Some merchants are still not convinced that they should be bidding on their own brand keywords when running a PPC campaign. I believe they should, but don’t take my word for it, take Google’s. When searching recently for some of Google’s applications, i noticed the following ad:

One could argue that it doesn’t cost Google anything to advertise on its own site but there is still an opportunity cost involved in not having someone else’s ad displayed there. Yet Google obviously thinks it is worth it because the ad stands out a lot more than the organic listing and they are able to control the message they convey to the user a lot better. When you are looking for a place to download Google talk, which link would you prefer?

From an SEO standpoint, the importance of having a blog on your website is paramount. Having a well written, industry-related blog will not only contribute to earning your site a higher Google ranking, but it will also dramatically increase traffic and maybe earn your site one or two extra inbound links.

Blogs are also an excellent way to keep informed about what’s happening in your industry. Starting the day by checking the industry related blogs like Inside Adwords and TechCrunch have began part of many people’s daily routine.

In fact, the pressure to turn out a daily blog has become so great that companies have begun adding blogging onto the job specifications of their SEO strategists. Some companies have even gone to such lengths as hiring bloggers specifically for the task of writing blogs for the company websites.

The quest for rankings causes its own set of problems as the Internet becomes saturated with copycat blog posts. The danger occurs when bloggers copy other blogs and post it as their own. If you find an interesting industry blog at your favourite blog site the chances are that you will find at least three other blog posts that have copied the original blog verbatim and published it under another name. The pressure to blog can sometimes lead some to these black hat tactics.

Micro-blogging, which has always thought to be a useful social networking tool, has emerged to be a source of marketing potential as well.

Micro-blogging websites like Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook are excellent applications to get your ideas and news out fast. These websites can be used as tools to make industry connections as well as to pass information to these connections quickly and en mass. With micro-blogging, you can keep track with what your connections are doing and vice versa.

It is no wonder that Google purchased Jaiku in October last year.

Google Analytics has introduced a data sharing policy which it says, will provide users with transparency, choice and improved product experience.

By sharing your analytics data with Google you are helping improve the products provided by the search engine. Users who opt to share their data with Google will have access to improved ad-specific services.

With Google Analytics Data Sharing you are able to share your data with Google and in return you are able to make use of benchmarking and have access to specific ads-related features such as Conversion Optimizer.

The Conversion Optimizer is an optional feature within AdWords which can automatically adjust your bids to maximize conversions at the minimum price. Currently, only users who opt to share their data with Google are eligible to use this feature.

To share your data, go to the Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings page within your account to opt in to sharing your data “With Google products only” or “Anonymously with Google products”.

If you select “do not share my Google Analytics data” in your Data Sharing Settings, you will not be able to use benchmarking or any of the other improved ad-specific features.

You can also choose to share your data anonymously. Google will remove all identifiable information about you and your website and then combine the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in similar industries and then place this data in an aggregate form.

Google Analytics Data Sharing will not affect a customer’s existing account without express and explicit permission.

Clicks2Customers has joined forces with yet another high flying client - innovative local airline Kulula.com

Clicks2Customers has just signed Kulula.com as a client to increase search-engine traffic to its online travel website.

www.kulula.com offers low cost domestic airfares as well as package deals which include car hire and hotel bookings. Kulula is currently South Africa’s biggest online retailer, with over R1.3 billion in revenue generated via its Website annually.

Carl Scholtz, Kulula’s executive manager of IT, said: “Kulula turned to Clicks2Customers because of its reputation and expertise in online marketing and managing pay-per-click campaigns, especially in the travel and tourism sectors.”

Clicks2Customers has had an excellent success rate with travel websites and is keen to use this expertise to increase the awareness of Kulula’s products and services.

If you are running PPC campaigns in the UK or Ireland and you’re a believer in open markets and healthy competition, you will love Google’s AdWords Trademark Policy Revision. However, as with most of Google’s recent changes, it will cost you.

The changes are nothing new to US advertisers, as Google has been allowing advertisers to bid on their competitor’s US trademarks since 2004 but the UK market up till now has enjoyed more protection.

Advertisers unsure how this will affect their PPC campaign can read up on a previous post on brand bidding but basically i foresee the following impact:

•  ’small’ companies will use this opportunity to aggressively start bidding on their competitors’ trademark in an attempt to gain market share
•  dominant advertisers will have to spend more money to defend their brand from their rivals.

The stronger your brand, the more you will be (negatively) affected by this change as well known trademarks are a big driver of traffic and others are going to want a piece of it. This is a time for UK advertisers to evaluate their PPC campaigns and their brand bidding policies. They last thing you want be is unprepared when the changes come into effect on May 5 2008.

And Google? They benefit because in all likelihood advertisers will spend more money on Adwords (although the official line is that they’re are just doing it for the sake of improving ‘relevancy’ to the user).

The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to increase the visibility of your website by achieving a very high ranking in the SERPS (Search Engine Results pages) by ensuring the most pertinent keywords describing the content of your site are effectively used throughout.

The higher up the search results you appear the more likely it is that prospective customers will find and visit your website.

The latest Comscore data tells us that 91% of Internet users use search engines. Websites are a dime a dozen so being on page 2 is just not good enough. People trust Google to give them the top 10 options and rarely search further.

The world of SEO cannot be fully explained in one blog post alone, but just employing the basic principles listed below will make a difference to the performance of your website.

So how can SEO improve your website over that of your competition?

Here are the fundamentals behind any SEO campaign:

• The first and most important component of your site is content.

Your website needs to have relevant and original content that accurately describes what your company is about. Google will know if you have plagiarized content from someone else. The more unique, content-rich pages your website contains, the better chance your website has of achieving a better ranking.

• Keywords

You need to identify what keywords best describe your company or what keywords you are going to be using as search terms. Once you have done this you need to incorporate these keywords into the content (if you have not done so already) and metadata without overdoing it. You don’t want to run the risk of spamming the search engine. So write for humans, not search engines!

• Links

The third step is to identify which websites to partner with your site. The more quality inbound links your website has, the better chance you have of increasing your Google ranking and as a result, your inbound traffic. An important point to remember is that quality is better than quantity - it doesn’t matter how many inbound links your site has, what matters is their site ranking.

Adding a few outbound links won’t hurt either, it proves you know who else has great content, but not too many. SEO isn’t an exact science, but its best to keep it simple. What you want is a clean, easy to navigate, content-rich website that is relevant and does what it advertises. You want the client to leave happy, and if possible, having bought something.

Good SEO doesn’t happen overnight and despite popular belief, it isn’t free either. If you’ve done your job well your website will rank and you will have increasing incoming queries, sales, website conversions and blog comments.

Your website is an investment. SEO is there to help your website be better than all the other websites out there. With a little time and money it can be.

For anyone who has ever uploaded a video into YouTube knows, the question that has always been unanswerable is “How do I find out who watches my video?”

Finally, YouTube has volunteered a solution to this problem to the delight to thousands of its subscribers.

On the 26 March, YouTube launched YouTube Insight, a free analytics tool modelled on Google Analytics. The tool is designed to help subscribers understand more about where the viewers watching their videos are and how those viewers found their videos.

Insight enables YouTube subscribers to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload into the site. This information, previously unavailable to YouTube users, allows subscribers to monitor how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

Using these metrics, YouTube subscribers can increase their videos’ view counts and improve their popularity on the site.

Now, the makers of the videos can watch those watching them.