According to The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), search advertising has grown 286% in the last five years and will increase from $14.6 billion to $16.6 billion in 2010.  The future for search engine advertising is bright. However, it’s the very vibrancy of search that leads to abuses and scams by counterfeiters, fraudsters and unscrupulous competitors. In fact, based on analysis of data from Direct Magazine, 14% of branded searches never arrive at the brand’s site.  While some of those clicks land on legitimate ecommerce sites reselling those branded goods, significant percentages are lured away from ‘clean well-lighted’ sites to disreputable destinations (read more in this pay-per-click advertising scams white paper). For luxury products, these statistics get much worse. A traffic audit for five luxury brands found that traffic to sites selling suspected counterfeit goods amounted to more than 45% of the search traffic generated by the official brand sites.

How does this happen?  Online scammers are every bit as savvy in online ‘best practices’ as legitimate interactive marketers.  They are smart and motivated and employ a wide array of online tactics to intercept traffic meant for legitimate brand and ecommerce sites.

The first tactic of choice is cybersquatting, the practice of registering a domain name which includes a trademark to which the scammer has no claim.  An unknowing potential customer may assume that this domain represents an official website of the brand and will mistakenly patronize this misleading website rather than the legitimate website for that brand. Cybersquatting can intercept significant traffic and, in the long term, dilute brand value when searchers are directed to sites with possibly counterfeit, poor quality or competitive goods.

Cybersquatting is often used in combination with other black-hat SEO tactics which scammers use to increase organic search rankings, often at the expense of legitimate brands.  In addition to cybersquatting, black-hat SEO practices can include placing a trademarked brand name in a web page title tag or headline, or building a large volume of links that use trademarked terms in a variety of ways.  For example, one site selling knockoff Louis Vuitton products created more than 13,000 inbound links, propelling the site to first place in searches for  the term ‘louis vuitton on sale’  and earning the knockoff site more than 3.3 million visits annually.

Analyzing these links further, we found that almost 25% of the links to this site resulted from internal website links with a brand term embedded in the link text. In addition, many external links to the site referenced a variation on the Louis Vuitton brand in anchor text. Still other links originated from a site where the relevant content was controlled by the knockoff company.  Black-hat SEO techniques are constantly evolving in an effort to stay ahead of the practices that search algorithms detect and discount.

Online scammers invest in paid search, too, just as legitimate marketers do. The most prevalent and obvious examples of paid search scams occur when a brand name is used in an illegitimate fashion in a paid search text ad or keyword buy.  The intention is to generate traffic at the expense of a legitimate brand and, as a result, paid search scams affect brands in two ways:  They intercept traffic that is searching for the legitimate brand and drive up the cost of a pay-per-click advertising campaign. Often, a branded term will be present in the ad copy itself and can lead consumers to counterfeit goods or to pages associating a legitimate brand with undesirable or offensive content.

As a side note, counterfeiters will also use common generic terms that a brand advertiser would purchase, too, driving up campaign costs and exposing consumers to knockoffs and sub-standard goods.  In a study that we conducted during the busy holiday shopping season last year, we examined search results for the popular term “designer handbags.”  A startling 32% of paid search ads that appeared on a search for this term led to sites that appeared to sell counterfeit handbags.

How and when can a brand take action? First of all, in the case of counterfeit or pirated goods, brands should always take action.  None of the ‘big three’ search engines allow pay-per-click ads that lead to sites offering counterfeit or pirated goods.  Each of those search engines has information on how to report these types of offenses posted within their advertising guidelines or ‘terms and conditions’ sections. It is important to remember, however, that the search engines do not police this type of activity and it is up to the legitimate brand to identify and report the offenders.

An advertiser can use a trademarked term in ad copy if the advertiser’s site either resells or provides information about the trademarked product, or if it sells or promotes component, replacement or compatible parts.  Advertisers are prohibited from using a trademark in ad copy if the advertiser’s site is deceptive.  A good example is that of a classic ‘bait and switch’ scenario in which a paid search ad promotes one type of branded product, but the corresponding landing page does not sell that branded product or sells only a competitive brand.

Online scammers are aggressive and savvy in promoting their wares online, but brand marketers can outwit them with a solid online brand protection strategy that seeks and destroys the scammers.  To paraphrase the old adage ‘you don’t need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the brand next to you.’

There are plenty of places on the web to help you familiarize yourself with the specifics of the pay-per-click scam threat including ecommerce associations, publications, blogs, and LinkedIn groups dedicated to the topic of brand protection.

MarkMonitor is a global provider of online brand protection solutions. The company offers a free white paper that can be accessed here about: Minimizing Paid Search Scams

Frederick Felman is the CMO at MarkMonitor®, a leader in enterprise brand protection, where he is responsible for promoting the company’s brand protection products.  He and his team created the Brandjacking Index®, an often cited measure of the trends in online abuse targeting the world’s largest brands.

© 2010 MarkMonitor Inc.  All rights reserved.  MarkMonitor®  and Brandjacking Index® are registered trademark s of MarkMonitor Inc.   All other trademarks included herein are the property of their respective owners.

In the past, we have talked about Inheriting Accounts from other Agencies, but what about internal accounts? As we adapt to the changes around us, we have developed a list of best practices for internal account transitions. Below are some tips and suggestions for how to smoothly transition an account to a new manager in a way that may even render new ideas and improved performance.

