Archive of General Posts

What is the Google Grants Program?

If you are currently working, own, or operate a 501(c)3 non-profit organization you may be eligible to receive an advertising grant from Google to raise awareness for your program through Paid Search advertising.

Here are the basic requirements:

• You must have a website, and your ads must link to a page on your website.
• The keywords you target must be relevant to your programs and services.
• Your website cannot display revenue generating ads, such as Google AdSense or affiliate advertising links, while participating in Google Grants.
 ... Read the full post

I’ve found that once people have determined what their ideal campaign settings are for a particular client they usually go into set it and forget it mode.  I’m going to go into detail about how we can use one specific section to get a little bit more out of our campaign settings.

Giving National Campaigns a Local Flavor

Normally when choosing to serve ads to the United States you’d simply pick the United States bundle under the Locations and Languages tab in the campaign settings.  Instead, try manually choosing each state from the list one by one.  ... Read the full post

Keyword insertion is a tactic used for creating ad copy, where rather than display a specifically crafted headline you choose to import the search query.  Due to character limit restraints not all searches can be imported as the headline, so a reserve or backup headline needs to be crafted.  Only keyword phrases that are under 25 total characters can be shown, and when the search query is too long, the pre-generated message would be displayed.

So using the above ad text as an example, if the search phrase was  PPC Management the ad would read:

 ... Read the full post

Sometimes you don’t need to use a limousine to get somewhere when a bicycle will do the trick.

… and sometimes you just might not have an advanced analytics tool and your only options are AdWords and Google Analytics.  I was setting up some basic revenue tracking for a low impact project of mine and I was amazed at the lack of instruction in the help center on how to track variable shopping cart revenues, namely revenue that is generated from a sales action that does not have a static value.  So I thought I’d take a few minutes and lay out instructions here.  ... Read the full post

This afternoon we’re headed to Western New York to see my side of the family for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, traveling west on the Massachusetts Turnpike the day before Thanksgiving is never a good idea. I’m preparing for worst. What usually would be a six hour drive surely will eclipse ten; hoping it doesn’t take twelve.

However, the miracles of technology in coordination with solid preparation have me ready for the journey ahead. Here are five recent blog posts I have bookmarked to read in depth and recommend to you if your Thanksgiving travel plans will be anything like mine (and you’re looking for some good material to supplement a long wait at the airport or in the car).  ... Read the full post

The Parasite Source: Wikimedia Commons	Symbiotic Creatures Playing Nice Source: Wikimedia Commons

Note for geeks and sticklers:  While parasites can have a mutually beneficial relationship (mutualism) with their host, I am questioning whether or not there is a parasitic relationship (parasitism) where the host does not benefit.

I’ve been in the SEO trenches since 2000.  Not as long as many, but long enough to form an opinion.

I’ve pretty consistently felt that SEO practitioners who follow best practices, and don’t spend time gaming the system for short-term gains, have helped organize the Internet.  This goes for SEO consultants, in-house SEO practitioners, business owners, etc.  ... Read the full post

[We welcome back Casie Gillette as a guest blogger!!]

This past May I left the world of consulting (and my good friends here at KoMarketing) to take an in-house SEO position at Grasshopper.com, a virtual phone system provider for small businesses.  After four years of being on the agency side, I thought it would be interesting to get a new perspective.

There are certainly some big differences when it comes to in-house and agency life but I have been learning that each side has its own advantages. Lucky for me, KoMarketing was nice enough to let me come back and share them with you:  ... Read the full post

Maintaining a website can be a pain.

Content Management Systems definitely make managing a website’s content easier.  But not all CMS platforms help you keep up with the fast pace of improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

I will be hosting a free Webinar, along with Dave Crouch of ten24 Website Solutions, that will highlight features you should look for in a CMS that allow for maintaining SEO best practices and that help make content & structural changes to a website easier.

Hope you can join us!

Over the past year or so I have written roughly 30 blog posts.  Some have been better-written than others, and some have had more value than others (that’s blogging for you!).

There are some posts that I have written that I wish had received more exposure than they did.  I might have published them on a day of the week, or time of day, that was not optimal.  The titles of the posts might not have been as compelling as they could have been.  The right people in KoMarketing’s social networks might have seen them.  There are many reasons why the posts did not see the readership that I think they deserve.  ... Read the full post

Google has released a white paper touting the benefits of the Content Network. The paper provides the following analysis:

Ads on the Google Content Network can be an effective way to gain additional conversion beyond those you get via search.

• When used in combination with Search, the median advertiser has a content CPA that’s within approximately 2% of their Search CPA.
• The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.

Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.  ... Read the full post