While it might be the simplest way to drive more impressions, any savvy search marketer (and particularly those in the retail sector) in should be aware that leveraging broad match type is far from the only possibility to scale your PPC program. There are plenty of other options out there –I’ll try to cover just a few of them in this post. 1. Leverage All Match Types In a previous article, I analyzed AdWord’s new exact and phrase matching behavior and found that those new "plurals, misspellings and other close variants" were beneficial overall, with a 4% lift in clicks on average with [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate | Search & Retail

One of the hardest things to do in keyword research is to uncover related keywords. With that in mind, the tools I’m reviewing today all help identify related keywords that you may want to search in more detail. These tools are not a substitute for detailed keyword research like I talked about in my first series of articles. Rather, they may help to either identify those keywords that are most important to your competitors, or help find obscure opportunities where there may be little search volume, but there is also little competition. All of the tools I reviewed for this article are [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: PPC | How To: SEM | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content | SEM Tools: Keyword Research | SEM Tools: PPC

Yahoo has suffered through its fair share of turmoil over the last few years: a revolving door of CEOs, significant layoffs, investor revolts, and a declining share of the search space, both paid and organic. One recent bright spot for Yahoo was their first year over year growth in search revenues after traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC)  since their alliance with Microsoft in the fourth quarter of 2010. In fact, before last quarter, Yahoo hadn't shown Y/Y growth in search revenue ex-TAC since they began reporting it in 2009. Not too shabby then, and Yahoo's results were generally well [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Marketing: Branding | Yahoo

We all know that Adwords is the most used system in the world to drive paid traffic to websites. The Adwords system is an extensive system with a lot of complex options to optimize campaigns and increase conversions. Advanced PPC managers should already know all of these features, but beginners and intermediate level Adwords users can definitely get some new inspiration and ideas from this list to boost up performance. In this article, I will highlight 10 features that I love and frequently use. 1.  Adwords Keyword Tool The Keyword Tool is a great starting point when starting a new Adwo [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate | Search & Conversion

It’s been long known in the industry that brand term keywords garner a much higher click-through-rate. As a result, marketers often start by bidding on their own brand terms.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | How To: PPC | How To: SEM | Legal: Trademarks

Since last time, you've been busy growing your keyword seeds into little seedlings, using those handy Excel tricks I wrote about. You've likely got thousands of keywords now, and may have no idea what to do next. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll continue the planting analogy for categorizing and mapping keywords. It seems appropriate, with spring upon us. You’ve found your seeds, planted them in little cups, and gotten seedlings from them. Now it’s time to plant them in the garden and watch them grow. But just as you shouldn’t drop a bunch of seedlings into the ground in no particula [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: PPC | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content | SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI) is one of the SEM tools most Advertisers don't even know they wish they had. MAI provides API access to keyword extraction and generation, and historical and forecast metrics, all wrapped in a softward add-in that integrates with Excel. It is in some ways better than AdWords' equivalent tools, and the Excel integration and wizard workflow are unlike anything AdWords makes available. The adCenter team invited me to help them announce their recent innovations at Search Engine Strategies New York last week. I was somewhat surprised to learn that [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Marketing Toolbox

Have your seeds germinated yet? Last time, we talked about keywords as "seeds" of ideas; a single keyword to represent an entire keyword cluster. Now it’s time to make our seeds grow. [caption id="attachment_114848" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Germinating your Keyword Seeds"][/caption] Using the example of Artisan Construction Services again (thanks!), we’ll walk through the process that I use to grow a single seed. In this case, let’s use "deck". To begin with, I want to think of the types of decks my client might build: Composite Wood PVC Hardwood Ceda [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To | How To: PPC | How To: SEO | Intermediate | Keywords & Content | SEM Tools: Keyword Research | SEO: General

Managing PPC accounts can be overwhelming. There is so much to-do, and no one ever has enough time. This leads most people to just make huge todo lists of items they either should be doing, or want to eventually do inside their account. The problem with to-do lists is that they are easy to ignore. There are still items on my to-do list from last decade. Of course, I don’t delete them as someday, I might get to them. We all know that’s not true – but we keep telling ourselves it could happen. When your PPC accounts are run like to-do lists what happens is that every few weeks, you sc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Paid Search

Optimizing Keywords and Negatives is a task I recommend to my clients that they do regularly. In this How To, I will include some real-world experience along with the basics of how to use the AdWords Search Term View to optimize keywords and negatives. What Is Search Terms View? The AdWords Search Terms View shows us the performance metrics on the Search Terms that matched against our Keywords (more detail on the difference between Search Terms and Keywords is coming up later in this post). Advertisers can use this data to optimize the Keywords and Negatives in their account. Optimization [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | How To: PPC | How To: SEM | Intermediate | Search Marketing Toolbox

