In today’s age of social media, search engine optimisation & search engine marketing, there is a misconception that anyone can do it.

If you know how to edit some meta tags, insert alt tags in images and stuff your content full of relevant keywords you can carry out SEO on your website.

If you create a group for your company on Facebook and get 50 members, you are a Social Media expert.

If you can setup your own PPC account in Google AdWords and broadcast your ads to the nation, then you earn the title of Search Engine Marketing Manager.

The truth is that this is all a misconception. Because there is so much information floating around about SEM, SEO, PPC and the like, both bad and good it is difficult for anyone to know if they are really doing a good job or not. I can say for a fact that a lot of people are doing a bad job, and Google is not helping in this area because all they are thinking about is their revenue stream.

99% of Google’s revenue comes from Google AdWords. Without this revenue stream Google wouldn’t exist as it does today.

As a specialist in this field it upsets and frustrates me that Google project the misconception to it’s AdWords advertisers that anyone can open and successfully run their own account. Of course, it is possible to open and start a new account quite easily, just as it is possible to do SEO on your website with a few META tag adjustments and keyword placements… not.

With basic help on how to run your own AdWords campaign, Google makes it look easy for the average person to run a successful campaign.

When you think about it, Google is the next Microsoft. Microsoft make it easy for anyone to open a new spreadsheet, word document or powerpoint presentation. While this is great, it doesn’t mean that you are an expert in any of these programs, it just means that you can spend a lot of money on a program in which you are going to use maybe 5% of it’s total features.

This applies equally to Google AdWords. AdWords is a fantastic platform and offers advanced analytics and adjustments to the ads run on this platform. The average user will use 5% of AdWords capabilities. A specialist in the field will use 90%+, giving their client maximum Return On Investment (ROI) and maximum benefit through Google AdWords.

Just because you can open and appear to run your own account in Google AdWords, doesn’t mean that you are not flushing your money down the toilet in overpriced keyword bids and under-optimised account setup. The basic user will lose out big time with their 5% knowledge and 95% ad spend. Don’t be fooled into thinking your are an expert just because you know the basics.

Remember that AdWords amateurs spend 95% of their money as they only use 5% of the programs features. Professionals use 95% of AdWords features, while spending only 5% of their money.

Yahoo have lost 15%, MSN have lost 21% and Ask has also lost 21% over last year.

Searchers are also now using longer search queries when searching for what they want on the web. What does this mean? This means that the average searcher now knows (better) how to use a search engine to find the results that he/she is searching for.

Longer search queries are becoming more popular as year over year increases (and decreases) show just that.

• 1 word search queries have dropped by 3%
• 2 word search queries have dropped by 5%
• 3 word search queries have remained stable
• 4 word search queries have increased by 2%
• 5 word search queries have increased by 6%
• 6 word search queries have increased by 8%
• 7 word search queries have increased by 12%
• 8 word search queries have increased by 22%

This means that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) management have become a lot more difficult as search queries become longer and therefore more varied.

Paid advertising using keyword targeting will become more difficult as accounts become larger due to increased keyword numbers. As keyword phrases become more targeted, so too must paid advertising campaigns such as Google AdWords, in order to maximise quality score, reduce Cost Per Click (CPC), and thereby increase Return On Investment (ROI).

Selling SEO Projects Against PPC Campaigns discusses the easy part of selling PPC, the hard part of selling SEO and finally, selling your SEO product.

Although this article is not so much for clients reading about whether SEO is a better investment over PPC or vice versa, it does offer some interesting information for the client on why PPC is easy to sell, and why SEO is more difficult in comparison.

Sam Niccolls discusses the ways to increase your conversions and thus your Return On Investment (ROI) by optimizing the pages on which your visitors, and thus potential clients land.

Perhaps in days past your most important page was your home page, however that is no longer the case as search engines bring traffic to those pages which are most relevant to your visitors.

Read more about these valuable 5 tips to improve your landing pages and keep in mind that these are not only for SEO, they can increase the performance and value of your website:

1. Reassuring Policies: Highlighting security features, guarantees, or refund policies can earn trust in your new visitors.
2. Testimonials: Knowing that other customers have enjoyed a pleasant experience with your company instills trust in new visitors.
3. No Credit Card Forms: Lure your visitors in before slapping them in the face with a credit card form.
4. Email Collection: Make email sign-ups easy so that you can keep in touch with visitors who are most likely to convert to customers.
5. Look At Bounce Rate By URL: Look at changes to your site which will have the most impact and therefore require the least amount of effort on your behalf.

It shows that tracking visitors to your website might be unreliable through several Twitter programs such as Tweetie. Some of these programs open links sent on Twitter through their own browsers, where Javascript is usually not enabled.

Since analytic software such as the very popular Google Analytics uses Javascript to track visitors to your website, visitors from programs such as Tweetie may give Google Analytics as well as other analytics programs the slip. At best these visitors will show up as direct visitors rather than being referred from a specific source and therefore it will be difficult to measure statistics such as Return On Investment (ROI) and conversion tracking.

This is something that needs to be kept in mind when analyzing data, and may explain discrpancies between various analytical software used to monitor the same domain.