Now you can check in quickly, from anywhere, and monitor what is happening in your Adwords account. Google just rolled out AdWords for Mobile with a new interface for Android, iPhone, and Palm Pre devices.

AdWords for Mobile provides mobile access to your account, key alerts and statistics as well as a facility to make quick changes to your AdWords settings even while on the move.

You have to customize your experience for your mobile device. To do this you should first log in from your desktop computer and choose the parts of your account that you want to monitor closely. You are able to set up custom alerts for key account events such as when your campaing reaches a certain threshold of your daily budget or to monitor when traffic drops significantly.  You can also set “saved filters” to flag your most important keywords and campaigns.

The interface was designed to access the essentials in your account by viewing and making basic edits to campaigns and keywords. If you need access any other areas of your account then you can switch to the desktop version of AdWords through a link at the bottom of the screen.

AdWords for Mobile is now the default mobile interface for a small percentage of English language advertisers, and Google will be enabling the feature for additional advertisers and languages in the coming weeks.

To try out AdWords for Mobile immediately, simply direct your Android, iPhone, or Palm Pre to http://adwords.google.com/dashboard/Dashboard

Congratulations to two of our team members, Kerry-Leigh Stevens and Mangosuthu Malinga, who succesfully passed the Google Adwords Professionals (GAP) exam.

As specialists in online strategy and e-marketing, Virtuosa recognises the need to provide credibility and we are proud to say that Virtuosa is now an Accredited Adwords Company – this means that we are officially qualified by Google to advertise online.

What this means for Virtuosa clients:

• Clients are assured of receiving expert PPC services from qualified Google Adwords Professionals;
• With more than one Adwords Professional in the Virtuosa team, clients are guaranteed of even better creative ideas for online business strategy;
• Virtuosa receives insights into future Google developments which allow us to understand and timeously implement trends effectively;
• Virtuosa will have access to Google beta testing of new tools to understand and participate in the development;
• Virtuosa has direct communications with the Google International team as well as exclusive previews of new product launches;
• Virtuosa has access to Google Market Intelligence on best practice within various industries that we operate within

Find out more about Virtuosa’s Paid Search Marketing services.

The topic says it all… the upcoming Journal of Marketing’s Breakfast Debate moderated by Jeremy Maggs is sure to be an interesting event. The panel that will participate consists of a variety of well known and exciting individuals in the online marketing arena:

• Heidi Brauer -Executive Manager: Group Marketing, Comair
• Arthur Goldstuck -CEO, World Wide Worx
• Michael Markovitz -Executive Chairman, Primedia Digital
• Jaco Meiring -Head Online Marketing, Investec Bank
• Mike Stopforth -CEO, Cereba

Discussions will centre around issues like why you need a Web 2.0 strategy, how do you optimize your convergence, what happens if you don’t blog, how to formulate a PPC model and how mobile fits into the mix.

Virtuosa will be attending this event so be sure to look out for our live blog postings & tweets on Thursday 16th July from around 07h00. We will be bringing you all the happenings from The Michelangelo’s L’Incontro Ballroom as they unfold. So watch this space…..

Virtuosa is currently looking for an Online Marketing Manager to join our amazing team to help drive business and revenue strategy for our clients.

We are looking for a results-oriented Internet technical marketing specialist, with notable successes in directing a broad range of SEO/SEM strategies and campaigns, PPC campaigns, technology development, strategic online planning, and revenue generation.

This is a unique and challenging opportunity to work with a highly motivated team in a positive, fast-paced environment, where your experience, creative thinking and exceptional skills will be appreciated and rewarded.

In summary, the SEO/SEM Manager will be responsible for increasing the site traffic position of client sites through both paid and organic search. He/she will develop the strategy for, oversee the execution of, manage the budget, and measure the success of all SEO and SEM efforts. Must have prior search engine marketing experience with a strong track record, excellent analytic capabilities, sound business judgment, and be comfortable in a fast-paced environment.

Is this you? Are you able to do all (or most) of the above? Then view the full Search Engine Marketing Manager position description and let us know that you are out there.

We are looking for a PPC Specialist/Search Marketer to join our team permanently in Fourways Johannesburg.

