There’s a whole lot more to blogging than just writing a couple of posts a week. I mean, you could just rely on that, but you’re not going to get much exposure that way. What you really need to do is create a whole online persona and image that people can use to connect you to your business and/or products. Now, we’ve already talked about Social Media and the wonders it does in effortless promotion, but there’s more that you can do. And best of all? It won’t cost you a penny.

One of the things you can do to increase your marketing reach is to read other people’s blogs. I know, you’re actually going to have to research – such a drag. You want to look for blogs that pertain to the same subject matter your blog writes about. Why? Because you want to comment on their posts. In order to write informed post comments, you have to know what you’re talking about as well as have a general knowledge and understanding of what the blog is talking about. Informed post comments are important because they help you create solid backlinks, which are used to elevate your ranking in Google. The more backlinks you have, the better your rank. But before you go commenting on every blog you can find, you should know that the quality of the page matters. So you can’t just write comment after comment on every page you come across and expect to move up the Google search ladder. It doesn’t work that way. Not only do your comments need to be informed, but they also need to be posted on reputable sites. The more well known the site, the more weight the backlink carries.

Ok, so you’ve got a few backlinks under your belt – now what? Because you’re only taking the time to comment on posts relevant to your own blog (right?), the people whose sites you visit are likely to check out your blog. And guess what? They’ll probably leave you a comment or two, filling out your comment section, and making your blog look pretty impressive in the process. This will spread your name around your target market, where it matters most, and you might even make a few contacts in the process. One thing to note: make sure you leave your contact info and a link to your blog when you comment. That way, traffic from the blogs you comment on will flow over to your blog, essentially providing you with a steady stream of free traffic. What did I tell you – free is good!

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Filed under: Blogs, Google, Writing by Caren Romanyschyn
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Since Google now owns Performics, they are obviously pushing to bring it more in line with their other products.  First, they made publishers set up payments through AdSense.  Other than the fact that now we only get paid once a month instead of twice, that move doesn’t really bother me that much.  But just like I knew they would, they are trying to force us to start using a Google Account to login.  And this is really pissing me off!

Like most people, I use several of the services Google offers.  I have several Gmail accounts (both personal and professional).  I even use iGoogle, despite its awful name.  Then there is AdSense, Analytics, and AdWords.  And for a very short period, I even used blogger.  All of these products use Google Accounts.  But the only problem is not all of them use the same one.  So anytime I go from one Google product to another, it tries to keep me logged into the same account.  I never really liked this, but this was never a major problem for me in the past.  But now that Google is moving towards making Google Accounts required to log into Performics, this is going to be a major inconvenience for me.  And yes, I called it Performics and always will.  Google Affiliate Network is just too long to say and GAN just sounds like something you would catch from a Tijuana hooker.  “Sorry guys, I would love to go out drinking, but my GAN is flaring up real bad.”

Every morning I run a report to get a broad overview of where my accounts are at.  This requires me to be logged into both AdWords and Performics.  So now that Google tricked me into switching my Performics logins to Google Accounts by making seem like I couldn’t log into my accounts unless I did, each morning I have to log into AdWords, start running a report, and then log out so I can check my Performics accounts.  Then once I am done with that, log back into AdWords.

Now, all those times that I switch from one Google product to another, I get annoyed that I have to hit a log out button each time because it tries to log me in under a different name.  So I thought maybe there was some setting in the Google Accounts that would keep this from happening.  Maybe a setting that made it so that just because I was logged into one Google product, I wasn’t logged into all of them.  There are people out there that I would let check my Gmail account for me that I would not want looking in my AdWords account or my AdSense account, so this just makes sense.  But no, there are no options like that that I could find.

