Which Search Engine is Best?

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This is a question posed by various people – SEOs, internet marketers, online business owners, and even just people browsing the web: which search engine is best?

Well, this really comes down to depending on what your approach is.  If you are just browsing, it’s really a personal preference.  But if you’re in internet marketing, then it comes down to understanding the varieties of users who are using each.

To start, Google is still controlling the search engine market, with 64.2% of all searches in April (according to ComScore).  Yahoo is second with 20.4%, and Microsoft is third with 8.2%.

As most people know, the bulk of traffic can be gained through Google.  Doing SEO or AdWords can take advantage of this traffic.  It’s been seen through PPC marketing that Yahoo does not get quite the same traffic but does tend to get a higher percentage of conversions.  This varies based on market, but it’s worth noting.

So what this means for internet marketers is this – definitely use Google if you’re interested in traffic.  For SEO or PPC, it’d be good to start with a focus on Google, and follow up with adjustments for Yahoo (and with PPC, start advertising with Yahoo) after a set plan is set for Google.  Microsoft is really an extra option to take advantage of, but in some cases may not be worth too much extra time/effort unless the amount of traffic gained through them is notable.

Make sure to realize that it’s worth it to go beyond just looking at Google.  One fifth of all internet search engine users use Yahoo, so the numbers there speak for themselves.  Be sure to keep that in mind when focusing on your internet marketing endeavors.

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What is Google AdWords Qualification?

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s a link on the left of the main site pages that says “AdWords Qualified Individual”.  Yes, I’ve been certified by Google as AdWords Qualified.  So what does it mean?

Well, in order to get that fancy logo, it’s more than just a cut and paste of the image.  In actuality, if I did that and Google found out about it, I’d be in very big trouble.  Legal ramifications, I’m guessing.  But I had to earn it before I could put that logo up.  How do you go about earning your own fancy logo, to put where you would like?

The first step is to set up an AdWords “My Client Center”.  This is basically a super-user level in AdWords; it allows you to have multiple AdWords accounts underneath, run by separate entities.  What this means for me is that I can have my clients’ accounts set up either by them or myself, and then I can manage each one, while they are still in complete control of their account.  As an AdWords Client Manager, you have full access over the client’s account, to optimize to your (and their) heart’s content.  Don’t break any of Google’s rules, and you’ve completed step one.

Once this is set up, you then need to have at least one client (can be yourself) in your account and manage it for a minimum of 90 days.  During these 90 days you have to build and maintain at least $1000 total ad expense for your whole My Client Center account.

Now all of this establishes that you actually have some experience with AdWords, but it’s a little more than that.  The final step is to pass the Google Advertising Professional Exam.  And this isn’t exactly super easy – it takes about an hour and a half, and has over 100 questions in it.  To pass, you have to get at least 75%.  Plus it’s $50 for each try.  I’ll tell you now – if you don’t have a lot of experience with AdWords, it’s worth your time to study a bit before trying to pass this exam.

After all that’s been done and taken care of, you’re Qualified!  Then, as long as you maintain the requirements, you can stay that way.  The nice thing is that at this point, you can use their logo on your site (as long as you say specifically how many people are qualified), and you can use it to some degree on marketing products, including business cards.  That, and Google will set up a nice page for you, so you can show off your achievement.

I realize not everyone loves playing with AdWords as much as I do, but if it’s something you really like – I’d recommend aiming to get Qualified.  It’s a very good achievement to have, especially if you want to do pay per click advertising as a service.

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Free Google AdWords Tool for Google PPC

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Brad Callen is an SEO guru and a PPC guru (as well as one of my heroes).  He’s released a new product for Google AdWords.  It plugs into Firefox as a plugin and allows you to do a few things.

It works any time you do a Google search, and it affects the “Sponsored links” results.  One nice perk he’s put in is an option to show the destination URLs for the paid ads.  Now not everyone realizes this, but every time you click on one of these ads, the person/company who placed that ad has to pay a certain amount.  Hence the term “pay per click”.  The option he put in lets you check out their pages without making the advertiser pay.  This is just polite, but lets you learn from other marketers who may be bidding on your terms, when you can check their landing pages.

