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.

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.

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.