Vigilance, micromanaging and attention to detail can help you avoid some common and costly mistakes of PPC advertising. What are those mistakes?

Here are the terrible 10 that are typical to most pay per click campaigns.

Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group

It’s important to target your ad to be as relevant as possible. Don’t group all your keywords into one or two ad groups. Break them out. Keep them tight. This gives you more control over ad variables so that you can be as relevant as possible.

Not Using Negative Keywords

Do you know what’s happening in your own site search? Understanding site search is one of the most important KPI (Key Performance Indicator) you should measure.

According to a Forrester study, over 50 percent of major web sites fail in search usability. When your search fails to deliver, your conversion suffers. A low converting site will result is less sales and decreased revenue.

Search is not just another nice feature to have. You have to think of search as a revenue generating part of your business.

What do you need to get top rankings on Google? There are many ingredients in the mix, but here are three of the most important that you need to concentrate on.

1.) Keyword Relevant Copy and Content.

Whatever the keywords you want to get ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), be sure that you have enough copy and content about those specific words which will give Google a reason to rank you in the first place.

Don’t buy paid links! Paid links are bad! Don’t cloak either. Search engines don’t allow it. You’ve all heard this before right?

Well as it turns out, not ALL search engines are as hard line on these issues as some claim to be. MSN Live specifically has now gone on the record that none of the above are necessarily taboo.

Over the holiday break, Jeremiah Andrick, product manager for MSN Live Webmaster Tools, stopped by our offices. We did a lengthy video interview where we chatted about all kinds of good searchy things. Highlights of our chat included some of the emerging differences between Live Search and engines like Google on subjects like cloaking and paid links.

The current proliferation of social media sites is the most pervasive phenomenon on the Internet today. Not since the dot.com explosion has the there been an Internet trend that is so widespread in its popularity. The comparison with the dot.com growth is in fact one that is made by many industry observers, and while there are a number of clear similarities, there are also some important differences.

It is expected that by early 2008, all the various social media sites will have more than 230 million members. That number is predicted to grow until 2009, with a leveling off on the number of new members expected by 2012.

I created a new site on Friday, and by Saturday exactly 24 hours later it was in Google’s Index. I posted about this just over a month ago in my post, 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours.

I had a lot of comments about whether or not Adwords was necessary, so I thought I’d try it again without running Adwords this time. Here’s how it all played out:

You have two choices to consider when trying get your site ranked higher in search engines. You can hire a Search Engine Optimization Company that is an expert in the field or if you have some time, you can do it yourself

Research your Keywords

Ask yourself what keywords you think someone might type in when searching for products you sell or services you provide. Though a keyword may be only one word it is usually a phrase made up of keywords. Phrases are more specific and will more than likely be what potential customers use when searching for products or services online.

Search engine optimization techniques for Google and Yahoo are quite different. Many websites rank well in one search engine but not the other. This is the direct result of each search engine having its own unique ranking algorithm. For example, the Google algorithm predominantly values the anchor text of in-bound links. Yahoo places more emphasis on keyword density and meta tags.

The primary reason for the difference in ranking algorithms is that Google owns the patent on Page Rank (PR), named after Google’s founder Larry Page. As a result of owning this patent, other search engines need to place more emphasis on different optimization factors including website URL, keyword density and so on.

Just in case you missed it… the Web has changed.

I think a little history of the Internet is in order to grasp the big picture. I’m not going to give any dates (late eighties and early 90’s)… I’ll just give a quick run down.

I would say nearly fifteen years ago I had a dial up Internet connection that allowed me to log into various College computers, BBS’s (bulletin boards) and Newsgroups.

By Lani and Allen Voivod (c) 2007

Now more than ever, if you want to be a successful business owner, you need a successful business website. Which means you have to make nice with the search engines. And the long-standing rule of search engine friendliness is to create inbound links — links from other sites pointing to your site.
Ten-ish years ago, when Google started the shift away from code to content (including inbound links) as the preferred way of determining “relevance,” the world changed. Immediately, businesses owners started scrambling, and begging, for every link they could get. Thank goodness that’s not the case anymore! But inbound links are still important. In many ways they’re more vital than ever.