December 6th, 2010 Newsletter

I don't know about you, but I for one can not believe that the Christmas season is upon us already. The days and months seem to just be flying by lately. We have had a very busy fall season rolling out and supporting 2 new e-learning sites that are being run out of Moodle as well as some other websites for local businesses/organizations.

Hopefully each of you are making plans to spend some quality time with your families over the holiday season.

This newsletter will touch on the following topics:

• Google Adwords & Website Promotion

Google Adwords

We have received a number of requests & questions about Google Adwords in the past month. Many of you have probably received cards in the mail from Google offering $50 or $100 credits towards creating a Google Adwords ad. Some of you have called or emailed me asking if this was a scam or if it was in fact a good use of advertising dollars. The answer is, no it is not a scam and depending on how web-based advertising fits into your company's advertising plans it is one of the most effective and cost effective methods of advertising on the web today (but not the only one).

The Google Adwords advertising model is really quite simple. You create an account with Google (if you don't already have one) and begin creating your ad. You have a pretty limited amount of space that you can use and some pretty strict guidelines for what you can include in the ad (but this keeps the ads on a pretty level playing field). Once you have created your ad, you can then pick the type of payment model that you want to use for your ad placement. Google offers 3 options:

1. Daily budget (how much you want to pay daily for your ad to appear)
2. Bids (you can select an amount that you would like to pay for clicks)
3. Ad Quality (the more you are willing to pay for a click, the higher your ad shows in an ad listing)

One thing to notice about the Bids and Ad Quality model is that they charge by the click. This means that your price is based on the number of people who not only see your ad, but actually click through to your website (which is ultimately what you want).

One of the most powerful parts of the whole process is the tracking that Google provides you along with your advertising. You select the categories that you want your ad associated with and then choose (from long lists) the keywords that you want to associate your ad with. Google then tracks how your ad is displayed and where the clicks are coming from. You can use this information (and should) to fine-tune your keywords and descriptions to help generate even more traffic for your website.

For more information on getting started with Google Adwords, you can check out their Geting Started Guide here.

There are other great ways to promote your website locally as well, and we will discuss Facebook advertising in future newsletters.

Client Spotlight

We have rolled out a larger than usual number of websites in the past few months and highlighting just one doesn't seem fair, so this month we thought we would draw attention to several different sites.

One of our longtime clients had us do a complete overhaul on their website and we think it turned out pretty well. Brian Moser has been a local real estate client of ours for several years and his site needed an update - so this is what we did for him:

www.brianmoser.ca

We also completed a website for a great local business - Honkers Pub. Vicki came to us through a referral and we created a completely custom website based on the design ideas that they had. We also helped design their new menu (watch for it on the tables very soon).

www.honkerspub.com

We hope this mailing was helpful. If you found it useful, forward it to a friend. If you didn't, drop us a note and let us know how we can better answer your questions and meet your needs by using our contact form.

Jeff Meadows

Director

G4 Ventures Ltd.