One of the biggest concerns in paid search is how much to bid for each of your keywords. It’s certainly a major part of a successful SEM campaign if you can crack this puzzle, you’re probably going to do pretty well in this business. It’s easier said than done, right? It’s almost like trying to […]
I recently reached my nine year anniversary in the search industry, which means I’m now on my tenth year in SEM. I started buying keywords on Overture with a company I wasn’t even doing marketing for, which got me into some early e-commerce activity, and then to the agency world. It definitely feels like a […]
At one time, quality score (QS) was the new kid on the block—the game changer of paid search marketing. Before Quality Score, the golden rule was in effect: he with the most gold, rules. Those of us with massive budgets during that time were able to achieve top positions with a simple bid increase. In […]
I hate to admit it, but honestly, I’ve been pretty down on search lately. After almost a decade as a search engine marketing guy, I’ve seen this industry grow, mature, and now, plateau. Do I still think it’s a great marketing channel? Of course! It might be the second best form of advertising in the […]
On occasion, I get asked what my single best tip is for successful paid search marketing. Usually, I try to better understand the context of the query to provide the most relevant answer. For example, is the person asking me looking for a general approach tip? If so, I may tell them to always be […]
I’ve attended a lot of conferences in my day. I find them to be a great source for inspiration for new ways of thinking and new ways to tap into the industry community to grow my own knowledge. I had no idea, however, when I walked into the South-by-Southwest session, “It’s Nature’s Way: Innovative Tech Design […]
Long time readers of this column know that I am fascinated with the technology behind search engine marketing. In recent posts, I’ve highlighted tools that optimize the Google Display Network, help generate winning text ads, and even a platform for developing thousands of tiny ad groups for Quality Score optimization. With SEM representing almost half […]
Not everyone who deals with search engine marketing is a full-time SEMer. There are vendors, publishers, small business owners who dabble in the art, brand managers who oversee agency teams, etc. So what do full timers do all day? There’s plenty to do…such as: Managing delivery (pacing) Testing and Optimizing for performance Building keyword and […]
Here we are. I hope your time here at PPC Academy was productive and you learned a lot because it’s now time for your final exam. Were you paying attention? Have you bloomed into a search marketing pro with the knowledge and skills to kick major PPC butt, or do you still have things to […]
I was wondering the other day — how big of a player is the Google Display Network bought through Adwords with regards to the digital marketing industry? I say bought through AdWords because Google sells their GDN inventory in other ways including direct sales, their DoubleClick ad exchange platform, YouTube, etc. I’m just interested to […]
Well, here we are. A year in the books! Thank you for reading this one-year paid search course—I hope you got a lot out of it. I know that it was a great exercise for me to spend time really organizing my thoughts into a structured format. So much of search engine marketing is self-learning […]
This week, instead of discussing specific paid search tactics, I’d like to take a broader look at how you can become a better professional search engine marketer. In short, there are some ethical ways to conduct yourself as a paid search pro that you should embrace. These aren’t necessarily just my own opinions, but rather […]
Last week, in An SEO FAQ For Paid Search Marketers, we went a bit out of bounds for this column, which is a one-year course for learning PPC. However, I made the case that as a search marketer, you’re still an online marketer and it helps to know a bit more about the other sub-disciplines […]
Astoundingly, eMarketer projects U.S. online search spending to reach over twelve billion dollars this year which is almost half of all advertising dollars spent online (most of that is in paid search). So forget the advancements made in mobile, social, email, and display! In 2011 and beyond, search marketers will surely be able to continue […]
Earlier in January in this column’s introductory post, Welcome To PPC Academy, A One-Year Paid Search Course, I said that this would be a column strictly about PPC. Well, if you’ve been reading this year, you know that I lied. The scope expanded to include some of the fringe disciplines including analytics, contextual targeting, placement […]
Well, my friends, this column, a one-year search course is coming to an end soon. Hopefully, you’ve learned enough to manage and steward your own paid search accounts. For those of you already engaged in search engine marketing, maybe you learned a few extra tips and tricks that have helped you out through the year. […]
For the past month, this column has focused on the non-search triggered ad inventory available to you from search engines. Google AdWords offers two such products: content targeting (appearing on sites relevant to keywords you specify) and placement targeting (choose sites and placements for your ads to appear). The arena of these ads is the […]
Continuing from last week’s introduction to placement targeting post, today we’ll discuss how you can set up one of these campaigns for your own account. Campaign Set Up Follow my Step-By-Step: Create An AdWords Content Campaign post from a few weeks ago to create campaigns, ad groups and ads. The big difference here is that […]
As great as it must be to be Google, there are probably a zillion issues that probably bog them down just like any other big company. Take for example the logistics behind the legalities they deal with regarding trademark issues on their AdWords platform. Every brand has their own ideas on how their trademarked terms […]
This column has primarily focused on paid search, but for the last few weeks, we’ve discussed contextual targeting using the engines. Today we’re going to dive into another non-search triggered product that Google offers, display targeting. Placement targeting, like content targeting allows you to access the largest ad network on the web, the Google display […]
