Google have released a new site which is set to rival the top UK credit card comparison sites. Compare UK credit cards was launched in February and many of the top credit card companies have signed up to be part of the service.

Google promise to make a search on their site take less than a second and there are various search options that enable a suitable credit card to be selected. Options include personal details such as income, age and credit rating as well as preferences such as card issuer and reward schemes.

Ian Morgan, industry head at Google, said:

‘We hope this new ad unit will help users easily find and compare credit card offers without the need to reveal personal information, while providing advertisers with a sophisticated and flexible cost-per-lead model.’

The credit card site is part of Google’s Adwords Comparison Ads which was firstly introduced in the US with mortgage related queries. It seems to be working as an affiliate site.

Although Google seem to have changed this now, when you performed a search on Google for credit cards often the top result on the pay per click section at the top of the page was the sponsored credit card comparison site. The top paid search spot is currently no longer given to the Google site in all cases. Perhaps they are taking note of the critisisms levied at them.

In theory if all the major cards sign up then this will be a great service but at what cost to other businesses? Google will certainly be using their power to give MoneySupermarket.com and GoCompare.com a run for their money.

Presumably the plan is for Google to create other financial search affiliate sites. Is Google abusing their position as the site that is used to perform up to 80% of all searches in the UK? Will companies be forced to advertise with Google simply because it uses its advantage in UK search to funnel people into their comparison sites?

Louis Vuitton has lost a five year court case against Google after they tried to ban the search engine giant from allowing other companies to use their name in their adwords campaigns.

Adwords allow companies to bid on any words, including tradenames, in order to attract search customers to their sites when they type in those terms. Louis Vuitton were naturally unhappy that companies selling counterfeit goods were using their brand name to attract visitors.

According to a Bloomberg report, Patrice de Cande, a Vuitton Lawyer, told the European Court of Justice that:

‘Google’s advertisement activities have given companies which sell fake products unprecedented visibility beyond their wildest dreams.’

Google, who state that they have a very strict policy against counterfeiting, fought against the case claiming that restricting who has access to certain words within Adwords restricts the ‘fundamental principal behind the free flow of information over the internet.’

Writing in a blog post, Google’s senior litigation counsel Dr Harjinder S. Obhi said:

‘We believe that user interest is best served by maximising the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts. For instance, if a user is searching for information about a particular car, he or she will want more than just that car’s website. They might be looking for different dealers that sell that car, secondhand cars, reviews about the car or looking for information about other cars in the same category.

‘Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trademark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising. Ultimately, they want to be able to exercise greater control over the information available to users by preventing other companies from advertising when a user enters their trademark as a search query. In other words, controlling and restricting the amount of information that users may see in response to their searches.

‘Our guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit users, and our aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful. We will study the decision as we move forward in order to make sure that we continue to deliver advertising that is perceived as both valuable and relevant by our users.’

So, for the moment Google will retain its right to do business in the way that it wants. It is required however, under European Law, for them to swiftly remove any campaign that is using copyrighted words in an illegal way. In contrast to this, businesses that use copyrighted words may still themselves be taken to court if they do not make it clear that they have no commercial link with the trademarked term they are using in their campaigns.

Journalists and blog writers are always looking for good information for their sites. Press releases are a sure thing if you want to get your name out there. If the media like your information and it gets taken up by blog writers you have a good chance of increasing traffic to your site.

Here are some tips to help you optimise your press releases for the search engines.

Good copy
Good copy is essential. This underlies the basics of your press release and represents who you are as a company. Good writing, spelling and layout are important. Make sure you include the correct date and contact information.   Is there a call to action that you want to include in your copy?

Keywords
Use your selected keywords in the body of your press release. Use them in the title of your press release and in any links or titles to images, videos or audios. This will help your press release rank in the search engines.

Newsworthy
Do you have something newsworthy to say. If not, save your press release for another day. Uninteresting information will not be passed on.

Links
Provide links in your press release that take readers to the best landing pages. Use keywords in those links. Providing links to your website will increase its ranking in the search engines.

Quotes
Journalists love quotes. People want to hear things that real people have actually said.

Website
Put your press releases on your website. Having a newsroom or media centre makes it easy for writers to find your press release. Allow them to subscribe to future press releases easily with RSS.

Promotion
Promoting your press release is essential. Capitalise on your efforts. There are various sites you can submit to:

OnlinePRNews.com
dBusinessNews.com
www.seenation.com
www.google.com/base
www.openpr.com
www.i-newswire.com

Once you have identified your main keywords then its time to use them. Making sure that your main keywords appear consistently in all your online marketing will help to maximise your campaigns.

Optimising your website
This is a technical area. For some people websites are just attractive windows that consumers will enjoy visiting and hopefully engaging and purchasing from. In reality website construction needs the involvement of people who know about search engine optimisation. Keywords need to be embedded in:

• title tags
• headings
• links
• the website navigation system
• document titles, directory names, file names
• the body text

Optimise all your digital output
Use keywords when labelling your videos, audios and all images. These are all included in many search facilities and are becoming more and more popular with the general public.

Social networking
Use your keywords in all your social networking. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, they all allow you to bookmark tags (your keywords) which make it easier for people to find you. This is particularly important now that search engines are using live search results.  Even posts on online forums have search facilities.

Back Links
Using your keywords in links that go to your site is very important as the search engines take this as one very important indication of the usefulness of your site to the readers. Building up good back links takes time, be patient.

Press releases
Use your keywords in everything you put out there including press releases, emails, articles, bio’s. It all counts because it makes it easier for people to find you.

Documents
Optimise any documents you have online with keyword content: pdf’s and word documents can all be used in search engines.

Think in terms of keyword optimisation for every piece of material you produce and you won’t go far wrong.

Keywords and keyword phrases are just as important as they once were. Keywords help the search engines to work out what your website/blog/twitter feed are all about and they use this information to match you to the search queries that their customers are making.  They should be one of the most important elements of your search engine optimisation.

There are various ways to find the best keywords for you. The most important thing when you are first looking is to test everything.

Objective
What is your current business objective? This is the most important question. And your keyword search is based on the answers to this question.

Overall, what are you trying to do? Inform people, get more contacts, get more visitors, make more sales? You may have several business objectives and this may lead to the development of several lists of keywords, each one targeted at a different objective. Once you are clear you can then start to find your best keywords for the job/s in hand.

Brainstorm
Along with your team, friends and even customers, brainstorm what you think would be best keywords for your business and its objectives.

Competitors
What keywords are your competitors with better search engine rankings using?

Keyword Research tools
Armed with your list of keywords the next thing to do is to test them with well known keyword research tools:

• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Insights & Trends
• Google Trends
• SEMRush.com
• Keyword Discovery
• WordTracker

These tools enable to track trends and assess the viability of your chosen keywords.  The Google tools are free and the others have both free and paid tools that you can access via their sites.

Professional Help
Keyword research is both an art and a science. Going it alone is time consuming but can be done. However because choosing the right keywords is a pivotal part of your online marketing it is important to get it right. Professional help will save you time and costly mistages.