Google Shares 6 Ways to Maximize Your AdWords Investment
Google says AdWords’ real-time targeting and reporting are ideal for finding an efficient way to reach customers in the economic downturn. The company has detailed six tactics for maximizing your AdWords investment.
1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.
"Consumers care about prices more than ever, especially on day-to-day purchases," says Google. "When someone searches on a particular product, you know they’re interested; by using your ad to tell them that you’ve got the highest quality and the best price, you’re more likely to earn their click."
2. Use value-related keywords.
People are constantly looking for bargains. Google suggests using keywords that cater to this mentality. The company recommends using the AdWords Search-based keyword tool and Search Query Performance report to find higher-performing keywords that people are actually searching.
3. Make sure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.
"Ads perform best when their ad text reflects the ad group’s keywords; this makes ads more relevant to their intended audience," says Google. "Make sure that both the text and the keywords in each ad group focus on a specific topic or product."
4. Don’t waste money on irrelevant clicks.
Google suggests using negative keywords to filter out traffic from people looking for things that you don’t offer. They use an example that if you sell peanut butter, you might want to use "allergy" as a negative keyword.
5. Make it easy for customers to buy.
This tactic is all bout the landing page. Put some thought into your landing page, because people don’t want to hunt around trying to find where they need to go to buy the item they clicked on the ad to buy in the first place. Why make it hard? It should be as easy a process as possible.
6. Focus your money on your high-performers.
Google has a free conversion tracking tool that will let you see what keywords and ads are performing best. It is wise to focus your time and resources on the ones you are getting the most value out of.
That’s the six tactics Google provides for maximizing you AdWords investment. Performance is more important than ever when there is not as much money to play around with. If you’re using PPC as an advertising method, focus on eliminating the waste of money by getting the most you can out of your campaigns. Google provides more resources for each of these tactics here.
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|A Twitter App Just for the World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker is now underway, and Twitter is pointing out a Twitter app called PokerRoad Nation, which aggregates tweets from professional players.
With PokerRoad Nation, users can filter the tweets to see updates from specific WSOP players or from specific events. There are over 50 events, and thousands of players (pros and amateurs).
"When you’re trying to follow an event like a poker tournament where thousands of people might be playing at hundreds of tables, a tool like this let’s you see what’s going on through the players’ eyes," says Jason Goldman on the Twitter Blog. "It’s a whole new way of seeing the game."
PokerRoad Nation was created by poker professional Joe Sebok, who is also an avid Twitter user. Along with poker pro Barry Greenstein, Sebok also runs PokerRoad.com, which features a blog, audio, and video content.
Looking at PokerRoad Nation, I can’t help but be reminded of when poker superstar Phil (Poker Brat) Hellmuth was drunk tweeting a while back. I wonder how much drunken tweeting we’ll see throughout this WSOP.
Integration - The Key to Google as a Social Network
Google has or is working on pretty much all of the main ingredients for a really great social network. The problem (in my opinion) is that they are scattered and not integrated as well as they could be. Do you particiapte in any of Google’s social projects? Tell us which ones.
Gmail
A while back when Gmail turned five years old, Google said that the coming five years would see more radical changes for Gmail than ever. Given the social nature of the web today, changes for the more social are the next logical step(s). Here are some rather social things (as I discussed here) that you can already do with Gmail.
    - send messages to friends
    - keep conversations with multiple friends together
    - embed videos/rich media in emails/chat messages
    - send messages to people beyond the Gmail wall
    - use search operators to bring up all photos /other media from any past messages
    - Account holders have profile pages with their picture
    - Creating a Google account essentially gives you an account to a much broader range of products in Google itself that allow for sharing things with friends (such as Docs, Reader, and Bookmarks)
Google Wave
Google Wave is a little confusing at first glance, but Jordan Golson at GigaOm sums it up well as a combination of email, instant messaging, and a real-time wiki. MarketingShift calls it the closest thing Google has to Facebook. Google calls it "a personal communication and collaboration tool" with the current incarnation being a "very early form."
This thing was made by the creators of Google Maps. It’s going to be interesting to see where it goes. It has received a lukewarm response thus far, but we’ll see what happens.
Google Friend Connect
Google Friend Conect is Google’s way of connecting users through other sites that aren’t owned by Google. It comes equipped with gadgets such as a Q&A gadget, and an event gadget that lets you coordinate events with friends, something you can do with Google Calendar also, by the way.
