Using PPC Run Charts To Identify Problems & Opportunities
Back in the 70’s, when the World Wide Web was still just a glint in Tim Berners-Lee’s eyes, a pair of Stanford grads working out of their garage...
Nov 21, 2011 at 11:48 am ET
Matt Van Wagner
Matt Van Wagner is President and founder of Find Me Faster a search engine marketing firm based in Nashua, NH. He is a member of SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England), and SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization as a member and contributing courseware developer for the SEMPO Institute. Matt writes occasionally on internet, search engines and technology topics for IMedia, The NH Business Review and other publications.
Want to Write Better PPC Ads? Try Cat Food For Inspiration
It was way past quitting time, and though I still was on deadline for a new flight of text and display ads, my creative muse had quit hours earlier...
3 Great Questions That Can Improve Your PPC Campaigns
I hate people who claim to have all the answers. Well, okay, hate is a pretty strong word, so let me rephrase. People who are smarty-pants...
Tips For Spying On Your PPC Competitors
Spying is such a loaded word, isn’t it? Spying evokes images of stakeouts on dark streets, dumpster diving to dig up old phone...
Google Study: PPC Ads Do NOT Cannibalize Your Organic Traffic
Though I’ve never met him personally, I admit to being a big Hal Varian fan. For those who don’t recognize the name, Dr. Varian is the...
adCenter’s Transparent Quality Scores – Will Google Respond?
There’s an old adage that goes “It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it that counts.” Having been married for 31 years next...
3 Sure Signs Your PPC Campaigns Need Spring Cleaning
There is no mistaking the official arrival of spring in northern climes. I am not talking about the beautiful blossoms of the dogwood, apple and...
How To Stay A Step Ahead Of Your Hungriest PPC Competitors
There’s an old story of two hikers who come across a hungry-looking bear in their path. The first hiker starts running for his life. The second...
Is It Time To Rethink Bidding On Trademarks?
Trademarks are in the news again. Last week, Microsoft announced an update to its trademark policy. Now, you can poach off your competitors’...
From Adwords To AdCenter: Cross Platform Compatibility, Part 2
This month, we continue our exploration of cross-compatibility issues between Google Adwords and Microsoft adCenter, and how understanding the subtle...
How To Develop Cross PPC Platform Strategies Using Negative Keywords
Managing PPC campaigns became a little easier last year when the Yahoo platform was retired and replaced with Microsoft’s adCenter. Now,...
How To Fight PPC Campaign Brain Fatigue
December can be a tough month for paid search campaign managers. On one hand, it’s a time to be tightly focused on hour-by-hour tactical engagement...
Black Friday? Bah! Cyber Monday? Humbug!
We are now just days away from the “official” start of the 2010 holiday shopping season with those two notorious leading economic...
Surviving The Impending Yahoo-Bing Ad Transition
After a year of planning, engineering and collaboration by teams at Yahoo and Microsoft, it’s go time for the search alliance. Within two weeks...
How Google Saved $100 Million By Launching Google Instant
It seems fitting that from the moment it was announced, Google Instant became an instant headline news story. For the past few week, industry pundits...
Back to School Time: A Refresher Course on Writing Great Ads
In this month's column, we'll take a quick refresher course on what goes into writing great ads and then we'll evaluate a few recent ads to see if...
Daydreaming About Paid Search: How About Airtight Ad Groups?
My best daydreams come on summer afternoons when the sky is full of big fluffy clouds in a deep blue sky, and there is a refreshing summer breeze to...
PPC Mad Scientists Prove Google Right… And Wrong
At the SMX Advanced 2010 conference in Seattle, we invited four leading paid search experts to share some of their recent experiments in paid search...
Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Testing, Part 3
Over the past two months in this column, I’ve discussed some of the pitfalls of A/B ad testing, and in this third and final installment,...
The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 2
In last month’s column, Pitfalls of Paid Search, Part 1, I raised the question of whether A/B Ad split testing, taken to the extreme, can be...