Richard Ball founded Apogee Web Consulting LLC, a full service search engine marketing firm, to help businesses succeed on the internet. Apogee Web Consulting provides strategic internet marketing services including pay per click advertising, search engine optimization and shopping search engine submission. All search engine marketing services begin with a foundation of keyword research and web log analysis. Use the company's free search engine marketing tools.

Prior to starting Apogee Web Consulting, Richard was a software developer for America Online. He has a degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT.

Purple Flowers Are Not Pink Despite What Google Might Think

by Richard Ball    August 2, 2007

It's important to recognize that there is no such thing as broad match. Let me say that again: There is no such thing as broad match! Broad match is actually expanded match....

Google AdWords: Local Advertising

by Richard Ball    March 30, 2007

Search engine advertising is beneficial for local advertisers as well as national advertisers. Google's advertising system, AdWords, offers the option to target ads to searchers in a specific geographic region. Due to the method Google uses to identify the location of these searchers, though, it's imperative for local advertisers to run national ads as well....

Click Fraud Minimization Strategies

by Richard Ball    November 1, 2006

Neither Google nor Yahoo do a good job educating users about the risks of contextual advertising. For advertisers new to search engine marketing, it would be wise to disable contextual advertising while learning effective search engine advertising techniques....

Google AdWords Marketing: Exact Match Bidding

by Richard Ball    December 7, 2005

The use of both broad and exact matches in Google AdWords campaigns can be a great boon to your marketing campaigns, find out why....

Meta Keywords Advice

by Richard Ball    October 31, 2005

Most people agree that the Meta tag is useless. I'll take it a step further and argue that it's hazardous. There is more risk than reward in using the meta keywords tag because your competitors can view the meta keywords tag and can steal your keywords....

Mastering Google AdWords Marketing: Contextual Advertising - Part 2

by Richard Ball    August 9, 2005

For existing, combined ad campaigns, it's worth taking the time to replicate a campaign and set one for the content network and the other for the search network....

Mastering Google AdWords Marketing: Contextual Advertising - Part 1

by Richard Ball    August 1, 2005

by Richard Ball - The target audience for search ads and content ads (contextual ads) can be quite different....