Eleven Hot Tips to Make Google Adwords Pay (Part 1) by: Dan Foley

For Pay Per Click Advertisers, Google Adwords is the 800 pound Gorilla. According to Google, its network reaches more than 80% of Internet users. If you understand and use Google Adwords correctly, it can drive a lot of profitable business to your website. If you do it wrong, you can lose your shirt.

To understand how to use Google Adwords, you need to know a bit about the history of Google.

When Google started in 1998, Yahoo! and AltaVista dominated the search engine market. Google was the new kid on the block. Most Internet experts at the time didn't think Google had a chance. Remarkably, in less than five years, Google surpassed both of them. How did they do it?

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Eleven Hot Tips to Make Google Adwords Pay (Part 2) by: Dan Foley

Have you tried Google Adwords and watched your money go down the drain faster than you ever thought possible? This is the second in three articles about how to make Google Adwords work for you instead of watching your hard earned money go to Google Adwords.

Hot Tip # 4 - Edit your campaign with negative keywords

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing up in searches that you don't want such as "free widgets". This helps prevent wasted clicks which tend to do nothing but cost you money. If you only sell red and blue widgets then you should add yellow as a negative keyword. You make a search negative by using the minus sign i.e. "-yellow".

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Eleven Hot Tips to Make Google Adwords Pay (Part 3) by: Dan Foley

Sometimes using Google Adwords can feel like you are watching your money go up in smoke. At least when you watch your money go up in smoke, you can get some warmth out of it.
If you follow these hot tips, however, you can actually make Google Adwords work for you and pay for your high natural gas prices.

Hot Tip # 9 - Use Google's conversion tracking to follow how your ads are doing

Google Adwords conversion tracking works by placing a cookie on your visitors' computers when they click on your ads. When the visitor reaches your page it is recorded by Google. This helps you determine the Return on your Adwords Investment.

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Eleven SEO Mistakes by: Jeff Palmer

There is so much misinformation floating through the internet regarding search engine marketing and optimization that it’s important to shed some light on a few common errors and misconceptions. The following list highlights some of the most critical issues involved in determining the success or failure of a web site’s search engine optimization and marketing strategies.

1. Lack of "Search Friendly" Content

Every week I review web sites with no real search engine indexable content. Web pages composed mostly of graphics, flash and other bells and whistle are commonly over-looked by the search engines. Search engines determine what content is of value per web page based on the text used on that page. A truly optimized site should contain at least 200 words of keyword-dense text. There is some debate among experts on exactly how many words should be used, but generally 200 words will suffice. As a point of reference this paragraph contains about 200 words. It is equally important for text content to contain keywords that match the page titles. For example...

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Evolution of a Search Marketer by: Jill Whalen

The more you read, the more you start to think that there must be some sort of trick to this whole SEO thing. Somehow you have to force the search engines into pulling your site up. You have learned that you need to think about keyword phrases as opposed to keywords, but you're still not clear about what to do with these phrases.

You remember reading about "keyword-rich content" and suddenly it clicks that you need to actually put your phrases on the page somewhere. But you have found so many phrases that you want to rank highly for, and can't quite figure out how you can get them all on your home page. You wonder if you should just list them somewhere. At the top? At the bottom? In a tiny font size, perhaps? Maybe you should make them blend in with the background of the site, because you really don't like the way it looks with all those phrases listed like that.

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Is someone draining your pay per click account? Find out & stop them. by: John Alexander

Perhaps you've experienced it first hand? Okay, let's first define what "click fraud" is first. Overture defines it as clicks not conducted in "good faith". Google, on the other hand terms it as "malicious" or "artificial" clicks.

Another definition could be: The systematic act of stealing money from PPC (Pay Per Click) internet search engine/marketing campaigns via human or automated means by synthesizing clicks. Clickfraud is reported to be as high as 30%. Some sources have said that it is even much higher. The term "Clickfraud" may sound like a buzz word these days but it's really a crime of "fraud" pure and simple. The crime is that someone may be just clicking on your PPC campaigns for the purpose of draining your wallet. We all know the ever increasing price of paying for certain keywords and the last thing you need is a competitor someone repeatedly clicking on your pay per click links (for whatever reason). The reason you are running a campaign is to attract genuine business. Many people have no idea of the implications of clickfraud or how much it is affecting you but the fact is that someone who is engaging in clickfraud is actually stealing from you. You can imagine the impact this can have on competitive businesses that may be paying upwards of $6.00 to $10.00 per keyword. Some industries are paying even much higher rates for certain keywords than that. The previous challenges with trying to stop clickfraud are that you must be able to prove where fraudulent activity is coming from.

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Easy-to-use Web Analytics To Benchmark your Web Success - Hitslink Review by: John Alexander

Overall, I like the Hitslink system mainly because there is no time-consuming program that needs to run in order to analyze log files. (In fact no log files are even needed to use the system.) It's very easy to just quickly set up and begin using it. All you do is add a bit of code to your pages that they supply you with and that's it. It could not be simpler.

The other thing I was pleased to see, was that they added Wordtracker into the mix. I never get tired of using this tool.

Okay, so in order to access your statistics in real-time after you sign up, you simply enter you user name and password and your reports are ready there for you to review each time you go into the main menu. The menu system works great and you can view your statistics or view results in a flexible array of variations.

You can also easily drill down to find "behaviorally" related information such as "conversion rates" or "average order size" or "time between transactions." Clearly there is more here than some Web sites may need but by the same token, it's nice to have the options if they are important to your particular business.

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