Anyone can put a Google AdWords Qualified Individual or Company logo on their website. So how is a small business owner to know that the person or company who claims to be qualified is really actually certified by Google?

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I’ve written two articles on click fraud related to pay-per-click services of Citysearch and Yellowpages.com. Both articles have received many comments from small business owners who had similar bad experiences. I’ve also received several phone calls from blog readers who wanted some advice from me regarding what to do after they’ve found themselves locked into a contract with a company like Citysearch, Yellowpages.com, Dex Online etc and are very unhappy with the results.

So here’s my advice to small business owners on how to avoid getting caught in the costly web of online pay-per-click advertising.

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I wrote an article in January ‘07 on my experience with Citysearch click fraud and since then have written articles on a client’s experience with YellowPages.com click fraud as well. Both of these article continue to collect comments from people who find them selves stuck in pay-per-click contracts that aren’t yielding any valid traffic. Many times these readers phone me looking for advice, which prompted me to write yet another article warning small business owners about signing  pay-per-click contracts. I wanted to write this article to give readers an update on Citysearch and click fraud.

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If you’ve ever used the Google keyword selection tool, you’ve seen those little green bars that represent how many other folks are searching for specific terms. And maybe like me, you’ve wondered, what the heck do these bars represent in terms of the number of searches? Till now, it was anyone’s guess. But now you can see exactly real numbers!

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Think click fraud is a thing of the past? Nope! Bigreds.com is suing Yahoo for 1 million dollars alleging that they were charged for fraudulent clicks as part of their pay-per-click online advertising campaign that Yahoo could have and should have prevented.

While click fraud is certainly a pay-per-click industry issue, and not specific to Yahoo, it will be interesting to see how this lawsuit progresses.

You can read more about Yahoo being sued for click fraud in this Information Week Article entitled “Yahoo Hit With $1 Million Click Fraud Lawsuit“.

I’m a client of Aldebaran Web Design and Jill kindly invited me to post in her blog about my YellowPages.com pay-per-click advertising experience. This story is for you, the small business owner with a website, who might be contemplating hiring a company to do pay-per-click advertising for you. Please don’t do it! Please repeat after me: “I promise I will use Google AdWords exclusively, and consult Jill at Aldebaran Web Design for guidance if needed.â€

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Bounce Rate has become my very favorite metric to watch when looking at website traffic statistics. This article explains what bounce rate is, how it’s measured, what bounce rate statistics look like, and what the bounce rate is trying to tell you to do.
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I got a phone call today from a Google AdWords representative. Two weeks ago, I had submitted an email request for help, because a particular keyword had a “poor” quality score and I couldn’t figure out why. The online chat representative had recommended I break the ad groups into smaller pieces, which I did, but the keyword was still “poor” after a few days so I emailed in for more assistance.
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Dynamic Ad Title Generation - Just Say No! If you are thinking of signing up with a PPC company, or are already running a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign, I strongly suggest that you make sure they aren’t running ads with dynamically generated titles. I’ll show you some examples of what these look like, and whey they can lead to poor quality clicks, and in some cases false advertising.
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I learned a new word the other day: “arbitrage”. I was having an online chat with a representative from Google AdWords to learn more about PPC quality. What I learned gave me a new addition to my click fraud vocabulary, and a new warning to give to clients who may be thinking about launching a pay-per-click advertising campaign: Beware of traffic that comes from arbitrage or “made for adsense” websites and directories.
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For those of us who work with Pay-Per-Click campaigns, who obsessively check our Google AdWords results several times per day, here’s a little humor.

Enjoy!

New websites often don’t rank well in Google’s organic search for several months and therefore to get website traffic, new website owners sometimes engage a pay-per-click campaign using well-known Google AdWords. Here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned from helping my own clients with their Google AdWords pay-per-click campaigns. I also recommend visiting the impressive Google AdWords online Learning Center - It’s got an incredible amount of information that teaches you how to totally control your AdWords campaign.

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Beware of Pay-Per-Click Advertising on Citysearch!

After spending many months focusing on getting good organic search engine rankings for my own website, I decided to get some experience with pay-per-click advertising for two reasons. First I wanted to see if it would increase my own site’s traffic. Secondly, I wanted to be able to recommend a pay-per-click strategy for my clients. I decided to start with well known Citysearch. (Update: I now am confident in recommending Google AdWords for those clients who need pay-per-click traffic - but you must actively manage the ad campaign. If you want help managing a Google AdWords campaign, click here.)

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