Adwords is a system to advertise on Google (and partner sites including Yahoo! and AOL) on a CPC (Cost Per Click basis). Adwords is an incredibly popular advertising scheme, as there is no monthly charges involved. Additionally, Adwords includes some advanced settings that allows users to present their advertisement to specific users searching for their key terms. This effectively qualifies the searcher to make sure they are in fact looking for the business or service being offered.
Adwords links appear at the top of the Google search engine results page, as shown in the figure above. Although statistically only 35% of users ever click on paid links, PPC campaigns can have an enourmous impact on a websites internet marketing campaign, and in competitive industries companies can bid as much as £5 per click!
Although I’m looking forward to relaxing with the family and enjoying the festivities over the xmas period, I will also be making sure that several of our websites are kept up to date with Fresh content. Googlebot doesn’t switch off for Christmas, and a lot of business owners and SEO experts will be using this time as an opportunity to get a competitive edge!
Maintaining the sites over Christmas doesn’t involve too much effort. Blog posts have been scheduled in, and I would expect traffic to drop significantly between the dates of 24th-26th December as people switch off their computers (or are forced to in my case!) and focus on enjoying their holiday and swigging back on the egg nog! Although this may not be a busy time, it’s important to keep your site updated to make sure it is still indexed regularly. Our office is closed for over 8 days so it’s important that we put in some valueable preparation time before we head home!
The meta data can contain lots of information about a website, however we recommend using at least the meta description and meta keywords. These should be used on every page of your site; however you should not duplicate this content, as this is at best a missed opportunity. Due to spammer abuse over the years, it is argued that meta-keyword tags have little or no bearing with improving your search engine position with Google. However, some search engines do still take them into account so it is definitely a worthwhile task.
Additionally, descriptions are used by some search engines in the snippet of information below the link on SERPs, and can include valuable ‘call to actions’ for the user. Some directories also use this information as the description for your entry. A missing description can leave your search results looking isolated and incomplete in search engines like Yahoo.
