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Archive for the ‘PPC News Round Up’ Category

Long or short? Keyword versus key phrase? What is the best targeting strategy for your pay per click campaign? Here is a great post from Search Engine Land that dives into some performance data behind both short and long tail keywords.

Google has made it easy to implement search campaigns on mobile phones, but many search marketers are still hesitating to take the leap into this new space. Search Engine Watch’s Parks Blackwell encourages search marketers to leverage low CPC’s and test mobile search campaigns.

This post from SEO Scoop gives some great suggestions on how to use your PPC data to gain insight into your SEO strategy. By digging int the data, you can find the best keywords to go after, and if you are showing ads on the content network, you can use that data to help build your link building strategies.

Maintaining a great client relationship takes skill. SEMGeek thinks the first meeting “discovery phase” is the most important. It certainly helps to make a good impression when first meeting with a client and set the tone for the rest of the working relationship. In their report, they have some great tips for starting things our right.

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.

Local search might be a great way to boost your clients’ campaigns. Actually who am I kidding it’s a great way to boost everyone’s campaign, so make some time to localize your campaigns! Here are some great tips on PPCBlog for setting up your local PPC strategy, so give it a shot.

Get your Google click to call deal while you can! Search Engine Watch has a useful post this week on Mobile PPCall and Click to Call Pricing. Not only does the article explain the significance of the click to call feature but it also includes a hint from Google to take advantage of the current pricing.

What you put on your landing page is key to your PPC success. Search Engine Land recommends one more way to boost your conversions through cross-selling. Although you may not be an ecommerce company, the general concept and tips can be applied to any PPC program.

Now that the Yahoo! and Bing partnership is official, and it will mean big changes for PPC advertisers. Though we will all have time to prepare, we need to start preparing our strategy adjustments sooner rather than later, and this Clix post gives us a few ideas about what changes we will be adapting to.

Setting up campaigns for regional targeting is a great way to boost relevant traffic to your site. The question, as Search Engine Land’s Debra Northart points out, is just how narrow should your geo-targeting be? This post gives you some ideas on what to consider when you’re planning out how to geo-target.

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.

The importance of strong keyword grouping and organization extends past the Google AdWords interface. How you organize your keywords plays a large role on how to build messaging platforms on your landing pages. Check out this post from Ion Interactive on grouping your keywords around user intent to build smart, higher-converting landing pages.

Google Adwords is rolling a new feature to their Opportunities Tab on the interface. The new “Bid Ideas” feature helps identify opportunities to adjust your bids on keywords to maximize your ROI. The feature provides you with bid-raising ideas, bid-lowering ideas or neither for your keywords and you can choose to implement the suggestions based on your goals.

Google is once again updating their opportunities tab in the Adwords interface. You once had new keyword opps along with budget recommendations. Now they’re adding a new ‘big idea’ section along with bid simulator information to help you determine where your bids should be set.

Google buys Aardvark, the half human, half algorithm social search engine according to John Battelle. Will they actually do something with it this time or will they let it flounder like Dodgeball?

Go straight to the source and Listen To Your Customers suggests a post this week on Search Engine Guide. If you’re working on adjusting your keywords, stop brainstorming with coworkers and start asking your customers what they think!

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.

There are some great benefits to the content network like lower click costs, and a large audience base, but like any campaign you need to make sure expanding past search will help you meet your business objectives. Once you’ve done that, it will be easy to get started if you follow this step-by-step guide from PPC Blog.

In his post Review Your PPC Keywords, Jason Tabeling from Search Engine Watch, reminds us to pay close attention to the keywords and match types we have running in our campaigns. Understanding how Google is serving up your ads based on users’ search queries can ultimately be extremely valuable for your account.

Here is a helpful post from Search Engine Watch on Managing Client PPC Campaigns on the Go. This definitely a must read before you book your next business trip! Remember transparency equals trust with client relationships and always have a backup manager in case of an emergency.