Two Birds with One Stone

• Start Early!
  • This may be easier said than done. Sometimes, team members may leave unexpectedly or with little notice. Don’t panic if that happens. Hopefully, you have a history of the account in place via Basecamp or another project management system (we document almost all information on an account or changes made to an account, just in case).
  • However, if you are in a nice position where 30 days notice is given, or maybe even longer, don’t wait to transition! Start giving the new manager campaign to-dos as early as possible. This will allow them to get a feel for the account without needing to know every little detail right away.
  • If time allows give the new manager at least 2 weeks of sole management (this will come after the steps mentioned below). At this point, the original manager (let’s just say this is you) should be hands off, allowing the new manager to face any challenges with the ability to ask questions if needed, as you are still on site and available.

• Internal Download: This involves you, the new manager, and any notes on the account. You’ll want to spend a couple of hours going through the account history, specifics about the client (their contact preferences, any quirks, etc.), and immediate plans for the account. For the immediate plans, it might be helpful to document monthly to-dos for the new manager. Write out all actions you were planning on taking in the next month or two that will help the new manager stay on top of any current plans while also helping them understand the optimizations made on a consistent basis. Be sure to grab some coffee – these sessions can be very long with a lot of information and you’ll want the new manager to be as alert as possible. Make sure they take good notes!

• Introductory Call with Client: At this point, the new manager should be ready to meet the client. I’d suggest letting the client know on the phone, if not in person, that you’ll no longer be managing the account, and that you would like to set up a call or meeting to introduce their new point of contact. Please, don’t call them up one day with the new manager on the phone and introduce them right there. Give them some time to absorb the information of your departure before you introduce anyone new. When it comes time for the call, make sure the new manager takes lead – you will want to assure the client that this person knows the account well and can competently speak about it.

• Keyword Audit: I’ve recently acquired a couple of new accounts and I decided to do a keyword audit with each client, which I found incredibly helpful. I created an excel document with all keywords in the account and included a second tab for negative terms. Having spent ample time learning about the client and the account, I went through all of the keywords and highlighted any that may no longer be relevant. I also embarked upon some keyword research and created a third tab with suggested terms I thought could be added. A fresh pair of eyes can do wonders for an account and this is one of the benefits of a transition. It’s always good to do some spring cleaning right?

• Client Meeting: Once the audit was complete, I sent it over to the client for approval and requested a meeting to go over the terms. By this point, the old manager was gone and I was on my own. The time I spent with the client really digging in to the account was incredibly helpful. It helped me better understand the product and target audience, and reassured the client that the account was on the right track. Plus, they were pleased I was willing to spend so much time with them. During this time, I also spoke with the client about goals of the account. This particular account had been with us for a while and the goals were a little outdated. We redefined our benchmarks and both left the meeting feeling good about what needed to be done to hit the new goals.

• Ad Audit: Once the Keyword Audit was complete, I moved on to ads. I revamped several of the old ads and created new ones for the new terms added to account. As with the keywords, I wanted the client’s input so I sent them over approval before implementation. When the client reviewed them, she found some old ads she thought could incorporate a new tagline that had been developed for other marketing material. If we had not gone through this process, she may not have thought to share the tagline with me.

With any change comes a time for reflection on the past and ways to grow in the future a time of transition can actually help facilitate growth. Following these steps will ensure that not only the transition goes smoothly, but you may even develop new ideas for the account. And if nothing else, you’re showing the client that not only do you care about their account, but you are a proficient search marketer.

If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, then you may want to consider becoming an affiliate advertiser.

Affiliate advertisers host ads for other companies’ products or services on their site. They are paid each time a particular action is taken relevant to one of the ads. For example, they may be paid each time someone sees the ad, each time someone clicks on the ad, or each time someone clicks on the ad and completes a conversion.

Revenues for affiliate advertising can range from a couple of cents per action to a couple hundred dollars per action. It depends on the value of the product or service for sale, as well as the particular affiliate program the company has in place.

Affiliate advertisers don’t need to be companies themselves. They can be regular people with simple and inexpensive websites.

If you’ve decided you’d like to try out affiliate advertising, here are some steps for getting started:

1. If you don’t already have a website or blog, start one. This is a necessary step for becoming an affiliate advertiser. Some affiliate programs, including Google’s AdSense program, require publishers in certain locations to have owned their sites for at least six months before becoming an affiliate. You may want to base the theme of your new site on a particular product or service you’d like to advertise, though a better idea is probably writing about a topic you’re passionate about. This way you’re more likely to update your content regularly, get more traffic, and have people click your ads.

1. Look for products and/or services to advertise. If you are new to affiliate advertising, you may want to start out with just one advertisement on your site. This way you can see if the revenue produced by the ad is worth the time you’ve invested in designing and updating your site for that ad’s success. You can search for products or services to advertise by joining an established affiliate network like Commission Junction, Amazon, eBay, ClickBank, or Google. Look for items that are highly relevant to your site, don’t have a lot of competition, and have a commission structure that fits your liking.

1. Once you’ve found the product or service you’d like to advertise, review your site. Make sure that it is relevant enough to what you’d like to promote. If it’s not, users will be less interested in the ad. If they are visiting your site to read about innovative children’s toys, for example, they likely won’t click on an ad for an office cleaning business. If your site’s theme is very different from the product or service you’d like to promote, find a new product or service. If it’s just a little different, modify your site to make it more relevant. That may include adding particular keywords, rewriting your headlines, and renaming your images. Once you’ve made these improvements, you’re more likely to be approved to advertise the particular product or service.