Web Elements - Conversation Element
Besides announcing Google Wave at the Google Developer Conference this Week, the company also announced Web Elements, which we discussed here. The Google Social Web Blog looks at one element in particular - the conversation element, which is powered by Google Friend Connect. It lets your visitors post comments restricted to just your site or participate in a global conversation based on topic of interest. That is interesting. Google explains:
A global conversation takes place on several web sites simultaneously and will have a "Global conversation" label underneath the title. When visitors post to a global conversation on a specific topic, such as mandolins (as shown in the image below), the post not only shows up on the site where they posted it, but it also on any site that chooses to embed a Conversation element on mandolins, now or in the future. So now your visitors can talk about mandolins with others interested in the same topic, no matter what site they’re on.
Google Reader
Google Reader, which of course allows users to subscribe to blogs and content sites by way or RSS feeds, has gotten a lot more social this year. They added a commenting feature, and a "friends and trends" feature.
More recently, they have pointed out the ability to create and share custom feed bundles with friends. This is an intersting way to share content.
YouTube
YouTube is often thought of as a video site, and it happens to also be the 2nd largest search engine. I think people often forget that it’s also a social network. Google continues to add social elements to this as well. For one, they’ve been testing realtime updates. They are also finally tying YouTube accounts to Google accounts. Makes sense doesn’t it?
Real Time Search
Google Co-founder Larry Page made it pretty clear that we’re going be seeing some more in the way of real-time search coming from Google. Well, that’s one of (not the only one, granted) the big appeals to Twitter. We don’t know what is going to come of this yet as far as Google’s concerned, but you can expect something.
Photo via Loic Le Meur
iGoogle and the Google Profile
I think these two elements are the real keys to integration of social activity through Google. If Google and users want to tie all of Google’s social elements together, I think it’s going to be through their iGoogle page and through their Google Profile. One appealing thing about both of these, is that neither one has to be limited to only Google’s social elements.
Google has a tremendous advantage with iGoogle, because it is designed to be the home page, and no doubt many people (myself included) use it as the home page in their browser (not just for Google).
Everytime I open a browser window, i start from my iGoogle page. And why not? It’s got access to my email, chat, Twitter, Facebook, task list, and everything else I want, all on a customizable basis thanks to Google’s directory of gadgets that can be added to preference - and that directory keeps growing. Most of Google’s products have gadgets. If you want to bring together your social Google experience to one home base, this is the most likely place that is going to happen.
Then of course, you have the Google Profile, the page that really ties your Google experience together from the backend. This is what you log in to every time you use a Google service, regardless of which you actually log in from (there may be exceptions). You can add any links to this page that you want (and I suspect that there will be a lot more customization options available in the future). Recently
Google made some big moves with the profile. For one, you can now create a vanity URL with it, based on your Google account name. Second, they started adding profiles right into regular Google searches for names. Considering that Google is the largest search engine in the world by a very large margin, that’s going to give those profiles some pretty significant exposure.
Advertising and Revenue Models
Revenue models and social networks don’t always go hand in hand. Some of course have yet to really even launch a viable one, but that has not been a problem for Google. Google has one of the best revenue models on the web (though there has certainly been a lot of talk that there is more to be done with YouTube), but Google has no problem with putting AdWords ads anywhere it feels like. Consider their foray into "interest-based" advertising, and you have to wonder if they’d ever consider displaying ads on iGoogle…or the profile. iGoogle being the starting point for the user (in many cases), and the profile being outsiders’ gateway to finding friends.
Conclusion
Basically, my point to all of this (and has been for some time) is that Google is building a social network right under us. Many Google users will find themselves social network users without even realizing it, and Google will have to be included in the conversation of top social networks. And Google is a beast to compete with, I’m sure others will tell you. Google has not had great success with every product  it launches, but if the company can find the right way to integrate everything, it’s going to be quite a force (or even more so than it already is).
 
What are your thought on Google as a social network? We would love to hear them.
Are You Optimizing Your Social Media Profile?
Questions are frequently asked with regards to how social media and search engine rankings can be used together. In fact, I wrote an article on this subject a while back, in which I asked a few search engine marketing experts their thoughts about where social media fits into the SEO equation.
