Google Adwords Express is the stripped-down version of Google Adwords, the pay-per-click search engine advertising program that is Google’s bread and butter. Adwords Express launched last summer and has had mix reviews from advertisers.

The idea of Adwords Express is to give the non-techie business owner a way to spend money on local advertising with Google Adwords. Everything about the campaigns are automated, and the set-up is extremely fast, performed through your Google Places account dashboard. The problem? As with any activity, businesses not willing to put the time (do it yourself) or money (hiring a professional) into it will generally get little out of it. The standard Google Adwords certainly has a steep learning curve that gets steeper as time goes on, but without that learning period a small business advertiser will not understand online advertising enough to get much out of it.

The main benefit of Adwords Express touted by advertisers is that of increasing “local visibility.” So if you are not worried about getting clicks and converting them to sales, but rather just exposing your brand to the local searching public, maybe Adwords Express is a no-brainer. However, if you are looking to expand your audience beyond a 15 mile radius of your physical location, you can’t do that with Adwords Express.

Another major limitation, in my opinion, is the fact that you can only create a single ad per business category that you have listed in Google Places. So if what you want to advertise is not represented by a category in Google Places, you’re out of luck.

Does the “Express” mean that Adwords Express is less expensive than Adwords? In the competitive niche I did my research for, the answer was “No.” The cost per click (CPC) was within the same general range, but on the high end.

Based on my research, I don’t believe Adwords Express gives the small business owner the tools necessary to run and efficient campaign. This, coupled with the fact that the CPC costs are no lower than a standard Adwords campaign, makes it difficult for me to see how it would be possible to get a positive ROI when using this service.

Google is at it again. Their “Google Caffeine” infrastructure update was vastly increased their computing power. That update has paved the way for features many of the new features that we’ve seen recently, such as Google Instant.

Today you may notice little magnifying glass icons next the your search results. Clicking on any of these icons will activate “Google Instant Previews.” On clicking you are presented with a thumbnail image of the website in the result, and from then on, rolling over the other results will also display the thumbnail of the associated website.

One positive result of Google Instant Previews, for those of us in the web design business, is that sites that are horribly ugly (a.k.a. not professionally designed) will most likely see a drop-off in traffic. Of course this will depend on the vertical involved, but I think most consumers will use this preview to filter out sites that look cheap, low-quality and unprofessional. Made For Adwords (mfa) sites will hopefully see a significant drop in traffic as will a lot of other spam, which is often easy to identify visually.

Across the board I think people will see less traffic overall, but their bounce rate should also decrease, as searchers no longer need to click in to get a preview of their website.

Another consequence I would expect, would be a lower CTR (click-through rate) for Adwords. Why? 1)Because Adwords ads do not have the Instant Preview feature, they are functionally separated from the natural results more than they have been in the past. In fact many searchers don’t know the difference between sponsored results and natural results, and to them, clicking on one was no different than clicking on the other. Now if the searcher likes the Instant Preview feature, they will be less likely to waste the extra click on the sponsored results that don’t have it. 2) At popular screen resolutions the Instant Previews actually block the Adwords ads.

I must admit I can’t imagine that Google would do anything to decrease the click-through for Adwords. It’s their bread and butter, and almost all of the recent changes they’ve made recently have had the effect of pushing searchers to Adwords, be it by rearranging the real estate, or pushing searchers to more popular key phrases.

What do you think?

I noticed yet another change yesterday in the way Google is displaying results. It’s not the recent algorithm change that has many in the SEO industry complaining that their sites have been trashed. It’s not the also-recent indexing glitch that has yet to be resolved and has many new pages, including blog posts like this one, going unindexed for extended periods. It’s not Google Instant, taking a big bite out of the long-tail. This change has to do with the serving of local maps “places” results outside of the maps box, and over most of the natural results.

One variation of the new format gives a huge amount of real estate to the local results by pulling them out of the maps box and reformatting them to a size that is now twice the height of the natural results. With one or two Adwords results, then two natural results followed by six huge Google Places results, natural result number 3 might as well be on Page 2. If the Google Places ad includes an image, then the searcher is offered a chance to click on it and remain on Google property, and be exposed to another batch of Adwords results. Or in other words another Google income opportunity.

The second variation I am now seeing basically pulls the Places results out of the maps box, without reformatting them, but includes 3 Adwords results at the top and zero natural results before the Places results. With this variation, having the number 1 natural result is not so great anymore. It’s probably more like having a number 5 or 6 position.

