Today I received this email from the Google AdWords team. AdWords seminars and workshops are great for new advertisers. Austin is a great city and if you live close and are interested in learning AdWords.
———————
Dear AdWords Advertiser,
Would you like hands-on, in-person training on how to make the most of your AdWords campaigns? If so, we invite you to attend the upcoming AdWords Seminars for Success in Austin at the Wyndham Garden Hotel. Each seminar is led by an independent and unbiased search marketing professional – an AdWords advertiser with years of experience who can show you how to choose targeted keywords, organize your account, and write effective ads. Continued…
Posted in Adwords, Seminars.
By Neil L.
– February 4, 2010
I wrote this back in May 2007. A lot has changed since then, but some of the principles still remain. This became the most highly read thread on SEOChat’s AdWords forum with 16k views and eventually added as a sticky. There were also almost 50 comments. The original forum post can be found here.
———————-
This is by no means a definitive list. Here are just some straight forward tips that I have learned over the years from experience with pay-per-click, AdWords in particular, as well techniques I have learned from gurus’ books and newsletters.
I am not merely repeating a combined list. These are in my words, and in no particular order. I believe in all of these and am currently using or have used these techniques in the past for multiple client accounts.
Some of these might require more explanation, which you are welcome to ask for here.
Each are split into categories that should help for reference.
Improving CTR & Conversions
1.) Use the core/parent adgroup keyword three times in the ad text and display URL.
2.) Bid on all three match types for every keyword/keyphrase: broad, phrase, and exact.
(This will get you more clicks for your money).
3.) Bid higher on terms that have been converting well.
4.) If continual ad performance improvement is one of your goals, on campaign settings, change Ad Serving to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly” from the default “Optimize: Show better performing ads more often. Then A/B split test your ads. Continued…
Posted in Adwords.
By Neil L.
– February 2, 2010
Google AdWords is the greatest direct response advertising medium ever created. This fact has been recognized by more than one national business magazine, newspaper, and marketing guru. Some business owners have Google AdWords to thank for their entire existence and growth, while others have replaced their traditional advertising budget at a fraction of the cost to advertise on search engines with better results. Since 2001 these classifieds-style, “Sponsored Links” seen above and alongside organic search listings have created millionaires, they have also lost advertisers millions. With a low barrier-to-entry, many business owners and marketing managers have tried their hand at Google’s pay-per-click system. Some have soared, while others have hopelessly wasted big bucks without knowing why. Having looked at dozens of accounts over the years and managed over a million dollars in clicks, I’ve seen the costly mistakes often made. Below are six of the most common with solutions.
1. Always Bidding to Be Number One - Ego bidding can cause expensive click wars. Always trying to be #1 over your competitors on one specific keyword just to be #1 wastes time and money unless you know your keywords’ true value or cost-per-conversion. For high volume, competitive, high cost clicks, make sure you know your keywords’ cost-per-conversion.
Solution: Generally, positions 3 – 10 have higher conversion rates because they receive less impulsive and irrelevant clicks. In recent years relevancy has been playing a larger role (Quality Score), and being #1 is not solely dependent on maximum bid. Calculate how much a customer or lead is worth to you and don’t spend more than that per lead (excluding the first month of testing or so). Swallow your pride, mind your ROI, and let your competitors waste their time and money on bidding wars. The one exception being when the keyword is the name of your company. Get five more common AdWords Mistakes & their Fixes. Continued…
Posted in Adwords.
Tagged with advice, Adwords, mistakes, solutions, tips.
By Neil L.
– January 8, 2010
Google has now decided to give live webinars for AdWords basics. This makes sense, they can reach more people than live AdWords seminars.
Users should have the choice of medium in which he or she would like to learn. Some are visual learners others are more auditory. By Google offering several choices, their advertisers can learn more.
——————————
Learn what you need to succeed with AdWords Basics webinars
Hello,
This fall, learn how to improve your advertising performance by attending the new AdWords Basics webinars, free of charge. Led by an AdWords specialist, each live, online seminar will include a presentation plus live Q&A. Whether you want to learn how to get more sales at a lower cost, add display images to your ads, or better set-up your campaigns, there is a webinar for you. Sign up and get the dates. Continued…
Posted in Google, Training.
By Neil L.
– October 22, 2009
Today I received an email from the “Claims Administrator” for a class action law suit against Yahoo! Search Marketing. It was addressed to:
ALL PERSONS THAT PURCHASED, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, YAHOO! PAY-PER-CLICK TEXT ADVERTISING IN THE U.S. MARKETPLACE
It then asked me to read the letter in its entirety in case I may receive some type of settlement. Now I never sued Yahoo!, but it looks like some major companies did. I’m guessing for some type of click fraud activity. Over the years, I’ve received small checks from large class action law suits against CD retailers and even PayPal, not because I complained, but because I was apart of the customer base at large. Here is the letter in its entirety.
