Results tagged “cost per click” from Portent Interactive, Seattle, WA
As we all already know Google AdWords has beta testing the AdWords Bid Simulator feature since late May/early June. So what’s new since then? I’ll show you: Previous screenshots of the new feature have not included this Cost versus Clicks graph, which gives you a nice visual on how your estimated stats will look like with an increase in bid. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much else on this new feature, it’s been like an Easter egg hunt just to even find campaigns that have it enabled. What we do know: It’s campaign based, not just account based. Last week I
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Continue reading AdWords Bid Simulator Update
As promised, my presentation from the SMX Advanced session Writing Killer Ad Copy. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And you’ll completely re-think how you write ads. Keep in mind that this presentation was created for advanced paid search specialists. The purpose of the session was to get people thinking “outside the box.” My job was to go so far outside the box that it would be almost uncomfortable and to also bring humor to what can be a very tedious job, managing paid search campaigns. Writing Killer Ad CopyView more OpenOffice presentations from Elizabeth Marsten. Read the warnings and disclaimers slide
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Continue reading Writing Killer Ad Copy...and not getting arrested
This week as part of the MSN AdCenter Spring Upgrade a new feature was released that’s been a long time coming: Content Network reports! Ever wonder what those mystery “Microsoft property sites” are? I sure have. I asked an AdCenter rep once and got a “we don’t know either” answer which I found pretty unsatisfactory. But now we can see where on the content network of Microsoft sites our ads are showing and even going that extra step to block a few. So what do we do next? Rip it apart of course! Accessing the reports is easy enough through
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Continue reading MSN AdCenter Content Network Reports
Are you tired of having to run a report in AdCenter every time you want some stats that aren’t: Yesterday, Last 7 Days, Today, This Month, Last Month, Last 3 Months, Last 6 Months, This Year, Last Year or Entire Time? Or in my case, I’m tired of deciphering just what would be 3 months after last year’s before entire time. Do you feel that the gold colored “Loading” circle spinning and spinning and spinning was placed there just to taunt you? Relax. The developers behind Microsoft AdCenter finally decided to stop loading up on predefined date ranges and now
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Continue reading Microsoft AdCenter Finally Brings Us Custom Date Ranges
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
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. How do you know which PPC keywords to stop using? Rolling right along in our series of often asked PPC questions, is the ever popular, should I pause it, delete it or keep it going? As with any PPC account, you’re bound to find some “bleeders”, those terms that just suck up clicks and money but
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Continue reading PPC FAQ - When to Stop Using PPC Keywords
.style1 { margin-left: 80px; } As I promised last week, here are step by step instructions for creating a free MSN’s Live Product Search feed. In case you are not sure what a Live Search Product Feed is, we will prepare a list of items to include in Microsoft’s product search engine. First you will need an Windows Live account, which will also give you A Hotmail e-mail address good for using in irritating forms when you would rather not receive Spam. A Windows Live ID, required to sign into your Windows Live account. Once you sign-up and navigate
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Continue reading Create a Microsoft Windows Live Product Feed
Google Products are listed on the search engine result pages of Google’s Shopping category. Each listing is a product that was submitted by a merchant. Listing your own products is free, so why not try it out? Here’s how to set up your very own Google Product Feed. Go to www.google.com/base, click on "Data Feed" and login with your Google Account login. Click on "create another account to manage" enter the name of your site, display URL and optional description. Next we’ll create the feed. Create a new Excel spreadsheet with these headings: Title Description Price Image link Link These
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Continue reading Create a Google Product Search Feed
These days Ask.com seems to be flailing, desperately trying to control the bleeding of is its’ visitor base and PPC advertisers. In the world of PPC search engine marketing, I have found increasingly less value from Ask’s paid search advertising program and stopped using their service altogether for several clients. If you cannot get a keyword to convert in 2008, one that easily converted in 2007, and especially during the keyword’s peak season, something is terribly wrong. Another issue I am experiencing is Ask double serving ads: One is from Google, as a Content Network partner. The other comes from
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Continue reading Ask PPC Advertising Pushing Me Away
Much like the mystery of the Big Mac’s secret sauce and Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices, we’ve all speculated what exactly makes up the closely guarded formula that determines Google’s PPC Quality Score. What are all the factors? How much weight does each factors carry? How can I exploit this to my advantage?! Last week Search Engine Journal posted screen shots of tiny suspicious text beneath Google AdWords ads. The text icluded pScore, mCPC and thresh. This spurred much discussion concerning what these terms mean and why they appeared. Google issued a statement to Search Engine Journal citing a
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Continue reading Google Leaks AdWords Quality Score
Once in awhile you get a client who’s site offers a lot of little specific products that is great for niche keywords but low traffic. Those keywords are great when they convert, but the real traffic is in the high competitive keywords that bring the visitors to the site. These visitors that search by the broad terms most of the time don’t actually know what they are looking for yet. It’s a “I’ll know it when I see it” type of shopping mentality. So, the question is: how do you get the most out of those big terms you have
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Continue reading Make the Most of High Traffic Keywords
But give the actual interface a star and a half. (On a scale of four stars, Google being four.) Almost every time I call MSN adCenter support for my various issues, be it basic account editing, billing, ad approval, keyword status or a general “what just happened?!”, I get top notch support and “I’m sorries”. While I find the helpful, apologetic and even sometimes even humorous answers great, I just wish I didn’t have to call them so much. Here is a short list of fun items that I have had to call about and have the support specialist come
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Continue reading Give MSN adCenter Support Four Stars
Per my post last week regarding Solving the (not set) in Google Analytics and Yahoo, we’ll continue this week bridging the gap between MSN AdCenter and Google Analytics. I did ask a MSN AdCenter representative once how come my two biggest keywords (in impressions, spend and clicks) didn’t register at all in Google Analytics, but yet I can see several of the keywords in other ad groups just fine. I was informed that MSN cannot be responsible (or apparently helpful) for anything involving 3rd party software or programs. And if I wanted transparency into my AdCenter accounts I should use
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Continue reading How to Make MSN AdCenter Work with Google Analytics
