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The goal of my website is to generate leads.  To do this, the site teaches people about my company, and explains how we can help them.  In the process, and as you go through the pages (that need some serious seo attention by the way) you will see that the site brags and is very biased because we created the content.  What company would write bad things about themselves anyway...right?

I saw this Google Adwords video along time ago:

You will note that rather than brag about themselves and how great Adwords is, they let a client that has had success tell their story and recommend Google to everyone why they should use Google.

Well, at Get Found First, we are changing our approach!  We are no longer asking that you take our word for it, or trust that just because we are a Google Adwords Certified Partner company that we are the greatest.  We have followed Google's example, sort of, with a smaller budget, but with real clients, recommending our services:

Let me know what you think!  I'd love advice on what we should do with future testimonial videos!

A business owner recently contacted us concerned because his Cost Per Clicks had doubled in the last month! His problem? Quality Score. He knew that it had been dropping, but didn’t know what to do to stop the pain.

So what do you do when quality score is sub-par? Here is a list of items to troubleshoot to make sure you’re doing everything right for your pay per click campaign:

1) Improve Click Through Rate In Ad Groups- Write some more ads and always test them. I always have at least two running and sometimes more if keyword popularity and traffic is high.

2) Improve Click Through Rate in The Account- CTR of the entire account will affect the quality score of every keyword in an account. We have made entirely new accounts at times when CTR was so bad for clients.

3) Add Negative Keywords- This is basically improving your CTR, but it also weeds out irrelevant searches.

4) Add Keywords to Your Ads- Matching the keywords from an adgroup to its ads improves the relevancy of the ads. Because Google bolds these words it usually improves CTR too.

5) Add Keywords to a Landing Page- Make sure your landing page is relevant to the keywords you’re advertising. Adding the keywords to a respective landing page will help.

BONUS TIP: Improve Your Click Through Rate More! I’ve read that historical CTR could factor up to 60% of a keywords quality score, while the next highest factor only counts for 10%.

We took on the client with the bad quality scores. After troubleshooting his account and making some changes we saw quality score improve for almost every keyword. With a little TLC you can improve your quality scores too!

Here were my takeaways from Dave's portion of the Link Building portion of the amazing BlueGlass Conference.

Links are the key to domination on the web. Get high quality links first that will convert, but also, just go get links!

Links are the core concept of the internet, and don't forget that.

Here is what Dave thinks (I agree fully. Dave is the man on this stuff!):

Don't just go spam everything! Link acquisition boils down to two concepts:

1.) Monetary Response - People love money and will do disgusting things to get it

2.) Emotional Response - Anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, acceptance, and joy.

Step 1: Mine Data

-What are people linking to in your vertical? (linkscape)

-How are they linking? (linkscape)

-What topics are people emotional about now? (google and twitter trends)

-How have people historically interacted with content? (linkscape)

Step 2: Create Your Reason for Linking

Step 3: Craft Outreach Strategy from Data

-Create an outreach list

-Look at social venues that have led to links in the past

-Make lasting relationships within your vertical that can be quickly and easily leveraged based on trends

Step 4:?

Step 5: Outreach

-Quantify and inventory the links

Step 6: Data Collection and Categorization

Step 7: Rinse and Repeat...No...Seriously!

Approach link building with this in mind:

Will this link increase my traffic and share my content with correct audience?

Typing super fast so please accept my apologies for typ-o's.

As part of my new hire initiation, I have been asked to introduce myself as the newest member of the Get Found First team.  I am a red head, and because of that I have been lovingly given the nickname, "the red man". As part of my welcoming in the office, Luke played a clip from Peter Pan where the Indians sing about the red man being red.

I grew up in the great state of Colorado close to Denver. I graduated from Brigham Young Univesity - Idaho in 2008 where I studied Business Management with an emphasis in marketing. I was introduced to the internet marketing world by a business professor of mine in 2007, and shortly after graduating I started an internet marketing company called Matchstick SEO. I have learned much since then and I am fortunate to work with the great staff of Get Found first!

Today is a special day. Not only is it Social Media Day, but also our fellow comrade Luke is experiencing his first day as a daddy! Luke is one of our Google AdWords Certified Professionals. His newborn son arrived safe and well on June 29, 2010 at 8:30pm. His name is Max, and weighs in at 8lbs 2oz and 22in. long! Feel free to congratulate him via twitter @lukealley. He’ll need all the support he can get for what lies ahead…late, late nights or early, early mornings, and lots of diaper changing!

You're probably thinking that the heading is an oxymoron and that it's impossible to get free clicks from the paid search results, but it's not!  Google just introduced seller rating extensions that will allow you to get free clicks.  The ratings will be shown by golden stars and will show up next to your PPC ad on Google (just like the one shown below), and the best part is when somebody clicks on the reviews, it DOES NOT cost you anything.