In last week’s post, you were introduced to the concept of contextual targeting via the search engines. Let’s review: Contextually targeted ads are non-search triggered and do not appear on search engine sites, but rather on partner sites elsewhere on the web. Web publishers set up accounts with search engines to display ads on their […]
We’ve spent virtually this entire year on buying paid search through the engines and now it’s time to dive into some of the other products that they offer for marketers. As a search marketer, you’ll be able to tap into some very powerful tools and ad inventory sources that can help supplement and compliment your […]
For those of you just getting into paid search, count yourselves lucky. You’re lucky not only to have landed in one of the hottest fields in marketing, but also lucky not to have gone though some of the major workflow frustrations that have now been addressed and fixed in the first ten years of paid […]
In the first two posts of this series (PPC Testing Part 1: The Ground Rules and PPC Testing Part 2: Optimization Cheat Sheet), the basic rules have been set and you’ve learned some of the optimization points you have to work with in order to gain more efficiencies in your accounts. However, for some, the […]
If you’ve been reading this column this year, you know that I have repeatedly pushed you to regard your campaigns as being in a continuous testing environment. Frankly, if you just load up some keywords and put down your credit card there’s a good chance you might just waste your money. Successful paid search requires […]
Repeat after me, then repeat again: success with paid search requires an always testing mindset. Why is this so important? I think that most of all, it is a continuous reminder that the difference between great search engine marketers and just good ones is that the great ones are always trying to get more efficiency […]
Now that you have your paid search account up, running, and are able to pull basic reports, it’s time to start setting up your schedule for handling all of the various tasks required to truly steward a successful SEM program. The amount of work you’ll be putting in will mainly be dictated by the scope […]
Because only a fraction of the world’s population resides here in the United States, the idea of global reach is a tempting one. There are some obvious business issues for anyone attempting to market to international consumers, and those challenges certainly extend to the realm of search engine marketing. Regardless of the complications of doing […]
Reporting is a very integral part of search engine marketing (and digital marketing in general). Of course, it’s important to be able to show the return on investment (ROI) of the digital budget. However, by using reports to analyze performance, search engine marketers can optimize their accounts by changing bids, adding or pausing keywords, rotating […]
To really dive into the nitty gritty of your account performance, you’re going to have to generate some custom reports. That’s because while the engine dashboards provide some top level data on your reports, they’re too general and non-specific most of the time to be really useful. Today I’ll take you step-by-step through your first […]
So, you’ve actually launched a PPC account! Woo-hoo! I think back to that great IBM commercial from a few years ago where an anxious boardroom launches the company website and the first sale appears on the monitor. They all cheer. Then another sale. And another. The boardroom is going wild. And then, the sales counter […]
The big day has finally arrived. You, my friend, have put in the hard work to get to this point. Launch day. Congratulations! Hopefully, you haven’t pushed this off too far and are ready to go live with your PPC accounts. Before you launch, however, let’s make sure that you have everything in place.
If you asked most marketers what’s the biggest draw of online advertising, you’ll often hear is that it is highly measurable. Interactivity (the ability to click and engage) is certainly a huge benefit as well, but if you’re a marketer who is spending significant dollars on your advertising, just getting people to interact with your […]
You’ve loaded keywords and ads into the engines via the desktop tools and have begun to go in to the platforms and tweak the various settings we have at our disposal. Last week, we began a dive into these settings that included ad rotation, dayparting, delivery method, etc. This week, we’re focusing on a single […]
Last week, in three easy steps, you uploaded your keywords and ads into your engine accounts. If you did it correctly, you will now have everything posted inside the engine platforms. Now it’s time to check and tweak the settings to ensure that your paid search campaign will launch exactly as you planned. Today, we’ll […]
You’ve done the research. You’ve done the build. Now it’s time to launch!
It’s been a decade of paid search, and once broadband usage hit critical mass, search volume has pretty much climbed at a steady, predictable rate. Last month’s U.S. searches (on search engines) totaled almost sixteen billion and we have a good idea of when it will hit seventeen. Sure, individual keyword volume will always be […]
Well, the first half of this one-year search advertising course is in the books! This column was an idea that I hatched, and thankfully, SearchEngineLand.com’s executive editor, Chris Sherman had also been thinking about something similar, so the timing at the end of last year couldn’t have been better. So far, it’s been a wonderful […]
I received some great tips from SEM pros after my last two posts regarding paid search copywriting (The Left Brain Of Paid Search Ads: Parameters & Limitations and The Right Brain Of Paid Search Ads: Tips & Tricks For Creative Ad Copywriting). For example, one person offered the great tip to use a question as […]
Last week we went through the left brain’s parameters and limitations of paid search ads. Frankly, you have to have a deep understanding of what’s allowed by the search engines in terms of copywriting to allow the creative juices to flow. Most people understand the character limits (25 character title, 35 character display URL, etc.), […]