1. Next, apply for the affiliate program you’re interested in. Also, if required apply for the particular advertising program you’re interested in. Before applying, check out the affiliate program’s website to see if you fit the eligibility requirements. You will see that to be an affiliate advertiser for Amazon products, for example, you can’t be a resident of Colorado, North Carolina, or Rhode Island. Also, make sure that you have your bank account or PayPal information on hand, as many of the networks require this information in your application.

1. Once you’re accepted into an affiliate/advertising program, create your ad. Affiliate networks generally provide tools that let you easily design your ad. Usually you can choose between a simple text ad or a banner image ad.  Some affiliate networks, like Google’s, allow for video, flash and mobile ads. You must make sure that the ad conforms to the affiliate and/or advertiser’s standards. eBay, for example, has special wording guidelines. Once your ad is complete, you will be provided with a code you must copy and paste onto your site. This code will make the ad appear, as well as track all traffic that is delivered from your site to a company’s landing page.

1. Monitor your ad and site analytics once the ad is up and running. See how much traffic your site or blog is generating, and how much of that traffic is clicking on your ad. Also, monitor the percentage of clicks that are resulting in conversions. Conversions can either be lead-related actions, like white paper registrations or newsletter signups, or actual sales. If your traffic numbers are pretty low, then improving those figures should be your number one priority. Perhaps you could update your blog more often, or start promoting your articles on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

1. If your traffic is high but your clicks are low, improve your ad. This could mean changing the ad type (banners instead of buttons, text instead of images), moving the ad to another location on your page, or simplifying the ad’s copy. Google offers a number of tips for improving your ad’s performance. Try to make just one change, and then see how that impacts your ad campaign. If it doesn’t make a positive difference, make a different change. Once you find the change or changes that work best, keep those in place. If none of your efforts improve your ad’s performance, you should consider picking a new product or service to advertise.

1. Once you’re ready, put more ads on your site. Once you’ve gotten a feel for whether affiliate advertising is worth your time, consider branching out. Find more products or services to promote within your affiliate program, or join additional affiliate programs to potentially maximize your revenue. Make sure, though, your new ads conform to your site’s theme. As you experience more success with your affiliate advertising efforts, buzz may generate about your site. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself being contacted by companies wanting to advertise on your site.

About the Author

Christine Laubenstein is a Marketing Associate at WordStream, a provider of an advanced pay-per-click tool suite, designed to improve the performance of pay-per-click keywords in your AdWords campaign.

This high number of engaged users represents a huge potential advertising audience for your business. If you choose to tap into this audience, consider following these 10 tips for advertising on Facebook:

1. Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s advertising guidelines. Facebook has very strict requirements for the types of ads you can place on its site. For example, ads can’t contain audio that plays automatically; they can’t contain excessive repetition; and they can’t promote “get rich quick” opportunities. Make sure you adhere to these rules or your ad will be rejected.
2. Make sure your ad text isn’t annoying. Facebook has a feature that neither Google nor Bing has: You can close ads you don’t like. Just click on the gray box at the top right corner of the ad. Facebook will ask you why didn’t like the ad, and you can offer your feedback. If enough people close the ad it won’t be shown anymore. So if you actually want your ad to last beyond a few days or even a few hours, make sure it’s not too pushy.
3. Find a relevant and attractive image for your ad. While ads on the major search engines can’t contain images, Facebook ads allow for one image. When I signed into my Facebook account today, for example, I came across an ad for Caribbean real estate containing a beautiful image of an island surrounded by clear, turquoise water.  Be sure to pick an enticing image that highly relates to your product or service. Then you’ll get more qualified clicks.
4. Familiarize yourself with the different ways you can target users. With Facebook, you can target people based on many different factors. You can show your ads to people of a certain age, people in a certain city or country, or people who had a certain college major. You can target single people, Republicans, or employees of a specific company. You can also target people based upon their interests, whether it be snake charming, fly fishing, or cross stitching. Determine your target audience, and then advertise to these people alone.
5. Determine the main purpose of your advertising campaign. Decide whether your main aim is to have users become familiar with your brand, or to generate leads or sales. If it’s the former, then cost per impression advertising is probably the better option. If it’s the latter, then cost per click advertising is likely your better option.
6. If you don’t have a lot of money, don’t spend a lot. You can be a thrifty advertiser with Facebook. According to Facebook’s Help Center, the minimum required daily budget is $1 for both cost per click and cost per impression advertising. The minimum cost per click is 1 cent and the minimum cost per impression is 2 cents. Just keep in mind that if you have a lower budget your ad will be shown less frequently.
7. Use Facebook’s bid estimator to help you set your bid. If you really have no idea what bid amount will get your ad a good amount of exposure, take advantage of this tool. While creating your ad, enter your targeting criteria, and then go through to step 4. The bid estimator will show you the range of bids that are winning auctions among ads like yours.
8. Make the most of the advertising space you’re allotted. Facebook allows 25 characters for the ad’s title, and 135 characters for the ad’s body. While Google also allows 25 characters for its ads’ titles, it only allows 105 characters for the ad’s body (70 for the ad’s text and 35 for the display URL). So take advantage of Facebook’s extra space by including all the information you think will prompt qualified clicks.
9. Monitor your ads’ performance with Facebook’s Ads Manager and Facebook reports. These resources will tell you how many people saw your ads, how many people clicked on them, and your click-through rates. They will also tell you how much you’ve spent, the types of users who have seen your ads, and the types of users who have clicked on your ads. This information shows you which of your ads are successful, and which need improvement. Modify your ad campaign based on this information.
10. Check out this Facebook advertising blog for more tips on good Facebook advertising techniques. It contains common Facebook advertising mistakes, information about new Facebook advertising features, and detailed tutorials for advertising on Facebook. This video, for example, takes you through the steps for building a Facebook ad.

