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.

UPDATE: A reply from Google came in (translated from Dutch):
“Advertising for ‘link building’ isn’t allowed, because Google doesn’t encourage building links artificially in order to obtain higher search engine rankings, and can even penalize this. I don’t know if you can interpret ‘link building’ in an other way, but Google sees this query as ‘building links for higher rankings’. This is why advertising for this keyword isn’t allowed.”

This post, Google Doesn’t Allow Link Building Ads, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

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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.

This post, How to use Google AdWords to find new links, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

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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.

Please note that it’s advertising spending in the US only, in billions of $. Hiring a web design company isn’t part of the online ad spending, for example. Banner advertising costs and Google AdWords click budgets, however, are included.

It’s almost stunning to see that four of the top 25 companies, GSK, McDonald’s, L’Oreal and Macy’s, spend less than 1% of their advertising budget online. Come on already, it’s 2007! Ok, the numbers above are last year’s, but still…
Only AT&T, Verizon and Disney spend 4% or more of their advertising budgets online.

It would have been great to dive into the online success of these companies measured by (for instance) #of Digg front page listings, StumbleUpon reviews or Del.icio.us favorites. Unfortunately, companies like P&G and Unilever each have hundreds of different brands, which would make these results inaccurate. Maybe if I had some spare hours left…

This post, Online ad spending of the top 25 US advertising companies, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

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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.

This post, Danny Sullivan: new job at Vizion, or is he a scam?, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

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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.

This post, Monitor the demand for your personal brand, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

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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.

My girlfriend’s birthday is in a two weeks, and because I’m a really cheap bastard, I’m looking for a “sale” somewhere.

Oh wait, I almost forgot, I need a new “LCD monitor“:

Hmm, back to the search for a birthday present again. Enter “sale“, hit GO:

That’s 3 really targeted ads. Looks like Google’s getting smarter by the minute…

Update 1: Ben Murphy also noticed it and it seems to happen with AdSense ads as well.

Update 2: Google sent SEL a reaction with some more info about this:
“What you’re seeing is that we look at the user’s previous query and see how well it intersects with the current query. If it’s significant, we’ll use it to help targeting on the current query. We simply look at what’s in the referring URL (every time you load a web page, the HTTP header includes your previous URL as the “referrer”).”

This post, Personalized Google ads, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

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