So how is 2012 treating everyone so far? Are you sticking to your resolutions? Or crying on the couch eating potato chips out of the jumbo-size bag with both hands?That’s what I thought. Sound like you could use a distraction. How about reading or re-reading our blog’s greatest hits from January?Here are the top 10 most popular posts from last month:What Industries Contributed to Google's $37.

9 Billion in 2011 Revenues? – In this post, Larry summarized the findings of our recent research into which industries spend the most on Google AdWords, and drew some interesting conclusions about what the data says about the state of our economy.SOPA and PIPA: Why They're Bad for Business – Meg breaks down the problems with SOPA and PIPA, proposed actions to put an end to piracy.AdWords Exper... > Read more

Well knock us over with a feather -- we're surprised and honored to be on Website Magazine's list of the 50 top software solutions to explore in 2012!Funny story: One of my coworkers actually printed out this list to use as a reference, but didn't notice until I told her that we were #13 on the list!According to Website Magazine, here's the methodology that determined the list:Website Magazine’s Top 50 rankings are a measure of a website’s popularity.

Ranks are calculated using a proprietary method that focuses on average daily unique visitors and page views over a specified period of time, as reported by multiple data sources. The website with the highest combination of factors is ranked in the first position.Thank you to Website Magazine for including us among so many great software ... > Read more

In today's print issue of USA Today, Byron Acohido reports on the trend of big search engine platforms (Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, etc.), whose bottom lines depend on selling ads linked to search results — they are pouring millions of dollars into initiatives to help small and medium-sized advertisers (SMBs) make the leap to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

In the article, I argue that it's all too common for small advertisers to waste money on poorly executed campaigns.Typically, they don't re-evaluate and optimize their campaigns, and therefore miss out on the opportunity to leverage a powerful marketing channel to grow their business.Read the full article, "Big search companies woo small businesses," in USA Today! ... > Read more

 Holy moly, guys. Another year, come and gone. I mean December basically doesn’t count; it’s basically already over, Christmas happened, and you’re all making hungover resolutions. Am I right?This time next month, I’ll be bringing you our best of 2011. But for now we’ll stick to the past 30 days.

Here are our top ten slammingest blog posts of the month:How Does the AdWords Auction Work? – Our latest infographic, a visual explanation of Google AdWords, was a big hit. If it you missed it the first time around, check it out.Small Business Saturday 2011: Tips and Tricks to Make the Most of November 26th – Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but Meg’s marketing tips for SMBs are worthwhile year-round.Our Top SEO Link Building Posts of ... > Read more

 Happy Halloween to all the lovable weirdos and kids-at-heart out there who still celebrate this silly holiday. (Stupid hats? Buckets of candy? What’s not to love?)And check out our top 10 greatest hits of the month – they’re SCARY AWESOME!Facebook Wall of Shame: Facebook's Failures, Criticisms and Missteps – There’s no doubt that Facebook, by and large, is a massive success story – but this infographic detailing the company’s various flubs and snafus was nevertheless our most popular post of the month by far.

When Should You Pause Google AdWords Keywords? – Learn two reasons why you might want to pause a keyword in AdWords to halt any damage it’s doing to your account.SSL Encrypted Search: Google Deals Low Blow to SEOs – Last week Google restricted access to organi... > Read more

 As you read this, I’m probably on my way to the DC area, leaving the virtually perfect Denver weather for the East Coast blahs. Ah well, maybe I'll spy some foliage. (I still think it's weird that New Englanders call it "leaf peeping!" It makes it sound so dirty.)Before you get your weekend started, check out the top 10 most popular blog posts we published this month.

Ultimate Guide to PPC Metrics: 17 Experts on the Top 3 Must-Check PPC Metrics – This group interview is packed with awesome insights into what metrics actually matter when it comes to analyzing PPC results – and which ones are pretty much worthless. Even if you don’t want to read the whole thing, be sure to skip to the bottom and see the three most popular answers.3 Ways to Scale Linkbuilding with Google Docs –... > Read more

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: August is the Sunday of summer. Although it’s technically still summer until September 22, the end of August pretty much feels like the end of it all – time to trade in late-afternoon cocktails in the sun for hours of homework. (Sorry, the Sunday blues make me forget how old I am.

) Before we all officially go back to school, let’s take a second look (or a first, if you missed them the first time around) at our blog’s top 10 most popular posts of the month: Announcing the AdWords Performance Grader: Find Out How You’re Doing on AdWords and How to Improve for Free – This post introduces our newest free tool. Have you tried it out yet? How does your AdWords performance measure up? Google AdWords E... > Read more

The next Mass Innovation Nights event is coming up on September 14, 2011. We'd be thrilled if you showed your support for WordStream by voting for us to present at the event! Mass Innovation Nights features innovative new products from companies in the Boston area. Here's more information about the event via MIN: We've got a great evening planned for our 30th event! MIN30, September 14, 6-8:30 pm, is going to be part of FutureM, a week of events in the Boston area, celebrating the future of marketing.

