LinkedIn seems like the perfect platform for business-to-business advertising. You’ve got a captive market, you can target specific industries with specific offers, you can decide which level of executive will see your ad. It’s an ideal scenario for us search marketers. At least in theory.

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There are many misconceptions regarding Google AdWords – below are the worst offenders. “The Display Network Doesn’t Work” The display network (renamed from the content network) is a large collection of websites where Adwords ads can appear. These ads (text, video or image) are automatically placed based on themes in your keyword lists but can also be placed manually. The misconception here is that the display network produces low-quality traffic that has no intention to buy. This is simply not true; the display network reaches over 70% of unique internet users around the world and has the advantage...

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  If you’re new to PPC advertising then you may be finding it difficult to determine the size of your budget. There are no easy answers for setting up an initial budget; however, there are certain things you should consider before starting.

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First impressions do matter, especially when potential customers are visiting your website. Your prospective customers will start making assumptions about your organization at the first glance of your website. If your website has an unattractive user interface or poor navigation, potential customers will immediately leave your website in search of something better. So what factors do prospective customers evaluate on your website to decide whether or not it’s worth their time? Is all the content on your website relevant to your business? Do you think it’s time for a website redesign?

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I had the pleasure of attending SMX Advanced, the premier Search Marketing Expo, earlier this month. SMX Advanced is recognized as being the go-to event of the year for Search Engine Marketers and all the big names in the industry are in attendance. Let's take a look some of the information that was put forward that business software resellers can use in their inbound marketing strategies.

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  Mobile devices target a more specific audience than that of the traditional web.  These days the majority of executives use smartphones and companies are still spending on mobility and productivity tools for small to medium-sized businesses. According to a Nielsen report in 2009 more than half of the smartphones on the market today are used for business.  Apple recently announced selling 50 Million iPhones/iPods and Google has announced they are making 100,000 activations per month of new devices.  With only those two statistics combined you have a HUGE emerging market of business...

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If you haven't heard about the Open Graph announcement yesterday, it's a huge game changer in the online marketing/advertising/privacy space. Facebook (and Microsoft) now have the ability to track people as they visit all sorts of 3rd party sites through the web and tie it back to your demographic details/contact details within Facebook and other websites. What does Facebook's Open Graph mean for businesses who use Pay-Per-Click advertising?

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To supplement our discussion at Directions 2009 we've posted some additional insight into the most common mistakes Partners make in regards to Google AdWords.

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Recently an old colleague of mine sent an email to my Gmail account. As you may or may not know, Gmail shows ads from Adwords PPC advertisers.  "Relevant" ads are generally displayed based on the content of the page (come to think of it, this seems like a bit of a privacy issue, but that's another story). Usually, I don't pay attention to the ads but, this time, one caught my eye:

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Google's Quality Score system is fairly straightforward, but the Quality Score interactions at the account, group, and keyword level can be a bit more complex to get through. In essence, account Quality Score is based on the overall performance of the account, and Google's perceived relevance of the keywords, ads, and landing pages to each other.  The relevance of the ads to the keywords is first calculated in a similar way to one component of how search engines rank pages -- keyword visibility.

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For most advertisers, Google Adwords is a quick and easy way to spend a lot of money on advertising with little return. We've seen a lot of clients come to us after spending thousands of dollars on advertising with one conclusion: online advertising doesn't work. If you're one of those people, or you're interested in learning more about how Adwords works, read on.

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