Posts Tagged pay per click
5 Pay Per Click Advertising Questions Answered
Posted by seo in Search Marketing, paid search on August 2, 2010
Are you interested in learning more about how your business can benefit from a pay per click campaign? Join our PPC manager, Dillon Zachara, as he answers the top 5 questions about pay per click advertising.
1) What are some advantages of having an agency manage your PPC campaign rather than doing it yourself?
One, search agency’s have already gone through the process of finding certified professionals that have the skills to optimize and manage a PPC campaign in a way that will maximize business opportunities. An agency also has dedicated representatives at the major search engines that can be contacted directly and quickly when technical issues arise. Finally, web marketing agency’s generally have more resources and tools for research available than individuals do, leading to a higher quality ad campaign.
2) What are the top misconceptions that people have about PPC?
The top misconception is probably that you can just choose a bunch of keywords, toss them in one ad group and one campaign, write an ad or two, and let it run without tweaking it. While this may seem obvious to some who’ve done work with PPC, it isn’t known or practiced by many newcomers to the trade.
3) Tips for creating effective PPC ads?
Ad copy is incredibly important and often gets overlooked. Always A/B split test ads, having more than one running to test for the optimal copy. Everyone managing a PPC campaign should also look into new developments, such as adding addresses for local ads and sitelinks in ad copy. Also with mobile searches becoming increasingly popular, always add a phone number and enable the click-to-call option. Finally, make sure your landing pages look great, otherwise your money is being wasted on a click that won’t convert.
4) What are some common mistakes inexperienced marketers make regarding PPC?
In general, I would say the most common pitfall is just not checking a campaign enough. I like to look through what is happening both in Adwords and Analytics at least once/day for each campaign. That doesn’t necessarily mean that changes should be made that often, but each time the stats are analyzed, a bit more information is being gathered in order to make the correct change/adjustment when necessary.
That pitfall can go the other way too though, where businesses make way too many changes and don’t allow a campaign to find it’s ’sweet spot’. PPC is all about finding the right balance between keywords, bids, ad copy, running times, and geo-targets. If you make a change and then undo it after only 20 clicks or so, you’re not letting the affects of that change be realized.
5) Favorite and least favorite aspects of PPC?
My favorite aspect of PPC is the amount of control and flexibility you can have over what is happening within the campaign. I love being able to change who sees any particular ad in a matter of minutes. Close after that, my next favorite aspect is the detail and specificity that you can get with reports in PPC campaigns. I also really enjoy monitoring the constant upgrades and changes in the industry. Right now is really an exciting time for PPC search advertising!
My least favorite aspect would probably be the fact that you can’t physically see who is clicking on an ad. Obviously this won’t be changing anytime soon, but the lack of personal interaction can be a little frustrating.
Learn more about how PPC consultants can help your business today. Dillon will be more than happy to answer some of your burning questions, so feel free to ask!
Search Marketing During a Recession
Posted by seo in , Search Marketing, paid search on October 16, 2009
Think Positive
What should you do when it comes to your search marketing efforts during a recession? Many marketers believe that search marketing is somewhat recession-proof, but it pays to do your own research. It may be too soon to tell, so it doesn’t hurt to do some analysis. First, talk to your peers and ask them how business is going. You can learn a lot from their personal experiences and networking is always a big plus. Keeping up with the latest news means that you won’t get left behind during the next economic upturn. Things may look slow in the meanwhile, but don’t be easily discourage. Innovations like Google Wave or advances in mobile search marketing thrive during times like these!
Recession Dos
Invest: Whether it is time or money, experts suggest that a recession is a time to invest more into search marketing efforts. Why? Competitors may significantly cut back on their expenditures, so that leaves room for you to take advantage of an open market.
Think “Free”: Take advantage of free help that can come from link building and social networking. These efforts take more time than money and will improve the results that you’ll see in the long-run. You can also take time to give your website that much needed makeover.
