The Real-Florists.com directory was created with good intentions - intentions that I wholeheartedly applaud. Listing real florist businesses in their local areas makes it easy for consumers to find a local shop and not have to rely on order brokers like FTD, Teleflora, 1800-Flowers - or any of their tens of thousands of affiliates. This gives the customer a better chance at getting good service, and gives the florists another incoming link to help them rank competitively in their neighbourhood.
Florist directories are nothing new - some exist as thinly veiled attempts at gathering orders to feed into the order brokerage systems. Others exist as a for-profit model where participants must pay for inclusion, and upgrades to their listings. Some even combine the two models!
Sadly, as is often the case, where good intentions abound, reality can hit like a hammer. [click to continue…]
Just a quick note to mention that ROI Revolution has posted a video of their webinar on Google’s new AdWords interface.
From their announcement:
We covered the following top new features:
- Ever been burned by the content network? This critical new tool will clear away the content network fog and allow you to target specific websites down to the URL to easily alter the bids on profitable or unprofitable websites.
- Before you change any bids in your account, you NEED to review the super accessible keyword analysis feature. With this new feature you can laser-target any specific broad or phrase match keyword in your entire account and view the actual search queries that triggered an ad for that keyword.
- The new account layout structure is not only aesthetically pleasing, but it gives you instant visibility to your top-performing or highest volume keywords so you make important changes in a snap.
With this video, you’ll see how the new AdWords User Interface will save you hours of your limited time, help you cut wasted adspend, and discover hew highly relevant keywords and placements to scale your online profits.
I attended the live webinar and was very impressed with the new interface (which we are currently using on client accounts) and the explanations from the Google staff about the thought process behind the enhancements. This new interface will be a huge aid to PPC efficiency and may help take some of the fear out of AdWords for small business owners.
