Paid Search looks at search advertising programs and how to most effectively use them. Columnists cover topics such as bid management, managing multiple campaigns, search ad copy tips and landing page quality issues and other subjects.

Considering An SEM Agency? How To Separate The Wheat From The Chaff

Dec 17, 2012 at 1:04pm ET by David Rodnitzky

[caption id="attachment_142102" align="alignright" width="131"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] Over the last month, I’ve had two clients send me email pitches from other agencies trying to “poach” business away from us. The two pitches were from different agencies, but the message was the same: something is ominously, terribly wrong with the way your current agency is managing your account! Here’s the pitch from the first agency: "I’ve been doing research on your AdWords account and have come across a number of problems running live. These include but are not limited to: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

A Search Marketer’s Guide To Google Display Advertising, Part 2

Dec 10, 2012 at 3:39pm ET by Matt Van Wagner

Last month, in A Search Marketer's Guide to Google Display Advertising, I discussed recent changes to the Google Display Network (GDN) that are important to search marketers who use both search and display advertising to reach customers. This month, we'll dig in and try to make some sense of GDN targeting options. Targeting Options On The GDN The ultimate goal of targeting your ad on Google’s Display network is quite simple, really. You want to find the websites and webpages across the length and breadth of the Internet where your ads attract visitors to your site who then become customer [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

7 Tips To Avoid High Bounce Rates On Landing Pages

Dec 3, 2012 at 12:56pm ET by Mona Elesseily

Five years ago, Avinash Kaushik famously described the sequence of the typical unsatisfied website visitor: “I came, I puked, I left.” There is a little less puking these days, but after clicking on an ad, far too many visitors are still squinting, yawning, shrugging their shoulders, or having trouble connecting their needs and wants with the information and offers they’re seeing on landing pages. Below, I provide seven examples of how to tighten that connection. In today’s fickle world, average online experiences just aren’t good enough. Before getting started, pages should be [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

Why You Must Choose A Winning PPC Ad

Nov 26, 2012 at 11:17am ET by Brad Geddes

One of the worst ways of testing ads is: Writing new ads Turning on one of Google’s ‘optimize’ features Letting Google serve your ads Writing new ads Let Google serve your ads repeat… However, I find this is a very common testing method. There’s a big problem with this method: there’s no delete. Just by deleting ads, you can increase your account efficiencies significantly. I recently saw a few accounts where just by picking winners, their traffic and conversions increased from 30% to almost 300%. That’s right, hitting the delete button was the best optimizati [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

Can Google AdWords Customer Service Be Saved?

Nov 19, 2012 at 12:17pm ET by David Rodnitzky

I recently had an AdWords client get blacklisted by Google for policy reasons. Anyone who has worked on AdWords accounts for more than a couple of years has no doubt had this happen to them as well. In this case, I had just launched the client’s account and had bought a total of maybe 20 innocuous terms. To be clear, there was *absolutely* no reason for this client to be banned (the client offers free online classes, is VC-funded, and 100% legit in every way). Here’s the initial email we got from Google notifying us that we had been blacklisted: From: <adwords-noreply@google.com [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Paid Search

A Search Marketer’s Guide To Google Display Advertising

Nov 13, 2012 at 8:34am ET by Matt Van Wagner

Google has been hard at work again on the AdWords interface to the Google Display Network (GDN), adding all sorts of new feature and interface updates. Take a quick glance at the AdWords help files online and you may be surprised at how many of the GDN targeting help pages have been updated just within the last few months. Today, we’ll highlight a few important recent targeting updates you should be aware of, and in the coming months, we’ll drill down even more deeply into the art and science of working inside the GDN. Google’s approach to display advertising - to make it accessi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