But the nice thing, the huge perk of this tool is a little “View Keywords” button underneath every ad.  When you click this, it displays every keyword that that advertiser is bidding on.  I’ll let that sink in a moment.  Yes, every keyword – this means that you can see all keywords that any one advertiser is bidding on.  You can use this information to add new keywords to your own PPC campaign, use those keywords to test out for conversions in a particular ad group.  There’s a good chance the keywords that experienced advertisers are bidding on are converting keywords, and you can learn quickly from this.

Yes, it’s a little sneaky.  You’re taking all the work that the other advertisers did to do their keyword research and learn what keywords convert, and you’re just jumping past all that work and getting a list of keywords.  But it’s legit – and there’s nothing illegal about it.

Brad’s decided to go ahead and give this tool away.  I’ll go ahead and forewarn you, he does do an upsell, but the basic functionality of the tool are all present in the free version.  If you have Firefox and do any PPC at all (or just want to see what kind of things PPC advertisers are bidding on), it may be something you want to check out.  The name of Brad’s new plugin is PPC Web Spy.

If you do check it out, let me know what you think, and if it gets you new conversions.  I already got it myself, and I’ll definitely be using it to try advancing my own AdWords campaigns.

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AdWords Basics – A PPC Tutorial

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At a start, Google AdWords looks like an advertising dream.  You put in your keywords, choose what you’re willing to pay per click, and then let the traffic come flooding in.  In reality, most people don’t know what they’re getting into; often not until it’s too late, and a lot of money has been spent.

One of most basic elements of AdWords that you need to be aware of is the different keyword matching options.  To begin, you need to make sure you have your ad groups broken into separate categories (so you can have targeted ads and keywords), but that’s a different topic.  For each ad group, you’ll want to have your keyword matching options carefully selected.

There are four different keywords matching options in Google AdWords: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.  They can all be used together, but don’t need to all be used.

The broad match is what the “default” option is.  If you enter a basic keyword or keyword phrase, it’s shown in your list as a broad match.  This means any match to any of the words in your keyword phrase will cue that keyword.  Your ad will show.  The search phrase can have the same words in a different order, the same order, or in some cases, even contain completely different words (based on what Google thinks the words are related to).  So if you’ve put in the phrase “buy dog food” (with no quotes), the search phrases “buy dog food”, “dog food buy”, “buy Alpo dog food”, and “where to buy dog food” will all trigger this keyword.

The phrase match is entered by using quotes.  So you put your keywords in with quotes around them, this is known as a phrase match.  It will only be triggered by searches that have that exact phrase in the search, uninterrupted.  If there’s an extra word in the middle, it won’t be cued.  So “buy dog food” will be triggered for the phrases “buy dog food” and “where to buy dog food”, but not “dog food buy” and “buy Alpo dog food”.

The exact match is entered using brackets.  You put your keywords inside brackets to look for exactly that keyword phrase, nothing more, nothing less.  For [buy dog food] in your keywords, only “buy dog food” in the search will trigger it.  “where to buy dog food”, “dog food buy”, and “buy Alpo dog food” will NOT be caught by that keyword.

And a negative match is done in one of two ways.  You can either put in your negative keyword with a negative sign in front of it, or else put it inside your Campaign’s negative keywords group.  Either way, a negative match works the same way as the other three – you can either have broad, phrase, or exact.  Just put a dash in front of them.  So if you entered -“buy dog food” (with quotes), any search with that phrase in it will NOT show your ad.  This is something that should be done often, especially if there are particular words you don’t want your ad showing for.  Common ones people tend to use are “free” and “crack” (the latter especially for software).

This is just a basic tutorial on PPC with Google’s AdWords, but they’re some of the most crucial details in making sure your own pay per click campaign is set up properly.

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