As digital marketing professionals, we work with a wide range of clients. Some are Fortune 500’s and some are mid-tier businesses trying to compete in tough markets. The latter of these can be considered ‘challenger brands’ for two reasons – contending with the industrial strength heavy hitters can be daunting for them and positioning these brands to stand head to head with the top players can be hard for marketers. So what is the solution to effectively grow the market share of these challenger brands while improving their online positioning? Turning a challenger brand into a ma [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | How To: PPC

This past Christmas, the phrase "doing more with less" achieved new meaning as I watched my nephew gleefully resuscitate his stubby, short crayons with Crayola’s Crayon Maker into fresh, new, color-packed crayons. Kids with crayons to employees with goals, the "doing more with less" saying has certainly achieved epidemic proportions. No department has able to hide from its grips and CMOs ensure every last penny is squeezed from each marketing initiative. Yet, savvy marketers still search for additional opportunities. Check out the insights of how mirrored exact and broadmatch PPC campa [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate

Fact: Google spoils us when it comes to free tools to optimize our search campaigns. Over the past few years, they’ve released a ton of really useful products that allow us to mine for keywords, auto-bid our campaigns, test ad copy and more. It’s true that Google doesn’t strike gold every time it releases something new into the wild (Google Radio Ads, anyone?) but when it comes to tools for optimizing your AdWords campaigns, they normally get things pretty dead-on. Here are three of my favorite AdWords tools for retailers, along with some hints and tips on how to leverage them for [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: PPC | Search & Analytics

For a long time, I thought utilizing a strong Landing Page Optimization program was only available to large companies with large budgets. The software to create landing pages on the fly by keyword is pricey, and the learning curve is significant. If you have the time, budget and manpower to utilize a design team and software that builds a landing page for every paid, organic, social and email marketing keyword or blast you send -- Awesome! The reality is, most of us do have time and budget limitations. Getting permission to spend thousands on software isn't likely, but that doesn't mean [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: PPC | Search Marketing: Landing Pages

Quality score can drive the success or failure of your paid search keywords, and the two best known impacts of quality score are the effect it has on text ad position and cost-per-click: Ad position is determined by Ad Rank which is calculated as bid x quality score. CPC is calculated by dividing the Ad Rank of the next highest advertiser by your quality score (and rounding up to the nearest $.01). But before fighting for position or even worrying about CPC, each keyword must earn eligibility into the real-time auction that takes place when someone enters a search query that Google de [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features | Google: AdWords | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate

Quality score is a system AdWords uses to pass judgment on each of your keywords. They score every one, reflecting how well that keyword has done in the past and how well it's expected to do in the future. This score has impact. It determines how often your ads are shown, where they appear, and how much you pay for every click they generate. The process by which these scores are determined is not clear - all we have is a vague set of explanations we're asked to accept, and loose set of clues as to the behavior that they suggest in order to earn good or even great scores. The power [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features | Google: AdWords | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate

Want to feel like a super-spy while learning valuable secrets that can help grow your client’s business? Here’s how you do it:  invest your time and money in PPC competitive intelligence and please shhh ... don’t tell anyone. As the auction grows more expensive and more complex, it’s critical to have a view into your client’s competitors paid search program, otherwise you’re fighting blind. The simple truth is, PPC is a competition. You’re competing for the world’s most valuable inventory and for the top positions in an auction that you can’t just win with a wallet, bu [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC

When I first started down this 6-lane highway called Online Marketing over six years ago, we used an absolutely archaic bid management software whose name escapes me. I want to say it was a Yahoo! (or precursor to Yahoo!) product, and basically it automated our bids so they would go up and down based on search volume. It worked about 10% of the time and was always down or broken….we quit using it pretty quickly. Fast forward to today – and remember the leaps and bounds PPC advertising has taken in just the last 12 months - take a look at Google  AdWord’s "Automated Rules" and prepare [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate | Search Marketing Toolbox

Most of us in the PPC world know that testing ads is a great idea - almost necessary optimization work. There are plenty of articles around the web expounding the benefits: increase QS, lower costs, boost conversion rate ... all good stuff. In this article, let's tackle the basic block and tackling necessary to get ad testing up and working for you. What Ad Is Better? With ads, as with keywords, this is not always black-and-white. There are many metrics we can measure, but which should we focus on? What is better -- Higher CTR or higher conversion rate? More Revenue or more margin [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | How To | How To: PPC

At SMX West last month, I spoke at length about what it means to manage PPC programs at large companies.  One of the topics I covered at some depth was using the various search engines’ targeting options to break keywords down into smaller bits of data to optimize them individually. This type of tactic can turn the ‘head’ of your portfolio into more of a ‘tail’ and makes it work more efficiently for you. But if you’re like us, and you have super-sized SEM programs, how do you tackle this in a manageable way that will drive incremental profit to your group or company, and make y [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: PPC | Industrial Strength