About the Author

Christine Laubenstein is a Marketing Associate at WordStream, a provider of an advanced pay-per-click tool suite, designed to improve the performance of pay-per-click keywords in your AdWords campaign.

Locations & Languages

If you haven’t taken a look at the geo-targeting options, it is worth becoming familiar with the many choices. I once had a client where we targeted the states in the Midwest. We noticed in analytics that a lot of clicks were coming from one metro area, but those visitors rarely converted. In order to help manage spend, we kept the states we were targeting but excluded traffic from a 15 mile radius around the metro area. This way we were no longer getting irrelevant clicks and had more money to spend on those who were more likely to convert. The location options allow you to narrow down your focus by country, state, city, metro area or even zip code. Want to reach everyone in who lives in Houston but not those that live downtown? You can choose to target the city of Houston but then exclude the zip codes in the downtown region.

Another option if you are trying to target a region but don’t want to list out every city in the area, is to use settings on the ”Custom” tab. You have the option to target a specified radius around a city or zip code or you can also create a “custom shape”. For custom shape, you can decide if it is a triangle, square or rectangle and include (or exclude) exactly what you want.

Networks and Devices

Under this section you can choose if you want to run on Google Search, Search Partners and/or Google Content Network. I won’t go into these differences today but you may want to brush up on the Content Network best practices before you make your selection.

If you haven’t taken a look at the Device options, you might want to. Is your landing page smart phone friendly? How about your conversion form – is it really long with a lot of items to fill in? You may be getting clicks from smart phones and your landing page is less than optimal for these devices. If that is the case, change your settings so you don’t spend money on clicks that won’t convert. Google gives you the options to target all devices, desktop and laptop computers only, or just iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers. If you do have a landing page that is mobile friendly, click on “Advanced devices and carrier options” to choose which mobile devices to target (Android, iPhone, Palm and iPad) as well as the mobile carrier. Running ads for a Custom iPhone app? Since the apps won’t work on Android phones, target only iPhone users to help rule out irrelevant clicks and spend.Bidding and Budget

Google provides two options for managing your bids – either use Manual Bidding or Automatic. I prefer to manage bids myself and use manual bidding in order to maintain control of budgets and spend but some only use automatic bidding and it works well. Try both and see which one gets you the results you need. Another option in this section is to use Conversion Optimizer. This option is only available for campaigns that have at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days. If you qualify, you are given the option to set your conversion goal and then Google will manage your campaign to help generate additional conversions. For better results, make sure your account has quite a bit of history before activating. Also, keep conversion optimizer on for several weeks before you determine if it does or does not work for you. Often the cost per conversion goes up at first and then brings itself back down to an acceptable average over the course of several weeks or months depending on your traffic.

Position Preference, Delivery Method

Position preference can be enabled if you want Google to control bids and show your ads in a preferred position or range. For instance, if you get the most qualified clicks in positions 3-4, you can set it to optimize to these positions. Google can’t guarantee you will show in your preferred position all the time, but they will try to automatically adjust your bid to place. You can choose to show:

• Higher than a given position
• Lower than a given position
• Within a range of positions
• In a single exact position

One important note before selecting this – you may loose impressions and clicks by setting position preference. If you are not able to show up in position 3-4 as specified, Google won’t show your ad at all. Make sure you weigh the options before deciding.

In Delivery Method, you have two choices – Standard or Accelerated. In Standard method your ad will show evenly throughout the day. The benefit is that Google helps balance your clicks to your budget so you are less likely to run out of budget by mid morning. Make sure your budgets are set high enough, if your budgets are too low, you will eventually run out of money not matter what. The Accelerated setting doesn’t take into account your budget and the amount of time left in the day. It shows your ads as frequently as possible, which means if budgets are low, you may run out by lunch.

Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling

In this section you have the option to set a start and end date for your campaign. Running a campaign for the 4^th of July? Make sure it starts and stops on time by setting a start and end date so you don’t loose track and time and forget to pause the campaign after the holiday. Ad scheduling or day parting allows you to run your ads only during certain time periods in the day. There are many options with this and we have put together a separate post with tips on how to get the most out of ad scheduling.

Ad Delivery: Ad rotation, Frequency Capping

Ad rotation allows you to choose how your ads are served. Do you want Google to determine the best performing one? If so, choose Optimize. If you are testing not only ads but also landing pages or simply want more control, select Rotate which shows your ads more evenly. A general best practice is to use Rotate, especially if you have a campaign focused on conversions. With Optimize, Google will run the ad that has the highest click through rate but it may actually have a lower conversion rate – since you want conversions, Google isn’t optimizing to your advantage.

While several of these categories can be explored much further, this gives you the general summary of the Google AdWords settings tab. Make sure you try different settings to see what produces the best result and anytime you add a new campaign don’t forget to go in and update your settings!

Bonus shortcut tip – an easy way to change the settings on multiple campaigns quickly. Click on the Settings tab (without clicking on a campaign first). Once all campaigns are listed, click the check box on the left for all the ones you want to edit. Once all are highlighted in yellow, select “Edit Settings” and you will be allowed to change settings right there rather than going into each campaign separately. Want to change Ad Rotation and it isn’t showing up? First click “Column” at the top and use the check boxes to select other categories. Make sure you hit “Save” at the bottom to save your changes.