5 Quick Fixes To AdWords Default Campaign Options

Nov 5, 2012 at 12:14pm ET by Mona Elesseily

There are a lot of levers to pull in PPC, and it can be confusing to prioritize them. One very good and often-overlooked area to focus on is the campaign settings tab in the Google AdWords interface. As you know, there are default settings in Google, and they can be calibrated too broadly or too narrowly, depending on the default setting. In my opinion, the campaign setting changes are some of the lowest hanging fruit in AdWords accounts and can provide tremendous lift in PPC accounts. Quick and easy changes here can mean big bang for your PPC bucks. By paying attention to this tab, and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Paid Search

How To Easily Manage & Test Millions Of Ads

Oct 29, 2012 at 11:53am ET by Brad Geddes

You must test ads to make your paid search account grow and thrive. That fact is no longer debatable – it is just a best practice fact. Ad testing in small accounts is very easy as there are not thousands of ad group or hundreds of thousands of ads to track. However, in large accounts, ad testing is often not done well. In today’s column, we’ll examine the most common testing techniques and why they are rarely successful, and then address how to test ads across large accounts. Common Testing Techniques For Large Accounts One of the most common is to create lots of ads. Turn on ‘op [...]

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

Applying The Theory of Sets In Match Types

Oct 22, 2012 at 12:19pm ET by Mike Nelson

When I was a math teacher, I spent a lot of time doing what I thought was, well, ‘teaching.’ In my first few months on the job, I focused on the logic behind the mathematics, not the formulas or other shortcuts. Students constantly complained about this, and they were failing tests, so, after higher-level discussions, I started going over the easy way to do things: the formulas. I was rather surprised when students started doing really well on tests – but when I verbally assessed their understanding of the logic, I was still greatly disappointed. Furthermore, they completely fell f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

Paid Search Advertising Gets More Complicated In 2013

Oct 15, 2012 at 12:27pm ET by Matt Van Wagner

Last week, we assembled a group of paid search experts in NYC at the SMX East Conference for a conversation about where Paid Search Advertising was heading in 2013. I figured we'd hear some wild predictions about new mergers and buyouts, ad formats, campaign automation tools; and the usual whining about rising CPCs, Google's quality score and ad serving policies; and whether or not Microsoft would make a significant dent in Google's search marketshare. Instead, our panel, which included some of our industry’s most experienced paid search luminaries like Chi-Chao Chang of AdX, Kevin Lee [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

5 Ways To Jumpstart Facebook Ads

Oct 8, 2012 at 11:57am ET by Mona Elesseily

The Facebook Paid Ads program has tremendous potential if you know what trees to bark up. And if you’re willing to put effort into making your advertising as effective as possible, as with any other type of advertising. In this article, I’ll cover some tips to improve your Facebook advertising. 1. Take Advantage Of Facebook Targeting Features There are numerous specialized targeting features in Facebook. Expanding targeting beyond age, gender and other basic demographics provides opportunities to target more specifically and/or widen your advertising reach. On Facebook, some of the way [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

5 Most Common Ways PPC Accounts Get Out Of Shape

Oct 1, 2012 at 9:41am ET by Brad Geddes

When you first build a PPC account, it's usually well structured, lean, doesn’t have any fat, and hopefully performs well. As accounts grow, offers change, websites change CMSs, accounts start to get out of shape. AdWords is now over ten years old. Many accounts have a decade of changes and additions which have grown out of control and lose their focus. In today’s column, I’m going to address some of the most common ways that accounts get out of control so you can get them back into prime shape. Old Ad Tests That Are Still Running So, we all know by now that you should be test [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

Enter The Cookie: How RFSA Will Affect SEM

Sep 24, 2012 at 12:27pm ET by David Rodnitzky

Imagine doing a search on Google for the word [fuzzy bunny slippers] and seeing a mortgage company touting their wares in the first paid result. Impossible, you say, Google’s Quality Score would crush this hapless mortgage advertiser in just a few impressions, right? Maybe in 2011, but maybe not in 2012. The reason: a new AdWords feature called AdWords Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (sometime called RFSA). RFSA allows you to remarket to your site visitors – on Google Search Results. So, if someone had just visited your mortgage website but not converted, you could conceivably [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

How To Look For Trouble & Find Opportunity In PPC Campaigns

Sep 17, 2012 at 10:51am ET by Matt Van Wagner

As I start each day managing our PPC accounts, the same two questions always come to mind: "What problems do we have to address right away?" and "Where can we find more opportunities?" The more quickly I can get a handle on these two questions, the more quickly I can take appropriate actions. That’s why I love all the visual trend line graphs available in Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter and other paid search analytics tools. With a quick glance, well-trained eyes, and the same sense of investigative curiosity that we see every night in crime and courtroom TV programs, I can quickly [...]