The primary focus of this position is to set up, implement, maintain, analyse and report on Pay Per Click services.

Duties, requirements and further details can be found here, PPC Specialist/Search Marketer.

This is an update on the latest trends in Global Search. eMarketer’s latest report named Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics says that in the realm of search marketing budgets, SEO budgets will increase in the next five years, while paid search budgets will decline relative to the overall marketing budgets for companies.

Here is a summary of the report

The Search Marketing Trends report analyzes the factors that are driving consumers, followed by marketers, to online search engines.

Marketers have four basic search options: paid search, contextual advertising, paid inclusion—all three are types of advertising—and search engine optimization (SEO).

While paid search gets most of the attention and money, marketers are increasingly turning to SEO to acquire new customers.

All four options will experience increased spending through 2013. By then total US search marketing outlays will reach nearly $23.4 billion, and marketers will be spending more on SEO than on contextual advertising.

The Search Marketing Trends report aggregates the latest data from marketing and communications researchers with eMarketer analysis to provide the information you need to make smart, timely business decisions.

Search Marketing Trends: A Return to Basics

I just wrote about Personalized Search and specifically SearchWiki a few days ago and alas, Google surprises us with another twist to the tale. They are testing SearchWiki on Google Adwords, allowing searchers who are logged in to remove (delete) Paid Ads from the SERP’s.

In case you missed what SearchWiki is, it lets you customize your Google Web Search results. In other words, you can delete search results you do not like, promote the ones you do like to the top of the listing and even comment on them. (Read my full blog post on “The change in Search and Organic Search Rankings“.)

Like I said above, with this test of SearchWiki on Paid Ads, you are simply allowed to remove ads. You cannot promote or comment on Ads as with the organic results and you can only do this if you are logged in with your Google Account details.

Is there cause for panic?
All of a sudden the Search World has been thrown upside down (yet again) and many have been asking questions about how this will affect Quality Scores, how much abuse this might generate, will it affect ad variations for that domain for “the same search in the future” and also questions about how much users will really engage with this.

I don’t believe there is any cause for panic. The Pay Per Click (PPC) model has for a long time been “the” mainstream source of revenue for Google and personally and I do not believe that Google will willingly hijack the success of one of their most profitable tools.

Second to that I believe that Google are very aware of how it might affect Advertiser confidence as a whole. Advertisers pay a lot of money to Google to advertise their products and many do have confidence in the PPC model. Google has worked hard to establish trust in their product but a permanent feature like SearchWiki on Paid Ads may damage or dent that confidence.

Finally, I believe that Google is simply testing to see how 1. The Search Marketing World reacts (I have no proof) and 2. how the general Google user responds to changes in SERP’s. I am still of the belief that Google is continueing in their ideal to deliver the most relevant results to the end-user.

Oh, before I forget, some say that this is only being tested in the US, but I am seeing the little “X” next to Paid Search Ads via multiple accounts from my location here in South Africa. Guess Google is testing global market reaction?

How long will the test last and what will Google learn from it? I don’t know, we’ll just have to wait to find out!

In the latest press release distributed on BizCommunity, longtail eMarketing eluded to the fact that as a result of website owners wanting faster results and quicker return on their investments, they are looking at PPC and Banner Advertising rather than SEO when they want to market their website on the Web. Let’s look at some excerpts from the article with extra commentary on these.

When website owners consider ways to market their sites on the Web, the most common Search Marketing methods they choose are often Banner- or Pay-Per-Click Advertising. These methods allow advertisers to calculate the Return on Investment within a number of days after going live with their campaign. In addition to this, live tracking tools allow site owners to monitor Site Visitors, Cost per Conversion and Click-through Rates to their site with a click of a button.

I honestly think that this is not an entirely new trend but certainly one that has gained much momentum and will continue to gain even more. We find that people are finely tuned-in to see a ROI in much quicker time and with the help of various free online tools available to the Internet-savvy site owner, control is now in their hands. The sliding scale has tipped over from marketing companies telling/advising clients what to do to clients telling the marketing company exactly what they want (even adding instructions on how it must be done).

