My SEO Book PPC Accounts

So I have been having decent returns with Google AdWords (free £50 bonus) and my orders have went up noticeably since I started using Overture recently ($10 signup bonus)...though I do not get near the click volume I do with Google AdWords...I assume this is because most people interested in buying books about SEO are more likely to use Google & maybe I still need to add a few hundred to few thousand more keywords to my Overture account).

FindWhat & Customer Conversion (for them)

So I signed up for my FindWhat ($5 signup bonus) account and they had a couple features I really liked (such as bid by position).
Unfortunately their site does not follow some basic common sense customer conversion techniques. When I first tried submitting payment they had a database error (talk about a good way to lose customer trust with financial data!)

I used my back button to enter payment again. This time when I was about to enter I clicked the wrong button. I wasn't really paying a whole ton of attention and the cancel button was right next (really close) to the submit button.

After I signed up there were a few times when the text told me to click the link above when the link was above and off to the right. If you know what you want me to do then why not provide the link in the text right there? Why make me hunt for it?

I am not really wanting to use this post to bash FindWhat because I would like there to me many good outlets in the pay per click market. I am just wondering how a company focused on internet marketing could be worth over $400 million and have no user feedback and have done no user testing say what I just said. Anyway, I will let you know if / when FindWhat makes me hoards of money. And if not, I'll let you know that too.

Quite literally, Google AdWords to Add Words.

Stefanie Olsen notes that Google is preparing a new tool that will automate keyword list generation. Google will spider web pages of large advertisers to determine relevant keywords for each page.

This tool will save large companies hundreds or thousands of hours of campaign maintenance.

I realize Google needs to automate portions of it's ad service to maximize revenues, but this tool will be a huge disappointment in my eyes.

Why I Think This AdWords Tool Will Suck

• Google already places broad match terms before exact match terms. This does not allow smarter, smaller, hard working advertisers as much benefit as Overture does for doing deep keyword research. I have one client who does exceptionally well with Overture, but finds Google AdWords prohibitively expensive for this reason.

• This new tool will allow fat, and lazy advertizers to automatically lock out competition throughout the AdWords system.
• The automation will likely have many errors which decrease ad relevancy.

I hope Google will continue to add other features such as the local advertising feature to help small businesses compete in such a competitive landscape.

Google has been beta testing it's local AdWords ad program for a decent number of months. Originally the product was primarily set to test a few state level and metropolitin level ad display networks.

Now there are a whole boatload of additional options. Instead of selecting a metropolitin area you can type in what specific towns you want your ads to appear in or how far away from your business the ads appear. These changes are highly important for helping small businesses compete and improving the relevancy of ads.

You can enter specific towns or cities if you want to target that way, or you can specify a maximum number of kilometers (min 35) or miles (min 20) the person must be within your business. This option allows you to enter your latitude and logitude setpoints or your physical address.

Google targets these ads based upon user IP address. In the event Google can not determine the IP of the computer they will display national or global ads.

Now with the ability to target by language, target pinpoint locations, split test, have accounts running within 5 minutes, psychographically profile based on keyword, and have built in ROI tools this system is becoming more and more of a direct marketers dream.

For more details on the new change to the Google AdWords login to your Google AdWords account, or visit thier Google AdWords help page.

Kanoodle has launched their new contextual based ad program which offers far greater control of ad placement (as compared to other contextual based networks) from any and all angles.

Interested in placing ContextTarget ads on your site?
Read more or sign up for Kanoodle ContextTarget.

Interested in buying ContextTarget ads?
ContextTarget financial ads (as shown on CBS Marketwatch) have a minimum bid of 50 cents, other categories may have different prices. Here is the ContextTarget FAQ page, and Shari Thurow recently did a review of the Kanoodle Context program.

If smaller companies like Kanoodle can add enough features and distribution they will force larger pay per click search engines to follow suit.

Ouch to GoClick

I have stated time and time again that it is a good idea to work with larger and more developed technology companies when dealing with pay per click distribution. I have got many emails from people saying the second tier pay per click search engines have given them a raw deal one way or another.

What is the problem with pay per click?

When you go with a smaller network you generally have a lower quality of traffic and slower feedback loops. You will not be sure if the problem is your site or the pay per click network. The wrong pay per click partner can hurt you on both the distribution of ads for your site or on your site. GoClick feedback from an angry former affiliate by the name of Britton Keene:
I signed up with GoClick.com at the beginning of last year. It seemed too
good to be true. One of the highest payout rates in the industry. If it sounds too
good to be true; it usually is. This was no exception. They paid me the first two
months then, when I wasn't logging in to check stats anymore, they dropped my rates down from the $0.02 per search to $0.00 per search and the $2.50 cpm popups down to $0.25 cpm. I noticed this in March of 2003, over 5 months after they reduced my rates. I contacted them and Mr. John Babina, proprietor of GoClick, promptly responded that their terms of service state they can change the rate at any time and for any reason. So, without notice, they did so in August and have been getting free traffic from my network of sites ever since. When I filed a report with the Better Business Bureau against them I received this e-mail from Mr. Babina:

This is official notice that we are hereby terminating our affiliate relationship
with the account holder at this email address. (under our affiliate terms:
"goClick may adjust affiliate parameters and payouts or terminate
an affiliate at any time for any reason. All decisions on content, rates, payment
or termination will be made by goClick and all decisions are final.")

Don't get me wrong, I am all for small business. I just think it may not be in your best interests to look for cheap traffic before you know your conversion system and setup work on larger systems. Even then, smaller pay per click search engines may not be worth the time they take to manage unless you automate much of the process.