Archive for the ‘Search Engine Marketing’ Category
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Best Practices
Sunday, February 7th, 2010Search engine marketing (SEM) can be a powerful lead generation source, or a complete waste of money. B2B marketers often get less from their SEM programs than possible by overlooking basic but critical steps. Here are some best practices to optimize your results from SEM campaigns:
1. Determine your budget: while there is no hard-and-fast rule for this, there are a number of factors that will affect the size of the budget required to optimize your return from search marketing:
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Number of keywords—more keywords means a higher budget. - Time-of-day and days-of-week display—running a campaign 24/7 will require a higher budget than a business-hours-only campaign.
- Geographic display—a global campaign needs a higher budget than one limited to one or a few countries.
- Search-only or search plus content sites—running a campaign across both search engines and partner content sites requires a higher budget than a campaign focused on search alone.
- The type of product or service you offer—as a general rule, products or services that are inexpensive, have only one decision-maker, and are either tactical (B2B) or impulse (B2C) purchases will benefit most from an aggressive search marketing campaign. Those that are big ticket, involve multiple decision makers, and are strategic (B2B) or infrequently purchased (B2C) generally see somewhat lower conversion rates from SEM campaigns, but can still be valuable for lead generation, using an incentive for response such as a thought leadership white paper or research report.
- Your goals—how many leads or sales are you planning to drive from search marketing? Higher goals require a larger budget.
2. Keyword / Key Phrase Development: look at multiple sources—your existing site content, competitors’ websites, industry trade publications, relevant blogs, and the keyword suggestion tool in Google AdWords—to develop your long list of key word and phrases to use in your SEM campaign. You can afford to go a little overboard here, as you only pay for actual clicks. Key words and phrases that get few impressions or a low conversion rate can be culled later.
3. Divide your keywords / phrases into logical groups: keep the number of groups manageable, but ideally you’ll end up with 30 or fewer keyword search terms per group—60 terms as an absolute maximum.
4. Write your ads. Both Google and Yahoo frown on the use of shorthand (such as “GR8” for “great”), excessive punctuation (FREE!!!) and superlatives (“best,” “leader,” etc.). So, keep your verbiage humble—but compelling. For example, “the affordable option” or the most specific functional benefit you can factually tout.
For headlines, you’ll increase your click-through rate by using variable headlines, where the term the searcher actually used appears as the title of your ad. The syntax for this, on both Google and Yahoo, is {KeyWord: your service} where “keyword” is the term your prospect actually searched on, and “your service” is the default term to use in the ad if the search phrase is too long to serve as an ad headline.
5. Set your campaign parameters—geography, time/day and search/content. Both Google and Yahoo provide campaign settings pages where you specify these various parameters for your campaign.
First, determine your geographic coverage: do you want your ads displayed to a global audience, or just one or a few countries?
Second, set the time and day criteria for your ad display. For global campaigns, time needs to be set for 24-hour display. For localized campaigns, you may want to limit display hours, but set your ranges broadly—few people work 8-5 anymore, and both B2B and B2C prospects may well be searching in the early morning or late evening hours.
Third, decide if you want your ads to display only on the search engines or across their content partner networks as well (this blog is an example of a Google content partner—notice the relevant ads displayed at the top and bottom of this page). Content partner sites tend to deliver lower click-through rates than search, but can still be a valuable part of your campaign. For aggressive campaigns, content sites should definitely be included; for more limited or test campaigns, search alone may be the better setting. If you’re uncertain, start your campaign with search, then expand to the content network once your keywords and messages are optimized. You’ll need to develop different ads for the content network with compelling static headlines to catch the attention of readers who aren’t necessarily seeking your content on network sites as they are on search.
6. Develop your landing pages. Logically, you may want a different landing page for each key term group. It’s amazing how many Google and Yahoo ads (still!) simply send clickers to a site’s home page. Unless your home page is spectacularly well-designed, visitors will wonder, “What am I supposed to do now?” Best practice is to send them to landing page that explains why you are absolutely the best vendor on earth relative to the key term group they came from, and then give them a clear call to action (“contact us for more information;” “download our white paper;” etc.).