The keyword report from the interface gives you the average CPC, not your max CPC, and the desktop tool doesn’t show you the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will want to see to base your decisions on, like average position and click-through rate.

A Solution:

I’ve always been a big fan of using excel to help make tasks as “automatic” as possible, so I wanted to share the following process for combining the interface report with the desktop tool to make your bid changes. There is a lot of information here, but I promise that if you go through it a few times it will shave time off of your bid adjustments, especially if you are still manually typing bids into the interface one by one.

The point of downloading both the report and the desktop tool is so we can do two things:

1. Pull the actual CPC into the report that shows us our KPIs.
2. Create a file with the updated bids that you can easily import into the desktop tool.

Formulas To Use:

First you will need to know a little about the following formulas in excel. I’ll explain how to use them later on:

Vlookup – This formula is used when you want to look up, and pull over information from another sheet. When creating a vlookup formula I use the following saying to help keep everything in order: I want to look up “X” in “this range”, and what I want to pull is in column number “Y”, and if it can’t find what I’m looking for, give me “FALSE”. Now, if you’ve never done this formula, I’m sure that saying doesn’t really make much sense, but it will be easier to understand when you put it into practice below.

Concatenate – This formula allows you to combine text and/or cells together. You will need to put a comma between each piece that you are concatenating, and remember to put quotes around spaces and text that you are adding. If you’d like some more information, you can review another post of mine about adding tracking parameters to URLs.

Setting Up Your Bid Change Workbook

The first thing you will need to do your bid changes is a keyword report from the Yahoo! interface, and a download of the keywords from the Yahoo! desktop tool.

To get the keyword report from the interface, follow these steps:

1. Log into your Yahoo! account, and go to the Reports tab.
2. Choose the Keyword Performance report from the left hand navigation.
3. Set your time frame for the report. We typically run our reports for 30-day time periods, but you can do more or less depending on the amount of volume your account gets.
4. Download the report to a .csv, and open the file. Save the workbook as an excel document, and give it an appropriate name.
5. The report heading information is not necessary, and all of those rows should be deleted so cell A1 contains the header “Keyword”.
6. The row immediately below the report headers can also be deleted, because we don’t need to know any of the totals.

Once you have cleaned everything up your sheet should look like this:

Looking at the interface report you will see that there is a column for cpc (in yellow above), but as I mentioned before, this is the AVERAGE cpc over the time period you are looking at, and NOT the actual cpc bid that you have set. Because this data isn’t what we want, you can delete all of the data in that column.

To get the keyword download from the desktop tool, follow these steps:

1. Open up the desktop tool, and make sure you have downloaded the most recent data of the account you want to look at. You do this by clicking on the “Get Account” button in the upper right hand corner, and entering your login information.
2. When the account download is finished, make sure you have the entire account highlighted in the left hand navigation, and click on the keyword tab so you are looking at every keyword in the account.
3. Export the entire account to excel.
   1. Go to “More Actions” in the upper right hand column, and choose “Export to Bulksheet (CSV).
   2. Click the account box so all of your campaigns are automatically selected, and hit “Export”
   3. Save the file, and open it.
   4. Copy the entire sheet, and paste it into a new tab in the report download file that you saved earlier.
   5. You won’t need the desktop export file anymore, so go ahead and close it.

Now that you’ve downloaded everything you will have an excel file with 2 sheets, one with the interface data, and one with the desktop tool data.

If you think about it, the probability of having duplicate keywords in your account is pretty high. For example, if you have restructured your account and moved “Keyword A” from “Ad Group 1” to Ad Group 2”, even though you’ve paused it in Ad Group 1 it will show up in the account download. When you download your account it would then look something like this:

If you were to do a vlookup in this example, the cpc bid for Keyword A would pull from the first time it shows up, which would in Ad Group 1 where it is paused. But we would want to know where it is Active in Ad Group 2. But never fear – it is possible to get around this by concatenating the Campaign, Ad Group, and Keyword, to create a unique “name” that we can vlookup against. That may sound more difficult than it is, so let’s walk through the few quick steps to set this up.

First, you will need to insert a column on the far left of the sheet, like so:

Then, starting in cell A2, you will need to create a concatenation formula that will combine your campaign, ad group, and keyword into one long phrase. You can copy and paste the following into your sheet:

=CONCATENATE(D2,C2,B2)

Drop it down for all of the other rows in your sheet. Just be sure to copy this formula into cell A2 when you start. Once you do that, your sheet will look like this:

Set up the second tab of your workbook the same way, but use this formula instead:

=CONCATENATE(B2,C2,G2)

Tip: Double check that your concatenation is pulling from the Campaign, Ad Group, then Keyword columns on both sheets, as you may have different report layouts set up. At this point I would also save the file if you haven’t done so already.

Combining the reports

A simple vlookup is all we need now to pull the actual CPC bid from the keyword download into the interface report. To do this, just copy and paste the following formula into the report in the CPC column:

=VLOOKUP(A2,’Desktop Tool Download’!A:J,10,FALSE)

Be sure to place this formula in the cell H2 when starting, and verify that it is pulling from the correct columns on your sheets. When you have made sure the formula is correct, pull it down to the rest of your rows so your sheet looks like this:

Tip: You’ll notice in the image above that I’ve also added a column header to the far right called “New Bid”. By doing this you can easily type in your new bids, or set up a calculation to increase or decrease your bids. This is also a good way to keep a record of the changes you make so you can revert back to the original bids should your changes cause a negative effect on the campaign.

