Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Shotgun Approach to Google Adwords

If I'm doing a Google Search for this:

what is the likelihood that I will click on this:

A Successful Google AdSense Story

For those of you who don't know Google AdSense:

is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.
(Source: Wikipedia)

I use Google AdSense on both this site and my travel blog - Mad About Madrid. Though the revenue is small, it is still consistent and pays for the odd meal, book or DVD. I was interested though to read on the Guy Kawasaki blog about a contest that Google AdSense was running to find out how AdSense has helped them. Guy featured the winner of the contest Dan Vandervort and highlighted how his "home improvement, remodeling, repair, redecorating, and do-it-yourself projects" website (Hometips.com) went from:

paying for coffee to paying for lunches to paying for all salaries, overhead, and business development.

As Guy says in the article he did what many businesses seem to find impossible:

do what you love, focus on a niche, find a viable business model, and work for yourself.

It's quite interesting that the same model that generates revenue for Google works further down the 'long tail' for smaller businesses, too. In fact, it is people just like Dan who make Google what it is today and help generate the vast profits that Google and its shareholders enjoy.

Get Yourself A Nice, Shiny £30 Google AdWords Voucher

I just came across this on .net magazine and thought I'd share it with those looking to open up a Google AdWords account.

Dectek - Best Ecommerce Site in Wales

I heard some great news yesterday - one of my clients has just won an eCommerce Award at Wales' most important Business Awards. Dectek is based just outside Cardiff, capital of Wales, and makes resin badges for businesses across the UK.

The work that I have done with them has focused on tuning their Site Structure, Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click campaigns. As recognised by their Marketing Director, Dave Beese, the company now generates more than 90% of new business through their website. Over the past year Dectek Spain has opened, they will shortly be adding new premises and taken on more staff to cope with demand. I am currently working with the business to look at ways that SEO and Pay-per-click can be used try to tap into the North European market.

Google Adwords Seminars USA

If you're a beginner or intermediate user of Google AdWords, and you're based in the USA, there are a number of opportunities for you to get on one of the Google AdWords seminars. The seminars are reasonably priced ($249) and over the course of a day it looks like the trainers cover quite a bit of material. It's a pity that they don't run these seminars in other parts of the globe (like the UK!) as I know quite a few people who would benefit immensely from them.

State of the Internet: Mary Meeker

For the past couple of weeks I have been downloading Web 2.0 podcasts onto my iRiver MP3 player. Most of them came from the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, where there were some great 'conversations': Eric Schmidt (of Google), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Bob Parsons (GoDaddy), to name but a few but the podcast which I remember most is the Mary Meeker: State of the Internet, Part 3 one. The main reason is that she delivered 37 PowerPoint slides in around 10 minutes - I have used a number of them on the eMarketing courses that I deliver.

Here are the downloads:
PowerPoint Presentation Slides
Download Audio
Download Video

Google Adwords to Display Content Network URL's

Whilst in Search Engine Strategies London a couple of weeks' back people were asking why Google didn't allow Adwords users to see where visitors from the content network came from. Well, it looks like Google may just be about to start doing that. In an article in the New York Times, Google's Kim Malone, director of online sales and operations for Google AdSense, says:

In the next few months, Google’s advertiser reports will begin listing the sites where each ad runs

She went on to add:

that advertisers on the Google networks would soon be able to bid on contextual ads on particular Web sites rather than simply buying keywords that appeared across Google’s entire network.

If you are a an Adwords advertiser this will indeed come as welcome news and should mean, if you're already doing it, that you'll spend less time with your head in the log files.

Google Adsense Tips and Tools

If like you run AdSense on your website (like me), and you've seen sharp drops in revenue, you may be wondering how you can maximise your AdSense returns. Well, GreyWolf's SEO blog has some good tips for both novice and intermediate level AdSense publishers.

Google Adwords Seminars in the USA

I was just reading the Inside AdWords blog and came across some details of some seminars which may be of interest to some of my US-based subscribers. According to Inside AdWords:

a new series of AdWords Seminars being offered by search marketing professionals who are also Qualified Invididuals in the Google Advertising Professionals program.

Looking on the AdWords Seminars' page, I found that the last remaining venues are: Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, Dallas, San  Francisco and New Jersey/New York. They will all be held in November and cost around $249 for a full day and $149 for an afternoon session (including a $50 Google AdWords Voucher). Better than spending money on a PPC consultant, I'm sure!

