Well guys, we did it! WE BEAT THE MAYANS! We got through December and the world didn’t end. Or, if it did, one can hardly tell the difference. I hope you didn’t sell all your possessions or anything rash like that. Awkward!I’m all about looking forward – 2013 Ho! – but before we rush off into next year, let’s take a quick look back at what happened in 2012, the year that was almost the end.

Our top 10 most popular blog posts this year were:What Industries Contributed to Google's $37.9 Billion in 2011 Revenues? – For our first infographic of the year, we found the top 10 industries that lay out the most cash on AdWords advertising and delved in to figure out what it said about the state of economy in 2011 going into 2012.The War on 'Free' Clicks: Think Nobody Clicks on Google A... > Read more

Best practices are best practices for a reason – right?You’ve probably heard people say the same thing about stereotypes. There may be a grain of truth behind some stereotypes, but mostly they’re just an excuse for lazy thinking.Marketing best practices – supposedly tried and true guidelines – are the same way.

Some of them are at least partly true; others are based on pure assumption or are so hypothetical as to be basically meaningless to your particular company.Take, for example, the “best practice” that content for the internet should be brief. Many people assume that web readers don’t want to deal with long-form content, so web writers should always favor brevity over depth.Recently, we’ve found the opposite to be true: Our longer blog posts tend to get better metric... > Read more

 “Why use AdWords” and "Does Google AdWords Work?" are pretty common keyword phrase searched on Google, which suggests that there are a lot of marketers and business owners out there who have heard about Google AdWords but aren’t sure if and how it can work for them. We believe that AdWords – Google’s enormously successful pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system – can work for almost any type of business.

Using AdWords (or any PPC platform) requires time and money, but thousands of businesses have found that it’s time and money well spent, because AdWords delivers measurable ROI. We’ve devoted countless pages to how you should use AdWords. In this post, we’ll answer the question of why you should use it.Before any of our SEO-loving readers get up in arms, let me prefa... > Read more

 The view from the top ain't badGot your sights on a keyword? Want to see your website on the elusive first page of Google for a given search term? Prepare yourself: Unless you’re Wikipedia or The New York Times, it won’t be easy. But it’s not impossible, either. Seriously – we do it all the time!Ranking for a keyword in organic search is a repeatable process.

You won’t get the results you want 100% of the time, especially if you’re a new website trying to rank for a popular keyword, but if you take content marketing and SEO seriously, you can start to make things happen. Things like rankings, and traffic, and sales, oh my!Here are the ten steps to rank for a keyword in Google.Step 1: Lay the GroundworkThis is really more of a pre-step than a first step. You’ll need to h... > Read more

Good morning, faithful readers! Did you celebrate Halloween? WordStream sure did! And I just know Larry was working on this costume for MONTHS:I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to see the dance!Before November gets underway in earnest, take a moment to catch up on our blog’s best posts from last month:The Changing Economics of Google AdWords – Our latest infographic breaks down just what goes on in the Google AdWords economy in a single day – including how many total impressions, clicks and conversions occur on Google Search and the Display Network in 24 hours.

The infographic also includes top-level metrics for the top 10 industries that spend the most on AdWords advertising.10 Reasons SEO Is Harder for Small Businesses – Some readers out there have gotten the idea that we don’t... > Read more

 Lots of small and medium-sized businesses have figured out that a corporate blog is good for business. The potential benefits of a well-run corporate blog include:Brand developmentSEO traffic and valuable linksOngoing inbound leadsBut buy-in is one thing. Actually creating and publishing new blog content on a regular basis is another.

Maintaining a regular publication schedule is a struggle for everyone, but it’s especially difficult for SMBs with their smaller budgets and smaller teams. You might not have a dedicated copywriter, and if you do, that writer is probably being pulled in multiple directions – writing copy for your email campaigns, landing pages and so on (oh, hi, to-do list!).A good way to make sure that you’re regularly publishing new content on your blog is to en... > Read more

 September must be such a joyful month for parents – school is basically free child care, right?! Well, OK, only if you send them to public school. But at least they’re out of your hair for about 8 hours of the day.Why not get into that back-to-school spirit yourself and read up on our greatest hits from the month of September?  The Importance of A/B Testing: 24 Marketing Experts on Their Most Surprising A/B Test – I asked a bunch of awesome folks (AJ Kohn! Oli Gardner! Matt Umbro, Michelle Morgan and others from the #PPCchat crew!) to share their craziest A/B test results.

Refill your coffee – this is a long read but full of inspiring ideas for testing your own marketing initiatives.3 More (Yes, More!) Ways to Save Money on PPC – Here are a few more little tricks you c... > Read more

There was a time when being a PPC manager necessarily entailed being an Excel ninja as well. Not a fan of spreadsheets? Then step away from the PPC account, my friend!In 2001, however, a tipping point occurred – the majority of companies no longer managed their PPC accounts using Excel. And the trend continues in that direction.

According to SEMPO’s recent State of Search report, the number of companies who manage their PPC campaigns DIY-style using free tools like those provided by search engines, Excel, or “a simple database” fell from nearly half (49%) in 2001 to just 38% in 2012. That’s a big drop! And a much bigger drop than the change from 2010 to 2011 (53% to 49%).Here’s the survey data from SEMPO (the exact question was “Do you or your primary search engine marketing ... > Read more