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Dear Advertiser,

As part of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, you’ll soon be able to reach potential customers using Yahoo! Search, Bing, and other partner sites with the convenience of one account. To do so, you’ll transition from using your Yahoo! Search Marketing account to an account with Microsoft Advertising adCenter.

This email kicks off a series filled with tips and advice designed to help you prepare for this transition. We strongly recommend that you follow the provided guidance to help make your transition experience smooth and to get your ads live within adCenter as quickly as possible.

Make some changes now
You can start editing your Yahoo! ad copy now so it will be ready to meet adCenter’s length guidelines.

Prepare now for changes to apply later
There are important differences in keyword mapping and bid requirements that you should prepare for now to be able to apply to your adCenter account after the transition.
Learn more about expanding your keyword lists and checking your bids.

Stay informed about the transition. In a few weeks you’ll receive the next email in this series. In the meantime, please visit the following resources:

Until the transition is complete, please remember that you’ll still want to continue to manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing account to maximize your Yahoo! network traffic. Our goal is to provide a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010 while protecting the all-important holiday season. If we feel that it would improve the overall experience, we may defer the transition to 2011. If this should happen, we will keep you updated. We appreciate your business and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the search alliance.

Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo!

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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.

On Monday, March 8th we will be offering AdWords 101: Beginner and on Tuesday, March 9th AdWords 201: Intermediate.

Some of the topics covered include:

• AdWords Basics: Discover the best ways to organize your campaigns, and learn common search marketing lingo.
• Keywords: Discover the keyword strategies that give you the most bang for your buck.
• Tracking Results: Learn to identify ads and keywords that really work, and to improve those that don’t.
• New AdWords Interface: How to effectively use the new interface to save time and improve results.

Additionally, each seminar will now devote a portion of time to address online advertising in a down economy. We hope this new section will be especially relevant and helpful to your current business.

Pricing:

You can sign up for either seminar day; you will receive a $50 AdWords advertising credit. If you sign up for the 2-day seminar package, you’ll save money plus receive $100 in advertising credit.

• AdWords 101, March 8th: $299 – Register Now at http://google-seminar-mar-8.eventbrite.com
• AdWords 201, March 9th: $299 – Register Now at http://google-seminar-mar-9.eventbrite.com
• Save Money! Two-day seminar package: $549 – Register Now at http://google-seminar-mar-8-9.eventbrite.com

You can visit our website at http://www.google.com/adwords/seminars/topics.html to find more detailed information on course topics for AdWords 101 and 201.

Learn from the experts and make the most of your advertising budget — sign up for AdWords Seminars for Success today .

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Click Here for More Information and to Register Online

Seminars are offered in select cities only; session topics and levels may vary by city. $50 credit limited to one per account, per session. Credit will be given to attendees who register at least 7 days before the seminar date. AdWords Seminars for Success are wholly conducted and operated by independent search engine marketing professionals who are not affiliated with or employed by Google. Click here to view the terms and conditions of advertising credits.

Links not working? Get more information and register at: http://www.google.com/awseminars

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.
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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.

5.) Sign up for LowerYourBidPrice’s Winner Alert’s, letting you know which ad wins statistically without having to manually check every adgroup all day long.

6.) Use a relevant call to action in your ads (Avoid clichés such as “Click here.” which won’t be approved by Google anyway).

7.) Here are 13 calls to action verbiage ideas: Browse our store, Submit Your RFP (RFI), See our client list, Free Shipping, Order today, ship tonight. Download our brochure, Free Consultation, Free demo, Free quote, Free Report, Start now, Call 24/7.

8.) Make ad display URLs more relevant by adding a slash /keyword. Example Keyword: Red Shoes. www.companyname/redshoes.

9.) Make separate ad groups for keyword plurals for better bolding (note YSM bolds plurals in ads, Google does not, unless keyword is plural and keyword in ad is plural).

10.) Use prices in ads if:
-Lower than competition
-Competitors are not using prices.
-You are selling highly competitive commodity item in which people shop on price.

*May reduce CTR, but improve conversion rate by weeding out a certain percentage of non-buyers.