Google Adwords Tutorial with john Battelle

I must apologise for not posting recently but I have been away on holiday and probably dedicating too much time to further developing my travel blog, Mad About Madrid. However, I will endeavour to post more frequently to this site in the coming months. First off, you may be interested in looking at how John Battelle is fairing with his first real forray into Google Adwords:

I've played around with AdWords before, just to learn about how it works so I could write about it with some first hand knowledge. But I was never a "real" AdWords advertiser - I didn't have anything to sell. Sure, my publisher (and Amazon) have purchased the "John Battelle" keyword, which is great, but I had nothing to do with that. That all changed today, when I created an account with Google and started a campaign, for real, promoting Federated Media's new ad platform.

Small Businesses Increase Spending on Internet Advertising

According to a survey of 700 small and midsize businesses by Boston-based Yankee Group, Internet Advertising has soared over the past year. According to senior analyst Sanjeev Aggarwal,

"..small and midsize businesses are using services from Google and Yahoo that allow potential customers to search for businesses within specific Zip codes. The whole notion of using the Internet for local advertising has become much more common, espcially for small businesses like beauty salons and restaurants that serve a local market.”

The company reckons that advertising shot up 50% to $1.3 billion.

Via: Small Businesses Spending More on Internet Advertising, Tech (Inc.com)

Google Adwords Changes the Size of Fonts

Not sure if anyone's noticed but it would look like Google has changed the size of the 'headline' font for their Google Adwords. I think this happened over the last couple of days. Google Adsense publishers should pay attention and adjust their adverts accordingly. I would say that this obviously means that Google will generate more revenue with larger font sizes or am I being cynical and it is actually designed to aid usability!

 

Search Google Sponsored Listings

Here is a neat little tool to search the Google Adsense Advertisers for a given word:

Search Google Sponsored Listings

Google Heat Maps & Other Adsense Optimization Tips

Google Adsense, the tool for Google Publishers, has  a really neat tool which gives people advice on the best locations to place Google Adwords on their own sites. The Google "Heat Map" displays areas on a sample page layout, with strong orange colours depicting the best performance areas and weaker orange colours poorer areas. Here is what Google has to say:

"All other things being equal, ad placements above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page."

Other Optimization Tips for Google Adsense are that wider ad formats outperform taller ones as they allow people to read ads more comfortably.

"The formats we've found to be the most effective are the 336x280 large rectangle , the 300x250 inline rectangle , and the 160x600 wide skyscraper."

Google reckons that colours that stand out without overshadowing your content are better than those that blend in with the site. Google says that whatever you do, the colour scheme should complement your site and here's an interesting tip:

"Also, rotating color palettes is a simple way to add variety and freshness to your ads. All you need to do is hold down the Control key and select up to four color palettes when generating your ad code in the Ad layout code page of your account."

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Related Article
How People Read Google Search Results
What's a Google Web Page heat map?
Google Eye Tracking Report

Making Money with Google's Adsense

USA Today posted an interesting article this week about the Google Adsense programme. Google's AdSense a bonanza for some Web sites lists a number of cases of people who have successfully used Adsense to generate a decent income, like Eric Giguère who is now writing a book about his experiences and Chris Pirillo, of Lockergnome, who reckons he is clearing more than $10,000 a month. This example is very much in the minority and tales of people making such large amounts are rare.

There remain others, like Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sulivan, who are a lot more cynical about the Adsense programme:

"This is a program that rewards people not for creating the best content, but for how to create sites to attract more advertising," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch online newsletter. "AdSense has nothing to do with search. It effectively turns the Internet into a billboard for Google's ads."

 As with many other Internet phenomenons, like blogging, Google Adsense has also sparked interest amongst those looking to make a quick buck and “click fraud” is getting more of a problem for both Google and Yahoo! Click fraud ranges from getting your mates to click on adverts to programmes, called “clickbots” or “hitbots”, designed to click all day. John Batelle, professor at the University of California, blogger to boot (Searchblog), says that Adsense has:

built a "growing, extremely sophisticated offshore industry."

"There are more of these sites than you can imagine," he says. "The robots click on the ads and then none of the clicks turn into leads for the advertisers. That's not how it's supposed to work."

How People Read Google Search Results

There's an interesting story on Search Engine Watch about how people view the search results on Google. The actual research itself was carried out by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools. The result shoudl certainly make marketers sit up and take notice.

It would appear that most searchers see information in the shape of an "F", with people's eye movements starting from the top-left of the search results and moving down, then jumping across to the right (where the first Google Adwords appear). Here are some of the results:

Organic Search Results Viewed:
Rank 1 - 100%
Rank 2 - 100%    
Rank 3 - 100%    
Rank 4 - 85%    
Rank 5 - 60%    
Rank 6 - 50%    
Rank 7 - 50%    
Rank 8 - 30%    
Rank 9 - 30%    
Rank 10 - 20%

Chris Sherman points out that though Organic Search Engine Marketing is far more popular with web searchers, many firms are ignoring its potential in favour of Paid Google Adword listings.

Original Source
Eyesite (Seth Godin)