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February Trends

I thought that I would write today about February’s business. I have found that for most businesses that we work with, February was very flat. Not only were results depressed in Google AdWords, but sales and traffic for many customers were lacking for February.

I have had a number of clients express concern about February and if we had not seen the broader trend, I may have been concerned, but February just seems to have been a poor month for nearly everyone.

Here’s to hoping that March will be better!

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March’s Newsletter is Out

I’ve just posted our March newsletter. In this issue I review Adobe’s Acrobat Connect and Microsoft’s SyncToy. Additionally I’ve made a handy updated keyboard shortcut that you can print out and slide under your keyboard.

I think that you’ll find the reviews interesting and helpful.

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Search Engine Optimization

I have just finished search engine optimizing a website that had not received good search engine placement. You can click our blog post title and visit the site. It is called the Center For Permanent Cosmetics.

Not only did we totally optimize the site, but reworked the content, added images, upgraded services, and in general gave it the polish that it needed. I wish that I could show you the before and after to really illustrate that great focused content can really upgrade a website to a new level.

One thing that all webmasters, newbies, and just educated site owners can take away from this post is that it is very difficult to get search engine placement if your only form of navigation is encapsulated in JavaScript. If you love having a drop down menu, just make sure to include text based navigation that the search engines can read and follow to spider your full website. Search engines will not read the links that you have embedded in JavaScript and so you may end up with just your home page being indexed as this site did. When you have more to offer than one page of content, make sure that you are helping the search engines by using spider friendly code, links, and techniques for improved search placement.

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Google AdWords Quality Score

If you don’t check your Google AdWords account frequently, here is a good reason to take a look. Google turned on a new feature in the AdWords control panel. Now you can see your quality score, well somewhat. At least you know from Google’s viewpoint whether it is GREAT, OK, or POOR. If it is poor, rest assured that it will most likely end up being disabled for search in the next several weeks.

Now is a good time to go in and to review your list, take action to drop keywords, create new break out ad groups that are more targeted, and revise your landing page. Google is aggressively disabling the keywords that it considers poor or assigning them a high CPC to show in search.

If you looked on Friday, you should take a look today as on Friday Google has announced that they had a big glitch and that many words that were not to have been disabled showed as disabled. They have announced that it had nothing to do with the Quality Score that was rolled out Friday, but sure seems like a very funny coincidence. I just about had a cow on Friday when I looked at my accounts, but the picture is much rosier today.