So I thought I would just contact someone at Google and see if there was a way to do it that I just didn’t see.  Word to the wise:  never try to contact Google through anything other than AdWords, because it’s just a giant clusterfuck.  I ended up posting something in the “Affiliate Network Help Forum.”  There, a Google Employee under the name Kariyushi said, “There is a green box below the login boxes that says ‘Stay logged in.’  Uncheck it.  Other than that, you will have to log out/in each time you want to switch Google Accounts.”  So I have to hit sign out every time.  Is it sad that this bothers me so much that I am considering using different browsers to access different products so that this doesn’t affect me?  Maybe use Internet Explorer to access Performics, Firefox to access AdWords, and Safari to access AdSense?  But screw Chrome.  I think Google already has enough information about me already.  Now if you excuse me, I have to wrap my computer in more tinfoil.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Google, Google Affiliate Network by Chris Cremen
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Gmail had yet another problem yesterday, once again making it so millions of people couldn’t check their email. Apparently, Google took some servers down for maintenance and that caused the remaining servers to become overloaded. While they did come out and apologize for the downtime, it’s still unbelievable that they are having problems keeping Gmail from going down. Gmail is currently the third largest web based email service. I can’t remember ever hearing about Yahoo Mail or Hotmail (the top 2 email services) going down, but I doubt this will slow down Gmail’s growth in the long term. For some reason, people have a huge loyalty to Google that just boggles my mind.

Were you one of the Gmail users that couldn’t access the email because of the blackout? I know I wasn’t. I didn’t even know there was a blackout until I saw it last night. How did I manage not to be affected, you ask? Well, it’s because the blackout only affected people trying to get their email through the Gmail interface. The IMAP/POP servers were still running just fine. It seems like those servers work on separate routers and therefore were not affected by the blackout.

Since I have multiple Gmail accounts, I got tired of logging in and out all the time. I used the Gmail Manager extension for Firefox for a while, but now I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird. Remember how easy Firefox was to use over Internet Explorer? Well, Thunderbird is like that compared to Microsoft Outlook. As a matter of fact, setting it up with Gmail is super easy. You just do File -> New -> Account. Then, there is a Gmail option. Just put in your Name, the Email address, and click Finish. You will then put in your password and it will download your mail right to your computer. No more having to login to Gmail just the read a message, just open Thunderbird and it’s right there. And just like Firefox, you can download different Extensions and Themes.

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Filed under: Google by Chris Cremen
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Local Search has been “in development” for a long time. Since the invention of the internet people have been going after the big picture instead of the specifics, many have tried to have a local portal that encompasses all types of local businesses and services but not many have been successful. At this point I can only think of a few including City Search and Urbanspoon. Others have tried but they look and feel so automated (restaurants.com for instance, you can tell all the info is just scraped information) and don’t offer much to the user in the way of reviews, recommendations or even if the location in question is still in existence.

These sites aren’t perfect and they have a long way to go before they are but it raises the question, as a small business, how exactly are you supposed to effectively advertise in your community?

Know Your Area

Keep track of your customers and where they come from, you should have an idea at this point where your business is coming from. Is it coming from right next door or are you clients driving an hour to do business with you? This information is very valuable to you because it will help you target your online advertising, once you find your niche online you should try to expand to other places where you have previously had success or wanted to advertise. There is always a way to make a new customer and sometimes reaching out locally is the way.

Know Your Customers

Your customers have come to expect something from you whether it is your service, your product or just your personality. You should let people who come across your ads online in your local area know that this is you. Put a little twist on it that lets your local customers or potential customers know that it is you who is advertising online.

Leverage The Power of Google

Google Local Business Directory

Being in new to Los Angeles I am continually using Google Maps more and more to find things that I need, since L.A. is so big it helps me find things in relation to my location. One great (and free) way to get your business in front of other in your area is to add yourself to the Google Local Business Directory. Esentially it adds your business to Google maps and it shows up when people are searching within or around the location that they specify.

Google Local Search

Adwords is an incredibly powerful tool. One of my favorite features of the program is that you can select specifically where you want to advertise. I am pretty sure that if you wanted to advertise just on your block you could. Anyway, there are a few ways you can go about doing this. The first is to select a radius around your business, there are many preset ones but you can also make your own. The second is to select the specific areas, you can select certain states, certain towns and so on. Going back to what I said above about knowing your area can be very useful here.

Keyword Selection

You don’t know exactly how people are going to search but you can get a good idea, just because your campaign is targeted to a certain area doesn’t mean people will find you. Often times it is a good test to try variations with the areas you are advertising in. For example say you are a hardware store in Los Angeles, a good keyword would be “Hardware Store” a good variation would be “Local Hardware Store” or “Los Angeles Hardware Store” this way it ensures that you will capture the most searches for your products, business and services.

Going back to what I said before about local search portals not being successful may not have to do with the portals themselves. We have been trained since the beginning of the internet to just search for things in a broad fashion. I think slowly people are coming around more and more and realizing that local search is growing and is becoming a more effective search for them. Honestly, I like when I can search for something in my neighborhood and then go visit that place whether it is a store or a national park it is still nice to go out and meet the faces behind the company.

