I’m pleased to say that I am now a Google AdWords Qualified Professional.

Having passed the Google AdWords exam with flying colours, and having demonstrated a track record of building and managing AdWords campaigns over a 90 day period, I’m now truly certifiable.

This means Google knows I’m competent to provide Pay Per Click (PPC) AdWords marketing and consultancy services.

I have to say the exam was quite rigorous, and it assessed knowledge of:

• AdWords Policies
• Ad Distribution
• Keyword Matching
• Site Targeting
• Keyword Performance
• ROI and Conversion Tracking
• Advanced Conversion Tracking
• Cross-Channel Conversion Tracking
• Driving Improvements with Analytics Data
• Keywords, Ad Text and Ad Groups Optimisation

If you are interested in some help in setting up a Google AdWords campaign, then get in touch (and I can offer you a free £50 voucher towards your first campaign that I set up for you!)

I have a new client that has come to me with a website that is under performing. Where should she put her scarce resources – into search engine optimisation (SEO), or pay per click advertising (PPC)?

Her objective: she needs clients now. But she also wants to grow her business over the medium term.

SEO and PPC have their relative strengths, and as always this is a case of weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

I’d recommend she kicks off with PPC:

• it’s immediate: she’ll instantly start ranking well in the search engine results
• it’s a great learning tool: she’ll have evidence of specific phrases that are working well for her business, and she can use these phrases to guide her SEO strategy
• it’s measurable: she can track which clicks have converted to enquiries
• it’s flexible: she can tweak her ads, turn them on, turn them off, test and learn
• it’s dynamic: she can test phrases that she doesn’t have time to incorporate into her website

But of course, there are drawbacks to PPC:

• it’s expensive: she’ll need relatively deep pockets to compete in her market space
• it’s ephemeral: turn off the ads, then her rankings disappear in a puff of smoke
• it’s advertising: how many of you actually click on the little ads on the right in Google?
• it’s subject to click fraud: (ed: allegedly subject to click fraud)

And we are working on her SEO campaign in tandem with her PPC, and I’m confident it will all workout well.

The benefits of SEO:

• After initial investment, the dividends in improved rankings are virtually free
• Searchers trust the organic results more than the paid-for ones
• Creating SEO friendly content delivers the additional benefit of human-friendly content, indeed also should be more accessible content

And the drawbacks of SEO:

• It’s a lot of work. And I mean a whole lotta work
• If you have an existing site, it may mean a significant rebuild which costs time and money
• There are no such thing as a guarantee. All your work may lead to disappointing results if you operate in a highly competitive market.

It’s all a matter of balance to meet her business objectives.

eBay has pulled all its sponsored advertising off Google in the USA.

What a shame; that means Americans won’t be seeing adverts for idiots for sale on eBay (this link shows adverts still operating in the UK)

The alleged cause of this drastic action? Cheeky Google planned a big party promoting Google Checkout on the same day and in the same city as eBay’s premier seller event, eBay Live.

And at the root of it all is eBay’s refusal to negotiate with Google over the use of Google Checkout as a mechanism for buyers or sellers. Google Checkout, of course, is a direct competitor to eBay’s own PayPal. Google Checkout is banned for use on eBay.

eBay’s position is that Google Checkout is unproven, and eBay expresses concerns over Google Checkout’s fraud and security issues.

Perhaps it really has something to do with keeping competitors off the PayPal turf?

The upshot is that removal of PPC advertising has cost eBay a 7% drop in traffic from Google. Google is the number one source of traffic for ebay.com. I would have expected a more dramatic drop, but the Hitwise analysis of the spat reveals the top search terms in Google are for the eBay domain name or eBay brand.

As for Google, the value of the lost advertising is estimated at $25 million, and eBay is Google’s largest AdWords customer.

So, big money is involved. As is usually the case money talks, and no doubt they will kiss and make up soon.

How do you feel about a “reverse psychology” or shock advertising for your Pay Per Click campaigns?

This Google AdWords advertiser describes his product as Rubbish and uses the strap line “Poor Service and Horrible Staff but Great Prices and Free Samples too!“

Your ad needs to differentiate you from your competitors, and catch the eye of your potential customer.

This is a sensational ad that might get clicks, but will it get the right clicks that then convert to sales?

