How to set up wordpress

Posts Tagged ‘Roundup’

PPC is highly competitive and the inflated keyword costs make it that much more difficult to compete. As a small business owner, if you are certain to be outranked in the search engines for popular phrases relating to your services, it’s first important to acknowledge that you may get trampled unless you start looking in other places on the web to attract traffic. Erik Whaley at Search Engine Journal points out some effective PPC tips for small business owners. You don’t have to abandon your PPC efforts, just re-think your strategy.

Having a landing page that isn’t relevant to your PPC campaign not only confuses users, it also confuses Google. In addition to matching your landing page message to your PPC campaign, you should also optimize your landing page for relevant keywords that you are buying. Giovanna over at PPC Blog has some tips on making sure your page is structured in the most efficient manner to maximize free traffic and to keep the visitors from making a quick exit.

Sometimes Internet searchers can be a little impatient. We know what we want and we want to find it now. Adding sitelinks to your PPC ads can help improve your CTR and ROI. By adding additional text to your Ads the benefit is two folds. 1. You are able to give searchers more information about your site and possibly your product and 2. Your ad will take up more space, increasing odds that a searcher will see it. Sinead from Redfly put together a great tutorial for adding sitelinks

Mobile web access is here to stay, and while many of us use smart phones to access information on the web, many marketers are not taking advantage of the opportunities available. David Ward at Clickz.com tells us, only about a quarter of marketers surveyed are using social or mobile advertising. The real take away here is that there is a huge opportunity to get to the mobile party first. By ramping up or simply starting your mobile PPC campaigns now you can already be ahead of three quarters of the competition. If you need more proof check out Micheal Martin’s piece. You don’t want to be late to mobile search marketing.

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.

If you’ve been burned by poorly managed broad match keywords in the past, Google just released the Broad Match Modifier in the U.S. According to George Michie from RKG blog. With BMM you can use a + sign in front of words within Broad Match to trigger close variations of that word: misspellings, singular/plural, stemming, and acronyms/abbreviations. In short, BMM lets you create keywords, which have greater reach than phrase match and increased control on broad match. Thanks Google, you’ve done it again.

Darwin wrote about survival of the fittest. With the release of new apps and add-ons to our browsers, consumers are fighting back against an overload of ads. Most notable, Apple released Safari 5 witch has a new “reader” feature that take out text and content ads in an effort to make its browser more user friendly. Check out Michael Gray’s post about fighting back against these new features.

Giving your ads a local feel can help you increase a consumer’s comfort level. You might be asking, how do I separate myself from being the Walmart of widgets and still reach a large audience? Joseph Vivolo offers some tips to give your ads that mom and pop shop feel while still marketing to the whole country.

Are you starting to get nervous about the impending merge of Microsoft and Yahoo AdCenters? We all are. It can be tough to weed through all the information that is (and isn’t) available. For those of us utilizing these search engines for advertising, we want as much info as possible to make the shift seamless. The Folks at PPC Blog have found a rose in the weeds in their article about Yahoo’s Trademark Policies winning through.

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.

Back in the day when people had something to sell, they traveled door to door with their products. Before they sold anything, they first had to find an audience. Nowadays, users generate ad content based on their search words. As a copywriter, the challenge is not creating the opportunity to sell, but crafting a winning ad in a competitive environment. Giovanna over at PPC Blog describes some copywriting tips that will help you get started down the road to conversions.

Seasons come and go and so do peoples interest. You’re probably not going to get a lot of searches for wool sweaters in July and if you’re like me, you can never get enough data about your ads. Pinpointing the most relevant search terms can be valuable. Here are some great keyword tracking tools from Google that the folks at PPC Blog point out.

Kim Farmer at Microsoft introduces us to the SEM Advanced Series with an article on Budget Optimization. Should you be using the “spend budget until depleted” option with Microsoft adCenter? It wouldn’t hurt to consider it. Kim shows us what to keep an eye on, what reports to run, and how to set up your campaign for ideal results using this option.

By now you’ve heard that Lebron James is making his way to Miami. The quest for Lebron has taught a valuable PPC lesson. As Christopher Heine reports, the New York Knicks now know to double check their landing pages. But wait, the Lebronathon has more to offer! As a bonus article, check out the folks at This Week in Relevance’s article on relevancy and accuracy of your ads and make sure you aren’t peddling outdated products or discounts that might drive you CPC or CPL up.

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.

Getting the consumer to your site is only half the battle. Check out these 5 Tips To Improve Conversion On B2B Landing Pages, and start reaping the benefits. *Side note: don’t be deterred by the title, the tips can be applied to your B2C clients as well!

Mike Fleming dropped his third installment on using ad testing to reach your marketing goals. This final article helps us know when to conclude our tests so we can analyze our results. These tips will help you get the most out of your tests and will make sure the time spent setting them up is well worth it.