7. Consider your “incentive for response.” A commonly used item is a white paper; visitors are far more likely to sign up to download or receive something than to simply fill out a form to get “more information”—from experience, about 10 times more likely. Research reports, webinar registrations, contests, surveys and newsletter signups can also be used as incentives.
8. Implement conversion tracking. Both Google and Yahoo provide conversion tracking code for your landing pages and instructions on how to implement this. Ultimately, the goal of SEM is to produce either leads or sales, not just clicks, so conversion tracking is a critical component of your search marketing campaigns. Without it, you’re just paying for traffic, with no way to measure the ROI of your SEM campaigns.
9. Launch your campaign and analyze the results. Neither Google nor Yahoo provide real-time statistics; there is a lag of several hours in their reporting, so it will take a few days to get a usable picture of what’s happening with your campaign. Analyze results weekly for at least the first six to eight weeks of your program. When analyzing results, look for both which keywords are generating the highest number of clicks as well as the highest conversion rate. Remember the 80/20 rule: 20% of your keywords are likely to generate 80% of your clicks. Start by focusing on improving your results for these high-value keywords, and optimize on less-frequently searched terms later.
10. Optimize your keyword bids. The top three ads displayed get the highest click-through rates (CTR), but are also the most expensive positions. The bottom two ads (positions 7 and 
get the second-highest CTR. To optimize your budget, bid for the top three position on terms where you get the highest conversion rate (regardless of CTR). For terms with a high CTR but low conversion, bid for the bottom three first page spots (positions 6-8). It’s unlikely that you’ll have terms that generate a lot of clicks with no conversions, but if you do—drop these ASAP, as they are just a waste of your money.
11. Test alternative ad copy. Write at least two different ads that point to the same landing page, then in Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search, turn on ad optimization so that your more effective ads are being shown more frequently. After 2-3 weeks, check performance; if one ad is clearly generating higher CTR than the other, delete the lower-performing ad and replace it with a new one to test.
12. Test alternative landing pages. Once your ads are optimized (i.e., you have two ads performing about equally well), point each to a different landing page. Test differing types of copy, amounts of copy, contact form / no contact form, and different offers. Test until you have one that clearly outperforms alternatives at converting visitors to leads.
13. Unless your goal is an immediate online sale, implement appropriate lead follow-up programs. “Warm” leads (someone who completes a “contact us for more information” form) can—and are likely expecting to—be followed up with a (relative prompt) phone call from sales. “Cool” leads (e.g., visitors who download a white paper) should be followed up with by email, with phone calls to those who haven’t opted out of your messages after two mailings.
14. Finally, optimize your site for natural search based on your ad search terms that generate the highest number of impressions and best conversion rate. Organic search listings typically generate 3-4 times as many clicks as paid ads, so it’s critical whenever possible to have your website rank highly in natural search results for popular ad terms.
Best Search Engine Marketing Tips of 2009, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010What’s the real optimal cost per lead for your SEM program? How can you improve conversion rates? Keep your search marketing program growing? Assure you that aren’t overlooking any important opportunities for optimization?
Discover the answers to these questions and others here in some of the best posts on search engine marketing of last year.
Finding The Optimal Cost-Per-Lead by Search Engine Land
Patricia Hursh makes the case that the lowest cost per lead isn’t always best, as this pursuit can cause marketers to leave leads on the table, so to speak. The goal, as she states it, should be rather on “maximizing lead volume at an acceptable (profitable) cost/lead.”
5 ways to boost your lead conversion rate by iMedia Connection
Noting that 78% of marketers consider generating online leads one of their top priorities, Andreas Roell offers advice on how improve both the quality and quantity of leads, including sharing source information between marketing and sales (as not all leads are created equal) and carefully monitoring the lead generation performance of each source. In another excellent piece from iMedia Connection, 10 tips for extending paid search growth, Noah Elkin and Rick Dalton provide tips on how to increase results from paid search, such as expanding your keyword list, optimizing text ads, carefully segmenting keywords and using the AdWords Search Query report to identify negative keywords to add to campaigns.