11.) Use specifics in ads: Percentages, names, product specs. Examples: Raise profits by 25%. Cut margins by 20%. Decrease skin oil by 10%.

12.) Use quotes & third party endorsements when factual and can be verified by Google. Ebert “Best movie 2007.” Oprah “My top five book.”

13.) From time to time use hyphens instead of commas as a slightly less common, and possibly more attention grabbing grammar tool.

14.) Use the words New and Free when true and appropriate.

Account Efficiency Techniques and Time Savers

15.) Download the AdWords Editor to copy and paste campaigns and adgroups easily (a must before doing #16)

16.) Separate & duplicate all campaigns and use one for Google + search partners and the other for the content network so you can see how each is doing from quick bird’s eye view without having to drill into each campaign.

17.) Clean out account of keywords with zero impressions after two months.

18.) Cross channel all other ppc platforms in order to see clicks and conversions from Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, Miva, Business.com, etc, all from your AdWords interface.

19.) Download account info into a csv using the AdWords Editor and send it to Yahoo! and MSN so they can bulk upload it. Do this after thoroughly optimizing the account, so your other ppc platforms mirror the same structure and keywords as your efficient AdWords account.

**Yahoo! is doing this for free just for a limited time because of the platform change. They will accept bulk uploads regularly if you spend 6k a month for three months. MSN only offers you one chance to do this. Give them a call and get the details.

Optimizing & Cutting Untargeted/Wasted Clicks

20.) Incorporate account wide and adgroup negative keywords by studying raw query strings which trigger your ads and eliminating non-relevant terms.

Increase Targeted Local Traffic

21.) For every campaign, duplicate it. Have one campaign that is manually geo-targeted for generic key terms/phrases and the other campaign for the same terms but with city and/or state added to the beginning or end. Example, one campaign has an adgroup for the key phrase Contract lawyer dallas which shows to all of US, another campaign adgroup had the generic key term contract lawyer, but will only show in Dallas.

22.) On the city/state stemmed keyword campaigns and adroups, use the state or city terms in the ad description text for more bolding and higher CTR.

Decreasing Cost Per Click

23.) If working with a larger budget, and you plan on constantly improving your ads, bid high to be #1 long enough to allow quality score to continually decrease your cpc.

24.) Enable content bids and bid separately for the content network. Typically start ½ – 2/3 lower and bid higher according to conversion rate.

Ad Space Savers

25.) Instead of using the word “and” use an ampersand (&). It takes up two less characters and gives you more room to sell.

26.) Use certain understood and acceptable abbreviations to save space.

Using AdWords As Market Research for SEO

27.) In the Reports tab, run a keyword report and look at high search impressions (not content targeting) on exact matches. Check for organic competition under those, and put your organic SEO efforts toward those keywords for even more clicks and conversions.

28.) Use a savvy analytics supplement to GA and study the raw query strings (GA does not show without special scripts and/or filters) that triggered your Google ads. Use the relevant buffering terms for added SEO as well as specific and relevant keywords for new ads.

29.) Keep ads running even when high on organic search for specific keywords. Having an organic listing and an ad has a 1 + 1 = 3 reinforcing each other and increasing the likelihood at least one will be clicked.

Miscellaneous No Brainers

30.) Set up at least two conversion codes. This is a no brainier and belongs on a beginner’s list. If you don’t do this, you are flying blind or basing results on the “gut feeling” email leads and incoming calls are coming from ads and web presence.

31.) Apply for pay-per-action and use it. Bid according to how
much you are currently paying for leads. If you don’t know that, run a keyword report and find out how much you have to spend before a click turns into a lead. This should be simple if you have your conversion codes set up.

32.) Progress through numbers 1-31, constantly improve, and repeat.

Related Posts
Seven Common AdWords Mistakes

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.

2. Unrelated Keyword Clumping -  Organizing similar phrases and keywords into similar and specific adgroups and campaigns is a huge key to scaling your AdWords’ account success. You’re not organizing just for the sake of organization; your account should be structured in a way that you are able to give you a quick “bird’s eye view” of any one of your particular adgroups or campaigns’ relative success.