However, there are some caveats that we should all be aware of.  Those catches are that not all merchants qualify.  There are certain criteria that must be met before those beloved golden stars will show up.  Google explains in their post Introducing seller rating extensions on Google.com.

"If your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have 4 or more stars, and you have at least 30 reviews, you’ll automatically get seller ratings with your ads...At this time, seller rating extensions will show to English-language users searching on Google.com."

So now you might be asking where these ratings come from and how to improve them.  Google has said that they include Reseller Ratings, Bizrate, ReviewCentre.com and Viewpoints.  However, in their answer to that question, it only said includes, so it would probably be good to assume there are more out there and not to just focus on those ones alone.

All in all, the merchant rankings will probably improve click-through-rate for those merchant's with high rankings, but does not mean that all the clicks will be free.  Google has done a great job at making the link rather small and the headline stands out much more than the reviews link.

So, still focus on maintaining good customer relationships and delivering exceptional customer service because those ratings will help, but don't count on all the clicks being free!

-Mitchell

Have you ever set up a campaign for a client and got the question, “How much will I be paying each click?” How do you respond? Many times you might turn to Google’s Keyword Tool and look at CPC’s. But how accurate is Google’s Keyword Tool CPC estimator?  We’ve taken a look at actual CPC’s from our clients and matched them up with what Google’s estimates.

Before we look at the stats it’s important to note a few things about Google’s CPC Estimator. In Google’s words:

“If you don't supply a Max CPC and Daily Budget for these estimates, AdWords will estimate your performance using a CPC that is predicted to always place your ad in positions 1-3 with an unlimited budget to capture all available impressions.”

Based off of that, we made sure that the words that we looked at were all in the 1-3 spot. Here are the stats for just 6 of our words:

Between them all there was a 44% difference between actual CPC and Google's estimated CPC! It's obvious that there are other factors in the difference in numbers. The AdWordsPro(a Google employee) clarified this on the Adwords help forum:

"Please know that it is simply an estimate - and in no way intended to be a guarantee. Your actual cost per click will literally vary from one click to the next, and depend on many factors that the tool can not know - such as how well targeted your ads are to the keyword, how well written the ads are, how many competitors you have in the moment the ad appears, etc."

We can conclude from this that YOU CAN'T TRUST GOOGLE'S NUMBERS! Next time you're looking for estimates on average CPC you might be out of luck. Although this can be a good place to start, you can only really know once you start your PPC campaign.

-Luke

Yes! This logo was officially provided to us after we officially passed the tests, met the other criteria regarding amount of spend managed and amount of time managing accounts, and now

Get Found First is a Google Adwords Certified Partner!

Google used to have a Google Adwords Qualified Individual Status, and a Google Adwords Qualified Company, and for a few more months companies can rest on those laurels. 

Rather than wait around, and to be a leader in the industry, we went ahead and became one of the first Google Adwords Certified Partners.  Here are the criteria to become a Google Certified Partner:

"Google AdWords Certified Partners are not Google employees, but rather are online marketing professionals, agencies, and other individuals such as search engine marketers (SEMs), search engine optimizers (SEOs), and marketing consultants. They have been certified by Google to manage AdWords accounts. To become qualified, professionals must demonstrate an in-depth understanding of AdWords by passing exams, and they must meet all our qualification guidelines, Different professionals have different areas of expertise, so you should talk to them or look at their profile page to get a better understanding of their service levels and specializations."

To elaborate, the Google exams are timed for 120 minutes and there are 120 multiple choice questions.   The first is a Fundamentals exam, and the second is an Advanced exam.  Each company must have 2 individuals connected to the account that pass with an 85% or higher score on each test.  Having taken the tests, I can assure you that they make the test hard enough that not just any Joe Schmoe can sign up, pay the $50 to take the test, and pass.  Questions relate to language targeting, trademark laws, bidding, adrank, quality score, and much more.

So what does all this mean to you? Get Found First has all of the tools to be your PPC management outsource solution.

While I was logging in some web browsing miles the other day I came across Wayne A. Kurzen, a dental practice consultant out of Georgia.  He had written a blog post that immediately caught my attention titled, “How Much Should Your Practice Invest in Marketing?” Great question I thought, one that many Dentists find themselves asking on a regular basis.

Wayne suggests, “Basing your marketing budget off of a range between lasts years collections, and this years projections at an estimated 5%. Therefore, if you are projecting to bring in $700k this year, then your marketing budget should be $35k.”

Now to make things interesting, two of our dental practice clients have been working with a $4k a year budget in online advertising and getting 14 – 18 new patients a month from it. At $4k a year, that’s only 11.3% of their originally projected budget of $35k. If a dentist really has that kind of a marketing budget, they need to go and get more advertising space online, and probably spend some money in the yellow pages where return on investment will be minimal, but probably still significant enough to go and get it.

