Google’s advertising concept simple yet quite ingenuous, if you bid on a keyword that does not have any competition you will have to pay a minimum of $0.01 for that ad to be published.

For your ads to show on Google's Display Network, your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid must equal or exceed your currency's minimum CPC, which is approximately equivalent to US $0.01. To find the exact minimum CPC in your currency, visit the Account Fees and Payment Options page.

The Google Search network publishes at most 11 ads in a single search result, 8 on the right column and at most 3 ads in the quality score area. Now due to a specific criteria that is used to calculate the quality score and to select the ads that can be published in this area, we will not be seeing ads published permanently here, so let’s focus on the right column ad section; In theory if a keywords is only being bided by 7 clients, the 8th client will only pay the minimum CPC of 0.01$ to appear in the last position of the right column ad area.

Naturally if the objective is to appear in a more prominent area of the ad area the 8th will have to “fight” his way into the desired positions by increasing the CPC and hopping the competition does not do the same.

This is Google’s advertising concept, and its this very business logic that has helped so many small business strive and shoulder with large corporations with huge advertising budgets. For a moment consider that you are bidding for the keyword: “azulejos” that is consistently returning 4 results on the right and one on the quality score. Even assuming that the site in the quality score position is moved to the right, we still have three available spots without any competition. Awesome, an 0.01$ advertising spot right?

 Not quite…remove the zeroes on the left and maybe…just maybe you might that last VACANT spot.

Here is an excerpt of a reply to a client that raised the issue in Google Help Center:

Google would actually rather show no ads at all than to show ads not likely to provide a good user experience. The AdWords system was designed from the ground up to protect this user experience by providing many checks and balances, and AdWords might most accurately be thought of as quality based advertising. All that said, please know that the first page bid estimate for a keyword is not highly related to how many (or how few) competitors an advertiser has for the keyword. Instead, minimum bid is more heavily related to the Quality Score of the keyword as it is used in an individual advertiser's account.

By the way, when you encounter keywords for which there are no (or very few) competitors, it does not necessarily mean that no one has thought of using that keyword and it is thus a great opportunity to advertise cheaply. In fact it often means just the opposite: that the advertisers who have used it in the past have found it difficult to keep it running affordably (due perhaps to a lack of 'commercial intent' on the part of those searching on the keyword) and have decided to stop using it.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=3452bff68df2b737&hl=en So let me get this straight…

1. If you find a keyword without any competition it means that advertisers who have bided on it in the past found it to be a poor investment, so they stopped bidding on it and Google made the natural thing… lowered…on no wait… RAISED the minimum cp of that keyword. Wait a minute… so if it’s a bad investment and no one is buying it the market makes it even more expensive to detract potential investment…right…

2. If the Quality Score is dictating the minimum CPC, and if you took care of the relevancy of your keyword VS ad copy VS the actual landing page/site, why is Google enforcing you minimum CPCs based supposedly on the historic performance data of that keyword? And again, if its not performing, why increase the CPC? It simply does not make sense in a business sense…oh wait… it does… on Google’s business sense.

Why doesn’t Google simple put all the cards on the table and stop hiding behind complex algorithms that determine the price that we have to pay for a service? It’s a method that has worked in commerce for 2000 years; you have a service to provide, you state the terms of the service and if I agree to them, I will pay you the agreed amount. No where in the process do I have to pay an undisclosed fee that depends on what salesman's undisclosed data thinks I should pay.

It’s been a while I know, so yes, this is a rant post, so please bare with me… Now, one would think that a company that generates 23.651 billion in gross revenue per month, that does not need to allocate time to attending their clients requests (most of the support requests are handled by automated systems), would at least take the time to get the most basic feature working on their website and that coincidently is responsible for bringing all of the revenue in! Don’t hide our god damn ads Google! For god’s / Sergey’s / Eric’s / Lawence’s sake! 

I know this is a bit geeky, but the sheer size of everything is overwhelming. Take a look at the cooling systems.

