Google Advertising Professionals Program Is Going To Be Replaced By Google AdWords Certification

Google’s longstanding Google Advertising Professionals program is going away, to be replaced with a new Google Adwords Certification program, Google has announced. The change means those certified through GAP will have six months to recertify under the new program. The change may also allow more companies to gain certification, as the overall required spend level has been lowered. More below.

Google Advertising Professionals launched in 2004 and is being phased out in place of the Google AdWords Certification program. Part of this change is to offer more training materials, more challenging certification exams, offer more advanced exams to test search, display, reporting and analysis and a shiny redesigned Certified Partner badge.

This change means that those who want to be individually certified now need to pass two exams. Companies wanting to be certified need to have one individually certified employee and have a spend of $10,000 per quarter.

Google is also relaunching the AdWords Professionals Search, which quietly went live in December 2009. The new name for the search is the Google Partner Search.

Google has also changed the pricing of their AdWords API usage structure. There is now a new preferred pricing section that takes you through to see if you qualify. This means some developers will get free API units based on managed client spend. You are eligible to apply for preferred pricing if your company is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and AdWords API-based tools remain in compliance with the AdWords API terms and conditions, including the required minimum functionality. More details on this at the AdWords API Blog and AdAge has some other details on this as well.

Postscript: I asked Google what happens to those GAP certified advertisers, do they lose their certification? Google sent me the following reply:

Yup, they’re still certified. That said, partners who are GAP certified will have to meet the new criteria, along with new terms and conditions, within a six-month period.
To be certified, each company must have one employee who has passed the Google Advertising Fundamentals exam, along with one Advanced exam (there are now four exams which cover a range of topics — Google Advertising Fundamentals, Advanced Search Advertising, Advanced Display Advertising, and Advanced Reporting and Analysis — instead of one broad exam). Additionally, the company must reach a 90-day minimum spend criteria of $10,000 USD or currency equivalent — which was previously $100k — and agree to new terms and conditions.

The GAP exam always had to be renewed every two years. The broad AdWords Certification exam (Google Advertising Fundamentals) is still valid for two years. However, the the advanced exams (Advanced Search Advertising, Advanced Display Advertising, Advanced Reporting and Analysis) that must be renewed annually, so it won’t be constant re-certification.

Google sent over more details about the terms for individual certification:

• The spend requirement has been removed (formerly $1,000 USD over 90 days).
• Individuals must achieve a passing score on two exams — Google Advertising Fundamentals, along with one advanced-level exam — as opposed to one exam.
• Formerly, these people were designated as a Google Qualified Individual. Now, they are Individually Qualified in Google AdWords.
• Individual badges will be phased out and replaced with certificates and an individual profile page hosted by Google – see example 
 

Source : Search Engine Land 

Web Analytics Wednesday Ahmedabad

Finally Team of Internet Marketing Journal brings Web Analytics Wednesday Day to Ahmedabad. Internet Marketing Journal (IMJ) was founded by Jaydip Parikh, Kaushal Shah and Dipali Thakkar. They really work hard and now we are going to enjoy Web Analytics Wednesday to our own Ahmedabad.

Lead Speaker

Ravi Pathak,
Founder & Business Head, Tatvic (Bangalore)
Tatvic is official Google Analytics Authorized Consultant in India and having clients like Make My Trip, Cardekho and other leading portal and some prestigious International clients too.

Venue – Date & Time

14th. April, 2010, 7.00 PM Onwards
Gloria Banquet Hall
1st. Floor, Regency Tower,
Nr. Rahul Tower,
Anand Nagar – Prahlad Nagar 100 ft. Road,
Satellite,  Ahmadabad.

Sponsors for this Event

Lead Sponsor :


YASH Infotech  (Business Partner TATA Communications Ltd.)

