Category: News & Trends

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AdWords Landing Page Load In Quality Score

The Google AdWords Quality Score just added another criteria for you to be concerned with. Read the full post at Google AdWords: Inside AdWords: Landing page load time now available on the Keyword Analysis Page

This is important for some AdWords sellers who love to have landing pages without end – you’ve seen them the wealth or get rich schemes with the landing page that acts like a website. Who knew you could scroll so much on one page :0)

You can view this important new information to check out your worst offending clients to help them make the changes now, by mousing over the spyglass to the right of the keywords on the ad group summary page, then click the more information and you will be able to see the landing page load information.

AdWords is working to try to provide the best experience for users and actually I appreciate it that very much as an account manager and advertiser both. But now we need to work on transparency on how much clicks cost, not guessing!

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Don’t Use Blogger Custom FTP

We used to implement Blogger custom FTP for clients, but now are no longer recommending its use. Blogger custom FTP is where your blogger account is set up to allow your blog posts to be archived back on your own domain server using FTP for search engine benefits.

The problem with Blogger custom FTP is that it is easily crashed, sometimes can take hours for the FTP part to send the posts to your server, and if you have a custom template can be fraught with problems.

If you want the search engine benefits that a blog affords, I strongly recommend that you use WordPress back on your own server. Upload and posting time is very snappy and you won’t end up at the mercy of Blogger when they do updates. We migrated several customers several months ago when Blogger had a reported bug for custom FTP clients as it took two days to publish blogs.

Another issue with Blogger custom FTP is label bloat. If you end of with many labels on your blog, get ready to spend hours deleting them as your publishing time will move to hours from seconds. The best option if you simply cannot use WordPress is to use Blogspot with a custom domain setting. We have found out that you really do not take a hit with the search engines when you are not using custom FTP blogging.

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The Value of A Google AdWords Account Manager – Preventing Fraud

I had a client on let me know on Sunday night that they would be bringing their Google AdWords account management in-house. I disabled my access to their account Monday morning. On Wednesday, they let me know that they could not log into their account.

It appears that in three days their account was hijacked and someone installed two campaigns on their account and ran up a bill of over $9,956.00 in clicks. Some of the clicks were over $28 each. I contacted Google for them today as soon as I was told they could not login and got Google working on a click fraud and account hijack issue. I reported to the client to advise his credit card company to put a fraud alert on his account. I can still not get into their AdWords account, but have access to Google Analytics and can see that new campaigns were set up and nearly $10,000 spent in just two or three days.

I have to say as I am on my Google AdWords accounts daily through My Client Center, that it would probably not have happened on my watch!

This is just one of the values of an account manager, identifying strange behavior that could be fraudulent, finding new campaigns or keywords, and catching a spike in activity. If you are not monitoring your Google AdWords account on a regular basis, you really should start. I never thought that this would ever happen to anyone I knew but yet here it is. Fraud happens!

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Yahoo Sponsored Search Still a Great Value

Now that the Yahoo Microsoft merger is kaput, it is time to look forward to the future of Yahoo, and I have to say that I think that it is bright.

Yahoo Sponsored Search is a good application, delivers clicks and conversions and is a great place for some to start out with a pay per click campaign. With prices lower than Google AdWords, a very user friendly interface, and the ability to see what top bids are for your keywords, Yahoo Sponsored Search is a great value.

The reality is however that you will get one half the clicks and one half the conversions that you will on Google AdWords, but for some this is satisfactory and a great place to start especially if you are managing your own pay per click campaign.

I for one and still expecting great things for Yahoo and know that this merger threat will help to strengthen them as they move forward. So Yahoo, it’s time to get back to business!