This particular advert forms part of a series of Ad Variations that enables the advertiser to test the effectiveness of different ad styles. Ads might take the style of:

• benefits led copy: why your product is perfect for the customer
• testimonials
• discount offers
• free trial

Special thanks to Sharon Weston for bringing this ad to my attention.

I’m pleased to be involved in the Women 4 Women programme, offering women-owned businesses in the East Midlands free mentoring and subsidised marketing support. The programme aims to boost women’s enterprise for start ups, new businesses, or women seeking to further develop their business.

To be eligible you must be located in an Objective 2 area and you can check your postcode eligibility here. The business must be at least 50% woman owned, and fit the usual SME requirements.

I’ll be mentoring women in the Lincolnshire area, but my Internet marketing training and support is eligible for support across the entire East Midlands Objective 2 region.

Get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Nottingham based Experian has acquired Internet marketing intelligence company Hitwise. Hitwise collects and aggregates data about how consumers use and search the Internet.

Take a look at the type of reports Hitwise is able to produce about people’s online behaviour:

In this example, Hitwise is reporting on the Travel sector for the period ending March 2007:

Not many of our small businesses can afford this kind of data, but from time to time Hitwise produces a freely-available report which can provide us with invaluable information:

This acquisition strengthens Experian’s offering for it’s clients who are switching their advertising pounds into online ads and the Internet:

One of the problems with blogging is that your best content might be buried away in the archives of old articles. Oldies but goodies, but nobody can find them.

But your web statistics will show you your most popular postings. It’s been a year since the launch of the new website, and I’ve had a chance to review my most popular postings.

I’m going to add them as a side bar to my blog in my forthcoming update, but in the meantime:

Susan Hallam’s Top 10 Blog Postings

1. Writing for the Web: web readability tests
2. Internet marketing trends: local search
3. Internet usage in the UK
4. Search engine “findability” index
5. Top tips for your Title tag
6. Social bookmarking and search engine optimisation
7. Pay Per Call: Touch Nottingham
8. Internet marketing myths: Googlebowling
9. Internet marketing toolbox: iWebTool
10. Personalising PPC campaigns using Microsoft AdCentre

For those of you using Pay Per Click advertising as part of your online marketing mix, here is some required reading.

Take a look at Business Week magazine’s cover story on Click Fraud (hint: the “Print Friendly” version gets rid of all the annoying advertising)

For the more visually-inclined amongst you, Business Week have also published an interesting click fraud slideshow illustrating how the scams and deceptions works.

But if you want to rest your weary eyes, then listen to Business Week’s clickfraud podcast interview with the journalists who wrote the story.

Do you click on Google’s AdWords advertising, or do you ignore the ads?

I ignore the ads. And Google knows I ignore the ads based on my browsing history.

Google appear to be experimenting with the positioning of its Google AdWords advertisements based on your personal ad-clicking history. They know your propensity to click, of course, through cookies or even through your Google personalised account.

If you’re not a clicker, then they are not displaying the ads at the top of the screen, but moving them to the panel on the right.

One explanation might be that users will be better served if ads are not pushed at them that they just don’t want. Another explanation is that we’re getting blind to the ads, and a bit of variety might spice things up.

I did an experiment: I searched for “solicitors Nottingham” using a computer without any cookies on it (so they didn’t know who I am) and then repeated the search logged onto my own personal Google account.

The assumption is a “stranger” might click on ads, but Google knows for a fact that Susan never does.

The “stranger” receives the blue sponsored ads horizontally at the top of the search results.

Non-clicking-Susan receives all the ads in the vertical panel on the right.

“Stranger” results:

The identical search, this time logged on as “Susan the non-clicker”’s ; note there aren’t any horizontal AdWords across the top of the results, and even the top ads are over on the right

So, if you’re advertising on Google AdWords, what might this mean to your campaign? Fewer clicks? Fewer, better clicks?

Watch this space….

“Was this link useful to you?”

I was quite surprised to see this question appear in Google after I had clicked on an Adwords advertisement and then immediately clicked the back button.

The question appeared beneath the Adwords advert with “Yes” and “No ” radio buttons.

I would assume Google are collecting data which could be used as part of the pricing mix for advertisers – with penalties being given to advertisers who are given negative feedback by searchers.

Unfortunately, I did not get a screenshot of my feedback, but take a look at Google Blogoscoped’s Google Adwords Feedback screenshot.