Our line-up looks terrific, with a great group of products somehow related to marketing. Join us! Remember, we’re here to help launch new local products, so here’s what you need to do: Check out the cool new products. Visit their websites for more info. Pick your favo... > Read more

Happy July! I hope most of you are not even reading these words, because you're already on vacation. Or, you're getting your last WordStream fix right before you take off for the long weekend. Or, you're on vacation, but so addicted to this blog you're reading it on your phone. Hi out there, wherever you are! Below you'll find links to our top 10 most popular blog posts from June, as voted by viewers like you! Google +1 Review: A Deeper Look at the Google +1 Button – In this post Larry examined Google's new +1 social button, looking for an answer to the burning question, Does it even work?? 8 Quick & Dirty Tips for Landing Page Optimization – Time to brush up your landing pages? Kathy Lamphier provides some easy tips and best practices for increasing your conversi... > Read more

For a limited time, we are offering a 15% discount on any subscription to our Keyword Research Suite. You'll save $50 when you purchase a standard subscription to the Keyword Research Suite by June 18 with code JUNE15. That's less than $1 a day for unlimited access to WordStream's full suite of best-in-class keyword tools, including: The Keyword Suggestion Tool: Leverage our huge database to find large numbers of keywords fast The Keyword Niche Finder: Find profitable new niches and clusters of related keywords to target The Keyword Grouper: Quickly turn a disorganized list into a manageable, actionable structure The Keyword Research Suite gives you access to way more keywords than free tools like Google's AdWords Keyword Tool.

For example, if you search on the term "ba... > Read more

The weather in Boston this month was really starting to get to me; it felt like most of May was rainy and unseasonably cool. But I went out of town for the long weekend and came back to the first sweltering weather of the year. We didn't get back to our apartment till 1:30 a.m. on Sunday night, entirely exhausted, and we still installed our air conditioner right then because there was no way we were going to get to sleep in an 85-degree apartment.

So, yeah, it's still technically spring, but nonetheless, I say welcome to summer!! And now it's time to kick back with an iced coffee in the cool breeze of the AC and enjoy our top 10 posts from the month of May: Five Ways to Lower Your PPC Campaign's Cost Per Action: Tom did a series of great posts this month on five ways to meet key PPC ... > Read more

WordStream is growing fast, so we're looking to add an enthusiastic and experienced Paid Search Specialist to our team of in-house AdWords experts. If you know someone who fits the below description, there could be $1,000 in it for you. Our ideal candidate for the Paid Search Specialist position will: Be passionate, ambitious, and ready to roll up their sleeves and immediately dive into managing paid search accounts Have at least two to three years of experience and demonstrated success in managing PPC campaigns and other search marketing initiatives Have comprehensive knowledge of building and optimizing PPC campaigns in Google AdWords as well as hands-on experience with content and display networks, phone tracking, and bid management The Paid Search Specialist will be respo... > Read more

April is over, you've paid your taxes, and now you're waiting for your tax return. Oh, the miserable wait: What to do in the meantime??? How about catching up on our best blog posts from the month? Is the Internet Bad for the Environment?: In honor of Earth Day we published this infographic detailing what kind of damage we're doing with our Internet addictions, as well as how the Internet is good for the planet.

Crayola Colored Bubbles: Reputation Management for a 1-Star Disaster: Worst product ever? Read some of the hilarious reviews for this mess of a product (literally) and learn what to do if this happens to your company. Understanding the Differences Between Google and Bing Match Types: This guest post by Bethany Bey from Hanapin Marketing explains the differences betwee... > Read more

Today I’m thrilled to announce the general availability of what I believe to be the World’s most comprehensive and accurate suite of keyword research tools for SEO and PPC – the new Keyword Research Suite from WordStream! You can test drive the tools for free, or read on for more information.

In this post, I’d like to talk a little about what the Keyword Research Suite does, how it’s different, and why I think it’s a must-have for anyone who's serious about search marketing. What Is the Keyword Research Suite? For the past several months we've been gathering feedback from our regular free tool users and buckling down to develop what we think of as the ultimate keyword research suite. We wanted to build a tool that would offer… The Biggest Key... > Read more

Looking for your next career move? Interested in search marketing? Apply for a job at WordStream! We're on a mission to build the world's best PPC management and keyword research solutions to help companies with their online marketing efforts. We're currently hiring for positions in search marketing product management and software development.

