• The MSN adCenter blog put together a comprehensive “Top Ten List” for preparing for the holiday shopping season. Tips included range from aggressive bidding, increased budgets and increased keyword research to the basics like including gift receipts and offering gift wrapping services.

• Have you abandoned Google’s Content Network and refuse to give it another shot? John Ellis has changed his mind. He discovered that with careful management and following a content-specific protocol …
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Today is the official unveiling of our new handbook: Inside Google AdWords Quality Score (click on title to access the handbook). Throughout our drive for Quality Score knowledge we have gathered detailed information, quips from our AdWords representatives and revelations from real world PPC results. We decided to place all of that information into a single, cohesive handbook.

This handbook is intended to empower AdWords advertisers to embrace Quality Score and use it to their advantage. To …

We write a lot about Google AdWords’ Quality Score. There I said it. But as long as Google has the largest share of search traffic, AdWords will continue to be the main driver of the PPC industry and we’ll continue to help turn your campaigns into well-oiled machines.

As you know, at the heart of Adwords is the Quality Score. Google has left search engine marketers to their own devices …

Keyword research was among a few things I never really understood how to do when I first began PPC campaigns. I basically used the keyword tools in Google and Yahoo, dumped a bunch of keywords into my account, and later refined my lists, deleted poor keywords and raised bids on better performing keywords. It was a ‘wait and see’ strategy.

This strategy wasn’t really working out too well. I was spending more time refining my keywords afterwards than if I were …

• Gordon Choi lays out some solid guidelines for testing 2nd and 3rd tier PPC search engines in this post. His advice ranges from setting expectations and priorities, researching before choosing an engine and knowing when to call it quits.
• This article is an example of a PPC strategy document, or a proposal. Shimon Sandler lays out his basic criteria for building an effective PPC campaign for a client. While he hits most of the major points, …
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When managing pay-per-click accounts, there is one activity that will improve your performance more easily than any other - effectively managing ad texts. Some would argue that bid management, optimizing for Quality Score or a myriad of other activities would take the cake. However, it is imperative that you have a strong first impression with searchers.  Consider the following:
Ad copy is the only part of your PPC campaign that a searcher actually sees. A searcher does not see …