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How To Share Budgets Across Google AdWords Campaigns Using The New Share Budget Feature [Tutorial]

Google AdWords rolled out a new feature last week that will make the lives of some SEM’s easier.  The new shared budget option enables marketers to apply one budget to multiple campaigns (versus having to manage budgets for each campaign separately).  Shared budgets make it easier to maximize your total ad spend for paid search … Read more

SEM Competitive Analysis – The Power of Understanding Your Competition in Paid Search

There are a lot of moving parts to developing and managing SEM campaigns.  First, you need to develop a strong paid search strategy, perform keyword research, map out a robust structure for your campaigns and ad groups, determine budgets, create effective ads, etc.  After the setup phase, you will be neck deep in ongoing campaign … Read more

Adjusted Bounce Rate in Google Analytics – One Step Closer to Actual Bounce Rate

I’ve written extensively in the past about Bounce Rate both here on my blog and on Search Engine Journal.  Bounce Rate is an incredibly powerful metric, and can help marketers better understand the quality of their traffic, and the quality of their content.  If you’re not familiar with Bounce Rate, it’s the percentage of visits … Read more

How To Use Index Status in Google Search Console (GSC) to Diagnose SEO Problems

{Updated on 3/28/16 to reflect the name change from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console.} In late July, Google added Index Status to Google Search Console to help site owners better understand how many pages are indexed on their websites.  In addition, Index Status can also help webmasters diagnose indexation problems, which can be caused by … Read more

Local Remarketing – 6 Remarketing Strategies for Local Businesses

Have you ever visited a website, researched a product or service, and then left only to see that company’s ads as you browse the web?  I bet you have.  That’s remarketing in action, and it’s darn powerful when implemented correctly.  Sure, there can definitely be a creepy factor, since users are being followed around the … Read more

It’s Official: Google Wonder Wheel is Back, and It’s Called the Contextual Targeting Tool [Tutorial]

Keyword research is a critical component to a solid and rounded SEO strategy.  When you break it down, you need to know what people are searching for in order to target the right terms.  Keyword research fuels your content generation strategy.  I use a wide range of tools when conducting keyword research and each has … Read more

+1 Reports in Google Webmaster Tools – How To Analyze the Search Impact of +1 Annotations

Google+ has now been around for close to a year, it has grown significantly since it launched, and Google is integrating its new social network across products.  Based on what I just listed, many business owners are wondering how Google+ has benefited their companies.  Unfortunately, I think many of them wouldn’t know how to answer … Read more

The Pandeguin Penalty: What to do if your website has been hit by both Penguin and Panda

If you’ve been following my blog recently, then you know how much Penguin analysis I’ve been performing.  Since the algorithm update first hit on 4/24, I’ve been working hard at analyzing websites impacted by Penguin.  You can read my previous posts to learn more, including my most recent post detailing my findings based on analyzing over … Read more

7 More Penguin Findings: An Update From the Over Optimization Front Lines

After Penguin first hit on April 24th, I started performing a lot of analysis on websites that were affected.  I ended up quickly publishing my findings in two blog posts here on the Internet Marketing Driver.  The first explained how exact match domains could be susceptible to penalty based on how those domains were being … Read more

Penguin 1.0 Initial Findings – Unnatural Inbound Links Heavily Targeted, Other Webspam Tactics Await Penalty?

The past few days have been fascinating for SEO’s.  Google’s latest algorithm update, now officially named Penguin, has been rolled out.  The update was originally called the Over Optimization Penalty, then the Webspam Algorithm Update, and now Penguin.  As you can imagine, there have been screams from webmasters far and wide about the update (from … Read more

Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty and Exact Match Domains

Yesterday, we found out that the latest Google algorithm update was underway (dubbed the Over Optimization Penalty).  Google posted about the update on the Webmaster Central Blog.  By the way, Google is officially calling the update the Webspam Algorithm Update and not the Over Optimization Update (although I like the sound of the latter).  There … Read more