- Trevor

Who wins in a Google fight? A paid listing or a map listing? A first page natural listing or a #1 paid listing? You might be suprised what we found...

We have been advertising for a dental client over the last year on Adwords, and Google Maps. We have also done his SEO. This client has what we like to call the Google TRI-FECTA (they rank high with all 3 listings). With one website performing well in all 3 spaces, we were curious how each medium performed against each other. We took results from the last 4 months, and dug up some info in Analytics. Here’s what we found:

This dentist's campaign is focused on lead generation. Customers come to the website and sign up on a form that offers web only discounts on dental services. Overall there were 59 goal conversions.

We broke down these conversions even further:

Total Conversions:

• Organic- 28
• Paid- 12
• Direct Traffic- 10
• Facebook- 3
• Other- 5

Not coming as too much of a suprise, organic traffic and conversions easily beat out paid traffic. What is most suprising though, is how the map listing performed:

From a simple business listing with Google Places, there was a 3.54% action rate, with a 2.38% click through rate for visits to the website. That compared to .84% click through rate with Adwords. Obviously, a limitation in this reporting is that we don't have conversion tracking for the map listing; however, the amount of traffic to the webiste ads up to just 80 out of the 491 total organic clicks!

What conclusions can we draw from this? Let's break it down:

• Organic Listing- The main source of conversions for this dentist. Limited in the cost and time it would take to optimize for multiple keywords. Appeals to majority of internet users.
• Paid Listing- Minimal conversions, but covered many more variations of long tailed keywords than organic. Appeals to clients wanting to cover hundreds of keyword variations.
• Maps- Great cost efficiency (depending on what local seo company you use). Not as trusted as the organic listings. Appeals to searches that want a map to see where a dentist is located/how close they are.

So can a Google maps listing beat out a paid and natural listing? Not in this case. But the traffic generated from the combination of these three mediums together may be unbeatable. We will post in a month or two on the results without any paid listings.

-Luke

In Star Wars Anakin and Luke Skywalker brought balance to the force. In Lord of the Rings it was Frodo. Now for search and display markets balance is being brought back with the formation of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance (sorry there probably won't be any movies made about this one).

"When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results."

 In an email sent out to current Bing and Yahoo advertisers they outlined a few details:

• The program will start in Fall and you will be able to reach over 15 million searchers.
• All accounts will be transferred beginning in late summer and will be ready by the time the holiday season rolls around. If any account has the possibility of missing the holiday season, their transfer will be put off until after the holidays.
• Big budget clients will have customer service by Yahoo and small budget clients by Microsoft.
• Regular communication and tools will be provided to aid in the transition.

What will this mean for advertisers? It means that Google is now going to have some more competition. According to the most recent statistics on search market share, Bing controls 11.7%, Yahoo 16.9%, and Google 65.1%. After the alliance it will be 65.1% VS 28.6% for the big two search engines. The competition will be GREAT for us advertisers. Competition spurs growth, right?

What are your thoughts on the search alliance? Will YaBing! outperform Google? Will market share decrease for the alliance? Keep checking back to the Get Found First blog and we will keep you posted!

-Luke

Have you ever thought about reaching those people who have visited your website, browsed around, but ended up not buying or signing up? You know they were at least a little interested in what you had to offer but after they leave they may never come back. Goodbye, adios, ciao!

Now you don't have to say goodbye to them forever with Google's new Adwords feature called Remarketing. These feature allows you to target people who have visited certain parts of your website and display your ads to them on other parts of the internet. You might be asking yourself, how could I use this? Well let's look at some examples:

• If you're a dentist you can target people who have visited your "Services" page and tell them to signup again if they still haven't been to a dentist.
• If your a loan company create urgency in your ads by emphasizing the low rates that are available now only.
• If you are selling a product offer a lower discount than was originally offered in their first visit.

The possibilities are endless but according to Google early tests have seen great results.

What could you use remarketing for? Rather than saying goodbye to customers, you can now say hello, hola, and bonjour, again!

-Luke

If you're a small business then undoubtedly you have Googled your own name and probably even setup a Google Local Business Center account. You may have even looked at the map listings and wondered how you might show up higher or stand out more on the Google map. Well, if my last sentence describes you then today is your lucky day! Google recently announced new changes that will take place in Google Maps that allows you to make your listing stand out more with tags.

For example, if you are a local dentist showing up on Google maps along with 6 other dentists you can make your ad stand out by adding a video of your office. The new feature costs $25 a month and for the time being is available only in 10 cities with plans to roll it out to the rest of the U.S.

Here's an example from an optometrist in San Jose.

Stay tuned and soon you will start seeing this feature in YOUR city!

