SmallBusinessNewz

We recently talked about the fact that consumers still had the majority of their holiday shopping left to complete. While in the days that have passed since that discussion, that amount has probably significantly decreased. That said, there are no doubt plenty of people who still have a lot of shopping to do. In other words, times a wastin'.

If you're running an online business, there is a good chance you are using Google AdWords for your search engine marketing. Google is offering the following tips for capturing "last minute and post-December 25th conversions":

1. Check your AdWords Campaign budgets

2. Make sure you're also showing ads from December 25th onwards

3. Have a look at which ads and keywords in you campaigns are performing best

4. If your budget is tight but you want to prioritize what you spend, filter your keywords by performance indicators like conversion rate or clickthrough rate.

If you are in fact using AdWords, you may also do well to remember that Google is offering some new ad formats, which have the potential to increase clicks.

Things are beginning to look like PPC will become increasingly important to marketers compared to SEO for the simple fact that Google is making a lot of moves that have a direct effect on how consumers get their organic results.

The additions of real-time search and other universal search features are pushing organic results down in a lot of cases. On top of that, Google's addition of personalized search results mean different people are getting different "organic" results. PPC appears to be a better way to stay in control of your listings. That's not to say SEO isn't still an important piece of the puzzle. When it comes down to it, people still do tend to click on organic results.