I thought this article might be of interest to those that use Google ads for marketing. Has it been effective for you?

I'm leaning towards no with google ads; I get a number of local hits, but I don't think they've ever generated even an inquiry for me. I do like that I do get hits when otherwise I'd be buried in the search ratings, but I really need to figure out how to build my pagerank so that I won't need google ads, but that's a bit of a challenge. With yahoo, I've managed to rank highly, but seems like I'm the only person who uses yahoo nowadays lol

Not to deviate, but it would be cool if we could generate some positive discussion on ways to increase pagerank.

I always feel guilty if I click on another photographer's google ad. I pulled the plug on my content network ads, mainly because I use Gmail and I see tons of photographers ads in my mail windows. These aren't 'good' impressions and if I click they're paying for nothing (I don't think of it as fraud however because I only click once and I am genuinely interested in seeing their website). I assume it's the same in any business, if you use Gmail and talk about your business, email with clients, etc, you'll see tons of your competitors ads. Not very good business on Google's part IMO.

Ya, any tips on SEO (search engine optimization) would be awesome!

I've limited my ad to just appear on searches and not on content network, to avoid clicks from a non-client audience. I also limited the searches to my geographic region to only allow locals to get my ad.

As far as SEO is concerned, I think the big thing with google is getting relevant sites to link to your page, preferably those with a higher pagerank rating. My pagerank right now is 2, and the top listings in my area seem to have a PR of 3, so I still have a bit of work to do (I'm pretty sure my site doesn't register in the top 200 yet, there are a ton of "directories" that register highly).