It is true that in a world where everything has become “instant”, there is a new reality that people do not have the patience to wait for results anymore. We have become used to and are expecting to see immediate results. This expectancy has shifted over to Online Advertising. Website owners not only want instant visitors by using the quickest methods possible, but they want to see results and conversions and they want to also track the effectiveness of their campaigns, all at the same time.

Like I mentioned, the weight has shifted, thus, from a Search Marketing perspective, digital companies now not only have to deal with a fast paced industry where the metrics are constantly changing, but they also have to meet the higher customer demand. Clients are expecting better results, higher relevancy, bigger profitability margins and increased performance, which I believe is something Search Marketing companies have adjusted to sufficiently to deliver quality results, not only to meet the needs of result driven clients, but to even exceed client expectation.

The key here is that Digital Companies should not fall back on trying to advise the clients on what to do, but to embrace the fact that clients mostly know what they want and to simply then provide a strategy that supports and improves the client objectives. Any company should be able to adjust if they are open-minded to change.

For this very reason, they seldom look at long-term solutions and never think of the value that copywrited content or optimized website pages offer them for the long term. Search Engine Optimisation is probably one of the least thought-of methods to use for online marketing.

However, it is a very effective, proven way of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Much more patience is required when doing SEO, but it will deliver the desired results.

As mentioned above, SEO is not only a proven Marketing method, but a very effective method to improve volume and quality of traffic to any website. Apart from patience and the understanding of SEO implementation, regular testing and tweaking is required which is why it takes much longer than 24 hours to see your efforts pay off. The end result is just as rewarding as that of seeing conversions come through from PPC or Banner referrals. The trick is knowing that it is not only about getting more quality visitors to the site, but understanding how to convert these visitors into customers.

Search Engine Optimisation works when applied correctly and the key is that it needs to be applied in a transparent way with no shortcuts taken. More importantly Search Engine Optimisation can work quickly, effectively and drive massive amounts of traffic to the desired site.

There is always a right way and a wrong way to do things. Perhaps it is just the way I am, but transparency and honesty is the core of everything I do and this must be the foundation from which I function. So, from my dealings with clients, colleagues, site visitors and even search engines, this is the metric that stays constant for me. That is why (again, for me) SEO should be applied in the correct manner and be done without trying to take shortcuts. Knowing the risks of taking shortcuts and knowing what the right and wrong things are and how to implement or when not to implement them, is important.

In conclusion, it is perhaps not a question of whether you are considering Search Engine Optimization as a marketing tool. All Search Marketing companies will tell you that it is worth doing it. It isn’t even a question of whether you are doing PPC or Banner advertising because these are equally important and effective.

Perhaps it is more a question of how you implement any of the above, how you engage with your client and what the message is that you want to give people about you and about your site.

Perhaps we should start there and then decide which method is best to market ourselves or our business.

Even though we live in a fast paced and virtual world we are still very limited in our way of thinking in order to retrieve and obtain information. I just had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Stafford Masie from Google South Africa at the Lowe Bull Group office in Johannesburg. I was not the only one, but all of us were equally blown away by what Google actually has to offers its users, Advertisers and individuals in the Media world.

I have to mention that longtail previously invited Stafford to speak on Google’s involvement in South Africa at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange which I was not able to attend, so the following are my impressions taken from his latest presentation. This is in the particular order of randomness.

Don’t think only ‘search‘ when you see Google – think BIGGER, much BIGGER. Google are set on bringing information straight to your doorstep, be it on your computer or your cell phone. Relevant content, images and soon also maps for SA. Interesting enough Google has the biggest datacenter in the world – 14 times the size of NASA.

Some interesting stats and notes:

• Information is more accessible on mobile phones
• 1 in 6 searches done on the Internet are done on mobile phones.
• South Africa ranks as 3rd largest in query volume behind Japan and India being 1^st and 2^nd respectively.
• Google recently launched Google mobile ads which functions on their motto of ‘Moment of Relevance’ so you don’t have to scroll through tedious pages of content before finding what you are looking for.
• We are the 4^th country in the world to get mobile universal search.
• There are more mobile phones in the world than tv, pc’s and credit cards combined and I think this is the future for branding your company, getting your information out there and communicating to your target market.
• Currently Google SA does not have any competitors in this field and it is huge for them.

