Most of us have been told at some point and time to use moderation and not over indulge. This advice holds true when it comes to negative keywords in paid search campaigns. Just like over indulgence, too many negative keywords can hurt your paid search campaigns.

Negative keywords are designed to help tighten the focus of your campaign. Let’s say you’re a jewelry company that only sells solid silver jewelry and your company bids on related keywords. Negative keywords that could benefit your campaign are “how to clean”, “wholesale supplier”, “how to make”, “gold and”, etc. All of these could potentially be negative phrase match keywords.

Negative phrase match keywords prevent your ads from showing when someone types in that keyword phrase in that particular order. This means that people searching for “how to clean silver jewelry”, “silver jewelry wholesale supplier”, “how to make silver jewelry”, and “gold and silver jewelry” should not trigger your ads to show. This is a positive because your company doesn’t give tutorials on how to clean or make silver jewelry, you’re not a wholesale supplier and you don’t sell gold jewelry. However, too many negative keywords could actually be a negative and block your ads from showing for relevant searches.

Negative keywords become a negative to your paid search campaigns when they block your ads from showing for relevant searches.  Let’s continue with the example above. If your company adds a negative such as “buy silver chains”, it could be blocking potential customers, especially if you are bidding on the term “silver chains” to refer to a necklace. In this example your company is working against its own paid search campaigns.  It could be that “silver chains” is attracting people who are looking for silver purse chains, silver chains for their fence, as well as those people who are looking to buy a necklace. Instead of adding “buy silver chains” as a negative, consider adding negatives such as “purse chains”, and “fence chains.” This allows your company’s ads to continue to show for searches like “silver chains”, but at the same time it excludes certain purse and fence chain terms from triggering your ads.

Negative keywords should always be a positive and not a negative to paid search campaigns. It’s good to add negative keywords, but don’t go overboard. If negative keywords are keeping your ads from showing for relevant searches, then it’s time to make some adjustments.

When someone reads a newspaper article online, there is normally a picture of the author/journalist above or next to that article. What would happen if everyone had their faces posted by article they have written? We could be closer to that happening than you think because Google+ is helping to make this a reality.

Google+ members who publish an article, and link to it in their Google+ account are standing out in Google’s organic listings. It’s one thing for a person’s article to appear in the organic listings, it’s an even greater bonus when your name and picture show up next to it.  Look at the example below. This article has a picture of the author right next to it along with their name.  It definitely makes it stand out from the other listings.
The organic listing links to the website where the article was originally published and the picture links to the author’s Google+ account.

This can be utilized as a great SEO tool for businesses.  For example let’s say the CEO for company A, which is a home improvement store, publishes blogs monthly. The CEO also has a Google+ account. Every time the CEO posts a blog to company A’s website, he links to it through his Google+ account. As people are searching the web for home improvement they come across the blog in the organic listings. It stands out because there is a picture next to it, and it seems to be related to what they are searching for. After clicking on the organic listing, they read the blog and proceed to do business with Company A. Company A received several benefits. First they received a sale. Second they improved their SEO value when the CEO linked to the blog. Third their blog drove traffic to the website which brought in a sale.

Many companies could benefit SEO-wise from this Google+ feature. In fact, it’s all the more reason to blog and publish articles.  There’s no word yet, if this capability will be given to individual companies (once Google+ opens up to companies), so it’s good to have a company representative(s) who can post and link to articles that they have written on the company’s behalf.

Most media can now be consumed online, from TV shows, to radio, to the news. In order to stay in front of their target audience, advertisers should be placing themselves where their audience is located, especially when it comes to video.

Google offers in-stream video ads so that advertisers can get their message to their target audience. In- stream video ads are 15 and 30 second video commercials that play before, during or after an online video. 15 second spots are recommended for in-stream video ads because that it is one of the most widely accepted time formats. In short, an in-stream video ad is a TV ad that plays on the internet. In-stream video ads are economical and cost less than a traditional TV buy.

In-stream video ads can be set up in Google AdWords. Google allows advertisers to choose between a cost per click or a cost per impression payment model. Google recommends starting with a cost per impression payment and then switching over to a cost per click after viewing results. Once a payment method is selected, advertisers can choose if they want to run their ads on YouTube only or expand their reach to other websites that accept video ads. In order to help advertiser’s ads play in front of the right audience, Google permits advertisers to select which category they want their video ads to be viewed on.  For example, if your company sells auto insurance, then the auto category would be good for your video ads. It would make no sense to select the medical category.

Once an advertiser has chosen the categories on which to run and uploaded their video ads, Google determines when these ads will run. Video ads can be paused and new ads can be uploaded at any time.  Just like paid placement campaigns, stats are provided on impressions, clicks, view through conversions and more.

In-stream video ads are a great way to get a message to the right target audience at a very low cost. Some advertisers have been slow to run in-stream video ads, but those who are running them are ahead of the curve.