Now that I passed the Google Adwords Certified Professional Exam, I’m ready to start raking it in with Adwords. In order to get fully certified I need to manage an account of $1,000 a month. That’s how I get my little logo, that will soon be proudly displayed on this site.

In the meantime, I need to find someone who’ll spend the $1,000 a month on Adwords. Easier said than done. It’d be easier to come up with some crooked black hat money laundering scheme. All just for that little ego, I mean logo.

Well, I did it. I finally took the Adwords Certified Professional test today. I was convinced I would fail, because it was very tough. Lots of stuff to learn. I studied for weeks, and still wasn’t confident.

You need 75% to pass and I got 83%. I feel I did pretty well. I get a nice little logo to put on my websites, business cards and resume. Not to mention Google has marketing material to get clients. How cool is that?

I already have 3 individuals who want me to manage their advertising campaigns. Now I can charge “professional” rates. The best part is I can be confident that I have a complete understanding of Adwords and that my own campaigns are optimized as well as possible.

Check back in few days, I’ll be proudly displaying my Google Adwords Certified Professional logo on this site!

Sunday I will be going to Chicago to attend the Ad Tech convention. The convention is on Monday and Tuesday next week.

I’m really looking forward to rubbing elbows with some of the heavy hitters. Not to mention I have signed up for a “one on one” session with Google. How cool is that?

It’s just me and my dad who are going. Should be a great opportunity for some father and son bonding as well. I’ll post more on how the convention was when I get back.

I have been working for almost fourteen years at my current company. I basically do three things: network support, web support and marketing support.

I have been in charge of every piece of marketing literature created in the last fourteen years. I do a lot of graphic design, presentation creation, overviews, brochures, custom reports, charts and RFP’s.

I am in tune with how the marketing world works. I am familiar with what prospective clients expect, and I strive to keep my marking team running smooth. Which allows them to focus on their main job responsibilities.

I am also very good at generating leads. Using the internet and several tools, I can sniff out leads that others might not find.

I feel I am a great asset to any marketing team. Whether it be traditional or online.

I consider my self a successful SEO guy when I can write an article or create a page and have it show up on the first page of Google. And I hold many positions on Google’s first page. So does that make me a success? You decide.

To me, content is everything. You can have all of your meta information, all of your alt’s and title’s, all of your link backs, but if you do not have keyword rich conent, you’ll land on page 58.

I like to focus on SEO as I’m developing the site. Keeping SEO in mind right from the start will help your site to be a success. I feel I’ve done pretty well, right now I have nine PR4 sites, one PR5, and numerous PR3 sites. The PR5 site is only four months old.

I have been trying to read as many articles as I can on SEO. I’m still searching for that one “Magic Trick” that no one shares. The more I read, the more I feel like I know quite a bit. As long as you look at each site differently, no two sites are the same.

SEO is constantly changing. If you read something today, tomorrow the search engines will be doing soemthing different. Today link exhanges are in, tomorrow reciprocal linking is dead.

My SEO trick is to just try and stay on top of the ever-changing web. Read and follow the changes. Arm myself with as much knowledge and hope I can use it on each of my sites. As well as, understanding that good old fashioned time and organic traffic will also be vital in the long run.

I have fallen in love with WordPress. Open source rules! There are so many plugins available, it makes me think that there isn’t anything you can’t do with it. Plus you can virtually set up a brand new site in about five minutes without touching a line of code. And the Themes available, oooweee.

I do all of my hosting on servers that use cpanel and fantastico, it makes installation and configuration such a breeze. I have also done several installs of WordPress manually, piece of cake.

I feel I’ve gotten very comfortable changing the style sheets as well as modifying all elements. I’ve also been very successful troubleshooting issues.

It’s hard not to like WordPress.

My latest craze has been with the content management system Xoops. I have been playing with it quite a bit…and I like it. I love the idea of building complete sites without touching any code.

I’ve been using Xoops to build portals that include blogs, message boards, news, faq, etc. Pretty cool stuff. I have a feeling I’ll be doing quite a lot of these type of sites. They look extremely professional. Very clean.