Just found out that Danny Sullivan dropped the Daily Search Cast indefinitely due to time constraints. Keeping a radio show running at a frenetic pace for three years is a marvelous achievement, and I very sure that I am not the only one that will miss the show. I hold Danny in the highest of considerations, both professionally and personally. I had the chance of exchanging a couple of emails with him in the past, and found him to be so down to earth, keeping at the same time an exemplary level of professionalism. All and all just a fantastic person to deal with. Would like to wish Danny all the best!

Haven't writen in ages so I decided to back back on track with a little rant. ;) I just found out that it's not possible to change our Google Account primary address. That's right, if for some reason you need to change the email address that you have associated with all your Google Product the only thing that the system will allow you to do is add a secondary email address that you can use to log in to your account. Now consider this, if for some reason you don't have access to the primary account anymore, of if you ceased to have control over it, you pretty much just have to suck it in and take it.

One the questions that I keep getting from colleagues who aren’t involved in the Search Engine Optimization arena is how many keywords should they to optimize their website for. First of all, Web Pages are optimized, not websites. A web site is usually constituted by several web pages that can rank for various terms that have a life of their own. As you might be aware of, the number of times a specific word is found on a page plays an important role on how that page will rank for with that particular term. However Google has several mechanisms in place that prevent content publishers from abusing the factor.

This is where the Keyword Density factor comes in. An optimal keyword density is a good balance between a specific word and the rest of the content published on a web page. Clustering a page with a keyword will have an adverse affect on how that page ranks for that keyword on Google, as the page will be identified as spam. Another aspect that should be taken into the account is the less time = ROI. The less time you spend optimizing your website for good results the better your return of investment is.

This is one of the things that I have noted to blog about in the future that I think most SEO specialists tend to forget. The fact that you achieved the ranks you proposed yourself to achieve isn’t necessarily a victory. Always ask yourself, how much time did this action take from me? Choosing your keywords carefully is always the best way to go.

Keyword Research

Find your market’s niches Web Market investors always tend to go for the keywords that they would search for, remember that internet user behaviour is completely different from the regular consumer. You will be surprised at the queries that your potential clients are doing. In this industry never assume that you know something without testing it out.

Tools for Research Although meant to be used for PPC campaigns, the Google Keyword tool provides you with the Google Search Volume information for any particular term that you search for that can be used in your Organic keyword selection. It’s a great tool to find good niches within your market based on the search volume data provided by Google. Another useful tool that can aid you in your Keyword selection process is Google trends.

It gives you a pretty good idea of how a certain search term does in terms of search volume, with the extra bonus is spreading this through out the year. This is extremely important as it allows you to program your investment during the year. Ideally, you should change the keywords you invest in depending on how well they do thought certain periods.

On-site Keyword Optimization

Placing the Keywords in the Meta tags, does it matter? No, at least not for Google, but it doesn’t hurt! How Google treats the Keyword Meta Tag is still not very clear, but what we do know is that as far as relevancy is concerned, they don’t matter. It is also a possibility that Google looks for repetition of keywords in the Meta Tag to look for spammers, so take this into account when building your keyword Meta Tag.

Keyword Density The Keyword density factor is one of the most disregarded and at the same time abused elements of Google’s algorithm. To put it very blatantly, Keyword density refers to the percentage of a given keyword within a specific web page’s content. Through a Search Engine’s perspective, it means that repetition means relevancy.

Getting inbound links to benefit specific keywords within web pages Although the purpose of this post is to provide a few tips on how to chose and where to place your keywords, without really focusing on link building, here are a few tips to optimize your optimized Keywords: Let’s suppose that you have a web page that talks about Coffee Mugs, and let’s suppose that it is an interesting niche, and that you have an affiliate campaign set and ready to go for this particular branch of products. If your website is about Coffee Mugs, or if you have more related internal links pointing

So how should I proceed to market that webpage.