9 things you MUST know before you start any conversion rate optimization by Search Engine People
Though this post is aimed primarily at b2c e-commerce sites, b2b marketers may find a few useful takeaways as well. Khalid Saleh provides helpful tips on how to improve conversion rates such as analyzing your analytics, viewing optimization as a long-term commitment, andstarting optimization during the initial site development process.
Finding Google AdWords Super Converter Keywords by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Laurie Sullivan reports on an online presentation by AdGooroo founder Richard Stokes, in which he explained how to find “super converters”—combinations of keyword phrases, ad copy, and landing pages that align to produce “enormous profits.” Stokes pointed out that “They are nearly impossible to predict,” but explained a formula for identifying them and methods to increase the odds.
Researchers: paid search ads don’t get as many clicks as believed by Econsultancy
Patricio Robles reports on a study which showed that contrary to other research indicating that paid search results get 25-30% of all search query clicks, the actual number is closer to 15%. The study authors admit that because they focused on meta search engine DogPile, the figures may be different for other search engines (such as Google, maybe?). What is clear is that, regardless of the precise figure, a significant majority of clicks go to organic results; therefore, smart marketers will invest in both paid search and organic SEO.
Aaron interviews Ben and Karl from Conversion Rate Experts (CRE) by SEO Book
Aaron Wall talks to Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson of Conversion Rate Experts about improving conversion rates, the most common mistakes search marketers make, messaging, audience targeting, testing, the role of public relations in the conversion process, generating referrals and more.
Never Get Bored With My PPC Tasks Checklist by PPC People
As Amber writes, “This post is dedicated to all the PPC search advertisers out there who think they have done everything to their PPC account and still can’t get the results they need to meet their goals. Just like any job out there, you can never be bored with your PPC account. There is ALWAYS something you can do to improve your performance.” She goes on to provide 15 tips for areas to check and tweak, such as geotargeting settings, keyword groups, negative keywords, ad text, bids, day-parting, landing page design and more.
Best AdWords Tips and Tactics of 2009, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010How can you utilize rich media ads to take advantage of the coverage provided by Google’s content network? Which AdWords reports are the most critical, and how you can take full advantage of the information they provide? How is AdWords Quality Score calculated, and how can you improve that score in your campaigns? How can you calculate the potential advertising value of AdWords before making a costly investment?
Find the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best articles and blog posts on maximizing the value of Google AdWords from the past year.
Setting up PPC Campaigns 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
The prolific and always helpful Ron Jones steps through the basics of setting up a search marketing campaign, from sorting keywords into ad groups to identifying negative keywords to use.
Rich Media and Video templates in display ad builder by Inside AdWords
Emel Mutlu steps through the benefits of and process for creating rich media AdWords ads for display across Google’s content network. This includes the capability to use multiple destination URLs, track all activity including mouseovers, and exercise greater creativity in producing ads. Another Inside AdWords post worth checking out is AdWords Editor 7.5.1 for Windows and Mac by Austin Rachlin, which outlines the process for importing CSV files for editing in the AdWords Editor.
Is The Hype Over Google AdWords Quality Score Justified? by Search Engine Land
Craig Danuloff clearly explains why the AdWords quality score is important, how it affects cost per click for SEM campaigns, and the factors that go into Google’s calculation of quality score. Another noteworthy post from Search Engine Land is The 6/90 Rule: 6 Reports Contain 90% Of Actionable AdWords Insights, in which Brad Geddes details how half a dozen reports—including the AdWords keyword, search query and placement performance reports—provide critical, actionable information, how to use them, and how often to run them.
