My feeling is that nothing beats getting organic results through a good search-engine-optimized site. I've received a few good leads from AdWords which I can use to justify the minor monthly spending, but it pales in comparison to the traffic/leads I get from organic search results. AdWords are beneficial if you are running a targeted campaign with specialized landing pages that allow you to test/track the effectiveness of different ads and conversion rates, but you can get a better overall long-term return on your investment from effective search engine and content optimization. Still no takers on linking AdWords & Analytics? I'll keep looking I guess... -- Blair Winans Winans Creative blair at winanscreative.com m. 857.205.0210 p. 413.303.0353 f. 413.303.9465 www.winanscreative.com On Feb 22, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Kurt Kolok wrote: > I've been using AdWords for the last couple of months and have to > say I've gotten mixed results. One of my main key words is > actually in my ad and for about a week my ad would pop up when the > keyword was Googled. There is almost no competition (only 2 other > ads from time to time) yet after receiving a couple dozen click > throughs from that keyword the rate went up from .50 cents per > click to 1.00 per click, then less than 2 days later went up to > 5.00 per click. It was pretty much the only fruitful keyword. > Others have brought a couple of clicks here and there but now those > prices are rising as well (with absolutely NO ad competition). > > I'm beginning to think it's a complete scam on Google's part--it > seems that when they see successful click throughs they increase > the cost per click. I've communicated with their live online help > and they claimed that price is re-evaluated constantly and that I > should refine my keywords and ad. The 5.00 cpc (cost per click) > has not gone down once and I've refined my ad several times to > include the keyword at least twice in the ad. Nothing has > changed. As you can imagine I'm not about to pay 5.00 per click. > > If anyone out there has had a positive experience with this service > I'd like to hear about it myself. > > We're currently focusing on adding/improving our reciprocal links > and developing an active blog, which both seem to help increase/ > improve your Google ranking when people type in those keywords > anyway. It's not quite the same as an ad in the margin, but it > also costs nothing. > > Kurt > > > -- > Kurt Kolok > Owner/Director > Kolok Gallery > 121 Union Street, 1e > North Adams, MA 01247 > +1 413 664 7381 > kurt at kolokgallery.com > www.kolokgallery.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20070222/26caf0c5/attachment-0004.html