The general consensus seemed to be that social media is a good channel for people to discover your content and link to it on their blogs and sites. But what about just getting your Twitter page ranked on Google? Some think that social media profiles could take the place of corporate websites. If this is the case, you would certainly want your profile to rank well.
An article from Source Square looks specifically at SEO for the Twitter page. The author of this article details the five steps outlined here:
1. Use search engine-friendly keywords in your Twitter name.
2. Use reader-friendly keywords in your Twitter name.
3. Use keywords in your "more info" URL
4. Flood your one line bio with keywords (while maintaining natural readability)
5. Tweet quality contents, and build lots of links
In a recent interview with WebProNews, Dana Todd of Newsforce, who is a board member of SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), talked about how social media frequently accounts for up to half of the top ten search results on Google for any given query. Perhaps more attention should be paid to the optimization of social media profiles.
It stands to reason that similar tactics to those listed above could be applied to Facebook pages as well (or other social networks). It’s all basically just good old fashioned SEO practice. Keywords, quality content, and links. You probably think about this for your website, but it is often overlooked on social media profiles.
Four People Who Don’t Get “The Internet”
It’s interesting how “the Internet” has come to be a singularly collective, authoritative entity. On a radio morning show today, a woman called in and said, regarding concrete foundations, “the Internet said you needed footers.”
“The Internet” said it. It seems many people regard “the Internet” the way they regard “the paper,” as the go-to, authoritative information source, without a thought of the individual sources making it up. It’s as though “the Internet” speaks with one voice and all descriptors used apply to all parts of it rather than a discordant symphony of infinite voices singing the impossibility of one size fitting all.
Some prominent people—well, at least they are given prominent pulpits—have been really trashing “the Internet” lately, but don’t seem to really get “the Internet.” The first one on the list disappointed me the most.
Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader
I respect what Ralph Nader has to say usually; I put him up there with Ron Paul as one of two guys who came the closest in the last century to being very nearly mostly right about things. Nader recently addressed a group of Washington, DC college students and implied they were too obsessed with “the Internet,” that “the Internet didn’t do a good job of motivating action,” and instead does a good job of massively trivializing communication to no truly productive end.
Guilt is a tried and true motivator, and Nader laid it thick onto the college students, asking them how the Internet generation would explain to its grandchildren what they did to prevent the ills of the future world:
"You know. The world is melting down. They’re nine years old. They’re sitting on your lap. They’ve just become aware of things that are wrong in the world: starvation, poverty, whatever. And they ask you, what were you doing when all this was happening: Grandma? Grandpa? That you were too busy updating your profile on Facebook?"
I almost thought he was right since I have curmudgeonly tendencies. Internet campaigns are most effective at saving cancelled TV shows. But “the Internet” sort of did get Barack Obama elected, too. It seems like Nader is bemoaning what all elders have bemoaned forever: the yet unrealized potential of the youth. He could just be coming down with a case of oldmanitis, growing impatient with the new batch of lazy will-be activists.
Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin
Besides what would be, if allegations were accurate, a blatant assault on freedom of speech and fair use, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her Attorney General’s legal threats to a Texas DJ show they don’t really understand “the Internet” either. Shoe Latif, operator of crackho.com received a cease and desist letter from the State of Alaska alleging violation of Alaskan law by using the state’s official seal on the site.
During the election, Latif says she actually just used a simple redirect to drive crackho.com traffic to Palin’s website, and never hosted any of Palin’s content, official seal included, on her servers. What came up was more like framing, kind of like what Google does with Google Images. In essence, visitors were rickrolled, which so far isn’t illegal.
Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton

Michael Lynton
Before becoming CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Michael Lynton served as CEO of AOL Europe and president of AOL International. So it’s naturally confusing to hear him say something like this: “I am a guy who hasn’t seen any good come out of the Internet.”
Of course, Lynton is Sony’s boy now, and he gets paid a lot of money to deride the very medium upon which he built his success. His perspective now is that “the Internet” is bad for the entertainment industry—worse, apparently, than twice-baked movies, bad acting, bad scripts, formulaic, lowest-common-denominator drivel the industry floods TV, radio, magazines, theaters, video stores, news programming, and, yes, iTunes, with.
But perhaps richer than the line about nothing good coming out of the Internet is the next one about copyright law. Lynton said Washington needed new rules to protect copyrighted material rather than expanding broadband further: “Somebody has got to realize that we need some rules.”
