AdWords Ups the Ante

Google announced on the AdWords blog that they would be rolling out a number of changes and they are all happening this week.

First we saw on Monday the line next to the keyword that says something like you will need to pay $16 a click to be on the first page of results. It is interesting that some of the keywords that this phrase had been placed next to already showed an average placement of 1 to 3.

Next we saw on a number of account Tuesday and Wednesday a significant drop in ad position causing us to increase the CPC across the board and by keyword depending on the situation.

I have not yet seen a significant rise or drop in impressions yet in accounts. Some accounts I have started to notice that there is more activity on more keywords, but not across the board on all accounts.

Clearly Google is working to tweak AdWords.  To find out exactly what AdWords has announced, please visit this post on the AdWords blog.

In a nutshell here is what the changes are about:

  • Quality Score is now more accurate — because it is calculated at the time of each search query
  • Keywords are no longer marked ‘inactive for search‘ — all keywords are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query
  • ‘First page bid estimates’ replace ‘minimum bids’ in your account — providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers
  • Remember when Google recommends a budget or a cost per click this is called add-on selling. It does not mean that you need to act on the advice!

    Clearly from what we are seeing across many sectors there is an upwards price adjustment happening, but will this impact an account with more impressions and a lower CTR. It is all too new to know exactly, but one thing for sure is that CPC is moving up and strongly on some accounts.

     

    The Best Time to Publish Your Blog Post for Readership

    When is the best time to publish your blog for readership? Are there best days? How about frequency? How many posts per week are best? Here are my tips based on long term blogging and our blog writing service business.

    Best Time to Publish

    With WordPress it is easy to write ahead and publish early to not miss readers who may subscribe through feeds and review your news every morning. For my blog, I post ahead and then publish before 7:00 AM on weekdays, typically on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. For our blog writers, our rule is post must be up the day it is due before noon Eastern Time.

    Are There Best Days to Publish?

    Sure, if you watch your website statistics and you are a typical service related business, the best days to publish are week days. For most service based businesses traffic will drop on weekends and blog readership will also drop for these businesses during those times too. For e-commerce sites, weekends are hot! From my experience Sunday is typically a soft day for most and Saturday more important. But make sure to check your website statistics as I have found the opposite true for some businesses with Saturday being flat and Sunday being big. For our blog customers and my own blog, I am not working on Saturday and Sunday and so you won’t find posts on my blog on the weekend or for our clients.

    What’s the Best Frequency for Blog Posts?

    From my experience, I like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have blogged five days a week for long periods and I have not seen an increase in readership, traffic, or organic placement. Some of our clients like blogging services five days a week, but I have not seen that moving to posts five days a week really makes a big difference for a blog other than to build up content and authority more quickly. But blog less than three times a week and your blog may flounder. If you post infrequently readers don’t follow you regularly, they just don’t think you are serious about your blog and their attention. My Yahoo will even fold up the RSS feed listing and state no new posts in the last 7 days – even if that is not exactly true if you are not on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. So for posting frequency, I like three posts but only as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

    What’s Best For You?

    So what’s best for you and your blog. Leave me a note by clicking comments and share what works best for you and your blog.