Here’s a quick tip from PPCBlog. They suggest using 1st-person quotes in the title of your Google Adwords to distinguish your product from other bland ads.

You don’t want to go too over-the-top and keeping it believable and relevant could be something to consider, but I’d be interested to hear how a 1st-person text ad like the samples below perform against similar ads.

Using 1st-Person Quotes in Your Ad Text is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

NOTE: I originally posted this story last year right before the Super Bowl.  I thought it was timely and in addition, I’ve updated it with a little more information. I will agree that this technique is sometimes frowned upon in the search world.  This is by no means a supplement for creating an amazing product.

Don’t have $3MM to spend on a 30-second Super Bowl commercial? Take advantage of your competitors deep pockets by bidding on long-tail memorable ad keywords that your competition may have missed. For example, Career Builder put out a series of spots during last year’s game that focused on “Follow Your Heart.” Users who searched on the “follow your heart” terms most likely didn’t remember the brand behind the commercial.  Monster.com took advantage of Career Builder’s publicity by bidding on their tagline and directing a large amount of focused traffic right to their site.

NEW: Here’s how to get started.  AdAge has a list of 2010 Super Bowl commercials and the creative behind them.  First, take a look at your competitors and see if you can find any holes or key terms from their spots that may stand out in a user’s mind.

Results from Google keyword tool

Next, drop on over to SpyFu and input your findings from above.  So for example, I’m a competitor to Dockers and I see that they’re running an ad with the song “I Wear No Pants.”  From what I’ve found via SpyFu and cross-referenced through Google Adwords tool, I see there isn’t much bidding going on for the term.  There isn’t a lot of search volume on this term either, but that could change.  Again, we’re really just trying to find a small niche of long-tail terms.  The likelihood that you get rich on these is slim to none.  Heck, you may even want to go as far as registering a keyword happy domain and using it for a landing page.  I hear that www.I-wear-no-pants.com is available.

Lesson: If you’re the guy paying $3MM for a single TV commercial, make sure you have a little extra left over for other channels as well. If you’re the guy who can’t afford the budget, riding your competitors coat tails, doing a little recon and spending a few hours setting up a landing page could turn you into the MVP.

Hack Your Competitors Super Bowl Advertising is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Tad tries to define this new shift in search engine optimization or what some are calling SEO 2.0 (which in my opinion is a lazy name).  While many of the pros are still hatching out and evolving the definition, he gives it a go and says that SEO 2.0 is “not Google SEO, a Buzzword, a PPC scheme or part of an MLM formula, it’s the people’s SEO, about relevancy & ORM“(object relational mapping – allowing different systems to basically speak a similar language).

Putting it all together, SEO 2.0 is about changing the factors that currently impact what influences a site and relies more on community and trust.  SEO 2.0 also takes into account other mediums much more, such as video, maps, books and looks to makes results more personal to the user. Here is the full SEO 2.0 article.

What is SEO 2.0? is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Facebook let it all hang out to a select group of members to test their new search interface.  The system would allow members to search their news feed for recent updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared on friends’ profiles and fan Pages. Users who have made their profile and content available to anyone will also be searchable.

SEOMoz yammers it up during Whiteboard Friday to talk about visualization.  I think visualization is one of those new and sexy fields that you’ll hear more and more about in the near future.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Visualization from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

12seconds is updating their iPhone app to take advantage of the new OS 3.0.  The app, which should be available soon, will allow you to send short video messages directly to your friends via twitter.

Back ‘dat thing up and pick up some great tips about landing page design through CopyBlogger’s Landing Page Makeover.  Their most recent tutorial covers CarsHelpingAmerica.org.

If you’re a fan of Indie Rock, I highly recommend The Veils – Sun Gangs. Rock out this weekend.

Facebook Universal Search, Visualization, 12Seconds and Landing Page Design is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

A great introductory video on how the Google Ad Auction actually works.  Chief Economist, Hal Varian (Mr. Personality 2003) shows how your max CPC bid and quality score determine how much you pay for a click within your Adwords account.

Search Engine Marketing Basics – How the Google Ad Auction Works is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Originally posted January 15, 2009

As budgets get tighter, take 20 minutes today to update your paid search negative keywords.  Negative keywords are those irrelevant or low converting keywords that you add to a pay-per-click campaign which tell the ad system not to show your ad when that particular keyword appears in a search.

To start, do some research for new negative and low-performing keywords through Google’s keyword tool or your web analytics data. Add your findings to your already established campaigns and adgroups.

Adding additional negative keywords optimizes and streamlines your campaigns’ effectiveness. They increases your quality score, improves your click-thru and conversion rates.

Quick Online Marketing Tip – Update Your Negative Keywords is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Google Alerts Hack (via DuctTapeMarketing) – The premise of this is to use Google Alerts to see who is linking to your blog or picks up content you’ve recently published.  Think of it as a hybrid of Google Alerts e-mail alerts and blog pingbacks.  Very easy to implement – (1) Go to Google Alerts (2) in the search box input link:http://www.YourURL.com (replacing YourURL.com with the site you’d like to track) (3) Select the type and frequency. There you’ve got it, an easy way to build a strong community and readership to your site.

Google Insights for Search – Introduced this week, Google Insights provides deeper flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior as well as adding new features like a world heat map to display search volume and regional interest.  Similar to Google Trends, Google Insights allows you to see search patterns over specific time ranges as well as top related and breakout/rising searches across multiple verticals.  This is a great tool for any business and could really give the likes of WordTracker, Hitwise and comScore a run for their money.

Google Advertising Frequency – Because of their acquisition of DoubleClick, Google will soon be able to provide advertisers on the content network the ability to cap the frequency at which a user sees your ad, better reach and improved reporting.  This should be fully implemented in the coming months.

Google Tools You Can Implement This Week To Make Your Business Better is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!