Metallica - El Cerrito House 1983 (First Jam Session with Cliff Burton)

Update 10/21/08: Being led by an errant post in a Metallica forum, I originally took pictures of the wrong house (the house next door). I’ve since taken new pictures, so the gallery below is the correct El Cerrito Metallica House.

Now for something a little different. Those who know me, know that I’m a huge metal fan among other things, and especially a Metallica fan. I’ve listened to Metallica since I was 13 years old and their music has had a huge impact on my life as a guitar player and songwriter. So, Adwords and Google Slaps aside, I wanted to write a quick post about an interesting experience I recently had related to “Metallica”. Read the rest of this entry

Unlike search campaigns, campaigns on the content network are fundamentally different in many ways. A lot of new marketers make the fatal mistake of leaving the option in Adwords selected to run their same search campaign on the content network. This is a big no no for many reasons:

1) The adgroup structure for a successful content campaign is very different from search.
2) Keyword matching options in the content network are not used (phrase, exact match have no relevance)
3) Content ads are driven by themes vs search ads that are driven by keyword queries.
4) Keyword insertion (dynamic or static) has no relevance in content ads.
5) Your target audience on the content network is much different (and
much wider) than on search, so therefore a new psychology of ad
writing must be used. Read the rest of this entry

Google finally did something I had long desired be added as a feature of the Adwords Editor tool. They added built-in keyword research functionality, or “Keyword Opportunities” as they called it.

One of just a handful of new features in Adwords Editor 6.5, the Keyword Expansion addition makes finding and adding new keywords to your existing campaigns quick and easier than ever. You enter your search query, then select the keywords you want to add to either your existing adgroups or new ones. You can then simply drag and drop those keywords into your adgroups in the right-hand tree column.

Click the thumbnail view below to see a quick sample I generate based on the seed “online dating”.

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As you can see, there are columns for volume and competition, rated on a scale of 0 – 5. This obviously differs from the way data is displayed by Google’s online Adwords Keyword Tool, but its a start nonetheless.

The other noteworthy new addition to Adwords Editor 6.5 is the “Keyword Multiplier” feature. Simply put, you combine multiple columns of keywords into all the possible word forms in that order, to quickly expand your keyword list. I’ve used quite a few online and desktop tools that provide this functionality, but it’s nice to finally have it accessible in one interface.

As a quick example in the image below, you can see that I combined types of buyer keywords with name brand computer makers and the type of computer being searched (ie: laptop, desktop). When combined, these 16 source keywords quickly became a nice list of 80 new long tail keywords, ready to be added to my campaigns.

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My prediction: As Google continues to improve the Adwords Editor, some of the more expensive Internet marketing keyword tools will soon become obsolete. Tools like Keyword Elite, Speed PPC, and Keyword Companion will have to grow and evolve beyond their current featureset to compete against a tool that is in Google’s best interest to develop.

To see a full list of the new features added in Adwords Editor 6.5 have a look at the AE 6.5 release notes.