-Luke

Inspired by Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com, I wanted to take a break from my normal "Good Word" about SEO and PPC this Easter season, and talk about the most important "Good Word" for the whole world to know about, whether you care about internet marketing or not.

Take 3 minutes and enjoy this video about our Savior and Easter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFhS0dAduc&feature=channel

Have you ever walked into a conversation where the two speaking you could tell were speaking your native tongue, but because they were speaking about their niche industry, nobody else in the conversation had a clue what they were talking about?  I remember as a young boy listening into conversations my dad was having about politics and/or business and hearing lots of words I had never heard before, and none of them were swear words.  And as I am known for never cussing in my circle of friends, I promise to not do so in the following short paragraph, but take a second to read it, and pay close attention to see if you feel like I did as a kid:

After focusing on SEO for a few years now, we have decided to launch our first PPC campaign to see what kind of conversion rate we can get from paid search in comparison with the organic traffic we are already getting. Once we have done that for a little while and seen some ROI, we are going to code some new landing pages that we have created to do some multivariate testing.  Obviously that is down the road and based on seeing good click-through rates and figuring out which keywords, products, and ad copies are causing the traffic to convert.  But as I was saying about the multivariate testing, we want to do that and watch our analytics and learn from the market research that...

In a room full of Internet marketing experts, hearing this would be just another day at the office (home office in a lot of cases), but for the average businessman, this is a whole new language.  Unfortunately for the average businessman, the above average businessman has already become well-versed in this online lingo.  They may not be doing their own online advertising, but they have at least enough knowlege that they were able feel confident hiring outside help.  If you are like most american businessmen, it is time to get caught up!  To help here is a quick vocab lesson:

SEO is search engine optimization.  Optimizing a website so that it can easily be found on the first page of search engines.

PPC is pay per click advertising on search engines. It is free to show up in the sponsored links of search engine results, unless someone clicks on your ad, then you have to pay per click.

A conversion is when a website visitor does what you wanted them to do on your site.

Paid search are the "sponsored links" or the results on search engines that don't come naturally.  These are usually the ads seen on the right side of search results.

Organic refers to a website naturally showing up on the left side of search results because the search engine deemed the site to be the most relevant search result. "Organic" clicks to your site are free.

Organic traffic means those visitors to your site that get there by finding you on the left/free/natural side of search results.

Landing pages are new pages designed for a site to either see how they perform in comparison with the old site, or for a specific product/service that doesn't have it's own page yet.  Landing pages are also used for testing different offers and web layouts.

Multivariate testing is when you use pay per click advertising to test different landing pages and/or different ads to with multiple variables to see which ones provide the best results.  There is more to learn about, if you care to learn more, check this out.

Click-through-rate (CTR) helps an advertiser determine which ad is the best.  The ad that gets the most clicks for the least amount of times showing up wins.

Ad copy are the words within the ad.  Great online advertisers will tell you that just changing one word can make the difference between whether you get clicks or not.

Analytics is a software that gives you info about how your website and ads are performing.  Google offers a free software called Google Analytics.

A new language, right?  Bookmark this post so you can refer back to this small set of internet marketing vocab the next time you feel like your web developer or IT guy, or marketing guru is speaking a different language!

You've heard of them, you've probably joined a few of them, now you can learn the top 10 ways to use a Facebook fan page! The tips that we are suggesting are focused towards dentists and the healthcare industry but they can be used universally!

1.       Getting People to Join your Group

a.       Invite Your Friends.

b.      Add links to your fan page on your website, or a widget.

c.       E-mail existing customers and invite them.

d.      In the office make people aware of the fact that you have fan page. Invite them to share their experience on the fan page.

e.      Possibly pay to advertise your fan page.

f.        Search for customers using Facebook search.

2.       Post on the Wall

a.       Write about anything your fans want to know about. Make it relevant!

b.      Make sure these are relevant to the Fan page you are promoting.

c.       Respond when possible to comments on your posts.

d.      Consider doing a “Spotlight Post” once a week that is more robust than anything else you post in any given week. Make the post the same time every week so fans can expect it.

e.      http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-better-engage-facebook-fan-page-fans/

3.       Post Videos/Photos

a.       These help make great content.

4.       Giveaways

a.       An occasional giveaway for a free service, i.e. free massage, or free checkup.

5.       Exclusive Discounts for Fans

a.       Offer something that only a fan can get.

6.       Breaking News

a.       Make your Fan page an exclusive outlet for news about your company.

7.       Make Effective Use of Events

a.       Organize some type of event that fits your business.

b.      http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-tips-for-creating-buzz-with-facebook-events/

8.       Encourage Your Fans to Act and Interact

a.       http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/13-ways-to-move-your-facebook-fans-to-action/

9.       Invite Your Fans to Invite Their Friends

a.       Phrase it something like this, “If you’ve liked our (service/product) tell your friends about us by inviting them to become a fan.”  Sometimes all people need is a little nudge.