Diamond Partners :

InvestPlus : InvestPlus is Personal Finance Software specially Design for Individuals needs.
Datatech Media : Web Development, Design & Internet Marketing Solutions Provider
Byte Technosys Pvt. Ltd. : RIMS, On Site Support, Microsoft Solutions, Web Solutions Provider

Merchandiser Partner :

Infibeam.com : Infibeam.com is a premier online shopping portal of India portal carrying 50 Lac products including Books, DVDs, Cars, Bikes, Mobiles, Cameras, Gifts and many more

Global Supporter : Eric Peterson Founder of webanalyticsdemystified.com

Source

Ranking In Google News Can Boost SEO Efforts

Placing content on Google News is an effective strategy for search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. However, this approach has its own set of challenges.

“Google News reaches more people than any other individual news source in the world,” explained the SEO Consult blog. “The fact that articles are selected by an algorithm makes the site even more attractive, as you don’t have to spend time courting stressed-out journalists and editors. 

This algorithm also makes things more difficult, which is why SEO experts have spent considerable time figuring out how to optimize for Google News.”

Ranking in Google News is a big challenge for any online content source, because it constantly updates rankings. Plus, Google limits the top rankings to authoritative sources only. 

This means that most of the top search results come from professional journalists.

Currently, very few online news sites can match the primacy of Google News in the online news realm.

Source : lastclicknews.com

WAW - Web Analytics Wednesday Ahmedabad

Hello Friends,

As you all know, I am here to share with you all my research and new facts that I come across related to SEO, Web Analytics, SEO Tips And Techniques, Internet Marketing Industry Updates and such others. So, in this post I would like to draw your attention towards a Grand Event that is going to be organized especially for Web Analytics Lovers. Many of you might be knowing that, there is an International Event called WAW (Web Analytics Wednesday) which has been started by a very well known Web Analytcis Practitioner “Eric T. Peterson”. Normally, these kind of events used to be held at US, UK & Canada, but since last 2 years, We were fortunate enough to get this Event at India. Last year, the same kind of events were organized at Banglore, Chennai & Hyderabad.

And, NOW, With Lot Of Cheers, I am happy to announce that, We got got an opportunity to get this event to our own “Ahmedabad”. This event is hosted and managed by IMJ-Internet Marketing Journal which is usually maintained and handled by the combined efforts of industry experts. Credit goes to my industry friends (Dipali, Kaushal & Jaydip). It will be for the first time in North-West India where such kind of events are going to be held. The agenda of this event is to share and discussion about the Role of Web Analytics Insights in the Business.

Yup, WAW- Ahmedabad sounds so good isn't it...

I would like to invite all of you people to attend this event. We will have a great presentations during this event (Might be few speakers who have presented their knowledge in Google India seminars last year will going to speak in this event)

Please visit the below URL to send your RSVP

 
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/list.asp?event_city=Ahmedabad

Event : Web Analytics Wednesday – Ahmedabad

Date : 14th April, 2010

Time : 7.00 pm onwards

Venue : Gloria Restaurant, Anand Nagar Cross Road, Satellite, Ahmedabad Gujarat

Agenda : To share and discuss about the role of web analytics & data based decision driven process.

If you have any queries Or concerns, Plz feel free to ask.

Feel free to get updates of WAW-Ahmedabad event on LinkedIn & Facebook.

Hoping to meet you all at WAW – Ahmedabad

Avoid Over Optimizing Your Site

A little SEO knowledge can be dangerous. In fact, it can be disastrous for publishers who learn their first few tidbits of information, and then begin to apply it to their sites. The problem it can lead to is known as "over optimization."

Search engines look at a variety of signals for ranking purposes, as well as spam detection purposes. This includes a site review to determine if it's over optimized, and can result in the rankings for a site being dropped to a lower position than they may otherwise occupy.

Unnatural behavior of any kind can lead to a site being flagged for over optimization. Here are some examples:

1. Pages that have identical page titles and H1 headings. This is more likely to be viewed as over optimization if subheadings on the page also repeat the key phrase, or if all the internal links to the page use anchor text that exactly matches the page title.

This bears a strong resemblance to the keyword stuffing practices from the early days of optimization, though at a lesser scale. In general, people don't write that way naturally, and it looks bad to a user, a human reviewer at a search engine, and to the search engine's algorithms.

