AdWords is Google’s flagship advertising product and one of its main sources of revenue.
AdWords offers Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, as well as site-targeted advertising for both
text and banner ads.

Pay per Click Advertising

Advertisers specify the words to “trigger” their ads and the maximum
amount they are willing to pay (or bid) per click that they receive. When a user searches on Google, ads
for relevant words are shown as ’sponsored links’ on the right side of the
screen, and sometimes above the main search results.

The AdWords program includes local, national and
international distribution options and a huge variety of configurable options when setting up and running your Ads. Google’s text advertisements are short, consisting
of one title line (max 25 characters) and two content text lines (max 35 characters each).

The order of paid listings depends on other advertisers’ bids and the ‘quality score’ of all ads shown for a given
search. The quality score is calculated by Google from a number of factors including historical click-through rates and
the relevance of an advertiser’s text, keyword and landing page to the search.

Site Targeted Advertising

A few years ago Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Via the AdWords control
panel, advertisers can enter keywords of interest. Google then offers to place
ads on sites advertisers consider relevant within their content network.

Advertisers then bid for placement, and can also build a list of sites
where they do not wish their ads to appear.  It is not  currently possible to obtain a list of sites
where their ads could appear), however it is possible to see a report of where their ads
showed and how many viewings and clicks were achieved.

Google Adwords can provide a very effective and relatively low cost means of building traffic for your website, and can be particularly effective for new sites, as a way of getting traffic while their organic (natural) rankings build up.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The 30 day Challenge to create your own online business is just about to kick of again …. For the 3rd year - and starting on Wednesday 1st August, the challenge to make your first $10 online begins.

For the full 30 days of August (or 31 actually) Ed Dale and Dan Raine and Nicolas Messe are going to be showing you exactly how to start your own Internet business and generate your first income online, all without spending a cent of hard cash… although it will clearly involve some time commitment on your behalf.

I’ve not been involved in any of the previous 30 day challenges but this one promises to be bigger and better than ever… incorporating video tutorials and podcasts… and simple guides and instructions on some of the most sophisticated Web 2.0 technologies around.

I’ll be directly participating in the challenge myself… and encourage you to go and take a look and see what it’s all about.

see : The Thirty Day Challenge for more info

Sound like an impossible challenge ? … Well perhaps it is… but what can be done to promote and market a website on a shoestring budget ?

Patrick Sexton (SEOish) interviewed some major players in the search space (Aaron Wall, Andy Hagan, Andy Beal, Todd Malicoat, Neil Patel, Lee Odden and CK Chung) and asked them all if they only had $100 how would they market their website.

Here are some highlights :

$100: Maybe a listing in joeant.com and/or botw.org

With $100… I think I would buy some cheap hosting, put up a WordPress CMS, find some good affiliate programs, and start writing and optimizing.

Attending a few conferences per year for education but particularly for networking can prove to be a very worthwhile investment.

leverage social media. You could potentially do it for free, but if I had $100 I would try and create 1 great piece of content and push it out on all of the social sites.

You will have to learn, and learn, and then learn some more.

The Article - Got 100 dollars? 7 Experts share budget website marketing tips -provides some great insights, and is definitely worth a read. But the overall theme is perseverance and dedication, which come to think of it tends to apply to SEO in general, with or with or without the budget…