How to Get a Job at WordStream (or anywhere, actually) Before diving into the job descriptions, thought it might be helpful to give my personal three best tips on how to get a job at WordStream, or anywhere else for that matter! Don't use find and replace in a generic cover letter – This is so obvious, I don't know why people do this. Instead, write a short note about what you thought about the position, what got you interested about it,... > Read more

February may be a short month, but that doesn't mean we were short on kick-ass blog posts! (Ugh.) Here they are, our top 10 page-view-grabbing-est posts for the month, every bit as awesome as they were the first time (except maybe for the first one): Unsurprisingly, our most popular post this month was Larry’s AdWords promotional code share.

You cheapskates! ;) (Sadly the codes have all been used and are no longer valid.) Larry did a quick analysis of Google’s big JC Penney bust. Tom wrote up a dead simple Google AdWords certification guide covering costs, the different types of certification, study tips and more. Google accused Bing of copying its search results after cooking up an elaborate and nerdy “sting” – Larry asks the burning question, Who cares? Cha... > Read more

Over the past few weeks, we've walked you through several scenarios demonstrating how you can use the newest evolution of WordStream to supercharge your AdWords account. Whether you're a novice or an expert, WordStream for PPC has tools that can make your job easier and your campaigns more successful.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Scenario #5 “I know the best practices. I’ve been using AdWords for a long time now and have had a history of success. That being said, I’m always trying to find ways to squeeze every last drop of profit out of my account, add to my efficiency, and continue to grow PPC-related revenue for the business.” If you're an old hand at AdWords – whether you're an pay-per-click agency or an individual advertiser – and you're already ... > Read more

DANG, y'all! You just. Can't. Get. Enough. Link building posts. Remember when I said I was running out of pictures of chainlinks? That's why you get a classic NES reference for your image today. So here you have it, our most popular blog posts from January: lots of link building love and a few AdWords and PPC posts too.

Enjoy! Quick and Dirty Link Building Tip Part 1: How to Get Lots of Link Prospect URLs FAST!: This is the first in a three-part series by SEO whiz Tom Demers, in which he lays out a process for a fast link-building campaign.  Quick and Dirty Link Building Part 2: How to Prioritize Your Link Building Efforts: In Part 2 of this series, Tom explains how to sort through the link prospects you gathered in Part 1.  Link Building 101: 5 Simple Ways to Build Links that ... > Read more

Over the past couple of weeks, we've walked you through some examples of ways you can use the newest evolution of WordStream to supercharge your AdWords account. Whether you're a novice or an expert, WordStream for PPC has tools that can make your job easier and your campaigns more successful. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Scenario #4 “I work at an agency. We're new to offering PPC services and need a way to quickly onboard clients and manage them going forward to produce strong results.” Many advertising and interactive agencies have only recently begun offering pay-per-click services. If you're in this situation, you likely know it's a big opportunity and are ready to jump in, but you need a little help getting up to speed. Conversely, you may work at a new pay-per-click agency tha... > Read more

Over the next few weeks, we'd like to walk you through some examples of ways you can use the newest evolution of WordStream to supercharge your AdWords account. Whether you're a novice or an expert, WordStream for PPC has tools that can make your job easier and your campaigns more successful. Read Part 1 of the series here.

Scenario #3 "I've had an AdWords account running for quite some time, but my Quality Scores remain low, even after revamping my website and landing pages." There are a number of factors that go into determining your Quality Scores, and the relevance of your landing pages, as well as factors like website load time, do have an effect. But you'll have the most impact on your Quality Scores by focusing on your ads and ad groups. Specifically, you'll need to: Ensure that yo... > Read more

Over the next few weeks, we'd like to walk you through some examples of ways you can use the newest evolution of WordStream to supercharge your AdWords account. Whether you're a novice or an expert, WordStream for PPC has tools that can make your job easier and your campaigns more successful. Scenario #1 “I just recently set up my AdWords account.

I have a few campaigns/ad groups/keywords in there, but I didn’t really know what I was doing, so it needs to be redone. I’m essentially starting from scratch.” Sound familiar? You're not alone. Many of our clients are just getting their feet wet with PPC; they know they need to add it to their marketing channel, but they haven't had time to learn it from top to bottom, and they're nervous that the whole effort could turn ... > Read more

In search engine marketing, as in so many areas of business, time really is money, and that means wasted time is wasted money. That's why it's so important to optimize your AdWords campaigns sooner rather than later, so you're not throwing away money on clicks that go nowhere. And going one better, if you can build a high-power PPC campaign starting on Day 1, you won't have to spend time fixing your mistakes.

We're committed to continuously evolving and improving our software, and we've devoted a lot of energy in the past few months to gathering feedback from clients and prospects, both on our software and their needs as busy search marketers. Today we're announcing a new release of WordStream for PPC that addresses many of the pain points we've heard from you. Along with some impressive n... > Read more

2010: The year of the link? At least here at WordStream it was. Six of our top ten most popular blog posts of the year had the word "link" in the title. That's great guys – I'm glad you understand the value of the link when it comes to Google and SEO. However, there are only so many creative-commons images of chain-link fences I can put in these round-ups, so let's make 2011 the year of something pretty, OK? Can we do for kittens what we did for links? Without further ado, here they are, our 10 biggest hits from the entire year! And a huge thank you to all our readers – we couldn't, or at least wouldn't, do it without you.

