How to set up wordpress

Archive for the ‘Basic PPC Strategies’ Category

One thing we do regularly for our clients is run search query reports from Adwords and MSN, pull all queries that are resulting in unqualified impressions or clicks, and add those in as negatives.

Doing this can really help narrow down your keyword list and prevent unqualified traffic from seeing your ad and not clicking – which prevents your impressions from skyrocketing and therefore lowering your click-through rate. But negatives also can prevent people from clicking on your ads, costing you money and lowering your conversion rates.

However, if you’re only relying on the search query reports you’re really only being reactive in preventing your ad from being shown and clicked on by irrelevant traffic.

Before you even start a PPC account, you should be running basic keyword research reports to find potential keywords that could cause irrelevant traffic from seeing your ads and/or clicking on them before it even happens. This is a more proactive approach in keeping unqualified traffic out and therefore increasing click-through rates and Quality Scores. For example, you could be doing PPC keyword research on ‘vacation in Paris’ but find keywords that have search volume for, ‘weddings in paris’, or ‘paris movies’. At this point you would want to add in ‘weddings’ and ‘movies’ to you negative keyword list to weed out that irrelevant/unqualified traffic.

You can run keyword research reports in Google, Yahoo, MSN and several other free keyword tools to find potential negatives.

Every PPC firm should have an on-going list of potential generic negatives that could be used across all of their accounts. Some of these terms can include:

Free

Sex

Comparison

Reviews

Diagram

Pictures

Career

Job/Jobs

Bargain

Discount

Cheap

And much, much more. **Note that some of these generic keywords may be relevant to your business.

Really, the search query reports are for finding negatives that you miss from your initial keyword research. Get in the mind of searchers and find those negatives before they find you!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Now that the holiday festivities and hangovers are over with, it’s time to determine whether or not you pre-holiday optimization efforts were effective.

So, what questions do you need to ask and what numbers do you need to evaluate?

Impressions
Did your keywords get more impressions than normal during the holidays? Were those impressions for your standard keywords, or for holiday-specific terms like “christmas sale” or “holiday special?”

Click Through Rate
Since getting more impressions is worthless without being able to drive more traffic to your site as a result, the next question is, “Did your holiday themed ads generate more clicks than the non-holiday ads?” If so, what were the differences? Was it something more than just inserting “christmas sale” into your ad copy? Was there a discount or bonus that was being offered?

Conversion Rate
Increasing conversions is the ultimate goal behind increasing impressions and improving click-through rates, which makes it the most important factor in determining whether or not your holiday optimization was effective. Did your search campaigns see higher conversion rates during the holidays? If not higher rates, did they see more overall conversions? Did you find specific keywords that converted better?

Now that you’ve considered the questions you need to ask about your search campaigns, it’s time to determine which holiday adjustments you can keep to maintain or improve performance going forward.
Try keeping some of the holiday keywords that generated a significant number of impressions. Any term that gets visitors to your site is potentially useful and should be tested further, even if it seems seasonal or specific.
If you saw a significant improvement from your ads, try to incorporate some of the holiday changes into your current ads. No, you can’t run “Christmas Sale” ads anymore, but you can try “New Year Special” offers to try to maintain holiday performance a little longer.
If you saw better conversion rates for specific keywords, look at the surrounding data for those terms. Were there changes in bids, ad position or match types? If so, those are changes that can be maintained and further tested.

It’s great to see improved performance and an increase in revenue during the holidays, but it’s even better to learn something from it and continue those improvements during the rest of the year.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

This is a special guest blog post from Matt Umbro at theppcblog.com.

Any PPC campaign interface provides valuable metrics such as number of clicks on a particular ad or the click-thru-rate (CTR) of a certain keyword, but to solely look as these figures when determining the success of a campaign is a mistake. To truly realize the value of your PPC campaign you must view your data in accordance with your analytics and determine the value of your conversions.

PPC does not stop when users click your ad. It is necessary to make sure the landing page experience guides users to convert (whether that conversion is a purchase, a whitepaper download, etc). Getting the click should never be considered enough just like going to the Super Bowl and losing is still a defeat. Users may click your ad because it stands out the most, but if they do not convert you need to find out why.

This is where your website analytics come into play. Say you are bidding on the exact match of the term “casual shoes” and the CTR is 12%. Congratulations, you have a very good CTR for this term, but upon further inspection you notice that the keyword has seen 100 clicks and has only converted twice. Users are finding the query relevant to the ad, but post click they are not converting.

