With Ad Intelligence you can work with lists of suggested keywords, and develop your strategy for keywords using MSN and Bing query information. The details include volume, relevance, demographic and geographic tracking as well as cost history. This data helps you fine tune your bid strategy because you use actual pricing information and data that is specific to keywords. You get information on clicks, impressions, cost-per-click and position.

One of the key factors in business success is leverage. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence allows you to leverage true history and forecast data. This means your keyword efforts are based on actual customer activity. You get key performance indicators (KPI) to track performance.

*You’ll need to uninstall the earlier versions of adCenter Add-in for Excel. Of course, you should have Microsoft Office Excel 2007 installed. Be sure Excel is closed when you go through the Ad Intelligence install process.

It’s good for your site to have promotions and giveaways that are accessible from your Facebook page. These can drive all kinds of traffic to your site, boosting it as well. Polls are popular, as are links to YouTube channels. Some third-party apps require you to go to another site and set up an account, which is usually free. But the apps are easy enough to put on your Wall, or you can give them their own tabs.

You’re really missing out if you aren’t using Facebook to market your business. It is one of the easiest ways to do so, and chances are you already know people on Facebook that you can personally nudge toward your business page and ask that they become fans and sign others up. You don’t get the kind of “viral” spreading of your message on any other medium than social network sites like Facebook.

With potential SEO companies, stay away from the ones that promise you that your business will rocket to the top of the search engines effortlessly, particularly if they don’t tell you how they plan to get you there. Oh, and when they say “search engines,” make sure they’re talking about the major search engines that people actually use. Think of it this way: if an SEO site is willing to engage in shady practices to artificially boost your search engine rankings, they’ll think nothing of rerouting your domain to a scary malware site if their relationship with you goes bad.

Many of the same principles apply when you choose a PPC company. Make sure their “results” have to do with the major search engines and stay away from cloaking and other deceptive practices. It’s bad enough to throw your money away on a bad PPC consultant, but it’s worse if they do things that get your site banned by search engines.

Actually, the death of thin affiliates has been declared multiple times, and perhaps there’s something to it, but like the “corpse” in Monty Python’s “Bring Out Your Dead” sketch, thin affiliates say they’re doing fine, thanks.

However, in early January 2010 Google slashed the number of advertisers in some categories by 90%, clearing the way for those who create original products and original content. And that’s what it eventually comes down to, even for thin affiliates that make quick fortunes slinging affiliate sites all over the place: if you don’t have unique content, you’ll be roadkill on the information superhighway eventually.

The way to long term marketing success with Google has always theoretically been high quality original content, it’s just that now they’re backing up their words with some slash and burn tactics that make thin affiliates a shorter term proposition for most.