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

5 Steps For A Flawless Paid Search Launch

Sep 10, 2012 at 9:15am ET by Richard Carey

Why does it seem like a paid search launch has as many moving parts as launching a space shuttle? To make sure that everything gets taken care of, I adhere to a five step launch process when building a new paid search program. This process makes it easier to divide and conquer developing each part of the program, and it always results in more tightly aligned content. Here are the five steps to follow when launching a new paid search program: Establish Goals Develop a Creative Outline Generate the Creative Assets Structure the Assets Have Someone Else Check for Errors 1. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

How To Find Success With Google’s Display Network

Sep 4, 2012 at 9:32am ET by Brad Geddes

Google’s display network is massive, encompassing more than 4 billion daily page views, 700 million monthly users, and reaching more than 80% of the online audience. Yet, with all this inventory, many marketers fail with display marketing. The major reasons are they either are trying to reach the incorrect goals or they don’t understand how all the targeting options work. In this article, I’m going to walk through how to get started with display advertising so you can avoid some of the most common mistakes that cause marketers to fail with the network. Display Keywords Most ma [...]

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

How SEMs Can Recognize & Resist Google-Think

Aug 27, 2012 at 9:04am ET by David Rodnitzky

One of the seminal moments in George Orwell’s 1984 occurs when the hero – Winston Smith – is finally convinced by his torturers that 2+2=5. The point of the scene is to show how Oceania (the totalitarian regime in which 1984 is based) has so much control over the mind of its citizens that it can even convince them to reject the fundamental rules of mathematics! Another of my favorite moments from 1984 occurs when the ironically named "Ministry of Truth" retroactively changes an old newspaper article regarding chocolate rations so that a new change in rations looks like an incre [...]

5 Areas Where adCenter Beats AdWords

Aug 20, 2012 at 1:57pm ET by Mike Nelson

To be honest, there isn’t much about adCenter that I like. Their UI is more ‘cool’ than functional. Their editor tool isn’t worth the space on my desktop, and their keyword research tools sometimes seem to be from the Stone Age. If I never had to login to adCenter again, it might be too soon. Throw on top of that the minimal search volume compared to adWords, and poor content network, and sometimes it seems like the stars are aligning so that you don’t even have to feel bad about neglecting the platform. That being said, adCenter has some really neat features that Google hasn’t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Paid Search

5 Questions To Create A Laser-Focused Dashboard

Aug 13, 2012 at 11:13am ET by Richard Carey

Dashboards exist to help make decisions. Unfortunately this principle is often forgotten. That is why many SEM's moan and groan when it comes time to building dashboards. Without a specific end goal in mind, building any report becomes a frustrating mind reading game. When you spend the time to clarify the decision that needs to be made before building anything, the details of a dashboard become clear to both the builder and the stakeholder. I offer five questions to ask your stakeholder (yourself in some cases) before building any dashboard that will help you to clarify the decision that [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

How To Manage & Measure Local PPC Accounts

Aug 6, 2012 at 11:24am ET by Brad Geddes

In my last column, I looked at some of the differences between small and large accounts as the best practices vary for each. In this column, we’re going to specifically focus on one of the most common small accounts: local accounts; and examine some of the best practices for this type of small account. A local account is where there is a limited geographic area being served. When you combine a limited geographic reach with a small budget, you often run into problems trying to balance spending the budget on highly relevant keywords while getting a high enough return for the budget so th [...]

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

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