10.   New Content Over and Over Again

a.       Start from step one and do everything again!

We at GetFoundFirst.com hope that these top 10 tips on how to use a Facebook fan page help. Let us know if you have used other methods that have worked!

-Luke

On any given day someone will use Google search 14.6 times, that according to myself, my best guesstimate, and the number of times I actually use Google each day! Really, the number might be competely off but the fact is we use search engines often in the day. What happens when we use those search engines though? Do we analyze the results that come up? Do we read the abstracts of each result and then pick out which result we like best? The answer, not suprisingly is no! We trust the first results of what comes up more than anything else the search engine gives us.

A fairly old study from the University of Indiana tells us that we trust rank more than relevance. The abstract of the study states:

An eye tracking experiment revealed that college student users have substantial trust in Google's ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When the participants selected a link to follow from Google's result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position even if the abstracts themselves were less relevant. While the participants reacted to artificially reduced retrieval quality by greater scrutiny, they failed to achieve the same success rate.

Further, one search shows us the difficulty in getting to the second page of Google. Let's look at the word "Olympics", go ahead and Google and see if you see the same thing. Here are some facts we can draw from this one search:

• There are 14,100,00 results. I look at the first 3 or 4 when deciding what I want to click on.
• The first things I see are the "natural" and "sponsored" search results. 
• There are a total of 9 different websites that I could visit.
• Halfway through the page are "news" results.
• Then before I even get to the link to the second page, MORE "related searches" are given to me implying that I wasn't able to find what I wanted on the page so I should try another search!

We can conclude from all this how important it is to be on the FIRST PAGE of Google! Even if you have the best website, with the greatest offers, and services the world needs... if you're not showing up first no one will ever know. So if you are on the second page of Google or even further back it looks like it's time to invest in some SEO or some PPC! Contact me if you want to know the name of a great company ;)

-Luke

This morning I was in a Google Adwords webinar and the question was asked, "Why would I ever want to use anything but broad matched keywords in my campaign? Don't I want lots of traffic to my site?" The answer to his question is YES you want traffic, but NO you don't want non-relevant traffic.

She's happy... but not because of free dental work.

For example, let's look at the keyword "dentist". At Get Found First we manage several dental PPC campaigns, and this is always a word we include with a broad match. Many people will use the search term "dentist" when they want to see a dentist. However, many people are looking for free dental work so they search "free dentist" or "pro bono dentist". Our ads show up for both terms but our clients aren't really the dentists giving out the pro bono work... I've only heard of that for people living in poverty in 3rd world countries.

So what do we do? Use Negative Keywords! I found a good article from http://ppcblog.com/ with some great suggestions. Many of these we do already here, but some are new and very helpful:

Generally you should avoid these keywords:

• Diagram
• Meaning of
• Map of
• What is
• Free
• Bargain
• Sales
• Low Price

All these words are either information inclined or have a "want something for nothing" feel. These types of searchers do not convert.

Although this list GENERALLY should be avoided, that is not always the case. For example if you have an offer for something free, you may want to advertise for that free offer.

Negative keyword lists should always be included in accounts, especially when using broad match keywords. This type of campaign takes time and close monitoring. Frequent checking of search terms will be neccesary to be effective.

In conclusion a campaign with many broad terms will drive traffic to your site, but if you are looking for relevant traffic you will need to toss some negative keywords in there.

Happy PPC'ing!

-Luke

The most important pillar for PPC is the one I am going to discuss today. "The 8 Pillars of Success with Paid Search," by Josh Dreller, talks about 8 of them, and we all know that no roof can be held up by one pillar, but I am here to discuss the strongest pillar.

With all due respect to Josh, he kind of just threw this pillar somewhere in the middle of his post, and it deserves more attention than that.  First, here is what Josh said:

"Test. Optimize. Then test again. This is the absolute mantra of the industry. What we do is find trends and act on them. We don’t know if the new creative will work or the bidding experiment will be a big waste of money. However, it’s the only way we can fine-tune paid search accounts. Just make the best analysis as possible and test your hypothesis for long enough to know if it’s working but not so long to disrupt the entire project. Over time, you’ll have enough insights to keep your account humming."

Okay, he did use the word, MANTRA.   That does give it some much needed emphasis.  Here are a few thoughts on testing, optimizing, and testing again:

• ONLINE ADVERTISING IS SUBJECTIVE.  There is no one "right way" for all online ads.  This isn't calculus.  This is Google Adwords.  This is Yahoo! Sponsored Search.  This is Bing Ads (or whatever they call theirs). 
• TEST - Even when you don't need to.  So you have a killer CTR.  That is great, but is that the best you can do?  Are there more keywords that will have a higher conversion? Is there another landing page to try out?
• DON'T BE A WUSSY!  Take risks with broad match and try different bidding techniques.  If you don't try, you'll never know.
• DON'T FORGET YOUR EXPERIMENT. It is okay to try new things.  You need to all of the time, but don't forget the changes you make so that you know what to look for.   In my younger days as a PPC manager, I would make changes and then forget what I wanted to learn from my experiment.
• KEEP GOING. The game isn't over till the fat lady sings.  If you still are running online ad campaigns, you should never stop testing and optimizing.