How to Create Amazing Backlinks – Why settle for ho-hum backlinks when you can have amazing backlinks?! Amazing backlinks, of course, t... > Read more

Out of work? Unhappy with your present gig? Interested in Internet Marketing? Consider applying for a Job at WordStream! We're on a mission to build the next generation of Internet Marketing Software solutions to simplify and improve customer success with PPC and SEO, and are currently hiring for the following search marketing jobs in sales, marketing and product development: We're hiring for the following positions and offer a competitive salary and benefits package: Director of Business Development: Become a significant revenue driver for WordStream by discovering new sales and partnership opportunties.

Director of Inside Sales: Have experience selling SaaS products and managing inside sales? Then come help us build and provide leadership for the WordStream sales team. ... > Read more

Since WordStream launched, we’ve talked a lot about Quality Score and created a number of Quality Score resources: A Quality Score white paper A Quality Score toolkit including a handy Quality Score cheat-sheet, a webinar on the topic, and a meaty white paper. And an interview which we think serves as a pretty comprehensive guide to Quality Score (despite what some people may think about the veracity of some of the interview answers – hat tip to Aaron of SEO Book and PPC Blog PPC Training for the very insightful comments incidentally!) We believe campaign structure is a foundational element in building out profitable pay-per-click marketing campaigns, and we know that it’s a crucial component of Google’s ad auction.

And while many vendors focus on tool... > Read more

  Today at SMX East (come visit us at booth 318 if you're at the show, by the way!) we announced a partnership with Acquisio, a paid search marketing and performance media platform designed for agencies. We recently announced a similar partnership with gShift Labs - both software companies will be leveraging the WordStream Keyword Tool API to offer additional functionality to their customers.

Acqusio has a nice write-up on the API integration and what it means to their customers. Not unlike the gShift announcement, the really exciting part of the partnership for us is the chance to work with really smart people and to have a cutting-edge software company leveraging our API and delivering our technology to their customers to help them succeed with paid search marketing. Intereste... > Read more

We are getting heavy into fall here, folks. OK not really. The high yesterday was 80. But if you're like me, September just feels different, whatever the temperature. It's the start of a new "semester." After 25 years of nonstop schooling, I've been in the plain-old workforce for almost six years, but I'm still trying to break the habit of buying academic planners.

(Same goes for the annual ritual of "back to school" shopping.) In the spirit of back-to-school, why not throw on a scarf and blazer (turn up the AC is necessary) and catch up on our most popular posts this month? Link Building Magic: How to Turn Citations into Links: Did you all want to be magicians as kids or what? Ken shares one of our favorite secret link-building tricks. How to Find People on Twitter: N... > Read more

After meeting with gShift Labs CTO Chris Adams at an SES conference, we realized there was a great partnership fit, and today we're announcing that gShift Labs has integrated the WordStream Keyword Tool API into their Web Presence Optimizer. The team at gShift has built out an entire page dedicated to detailing how the WordStream Keyword Tool API is leveraged within the gShift product.

Here's a screenshot of the implementation: We're really excited about the implementation because it's extremely validating for the WordStream API to have companies like gShift programming against and leveraging our data and our algorithms within their software. We've been able to get a closer look at the gShift software and have gotten to know their team, and they're a very smart bunch solving some interest... > Read more

August was a very graphic month for WordStream. I’m not talking about anything R-rated (though our marketing meetings can get pretty violent)—I’m talking about infographics! Who doesn’t love infographics? Definitely not us. I mean, we definitely don’t not love them.

I mean, we love them. And you all love them too, judging from the page views. And you loved hearing about our infographic strategy almost as much as loved the infographics themselves. Here are the top 10 most popular posts from the WordStream blog in August: How We Got a Link from CNN and Drove Loads of Traffic with Infographics: This case study shows we used infographics to score a huge range of links and big traffic spikes in a short amount of time. Five Myths About Link Building: Larry de... > Read more

Search Engine Watch today published a really interesting article called "How to Cut Through the Clutter in Branded Search," using WordStream's keyword tools as the first step in a brand query analysis. In this article, Web Liquid Group's Paul Burani (Web Liquid is a New York marketing agency that measures brand health in the digital space) helps a friend, a chief marketing officer, develop a methodology for obtaining "an objective view on [a] brand's overall performance in digital.

" Paul writes: I told him that one way of answering the question would be to look at the trend in search query volume for the brand name -- if more people are querying keywords related to the brand name this month, compared to last month, that would be one way to answer the CMO's question. Thi... > Read more