I knew that Google stopped allowing ads for search phrases like ‘buy links‘ and ‘text link ads‘ a while ago, but apparently, Google stopped accepting ads for ‘link building‘ as well. After doing some research, I noticed that a member at WMW noticed this too, around a month ago.

According to the Google AdWords help center, “This keyword is not permitted to show your ads in the targeted location.”

Google still displays ads for keywords like ‘linkbuilding‘, ‘link baiting‘ and even ‘purchase links‘, though.

In the process of finding links and determining which links are actually valuable, Google can play a bigger role than you’d expect. Google can tell you exactly which website is of high quality, is relevant to your website, attracts lots of visitors or can provide lots of conversions. Google can even provide information about the possible monthly value of a link in $.
How? Read on.

1. Use relevant, commercial search queries.
No new information here. If this is new to you, please go read this or this. If your website is about hotels in Barcelona, use Google to search for hotels in Barcelona. Google will provide a list of websites which Google thinks are high quality, relevant Barcelona hotel websites. The perfect material for your link.
All you have to do is Google for hotels in Barcelona and contact the websites that are in the top 50, top 100 or whatever other amount of websites you prefer.

2. Search for related, non commercial websites.
If you have tried the previous tactic before, you’ll know it sucks. If you’re lucky, there might be two websites in the top 100 that are willing to add a link to your website. This strategy can be more successful.
When you’re promoting your website about hotels in Barcelona, search for ‘information about Barcelona’, ‘Barcelona city info’, ‘Catalonia area’, ‘FC Barcelona’ or ‘Spain weather info’. Google will show (mostly non commercial) websites related to this subject and somewhat relevant to your website. Most of these sites might be willing to add a link to your website, especially when you’re able to offer them a ‘reviewing’ fee.

3. Use Google AdWords.
The second tactic sometimes provides a lot of useful websites that -paid or not paid- are willing to link to your website. But here’s the top tactic. Google’s own ad program can deliver very valuable info about which link
a) is relevant to your website
b) can provide a lot of visitors
c) may provide a lot of converting visitors

Are you using Google AdWords? Don’t forget to let your ads appear on the Content Network. While not every Google AdWords user is a big fan of the Content Network (mainly because of the higher amount of non-converting visitors), this option may provide valuable data about which websites to contact for a link.

Since earlier this year, it’s possible to see on which websites in Google’s Content Network your website is appearing. To run a report like this, select the bottom report type in the AdWords Report panel and hit ‘create report’.

This report shows you websites that are relevant to your subject, because Google matched to content of these sites to the content of your. It might be possible that the website isn’t 100% relevant, but there must be at least one page on the site that is relevant enough to show your ads.

The report also gives an indication of the possible amount of visitors, because it mentions the amount of impressions. Besides the impressions, Google also lists the amount of clicks (interested visitors), the amount conversions (possible customers) and the total costs and cost per conversion (value of the link). You can also download the report in csv (excel), which makes the data even more accessible.

This means that Google doesn’t only show which websites or web pages are relevant to the subject of your website, but it also is an indicator for the amount of visitors and conversions that a link on that website or website can provide. Google’s Content Network report option can even calculate the possible value of a link for you.

While there are companies that use nothing but online advertising, some companies still almost neglect the web. Most of these companies are the top overall advertisers. AdAge released the 2007 edition of the Top 100 US Advertising Companies (pdf, or via this html link) a while ago, but I stumbled upon it this weekend. Research documents like that always are fun to read.

It’s almost funny to see how some companies still avoid the Internet as an advertising opportunity. I took the top 25 companies (totaling a stunning $53 Billion) and listed both their advertising spending and their internet advertising spending.

#

Company

Total Advertising (in billions $)

Internet Advertising (in billions $)

In % of total

1

Procter & Gamble Co,

4.898

0.054

1,1%

2

AT&T

3.344

0.169

5,0%

3

General Motors Corp,

3.296

0.118

3,6%

4

Time Warner

3.088

0.091

2,9%

5

Verizon Communications

2.821

0.124

4,4%

6

Ford Motor Co,

2.576

0.099

3,8%

7

GlaxoSmithKline

2.444

0.015

0,6%

8

Walt Disney Co,

2.320

0.133

5,7%

9

Johnson & Johnson

2.290

0.034

1,5%

10

Unilever

2.098

0.028

1,3%

11

Toyota Motor Corp

1.995

0.056

2,8%

12

Sony Corp,

1.994

0.074

3,7%

13

DaimlerChrysler

1.952

0.045

2,3%

14

General Electric

1.860

0.061

3,3%

15

Sprint Nextel Corp

1.775

0.038

2,1%

16

McDonald’s Corp,

1.748

0.014

0,8%

17

Sears Holdings Corp,

1.652

0.024

1,5%

18

L’Oreal

1.456

0.008

0,5%

19

Kraft Foods

1.423

0.023

1,6%

20

Macy’s

1.361

0.005

0,3%

21

Honda Motor Co,

1.350

0.034

2,5%

22

Bank of America Corp,

1.334

0.043

3,2%

23

Nissan Motor Co,

1.328

0.029

2,2%

24

PepsiCo

1.322

0.014

1,1%

25

Nestle

1.315

0.021

1,6%

53.049

1,350.8

2,5%

(more…)

When I was writing up a post this morning, I checked to see who used AdWords for their personal name. Besides the fact that I, strangely enough, noticed that only very few use this strategy, I came across these ads.

So I guess Danny found a new job at Vizion, or is he just a scam?

Edit: David Naylor seems to be for sale on eBay as well and Jill Whalen might also be a scam.

It has been mentioned before, online marketing is like a big popularity contest. When you enter a popularity contest (since you’re probably in to SEO, you already have), you’ll want to know your score. The score for your company and/ or website isn’t very hard to track. Just monitor your rankings, visitors, sales, subscribers or whatever you consider as a score. But how do you measure the popularity of your personal brand? Easy, use search ads. This is also very useful to serve people who search for your name the page that you want them to see.

Have you been busy creating some personal buzz lately? Monitor how often your name is being Googled or Yahoo’ed. Create your own Google Trends. You can easily determine how often people were searching for you (or a username you use), by checking the amount of impressions your ad received. It has to be said that, unlike in real life, having a weird name pays off when you use this strategy. Can you imagine dozens of people with really uncommon names like this? If your name is Mike Johnson, it’s harder to determine if people are looking for you or for that other Mike.

If you don’t want to invest in tracking yourself (which I can’t imagine), you can also let others do it for you. Did you know that there are two services (I know of) that place ads to a page you create for free? I haven’t tested them out, but I’m pretty sure they can be useful to some.

A colleague who’s really into Google AdWords showed me a great example of personalized Google ads. In some cases, Google shows ads that are related to your previous search queries. It even works when all cookies are deleted and you aren’t signed in to your Google account or whatever. The searches must be executed in the same window, however.

Let’s say I’m looking for the weather forecast. When I search for “weather forecast“, I’ll get these results (click to enlarge):

What if the next thing I’m looking for is a “Holiday to Spain“?

Now let’s see what happens to the ads if I enter “weather forecast” in the search box again?

Hmm, the first ad looks really targeted to me. Let’s see if we can get personalized ads on other queries as well.

(more…)