Solution: Don’t put a long list of unrelated terms and phrases in the same adgroup. Organize and stratify your adgroups using what I call the “Two Word Relevancy Litmus Test” where all phrases in one particular adgroup have at least a two word base commonality. This will create adgroup naming conventions which are close to WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) as possible.

3. Neglecting Conversion Tracking Codes- Google AdWords provides up to four conversion code types which should be correlated with an action a user takes on your website: form submission, shopping cart sale, whitepaper download, contact page view, etc. These codes allow you to calculate a much more important number than traffic — your cost-per-conversion or even cost-per-acquisition.

One click may cost you .25, but it may take 100 clicks before someone fills out a contact form, resulting in a cost-per- conversion of $25. This is a crucial number in which you should base your bid amount. Based on your closing ratio you can then calculate your cost-per-acquisition or advertising cost-per-customer.

Solution: Add the provided conversion tracking codes to your website before you spend a dime on AdWords. Label each action. Put one on the “Thank you” page after a contact form submission. If you have an ecommerce shopping cart, place a code on the receipt page after an online sale is made. You will then know which campaigns, adgroups, keywords, even ads attract the most, and most highly qualified, leads.

4. Using One Catch-All Ad - Non-specific ads which attempt to sell on generalities and features, using superlatives and hyperbole combined with a cliché call to action do not work.  These ads under-utilize the direct response nature of the Internet combined with flexibility of matching keyword relevance to ad copy. Search Engine users are typically later in the buying cycle because he/she is looking verses mass marketing which advertises to a much less targeted audience.

Solution: Write tight, keyword relevant ads in small adgroups for every area of your service or product categories. Get the user to take the next step closer, which might not always be a sale. Signing up for newsletter, Ezine, to receive a free whitepaper or ebook, all have huge long term value if a relationship is cultivated.

4. Pointing All Ads to the Homepage – Only linking ads to your homepage is not wise. If a user has to hunt too long for the service or product he/she saw mentioned in your ad’s headline, your potential customer is gone and will never return.

Solution: Create specific ads to link to interior landing pages having content that specifically relates to the keyword phrase/ad. Giving the user what he/she was looking for quickly makes it less likely they will leave because you made them think too much. Categorizing your services into separate pages and having a specific ad land exactly on what the user is looking for combined with a convincing argument and a way for him/her to receive more information  will dramatically increase your conversion rate. Don’t make your prospect hunt, that’s what a search engine is for, not your website.

5. Neglecting Negative Keywords – Adding negative keywords to your adgroup or campaign means your ads won’t display for search queries containing phase combinations which use irrelevant terms. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.

Solution: Find negative keywords by using common sense, keyword research tools, and the Search Query Performance report over time.

6. Mingling Search & Contextual Campaigns- Did you know more than half of Google ads are not served on Google or any of their Search Partners (ASK, Dogpile, AOL)? They are served on relevant sites surrounding articles, blog posts, news, and other content (aka “Ads by Google”). You have the choice to opt out of this non-search network of sites. Since these two arenas are very different and require different strategies you should address each network one at a time.

Solution: When first starting out with your AdWords uncheck the Content Network by choosing to “Edit Settings” on the campaign level. Once you have achieved an acceptable cost/conversion for the Google + Search Network, then duplicate your campaigns using the AdWords Editor and have “Content Only” campaigns, in which you will most like want to test new ads on as well.

Internet & Pay-per-click Marketing Consultant Neil Lemons has optimized over 50 websites and managed over a million dollars in clicks through  Google AdWords and other pay-per-click networks. He currently works for The Marketing Zen Group, a social media marketing and Internet Marketing Company in Dallas, Texas.

*10 Serious AdWords Beginners Mistakes*

1. Neglecting to Split-Test Your Ads. I’ve gotta say one of the coolest discoveries of my whole life was, in my first week of playing with AdWords 5+ years ago, noticing that “create new ad” link and seeing that I could create a 2nd and 3rd and 4th ad and try different text. Running them simultaneously, then seeing how teeny tiny changes made huge differences. I still get jazzed about this. It’s like practicing psychology without a license.

2. Letting Google Retire Your Ads Without Testing: In Campaign Settings, when you turn “Optimize Ad Serving” OFF, you declare a winner and a loser much faster. Turn that option off if you’re checking in every day.

