the cam...
MorePPC Campaigns and Quality Score
Google recently announced changes to its approach to Quality Score. Quality Score is the bane of my existence. It turns previous 'best practices' into bad practices and dooms the long-tail to obscurity. Sure it makes sense to have the keywords relevant to the ad and the landing page relevant (duh!), but in practice Google weighs click thru rates (CTR) in the overall campaign to judge what you should be paying and if your CTR drops too low for the ad group, you'll receive a Quality score minim...
MoreMarketing Overview for Web Developers
I was recently asked to speak to the North Alabama Web Developers group. I created a slide presentation that discusses organic versus paid search results and some of the elements that come into play when improving Search Engine Rank. Here is a link to that presentation. Marketing Overview for Web Developers.
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