2. Too many non-contextual internal links on your site. For example, many publishers know the value of linking to their most important pages from other pages on their site. Certainly, you can take your 10 most important pages and link to them from nearly every page of your site. But when the list of cross links grows too large (even 25 is getting there), you're beginning to push your luck).

3. Having pages with great visual experiences above the fold, and not finding text until well below the fold. Publishers who first learn about the value of keywords, and also about the long tail, are prone to doing this. They generate large blocks of text which users likely won't even see, and if they do, they will quickly ignore.

      This text, because it isn't intended for users, is often poorly written and crammed with keywords and internal links with rich anchor text. Sometimes it appears as if publishers go out of their way to make the text user unfriendly. For example, a huge block of 25 lines of text in one paragraph isn't intended for users!

Summary

Take care when you optimize a page. There's little reward, and possibly even a negative penalty, for doing too much to try and support ranking for a particular key phrase, or set of phrases. Let the content from those pages be a bit more focused on the user and optimizing conversion. You might just find that this is the best SEO tactic.

Also, be careful when providing SEO training to your writers. Many writers with good intentions have turned in articles to me that were crammed with keywords (and those writers were promptly instructed to re-write the articles).

The problem is that the result didn't look right to the average reader. Let your writers write good stuff, without burdening them with lots of SEO instructions. You just don't know where they'll go with it.

Give them the desired title of the article, tell them the topics and sub-topics you would like covered, and let them write. You'll be better off for it.


Source : Avoid Over Optimizing Your Site

12 Quick SEO Tips For Blog

Here are some helpful seo tips for your blog. These tips definately useful for your blog and your blog will get more traffic for the search engines if your follow the following tips :

1. If you have a domain and want to install wordpress blog, don't put your blog at the root of your domain. Rename the directory with "blog" instead of "wordpress".
2. Always use dashes or hyphens in the url. These are best. You can also use underscore in the url. Spaces and no spaces are useless.
3. Put target keyword in the title tag and the heading of blog post.
4. Include the main keyword in the first paragraph in every post.
5. Use alt tags on images. Its good seo strategy.
6. Install title and meta description plugins. And make all the titles unique with the help of title plugin. These worpdress plugins are available free.
7. Always ping your blog in google and other autoping resources when updated.
8. When changing your host, use a permanent redirect (301).
9. Check your blog in all the popular web browers and cell phone.
10. Verify your blog using google webmaster tool and submit xml sitemap in all the three major search engines like google, yahoo and msn.
11. Don't mix non-www with www.
12. If you are earning from google adsense, use section targeting. Google will display relevant ads on your blog.

Source : tipsofseo.blogspot.com/

Suggested Users List for Twitter That You Can Actually Use

Twellow has launched a new "Suggested Users" feature aimed at connecting Twitterers with similar interests. It should be much more useful to the common Twitter user than Twitter's own suggested list, which is one static list for everybody, and includes mostly celebrities and other well-known people. In fact, Twitter may be getting rid of that list soon anyway.

Twellow's feature is tailored to the interests of the specific user, so your list will be completely different than the next person's.

Twellow is a WebPronews service, which provides Twitter users with a directory of people to follow by category or location.

"Being able to find people that really share common interests is what Twellow is all about," says Twellow's lead developer, Matthew Daines. "This new feature should really add value to our Twellow toolset in helping people meet this goal."

suggested_users_tab

"While Twitter has offered a suggested users list for some time, it really hasn't been very useful for the average Twitter user," he says. "Our large database of categorized users really has allowed us to provide a much better matching system for suggesting users to follow. These are relevant people who actually share your personal interests."


Twellow's Suggested Users feature can:

    - Display up to 500 profiles.
     
    - Let you follow users right from the list.

    - Let your ignore and hide profiles you don’t think are good matches.

    - Let you click the More Info buttons on each profile to show the categories for that profile. Your matches are marked with a green star.

    - Let you adjust your profile categories if suggestions are not accurate, then return and view the new results.

Check out the Suggested Users feature on Twellow, and let us know what you think about it. Our team is always open to feedback.



Do you think such a feature would make Twitter more useful? Share Your Comments Here!!!!

Source
Suggested Users List for Twitter That You Can Actually Use