You look at your analytics and see exactly how this keyword is doing post click. Within the casual shoes ad group you have created two ads each utilizing a different landing page for A/B testing. Both ads have the same message, but one goes to a landing page with business casual shoes and the other goes to a page with everyday casual shoes. The business casual shoes landing page has been the destination URL 58 times while the everyday casual shoes page has been the destination for the other 42 clicks. You see that the two conversions occurred when users landed on the everyday casual shoes page. Whereas you have a total conversion rate of 2% for the keyword, you have a 4.76% keyword conversion rate when users land on the everyday casual shoes page. Additionally, users are spending two minutes more on the site when landing on this page.

The analytics tell you:

1) Users who search for the exact match of “casual shoes” tend to be looking for everyday casual shoes.

2) The casual shoes ad group needs to be separated into two ad groups, one for business casual shoes and one for everyday casual shoes.

3) Within the new business casual shoes ad group the ads need to better include the targeted keyword(s).

This is just one example of why it is necessary for your PPC campaign and analytics to be in synch.

You also need to analyze the quality of the conversions. If you are running an e-commerce site you need to be able to track every sale back to the converting keyword. You could very well find that a term is costing you more per conversion than the revenue it is bringing in. Same thing goes with a B2B site. Your conversion goal might be for users to download a whitepaper. A particular keyword may bring five conversions, but none of these end up being good leads. So even though a term is showing good PPC metrics, your business might actually be losing money.

PPC cannot be done in a vacuum. To effectively manage and optimize a PPC campaign you need to know what is happening post click and make sure the right types of conversions are coming in.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

There’s a continuous debate in the search marketing industry about which is the more effective and efficient use of resources: pay per click or natural search engine optimization. Obviously, I’ll be supporting the PPC side of this argument. Our trusty sidekicks over at www.SEOBoy.com can be counted on to back the natural optimization horse in this race, and the good people at Search Engine Watch have provided a good breakdown of both sides of the discussion that took place last week at Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009.

Before discussing the benefits of PPC vs. SEO, I must make a few things clear: 1. My experience and expertise is in direct response, and my arguments will focus on that industry. 2. I’m certainly not recommending that organic search optimization be ignored. It is an extremely important and effective marketing tool, and can sometimes offer benefits that PPC does not. 3. Whenever possible, PPC and SEO should complement each other rather than compete for resources.

Now, that the disclaimer’s out of the way, why should you devote your time and money to PPC?
According to data discussed at SES:
PPC traffic converts at 2.03% versus 1.26% for natural traffic.
PPC visitors spent about 10% more money on sites than natural visitors.
PPC visitors stayed on sites approximately 29% longer than organic visitors.

So, what are some of the reasons for those numbers?

Speed
PPC campaigns are FAST. While it can take months to push a site up into a useful position in the organic results, PPC listings can hit the top of the page as soon as your ads are approved. This is especially important for short term holiday offers, new domains and time-sensitive campaigns (e.g., training or finance seminars, that are generally locally targeted and only active for a week or two).

Testing
PPC search offers more specific testing, allowing for a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of ad copy, keywords, landing pages, CPC’s, ad positions and the relationships between all those things. PPC campaigns make it easier and faster to determine what works and what doesn’t, and makes it far easier and faster to optimize for those things.

Control
PPC campaigns allow for total control over the product’s message. Ad titles and copy can be tailored precisely to specific keywords and/or product benefits. Ad positions can be easily maintained and budgets can be strictly adhered to. Along with ensuring top positions for effective keywords, it’s very easy to avoid ineffective keywords through the use of negative match.

While good SEO is a valuable tool and an important piece of any long term marketing strategy, my answers to a client’s question “Why should I use PPC search for my product?” generally begin with the conversion & ROI averages, and then focus on speed, testing and control as the main reasons for those numbers.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

After reading the second half of Ron Jones’s article, Measuring Success, on Search Engine Watch, I was struck with an overwhelming urge to blatantly steal his ideas. However, my more noble tendencies forced me to merely reference them, while giving him credit for the inspiration.

Mr. Jones’s article discusses the methods for planning and measuring success in SEO efforts using SMART goals:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

These principles can also be applied to PPC campaign optimization.
 

Specific – The tendency for PPC campaigns always seems to be more, more, more. More clicks, more orders, more revenue… And, while “more” isn’t an unreasonable goal, it’s an extremely vague plan. Starting with a specific goal – e.g. “improve campaign click through rate by 3% over last month,” or “increase SEM orders by 5%.” – makes it much easier to focus.

Measurable – Obviously, the ability to track traffic and sales is essential to running a successful sponsored search campaign. Regular ad group and keyword analysis is necessary to be sure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns. Along with maximizing the keywords and ads that do lead to conversions, it’s equally important to limit, or completely eliminate, the ads and keywords that do not lead to orders.