To help you remember, repeat after me: Test - Test.  Optimize - Optimize. Test Again. Test Again.

If that wasn't enough to help you remember, maybe an example will help.  Have you ever read the instructions on a shampoo bottle?  I always thought it was fairly obvious what to do with shampoo, but the shampoo companies feel a need to tell you just in case you don't remember what to do with shampoo.  Have you thought what the instructions were yet?

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.  To help you remember your best PPC management practices, think shampoo instructions.  Rinse.  Lather. Repeat. 

Test. Optimize. Then test again.  WARNING: You should never try to apply shampoo to computers!  And avoid getting shampoo in your eyes! 

-Stu

As Adwords experts it is important for Get Found First to stay on top of changes in Google Adwords policy. A recent change that may affect your advertising pertains to pharmaceutical policy. Straight from the Google Adwords blog we learn:

Only VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to advertise
We've made the decision to further restrict the ads we accept for online pharmacy sites in the U.S. and Canada. Starting at the end of this month, Google AdWords will only accept ads from online pharmacies in the U.S. that are accredited by the National Association Boards of Pharmacy VIPPS program, and from online pharmacies in Canada that are accredited by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA.)

Pharmacies can only target ads within their country
These pharmacies may only target ads to users in the country in which they are accredited. This policy change does not affect our online pharmacy policy for countries outside the U.S. and Canada.

If you would like to read the full post, vist: http://adwords.blogspot.com/

We'll keep you up to date on any changes relating to Adwords!

-Luke

Tom Bennison wrote a great article on why companies should outsource their pay-per-click campaigns.  He gave eight reasons why and here they are, some direct quotes and some paraphrased using our name and company for the agency (For the full article and references, click here):

• Get Found First has unique relationships with search engines.  This allows us to get quicker resolutions and answers to questions as well as upload data quicker.
• We have advanced tools and methods that allow us to fully optimize your campaign and achieve a better return on investment.
• Pay-Per-Click is what we live and breath each and every day.  We also experiement with all the new tools and we are always up-to-date on the latest software.
• Get Found First's Pay-Per-Click specialists use the latest bid-management software to ensure all keyphrases are performing well at a low cost-per-click.
• On average agencies achieve better click-through-rates than marketers, with agencies at 3.4% and marketers at 2.8%.
• We provide comprehensive reporting and ROI analysis.
• Pay-Per-Click achieves higher conversion rates, for both Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click in particular, with agencies achieving an average of 6.8% and marketers achieving 5.4%.
• "Good Pay-Per-Click companies are well worth the cost as they will always make you more money than you would otherwise make."    -Jill Whalen, Search Marketing Columnist

The above reasons are spot-on as to why companies should outsource their Pay-Per-Click marketing campaigns.  However, this not only applies to businesses looking to advertise through PPC, but also for businesses that offer PPC as a complement to their main service.  This could include website developers, business consultants, Search Engine Optimization companies, etc.

Outsourcing to an experienced Pay-Per-Click management company not only saves you time, but will save you money and most likely make you money.  I really like how Tom points out the fact that we are here to get you a low cost-per-click.  This is the part that saves you money, then you will make money by letting us get you better conversion rates and click-through rates, after all, this is what we do each and every day.

-Mitchell

About 10 years ago I had a buddy who used Google for his searches... I found it interesting that he wasn't using Yahoo, AltaVista, or MSN. The Google page only had a place to search, no entertainment news, no email services, etc. I just didn't understand what it was that he liked and millions of people like today. What was it that he liked? Relevancy. When he searched for something he found exactly what he wanted in the first results. 

Relevant searches have put Google in the position they are in today, with both searches and paid advertisements. However, for paid advertisements Google must now balance the relevant ads and the ads for which people are willing to fork out the big bucks. How they do this is with a quality score.

The quality score tells us how relevant your ad is to what people are actually searching for. Are a flower shop advertising on the keyword flower? You will have a HIGH quality score. Are you a multi-level marketing company advertising on the keyword flower? You will have a LOW quality score. Google then rewards those with high quality scores with lower prices to be in the number one spot. Yes, the multi-level marketer can still get the number one spot, they will just have to pay more.

It pays to have a High Quality Score on Google Adwords!

So courtesy of the Google Help Center, here is the list of what makes up the Quality Score and things you should focus on in your Adwords campaigns:

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google; note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network — not on Google
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

Best of luck raising those quality scores!

