How We Became an Adwords Certified Partner

All companies seeking this certification must meet three criteria and we rose to the challenge by:

Passing the Certification Exams – Owner, Pat Hogan, passed both the fundamentals and advanced exam, positioning us to move forward in the process.

Meeting the Minimum Spend Requirement – Our client accounts are pooled into what is called a Master Client Center or MCC. The MCC allows us to access all of our clients from one interface. It also allows Google to monitor our activity from one interface and assure that a minimum of $10,000 is spent through our sites over a 90 day period. We consistently exceed this minimum spending requirement which moved us one step closer to our certification.

Providing Best Practices – Google uses the MCC to determine that we have implemented and utilized best practices for Adwords success throughout our client base. They continuously review multiple parameters to determine that we utilize the Adwords platform to maximize our client success by optimizing:

Click through rates – Do our ads get clicks?

Features utilized – How many additional features do we use such as site links, ad scheduling, call extensions, etc.?

Conversions – Are we measuring them and how many do we have?

Ad positions – Are the ads located for optimal viewing?

Ads – Are we constantly challenging ourselves to optimize our ads?

Campaign Consistently – How long have our campaigns been running? Longer running campaigns are generally viewed as the result of satisfied customers for Google.

Limitation of the Google Partner Program Certification

A Google Partner Certification certainly does not ensure success nor is it necessary in order to produce success. There are plenty of highly effective campaigns run by people with no certification. It takes a lot of time to set up the profile, set up the MCC, study and take the exams. Some very qualified companies simply haven’t taken the time to do it.

The certification exams don’t hold much value since there is no supervision. They are taken on a home computer and we can easily search Google for the answers to their own test. A company could also find someone else to take and pass the exam.

Additionally, the whole process is in some respects a marketing scheme for Google. The program gives Google a direct communication conduit to everyone using their system. And it also gives agencies selling pay-per-click campaign development services the ability to use the Google endorsement as leverage to sell Adwords.

Why We Did This

We didn’t have to become a Google Ad Certified Partner to continue to provide our customers with the quality account management that they have come to expect. We did it because:

To provide our customers with the best competitive information possible regarding best practices. Through our Master Client Center, Google can compare every parameter in our account against every parameter of all our customer’s competition’s accounts. Here is the bar from our Partner Profile showing EyeQuest Digital’s current best practices ranking compared with other companies seeking Google Partner Status:

Eyequest Digital rated well passed the required minimum and average Google Partner – Click to Expand View

To assure our clients that we have the skills and expertise to launch and manage successful campaigns. Approximately 90% of Google’s revenue comes from Adwords and they are committed to helping their customers succeed. It benefits Google to only certify companies which consistently run effective, quality campaigns so our certification benefits us, our clients and Google.

To access the newest and best resources and features that the Adwords system offers. Through our certification, we have notification to new Adwords features the moment they become available as well as the tools to implement them for you, enhancing your campaigns. We also have a specific Google strategy consultant for our account to get immediate direct access for questions, strategy suggestions and training.

We are excited about achieving our certification and the benefits that our customers will receive from our efforts. Please let us know if you have any questions about this process and what it means to you.