AdWords Management : How ROI, Costs, and Services Measure Up for Your Business by Pure Visibility
Steve Loszewski explains how to use the AdWords Traffic Estimator tool to calculate the potential value of AdWords for your business, and gives tips for maximizing that value. The only statement I take exception to in this excellent post is that “For small companies unaccustomed to budgeting much at all for advertising, the costs can be impractical.” Actually, by combining the geo-targeted features of AdWords with careful keyword selection and close monitoring, AdWords can be a cost-effective advertising tool even for very modest sized enterprises.
Learn How to Import Your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords Conversion Tracking by PPC Hero
As this post notes, until recently Google AdWords and Analytics were two entirely separate entities. But recent upgrades enable at least partial data sharing between the two systems, and this post provides instructions for importing Analytics goals and transactions into AdWords for unified conversion reporting—a “pretty nice” feature, as the author notes. Another noteworthy post from the PPC Hero blog is 5 Tips on Passing the Google Adwords Qualified Professional Exam, in which Amber provides tips to help “pass the exam with flying colors,” such as reviewing the materials in the AdWords learning center, ad text policies and how to calculate ROI for e-commerce campaigns.
Top 11 Money-Wasting AdWords Mistakes by Alibaba.com
The ubiquitous Jon Rognerud lists 11 common mistakes made by small companies and those new to AdWords, such as duplicating search ads on Google’s content network (the ads need to be different due to the different context in which they are seen), using too many keywords, sending visitors to your home page, and not properly testing ads.
5 Common AdWords Myths Absolutely Destroyed by Search Engine Journal
Brian Carter demolishes five common misconceptions about AdWords, explaining the real story in detail. Among the myths: “AdWords is an auction”—well, sort of, but quality score, which is influenced by the click-through rate, is as big a factor as your bid, and “Google is out to get me”—a common feeling, but as Brian responds to this: “Sure, in some ways. But not so much that you can’t get incredibly good ROI from AdWords for the right offering, if you know what you’re doing” (or are willing to hire professional help from the outside).
Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones explains how to increase your quality score in AdWords, which gets you a higher ad position at a lower cost. Among his recommendations: small (15-20 term), tightly-focused ad groups; including keywords in landing page copy; and experimenting with different matching options. Another interesting AdWords-related post worth checking out from the team at Search Engine Watch is Get More Attention with Legal PPC Ad Symbols. David Szetela recommends experimenting with using symbols in your ads to increase CTRs, though commenters call him out on the practice.
PPC Web Spy For Competitive Keywords Analysis by WordPress Howto Spotter
Alex Sysoef reviews and recommends PPC Web Spy, a free keyword research tool for AdWords and organic search optimization. The post is a little spammy (as is the PPC Web Spy landing page), but the tool sounds interesting. For any keyword, the tool displays statistics like the average cost per click and number of clicks per day. If you have any experience with this tool, feel free to share it in the comments.
Do more with less — Part 2 of 3 by Inside AdWords
Amanda Kelly explains how the free AdWords Conversion Optimizer tool can improve the productivity of AdWords campaigns: “The Conversion Optimizer helps you get the most conversions for your ad spend by using your conversion tracking data to improve your advertising efficiency. It does this by optimizing the placement of your ads in each auction based on the likelihood of a conversion. This process helps to avoid unprofitable clicks and to get you conversions without requiring you to spend as much time managing your bids.”
Everything You Need To Know About AdWords Display URLs by Search Engine Land
Brad Geddes recommends testing the display URL portion of your AdWords ads as thoroughly as you would any other elements, and offers several examples that fall within Google’s requirements.
How Does AdWords Determine a Keyword’s Quality Score Before It’s Even Activated? Find Out! by PPC Hero
This post explains how Google determines a quality score for your keywords as soon as your campaign is launched, by using the experience of other advertisers who have used that keyword as a base. How can you use this information? As the author notes, “If you load a series of new keywords and they all have a low Quality Score, then you may want to re-think these additions. This is because other advertisers have not had success with these keywords. On the other side of the coin, if the Quality Score for a keyword is 9 or 10, this means that previous and current advertisers are having success with this keyword, and competition could be more fierce. You may want to give this keywords special attention and place them into their own ad groups.”