-Luke

According to Barry Schwartz of clickz.com, Google is planning a "Google Store View". Currently in Google Maps you can see traffic, a normal map, a satelite map, a terrain map, and as you zoom in more you can even do a "street view". This allows you to see what the area looks like if you were actually on the street itself. Google accomplishes street view with a fleet of cars mounted with cameras. They simply drive around the streets with sophisticated camera equipment constantly taking pictures. If you're interested in seeing what it looks like here is an article with some up close pictures of the equipment.

So this brings us to the point of this post... Googles "Store View". Apparently now Google is planning on entering stores and taking pictures of everything going on inside. A store in NYC called "Oh Nuts" tipped Clickz to Googles plans and supposedly came in and took pictures. It makes me wonder if this is really plausible. Would the ROI on hundreds or thousands of photographers taking pictures be worth it? It will be interesting to see what Google comes up with... Stay Tuned!

-Luke

Looking for a good way to get your blog found by the hundreds of millions of internet users that are surfing around daily? Well look no further... Technorati.com is your answer. Technorati is a website that allows you to index your blog to make it easier for readers to find. It allows you to add your blog to several categories and put dozens of tags for your blog; making it much easier to find when someone searches for a blog.

If you're not a blog owner but want to read blogs, Technorati does that too! It allows you to search blog posts, or entire blogs for the content you are looking for. We are currently adding our blog to Technorati so look for us soon on there.

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(That's our Technorati claim token)

Today Google formally announced the launch of clickable phone numbers for its mobile ads. "Click to Call", as the phrase will officially be called, will be available only for high-end mobile devices or phones that allow full HTML browsing. It allows users to search on Google as they normally would and rather than have to click through to a webpage and find the number, the number is included in the ad copy.

What does this mean for businesses advertising on search? Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land expounds on it in his article. Here are a few of the points he makes:

• The presence of a phone number in the ad significantly improved ad performance. It gives a greater sense of credibility for the advertiser and then trust for the user. It also makes the ad stand out more.
• Calls can be tracked and show up  in reporting.
• Advertisers can make mobile specific campaigns with mobile targeting and ad copy. Very effective!
• The feature is now basically a pay per call system at bargain pay per click prices.

As the feature becomes increasingly popular we can expect to see prices increase as advertisers bid against each other. For now though, it is a steal for what businesses are paying. Just another exciting and innovative way that advertising is evolving.

Check back to the Get Found First blog for more news on any internet marketing related news!

As I read and watched the news results and videos for the hyped Apple iPad, I couldn't help but wonder what affect this might have on internet searches.  Does this mean that the iPad will increase search volume because it would be more accessible due to the iPad?  Will the larger display of the iPad (basically an enlarged version of an iPod Touch) allow people to see more sponsored links causing more people to click on those links?  Or, will is the iPad not quite what we hoped and will have no affect at all?

First, I think the iPad is a pretty neat device for the educational sector.  Universities could use the iPad for textbooks and possible subsidize it.  This might cause searches to increase because instead of using a textbook in the classroom, all the students would be on an iPad and have the ability to surf the web.  This also means that students would be reading and doing homework from an iPad, meaning they would be more tempted to connect to the internet because it would be right at their fingertips.  So, I could foresee the frequency of searches increasing if the education field began using the iPad.

I could also see that more people would click on sponsored links if they were using an iPad versus an iPod Touch.  I say this because of the larger screen.  I think this would make the links more visible to the user and as Scott Forstall, the Senior Vice President of iPhone software, said, "If you see something, you just reach out and tap it, you don't even have to think about it."  If you saw a sponsored link, maybe you'll just reach out and tap it without even thinking about it.

However, I could only foresee an increase in searches and the clicking of sponsored links if many people buy the iPad.  I do not know how many people will because the iPad won't fit in your pocket, but then again, Apple could not get Amazon's customers that are using the Kindle.  If Kindle users switched to the iPad, along with all the iPod Touch users, I could really see an increase in the amount of searches and the clicks of sponsored links.

All in all, these are just really my thoughts and speculations, but I could really see some of these things happening and the iPad adding power to the power of search engines.  Thus, it is becoming more and more relevant for businesses to advertise online and to really have a web presence in order to gain business and to succeed.

Is it any surprise that Google continues to attract the majority of searches on the web? According to Jack Marshall of Clickz.com over 2/3 of worldwide searches happened on Google sites(google.com, youtube.com, etc.).

What makes this fact even more interesting is that 46% more searches were conducted this December than last! In one year, the number of people searching on the web has increased almost by half. This fact emphasizes the role that online advertising is going to have in the future. Everyone is going online and searching for the things that they need! Even my Grandma is using the web now more and more... she's 80 something!

What does this spell for advertising in general? G.O. O.N.L.I.N.E. Marketers follow the people and where they are... and where are they now? On the net.

