Andrew Goodman is a jack of all trades and a master of them too.  He’s written books on adwords, blogs, pay per click advertising, and search engine marketing, as well as running his search engine marketing agency and speaking on internet marketing at industry conferences.  Andrew Goodman got his start by writing Traffick.com in 1999.  It was written as he finished his PhD in, of all things, political science.  This book examined how search companies control how users access the internet and how profits are made by maximizing web traffic.  Next, he researched a book called Internet Directory 2000.  He made many contacts in consulting and during the creation of his search marketing consulting business, Page Zero Media. 

Andrew Goodman believes that it is search marketing consultants who must search for clients rather than the other way around.  He looks for strong niche companies or strong brand names.  What does he think the companies should look for?  He says they need marketing consultants who are problem solvers, stay within a budget, have strong domain knowledge, and extensive business connections.

Andrew Goodman wrote two books on adwords: AdWords and Winning Results with Google AdWords.  They sold with little competition until the internet was flooded with others like them.  For those businesses that use adwords, Goodman says that the Quality Score Formula is the determining factor in where an ad ranks on a search engine page. An important part of the formula is the ranking Google gives to a landing page; avoiding deceptive material and unneeded ads is the key to a good ranking.  He also states that the fight for search engine advertising will get more and more aggressive.

When asked for advice on maximizing use of adwords and keywords, Andrew Goodman stated,  “Analytics is very much dependent on your company’s needs. Above all, avoid paralysis by analysis. You need to pick a tool and go with it.  If budget is unlimited then you’re not going to go wrong with Omniture Sitecatalyst, Webtrends, etc.  Clicktracks Pro seems to be an exciting mid-priced answer.  There are a lot of details with customization and buying the right version — selecting a vendor is only the beginning.  At the low end, you can get almost as much in practical terms, but your career might take a hit if you’re generating amateurish-looking reports or failing to build theories about customer behavior.  That being said, most companies put too much stock in the sizzle when some very fine products like ConversionRuler, Keyword Max, Indextools, and so forth, have as much steak as they need to gather very detailed conversion data and apply it to their campaigns… for $20-120 per month.”

His favorite search tool is testing ad performance right on the internet, which is built into AdWords.  Andrew Goodman is considered to be one of the world’s experts on Google AdWords.