Organize: Regardless of the economic conditions, a well-organized business always runs more efficiently. Keeping track of what you cut-back on or increase will help you easily make changes and see results.
Recession Don’ts
Don’t carry on as normal but don’t be afraid. Does that make sense? It is foolish to think that the recession doesn’t have some impact on a part of your business. Disregarding external factors is not beneficial and you won’t learn anything new. The worst thing that a business can do is to cut costs in blind fear. If you cut back or eliminate new content and a paid advertising campaign, why would you be surprised if your business suffers? It’s time think smarter and you can take these tips with you as you move ahead.
PPC Negative Keywords: Maximizing the Positive Effect
Posted by seo in Local Search Marketing Workshop, Search Marketing on October 13, 2009
Just this morning, we sat in on a webinar titled, “PPC Negative Keywords: Maximizing the Positive Effect”. It was hosted by Marin Software and Ken Jurina, the co-founder and CEO of of Epiar, Inc. Here are some of the gems we plucked from our experience – some we know, but some of it was a kick in the pants to spend more time thinking negative.
Negative keywords instruct search engines to not display your ads, decreasing irrelevant queries, impressions and most importantly clicks and spend.
An interesting reverse logic idea that was mentioned: you may want to consider using negative keywords for legitimate terms. Maybe these terms are spending a lot of money and bringing lots of traffic but they are expensive and converting poorly. Other great reasons to use negative keywords are:
- Expensive conversions
- Expensive clicks
- Limited budget
- Bad brand association
- Not relevant for the user
- Quality improvements
- Lowering costs
An important, sometimes hard to find tidbit for each of the search engines is: What are their negative keyword limits?
- With Google – 10,000 negative keywords in Ad Campaign or 5,000 at Ad Group Level
- With Yahoo – 250 negative keywords at Ad Campaign Level or Ad Group Level
- Singular term covers plural and misspellings
- With Microsoft adCenter - 1024 character including spaces and commas
- Campaign, ad group or keyword level
A major lesson seemed to be that ultimately, a combination of exact phrase broad and maximized negative keywords is the best way to target paid search. Keep in mind that negative keywords have no impact on exact match terms.
So – I’m sold on the idea of switching to more broad and phrase matching and adding negative keywords to all of my accounts. After adding broad and phrase match and negative keywords, what can I expect?
- Your ads will now appear on the relevant long tail phrases
- Your ads will get better exposure to better prospects, which means increased leads and increased revenue!
- You can now advertise on long tail phrases where your competitors dare not tread, meaning more cheap clicks for you without the dangers of broad match.
- Once your ads get impressions deep into the long tail phrases, your advertising reach may double, triple, or more!
OK – great, now how do I build these lists? What tools are there for me to use?
Manually, using intuition and industry knowledge.
Scan through past referring phrases that did not convert, had bounce rates or were trash
- Google Search Query Report
- WordTracker
- Trellian’s Keyword Discovery
- Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool
- Microsoft AdLabs Keyword Mutation Tool
So – In the end, negative keywords is a simple concept, important part of every campaign and can according, to today’s webinar, save up 20-40% on spend. Wow, that’s a “no-brainer”.
The Debate Between Paid and Organic Search Results
Posted by seo in , paid search, search engine optimization on July 30, 2009
When it comes to paid and organic search results, many experts have their opinions on which is more effective. Many studies have shown that Internet users are more likely to click on the first few organic search results than the pay per click advertisements. This does not mean that PPC ads are without benefits. So, why does one have to be better than the other? Most industry experts believe that it is important to focus efforts on both paid ads and organic search in order to maximize your gains.
It is important to understand the relationship between paid ads and natural searches. Together, they can build a strong foundation that your company cannot be successful without. In the short run, a paid ad campaign is beneficial because you will receive traffic almost immediately. With PPC, you can control the content of your ads and quickly make changes. On the other hand, organic search marketing is a tedious task and it may take many months before you see any results from your efforts.
