During 2011, the world experienced first-hand just how big a role social media can play in influencing the future of a nation – we witnessed this in the Egyptian revolution and later in the Libyan civil war. Considering most of us will see nothing more rebellious on our social media profiles than the odd Facebook photobomb or passive-aggressive tweet (I’m looking at you, former high school classmates), the revelation may have come as quite a shock; it’s strange to think the platform that made nationwide civil resistance possible is the same platform that brought us Farmville and other insipid online pastimes. Still, the evidence is impossible to ignore, and while some may find it inspiring, the potential of social media to be a revolutionary tool has made plenty of authorities decidedly uneasy.

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I constantly stumble across people debating the benefits of SEO versus the benefits of an effective PPC campaign. Many PPC agencies will slag off SEO agencies and vice-versa, but the truth is that each of these strategies are good in the their own right and should almost not even be compared to one another because they are effectively different things; the difference being that organic SEO traffic is technically free and PPC traffic is well, pay per click.

I have decided to do a 3 part blog focusing on the Benefits of SEO, the Benefits of PPC and the Benefit of using both in cahoots with one another in order to form a well balanced, all-round online marketing strategy.

Today’s post takes a look at the benefits of SEO when compared to PPC. Next week we will take a look at PPC and conclude the week after that. I hope you’ll find it as interesting to read as I have found it interesting to write.

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It is often said in medical circles that prevention is better than cure – advice that the folks at Google Inc. have apparently taken to heart, preventing a lengthy legal wrangle by making one of the largest legal settlements ever seen in the US. Google has agreed to pay $500 million to settle claims that the company allowed Canadian pharmacies to place online advertisements targeting US consumers.

US law (specifically the Controlled Substances Act) forbids the importation of prescription drugs from pharmacies beyond the country’s borders, and the Department of Justice reports that the pharmaceutical AdWords campaigns led to illegal shipments of medication from Canada to US customers. Google’s payment of $500 million (the equivalent of £305 million) is a reflection of the revenue generated by the search giant and the pharmacies as a result of the AdWords advertisements. According to the Justice Department, Google was aware of the legal restrictions, and paying the penalty for “improper advertising practices” will allow the company to avoid criminal charges. This follows a 2-year investigation into the matter.

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There is an ongoing war for social media dominance and even when social media platforms aren’t in the same race, the struggle continues on the grounds of integrating features between these platforms. Google is putting all of its efforts into obtaining a piece of the social media money maker and so it recently launched Google Plus. This of course after its previous unsuccessful attempts with Wave and Buzz and also, although not a social platform, Realtime search. However, resurrection seems to be in the order of the day with the announcement of the re-launch of Realtime search results.

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If you are creating or updating web pages then you want Google to index your URLs as quickly as possible. While many of us publish our pages and then check anxiously whether or not they have been indexed, a faster way to submit URLs has been brought under the spotlight. By using Webmaster Tools you can fetch a URL as a Googlebot and then, if the fetch is successful, you will have the option to submit the URL to be indexed. After you submit the URL to Google it should be crawled within a day and will be considered for inclusion in the index.

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Time and time again, the online community has watched Google try and fail to break into the world of social media. Buzz turned out to be more of a drone, Wave crashed seriously short of the social shore and Orkut just couldn’t cut it on the international networking stage. Give the folks at Google their due though, they never gave up – and with the advent of Google Plus, it seems they may have finally got it right.

The Google Plus concept has turned out to be wildly popular; in fact, within a mere 2 weeks of its launch, the service reached 10 million users, and a week later, there were 20 million Googlers looking to join the Circles, Hangouts and Huddles of Google Plus.

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The Google AdWords blog recently announced the release of call extensions; a function has been in beta testing since last year. An overwhelming five million calls were made during this time, averaging a duration of six minutes, which convinced those at Google that it is a worthwhile extension. We expect to see many a PPC agency using this feature over the next couple of months.

The call extension function is available on AdWords ads featured on high-end mobile devices, provided that you have set your campaign to opt into Mobile devices with full internet browsers, located under the Devices tab. Should you also activate call metrics (currently only available in Canada and the US) then the call extensions will be visible on both desktop and high-end mobile devices.

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The latest development from Google is melting hearts as it encourages Internet users to answer the question: What Do You Love?

Google’s latest offering takes the form of a universal, amalgamated search tool titled What Do You Love? Visitors to the www.wdyl.com site type in one of their favourite interests, and WDYL returns several streams of content related to the topic. The content is drawn from Google’s entire spectrum of search tools, including Google Image Search, Google Maps, Google News, Google Trends, Google Books and YouTube. In this way, users are presented with a comprehensive, all-encompassing results page presenting them with a variety of ways to explore their favourite topics further online.

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