Three Tips for Optimizing SEM Programs
Friday, December 18th, 2009
This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in February 2009.
If you’re relatively new to search engine marketing programs such as Google AdWords, these tips can help you get better results for less money. For those experienced in SEM, these tips may still serve as helpful reminders.
1. Bid on your own company name. Even though your website should already show up in a top organic search spot for your firm’s name (unless your company name is really generic), using it in your paid search campaign provides benefits: showing up in both the paid and organic search listings boosts your brand credibility, helps your site additional clicks, and enables you to deliver specific offer messages. It also lets you guide visitors to specific landing pages other than your home page. The cost of paid clicks for your company name is usually low, and the conversion rate—assuming a well-designed landing page—is generally very high.
2. Periodically check and clean your keyword lists. Your keyword lists should be dynamic, with an objective of continually improving the ROI of your campaigns. Periodically go to Reports…Create Report and run a Placement / Keyword Performance report. Under Add or Remove Columns, be sure to include the Conversions, Conversion Rate and Cost/Conversion fields. Under Filter Your Results, select Keyword Status of Active so you’ll only get results for the keywords currently in use in your campaigns.
Once the report is complete, you may want to export it to Excel to make the data easier to work with. Sort the data in a couple of different ways, first using “Sort by Impressions Descending Then by Clicks Descending,” then “Sort by Clicks Descending Then by Conversions Descending.” These two sorts will indicate which keywords to drop and which to expand on.
To determine which terms to drop, set a threshold rule that you are comfortable with for each sort. An example would be 200/100: delete any term that has had 200 impressions with zero clicks, or 100 clicks with zero conversions.
After deleting unproductive terms, look at your most profitable terms to see if you can expand on these. For example, suppose top marketing books was a high-performing phrase for your SEM campaign. Within AdWords, go the ad group where you are using that term and click Keyword Tool. Type in “top marketing books,” then click the Get Keyword Ideas button. The tool will return a large list of related keywords, along with average volume and advertiser competition information, from which you can choose to add to your campaign.
3. Use SEM terms for SEO. Your SEM keyword reports contain a wealth of data about the keywords being used to drive relevant traffic to your site: which terms are searched most often, which produce the highest percentage of clicks, and which convert most effectively. Just as this information helps you optimize your SEM spending, it also indicates what terms you should focus on in your natural search efforts. SEM keyword reports are particularly valuable for identifying long-tail terms that are relatively easy to optimize for yet can produce a respectable amount of traffic.
Best of 2008: Search Engine Marketing
Saturday, December 12th, 2009Originally published on WebMarketCentral between August 2008 and January 2009.
Everything But Google: Alternative Search Marketing Options: SES San Jose by Search Engine Journal
Blogging a session on alternative search marketing outlets at the SES conference, Darrell Long provides bite-sized updates on pay-per-post (boo!), Superpages, Facebook, Quigo (interesting), ContextWeb, LookSmart, ASK (lower CPA than Google? hmm…) and MSN.
Why Google keywords cost more but deliver less by iMedia Connection
Dave McCarthy explains how Google uses its quality score to reward (or punish) advertisers, how to improve your quality score, and what types of landing page offers to avoid. All of which explains the interest in Darrell’s post above.
Killer PPC Ads: The Fundamentals by Search Engine Watch
An outstanding post from David Szetela that walks you step-by-step through the process of turning a boring, unproductive search ad into a “killer ad” that stands out and performs. Among his tips: speak directly to your audience, sell benefits not features, and use a clear call to action.
10 tips for scrutinizing paid search agencies by iMedia Connection
Noah Elkin offers thoughtful advice to organizations looking for search marketing help. Among his recommendations: think about your goals and budget first, so your needs are clear; think about the size of agency you’ll be most comfortable working with (“Do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?”); and finding an agency that has experience solving your specific type of challenge is sometimes more important than finding one with similar industry experience.
