AdWords Express manages your whole campaign, from keywords to budget. The plus side is that it’s easy. The minus side is that keywords can be targeted that have little or nothing to do with your business. And each click on those keywords will cost you money.

What should your business do? You can either manage your own campaign – through AdWords or AdWords Express – or hire a professional to do it for you. With a professional, you’ll spend money paying him or her, but you’ll also get a highly optimized campaign, where keyword choices are very relevant to your business.

If you decide you want to do it for yourself, you’ll definitely want to spend time reading up on the process. Make sure you understand how AdWords works and how to manage campaigns. Get an idea of what keywords are important for your business. If you want to try AdWords Express, watch your budget carefully and check to see if appropriate keywords are being targeted. If not, use AdWords and manage your campaign yourself.

My favorite resource for my clients is a free, easy-to-use site called Picnik. In just a few short steps, you can dramatically improve the quality of your photos and resize them as needed.

To get started, go to http://www.picnik.com. Click on “Get Started Now.”

Once the interface loads – it takes some time – select one of the demo photos on the left to practice on.

The picture will open up in a window with several buttons at top.

1. Start with Auto-Fix. Most of the time, this will automatically make your picture look better. If it makes it look worse, just click “Undo” on the right.
2. If you need a different size, click on Resize. Make sure “Keep Proportions” is checked and enter the width you need in the first box. Click OK.
3. Once you’ve resized an image, it will usually need to have the colors made a little brighter. Click on Colors and slide the Saturation slider to the right a little until your picture looks good. Don’t overdo it! Click OK.
4. Next click on Sharpen. Slide the Sharpness slider to the right a little. Again, be careful not to overdo it. You can slide the slider back and forth until the picture looks sharper without strange white halos. A good technique is to slide the slider all the way to the right, then move it back to the left until the photo looks sharp without being overdone – usually this will be a low number like 2 – 10. Click OK.
5. When you’re done, click on the “Save and Share” tab at the upper right. Accept the defaults and click “Save Photo.” A dialog box will open up that will let you save the picture on your computer.
   

There are several other options for editing and saving your photos. Take some time and explore the other options. If Auto-Fix doesn’t fix your photo, try the Exposure button. You can get rid of red eye with the Red Eye button. Besides resizing photos, you can also rotate or crop them.

When you’re done, click on the Home tab, close the sample photo you’ve been working on and select “Upload a Photo” to get started on your own photos.

However, one of my clients recently became a case study on how easy it is to get de-listed from Google Places. When updating their address, they left old addresses in their profile and one of the addresses was a post office box. They were quickly dropped from Places and are now working hard at getting reinstated.

So what do you need to know to guard your listing?

• Keep your listing up to date – be sure to delete any old information as well as adding new.
• Give the physical address of your business, not a post office box. A UPS box (with a street address instead of a P.O. box number) does not count – change it to your real address.
• For your business name, put in only the name of your business – no keywords, no location information. That used to be acceptable (or at least ignored) in Google Places, but now it’s an infraction. In fact, be careful not to stuff keywords or location into any part of your listing.
• Stay informed! Google makes changes fairly frequently.

Guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528&ctx=checklist.

Search

“Search engine optimization” is probably the term you’ve heard most often: the items mentioned above (domain name, filename, text) will help with search engine optimization – getting your site found when people search for a product or service. SEO (search engine optimization)  relies on understanding what keywords are most likely to get people to your site. If you sell swimming pool equipment, for example, you’ll want that fact reflected in your domain name if possible. You’ll also want pages with the very specific name and description of each equipment item – the more specific the better.

A second major aspect of search engine optimization is getting links to your site. Find out what directories of sites exist for your business and get listed there. Take a look at who’s linking to your competition and see if they’ll link to you as well. The more relevant the links are, the better. “Relevant” is an important word here. If you sell swimming pool equipment, a link from a modeling site isn’t going to help and may, in fact, hurt. Google may think you’re engaged in link spamming.

“Findability”

But getting found on the Internet goes beyond what we think of as search engine optimization. It involves what Heather Lutze calls “findability”: all the different ways people can find you on the Internet. Facebook is as much a force these days as Google. If you sell to consumers, setting up a Facebook page for your business is pretty much a requirement. If you sell to other businesses, participation in LinkedIn can be a new source of business. Merchant Circle is another place to get listed and interact with other business owners.

Local Resources

For local merchants, Google Places and Yahoo Local can give you great exposure for free. Beyond the extra service these provide, you get reliable links to your site. If you haven’t already claimed your listings here, put it on your “to-do.” Be sure to supply as much information as you can.

While you’re at it, sign-up for Google alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts. Google will let you know when your business name (and/or any other topics you choose) is mentioned on the Internet. If your business is getting a review – positive or negative – you’ll want to know about it. If you get a negative review, it’s especially important to respond to it right away.

Other Techniques

Have video? Put it on your site and on YouTube or Vimeo (both is better) with tags (keywords) and descriptions that will help attract users.

There are, of course, paid ways to get found – Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, banner ads are just some of them – one or all of these may fit your business and your budget.

What’s important is to realize you can promote your business online in many different ways. Select the methods that are most appropriate for your business and don’t waste your time and money on those that aren’t relevant. And don’t think just building it will make them show up.