You can read the full article at http://www.clickz.com/3636277.

We posted last month about November's search results... Here is the latest:

Working closely with the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing, we often get asked the question: how much traffic does each of the search sites get? To answer this question we turn to the latest results courtesy of Experian Hitwise:

Percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine providers Domain Nov-09 Dec-09 Month-over-month percentage change www.google.com 71.57% 72.25% 1% search.yahoo.com 15.39% 14.83% -4% www.bing.com* 9.34% 8.92% -4% www.ask.com 2.65% 2.54% -4% Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Nov. 28, 2009, and Jan. 2, 2010) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Figures are for web searches only.  
*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Experian Hitwise

So what does this all mean? For one it shows us that Google has found a way to increase its share of searches despite recent intense competition from Bing. It also shows that Bing is going to have to figure a way to increase its popularity now that the honeymoon is over for searchers! 

Will anyone be able to dethrone Google from its search engine throne? Only time will tell.

Being in the internet marketing arena, there are a lot of blogs that I read every day.  I frequently read www.ClickZ.com.  Just today, I read an article from one of their bloggers that I haven't followed very closely, Augustine Fou.

Apparently, Augustine considers himself to be the God of internet marketing as he is the one that has put together the 10 commandments that we as marketers should follow.  Here they are, in his words:

1. "Thou shalt not target customers with messages they don't want.
2. Thou shalt be truthful.
3. Thou shalt respect your customers.
4. Thou shalt make it easy for people to find you.
5. Thou shalt be useful.
6. Thou shalt make it easy for people to pass along.
7. Thou shalt measure and optimize.
8. Thou shalt listen to customers.
9. Thou shalt remove any organizational barriers to speedy, collaborative innovation.
10. Thou shalt not do brand-ing. "

You can read his reasoning behind each commandment at http://www.clickz.com/3636027.

I don't know that I will ever follow rules that some guy comes up with about marketing, but I can obey Augustine on these 10 commandments.  Not only am I already obey for my exisiting clients, but I plan on continuing to do it for myself and future clients. 

Jack Marshall of Clickz.com answers a question in his recent blog post, Yahoo and Bing Lose U.S. Search Share in November, that I am asked all the time.

The Question: What percentage of online searches begin with Google versus Yahoo and Bing?

My answer, per Jack Marshall:

"Google accounted for almost 72 percent of all U.S. searches conducted during the four weeks ending November 28th 2009, according to data from Experian Hitwise.

The search giant grew its overall share of searches by one percentage point in that period, while its closest competitors in the space -- Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing -- both experienced a decline, dropping 5 percent and 2 percent respectively."

I love Jack's title because rather than focus on Google's triumph, he focuses on Yahoo and Bings loss.

Brent Turner brings up some great points about online advertising now generating more and more phone calls.  The old thought has always been, when someone is using the internet to research something, why would they turn to the phone to get answers?

Here are my two cents on quality score:

Penny #1: It's like your credit so watch it carefully.  If you let your credit score slip, it is very difficult and it takes a long time to improve.  With your bills, missing payments on one account will have a negative effect on your credit score. Quality score is similar in that it only takes one bad keyword to effect your entire campaign.

Just yesterday I spoke with a man that can't figure out how come he isn't seeing more sales from his website.  As soon as I read this article from Marketing Pilgrim, I thought of him because his website just isn't that easy to use.

More than half of Get Found First's clients are Local Business Owners.  They need to be optimized incredibly well for local search and we help them out!

We always stay abreast of what is new and exciting, and what may be disruptive to the success of our clients online presence.

Please read Kevin Lee's article and know that Get Found First can help you when and if Google decides to add more sponsored links to search results:

As Get Found First continues to grow, we are looking at offering to customers that qualify, a cost-per-lead pricing model where our clients only pay us when we help them get a new patient.

One of the worries that we have is that a lot of our potential clients won't have a clue what a new patient is worth to them.

With Get Found First Google AdWords Qualified Professional status, we are able to guarantee that all of our clients show up on the first page of Google within 24 hours of when they sign up for our services!

Yes.  I specialize in PPC management.  I help people "Get Found First" on Google through paid advertisements.  But, as you may have already seen on our site, we help website owners get on the first page of Google through natural, organic or free listings as well that show up on the left side of the page.

Recently, I read an article calling "SEO Best Practices" bunk.  Bunk means bogus; not the real deal, if you will.

I TOTALLY AGREE (but believe there are exceptions).

Jack Marshall of www.Clickz.com said the following in a post on Sept. 1st, 2009, "Not only does Google continue to dominate the global search market, it's also growing faster than any of its competitors, according to data from comScore.

What do people do when they are online?  Pew American Internet Study says that, "91% of all internet users say search is the number one activity they do online."

WOW!