Recently by Elizabeth Marsten
We’re all familiar with the wedding industry’s spending power, no matter what the economic climate, the lavish wedding will always prevail. The industry is highly competitive with high barriers to entry, so how do you generate a positive ROI in a sector that can bleed your budget dry within an hour? Build Up & Be Smart. Pick a few items or products to start out with. Go with broad long tail keywords and with more of a budget on those niches rather than trying to break right out of the gate into [wedding invitations], [wedding favors], [wedding dresses] and [wedding
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Continue reading Winning In the Wedding Industry with PPC
Since the latest Quality Score update, one of the new features was doing away with the “inactive” classification for keywords whose maximum cpc was below that of Google’s set minimum bid. Instead we have the “first page bid” qualifier which will label keywords with a maximum cpc too low to appear on the first page of search results. It’s been said already that by creating this label Google is admitting that having your ads on any page but the first page is an exercise in futility and what we all already know, that you’ve got to get on that first
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Continue reading More Revenue for Google with First Page Bids
Continuing our coverage on 2nd and 3rd tier PPC engines, we’ve come to ABC Search. A little platform that could out of Encino, CA. ABC Search is a search engine themselves, but also rather a mediator and distributor of ads to partner sites from advertisers through their "Adentify" content network. They claim 1billion searches a month and have been around since 1998. From the advertiser side, I can say that this is one of the few 2nd/3rd tier engines from which I have seen a consistent positive ROI and not just in 1:1 or 2:1, but during seasonality highs, up
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Continue reading ABC Search | A Positive ROI
Once again, it’s that time when Google AdWords announces to the world that they will be tweaking their Quality Score algorithm. Rather, as they put it “making an update.” Each time these “updates” occur, I end up on the phone with a Google rep. Each time they’ve done this though, I will give credit where credit is due, they’ve gotten smoother and smarter about the transition. Claiming to be rolling this out to a “very small segment” of advertisers and gathering feedback before unleashing their changes system wide, is a far cry from the day I would login and find
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Continue reading Quality Score Updates Make Me Nervous Too
Most optimization tips and instructional guides cover the big 3 of PPC search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN. But what about all those little guys out there? Have you tried any of those yet? I’ll review some 2nd and 3rd tier interfaces in the coming weeks, how the traffic was, how much it was, the return on investment and the customer service. In the meantime, I’ve put together a short checklist of must do’s before deciding on whether or not take one of those lower tier PPC search engines for a drive. This doesn’t include sites that are content or
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Continue reading Top 11 Tips for Picking a 2nd or 3rd Tier PPC Engine
If you're like me, you have your Google Reader set up to feed you all the latest, greatest and newest news, tips and tricks in the world of pay-per-click marketing. At the very least you're set up to receive recaps or topical news items. I noticed that when I receive recaps from Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, SEO Roundtable and their like, their stories rarely match up with the muck and the ilk I find in my Google Reader. Why? Because respectable news sources like the sites I linked to filter out articles from zealous spam laden proprietors whose
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Continue reading No Deep Secrets In PPC Marketing
Not everyone has the ability to work with Yahoo and receive the occasional free optimization help from their “experts.” If you do, carefully review the ads that come back. Several times, I sent in existing ad groups for help with ad optimization (who knows what will get a better quality index score than the search engine itself, right?) or requested help to build a new ad group to save time, only to have to tear down the ads returned. It wasn’t that the PPC advertisements were unrelated or made no sense, but they were still wrong in that the
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Continue reading Yahoo Outsources Your PPC Ads to India
The display URL in any PPC ad is a great place to stuff additional keywords, attract attention to your ad and/or increase branding. So it is definitely not a space to be wasted or ignored. Next time instead of simply putting “www.yoursite.com” as the display URL, try some of these simple tests and see if you can’t increase click through rates! 1st Display URL Vs. 2nd Display URL Test http://www.examplesite.com www.examplesite.com No “http” www.examplesite.com examplesite.com No “www” www.examplesite.com www.Examplesite.com Capitalize first word www.examplesite.com www.ExampleSite.com Capitalize first letter in all words www.examplesite.com www.examplesite.com/product Adding keyword to
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Continue reading Do Not Waste PPC Display URLs
When I first started in pay per click marketing the content network was considered a dark, black hole where clicks went to die and impressions soared. Nowadays there is a lot more success, a lot more transparency and a lot more of control that an advertisers can exert over their campaigns. So, when starting a pay per click account and building new campaigns and ad groups, here’s a checklist of how to get a solid start on the content network. First of all, be sure you understand what the content network is: these are websites & blogs that are
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Continue reading Get Started with the Google Content Network
I answered some questions about PPC keywords last week then realized that you might find these useful. Ask your own question in the comments. Depending on how many questions I receive I’ll answer either all or the best ones in future blog posts. What about PPC bidding on branded, trademarked or copyrighted keywords? The fact is, that in some cases you can bid on copyrighted and trademarked terms, but pay attention to how you do it! So please keep these guidelines in mind and you will avoid When you bid PPC bid on competitor’s brand name, trademark or copyrighted
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Continue reading PPC FAQ - Bidding on Trademarked Terms
