Anyway the recent rumour seems to have caused some mixed feeling amongst webmasters as they feel Ebay has been pushing up bid prices but not improving their ad relevancy. We have all come across some terrible and irrelevant ads from Ebay in our time. The one below was one of my favourites.

There will be some interesting times ahead for people in the world of Adwords.

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This is particularly interesting as we are currently trying out a few ideas with RSS feeds and organic search. Webmasters are also excited by development as new revenue generating opportunities have opened up. Well-formed feeds with high subscription rates for example could cash in nicely on the new scheme.

The Adsense for RSS feeds is of course not a particularly new idea as Google have been developing the product since May 2005. Early testing showed promising results so Google decided to release the product to everyone. A screenshot showing the creation process of an Advert for feeds can be seen below.

You will also be pleased to hear that Google has been working hard on making it easy for publishers with Feedburner accounts to incorporate ads into their published feeds.

The post Adsense Enabled In Feeds appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Firemen on the job

The full Castlefield Fire Photoset is here.

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But at the risk of biting the hand that feeds me, I have some “opportunities for improvement” for Google.

The revision for the exam took a fair while, not particularly due to how complex the topic was, but more for the fact that it was dryer than a fossil… Whoever wrote the notes clearly got to the end of writing it and lost the will to live before he/she had chance to proof read before publishing.

The practice exam was littered with errors… there are a couple of things wrong with this for example:

Firstly, this exact same question was repeated twice on the same page, secondly the answer is repeated twice and the first instance is marked wrong, thirdly and most worryingly, the supposed answer is actually incorrect – it’s out of date!

And much to my joy I was faced with the following message a few times :

And I really do mean “joy” because it meant there was less to sift through before getting on with my life!

The AdWords exam focusses on a lot of the account settings, how to navigate through the site and an overview of the tools available. There were some tips on how to optimize campaigns, this was quite useful, but I feel it was a fundamental part of being an AdWords expert, and was in no where near enough detail as it should have been. As with most training, you learn more after the course when you’re actually doing it for real.

I also think it’s a weird process – you can only qualify to do the exam after you’ve been actually doing it for some time, and at a certain spending level. This is strange, because the exam covers the fundamentals – from setting up and using the tools to writing good ad copy. Surely this would be more useful before you start spending your advertising budget?!

It’s certainly a great marketing ploy from Google, when you advertise your capabilities as a qualified AdWords professional, you’re also advertising Google AdWords. You also become more familiar with the brand, and are likely to use the tool more and recommend it to more clients.

In summary, although it’s highly flawed I’m glad I did it; there were some things that the AdWords tools could do that I didn’t know about, and it refreshed my memory of the best practices of setting up campaigns and optimizing adverts; and I get to put the badge on my business cards! But Google needs to update the revision notes, practice exam and test. And I can’t help thinking that a podcast revision session would be quite handy…

The post Google Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Professional appeared first on PushON Ltd.

However, it’s comforting to see that their Ad Text Writer demonstrates that not everything in this shiny new digital world can be automated.

Here are some of the suggested PPC adverts their tool suggested for one of our clients; ContractStore, which is an E-Commerce site dedicated to Legal Documents and Contract Templates.

How’s this for a compelling advert:

“Important Notice – This notice applies to all materials and information available on this website”. It just begs to be clicked on!

Clearly human intervention is needed when creating adverts.

When copywriting for PPC Adverts you should keep the following in mind:

• Use your main keywords within your advert text – and preferably in the heading
• Keep to the guidelines specified by your publisher for punctuation, character limit & grammar (guidelines are similar but not exactly the same for Google PPC, MSN/Live Search, Yahoo Search Marketing, Miva, etc)
• Deep link to the specific page covering the topic your bidding on keywords for; it’s usually something other than the homepage
• Be clear about what you are offering – vague adverts will generate limited or irrelevant traffic – which is a waste of your money
• Use a good call to action – an example for this client might be “Download Contract Templates Now!”
• Test multiple advert variations using different calls to actions, positioning, and test how adding product pricing affects your results
• See what your competitors are doing, and work out how to stand out from the crowd

I like some of the Microsoft tools, but I would only use then for inspiration – a starting point that can be edited and developed… or just to laugh at them a little bit!

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So we have the contradiction of whether relevance rules the roost or revenue reigns.

I should have been a poet.

It strikes me that Google is getting quite obviously huge and taking up contradictory positions. The beauty of Google has always been that it was clean in every way. Is this confusion the first indication of a chinck that may be exploited by the growing competition?

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