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed those pesky bids called “Default”. When you see that it means that the keyword is using the ad group default bid, and you can pull that in by doing a vlookup against just the ad group name:

=VLOOKUP(C3,’Desktop Tool Download’!C:J,8,FALSE)

Tip: You will need to change the cell numbers to match your sheet. This is just an example to get you started.

Pulling It All Together

Once you have set your new bids, the final step is to put it back into the format of the desktop tool.

1. If you’ve been using formulas to get your new bids, copy and paste the values.
2. Go to the second sheet that contains your desktop tool download.
3. Highlight the header row, and turn on filters.
4. Set a custom filter to show you everything that does NOT contain “keyword” in the component type column. Delete all of the rows that are showing.
5. Take the filter off. You should now only see keywords.
6. Assuming you have not deleted any columns in either sheet, in the “Sponsored Search Bid (USD)” column enter the following vlookup formula to pull your new bid in:

=VLOOKUP(A2,’Interface KW Report’!A:Q,17,FALSE)

7. Copy and paste the values of the bids, and format them to be currency.
8. Delete Column A that contains your concatenated names.
9. Copy the entire sheet, and save it in a new file as a Unicode Text File. Once the file is saved, change the extension to .csv.

10. Upload the file into the desktop tool using “More Actions”.

If you’ve hung in there until the end, well done! Though this process has enough set up steps that is seems daunting when you are getting started, it really will help shave time off of your bulk bid adjustments in the end.

If you have any other suggestions on how to easily make bulk adjustments, please share them with us!

The exciting thing about search marketing is that people’s search behaviors are always changing; this can depend on the time of year, trends or new developments in the industry. But how do you stay ahead of these changes and more importantly, what do you do to counteract any negative effects in your accounts? In this post, I’ll focus on understanding traffic trends in your PPC accounts and in my follow-up post I will talk about how to effectively leverage your findings to benefit your account.

Digging-in To Your Account

There are many tools out there to help you understand traffic patterns for your campaigns. However, the first place you need to look is in your PPC account. Start out by running a campaign report for the last few years. Under settings choose “monthly” as your unit of time. Alternatively, set your time range and look at a graph for impressions and clicks in the interface. Either of these tools should give you insights into when traffic drops or spikes occurred. Are there any patterns in your data? Now start thinking about what events (good or bad) happened during those time periods:

• Did you make any significant changes in your account during those times? The “View Change History” tool can be very insightful.
• Did something big happen in the industry?
• Is seasonality a factor for your product or service?

Drill down even further by pulling keyword placement performance reports. Some keywords might be affected by seasonality as well.  Certain keywords may have been star performers for a few years, but have dropped off in performance even if their average position hasn’t changed much over time.  Pull out these keywords and use Google Trends to further trouble shoot. Searchers might be using different search terms than they did a year ago. Along with Google Trends, your Google Analytics can also help you identify search patterns based on geography.

What Are Your Competitors Doing?

Keep an eye on your competitors – know what they’re doing, not only in the PPC space, but other marketing efforts as well. It is easy to get sucked in to the PPC world, but take those blinders off. Your competitors maybe running compelling awareness-building offline campaigns that are driving searchers to click on their PPC ads as well.  Your traffic might be directly impacted by what your competitors are doing.

What Is Going On In The Industry?

You may want to set up Google alerts for your most important keywords and try to catch-up on some industry news on a weekly basis. Traffic may spike if there is a huge surge in your industry or tank if there is some bad publicity, so keep on top of what’s going on and think through what that might mean for you PPC account.

I’ve recapped several ways in which you can start identifying changes in your PPC traffic. In my next post, I will discuss how to utilize the knowledge that you have about search patterns to maximize your account performance.

Search Funnels are a set of reports in Adwords that allow you to analyze ad impression and click behavior for campaigns, ad groups and keywords. So why is this important for advertisers? Adwords currently attributes conversions to the last click, but as we all know, few conversions are driven by just one click on one ad. There are usually many touch points with a customer, so the search funnels reports allow us to see the impressions and clicks that lead up to the conversion, which in most cases is just as important as knowing what finally lead to the sale.

What reports are included?

The search funnels reports are found in the Adwords interface under Reporting > Conversions. Click the link on the right hand side of the page, and you will be taken to the Search Funnels section.

Let’s first define the data that you will be accessing from these reports.

First click – The first time one of your ads is clicked.

Last click – The click on an ad that precedes a conversion. All conversions in Adwords are by default attributed to the last click.

Assist click – The click on an ad that precedes the last click.

Assist Impression – When an ad is shown preceding the last click, regardless of whether or not the ad was clicked.

Items to Note:

• The number of conversions in Adwords will differ from the Search Funnels, because Adwords includes conversion from the Google Content Network, and the Search Funnels do not. They also exclude information on organic results, actual search queries, and competitor keyword information.
• Cookie settings – search history is currently set at 30 days, and is not yet customizable.

Reports within the Search Funnels

Overview – Show how keywords and campaigns work together to create a conversion. Data is generated from conversion paths, or the sequence of ad clicks & impressions that lead to conversions. As mentioned above, content network, organic and competitive information isn’t provided.

Top Conversions – This report pulls together the various conversion types that you have set up through Adwords conversion tracking.

Assist Clicks & Impressions – This report is helpful when you need data that is not conversion focused. Assisted impressions are when your ad is shown, but not clicked, but these metrics are important in considering how many touch points you have had with the customer. Once again, you can see data for all conversion types together or individually, and you can drill down to the campaign, ad group and keyword levels.