Head over to the PPCBlog for an interesting read on the importance of headlines in PPC advertising. To an expert, this little fact might be nothing new, but this post is a must read as it goes into depth about the role of headlines, not only in PPC campaigns and traditional advertising, but also in our overall media culture. Brevity, relevancy, and simplicity are the keys to success for higher CTR and conversion rates.

Josh Dreller over at Search Engine Land has come up with a list of 11 Inventory Sources for Keyword Marketers. From Twitter and Facebook to the Internet Yellow Pages and Shopping Engines, this list includes some of the top ad inventory for search marketers.

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.

As the end of the month nears, some of us have found ourselves running on a low budget. Unfortunately, lower budget often translates to low traffic. According to Jason Tabeling, this isn’t always the case. Check out these tips on avoiding lost impression share due to budget.

Take advantage of Google’s Ad Sitelinks in your campaign. If you aren’t already aware, Dan Friedman of the Inside AdWords crew reminds us that you can now turn Sitelinks on without waiting for your campaign to pre-qualify. Sitelinks ad value to your brand terms and provide for more relevant ads. The option is under your Campaign Settings tab. You should consider turning it on and keeping your ads relevant across the campaign.

Creating negatives can be an important part of maximizing your PPC. But sometimes coming up with a list can be a bit tedious. Try using the WordStream’s new free negative Keyword tool to help speed up the process. WordStreams Negative Keyword tool is a lot like the Google Keyword tool, except is has a simple interface, is easy to use, and is built with negative keywords in mind. Just type in your keyword and out pop the negatives. It also allows you to upload straight to AdWords, or email the list as an excel file, so go ahead and have the interns do the dirty work and just send it to you.

Proper set-up and management of your PPC campaigns is vitally important to ensure you have a profitable and high ROI PPC campaign. Without effective bid management and ongoing testing of ads and landing pages the campaign will soon be nothing more than an expensive traffic delivery method. Google AdWords is currently the prominent PPC resource available today. Understanding some of the ways to optimize your AdWords campaigns can cut costs, open opportunities, and increase profits.

Facebook wants to go one step further than Google, and as such has declared war. Though is this a war Facebook really wants to wage? One way in which content is ranked is via the like function. It’s an interesting concept but how far will this go. They may have the PPC side down but not the search.

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 might be new to PPC or perhaps would like a refesher, how many things are different about your campaigns now than 2 years ago? Are you sure you’re staying up with the latest trends? Here’s an excellent resource for those wanting to freshen up on their skills or enter the industry. You may want to stick with the old standby’s – Google, Yahoo and MSN or give ROI’s Revolution a shot.

It’s 2 am you’re asleep, and so is everyone else, so why are you paying as much for your PPC ads? Check out the ad-scheduling tool in analytics to help you pin point when your ads will run, and squeeze the most out of PPC budget. There’s several great reporting tools in Google analytics that help you maximize the performance of you adds.

Yahoo & MSN search alliance will affect PPC accounts. By June 30, 2010 PPC accounts from Canada and the US will be transitioned over. In order to bring about a seamless transition dates can be modified from the initial deadline. The alliance between yahoo and msn’s main sales pitch is that the alliance will bring about a streamlining effect for users. My advice; plan, implement and make sure your clients are affected in a positive manner with this industry move.

In search, optimization starts at the time a user sees your ad, and sometimes it doesn’t end until months after they leave your site. The most effective advertisers are able to view the whole picture and optimize each piece of it, balancing engine and profit optimization along the way. Therefore it’s important to make your data work for you from multivariate testing to pre/ post-click experiences. Spend some time understanding the data. It’ll be well worth your time and make you a more efficient marketer.

Ever wondered how bid changes would really affect your account? Do you put a lot of thought into bids when setting up your account? Well according to Siddharth Shah, subtle differences in bids are more important than people think. Check out the science of bidding to see how your bids are affecting your account.

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.

Andy Komack offers some interesting ideas for overcoming high click costs, specifically for B2B PPC accounts which tend to have high competition and cost- but these concepts can be applied to any account. As always, the keys to PPC success- have good ideas. Apply and follow through. Test continuously.

If you have a campaign that’s struggling to convert, maybe you’ve identified the wrong type of conversion for your target audience. Rob Ousbey recommends optimizing conversions by offering multiple conversion options. With models, examples and in-depth instructions, this article offers a fresh look at increasing your conversion rate.