1. Make sure the keyword density is right within the page

2. Try and place the keyword in the title of the webpage in the first position of the title tag (it does matter). Ex. Coffee Mugs – Mysite

3. Place the Keyword in a Header tag. If it is an article the ideal structure would be; placing the Keyword in the Title of the article wrapped around h1 tags and in the short description of the article wrapped around header 2 tags.

4. Get properly anchored inbound links from websites related to Coffe Muggs. Google is all about contextualization. If your Web Page is getting links from Web Pages that are in context to what your page is talking about, the importance of that page will logically increase. (Even better if those contextual inbounds have are authoritative). http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Choosing-Keywords-Help/Choosing-and-Researching-Keywords/

So as most of you know Google Chrome is out, and I must say, it did not disappoint me at all.The interface is awesome; Google manages to take things to the next level, by not only making the navigation a lot smarter and intuitive, but most importantly a lot faster as well. So not only is the navigation itself faster, but the loading speed is also dramatically quicker then in IE and Firefox. One thing that I was a bit surprised was that at the moment it’s still not possible to install Google’s Toolbar in Chrome. I’m still testing the application, so I will get back to you guys on my findings in a later date.

Google is watching your every move, don't you think you can fool the eyes of the Bot! So buying your way to the top, are we? It's just a matter of time before you get caught. Riiiiiiiiiiight. A little word of advice to the big G, Begin by sorting out your first page results, and then worry about what Webmasters are up to. Search for Web Marketing at Google.pt: (The Red arrow is pointing to my companies website whilst the blue arrow is pointing to the site that is "clustering" the results page). http://www.google.pt/search?hl=pt-PT&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enPT232PT232&q=web+marketing&meta= Is a simple condition statement too complex for the algorithm to handle? IF RESULTS page 1 already contains Page A should I display Page A twice? What about three times? Heck, why not go all the way and cluster my own search results page with a single website?? that should be fun! I don't have a lot to complain about since my company is leading the SERPS with a single results. But for the love of God, this is becoming ridiculous, to the point where I'm having trouble explaining to my clients that Google is a good reliable system to invest in. Maybe the Adwords Learning Center could add a new Sales pitch tutorial on how to lead with questions like: "why is that site occupying three slots in the first page? Why should I invest in PPC when I can get 30% of the top page slots with my website? Please note that I have nothing against the website's webmaster, I personally know the owner of the company in question and kudos for him for the fantastic results, but it's impossible to stay quiet when you see one of your top business search queries being handled by Goolgle the way it is. Sort it out!

Now here is a creative way of kicking the crap out of your competition. So Google's Brad Fitzpatrick published some notes about how Google is going to develop a system that will aggregate the data from all of the most prominent Social Network sites. Note that we are not talking about an end-user product, meaning that the purpose of this system is to provide a tool that will generate graph data from all of the network sites without having to login seperatly to each account. Sounds a bit confusing right? That's the idea! Of course that there is a hidden agenda here, and doesn't take a rocket scientist to uncover it. Imagine not having to re-invite your friends every time you register on a new Social Networking platform since this centralized system will aggregate all of this data for you! and what about only needing to login to your Google account to have all of this data at your mercy? Ah the joy of Google contr...I mean simplicty. Supposedly, Google is negotiating with Facebook and they have shown a lot of enthusiasm.

The goal is not to replace Facebook. In fact, most people I've talked to love Facebook, just want a bit more of their already-public data to be more easily accessible, and want to mitigate site owners' fears about any single data/platform lock-in. Early talks with Facebook about participating in this project have been incredibly promising.

If you have a centralized system that aggregates all of the data in one platform, the natural progression will be that the traffic will divert from the independent data feeders to the centralized system. For the life of me I cannot understand how any of the Social Networks can find this exciting or promising in any way, unless of course there is plenty going on that we don't know about.

Very cool presentation my Googler Mark Lesser. He talks about how one should take a step back and try and enjoy the "art of doing nothing" at least once a year. Something I should deffinately consider doing in the near future.