3. Split Testing for Improved CTR Only: At first, Click Thru Rate is the only thing you can measure. You want it high so you get the most traffic. But eventually what REALLY matters is conversion rate and cost per new customer. Sometimes high CTR ads don’t bring buyers. Conversion is what matters most.

4. Ignoring the Display URL Line in your Ad: If you own http://www.redwagon.com, you should try http://www.RedWagon.com, and http://www.RedWagon.com/RadioFlyer, or http://www.RadioFlyer.RedWagon.com, or RedWagonStore.com. Tiny hinges swing big doors.

5. Creating Ad Groups with Unrelated Keywords: Do not write an ad and dump every keyword under the sun into the ad group. Make tight ad groups based on a narrow set of related keywords matched closely to the ads and the landing page.

6. Muddying Search and Content Results: If you run all three streams of traffic (Google / Search / Content Network) through the same ad group, you lose the ability to distinguish among the very different kinds of traffic. I prefer to separate Google & Search from Content, in different campaigns.

7. Ignoring the 80/20 Principle: The 80/20 Rule says that the vast majority of outputs (impressions, clicks, leads, sales) are caused by a very small minority of inputs (ad groups, ads and keywords.) Spend your time on the vital few instead of the insignificant many.

8. Declaring Split-Test Winners Too Slowly: If you can declare a winner twice as fast, your site improves twice as fast. I recommend combing through your ads as often as you can announce a winner. If you go to http://www.splittester.com you can enter the # of clicks and the CTR of any two ads and it’ll tell you whether the better one is really better, or if it might just be luck.

9. Declaring Split-Test Winners to Quickly: If one ad got 1% and 5 clicks, and the other got 2% and 8 clicks, that’s not enough clicks to know for sure the winner is a sure thing. Again, let http://www.splittester.com decide their fate. Rule of thumb: 20+ clicks on each ad.

10. Ignoring negative keywords: Just about ANY ad group should probably have some negative keywords. It should always be on your checklist. It increases your Click Thru Rate because your ads don’t get shown to people who shouldn’t see them. Less waste.

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.

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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.

See a full listing of webinars and register at www.google.com/events/training, or sign-up now by clicking below.

• Get More Sales at a Lower Cost: Basics of Conversion Optimizer – Tues Oct 27th
• Focus on Results: Basics of Tracking Your AdWords Return on Investment – Tues Nov 3rd
• Set Up Your Campaigns for Success: Basics of Account Maintenance and Improvement – Wed Nov 4th
• Beyond Text Advertising: Basics of Display Ad Builder – Tues Nov 10th
• Put Your Website to the Test: Basics of Website Optimizer – Tues Nov 17th

Register today at www.google.com/events/training. You will need your email address and 10 digit AdWords Customer ID to register. Your Customer ID can be found in the upper right corner of your AdWords account when you’re logged in at adwords.google.com

See you in class!

The AdWords Team

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.

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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.

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.

• Search Engine Marketing Tactics: How to set up and manage pay per click campaigns across Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture), Microsoft adCenter (MSN), and all the smaller pay per click search engines
• Identifying keywords that really drive conversions
• Effective Search Engine Marketing copywriting
• Which tools, solutions and resources can help you reach your CTR and conversion goals
• What to track and how to do it effectively
• Search Engine Marketing Strategies: Bidding strategies that are specific to YOUR business model
• Effective landing page development and deployment
• Discover what is making your competitors successful – case studies, metrics, examples etc.
• How to recognize and avoid click fraud that could kill your campaign performance
• Focus on the best present and future opportunities in Search Engine Marketing that are right for your business

How You Will Benefit

• Benefits of attending a PPC Summit: In-depth practical knowledge to manage effective PPC SEM campaigns.
• Two comprehensive “How-To” resource manuals that will serve as a complete reference guide for pay per click – one per day of attendance
• Access to leading vendors (search engines, tools providers, SEMs, etc.)
• Opportunity to build lasting relationships with peers who have similar goals of succeeding with pay per click marketing
• Get your questions answered by Search Engine Marketing experts and discuss issues critical to your business

Read more and register for the 2009 Chicago PPC Summit.