Google has indicated in the past that its goal is to bring a faster web experience to its users. Matt Cutts has gone over the benefits of Google’s new search system numerous times. The fact that the company has been testing the idea of “live search” means that are pretty much heading in that direction. Showing searchers with an updating stream of results as they type is interesting but could it actually take away from pay per click campaigns?
Google has been quite clear what it’s willing to accept from webmasters that rely on Google search results to generate leads. Every blackhat SEO knows that cloaking and tactics like that could lead to a potential ban for websites implementing them. Apparently, it seems Google Adwords help pages were using the same tactic. Funnily, they seem to have been slapped by Google itself. The problem does seem to have been solved, but it does show Google does things it preaches against.
Let’s face it. Google Adwords is not a perfect service. As much as Google tries to tell us that it does its best to filter out bad advertisers and crappy offers, people always find a way around Google’s measures. It did not take me long to find an offer that seems suspicious at best. Take WooThemes. It’s one of the most popular WordPress theme clubs around. Anybody who has searched for premium WordPress themes in the past has probably heard of the company. The company has all kinds of plans and tiers of membership. What it does not offer is all its premium themes for $10.
So how does the webmasters behind this crazy offer explain their deal? They do talk about the license of these themes and the fact that they can redistribute it.
In case you have not noticed, StumbleUpon has been making some major changes to its interface for advertisers. The new changes were introduced a while back to make it much easier for StumbleuUpon advertisers to manage their campaigns. The service still allowed those who preferred the old interface to switch back. Not anymore. The changes seem to be final, and while we did not get the features we were expecting for, the new interface is a nice minor upgrade.
The new design focuses more on metrics and has a more sophisticated look and feel. Now you can easily find out your effective CPV for your campaigns and even figure out the free stumbles that you have gotten from the service.
Many marketers are taking advantage of Twitter to drive traffic to their websites and take their business to the next level. We are not talking about those aggressive marketers who are bordering on spamming Twitter. But those who have treated Twitter as a way to connect with their prospects and provide value to them are reaping the rewards. You can think of Twitter as a communication channel that is very similar to your newsletter but it has a social aspect to it. Your followers on Twitter are much different from your e-mail subscribers, and your actions are much more transparent in a social community such as Twitter. Many marketers still rely on their e-mail subscribers to generate revenue for their business. Twitter can offer that and more.
Should marketers promote their Twitter accounts on their landing pages? There is no easy answer to that question. You never know how adding a small tweet button could affect your conversion rates. Would people be turned off by the low number of retweets your page has gotten? Could the button change the complexity of your landing page and make it less attractive to your visitors? Will your visitors actually navigate away from your site to spend more time on Twitter if you add a tweet button to your page? These are all questions that one needs to consider when it comes to implementing Twitter on a website. Twitter @Anywhere has certainly addresses some of these issues. (more…)
Google Adwords is still the best way to drive traffic to any website. Sure. It has gotten expensive. Google is not exactly making life easy for its Adwords customers either by changing the rules around all the time and introducing strict policies from time to time. Google has been pretty clear about what it will and won’t allow to be advertised on its network. But a lot of people still get away with a lot of things on Google.
Let’s say you want to pick up an e-book reader and start your search on Google instead of Amazon or B&N. What would you do if you saw the following ads?
Essentially, some of these apps are promising you a lot off on Kindle. Some are comparing a device that is not available for sale with Kindle. Let’s not forget that Kindle and iPad are trademarked terms. And let’s not forget about Amazon Associates Program’s policy either. Use of:
any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, or any variation or misspelling of any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, in any domain name — for example, a domain name such as “amazon.mydomain.com”, “amaozn.com”, “amazonauctions.net”, “facebook.com/amazondealsgroup,” “endlessboots.com,” “endless.mydomain.com”, “endlss.com,” “kindlemagazines.mydomain.info,” or “kindlewirelessreader.co.uk” would be unsuitable (more…)
Going Rogue may sell books for some folks, but it certainly won’t work too well for advertisers. Black-hat Adwords advertisers have been around for what seems to be forever. These folks use unethical practices by bending the rules and shutting out fellow advertisers from making it big on Adwords. Google has been awfully lenient on spammy advertisers in the past, but that is about to change as Google has started a serious crackdown on those need to be dealt with.
