by mtraphagen | Aug 2, 2010 | Google, Paid Search
In July of 2010, Google AdWords announced a global rollout of a new broad match keyword modifier feature. This new feature is supposed to create keywords with “greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match.” Simply put, modified broad...
by mtraphagen | Jul 28, 2010 | SEO, Social Media
Just thought I’d pass along something I noticed since Caffeine (Google’s new search ranking algorithm) kicked in. I’m wondering if anyone else has seen this? The meat of what I’m going to share: feeding your site updates to FriendFeed may bring...
by mtraphagen | Jun 28, 2010 | Google, Paid Search
If you’ve spent any time doing pay-per-click advertising, you’re probably familiar with the technique known as “peel and stick,” popularized by AdWords guru Perry Marshall. If not (or if you need a refresher), read the blue paragraph below. If...
by mtraphagen | Mar 8, 2010 | Social Media, Twitter
Since its inception people have found many creative uses for Twitter, but to my mind one of the most useful has been as the collective, real-time public notebook for conferences and special events. Smart conference organizers establish and publicize a hash tag for...
by mtraphagen | Feb 22, 2010 | Facebook, Google, Social Media, Twitter
I’ve been an enthusiastic early adopter of Google Buzz since it appeared in my Gmail inbox the day after its unveiling. As a one-time huge fan of Friendfeed, the interface was immediately familiar (though lacking in some of Friendfeeds best features). I’d...
by mtraphagen | Jan 18, 2010 | Paid Search
Among the most rudimentary, yet important, regular optimization tasks you should be doing for your pay-per-click advertising account is ad split testing. It is a fact that, in most cases, no two ads for the same keyword(s) will perform the same. It’s not enough...
by mtraphagen | Nov 3, 2009 | Paid Search
For those of us who have been immersed in the highly-complex world of Google’s AdWords for some time, it may be difficult to remember how overwhelming and confusing (and often irrational!) it seemed when we were starting out. It’s hard enough just to learn...
by mtraphagen | Oct 29, 2009 | Google, Paid Search
If you’ve got some experience managing cost-per-click (Google’s term for pay-per-click) advertising using Google AdWords, you surely by now realize the high importance of optimizing for Quality Score. Either that, or you enjoy throwing away your or your...
by mtraphagen | Oct 1, 2009 | Paid Search
From a search on Google for the keyword “ball cancer” (in the Sponsored Results column): Next time I’m looking to buy cancer balls, I’ll know where to go for the best deal! How does this happen? How could Google be showing me an ad for...
by mtraphagen | Sep 29, 2009 | Hive Digital
Bloggeris a great, easy to use site for creating a personal blog. However, if you are planning to build a blog for business purposes, it is probably not your best choice, even to start out on. I just learned that Google does not allow Blogger sites to 301 redirect....
by mtraphagen | Sep 28, 2009 | Google
Proving once again that it is the Santa Claus of the Internet, Google last week announced yet another free toy: Google Sidewiki. Sidewiki is an addition to the Google Toolbar (so far only for Firefox and Internet Explorer) that allows anyone to leave comments and...
by mtraphagen | Sep 2, 2009 | Paid Search
If you’ve been using Google’s AdWords and/or Analytics products for any length of time, you must be aware that the numbers don’t always add up. In fact, they don’t add up at a sometimes alarming frequency. That is to say, the reported numbers...
