The 15 Minute Paid Search Tune Up: 3 Quick Fixes

In preparation for my upcoming appearance at SMX West as a PPC pro in the Paid Search Tune-up Clinic with the SMX Mechanics session, I’ve been thinking more about quick fixes for paid search marketing accounts.

Next time you are waiting to get your oil changed, login on your laptop and consider these three 5 minute quick fixes to tune up your paid search accounts.

Quick Fix #1: Test Some New Ad Copy

There’s always more ad text testing to do! Maybe the account has got winning ad text from a test long ago, but they’re getting stale, throw up a couple of ads to test something new. Or maybe there’s some lower volume adgroups that always seem to get neglected by the 80-20 rule and they could use a couple of fresh ads. Take five minutes and write a few new ads.

There’s definitely a place for the well-organized, large scale, deeply tracked ad text testing regimen, but there’s equally a place in search engine marketing to just get scrappy, inspired and jot off a couple of new ad text ideas to test for a short while.

If click-through rates rock for the new ads, then maybe more formal testing on conversion is a good follow up. If the ads don’t pan out so well, the loss was five minutes and a small amount of impressions for trying.

Quick Fix #2: Add Some New Keywords

Any good in-house search engine marketer has keyword lists lying around as long as their arm.

The reason they are often lying around is lack of time or resources to undertake adding them all at once to an account. There are always new keywords to add to existing campaigns, take five minutes to clear a few off the list.

Prioritize keywords for high converting adgroups and see how many you can plow through. Getting some done sooner is better than waiting to get them all done, and the little times spent on it add up in the long run. An hour on a plane here, fifteen minutes between meetings there, and before you know it, you’re looking for more new keywords to add.

Quick Fix #3: Add Google Ad Extensions

If your Google AdWords account isn’t using ad extensions, most are generally easy to implement in just a couple of minutes. At a minimum, add some sitelinks to a fairly targeted campaign. And, if you have physical locations, add in location extensions to enhance listings (usually with regard to address information) for Google Maps and other local search results.

For advertisers that already have a Merchant Center account, it is easy as pie to add product extensions. If the search account is organized into orderly product campaigns and adgroups, it’s a perfect fit to just flip the switch for product extensions to appear.

Simply enter the Merchant Center id and enable the product extensions feature. If a Merchant Center account is not currently linked to the AdWords account, specify the AdWords’ account id in the Merchant Center account and that links them together. Easy!

Search engine marketing is an often complicated and time intensive channel, but there’s always an opportunity to step back from the myriad of deep labor for a couple of five minute fixes.