Somebody like the cast and crew of the former US Senate, who unanimously passed sweeping, tougher copyright legislation, upping fines and penalties last year? Somebody like the Congresspersons and White House officials making international copyright treaties matters of national security so they can hide from the public and “the Internet?” Somebody like the five RIAA lawyers currently implanted in the Department of Justice?
Somebody like those guys, Lynton? How about somebody who thinks a teenager downloading songs (or his parents) shouldn’t face $150,000 fines every time he does it?
Bryan Appleyard

Bryan Appleyard
Writing for Britain’s TimesOnline, erm, an Internet site, Bryan Appleyard reduces Web 2.0 to something created and popularized by California cultists, whose creation has led to Appleyard coining a phrase sounding as close to buggery as he could muster:
“Bloggery is forming itself into big, institutionalised aggregators such as The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, and remains utterly parasitic on the mainstream media it affects to despise. Even Twitter is already coming to be dominated by conventional, non-web-based celebrity — Oprah Winfrey in the US and Stephen Fry over here.”
Yes, “bloggery” does sound like a filthy, depraved habit. It’s one of those words requiring the speaker to turn up his nose a bit at the stench of it. The rest of the piece reads like a diatribe delivered over crumpets in a newspaper mogul’s—what would they have?—sitting room.
The Internet
The problem is not “the Internet.” It’s not the fragmentation and trivialization of communication. It’s not the rampant freedom of speech and fair use liberties. It’s not the free promotion fans offer entertainment companies. It’s not a few innovators having world-changing influence.
The problem, for the establishment, isn’t any of that. It’s that the world is changing, at all. Entrenched power and money structures need predictability and control if they are to continue to succeed. And that makes the Internet a problem for them, not for the rest of us. “The Internet” carries the only current populous hope of the people and it’s driving the powers that be absolutely crazy, save for Nader, who just thinks it’s pointless.
It isn’t lack of control that’s the problem, nor populism, nor cultists, nor fragmentation. It’s the ever-increasing desire of the few to control what has become the masses’ medium of choice. Governments, ISPs, Entertainment, Newspapers, and Others want this new Wild West reformed into something orderly, something controlled, something (immensely) profitable. The desire to lump "the Internet" under one easily understood label is only very nearly as strong.
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|Do You know how #FollowFriday started?
Today is Friday, the most famed day of the week. Why you ask? It’s the end of the workweek and the beginning of the weekend (for some). But, for the Twitterverse, it’s a day where you could see your follower count substantially climb as a result of a grassroots hashtag simply called #followfriday.
Sure, Follow Friday has been around for a few months (a little over four) but do you really know anything about it? Who started it? How it got started? Why does it work?
| What are your feelings on #Follow Friday? Do you participate or do you despise it? Let us know |
Well, Follow Friday was born in a dirt-floored log cabin in the hills of Tennessee… wait that isn’t right. Let’s try that again. Follow Friday began with one simple tweet back in January ’09 from Micah Baldwin, it simply said:
Its intent was simple, recommend people you follow to people who follow you. That’s it, pretty cut and dry isn’t it?
You may notice that the original Follow Friday tweet is missing something, a very key element. That’s right, the first Follow Friday tweet didn’t feature the famed hashtag. Mykl Roventine suggested this a short time later.
Micah Baldwin recounts his first day of Follow Friday on his site…
And, then I headed into the office and my first meeting of the day.
When I got back to my office, and finally fired up my machine, #followfriday tweets were flying all over twitter. It was wild.
Near the end of the day, almost every half second, a tweet went out with the hashtag #followfriday.
 
You might be asking yourself, why does Follow Friday work? Well, the main thing that helps make Follow Friday a success is… it’s easy. It takes very little effort to type out a few friends Twitter handles and slap a #followfriday hashtag on it.
But, probably the main reason it works is, people want followers. It’s about ROI (you invest time suggesting someone, they’ll invest their time suggesting you)… thus completing the Follow Friday circle of life.
Sure, Follow Friday is trendy now… but six months from now it could be just another Internet fad causality. It’s hard to say for sure, but with Twitter growing by the minute and users wanting to increase their follower count, I’d say you could expect to see #FollowFriday stick around awhile.



























