Alan Rimm-Kaufman
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PPC

Secrets Of Paid Search Success From 1930s Direct Mail Wizards

height=”100″ hspace=”5″ vspace=”3″ width=”100″> If you buy search ads to drive sales, you are a direct response advertiser. Welcome, today’s short column is for you. If you buy search to increase awareness of your brand, you’re a brand advertiser. Sorry, but this column is for the direct response gang, us red-headed step-kids of the advertising […]

LinkedIn

The Secret Of Large Term Lists (It’s All In The Bidding)

height=”100″ hspace=”5″ vspace=”3″ width=”100″> Last Monday, in a SEL post discussing the click quality by engine, I mentioned in passing an 89% drop-off between ‘phrases tested’ and ‘phrases actively generating good clicks’. Specifically, we posted 176,903 terms en route to discovering 20,152 active good terms for a client. Today I’ll revisit that drop-off and analyze […]

Google Ads

All Clicks Aren’t Created Equal: Q&A With Danny Sullivan

Earlier this month, in a blog post reporting our clients’ aggregate ad spend across the major search engines, we noted that Google’s slice of the pay-per-click pie increased across 2007. I wrote: “We never sat down and had meetings about moving budgets. Rather, our systems noticed that ever-so-slightly better clicks could be had on Google […]

PPC

RKG Duck: A Handy Open Source Tool For Search Marketers

In this post, I’d like to introduce a handy little tool for paid and natural search called RKG Duck. I wrote the app a few years back, and we find it useful in our agency’s work in paid search and site conversion optimization. We’re releasing RKG Duck under the GNU Public General License, so you […]

PPC

Paid Search Trends: 2006 vs. 2007

We’re entering the home stretch: Christmas is about six weeks out. For many of our online retail clients, the next month and half of revenue will make or break their year. PPC impressions will soar. CPCs will rise. And SPCs (sales-per-click) will skyrocket. Most clients will see big profits from their paid search campaigns, even […]

Google Ads

Secrets Of Google Quality Score Revealed!!! (Not.)

The nice folks from Google were in for a visit a week or so ago. One of the topics on the day’s agenda was Ad Quality. If you read extremely closely, much of what they presented in their briefing is also described at the AdWords help center (see What is a ‘Quality Score’ and how […]

PPC

The Long Tail Of Search

What is the “long tail” of paid search, and why does it matter? Chris Anderson coined the long tail concept in a 2004 Wired magazine article. Anderson’s original argument applied to online merchandising. Because web-only merchants (think Netflix) should have lower inventory carrying costs than traditional retailers (think WalMart), web-only merchants can afford to offer […]

Advertising

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft: Year-To-Date PPC Report Card

As 2007 is now half over, it seems a good time to compare the performance of the Big Three search engines year-to-date. The punch line: Google reigns dominant, providing the lion’s share of clicks, and Google clicks convert well. Microsoft offers strongly converting clicks at a lower-than-expected cost—good efficiency, but sadly almost no volume. Yahoo […]

PPC

Should Stronger Keywords Subsidize Weaker Keywords?

Some keywords perform great. Some keywords perform OK, and some keywords stink. Today I’d like to write about keyword portfolio economics, asking, “Does it ever make sense to use stronger keywords to subsidize weaker keywords?” My answer is “Yes—when done correctly.” Efficiently bidding a large keyword portfolio is not simple. A well-built keyword portfolio includes […]

PPC

Free Tool For Back-Of-The-Napkin Paid Search Forecasting

Forecasting is a delicate process which demands care. When prospective new clients ask our agency to build 12 month PPC projections, we often shudder. It isn’t that building forecasts is technically or theoretically difficult: stir reasonable monthly estimates of term-level click volumes and click costs into reasonable estimates of site conversion, bake at 350 degrees, […]

PPC

Google At $950 Per Share: Extreme Transparency

To grow share, revenue and market capitalization, Google should adopt Extreme Transparency. Google dominates search with 70% market share. Google has soaring revenue, 63% up year-over-year Q1. Google has a monster market cap, north of $140B. But there’s a problem lurking in the wings, and pulling that problem into the sunlight and solving it—nay, obliterating […]

PPC

Search Marketing Agency Pricing Models

Pricing structures and rates aren’t secret in established service industries. Real estate agents get 3% to 6% of the house’s price; recruiters get 1/3 of total first year comp; trial lawyers take 33% of the settlement; list brokers charge 20%. While specifics vary, each industry has conventional pricing arrangements. Not so in paid search management. […]

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