Small Business Search Marketing posted a list of the 3^rd annual SEMMY Award winners this week. Be sure to check out the winning post for PPC – oh, hey, look at that, it’s a PPC Hero post! Check out the SEMMY’s Homepage for a breakdown of all the votes.

The RKG blog has been talking about how people shop, and what that means for your conversion rates, this week: the type of shopper your keywords, ads, and landing pages are targeting could make all the difference to your conversion rates. Like George Michie says in the post, he’s not offering data-based classifications, just logical assumptions, but they’re good to think about for your websites in either case.

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.

Are you managing a business-to-business PPC client? Search Engine Land has a post this week on 6 common mistakes in B2B PPC advertising. Some of the mistakes listed include: using too many industry acronyms (not everyone knows what you’re talking about), not bidding on branding terms, and thinking Google is king.

Users quickly judge your brand when they reach your PPC landing page. To get the most from your campaign, make sure you are meeting users’ expectations. Don’t use pages unrelated to your ad text and more importantly, make sure your page loads quickly. Steve Baldwin at MediaPost has put together a list of six landing page errors and tips on how to avoid them.

You’ve worked hard to create well thought out PPC campaigns with tightly themed keywords and killer ad copy, but without an effective landing page you run the risk of your hard work going to waste. To help make sure that doesn’t happen, check out this recent post on Effective PPC Landing Pages, and get some great resources for creating better pages.

If you’re looking to start up an Adwords account for the entertainment or health field you best put forth a decent budget. ClickZ.com recently announced that these two verticals have the highest cost-per-lead in the industry.

Brad Geddes has a YouTube video post on the recent upgrades at Yahoo! Search marketing. Check it out!

You can gain some great insights by looking at the total conversion time for a keyword in a campaign. Search Engine Land’s Siddharth Shah discusses how to use conversion time information to better target customers and optimize your campaigns.

So as George Santayana says “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” this is absolutely true with Google Adwords. If you don’t already know how to use the Change History report in Adwords or would like to learn a little more… click on through and check out these excellent change history tips.

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.

You maybe determined to give your PPC accounts a makeover this year, but remember to optimize PPC accounts gradually. Melissa Mackey from Search Engine Watch discusses why drastic changes can end up hurting your account and some ways to achieve long-term results.

With 350 millions users, Facebook is hard to ignore – even for PPC. This post on Search Engine Land shows some interesting stats for traditional campaigns, and the boost a Facebook campaign was able to give them.

With advertisers spending nearly half of their budgets on PPC last year, it’s certainly an area that requires our attention going forward. But if you’ve ever wondered how it all started, check out this Brief History of PPC post.

Copywriting can make or break the entire advertising process. It’s seemingly hit or miss, so here’s an in depth look at how to be spot on. Tip number 1? Market research!

Google is still working on perfecting their local search results and in a recent post by Search Engine Journal you can read about how Google is now showing local results for statewide searches. One interesting part of the post suggests that when city results come up, your location to center of the city gives you a better chance for high ranking, while this may not be true for statewide results.

Google Adwords search query reports are excellent data points for shaping up your account. PPCBlog offers a few tips on what to look for when you’re trying to update negative keywords, increase your quality score and boost ROI. Pretty typical topics but it has some good tips, check out what you may be missing.

You’ve gotta admit the examples are funny, and functional: tips for feminizing your copy. It’s a great reminder- think about your audience and what kind of clients you’re trying to reach- and then use the right language to appeal to them.

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.

The lives of Yahoo PPC advertisers just got a little easier! Yahoo announced that they are launching a feature that lets you import campaign data from Google AdWords.

Here’s a great tutorial on what types of Google Analytics reports you can run to help better manage your PPC campaigns. There are lots of new features on Google Analytics, but it helps to get back to the basics and recognize how much valuable data you can find!

One of our favorite things to do is Test, Test, Test, and this post gives a great step-by-step process for creating and testing your ad copy to make your ads the best they can be.