Assisted conversions – This report shows both last click and assisted conversions. The drop down box allows you to view all conversions, or select one particular type. This will come in handy if you have different types of conversions set up (a sign up versus an ecommerce purchase), and you want to see if there is a difference in how each type conversion is reached. This report also gives you the ratio of Assisted conversions to last click conversions, so see below on the details of how to analyze this metric.

First Click & Last Click Analysis - First click and last click analysis reports allow you to focus on conversion paths that began or ended with a specific campaign, ad group or keyword. Once you are on the level you want, you can choose any other report in the drop down (while staying focused on conversions).

• For example, you can choose the top paths report in drop down. Once you are there, the breadcrumbs will show you that you are in a subset of conversions. You will stay drilled in until clicking on a main navigation report.

Top Paths – Shows most common conversion paths, and how everything works together to create conversions. Choose keyword in the dimension drop down box, and you will see the most common path for keywords. If the same keyword is repeated, it represents two clicks for that keyword that then leads to a conversion. As with the other reports you can also view data on the campaign and ad group level. If you select keyword path (impressions) you will see the sequence of keywords that showed your ads, regardless of whether the ads were clicked or not. This data closely represents the breadth of related keywords people are searching for prior to converting.

Time Lag – This section represents the time it takes customers to convert. If it takes a lot of days before a conversion, you will know that your customers are in the research phase of the buying cycle. However, if conversions come on the first day, and the rest of your research shows that there was only one click and one keyword, you will know that your customers are coming to you on those terms when they are ready to buy. The hours data represents the first 24 hours in hour segments.

Path Length – This report is a high level diagnosis that allows you to see how many clicks it takes to get a conversion, and the type of conversions. As mentioned before, different conversions may take more clicks. You can also see how the value of your various conversion types changes by clicking the value link. The data represented here is the percentage of your revenue that is attributed to paths of different lengths. Additionally, if you change to the impressions view you will see how many times people saw your ads (without clicking) before converting.

The search funnel reports can be overwhelming when you first look at them, but it is important to keep in mind that the additional data that is provided is just one more way we can make educated decisions. Start with the overview reports and familiarize yourself with the broad data like understanding on average how long it takes before your customers convert, and identifying if your campaigns tend to have more assisted or last click conversions. From there you can dive deeper into the data, and ensure that you are benefiting from it, and not just spending time looking at more numbers. Along with the tips above, remember the following:

• Keywords play three roles in a conversion path. Last click (immediately preceding the conversion), assist click (immediately before the click that leads to the conversion), and assist impression (ad is displayed but not clicked).
• The ratio of assisted conversions and last click conversions is a quick indicator of whether the keywords serve more in the role of last click or assist click. A value close to zero means they are last click, and a value close to 1 means they are equally an assist and last click. The higher the number, the more they are in the role of an assist click.
• Some keywords in your Adwords campaigns may not show up in the reports because they only include keywords that play an assist or last click role.
• Assist clicks & impressions report break out information in same way, but for clicks and impressions instead of conversions.
• When possible, have FUN with this data. This is great information that will help you grow your accounts, and at the end of the day that’s the main goal, so enjoy getting there!

Over the course of the past several years, many old PPC tactics have become dated and are no longer considered best practice. There have also been many PPC strategies that have been developed bloggers and so-called PPC advertisers without solid evidence of increased ROI and, to no one’s surprise, may damage your account’s profitability rather than help.

After reading Search Engine Land’s excellent take on 36 persistent SEO myths we were inspired to create a similar list for PPC- check them out, see if you’re falling prey to any, and figure out how to get over them if you are!

1. Being in position #1 will make you most profitable. This is absolutely not true. Sometimes being in position #1 will be profitable, but most of the time you’ll end up spending more cash than what you’re generating. Being in position #1 gives you great visibility and is great for branding purposes. However it also draws in a lot of ‘searchers’ who are not yet ready to buy, but are still researching. Experimenting with ad position will allow you to determine the positions in which you achieve the right balance of cost vs. value.

2. Turn off your account at night, no one is searching or buying then. There are actually several reports that can show you how much traffic you get during all hours of the day or night, as well as click-through rates. Using Analytics, you can also determine your hourly conversion rates. Consider all of the different time zones you’re targeting, and remember that if you do turn your account off before doing the proper research you could be eliminating qualified traffic.

3. Dump as many keywords into your PPC account as possible to get the most traffic. While in theory you may get a ton of traffic from doing a keyword dump, it won’t all be qualified traffic. You really want to only target the most relevant keywords for your PPC account. If you do a dump you’re likely to blow through your budget quickly without generating much return on your investment.

4. Turn on only your best performing ad. Having only one ad text running can be detrimental to growing your PPC account’s performance. Ad text testing is a great strategy to help increase your click-through rates and conversion rates. If you stick with only running one ad, you’ll never be able to truly grow your account.

5. With PPC you can set it and forget it. A lot of small businesses think they can load in their keywords and ads, set a budget and walk away. PPC is not set it and forget it if you want to make the most of the money you’re spending. It takes constant monitoring, testing, bid lowering & increasing, turning off, and turning on in order to get the biggest bang for your buck. It is for this reason that many businesses choose to outsource their accounts to a PPC agency which can dedicate time and expertise to these tasks.

6. You should always run the content network. The content network can be a great source of extra traffic and leads. However you should research content network best practices before just turning on the content network and letting it run, and always make sure you monitor it very carefully. The content network has been known to drive a lot of unqualified traffic at very high costs when left uncontrolled.