Six benchmarks for the perfect search campaign by DMNews
Howard Sewell lists his ideal criteria for measuring the success of SEM campaigns. Of course, any search marketing program should do more than just generate clicks—without some measure of ROI, it’s too easy to spend money unproductively. Still, even Sewell admits that his list is an ideal that few if any programs fully meet. For example, “generates a cost per acquisition (CPA)…competitive with other advertising vehicles” is an extremely reasonable goal for almost any advertiser, while few organizations really have backend systems in place sophisticated enough to measure ROI on an individual keyword basis.
Optimize PPC Campaigns by SEM Scoop
A short but useful (particularly for SEM newbies) post on how to maximize results from paid search campaigns. Basically, 1) use keyword tools to help develop a solid list of PPC search phrases, which will be pruned over time; 2) test keywords, ads, landing pages—everything; and 3) understand and utilize broad, exact, phrase and negative matches.
The 5 Biggest Mistakes in PPC Testing by Search Engine Journal
The biggest mistake advertisers can make in an SEM campaign is not testing. Without full conversion tracking in place, there’s no way to measure ROI—and without testing, there’s no way to maximize return. Brian Carter notes both of those points and explains three other common PPC testing mistakes.
7 Tips to Save Money on Pay-Per-Click Campaign by Saad Kamal
Great advice on how to set up an AdWords program that produces positive ROI, though written more for newbies than seasoned pros. Among the recommendations here: understand keyword match types and use wisely, bid in odd amounts, and avoid the content network—at least until you have the search side performing effectively.
5 Keyword Strategies for B2B PPC Campaigns by High Rankings Advisor
Andy Komack offers five valuable, practical tips for improving web marketing results, such as “Users Do Not Search for ‘Solutions’” (so true!) and “Apply Your PPC Intelligence to SEO.” This is a relatively quick but highly worthwhile read.
Cookies, Milk & Kramer: Converting Visitors Into Buyers @ SES by aimClear Blog
Charlene Jaszewski, self-described “Internet Consultant and Word Wrangler Extraordinaire,” provides an excellent and detailed summary of presentations by Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly
Challenges of Paid Search Marketing in 2008 by PPC Blog
PPC guru Gordon Choi outlines the challenges that pay-per-click advertisers will face as this space becomes more competitive, and provides strategies for addressing these challenges, including how to structure and retain PPC staff, monitor click fraud and write more effective ads.
Using PPC for Conquesting Your Competitor’s Brand Keywords by Search Marketing Sage
As Tad Miller explains, “‘Conquesting,’ as used in the Advertising Industry, is a means to deploy an advertisement for one’s products or services adjacent to editorial content relating to the competitor or the competitors’ products. In the online world it usually means bidding on your competitor’s ‘brand’ keywords on a Pay Per Click Advertising platform.” As a PPC tactic, it tends to have a high cost but also a high value per conversion. His post outlines five challenges of keyword conquesting along with six solutions to those challenges.
2 Major Reasons Why You Should Run a Search Query Report Today! by PPC Hero
This post shows how to use the Google AdWords Search Query Performance Report to generate new keyword ideas as well as to identify negative keywords for exclusion from your campaigns.
Marketing lessons learned form pay-per-click analytics by John W Ellis
How PPC analytics take the guesswork out of marketing, providing precise, quantitative feedback on elements like ad messages, geo-targeting and keyword selection.
Essential metrics in paid-keyword campaigns by DMNews
Olivier Silvestre provides guidance on optimizing landing pages, ad copy and keywords through the proper use of actionable SEM metrics.
Campaign Maintenance – Removing dead keywords by CDF Networks
A very brief post that doesn’t say a whole lot but provides an important reminder: while it’s important to experiment with new keywords to try to maximize campaign results, it’s also critical to periodically prune unproductive keywords in order to maintain high quality scores.
The Great (And Completely Ridiculous) ‘In-house vs. Outsourced SEM’ Debate by MediaPost Search Insider
Dave Pasternack hammers home the value of using an outside specialist firm for search marketing by looking at the possible reasons some executives might still believe their in-house teams can do this just as well. There is no explanation, however, for the incredibly wrongheaded statement about SEO in the last paragraph; typo?
