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In a post last week at Search Engine Guide, I identified where paid ads display on the different search networks. This time I thought I’d create a brief outline of what the ads themselves actually look like, and explain some of the basic ‘rules’ associated with each search network.
Have you ever speed dated? I’ve been married long enough that I’ve not ever had the opportunityneed to attend a speed dating meeting, yet I’ve seen it on TV. (wow I feel like I just almost made a bad quote, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”)
Last Night I attended Charity Speed Networking as part of Small Business Marketing: Unleashed and it was FUN. Honestly, if I were single, I may seriously consider speed dating if I was looking for someone with common interests.
Back in the dark ages, long before Google entered the search market (and I used AOL shhhh, don’t tell), I found Dogpile.com and it instantly became my favorite engine. When Google entered the scene, I was horribly reluctant to leave my old friend Dogpile and the mascot Arfie. When teaching computer training classes to newbies, one of my favorite parts of teaching the “Introduction to the Internet” was introducing everyone to the meta search results that Dogpile returned.
As I said, I was reluctant to move on, but working in the IT industry it was pretty much mandatory, and I did eventually make the move. After some initial adjustment, I never went back. That is until recently. On Wednesday the AdWords Addict posted AdWords on Dogpile - Can You Spot Them? and I had to go check it out.
Last week Yahoo posted a blog about how using the negative keywords helps increase relevance. Where they did provide a list of steps, I thought I’d take that a bit further and outline the steps for each of the three major PPC providers.
Google AdWords
Quite often you will want to create a negative keyword list that applies to your entire campaign, rather than creating individual lists for each ad group. Google makes this easy by following these steps:
In the never ending effort to improve the success of the current campaigns, I recently spent some time going back through our AdWords history to see which ad creatives had been successful, as well as to see what keywords had converted strongly. I went back a year, prior to my employment with Pole Position Marketing. Sometimes I feel like my creativity has been tapped out, so I was hoping for some inspiration.
Looking at the campaign level, I found some paused and deleted campaigns with healthy Conversion Rates, leading me to wonder why that campaign had ever been paused, much less deleted. A quick glancing at the CTR and my questions were answered. Sometimes it is best to just dump what isn’t working and begin again. Ad group quality score certainly reflect that.
Planning and organizing are often overlooked aspects of PPC accounts. A retailer knows their product inventory and wants to sell it online. Let’s say they sell sporting goods, everything from bowling shoes to tennis balls. They create a pay-per-click account and get a huge list of keywords that anyone might use to find the products they sell. The problem is that they do this without planning ahead.
They compile a gigantic list of keywords because they sell hundreds of products. They create one campaign with one ad group to sell everything in their inventory. Their ad lists the company name and points everyone to the home page. Thousands of impressions, hundreds of clicks and dollars later, few conversions are the result.
Last week I talked about my awesome Click-Through-Rates, so this week I pulled together some impressive conversion rates… These screen shots are month to date as of 10:00am, Tuesday, January 29, 2008.
With very limited and tightly focused long tail keywords - great success.
Whether starting out fresh with a new Pay-Per-Click account, or improving an existing account, keywords are the root of every campaign. Knowing what words people are actively searching can help you capture the traffic you’re after. The following tools can be useful in generating new keyword ideas.
(Don't wait for the movie!)
E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing & Marketing Your Website Online