Not only do they bring us search results, they have gone and made it a true experience to search for something.

Pay-Per-Click and Quality Scores
Despite popular belief Pay Per Click Ads on Search Result Pages are actually not ranked due to the amount advertisers pay but according to the Quality Score given. Quality Scores are made up of 4 very vital features which is:

1. The Speed of Landing Page
2. The Quality of Landing Page
3. The Number of ‘click troughs’ (high or low)
4. The Moment of Relevance

Some companies make use of additional links (Google co-op) under their search result listing that allows you to simply browse their site without actually opening their landing page eg. Microsoft.

Google SA will be bringing us Google Maps soon with great prospects. It is currently up and running in the States and a real ground breaker when it comes to mapping. You can get step by step directions that guide you from point A to B and these will update if you drag the dots on the map to alternate the route. You can also place ‘yourself’ in the vicinity by dragging the little man onto the street you would like to view – this will allow you to view the surroundings which opens up even more possibilities. Should it just be to familiarize yourself with the area, to get visual land marks for when you are in the area, to sussing out an area before you go look at a house that’s for sale/rent and even better, you can advertise on this virtual street, meaning that browsers can ‘walk into’ your shop, see what it looks like and even order from your menu. This is a whole new advertising market that’s opening up.

Google prides themselves on using a fast platform, they are able to go through posted content in 0.7 seconds by using their spiders to grab all the relevant information. This is even faster abroad and sitting at a whopping 0.03sec. This allows for up to the minute news reporting and CNN tapped into this market. Instead of sending out reporters they now have over 300 000 civilians uploading ground breaking news where they are in the heat of the moment using i-report.

With YouTube being a part of Google they have expanded their services even more. 14% of total traffic in South Africa is just YouTube and this will probably grow due to the fact that they promise to improve the download time and search experience in September as they are building new centers locally with new servers. YouTube statistics can be tracked for your video – how long it’s been viewed, do they complete the watch and from where they are. Companies are starting to utilize this medium to post competitions and to draw the market to their product.

In South Africa we have under 5 million people connected to the internet currently and less than a million broadband users. Hopefully this number will increase as Google is working hard in trying to lower broadband costs. So we can start looking forward to SA going from the most expensive to one of the cheapest in terms of connectivity and they would like to see this at the end of 2010 and have between 12 and 17 million people connected.

Google is clearly bringing the world to us click by click, be it information, other users, video, advertising, maps and up to the minute news reporting. It’s out there – so you might as well use it.

In a recent blog How the Internet is affecting (y)our world?, I made mention of how the “Interent has shaken up the US Elections”. Another article on this topic caught my eye this morning which made for further interesting reading.

The article, written by Greg Jarboe, asks the question whether the more seasoned Hillary Clinton was out-Googled by the more search savvy Barack Obama for the 2008 US Presidential Campaign.

I personally don’t follow too much of US Politics, Presidential Election Campaigns and their respective efforts to lead their respective parties, but what I did find interesting was that there has been a significant change in marketing efforts toward the Internet with a new focus to online digital solutions.

Clearly, advisors to the Barack Obama 2008 campaign knew how much influence voters (as Internet consumers and end-users) could have on the outcome of the elections, so what did they do?, they took advantage of “Voter-generated content” (end user-generated content) such as shared Videos on YouTube and blogs to secure Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential nomination.

Not only that, they also used Pay-Per-Click Advertising on Google to achieve this. This was confirmed by senior editor of ClickZ, Kate Kaye, saying that Clinton spent far less online than Obama in an interview by BNN (Business Network News). She explained that the Barack Obama 2008 campaign used pay-per-click advertising on Google for different purposes than the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

So there you go, not only does it prove that online Marketing works when used effectively but it also indicates that there is much more confidence in people’s opinions and interactions online than ever before. We need to take notice of online conversations and opinions and not only monitor it but use it to our advantage. This is what the US government started doing, shouldn’t we?

Here is the video of the BNN interview with Kate Kaye.