For local businesses with results in Places, but not in the natural results, this may be a good thing. For searchers who are looking for a local company, this change may be good as well. Especially with the first variation I noted, the SEO landscape when it comes to natural local search is changing significantly, with Google Places playing an increasingly important role.

This is a blog I created for a law office in the bay area. It’s a WordPress blog with a customized theme.

Attorney Blog Design

Blogs to promote legal practices are getting more and more popular these days. The blog can contain timely analysis of current events relating to the legal practice’s focus, and highlight the attorneys’ expertise regarding the subject. The posts can also link back to the attorney’s main website, adding some SEO benefit.

Link exchanges are one way to help with link authority, especially if you have nothing else going for you. Promoting blogs and fresh quality content are preferrable, but some people don’t have time, and reasonable, content targeted link exchanges can at least get you on the map. But you need to be very careful.

1) Beware 3 way link exchanges with junk sites. Generally the person requesting the link will want you to link to their client’s site, but all you get is an incoming link from their throw-away wordpress site that looks like it was put up in 15 minutes. Don’t bother.

2) Ignore link exchange requests that require you to put your link up first. If you do, they won’t. Credible link partners will always place your link first (not necessarily before they contact you though).

3) Ignore link exchanges showing y0u some great PR sites that will link to you, but you have to put up your link first. Hint: those aren’t even their sites! A certain percentage of webmasters will see that high PR and put the link up.

4) Don’t exchange links with any website that is unrelated to yours, i.e. don’t put a viagra link on your golf club ecommerce site.

5) Don’t swap links with any low quality website. The search engines will never count the link anyway, and you will be wasting your time and credibility.

Microsoft’s update of LiveSearch launched this weekend. I haven’t read much of the hype, because I expect it is just that – hype. What I have absorbed is that Bing is supposed to be a “Google Killer” and a substantially new way of performing search, with the searcher being kept on the Bing site longer (because it gives them everything they need) so they can be exposed to more advertising.

The first thing I noticed when visiting Bing.com is the nice big graphic on the homepage. There was a little arrow indicating I could change the picture (hot air balloons, how original), but when I clicked on it, I was prompted to install Microsoft SilverLight, with no explanation of what it is.  I happen to be aware that it’s supposed to be a Flash type program that allows rich media experience, but I don’t know that the typical visitor would be. Anyway, I learned my lesson from Windows Vista and my daughter’s X-Box to thouroughly research performance of Microsoft products before exposing my life to them, so, no thanks.

The searches returned results identical to LiveSearch. Focused on keyword relevance rather than link authority. On-page trump off-page factors, so very easy to get good ranking, even for competitive terms. Good news, I guess, if anyone actually starts using Bing.

On Bing.com you are automatically shown local listings, including a little map for certain searches. Not a huge difference from Google, which does that already. Also included are categorized links below the top result, kind of like Google Sitelinks.

A search for Pleasanton Restaurants in Bing resulted in a list of the worst  restaurants in the area. I have a stomach ache just looking at it. The same search on Google results in a list of some very good, and some so-so restaurants. This is probably due to the review feature of Google Local. Bing has reviews listed too, but they are all pulled from Yelp. Bottom line is, as my son would say “FAIL.”

In conclusion, my first reaction to Bing.com is that it is a mediocre attempt to copy Google, so I have a hard time seeing how it is going to be a Google Killer.

Matt Cutts addressed the Google algorithm update that recently gave a boost to brands that I commented on in my post Big Company Google Boosts Other Big Brands in Search Results. He basically downplays the change and apparently ignores the question posed “What does Google consider a ‘Brand’” by saying his team doesn’t consider brands. Right. What is Vince based on then? Guess it’s a secret.

Let’s face it. Maybe Google started off as a egalitarian, nice, fair, “do no evil” type of company, but they have officially hit the big time. Big companies aren’t nice or fair. There is too much money involved. If you still buy into the nicey-nice Google culture, read the New York Times article on Google’s Marissa Mayer and the reaction/comments from Silicon Valley Web Guild and ValleyWag. That, along with comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, paints a pretty good picture of corporate executives drunk on their own elitist Koolaid (ok, crappy metaphor, but it’s early).  He calls the internet a cesspool. And the solution? Good ole Big Brands. Trusted by millions.

So what does that mean to you, trying to make information about your products and services available to the general public ? It’s going to be harder, at least in the short term. What does it mean to you, the searcher trying to find specific information that’s a little bit off the beaten path. It may be more difficult.