Even though this strategy may not work for everyone, it is crucial to understand the synergy between these two approaches. Research has revealed that showing up for paid and organic results increases overall click through rates. Although natural results may get more clicks, they receive even more traffic when paired with an ad campaign. Also, paid ads get more clicks when you also show up in the organic search results. Not only will the number of clicks increase, but studies show that both efforts will help increase page views, conversions, quality of the visitors, and time spent on your site. So, before you make your final decision on what to focus on, don’t overlook the benefits of using both paid ads and organic search results!
How Quality Score Can Help Or Hurt Your Adwords Campaign
Posted by seo in Article Optimization, Search Marketing, paid search on July 15, 2009
Quality score is a somewhat mysterious variable for Google Adwords campaigns that have a real effect on the cost of your advertising. The price of your pay per click ads is determined by a combination of your bid and your quality score, which means that a good quality score can get you a higher ranking for less than the other guy is paying. So how do I get a good quality score? Well, that’s where Google is a little vague, but there are some strategies.
You can use the keyword report to discover which keywords have a low Quality Score. Once you find those weak keywords, you can use the keyword analysis tool to find out what factors are affecting your score.
The analysis really only gives you three categories and a thumbs up or down. It may not be very useful if you are trying to bump your score up from an 8 to a 10, but it will let you know when you are way off base. The three areas that affect your quality score are: keyword relevance, landing page or landing page load time. Basically you want to make sure your keyword is relevant to the page your ad is linking to, this means including your keyword on the page, and maybe even creating specific landing pages for certain keywords. Also if the link is broken or takes a long time to load, your quality score will go down.
Quality score may not be your number one concern when designing an adwords campaign, but it’s a good indicator of which ads aren’t working at all, and anything that makes your campaign more cost effective is worth the time.
Web Advertising for Mobile Browsers
Posted by seo in Search Marketing, search engine optimization, seo design tips on June 25, 2009
The number of people accessing the web from their phones is skyrocketing. However, devices vary from full browsers like iPhone or Blackberry Storm to mobile browsers whose access to the web is more limited. As a result, websites and advertisements must be prepared to cater their search engine optimization campaigns to all types of browsers or risk being inaccessible to their customers.
For businesses who need to reach customers on the run, such as tow truck companies, locksmiths, or even restaurants, gearing pay per click advertising to mobile users is critical. It is important to think about what a mobile user will want to accomplish with a small device with limited speed and storage. Since mobile users are not likely to go beyond the first page of a website, getting the vital information out front and legible on a small device is key.
It is always a good idea to check to see how an ad renders in a mobile browser. Some mobile browsers don’t render flash or java well. When images, flash files, or script files are large, it may take some time for the website to render on a mobile device. One way to test mobile ads without paying for a full mobile site is to create a test site using a blogging platform like Wordpress which has a mobile compatible plug-in. Google also has a mobile preview tool that will let you view mobile results from a laptop.
Adwords and Google Analytics also allow you to track your mobile conversions so organic SEO performance can be assessed and adjustments made. It can also be useful to have completely separate mobile versus desktop campaigns, sending traffic to different pages on your site for the same keywords based upon their device.
As phone browsers’ capability increase, it becomes more viable to reach customers anywhere and everywhere and convert a passing whim into a sale, but it will always remain crucial to distinguish properly between the needs of the mobile customer versus the desktop customer.
Web Advertising and the Small Business: Do I Need a Middleman?
Posted by seo in SEO Tools, paid search, search engine optimization, seo design tips on June 24, 2009
Web advertising is becoming an increasingly self-serve business, allowing SMBs to run their own web campaigns. Now that anyone can purchase keywords on search engines and pay per click advertising, do SMBs really need a company to help them advertise?
Although the new age of advertising does offer unparalleled flexibility and affordablilty, wading through the sheer amount of options and technical lingo can be overwhelming, and many SMBs still find it worthwhile to have someone to guide them through the process, sift through the options, and find the most effective and economical strategy for their advertising dollar. Techniques such as search engine optimization, and organic SEO though simple in concept, can be tricky to implement.
