How much should you budget for AdWords?

The most common questions I get as a consultant usually revolve around the the theme of “How much should I budget for my AdWords campaign?”

This is really a personal decision, and I can’t give you that number. All I can tell you is that you should budget the largest amount you can afford.

In order to create a good campaign, you need good data. And the only way to get relevant, personalized, actionable data is to drive traffic through your campaign and view the results in your analytics application.

Therefore, the less money you risk, the longer it will take to see results. Since time is money, you should try to maximize your expenditure within the first 2 months in order to generate momentum. After that, you should have a better idea of what would be appropriate for your company.

If you’re spending at least $1000 per month on your campaigns, I’d strongly recommend hiring a professional AdWords manager to set up and manage your account. This will help you save money by cutting your learning curve and eliminate costly mistakes.

How to get FREE Google AdWords

Wow… I just tried it out today and it still works. I first read about this in April 2004, and I’m shocked that Google hasn’t done anything to fix this bug yet.

Demographic Bidding Now Available

I’ve been hearing rumors for a while now, and it’s finally happened. Google has begun to offer demographic targeting for many of their content-network sites.

For example, a company that works within the “prostate cancer” niche can now focus their ads on Men who are 40 and over.

Although this has opened up a lot of new possibilities, supply is still limited. For now, only a few sites offer this new service:

• aooa.de
• asianave.com
• asianavenue.com
• beltrano.com.br
• blackplanet.com
• communityconnect.com
• cuantomedas.com
• cupidbay.com
• faithbase.com
• flirtbox.co.uk
• flodeo.com
• fotolog.com
• friendster.com
• gazzag.com
• gesichterparty.de
• glee.com
• hotornot.com
• imvu.com
• invisionfree.com
• migente.com
• miss34.com
• myspace.com
• nexopia.com
• parperfeito.com.br
• picturetrail.com
• plentyoffish.com
• proboards.com
• ratemybody.com
• sexyono.com
• unister.de
• wolke10.de
• youtube.com

Also, users under the age of 18 have been excluded form this type of demographic profiling.

This presents lots of new opportunities for the B2C market. I’m already starting to hear a lot of success stories.

Controversial new program for AdWords

Lately, I’m sure many of you have been hearing a lot about Google’s new “Automatic Matching” program.

This is a new program being tested by Google, where they help advertisers utilize more of their budget, by automatically bid on keywords that the advertiser may not have been targeting.

Some claim that this service will help novice advertisers get more value from their ad budget by getting more exposure. But I can also understand why some people would be upset, and see this as an unethical cash-grab on the part of Google.

According to Search Engine Land, this is what Google had to say:

As part of our ongoing commitment to provide advertisers with innovative ways to reach users online, Google is currently testing a feature known as ‘Automatic Matching.’ This feature is currently in a limited beta with a small number of advertisers. We have no news to announce at this time regarding developments in our AdWords product offering.

As you can imagine, I don’t quite agree with this new program. If I’ve spent a lot of time and effort in creating and optimizing my program, I don’t want anyone else coming in and overriding my decisions.

AdWords minimum bids surge?

Well, we should’ve seen this coming. With all the reports of click rates going down, and of Google’s financial ‘difficulties’ (they’re still stinking rich), it was bound to happen.

I can’t confirm or deny any of this, but there’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about something funny that happened yesterday. It seemed that many advertisers complained of a sudden spike in the minimum bids for their best keywords.

You can view more discussions about this topic here and here.

Google prices their minimum bids based on a number of factors. The primary variable is something called the Google Quality Score which takes into account both the profitability and competitiveness of any given keyword.

So far, I haven’t heard anything formal from Google regarding this spike. But it’s just another reason to keep an eye on your campaigns, and to make sure they’re well-structured.

I’ll keep you updated if I hear anything.

Google hosting special Website Optimizer webinar

Okay everyone, time to free up your calendars. I’ve just gotten words that Google will be offering a special one-time webinar on their Website Optimizer feature. This should be especially informative for those of you who have in-house web developers, and high-volume campaigns.

This seminar will be held on March 11, and will be hosted by none other than Tom Leung and Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now inc.

Please note that this is not intended for beginners.

This is an advanced seminar that will be a follow-up to Google’s previous Website Optimizer. Before attending, I’d reccomend taking the time to view their quick-start guide, and to read their advanced testing strategies guide.

In this seminar they will be delving deeper into best practices, discussing the top testing elements of your web site, and reviewing some of the top mistakes that people will make when developing new content.

So if this sounds like it might be for you, go ahead and check out the webinar:

Website Optimizer: What Should I Test?
March 11th, 2008
9 – 10 am PST
Register here to attend

Here comes the Pagerank Insanity

Yes folks, it’s that time again.

The pagerank algorithm has just been updated, and now everyone has to put their 2 cents in.

The ones who did well will all claim to be supergurus, and the ones who did badly will all start complaining about how Google is losing touch with web users.

And as much as we’d all like to believe that we have some secret edge over the search competition, we all (the experienced guys, anyways) pretty much rely on the same 8 or 9 tactics.

Case in point:

I have 2 web sites that just got their PRs this week.

One is a home improvement site with 400 inbound links. It only got a PR1.

The other was a medical site with just 100 inbound links. It got a PR3.

In the end, it all comes down to quality-over-quantity. So as you can see, it’s all about sticking to the fundamentals, and doing them well.

See you in another 3 months.

Great overview of AdWords

In this day and age, I’m really surprised at how many people don’t quite understand the internet. Sometimes, it can be tough to explain, in detail, what Google AdWords is, and how I can help them leverage this advertising medium.

This is compounded by the fact that I’m somewhat of a geek, and sometimes it can be tough to relate “nerd talk” with layman’s everyday reality.

Fortunately, I was browsing the net today, and came across this brilliant video. I don’t know exactly who produced it, but it’s very nicely done. I was really impressed at how simple it was to understand, and the depth of topics covered.

For anyone reading this blog who doesen’t quite understand the AdWords business model just yet, I’d strongly reccomend watching. It’s really quite educational. So have a look and let me know what your thoughts are.

You can view it here:
http://www.vsocial.com/video/?d=203879

Attention Developers: The API is fixed

WARNING: This might be a bit advanced for most of my readers. So you’ll have to please excuse me for nerding out and alienating a few readers.

Remember those 502 errors you were all getting on your Adwords applications? Well Google has identified the issue and successfully resolved it. So from now on, the API should be working fine again.

And thank goodness for that.

Google AdWords being used as a political tool

I’m always impressed at the new and innovative ways that people use technology. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes it’s efficient, but sometimes it’s overcomplicated.

More and more, you’re starting to see activists buying up searches of company names in order to interfere with the corporations’ business activities. With such low prices, it can be an attractive way to place yourself between a company and it’s online customers.

I’m not sure about the legal ramifications, but this seems to be some uncharted territory that could potentially cause a lot of damage before the law steps in and sets some clear ground rules.

A prime example of this is the recent labor dispute between Marks & Spencer, and the Unite labor union.

Britain’s biggest union, Unite, has launched a “virtual” assault (cyber sabotage – cybertage anyone?) on Marks and Spencer, to highlight what it says is exploitation of agency staff.

Unite says it placed an ad with Google so anyone searching for the term ‘Marks and Spencer’ today would be confronted by a message urging them to “look behind the label”. The stunt was being carried out in addition to its conventional campaign against the high street chain.

I just recently did a search, and the ad doesn’t seem to be running here in Canada. I also tried an anonymizer service and was unable to see the offending ads.

Next time you hear about a local labor dispute, load up Google and check the ads. I think this’ll be a new recurring trend.