Are you a newcomer to PPC? Or maybe you are trying to explain PPC to a newcomer? Search Engine Land has a helpful post on The Five Most Frequently Asked Questions About Paid Search.

Content network advertisers are apparently being blocked from advertising. Why is this? Apparently Google has high hopes for the Nexus One and is using up quite a bit of space on the content network to push the phone. Isn’t the first rule of being Google, not being evil?

The structure of your PPC campaign is imperative to your success. Make sure you have all of your ducks in a row with these tips and tricks for creating order.

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.

Google is definitely reaching new heights with their mobile ventures. Search Engine Land reported this week that Google is to introduce Click-to-Call (billing) in Ads on Mobile Devices. It will work much like the clicks to a website, except a click will lead to a phone call.

Tis the season for resolutions, so here are 5 great ideas from Jason Tabeling of Search Engine Watch that will help us all get back to basics, and help make 2010 a fantastic PPC year!

Though short and sweet, this post from ROI Revolution helps us remember the cardinal rules of PPC ad text writing that will help improve your performance.

What would the new year be without predictions? Here are a few things to consider when planning for 2010, if you haven’t already gotten there. Mobile web advertising, what a great idea!

Here’s a nice analysis on the value of tail keywords. While the findings aren’t scientific, it’s nice to be reassured that tail keywords are not a waste of time! This however we already knew.

Selling clients on paid search in this economy is no easy feat. Search Engine Land’s Benny Blum discusses how to best measure PPC results and explains the benefits of PPC marketing. Hopefully, you’ll be armed with the right information the next time you have to convince someone to use paid search.

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.

Properly organizing keywords in your PPC campaigns is crucial to success. Search Engine Land’s Josh Dreller interviewed WordStream’s Larry Kim to understand best practices in keyword grouping and some new keyword research tools that PPC managers can use.

Believe it or not, it is time to start preparing for post-holiday optimizations in your pay-per-click campaign. Check out the AdCenter Blog for a checklist for their PPC post-holiday checklist.

Even though Google has closed the Local Business Center, Local is still the buzz word of the moment. Search Marketing Standard has a post this week on Optimized Local PPC Targeting. The post explains how and why you should set up a local campaign and a national campaign if you really to optimize your results.

Because we all love top 10 lists near the end of the year, here’s one more! Joy Brazelle takes a moment to provide some tips for 2010 on getting your accounts ready to go.

PPC and SEO duked it out at SES Chicago, and Manny Rivas has given us this great summary of the session with lots of detailed info from industry leaders about the benefits and drawbacks of each, giving those of us who think one or the other is just silly something to think about.

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.

With so many new features coming out in online marketing these days, it is easy to lost sight of the small things that can impact your PPC account. Inspired by an SES Chicago panel, Kevin Lee has posted the top 10 oversights in base search best practices.

Don’t forget to take advantage of all the free tools that are out there to help you with your PPC campaigns. Search Engine Land’s Brad Geddes provides some great tool suggestions in his post “7 Incredibly Valuable But Underused Free Tools For PPC Marketers”.

Just in time for the Holiday season… Search Engine Journal reported that the Local Shopping Search Engine Milo.com has gone mainstream. One of many great features on the site, which is now out of its Beta version, is the ability to give you inventory numbers for stores near you.

Search Engine Journal has noted a WebmasterWorld forum discussion on Google Adwords My Client Center Phishing. We received a couple of fake Google emails this week so make sure you’re protected and up to date on phishing attempts.

Once gifts are opened and relatives gone, you may think the holiday season is over but there is still plenty to do on your PPC account. Making a few changes can help boost sales at the end of the year as well as start the new year off right. The Microsoft Advertising Community has put together a checklist with the SEM Best Practices for the Post-Holiday Shopping Season.

Have a New Years resolution to start at PPC campaign? Tina Kelleher has started a beginners series to help get you started!

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.