File under “Not necessarily Search Engine Marketing ”

Those who know me well know that I don’t always stay within the lines. Here’s an example of this bleeding over into the rest of my life.

Of course, I came clean (without asking for forgiveness).

I thought this was all settled, but the other employees here thought it was time to make sure I got the message. To make a short story, long… Here’s what I got on my car this morning.

“Keep off the Grass: This message has been brought to you by Mothers Against Bad Lawn Care.”

Posted in Other ~ 3 Comments

The more time I spend in the forums, the more confusion I see about Google AdWords’ Ad Rank (CPC bid × Quality Score). I’m going to try to break this down, not by what Google says it is, but what it actually is.

According to Google:

A keyword-targeted ad is ranked on a search result page based on the matched keyword’s cost-per-click (CPC) bid* and Quality Score.

Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

The Quality Score for Ad Rank on the search network is determined by:

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the ad and of the matched keyword on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered
• The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• Other relevance factors

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6111

The more you think about this, the more your head hurts. In reality, the formula is quite simple: Ad Rank = How much revenue your ad generates for Google. The more revenue your ad generates, the higher your Ad Rank.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google AdWords, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-Per-Click ~ 2 Comments

If you’ve ever setup a Google AdWords account and noticed that the Minimum CPC (cost-per-click) for most of your keywords started around $1, $5, or $10 from the get-go, you may be experiencing a quality score issue around your “Visible URL” …at least that’s what was explained to me by a Google AdWords insider last week. It’s apparently possible, through no fault of your own, to inherit a doomed domain …and possibly ruin your SEM reputation in the process.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google AdWords, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-Per-Click ~ 4 Comments

There has been a lot of news and blog buzz this week about PageRank changes at Google. Everybody’s PageRank bar is a little less green and mass hysteria has ensued. I can’t say I blame anyone for this, as there is a lot of misinformation about PageRank …with the worst offender being Google itself!

If you are that guy who is freaking out, this is really going to surprise you: PageRank is not as important as you think. Here’s why…
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing ~ 3 Comments

After yesterday’s bashing of Google’s only crappy tool, I have to talk about one of their better tools.

I just downloaded and tested Google Analytics AIR beta, powered by Adobe AIR. It runs on your desktop and uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google. The screenshot below includes data from my new blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google Analytics, Analytics ~ 1 Comment

Google AdWords Campaign Optimizer Optimizes Something
…but not Campaigns

Considering Google’s track record in releasing quality products, I’m a little bit disappointed with their recent release of Campaign Optimizer. Wanting to test this new tool, I set up a nationally targeted test campaign for “Tampa Plumbers”. I was careful to make sure the campaign was about as poorly optimized as the average campaign generally is.

The results might surprise you. Not only did Google AdWords Campaign Optimizer fail to offer any helpful optimization, its recommendations made the campaign less optimized. In addition, one can’t help but notice that all suggestions the tool made would help increase Google’s revenue from this campaign (generic keyword additions, increase bid prices, and copy changes that increase click-through rates). It also ignored optimization tactics that would benefit the advertiser in terms of driving qualified traffic and eliminating budget waste. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google AdWords, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-Per-Click ~ 1 Comment

Well… I figured since I’ve been leaching off the knowledge of the search engine marketing community and not contributing, it was about time I gave back. I’ve been involved in search engine marketing in some facet or another for the past 15 years. Over that time I’ve lived through a lot of changes in the techniques that drive traffic and I’ve made my share of mistakes, so I hope there’s a little I can add to help others avoid my pitfalls. More importantly I think there’s a lot of crap out there to be found. Probably as much as 75% of what is out there is just plain bad advice or several year old practices.

For now, the focus of this blog will be geared toward the pay-per-click side of search engine marketing. I just think there is a big gap that needs to be filled in terms of solid resources of information. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-Per-Click ~ 1 Comment