It looks like we are almost back to the days of the Iframe – with a difference. Google is showing your entire page without sending you the traffic, and as @graywolf correctly pointed out – they have the balls to host Adwords down the side with a big fat arrow pointing at them (flip to next page) and should you miss the arrow – well then you click the conveniently positioned ad!

http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/view?q=view:popular#V5LKvYsCtI-iIM

Already there has been a lot of talk about this arrangement contravening adsense guidelines. I couldn’t specifically find the paragraph that says you may not draw attention to the ads – perhaps someone who knows the guidelines inside out can enlighten us, but what worries me more is the fact that visitors are no longer coming to your web page to read your content. So your analytics will suffer in terms of home page pageviews. At present fastflip has pre-defined categories and sites for well known news sites such as “The Washington Post” and “BBC News”, so there is no danger of the average web site falling prey to this.

The PPC buying cycle, like any other buying cycle includes the following phases: Research, shop and purchase.

The issue we need to identify is where to spend our money. That seems to be a pretty obvious one to answer, but is entirely dependent on our goals. We also need to look at whether or not it’s worthwhile investing in the other 2 phases (namely research and shop).

Let’s start with the research phase: Customers may be searching for general terms such as ‘used cars’. There are many searches for these general terms, but their CPC’s will most probably be extremely expensive. Is it worthwhile to spend your money on these terms or would it be more beneficial to forfeit this stage completely? This is a bit of a tricky one and I think it’s dependent on a variety of factors including your specific goals, your budget, and the product, etc.

There are many shady SEOs out there; we call these guys Snake Oil salesmen because they’re scammers who would sell their own grandmothers given half a chance.

These are the guys who offer “Guaranteed” first page listings in a ridiculously short period of time. They target small businesses that don’t have a huge budget and are easily sucked into the vortex of deception. Of course, it’s not only small businesses that get approached, but these are the guys who will feel the impact most.

Whatever means these SEOs use to achieve rankings and deliver promised traffic, they cannot be ethical. At the end of the day, many small business owners don’t know any better, all they really know about SEO is what these conmen have sold him. Promises of great traffic and impressive listings, and they are sold. These are the bandits that give us ethical SEOs a really bad name and they must be stopped.

Is your PPC campaign suffering from low click-through rates and high minimum bids? It might be time to start looking at your account structure. This would, of course, be after scrupulously sifting through your keyword list. We are assuming here that your keywords have been meticulously and accurately selected.

Many experts advise advertisers to keep their PPC account structure in line with their sitemaps, or website structures. This is a great idea if it is possible. It maintains an order that is easily lost when creating targeted AdGroups, but in many cases, it`s just not viable.

Your next step would be to look at your AdGroups. Are they all tightly themed or do you have one Campaign and one AdGroup with a long list of largely unrelated keywords? In an ideal situation, each keyword would have an exceptionally strong correlation with the rest of the keywords in the AdGroup and with the Ad Copy associated with that particular AdGroup. Every keyword would appear somewhere within the Ad Copy. The most profitable keywords should, in addition, appear in the heading text.

An anti-corporate advertising evangelist paid Columbia Records to run a PPC campaign on their home page. The ad text he chose stated: “Major Labels Are Obsolete/ R.I.P or learn and thrive/ Music. Tech. The New Music Business”, and displayed a link to their home site, which promotes a vague new music industry – presumably a communist one. The point was to promote relevant ad placement, while supporting those smaller web masters who are often forced to pay their bills using advertising that is not congruent with their sites` messages.

The “new music business” is one I`ve discussed at length with Moth and some sound engineers of my acquaintance who have some very interesting things to say about syndicating the ‘quality of the bona fide recording` and sorting through blurred music nomenclature. But what interests me more is the idea of using pay per click advertising to prove a point – in this case, that incompatible advertising is unacceptable.

Breaking news on the paid advertising scene is Google`s deal with Seth MacFarlane, creator of television gems like Family Guy and American Dad! Gone are the days of Saturday morning Nickelodeon cartoons, as MacFarlane plans to release his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy exclusively to the Internet in September, and it`s funded by Pay Per Click!

What interests us as a search engine marketing clan, is that Google plans to advertise Cavalcade via AdSense video clips, which will run on their content network. Thus, ads for the cartoons will appear on sites that already update with fresh content and partner with Google to display AdWords, while MacFarlane, his production company and the search engine take a share of the advertising fees. In some cases there will be a “preroll” of ads that viewers will have to watch prior to the clip, and in others there will be a “brought to you by” foreword, which will justify advertising expense.

Google have changed their Trademark Rules and are now allowing companies to bid on their competitor`s Trademarks. The associated ad copy cannot contain any reference to this Trademark name though.

Why are Google doing this? Are they enhancing the user experience? Opinions definitely seem to differ on this topic. Some think that Google is simply trying to make money by forcing companies to bid on their own Trademarks. Others argue that Google is increasing the user experience by offering them more choice.

Personally I think that companies like Tesco, who are refusing to bid on competitor keywords on ethical grounds, need to be congratulated.

If I had to enter the search term ‘Tesco` and see sponsored links for Sainsbury, Waitrose or Morrison’s appear ahead of Tesco, I would be immensely annoyed . Maybe it`s just me, but if I am searching for a particular Trademark term, that is what I`d like to find. Not one of their competitors.

I recently read of Google`s release of a search feature update of including video ads in search results. VP of search product and user experience, Marissa Mayer commented how Google used text ads to flow with the format of search, but now with universal results, video results are common and definitely attract the eyes of searchers, who by now have adopted the condition of “banner blindness” for text ads.

Marissa`s is quite a dubious conviction, as she didn`t go into depth about the technical challenges involved. Surely the fact that the search results have been text based up until “blended/universal search” suggests that the task of determining relevance in video or even images subject matter is a highly complicated issue? And this is without simply associating dozens of tags to a piece of such media.

So what is the best way to advertise and gain trust from new users looking to buy your product? Some might say it is paying for online ads and having your site show up for a certain product search. Others will go for viral marketing and rely on word of mouth to gain trust.

When a customer reads what previous users of a certain product had to say about it, their attention will be caught more quickly than just a basic advertisement. Searchengineguide explained a survey by Nielsen, in which consumer recommendations and opinions were two of the most trusted marketing techniques while search engine ads were third from the bottom with a mere 34% trust factor.

Why would a client choose you over your competition? Do you have extensive experience? Do you have a lengthy list of client references and proof of results?
Or, like the majority of firms in this industry today, do you have to convince them that you are a promising young firm that they should utilise?

Let the client realise that you know all the latest strategies and tactics to enhance their PPC Campaign, and don`t be afraid to let them know what they are doing wrong. Don`t give them the specifics of exactly how you are going to solve the problem or too much detail on exactly which parts need to be amended. Just give them enough to let them know that you know how to make their campaign more profitable.

Look at their current PPC strategy and make sure it is in line with their overall marketing goals. Find out enough information about them to ensure that you understand their business and what they wish to accomplish with regards to their PPC campaign.