If you haven’t seen BP is now buying search terms like “oil spill” and others related to the gulf coast oil spill in an effort to manage their Public relation with PPC. But many critics have burned BP for attempting to use PPC to control the information on the Internet claiming that the companies links “don’t explain or help the situation at all…the practice of paying to direct information on the Internet is only growing and getting harder to detect.” It looks like BP’s attempt to direct traffic to its own site seems to have backfired. But it raises the question: Will PPC become a new form of public relation management? While BP’s PPC public relations campaign seems to have fail, it does open other powerful use for PPC in the future.

If you have a few minutes for a longer post, be sure to read Stoney deGeyter’s, How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign to Profit from Every Click. It’s long and and a bit complex, but offers some excellent tips on calculating cost per conversion ceilings and other formulas for optimizing and maintaining a PPC account.

Quality score can be an important factor in how your PPC account performs but if you don’t completely understand what it is, you are not alone. Search Engine Land has a good recap of what quality score is, how it’s calculated and what you need to know about it to optimize your accounts.

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.

Many small experiments are currently being run on Google’s display ads, and while they are meant to go unnoticed and without fanfare, they are occasionally leaked and analyzed publicly. Ultimately, this usually provides us with an interesting look at the future actions of Google and online marketing. The latest experiment allows advertisers to incorporate company Twitter feeds into display ads, thus allowing direct, real-time updates and interactions to the ads.

Need some tips on running paid search ads for local businesses? Search Engine Journal outlines how to best focus on PPC for your small business clients. Local businesses can provide significant opportunity for creativity in your ad writing as well as your landing page development. Check out this fascinating read and begin reaching out to those consumers right in your backyard.

Plenty of people are out there searching for you on the net. But whether they can find you or not may come down to your keywords. Just think of what people want from you. You can increase the quality of your keywords by having a better understanding of why people are buying your product or using your services. If you’re having trouble coming up with the type of quality keywords that you want, you should check these tips on high efficiency keywords.

According to eMarketer, about $11.4 million will go to search spending this year. But when search marketing is growing so rapidly, most search marketers’ PPC attention is on bids, ads, keywords and so forth. What about conversion? Isn’t that the goal? According to the post click is the yin and the conversion is the yang. Search marketers need a holistic approach to PPC, prioritizing conversion optimization because it’s not only about the click. But it’s about how you convert.

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.

Loads of consumer data, segmented target markets: Facebook is theoretically the Land of Milk and Honey for a search marketer. Unfortunately, all that glitters is not gold. With a lack of hierarchical structure, no MCC, and daily spend limits (among other things), Facebook is lacking in PPC usability. While I wouldn’t recommend giving up the dream altogether, there are a few things you should know before planning your Facebook campaign.

Beyond keywords and campaign structure, copywriting is fundamental in PPC. Good copywriting ensures your potential customers understand your benefits, your solutions to their problems, and are ready to buy. Good copywriting also ensures that, once your customers are hooked, they know how to buy-in. Subpar copywriting can confuse and even lose customers, thus it’s important to constantly be looking for steps to improve your copywriting.

Whether the job is to redevelop a recently inherited AdWords campaign or perform a much-needed overhaul on an underperforming account, learning how to successfully move and consolidate campaigns is a powerful ability to have on your PPC tool belt. To complete the process you need to create a reliable plan of action, conduct a thorough analysis of the campaign (before moving), and set appropriate expectations with your client. The task is daunting and will undoubtedly face short-term instability, but with proper planning and a little help from this blog post, your account should be back on its feet in no time.

Summer events can really have an impact on paid search. Microsoft adCenter gathered together some industry leaders to discuss how they are adjusting their PPC campaigns to the summer heat. This is a fascinating read that will have you considering everything summer — from keywords to landing pages to the time of day you place your ads.

PPC can be a great way to market your company or product, but it is more than just setting up an account, entering some keywords and ads and pressing go. Search Engine Guide has put together a beginners guide to optimizing your PPC account to help you make sure you get the most out of your efforts.

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.

Is Foursquare the next big place to advertise? I’ve heard some noise about it myself, and a post from Small Business Search Marketing also asks the questions. There are some coupons going around for those who are mayors of Starbucks, but surely ad space will be for sale soon – will it be PPC based?

If you aren’t managing your SEM accounts through a desktop editor, now is the time to start. The SEM desktop tools from Google, MSN, and Yahoo benefit you far greater than the online alternative. Bulk updates, copy and paste functionality, and validating your changes before going live makes managing SEM account much more efficient. Take some time and learn about the big three desktop editors in this post from Search Engine Land.

How you structure your accounts is as important as the keywords that are in. Make sure you are thinking about how to organize your campaigns, settings to apply and where to set your bids before you upload. Here is a list of campaign best practices to make sure you are set up for success.

Here’s an interesting read from Search Engine Watch on Google wanting to get rid of bidding. He discusses how smart pricing, product listing ads and other tools within Google are trying to move away from the bid system. Do you agree with his conclusion?

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.