Attainable & Realistic – These two points go together. Is it realistic and possible to increase orders by 25% in any given time period? Maybe, but there are many outside factors that contribute to it. In the direct response industry, sales are still largely driven by television and/or radio exposure. If there’s no change in the media exposure for a product, it’s very difficult to significantly increase the impact of paid search efforts. It’s important to realize that marginal improvements in click-through or conversion rates can drastically affect the bottom line (i.e., net revenue) only if there’s a corresponding bump in relevant traffic.

Timely – Timing is particularly important for direct response campaigns, where products typically have a relatively short lifespan. Whether those product lifespans are dictated by seasonality – i.e., gardening products, which are mainly viable in the spring and summer – or by market demands – i.e., there’s a 6 month period before the next generation technology is available – it’s important to maximize efforts when they can be most effective. Increases in click through and conversion rates when a site is getting 500 searches per day are far less useful than when that site is getting 5,000 per day.

Ultimately, as in many other aspects of life, the key to creating and successfully managing effective PPC campaigns is to be as SMART as possible.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

There is so much going on within any PPC campaign that it can be difficult to keep track of all the moving pieces. You can be a proactive PPC manager but there could be elements of your account that may be quietly hindering your performance. Actually, when an account is performing well, this is when you need to be most vigilant in searching for these “quiet killers” because they may be harder to notice blatantly.

Incorrect campaign settings

When you create a new campaign, I am sure you check all of your settings to make sure they’re correct. However, if you launch numerous campaigns at once or if you add campaigns frequently, something may get missed. This doesn’t mean the campaign is broken but it may not reaching its full potential. As a proactive step, you should make sure that these settings have the correct information for your campaign’s goals:

• Location targeting
• Networks, devices and extensions
• Bidding and budget
• Position preference, delivery method
• Ad delivery: ad rotation, frequency capping

Just do a quick review all of your campaigns just to make sure everything is correct. If you no errors, great! However, if you do find a setting that is incorrect, you can make great progress with just a few clicks.

Neglected ad text split tests

Continually testing your PPC ad texts is the key to click-through success. However, you may have launched a test, or perhaps a few tests, that you have not recently checked in on. If your account is performing well, then you may over look following up on a split test. It happens. Now is a good time to run an ad text report to see if there any ads that are under performing. You should make sure that each ad group has a statistically valid sample size in order to determine the clear winners and losers.

Under performing keywords that hide in good ad groups

If your account is performing well overall, that’s great. And you may not even have any ad groups that stick out like a sore thumb due to poor performance. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no rouge keywords that are generating traffic but few conversions. You should run a keyword report to hunt down those terms that are not performing well and adjust accordingly.

Irrelevant search queries are not always obvious

If you are utilizing broad match or phrase, when was the last time you ran a search query performance report? This report is easy to run and can help you hone your campaign by building your negative keyword list. In fact, you should make it a point to run a search query report at least once a month in order to monitor which queries are matching to your keywords.

Poor converting sites on the content network

The content network may be working great for your account but I bet if you looked closer, you would find a handful of sites that have a higher-than-average cost-per-conversion. Similar to poor performing keywords, the content network as a whole may be doing great but I’m sure there are a few sites that are quietly hindering your campaign. And these sites can get away with this when everything is going well in an account.

There are numerous other elements that can negatively and quietly effect your campaign’s performance, but this is a quick check list for you. Remember, if your account is generating great results – it can always do better!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

As I’m sure you are aware, it’s a new month! Now is the time to kick off your PPC campaigns with a bang. There are a few tasks that you can accomplish quickly in the next day or two that will help improve your performance for the rest for the month.

When optimizing your PPC campaigns, you should always make positive changes all month long. However, you should front-load as many of your tasks toward the beginning of the month as you can. Why? This way, when you make some great changes, your account will feel the effects for the longest amount of time possible.

Here is a list of five tasks you can accomplish quickly to get your month started successfully:

1. Run a keyword report and focus on your top 10 keywords. It’s easy to get caught in the mire of hundreds keywords, especially if you’re managing a robust campaign. For this task, you should look at your most valuable keywords to see how they’re performing and what you can do to improve their performance right now. This can include bids, ad texts, ad group restructuring, negative keywords, etc.
2. Are you testing multiple landing pages? Run a URL report to see if you have any weak performing variations that can be removed. This will also allow you to devote more traffic to your best performing landing pages. This way, you can get those weak landing pages out of rotation to start off your month right.
3. Are you running ads on the Content Network within AdWords? Run a placement performance report and focus on the 3-5 websites with the lowest conversion rate and the highest cost-per-lead (or sale). I am sure there are other sites that may not be performing well, and there are sites that are doing great that you want to specifically target – but for this task, just remove those 3-5 sites that are hindering your performance.
4. There is always room to expand your keyword list. Conduct a quick review of your website to see where you can add at least 1-2 new ad groups. Now, you don’t have to do all the extensive keyword research right now, but can you find a few core terms/phrases that could be expanded upon? You can then do the full research and expansion later in the month.
5. Create new automated reports. Staying on top of your performance is crucial to maintaining your performance. You should create one report that provides the vital stats for your account and have it sent to you daily. Don’t overload this report with data because it will become a hassle to review each morning. Only pull the vital stats you need. This way, when you get into the office, you have an email waiting for you and you can review the previous day’s performance.