Here’s a possible side-effect of the brand bump in the Google SERPS, that I haven’t see much discussion about. In a couple of different verticals I work with, I’ve noticed page one being filled with directory results from large paid directories, rather than websites of individual businesses, when doing a local search for a specific product or service. Are these big directories considered a brand?  How does adding an extra step of displaying a directory results page in the search engine results page help anyone?

So Big Brand=Higher Quality, More Accurate Content=Better Search Results? No. Google has the ability, resonsibilty, or authority to determine what information is “TRUE” and what is not? NO. My personal opinion is that such an idea, forced into the algorithm by the almighty dollar rather than a concern for helping the searcher find what they are looking for, will result in people switching to another search engine to find what they are looking for. Then, when the traffic decrease results in a loss in revenue, Google will move the other way. I hope.

Until now, the only way to get an inkling of which backlinks to your Website Google knew about was to use the “link:” operator. As I’ve mentioned before, it is utterly useless, especially if your Website dwells in the lower bowels of PR (PageRank). Here’s the backlinks the “link:www.tpdesigns.net” tells me that Google sees.

Nine backlinks? All that work for only nine backlinks? Well I knew I was being had, so Yahoo! to the rescue. Here’s what Yahoo! Site Explorer tells me about my backlinks:

6,228 backlinks? That’s more like it! Without actually counting, I can say that might be most of them.

Today I saw in Matt Cutts blog that Google Webmaster Tools now included backlinks. It had to be an improvement over the totally useless “link:” operator, and it is. I logged in, and after clicking to my Sitemap, I was pleased to see a new tab label “Links.” Here’s what it said:

448 Backlinks. That’s more like it. I noticed the the main difference between the number of backlinks displayed on the “Links” tab in Google Webmaster Tools, and the “Inlinks” displayed in Yahoo! Site Explorer seemed to be that Google was limiting backlinks displayed to a certain number per site, while Yahoo! was displaying most, if not all of them.

Google Webmaster Tools has always had some cool features, not all of which have worked for me. I’ve always felt that I’ve received limited data because my Website was just too small for Google to care about. With the new backlinks feature, Google has given me a reason to log into Webmaster Tools on a regular basis, as well as given me hope that their other tools may be made more useful to us little guys in the near future.

Here is part two in the series recapping a recent Web Guild panel discussion:

Advanced Search Marketing
Silicon Valley Web Guild
12/13/06

Speakers

1. Barbara Coll, Founder & Search Specialist, WebMama
2. Jessie Stricchiola, Founder, Alchemist Media
3. Moderator: Massimo Burgio, Search Specialist, Global Search Interactive

I’ve just outlined comments or information that stood out as being useful for someone involved in or trying to understand search engine marketing.

Pay Per Click (PPC) and Web Analytics

Massimo: Analytic tools are important in obtaining necessary metrics to determine ROI for a marketing campaign.

Barbara: Business to business marketers selling products priced between $5000 and $25,000 aren’t worried about PPC costs. What is the most important question to answer? What are you willing to pay to get a customer? What is a customer’s lifetime value to you?

Jessie: Send PPC traffic to the proper landing page. Properly track clicks with a query string in the link, i.e. url?page=2.

Redesign your page layout for the best conversion. You can better track the effect of changes by testing with a PPC campaign. Use split AB testing for this purpose. Feed the data obtained by this testing back into your SEO program.

Keyword Analysis

Massimo: Talk to your sales force. They are most likely using different terminology than you PR department and customers.

Tools:

Trellian.com – Keyword discovery.
Wordtracker.com – Wordtracker keywords. Has a steeper learning curve. You can buy a daily license.
Bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

Firefox tools for SEO
Extensions:
seobook.com – search “SEO for Firefox”
http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

Jessie: The average number of words in search queries is increasing all the time. The following are measurements and predictions by John Smart -
2002 – 1.3 words
2006- 2.6 words
Projected:
2010 – 5.2 words
2013 – 10.4 words

The average number of words in a human to human questions is 11.

Question and Answers

Q: What is the most critical piece of information in designing your internet marketing campaign?
A: Barbara: Which action converts.

Points to Take Away from the Q&A:

1. There is better conversion on the long tail.
2. Local.google.com gets most of it’s traffic from Google.com because Google includes links to local results in it’s SERPs when appropriate.
3. Buy a feed on local.google.com. You can also include local results in your adword campaign.