Using AdWords To Boost Your Business During This Lull

The global economy looks like its weakening again. The U.S. is still fighting with high unemployment, growth in the U.K. has been anaemic at best, and some of the countries in the Euro zone are at risk of going bankrupt. Hence, it's no wonder that you may be experiencing a slowing business during this period.

One of the quickest and most effective way to give your business a boost is by advertising, and nothing gives you better ROI than Google AdWords - the world's largest Internet advertising program. There are several benefits of using Google Adwords:

1. Hundreds and thousands of Internet users advertise with Google AdWords every year, and it’s no wonder why. Google AdWords will advertise almost any niche or genre for anyone, anywhere, that when published will be aimed directly at your market’s target audience. AdWords uses PPC (pay per click), which simply means that you do not pay for your advertisement until someone clicks on it.

2. When signing up for your Google Adwords advertising account, it allows you to set a maximum bid limit for you PPCs, with bids starting at just 1 cent US. Advertisers are able to see their ads up and running on Google within a few minutes of setting them up. The ads are displayed along with search results when someone searches Google for any one of your keywords. Ads are listed under the heading "Indicators" on the right side of your search results page. They can also appear in additional positions above the free search results. This way, you are advertising to an audience that is already interested in your topic. You can also place the ads on sites in the Display Network part of the growing Google Network. You can select the exact placement of the display of the network on which your ad will appear. Alternatively, you determine the right content for your keywords with contextual targeting.

3. Choose from a variety of ad formats, including text, image and video ads. Each has it’s own benefits in relation to your target audience. With the statistics and reports in your AdWords account, you will have full control over your ads’ performance.

4. With Google AdWords there is no minimum monthly fee - only one initial activation fee.

If you feel that you'd like to focus your time on your core competency and leave the campaign management to professionals, or if you feel that AdWords is too technical for you, you can always engage one of the many Google AdWords agency available in Singapore. Be sure though, to check that the person or company is an AdWords Certified Individual or Company - a validation by Google that the person/company has passed certain minimum criteria, and thus is capable of managing your AdWords campaign adequately.

Google's New Place Search

If you're performing local searches, e.g. on google.com.sg or google.co.uk, you may have come across a new search results format, where Google Places (i.e. Google Maps) listings are merged together with organic results.

This is part of the new Place Search function recently rolled out by Google, which you can activate by clicking on the Places link or the red pin on the drop-down menu on the left. It's also automatically triggered for certain keywords under "Everything" searches.

Larry Lim, an SEO Consultant in Singapore, has written extensively about this new Google Place Search function and its impact on local SEO. Go have a read!

Larry Lim - Singapore SEO Consultant

Larry Lim is a leading SEO Consultant in Singapore, counting companies like SPH, M1 and Edelman among his clients. Beginning as a web entrepreneur, he used to own a network of websites serving over 8 million pages a month, before providing SEO services.

He currently ranks #3 for "seo" on google.com.sg and have been able to achieve top 5 rankings for his clients, for general keywords like "property", "jobs", "cars" and "classifieds".

Apart from search engine optimization, Larry also provides Google Adwords campaign management and internet marketing coaching for companies.