Google is focused on protecting its brand and keeping its promise to provide the best service possible to both advertisers and searchers. In part of advertisers, you can’t do that when the rules don’t apply to the rogue PPC marketers. But the focus is more on protecting the searchers from bogus get-rich-soon schemes, malware sites, and any other harmful site that is being advertised through Google Adwords. (more…)
Many small businesses take advantage of Google Adwords to bring traffic to their websites. You set up a keyword list, create your campaign and ad groups, get your targeting done, and go live. That’s all fine an dandy, but Google wants small businesses to have a better chance of reaching out to their prospects (for money of course). Google is test driving Local Listing Ads in California in order to launch the service nationwide in the near future. The service allows you to pay a fixed fee to show up on Google business listings (maps) above the SERPs.
So here is how Google Local Listing Ads work. You will have to add your business to Google’s Local Business Center. The process is painful and is free. You will have to verify your business before being able to move forward, but that’s nothing to sweat on.
Once you are listed on Google, you can take advantage of Google Local Listing Ads to not only reach out to new prospects in you area (through Google and Google Maps), but also have Google track your calls and user interactions with your ads. So how’s Google Local Listing different from “local ads” on Google Adwords? Local Listing Ads are much cheaper and don’t require small businesses to deal with keywords, campaigns, and so on. You can think of it as Paid Inclusion, except these are ads and won’t show up in the search results but rather above them as ads.
Should you try Google Local Listing Ads? It’s not currently available in a lot of areas, so you may not have the choice. But for those who do, Local Listing Ads is yet another simple, affordable way to get your business in front of your local customers. How affordable? That depends on how you define “affordable” for your business as well as your location and the category you want your business listed in. It never hurts to test it out.
The concept of red-ocean/blue-ocean has been around for a while. Essentially, to put things in very simple terms, a red ocean is a market that is mature and has a bunch of established players vying for market share. Entering and dominating such a market could prove to be difficult as you do not have too much wiggle room and will have to stare down and beat some pretty established players in the market. What does that remind you? For me, it does somewhat remind me of Google Adwords. If you intend to go in and outbid everyone and stick with the strategies that used to work 5 years ago, you are going to get involved in a bloody war with a bunch of other advertisers that are practicing the same old habits. In the end, Google is going to be happiest of them all as it gets your money while you engage in bidding wars with your competitors.
Top Adwords players are always testing and finding new ways to beat their competitors without engaging them in wars that is not good for both sides. In essence, they treat Google Adwords as a blue ocean and innovate with their campaigns, adgroups, and ads. In order to do that, you are going to need to have understood how Google Adwords work, and what strategies are currently being used by the top players in your market. Once you understand the limits of “the box,” you can then think of ways to think outside the box. (more…)
In case you haven’t been paying attention, there have been a lot going on in the search industry. First, we have Facebook pickup Friendfeed, and then change its advertising system to allow you to target others by their birthday or their connection to your pages. And then we have Google showcasing Google Caffeine. You can’t forget about Google Adwords latest changes to include related ads in the sponsored section. So let’s see what has changed in detail:
Facebook:
As you can see, Facebook has added a few new fields to its ad form, making it so easy to target customers by their birth date. So you can essentially give out discount coupons for their birthday. Another interesting Facebook Ads feature is two brand new fields that help you target people who are and are not interacting with your fan and product pages. For those who are not part of your fan club, you can use Facebook Ads to target them and give them some incentive to join your club. And for those who are a part of your fan page community, you can put up ads to make them interact more with your pages. (more…)
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