Search Marketing Trainer

If you think there aren't any rules in search marketing and that it's just a free-for-all in the new media landscape, think again! There are plenty of rules and even more guidelines and when you're done with those, there are best practices!

Look, I dislike rules as much as the next guy (why do you think I'm self employed?) But we're talking about the Google collective here! These guys are programmers and engineers - they LIVE by rules.

See what I did there? I made a Star Trek Joke. That's for all you fellow geeks out there. No need to thank me.

Okay, so, speaking of Google's many rules, you should probably start there.

Here's a link to Adwords Support Central. If you're new to Adwords and you've just set up an account, chances are you don't have a dedicated rep. Enjoy the support pages, that's as close as Google lets most advertisers get to its actual employees - at least at first.

I'll provide links to some of the more useful support pages on some of my more specific rules pages. See how that works? I'm detail-oriented like that.

So here's how I recommend you tackle the rules, in order of importance...

1) Setting Goals for PPC. We all need goals, particularly if we plan to spend money on advertising as a means to reach those goals.

2) Conversion Tracking. Chances are your goals have something to do with conversions. If they don't, they should and this section outlines rules for setting up conversion tracking and provides some resources for getting that part of the plan up and running.

3) Keyword Research. These are more guidelines/best practices than rules. Still they're important and meant to save you time.

4) Competitive Intelligence. That's right - I used a buzzword and I'm not sorry! Learning where you stand in the PPC competitive landscape is important - this page provides some strategies for understanding things like how much search is going to cost you and how cluttered the search space is in your category.