Organic Click-Through Rates Not So Elusive Anymore

For those of you who use Google Webmaster Tools on a regular basis, you must have been excited to see some of the recent updates that Google has made to GWT.  Earlier this month, Google announced that they were updating some of the search query data which turned out to be:

showing an “Average position” column right on the main Search Queries page
showing a “Displaying” number for Impressions and Clicks
showing a CTR for a given query

These items can provide some great insight into your site’s activity.  Of course you should cross reference with your own analytics to see if the data [...]

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 4 of 4)

This is the final installment of the 4-part series on key PPC best practices (PPC Best Practices Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).
Speak Their Language
There has been constant debate as to what to use for keyword analysis with regards to long-tail versus head phrases and which yields the better results. Head phrases are the very generic and broad search queries where there is enormous search volume, but costs associated with the keywords are quite high. Torso keywords are the more-specific keywords; the 2- to 4-word search queries that still have lower search volume compared to the head phrases, but [...]

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 1 of 4)

Stop Thinking PPC, Start Thinking Consumer-Initiated Marketing
Over the past year, several new options (and the list keeps growing) have been made available for online advertisers to create more sophisticated online marketing campaigns. We’ve seen the implementation of display advertising through Pay Per Click (PPC) providers as well as a significant movement towards local and mobile advertising. This movement in the market represents a paradigm shift, from simply a PPC-focused strategy, to thinking about all the channels associated with consumer-initiated marketing conversations.
Several of these options include display advertisements, paid inclusion, local listings and Pay Per Action (PPA). With each of [...]