Read this convincing article that gives some teeth to the importance of SEO.
Here is a glimpse:
“Leads generated through SEO close at around 14.6 percent while leads from other channels close at an average of 1.7 percent. -HubSpot”
“The #1 organic result gets nearly twice as many clicks as the #2 result. –Chitika/ Search Engine Land”
Authority on the web is one of the building blocks of SEO. Being popular online helps raise your search results just as having high search results helps raise your popularity. Basically you need to be popular… to be popular. Not very useful advice – I know. But how do you break into this circle of privilege? You can actively work on authority building. In fact we will do it for you!
See our authority building service for details.
While looking through your current or potential SEO’s website, you may notice the Google Adwords Certified Partner Badge. This badge represents that the company currently has Google Adwords Certified employee/s, and has also met other important criteria to become recognized as an official Google Partner.
Google Certification Benefits
In order to become Google Adwords Certified, an individual must pass two exams: Advertising Fundamentals, plus either of the Advanced Search or Advanced Display exams. This signifies that through extensive studying and experience, a company is more adept at providing a client with industry recognized training. Ultimately, this will help to improve your campaign performance across the Search and Display Networks.
This can also help to reassure the client that they are dealing with a dedicated and trustworthy company. The company invests time and money into the skills development of their employees in an effort to offer their clients advanced account maintenance and recommendations within the Adwords system. These techniques are applied to bring maximum results to a client’s campaigns.
To read more details on the process of becoming Google Certified, please see our post about how to become a Google Certified Partner.
With the many updates that Google has recently posted for the Certification program, we thought we would give you a little insight into what these changes entail and what the process is to become Google Certified. Now, instead of learning and taking exams through the Google Certification Program (GCP); users and companies will now have to create/transfer an account to the new Google Partners program.
Implemented Changes
• As of September 30, 2013, all access to your GCP account will be read-only information.
• A Google Partners account will be required in order to take exams to become certified.
• Exams will no longer cost $50.00 USD. All exams and certifications taken via Google Partners will now be free!
• Your previous exam history and certification status will transfer from GCP to Google Partners if you join using the same Google account.
• Certifications earned through GCP will remain valid through the expiration date.
Google Exams
To become Google certified, you must pass at least 2 exams; first the Advertising Fundamentals, then you can choose between either the Advanced Search or Advanced Display exams.
Advertising Fundamentals
In order to pass this exam, you need to have a passing score of at least 85%. You will be given 90 questions that must be completed within 120 minutes. Study material for this exam contains 11 lessons that can be found on the Google Partners site: Advertising Fundamentals Lessons
While the Fundamentals exam covers the basic aspects of Adwords, it is highly recommended that you study all 11 lessons.
Once passed, this exam is valid for 2 years.
Advanced Search
If you pass the Advertising Fundamentals exam, you can then choose between the Advanced Search exam and the Advanced Display exam.
The Advanced Search exam requires you to have a passing score of at least 80%. You will be asked 99 questions over 120 minutes. The study material contains 9 lessons that you should study explicitly. This is no easy exam. The questions are created to challenge even the most experienced Adwords users, and require you to answer with the best practices…not necessarily the methods that you as an individual apply. The study material can be found at: Advanced Search Lessons
Once passed, this exam will be valid for 1 year.
Advanced Display
If you choose to become certified specializing in the Display Network, then you should choose the Advanced Display exam. This exam requires a 70% passing score and will ask you 90 questions over 120 minutes. There are 4 lessons in the study guide: Advanced Display Lessons and once again, it is highly recommended that you cover all of the lessons while preparing to take this exam.
Once passed, this exam will be valid for 1 year.
Once you pass the 2 exams, your certification status will be updated on Google Partners (and your affiliated company) within 24-48 hours.
Failed an exam? Not to worry, they are free to take but you will have to wait 7 days to retake a failed exam.
Red Carpet Web Promotion started 13 years ago on June 1st 2000. Remember Y2K? Some of our first projects were creating affiliate websites for posters. Thanks to all of our clients, many of which were our uncles and family friends at the beginning. Thanks to our employees, contractors and families!
What is Search Engine Optimization? See our short video clip for an explanation. http://youtu.be/nOQ7cFMfgU0
We just updated our page content describing link building for your website. Given the changes in the Google algorithm our approach for link building now also includes an assessment and cleanup of unnatural links to your site. These include any links from spammy sites that were put up just for the benefit of SEO. The benefit of these types of links is gone and to avoid penalizing your position in search results it is recommended to do a clean up of bad links. See the details here: https://www.redcarpetweb.com/link-building.html
“How do I make sure my business gets found in Facebook search?”
Never fear: Facebook itself has already shared a few tips to help make that happen. We’ll get to that below, but first a quick bit of background that’s good to know.
What Business Owners Need To Know About Facebook Graph Search. See full article.
Jan 15, 2013
by Matt McGee, published on http://searchengineland.com/
“A Facebook Offer is a coupon created and shared exclusively on Facebook. Admins can create these Offers on their Page, and Facebook users can then claim the Offer to use at a business via an email confirmation…”
Offers can be used online or in stores. See full article.
Jan 3, 2013
Taking Advantage Of Facebook Offers
by Emily Wilson published on Marketing Land.
January 3, 2013 7:07 pm
US clears Google’s core search business
By Richard Waters and Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco
The US has ended a sweeping antitrust investigation of Google without imposing any sanctions on its core search business… see full article.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/61124f52-55d4-11e2-9aa1-00144feab49a.html