If you are looking to get started with local Search Marketing or looking for someone to explain it to you better contact us at 1.866.282.1903 or leads @7evenleafclover.com or come to our website www.7evenleafclover.com and sign up for our free analysis and proposal.

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Filed under: Adwords, Business Functions, Google, Local Search, PPC Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines by Dean Karasinski
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Hi Everybody! (bonus points for anyone who read that in Dr. Nicks voice.) Is it Monday already?  Well last week I talked about composing a solid keyword list.  This week I’m going to go deeper in detail about keywords and keyword matching options.  Keyword matching options allow you to control how precise a user’s search must be to trigger your ad.  Remember, the more targeted your keywords are, the more likely you’re likely to reach potential customers.  There are four matching options for you to choose from; broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.

Broad match keywords are your default setting.  Broad match is pretty simple. If you enter a keyword in without any punctuation, it’s a broad match keyword.  These keywords produce the most impressions and will get your ad seen by more people.  The problem is that is usually a vague word/phrase and will produce a lot of clicks, but those clicks might be untargeted traffic which will not result in conversions.

Phrase match keywords are entered by adding quotations ( “ “ ) around the word or phrase.  Meaning your ad will only trigger if someone search has the exact words in the exact order.  If your keyword was “free games,” the search for free download games would not show your ad.  Phrase match options are fantastic for question based searches.  The phrase “engagement rings” would be shown for searches like “How much are engagement rings” and “cleaning engagement rings.”

The exact match option is entered by putting square brackets around the phrase.  ( [ ] ) Exact match option means that only search queries with the exact words/phrase without any additional words or letters before, between, or after the keyword will trigger your ad.  Example: The exact match [cheap video games] means that only a search of “cheap video games” would trigger your ad.  A search for “where can I find cheap video games” or “cheap video games for sale” would not trigger your ad.  Exact match tends to not get as many clicks but the resulting traffic will increase your click-through rate.  Having you enter every possible combination of words/phrases you want to trigger your ad is more time consuming and could restrict some traffic if you have forgotten to include something.

Finally negative keywords, WOO HOO!  Negative keywords are words that prevent your ad from appearing and are entered by using a minus sign ( – ) before the word.  If you sell used video games on your website, negative keywords can help you immensely.   A good negative keyword would be –free.  That way for any search that is for “free used games” your ad will not be triggered.

It’ll take some time and effort but if you learn the advantages and disadvantages to the keyword matching options it will greatly improve your online PPC campaign.

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Filed under: Adwords, Affiliate Marketing, Google, PPC Marketing by Matt Fern
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Google has been generating a lot of buzz around the net this week with images popping up in the sponsored links section. This feature is seemingly only being tested in certain areas as many, including myself, have not been able to duplicate the results. The immediate WOW factor is high and should, without a doubt, help attract more attention to your ad and ultimately help Google to provide the best results to you. Let’s look at this from another perspective, mine.

Does anyone remember the old TV Guide channel? It used to simply show you what was on, they may have played some music and the listings filled the majority of the screen, then they started adding some advertisements (I can live with that, they need to stay on and I think it is a useful service), then they shrunk the listings to show the ads slightly larger, then they shrunk the listings even more so they could run a rubbish channel on top of the information I really wanted to see. I don’t actually care about Kimberly Caldwell interviewing a Jonas brother, I just don’t, but I digress.

The point is, doesn’t this seem familiar and applicable to the current Google situation? Their natural search listings have been getting smaller and smaller to make room for more and more sponsored links, how small will they actually get, will they become secondary to the ads, will Kimberly Caldwell appear in the search bar? Let’s hope that it doesn’t get to this point. I am all for making the sponsored listings more interesting to look at but not at the expense of the natural ones.

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, PPC Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines by Dean Karasinski
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Lately it seems that everyone and their brother is calling themselves a Search Marketing Professional, but what do they actually know about it and how do you find out if they really know what they are talking about or if they are just a student in a dorm room trying to make some money and will leave your AdWords account to fend for itself?