For the unsure, online ads can be as simple and old-fashioned as the online yellow pages ad. Any business owner familiar with yellow page advertising can wrap their head around this one, but the technique is still the same as print advertising, visibility is determined by the size and placement of the ad. Local search sites like city search add such features as customer reviews, but not much else.
Search engines, considered by many the most effective form of online marketing, also bring a wide spectrum of options and increased complexity along with them. The goal here is the highest rankings, but truly effective search engine optimization is far more than popping up first under a particular search. For example a search for “plumbing” versus “plumbers” or “plumber” can yield far different results. This complexity has created a niche for companies like Emarketed to help SMBs plan SEO campaigns more effectively.
The irony is that as web advertising becomes more accessible to the small business owner, the complexity of effectively running these campaigns increases as well, meaning that at least for the present, SMBs will find themselves best served by consulting these middlemen for their online advertising campaigns.
Organic SEO vs. PPC
Posted by seo in on April 16, 2009
The ongoing debate between organic SEO and PPC has continued to be a hot topic among many website creators. The debate between using organic SEO or Pay Per Click continues to be hot with ups and downs to both of them. Which one is best? Some experts say that both organic and paid searches are important. They are both important for the success of a website and business advertising on the web. Organic SEO is accomplished by optimizing your webpage and using link popularity by acquiring links that direct people to your site and the optimization gives the site higher rankings based on your chosen keywords and popularity based on its links.
PPC advertising is when you actually buy clicks or visitors from a search engine. PPC is a market place and you are buying clients and selling then a product at a profit that hopefully lets you dominate the marketplace .The keywords are bid for or you are buying them. Anytime you are making money organically it is a good idea to try it on the PPC side. One of the most important things to think about is the time in which the results are needed. One of the downfalls of organic or natural marketing is that it takes time to see the impact of linking and other organic SEO techniques. Every site would benefit from organic SEO and traffic is great from all businesses. In terms of putting resources into organic SEO, the kind of sites that can benefit from this type of campaign are those who need a large audience and a larger body of traffic. Organic SEO is seen as more trustworthy and be more sincere than PPC.
Professionals recommend that both organic optimization and PPC advertising be used together. It is very important to know how to stay in front of the competition. One good way to see if your SEO is working by looking at Google’s quality search ranking for how useful and good any particular website is. Further, websites that rank high organically are also most likely to be less expensive for pay per click campaigns.
PPC is great if you are starting a new site and you believe in the product it is a faster way to get a greater audience as opposed to natural SEO. In the meantime it would be wise to get the organic SEO campaign on track drawing from the data that the PPC advertising results have given you. PPC search results are easier to predict in terms of ROI and can provide immediate results and traffic, and possibly revenue. Paid placement search is also evolving. Which sites does PPC or SEO work best for? SEO works great for blogs while hardly anyone tries to use PPC on a blog. Ecommerce stores, for instance probably spend 99% on PPC advertising. Sites not necessarily focused on selling a product are probably better off sticking to SEO. In conclusion both SEO and PPC offer great tools to webmasters looking to promote their sites. Keep posted for more articles to come!
Google AdWords Editor
I’d recommend using Google AdWords Editor if you manage over 100 words for your pay per click campaigns. Google is at it again with a new version just released. You can download AdWords Editor 6.5 and load your user ID and password in and be managing your account within minutes, We’ve been using the editor for a few years now and it saves us hours of frustration, tears, and sweat on a weekly basis.
A few of the new features from the latest update:
- Horizontal scrolling when viewing data
- Updated calendar so you can view statistics
- New keyword opportunities tool (my favorite!)
A few of the existing features that have saved us hours of work:
- Bulk changes/uploads
- Easily copy or move keywords or ads between ad groups and campaigns
- Quick navigation
- It’s Free!
It’s baffeling to me sometimes to think of all the different departments at Google that are just working on one aspect of the great company that provides so much more than just search.
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