A Google AdWords bug has cost a company thousands of dollars. Even after Google fixed the situation for the company, Google has not offered the company a refund or even a credit on their account. Lawnstarter.com realized that Google was running their ads in Austin, Texas with someone else’s phone number–even though the company is located in Virginia and restricted their ads to their local area.

In a blog post on the company’s website, Lawnstarter explained what happened: [Read more…]

A lot of companies that you typically wouldn’t expect to offer SEO (search engine optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing, PPC) services have lately have begun to offer such services to their current customers. A while back Deluxe Corporation bought Orange Soda, and Behr Paint then started offering SEO and SEM services to their Pro contractors. Now, the latest company to jump on the SEO/SEM bandwagon is IBM. [Read more…]

If you have a brick and mortar business with a physical street address that you publicize (you typically have customers visit you at your location), then you should be listed in the “local” listings of the major search engines. Yahoo! Local, for example, is one that you should make sure that you’re listed in–and your listing should be correct. [Read more…]

Update: December 14, 2013: I have received complaints about this SEO tool, as it either is no longer being updated, or the service is unreliable. I personally spoke with the owners of this tool and these issues have been resolved now. [Read more…]

As of today, August 27, 2013, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is gone. You can no longer use this free online keyword research tool to get the average number of searches per month for keywords. And you can no longer get keyword suggestions from the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. [Read more…]

During a recent comment thread on Facebook by Steve Floyd, the subject of SEOs (Search Engine Optimization pros or “search engine optimizers”) and SEMs (Search Engine Marketers or “Pay Per Click professionals”) came up. During this heated discussion, I think there was only one thing that many tended to agree on: SEOs and SEMs are very different. [Read more…]