If you are looking for someone to manage your PPC Marketing check out PPC Hero and their article titled “10 Questions You Should Ask a Potential New PPC Management Firm” then consider 7evenLeafClover for all your needs If you still have your heart set on doing it yourself then let me offer you some tips:

Account Structure

Account structure is arguably the most important aspect of your PPC campaign. If you have put together a great keyword list and then just threw it all into a campaign named “Company PPC Campaign” then you have just thrown all of your hard work out the window.

Structuring your account not only helps you to better organize your keyword list it also has some advantages when it comes to your overall online marketing strategy. Lets say you sell Red, Blue and Green widgets. If you through all of your keywords into the same account you wouldn’t be able to get a very clear picture of how each type of widget was performing and selling. It would take a long time to sort through this data to make any sense of it. If you have some account structure and did something like a Campaign for each type of widget you would be able to see what keywords were working for each type of widget, you would also be able to write custom ad text for each campaign to really tailor the ad to what you are selling.

Negative Keywords

Negative Keywords are another important aspect of your PPC campaign, while in my opinion much less important than account structure they are important nonetheless. Let’s say you sell widgets for camping the red, blue and green kind again. Your keywords consist of red widgets, blue widgets and green widgets, you are getting a lot of traffic but you see that a lot of it is just wasted or has nothing to do with your product. Many keywords like red widgets for weddings or green widgets for cameras keep showing up. These are not qualified leads to your site so you would set negative keywords in your account to combat keywords like this from wasting your money. By making weddings and cameras negative keywords you will ensure that you are honing in on your niche of widgets for camping. This is one of the easiest ways to optimize your account.

Match Types and Long Tail

One of the easiest ways to cast a wide net while still staying focused on your target market is to use the multiple match types (broad, exact and phrase). Using these match types will help you find how people search for your products and then you can create new keywords based around that. If some of them aren’t working for you turn them off or create new negative keywords  to combat their negative effects. Long tail keywords are another great way to help you get quality leads. Long tail keywords are often found by using a full product name, through phrase match keywords or just through trial and error. If someone is searching for a product in such a specific fashion (big red camping widget with three headlights) then they are probably ready to buy and if you have that word or something similar as one of your keywords I can almost guarantee that you will make that sale.

So go take a look at your adwords account, make these changes and let us know what changes happen as a result of them. I guarantee that things will start happening to your account that I didn’t mention here (*cough* Higher Quality Score *cough* More Sales *cough*) Excuse me, the smog here is Los Angeles is really rough sometimes.

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, PPC Marketing, Search Engine Marketing by Dean Karasinski
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It’s me again back to talk about the lovely Google Adwords exam.  Last week I went over the requirements of what is needed to become a Google Adwords certified individual and some of the perks that come with it.  But sadly there are some down sides to this whole process.

First of all the main problem I have come to realize is the time factor.  After you meet all the requirements for the exam you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing on Adwords (which is 90 days for those who haven’t been paying attention) During the 90 days you’re going to want spend some time going over the lessons Google provides (http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/index.html) The learning center has a large amount of information that will take a while to read through.  It’s a long and tedious process but if you are taking this seriously it’s a necessity.  So the initial 90 days plus a good study session in the learning center will take a good chunk of your time.

Also becoming certified does not guarantee work, and it doesn’t teach you a sound strategy.  Just because you are certified doesn’t mean everything will just fall into place for you.  There’s still a lot of work involved and still A LOT more to learn.

The final downfall isn’t really a downfall at all.  There is a cost involved, $50.  That’s right fifty bucks just to take the test, and if you fail your first time and have to retake it, it’s another fifty dollars.  The upside to this is that it shows your clients you take your job seriously and are knowledgeable about Google Adwords and can help them to make money (everybody likes money)

I know my posts might come off a little “flip-flopped.”  One paragraph I’m telling you how great it is to be Adwords certified and the next I’m telling you it’s a bit overrated.  The bottom line is credibility.  Being certified gives you and your company credibility and an advantage over your competitors.

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, Search Engine Marketing by Matt Fern
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When I first saw the new Adwords interface, I had the same reaction that I did when I first saw the new Linkshare interface: PURE OUTRAGE! Part of the reason for this outrage is my total hatred of change. I tend to be a creature of habit and I don’t like people messing with my world. Besides, Adwords was already the easiest and prettiest of the search engine ad platforms. Why take something that worked so well and is so easy to use, and change it? But unlike the new Linkshare interface, the new Adwords actually turned out to be at least as good as the original, if not better. I am not going to go into detail on all the changes that Google made, just the ones that I either really like or really hate.

