An entrepreneur or freelancer has two main strategies to tap into when marketing online. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which attempts to rank your website on search engines "organically", and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which ranks your website in search results in exchange for money. Both strategies can be used to build a business successfully--but which one is right for you? A great way to market your business is to use search engines to help your customers find you online. You will need a sales-focused website (e.g., one aimed at creating contact rather than one aimed at assuring customers that you are who you say you are) if you use this strategy; otherwise, your efforts will likely be wasted. You have two ways to use search engines to help people find your website; search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).

Everyone knows that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a big thing and almost every single tech company in the world seems to be riding that hype wave. However, we feel like it's our purpose and responsibility to inform you that the claims of almost every tech company using AI are absolutely false, and here's why. Such hype wave comes with a whole new world of marketers and scammers using the buzz word with fake AI to trick their potential users into thinking they're using real autonomous AI. Our job and responsibility is to inform you on the business aspects of truly "Useful Autonomous AI vs Useless AI"; because there's no point in supposedly using AI if it's not going to outperform humans. Useful and autonomous AI implies using a combination of neural networks, machine, transfer, reinforcement and deep learning in production models that are actually taking action on the predictions of the simulations, not just making recommendations and providing insights of what to do (sorry "AI" analytics companies, but if some human needs to actually do what your platform recommends, then that's not a truly useful, independent and autonomous AI).

Google has introduced new shopping campaigns for AdWords, which utilize automation and machine learning to maximize conversion value. If an advertiser were to define their conversion value as "revenue," for example, then AdWords will automatically optimize the shopping campaign to maximize revenue based on budget constraints. Standard shopping campaigns will continue to be offered along with Google AdWords' new goal-optimized shopping campaigns. Google boasts that the new shopping campaign type "offers a fully-automated solution to drive sales and reach more customers." The new shopping campaigns will be automatically optimized to help marketers achieve their specific goal, whether it's maximizing conversion value or maximizing conversion value at a specific return on ad spend.

The two most pivotal innovations of my career have been the Facebook News Feed and Google AdWords. The Facebook News Feed was created in 2006 and completely redefined how humans consume and share content, and the immediacy with which they can do both--albeit with some unintended consequences. But even earlier came Google AdWords. AdWords changed the dynamics of advertising forever by introducing a new market defined by auction-based pricing. It moved power from those brands with the most money--and might--to those with the most insight and the greatest relevance.

Technology and automation play a huge role in search marketing. The number of networks that require management is constantly expanding, the functionality of the platforms is becoming ever more complex, and without automation, search engine marketers will struggle to focus on the deeper analysis and insight that clients really value in an agency. Enabling as much automation as possible will reduce the strain on PPC account managers' ability to efficiently manage their accounts and free up time for high-level strategizing that a machine can't do (yet). To provide some inspiration around where you could lean on automation for certain PPC tasks, here are a few examples and resources to help expand your knowledge of PPC automation. Managing your bids manually is hugely time-consuming, and not only may it prove impossible to oversee across larger accounts, it may be more profitable (and accurate) for a machine to manage the bids on your behalf. There are a few options when it comes to automating bid management, and some methods are slightly more advanced than others.

If you're still getting your arms around deep learning, start with the very basics. This video series by Deep Learning TV provides an introduction that assumes no knowledge of math, programming, or statistics. The series starts with neural networks and deep learning concepts and later gets into techniques such as convolutional nets, restricted Boltzmann machines, deep belief nets, recurrent nets, autoencoders, and recursive neural tensor nets.