This may seem like old hat to many SEOs, but it's a tip that never fails to get an "oh yeah!" during client meetings. The concept is simple - in any given search engine optmization campaign, you are naturally going to form a list of high-traffic, (perceived) high value keywords that are an idealistic goal for your site to dominate. For a site like SEOmoz, those might be the highly compet...

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Today I sat in on a webinar taught by David Szetela, the founder of Clix Marketing. He gave some great tips about common PPC and paid search mistakes, and I thought I'd share them below. Don't mix search and content campaigns. David recommends turning off the content network and not mixing search and content...

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After our dismal experiment with trying to track impressions, Rand's course of action was to have me dive in headfirst and manage our PPC campaign for our Premium memberships. I half-assed the campaigns in August '07 and retooled them in November, when we redesigned our landing page and added a few targeted pages. The ...

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There have been a number of updates to Google Ad Words and Google Analytics lately so I though the SEOMoz community might want a summary of them.  For the most part, I am impressed with the new features and Google should be applauded for listening to their user base and responding with these additions.  Improvement #1 - AdWords Geographical Targeting with Google Maps...

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Economics is the study of relationships between supply and demand sprinkled with an understanding of human behavior.Pricing is something that most business owners GUESS, and they typically fall within the average area where the demand curve intersects with the supply curve.<img src="http://www.apollosem.org/images/normal-supply-demand.jpg">Then, the distribu...

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From 2003-2005, I managed several different campaigns for clients on all the major ad platforms - Yahoo!, Google, even an Ask.com campaign. However, since that time, I've been out of the game, and my skills are mighty rusty. In this post, I wanted to show off not only how badly you need an experienced paid search marketer (even if you're a pretty savvy search guy like me), but how big a differe...

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Over the last few weeks, Google has introduced without a lot of fanfare several important features into the AdWords platform. And they're not just cosmetic changes, so it's worthwhile for advertisers to become familiar with them.  Here's a recap of what's new.Content Network Placement ReportOne of the reasons that many advertisers have been he...

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(Note from Rand: Tonight, I introduced Mystery Guest to the wonderful word of AdWords. Needless to say, she went a little wild. This one's just for fun, folks)Ads that Weren't Approved: Ads that Google Allowed:  ...

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As I manage quite a few PPC campaigns I always notice the silly and sometimes not so silly mistakes that advertisers make with their PPC programs. Mistakes when creating PPC ads, click fraud detection, and ...

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I would like to make an economic argument for giving contextual ad publishers the ability to filter their ads by keyword.  Today I am feeling really sad about the contextual ads that have been showing on one of my websites.  I am getting ads with titles such as "Afghanistan Sex"..."Pakistan Girls"..."Pakistan XXX"...  I a...

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Mike Reining from MindValleyLabs emailed me about their blog and while I wasn't thrillled by the piece he specifically sent me, I did find great value in a couple of their most recent posts. First off, on The Impact of Seeing Your Name in Headlines:...

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For a very long time (at least in web years), CPC advertising has been the only model for search engines seeking to monetize their search results. While the effectiveness and profitability of these ads can hardly be disputed, it's also obvious from statements like Google's famous "20% of all queries each month are completely unique)" and Ask's "80% of our users' searches show any ad...

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Google Adsense is one of the best programs ever to hit the web.  It allows webmasters to easily monitize their sites and has been a treasure trove for many. As good as it is, I think that it can be better.  Here's my wish list of what I would like to see added.  Some of these wishes are available to publishers with enormous traffic - but I would like to see them offered to anyo...

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Hat tip to Todd who found this Adwords ad at Google in a search for San Francisco. If that isn't love at first sight, I don't know what is. Now all you Friscoers, get to work tracking her down! ...

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Donna's got great coverage of a WMW post that discusses the problems with the recent gain in notoriety of big AdSense earners (Shoemoney being foremost in my mind). For two years, I did my t...

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