Upon loading up the new interface, the first thing that I noticed was the change of colors. Well, actually, the first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t loading properly. In the orange box there is a message saying:

“The updated AdWords interface may not work properly in your web browser. We are working hard to add support for more browsers. Until then, please use Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, or Chrome to manage your campaigns. The updated AdWords interface may be slower on older versions of Firefox. For better results, we recommend upgrading to Firefox 3.”

Since I am still rocking Firefox 2.0 (some of the add-ons that I love haven’t updated for Firefox 3 yet) I keep getting that message EVERY TIME I LOAD AN ACCOUNT. We have over 100 accounts in our My Client Center, so I am constantly bouncing between different accounts. Meaning, I have to see that message pop up constantly. For a company whose motto is “Don’t be Evil,” they are slowly driving me insane. Anyway, as you can see, the page clearly doesn’t load correctly.

The colors have also been tweaked with the green being a little darker and a graph tracking spend above the different campaigns. I think that this is the thing that bothers me the most about the new interface. But then again, I am the guy that changes the start menu and color scheme of any new computer back to Windows 98. I just don’t see why they couldn’t add in these new features while keeping the look of the old AdWords. Personally, I hope that they start offering themes for AdWords like they do with iGoogle and Gmail.

As for the features Google added, I really couldn’t complain once I learned how to use them. I really like how you can edit bids for a campaign without having to go into the actual ad group. I just wish that they would do something similar for changing ads. Also the changes in how you pause ads took me a few clicks to figure out and could be done a little smother.

Google also added a one step way to add new ad groups. Now you can create you ad, list your keywords, and enter your bids all on the same form. This is something that I have been wanting from a major ad platform for quite a while. This is really important for this new interface because it is slower. I never really had a problem waiting for pages to load on the old interface, but now I see a loading message quite often. Also, I kept running into pages where buttons wouldn’t load. The first time I tried adding an ad group in one step the “Save ad group” button did not appear. At first I thought I was just missing something on the page because I couldn’t submit it. But once I went back and tried it again, the buttons showed up.

Another new feature is the Account Tree that AdWords Editor has. I usually have this minimized because I feel it makes the screen too cluttered. Also, it lists all the accounts in each campaign in alphabetical order and all paused of deleted ad groups are grayed out. The fact that they are in alphabetical order is ridiculous. Often times, about half of the campaigns I have listed are grayed out. These should be at the bottom of the list, or they should be ordered by ad spend.

Overall, I don’t mind the new interface to this AdWords after I used it for a little while. I would have rather just seen these changes slowly added to the old interface though. But it does make you wonder why Yahoo and MSNs ad interfaces are still so bad. If the platform with the best interface is doing a facelift, why are the others not trying to catch up to at least where Google was? But what do you guys think? What do you like or hate about the new Google interface? Do you think MSN and Yahoo will ever have a platform that can rival Google in ease?

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines by Chris Cremen
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Well it’s Monday so it’s my turn to write a blog post.  And considering writing this is taking away from my study time for my Google Adwords Certification I have decided to write about that.

Becoming Google Adwords certified is no easy task, but can easily be achieved by some hard work and good ol’ fashion studying.  Adwords is an amazing advertising tool, and becoming certified will only help your online business.  Let us begin with the requirements.  There are four requirements you have to meet in order to become certified:

1. Sign up for Google Adwords and be in good standing (accept terms of use and are not in violation of any.)

2. Manage at least one Adwords account in My Client Center for 90 days.

3. Build and maintain at least $1000 total spend for your My Client Center account during the 90-day period

4. Pass the Google Advertising Professional Exam

Those are all the requirements, shouldn’t be too hard for anyone already familiar with Adwords.

By becoming an Adwords Qualified Individual/Company, you let your clients know that you are well trained and knowledgeable about what you do.  Having that logo on your webpage will put your clients minds at ease and gives you an automatic advantage over your competition.  After you pass the exam you will look at Adwords with a new perspective, knowing that you are now an expert in this field.  Another great advantage is that you will be able to apply all of your knowledge to other search engine based marketing, but that’s all for now.  I’ll go into more detail next week……I’m off to study

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Filed under: Adwords, Google by Matt Fern
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