———————————-
|
I. Why Did I Get This Notice?
You received this Notice to inform you of a proposed class action settlement (the “Settlement”) that may affect you. The Settlement was entered into by the parties in an action entitled In re Yahoo! Litigation, Case No. CV-06-2737 CAS (C.D. Cal.) (the “Action”). The purpose of this Notice is to inform you that a class has been certified in the Action and to inform you of the terms of the Settlement. You may have received this Notice because you were identified as a present or former pay-per-click advertising customer of Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services, Inc., or GoTo.com, Inc. (collectively “Yahoo!”). This Notice explains your legal rights, and how and by when you need to act. Continued… |
Posted in Search Marketing, Yahoo!.
Tagged with lawsuit, ppc, Yahoo!.
By Neil L.
– October 14, 2009
You may have noticed over the last year or so, the Google AdWords interface saying by specific keywords your are “Below first page bid estimate.” It will then tell you the predicted maximum cost-per-click bid in order to appear on the first page. As you may know, being on the second page greatly reduces your overall impressions and clicks. If you have several highly competitive keywords not appearing on the first page, you may have a skewed view of the traffic and search volume for some of the most highly-sought after keywords in your industry. If you manage a large account, it can be time consuming to click into every adgroup in order to see the keywords which are “Below first page bid estimate.”
Fortunately, using the AdWords Editor, you can find all keywords which fall under this category in one swoop. You can also quickly adjust your bids to appear on the first page. If you are sure most of your keywords are not not overly expensive, you can make this adjustment on a macro scale. Simply click on the keywords tab, making sure you are on the whole account, then choose “Advanced bid changes.” The third choice from the top says “Raise keyword maximum CPC bids to their first page estimates.”
Craig Danuloff over at ClickEquations.com covers more in-depth how to run adjust First Page Bid Estimates quickly using the provided report.
Posted in Bid Management, Google.
By Neil L.
– October 12, 2009
Negative Keywords are keywords you do not want your ad to show for when in combination with other phrases which may or may not be relevant. They are highly important to your campaign’s success. Without them you may be showing your ads for irrelevant queries, spending money on irrelevant clicks, and dealing with a lower click-through rate than you deserve. When working with large or highly stratified accounts, adding negative keywords on the adgroup level can be tedious. Using the AdWords Editor, there is a way to quickly add account-wide negative keywords.
I’ve done this many times and it always increase click-through rates as well as conversions. Some common negative keywords you typically always want to add if you are selling products or services are: free, pro-bono, pictures, photos, and history of. Depending on your industry you could have 100s more negative keywords which are often associated with your true keywords, but are not associated with someone in the buying mode. Or by adding one of these words, it could completely change the meaning of the product or service. If you need help finding your negative keywords here is a quick guide I wrote a while back with some excellent examples on SEOChat — Building Your Negative Keyword List – Three Progressive Strategies.
I’ll get back to the subject at hand. Hiren, over at over SEOAddicted.com does a through job of explaining how to add account-wide negative keywords.
I will let him take it from here, since he has already taken the time to explain. Read How to quickly add Account wide Negative Keywords here.
Posted in Keywords.
By Neil L.
– October 11, 2009
Find out how the experts run campaigns on Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture), Microsoft adCenter (MSN), and all the smaller Pay Per Click Engines! PPC Summits are designed as How To workshops that teach you how to better manage your PPC campaigns. The focus is solidly on advertiser education: how to spend less money, more effectively, with better results. What will you learn? Continued…
Posted in Conferences.
By Neil L.
– October 5, 2009
Google AdWords is now offering a new, much anticipated, report for display advertising conversion reporting. View-through conversion reporting measures the number of conversions that occurred within 30 days of your display ad appearing for which there was no ad click generated. This is much more helpful for advertisers understanding the longer term impact an ad has on visitors reflecting the old advertising industry mantra, repetition, repetition, repetition. This also answers the question, what about branding? As long as cookies are enabled, Google will be able to tell if the visitor typed the URL in the browser manually at a later date.
Example of how View-Through Conversion Reporting Works
Say you are selling organic, healthy dog treats on the Internet and you are measuring conversions on two different actions: newsletter sign-ups and your shopping cart “Thank You” page after a purchase is made. If a user sees your display ad on another site on Google’s Content Network, does not click on the ad, but visits your site within the next 30 days to sign-up to receive your email newsletter and to purchase a couple dozen orders of organic dog treats, you’ll see two View-through conversions reported on your Campaigns tab in AdWords. Read more details on the new report.
Posted in Conversion Tracking, Display Ads, Google.
By Neil L.
– October 3, 2009
Recently, I have received several emails for AdWords Seminars for Success 2009 coming to my city. Since I have managed dozens of accounts over the years, and usually set up a separate Gmail account which I forward to my main account, I typically get an over-communication of whatever may be the latest AdWords news.
I attended an AdWords Seminar for Success in 2006. At that time, they did not offer the advanced program in my city. Much of what was taught, I had already taught myself through experience, books, and SEM forums when I started PPC training in March 2005. I can certainly see how these 101 seminars would be helpful for those who are not readers. However, Google has come a long way since 2006 and much has changed with AdWords. Continued…
Posted in Adwords, Seminars.
By Neil L.
– September 23, 2009