Of course, there are many other tasks to complete in any given month when managing a PPC account, but these are a few tasks that can improve your performance quickly. As you complete these tasks I’m sure you’ll see other elements of your campaigns that require attention. You should build this list and get to these tasks ASAP. This way, you’ve jumpstarted your PPC campaign for the month!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

You’ve either been trying to manage your company’s PPC account on your own, or you have hired a general marketing person to manage the PPC account internally. Regardless, you know that more could be done to get more bank for your buck. How do you know when it’s time to hire a PPC management firm?

• You know more could be done.
• You have 50 keywords in your entire account.
• You have one or two campaigns total.
• You’re blowing through your budget by noon.
• You perform a search to find your ad, and it’s no where to be found.
• You don’t know what the content network is, but you know it’s spending a lot of money.
• Your cost-per-lead is much higher than any other way of advertising.
• You don’t know how many leads your getting.
• You don’t know what your users are doing once they enter your site.

Honestly, I could go on and on here. But the point of the post is to remind those people who think they can handle their PPC account just fine on their own, that just maybe they’ll make more money by hiring an agency than they would be saving the company money by doing it on your own.

But how does one know what questions to ask a PPC firm? How do you know this firm is legitimate? Is the pricing accurate for what their providing? Below I’ve provided the best questions to ask your potential PPC firm and the answers you should be looking for before hiring them.

1. How do you manage the Google Quality Score?

Answer: The Google Quality Score is based on keyword, ad text and landing page relevance. The key is to have smaller, more targeted ad groups with fewer keywords so we can write more targeted ad text and increase the click-through rates. We also like to have our keywords contained in the landing pages to increase relevancy and conversions.

2. What will be the first step when taking over the account?

Answer: A good first strategy is to see if there is anything that needs to be fixed immediately like incorrect settings or an account re-structure. We would plan the re-structure carefully as to not revert any positive Quality Scores or remove any account history.

3. What kind of reporting will I get?

Answer: Any ad hoc reports you want. But pro actively a weekly or bi-weekly report as well as a monthly report detailing work completed and an analysis of the account statistics.

4. Will I have access to Google Analytics reporting and Adwords?

Answer: Yes we will set up a Google Analytics account for you if you don’t already have one and yes you can have access to the Adwords account. (Just remember if you hire a PPC firm to manage your Adwords or Yahoo account, you can’t go in and make changes on your own. That could mess up any potential strategy the firm has in place.)

5. What is the communication process like?

Answer: We respond to emails or calls same day or within 24 hours. We also use an online project software management tool that documents all work completed.

6. How does keyword research work?

Answer: We use several free keyword research tools to find any new keywords or variations of existing keywords. Keyword research is an on-going process as new terms come up frequently. We would also use the search query report in Google Adwords to find new keywords and negative keywords to drive only qualified traffic.

7. What search engines will you advertise in?

Answer: Mainly Google, Yahoo and Bing. However if we feel there is good opportunity to advertise in 2^nd tier search engines we’ll definitely look into it.

8. What kinds of testing will you be doing?

Answer: We write and test new ad text on a weekly basis. We use different messaging, different calls-to-action and benefits to see what message gets the highest click-through rate possible. We also like to work in Google Website Optimizer to test different variables of your landing page to improve conversions.

9. What is your bidding and budget strategy?

Answer: It’s really different for every client. We create settings in the accounts that will show our ads all though out the day. We also pay very close attention to see if we’re hitting our daily budgets. If we are, then we take the approach to either increase the daily budget or decrease our keyword bids gain additional traffic but at a cheaper cost. Our goal is to reduce your cost-per-lead but at the same time increase the number of leads you receive.

10. How can we be sure all potential opportunities for improvement are taken?

Answer: We read all kinds of PPC and SEO related blogs to be sure we’re keeping up with the changing industry. We also have Google, Yahoo and MSN representatives that let us know if new beta tests are available or if a new optimization is available.

Not all PPC firms will have the same answers as I do. But they should all be generally identical. I think one of the most important aspects of hiring a PPC firm is the amount of transparency they offer. If they’re willing to share with you what they’re working on for your account on a daily basis then they have nothing to hide. Also, sending you reports on a weekly or monthly basis not only helps you track your success, but allows the PPC firm to track their success too!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.