Yahoo Smart Start – A Handy Guide For Yahoo Advertisers by Google Analytics Blog
PPC specialist Katherine Anderson recommends the downloadable Yahoo Smart Start manual as both a valuable guide for beginners and reference for experienced search marketers, saying “the book reaches out well to its target audience and addresses common concerns of new and experienced advertisers in an easy and understandable way.”
Google Analytics Keyword Sleuth vs Search Query Performance Report by Google Analytics Blog
Mark Curtis offers up a detailed comparison of these two helpful PPC keyword research tools. Both are free, but one is considerably faster and more thorough.
SEO and SEM Shortcuts, Spying and Stats to Dominate Google! by SiteProNews
Writer Michael Small supplies some now-slightly-out-of-date but still useful statistics on usage of the leading search engines as well as advice on tools to help improve both SEO and search marketing results.
The AdWords Content Network – Better Than Ever by PPC Discussions
Reflecting the experience of many search marketers, blogger Jeremy Mayes gives 10 reasons why the Google content network no longer sucks for advertisers. Thanks to improved quality of sites in the network, along with other factors, the content network can now provide reasonably good lead generation performance often for considerably less than the cost of search-driven conversions.
Whats the best keyword match type? by CDF Networks
Broad match, exact match, phrase match, negative match…ever wonder when to use which? This brief yet helpful post provides some answers.
Four Tricks to Gain An Unfair Advantage on AdWords by Search Marketing Standard
“Unfair advantage” may be stretching the case a bit, but author Andrey Milyan nevertheless presents four tactics that enhance your SEM results with Google AdWords.
With A/B Testing – You Don’t Think, You Know by Find Resolution
In this articulate and well-researched post, Jeff Campbell lays out a 10-step program for scientifically performing split tests to optimize campaign copy.
Why YOU fail with Google Adwords by SiteProNews
Leighton James ticks off ten common mistakes to avoid in PPC campaigns, from including too many poorly targeted keywords and failing to optimize landing pages to improperly using phrase matching options and modifying bids for the content network.
Avoid Scope Creep Money Pit SEM Jobs by aimClear Search Marketing Blog
In kind of an inside-baseball piece for search marketing agencies, Marty Weintraub shares his firm’s goals and scope document, which is designed to set clear expectations, avoid expensive scope creep and, in the end, make projects fair for both agencies and their clients.
PPC Automation: Robots vs Humans by StraightUpSearch
This post makes the case for using a real live PPC manager instead of PPC automation software. In practice, both are probably needed. Particularly for large, complex campaigns, automation software can improve efficiency and reduce total costs. But the software itself is just a tool; for best results, it needs to used in the hands of an expert search marketing professional who can use it to streamline tedious tasks while applying human judgment in areas such as optimizing ad copy and aligning SEM programs with overall marketing goals.
Pay Per Click Advertising Tip #11 – Conversion Tracking by semvironment
Okay, it’s kind of basic, but conversion tracking is essential to determining and optimizing ROI from search marketing programs. This post walks readers through the conversion tracking process on AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.
Website Visitors Read Your Copy, Right? by Search Marketing Standard
Uh, no. Kevin Gold offers a couple of examples demonstrating that ad clickers don’t read landing page copy in detail. In other words, they respond to what they think the offer is rather than what it actually is. As with all other elements of search marketing campaigns, the key is to test, test, test landing page copy to not simply maximize leads but also disqualify resource-consuming non-prospects.
PPC ads should always lead your online sales efforts by DMNews
Writer Tim Schaden makes a compelling case that PPC efforts should precede and guide SEO efforts. Because PPC produces almost immediate results—while SEO changes need weeks to take effect—it’s the ideal testing ground for the productivity of various search phrases for a particular offering. Armed with analysis from PPC testing, SEO efforts can be focused on optimizing for the most valuable terms for a specific company, product or service.
