Results tagged “ppc” from Portent Interactive, Seattle, WA
Dear Google, It’s time. You’ve given us the ability to segment out search from search partner traffic and yes, we see it now- search partners aren’t so great. We’d like control now so we can make it great. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the new features- the extensions tab, product extensions, ad sitelinks and so on. But I won’t be distracted! I am very well aware that parked domains are in included in the “search partner” network and that I am unable to exclude specific sites, nor see which search partners are doing what. I’d like
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Continue reading Google AdWords Search Partner Network
No seriously. Portent’s PPC team is running a special, for $100 get the AdWords Expert Quickstart AND get $100 in clicks on AdWords, FREE! Yes, it’s really free, here’s the math: The AdWords Expert Quickstart costs $100, one-time. There are no ongoing fees, and you own your account. Plus, you’ll get your first $100 in clicks free. $100 - $100 = $0. You’re getting expert PPC advice for free. How it works You hire Portent, and our PPC experts will set up: * 3 AdWords ads * For a total of 20 keywords * Plus 5 ‘negative keywords’ Portent will
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Continue reading Free AdWords Account Set Up- It's No Joke!
Recently I was able to ask some more specific “PPC nerd” questions of an AdCenter rep and got to really drill down into match types, the way the keywords are “locked” together, ad position and how it’s been changed since Bing came online. For those that don’t know, AdCenter keywords are unique for match types in that they are “locked” together which means that while it’s cool that you can easily separate and combine them in the edit feature to see the stats and judge performance, it’s not cool that you cannot pause a match type, you simply have to
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Continue reading MSN AdCenter Match Types Can Determine Your Ad Position
Our good friends over at Hanapin Marketing - you know, the folks who run the PPC Hero blog - are running a pretty amazing SEM Sweepstakes right now. They have some great prizes available, including: (3) Paid Subscriptions to SEOMoz (1) 3-Month Subscription to ClickEquations (a neat bid management tool that we use at Portent) (100) Various Internet Marketing Tomes (1) Full PPC or SEO Audit by the Hanapin Marketing Team (worth $4,000) What are you waiting for? Go sign up! They’ll start randomly selecting winners on October 12th, 2009.
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Continue reading Shout-Out: Hanapin Marketing's $16,000 SEM Sweepstakes
After attending a Stratigent workshop with Jennifer Vessenmeyer called "Pimp your Reports" it got me thinking about PPC reporting and how I could be "pimping" my own reports. I don’t mean throwing so much data together that no one will ever read it like a house bill nor exporting something out of AdWords and handing it over, I mean putting together the suggested meaningful and insightful report. Currently the PPC report I put together each month now for clients is actually right in line for what the workshop covered- but definitely in need of a tune up and there were
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Continue reading Simplify PPC Reports
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
That’s right, yours truly is on one of many SMX Advanced panels this June 2 and 3rd in Seattle, dedicated to organic, paid search and internet marketing tactics. In particular my panel is on the paid search track for “Writing Killer Ad Copy- The Interactive Edition.” After the conference, I’ll post my presentation here (or rather a link to it) for those that couldn’t make it across the country or foot the entry fee into the conference. A sneak peak of what I’ll be presenting on: Writing ads that use guilt or are aggressive: Buy My Stuff Now Hey You!
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Continue reading Writing Killer Ad Copy: SMX Advanced Seattle Speaker
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
The Paid Search Problem Let’s be honest. All too often, starting or optimizing a paid search campaign is a guessing game. You make obvious changes to your keyword list, rewrite some ads, and setup a new landing page - but for the most part, it’s like a Jackson Pollock painting. You throw a bunch of things at a canvas and hope for a work of art. If that doesn’t work, you whitewash the canvas and start over. To be fair, there are tools that will give you a fairly good indication of what you’ll pay for a term, what kind
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Continue reading New Predictive PPC Tool: Paid Search Return Estimations
Everyone knows those distinctive for Dummies books; the bright yellow cover, the triangle headed man with pointy fingers and the strange feeling you might have picking up something for Dummies. Why? Because you know you’re smart. Why would you need a book for Dummies? (Because I co-authored one, that’s why.) Need a little more than that? Fine, here are 36 reasons why you need the Web Marketing all in one for Dummies book.... Learn how to optimize a blog post to earn the top Google rank for “enraged bear.” Because no one reads your blog. $25 coupon for Google AdWords
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Continue reading 36 Reasons You Need This Dummies Book
We’re all very well familiar with Google’s myriad of keyword generation tools, be it within the AdWords interface, the external keyword tool, by URL, by similar keywords, by topic or the new “search based keyword tool.” Then of course each search engine has it’s own keyword tool generator, add in the Wordtracker, Wordstream and Trellian’s of the world and you’ve got a lot of resources. But where do you go to find those really weird and whacky keywords that you should be bidding on? Or at the very least, expanding your negative keyword list with? Ask.com is Useful? eVisibility’s post
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Continue reading Keyword Resource Tools that Aren't Keyword Tools
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
AdBrite has been around awhile, they’ve been conventioning and promoting and press releasing, trying to grow their brand and their business and I have always been a sucker for testing a new platform. You just never know when you’re going to find that 2nd or 3rd tier platform that turns into a gold mine. Previously I had taken them for a spin on an affiliate site as a publisher, just to see if I could find another source of income by the pennies other than Google AdSense for automatic ad serving. (Not the kind where I go out and
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Continue reading AdBrite: Trash or Treasure?
Back in September of 2007, Yahoo announced the ability to choose Pay Pal as a payment method for adding funds to your search marketing account. Up until now, I hadn’t had a use for the option and continued doing manual refills, automatic deposits or invoicing for clients. But then a client came along (me) that had a free $100 advertising credit if I opened a new Yahoo Search Marketing account. All I had to do was put down the minimum deposit of $30 to get the $100. Sounds like a great deal for the small business right? Right. I went
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Continue reading Paying your Yahoo Search Marketing bill with Pay Pal
If there’s one amazing thing about Google Analytics, it’s that Google’s ability to improve it is never dormant. At their Mountain View compound, they’re always looking for a way to constantly better their products. Here at Portent, we have a similar resolve - except that ours is to exploit Google’s tools to achieve our internet marketing goals. That being said, here are 3 new reports that you can put together quickly that’ll immediately benefit your PPC campaign building techniques. Just open up the Custom Reporting section and click on “create a new custom report” to get started!
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Continue reading 3 New Google Analytics Custom Reports a PPC Marketer Should Be Using
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
Google AdWords is a mystical beast sometimes, capable of dumbfounding and goring the best of us. My cost-per-click cohort, Elizabeth, kindly tipped us off to Google’s most recent Quality Score update - and it appears the latest changes are starting to affect the paid search landscape in a big way. For some, scores have dropped considerably, prices have gone up and general unrest has befallen bidders. With that said, it’s a good time to reiterate a few things at the crux of achieving good quality scores, especially given the apparent added weight Google is placing on certain key variables
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Continue reading The AdWords Quality Score Hammer Has Fallen, Now What?
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