7. You should never run on the content network. Again, the content network can be a great source for extra traffic and leads. Always try the content network, tweak settings as necessary, and give it a chance to work for you before you write it off.

8. Bid on only long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are very specific keywords that relate to the product or service you are selling on your site. However, there is minimal traffic associated with long-tail keywords at times and this traffic also revolves around searchers who are now in their buying phase. If you don’t bid on some general keywords, your ad may never appear and you’ll never be in front of your target audience when they’re doing their initial research, which will strip you of important brand recognition opportunities later in the customer’s buying cycle.

9. Quality score is calculated on click-through rates only. Quality score is heavily based on click-through rates, but it is also impacted by landing page quality, among other factors that Google doesn’t want to define too closely

10. Good conversion rates will help improve your Quality Score. No, in fact Google says conversion rates are not calculated into your overall account Quality Score.

11. Opening up a new PPC account will re-start your Quality Scores. Technically, if you open up a new account your Quality Scores will reset. However, if you keep the same account structure, landing pages, ads, keywords, etc., then you’re going to end up with the same Quality Score as you had previously. In order to improve your Quality Score, you need to re-structure your account and organize your Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords to reach the most targeted audience possible.

12. You should only have one keyword per ad group. While some advertisers live and die by this (so I’ve heard), this is not necessarily true and you could be spending a lot of time over-optimizing your account. The best practice here is to have a small list of keywords in your ad groups so that your ads match the keywords as best as possible. With this strategy, the more your keywords match your ads, the more likely your ads are going to be more targeted to the user, and the higher your click-through rates will be.

13. Never put phone numbers in your ad texts. We did a test on this a while back, and honestly it depends on your account and your target audience. If you’re reading in some article that you should ‘never’ or ‘always’ do xyz, then you need to test it for yourself first before making the final decision. We found that putting the phone number in our ads actually increased our click-through rates as well as increased the number of calls/leads we got from the website.

14. Copy your competitor’s ads. It’s okay to look at your competitor’s ads for ideas, but do not copy them. Putting aside the legal issues, your ad will not stand out from your competitor’s ad, and you’ll only confuse your potential customer. Find a way to make your ad different and enticing enough to make the customer want to click on your ad over your competitor’s ad.

15. Test your ads every week no matter how many clicks they have. Wrong! Be sure that when you’re testing ads and deciding on when to pause or leave an ad on that you give yourself a longer date range to look at – also be sure each ad has at least 100 clicks, the more the better before making any final decision. This will allow you to get a true perspective on which ad is performing best over time. If you get too anxious and pause an ad too early, you could be pausing a potentially great performing ad.

16. Your PPC agency is there to drive traffic to your landing page only. No, your PPC agency is there to help you meet your bottom line, period. This includes managing your PPC account, giving recommendations on your website, and optimizing your PPC landing pages, among many other things.

17. PPC is mainly click fraud serving your ads to invalid traffic. Actually, Google, Yahoo and Bing are very good at keeping track of fraudulent traffic. The search engines can actually refund your click money if they determine some of your clicks are invalid.

18. Google Adwords and Analytics reports different traffic numbers, therefore they’re not very accurate. Google Analytics and Google Adwords report on traffic numbers differently – Google Analytics reports on the number of unique visitors to your site from PPC, whereas Adwords reports on the total number of clicks your PPC ads get, therefore some discrepancy in visitor number is to be expected. Lead numbers given by each source should be very similar.

19. Google is the only search engine worth advertising in. This is absolutely a myth!  Yahoo and Bing, together with a few other second tier search engines, are well worth advertising in. For certain accounts, sometimes Yahoo and Bing actually work better than Google when it comes to conversions and ROI.

20. Google is more for young, college-aged kids, where Yahoo and Bing are more for older people. These kinds of studies have been going around for a while. And while some people truly believe these search engines have such specific demographics, there is no definitive study – just opinions.

21. The search engines know best. While they certainly aren’t’ trying to defraud you, they won’t catch every instance of nefarious activity that may happen to your PPC account, and remember: their goal is to make money for their company and yours in the process, not JUST for yours. You need to be responsible for your own ROI and watch for any suspicious activity in your PPC accounts.

22. There are many special targeting options Google has that Bing and Yahoo do not. Recently, Yahoo and Bing have made big strides to give you the same level of targeting that Google provides, including geo-targeting, demographic targeting, etc.  This is likely to increase in the future, so don’t write off possibilities for local targeting and demographic targeting in these other search engines.

23. If you want a good keyword research tool, Google is the only way to go. There are so many good and free keyword research tools out there you can use. I would recommend that you use as many of these free tools as possible when performing your initial keyword research. Google may give you a nice comprehensive list, but expanding your search among multiple tools can give you many more keywords to bid on or add in as negatives.

24. You should never use broad match keywords. Again, this is one of those things that you need to test in order to see what works for you. I use all three match types in my campaigns, initially to see which ones perform the best over time. Then I may only use one or two of the best performing match types. By excluding broad match, you could potentially be excluding additional keywords from showing your ads that could be very profitable.  Broad match keywords, with proper bids and cost management, can also be an excellent source of information (via search query reporting) about longer-tail keywords that may work in your account.

25. Don’t worry about adding negative keywords, the search engines don’t really use them anyway, especially on the content network. Negative keywords are a must for every PPC account. All search engines use them as effectively as you enter them, and using search query reports you can determine negative keywords which may be driving substantial unqualified traffic to your ads.

26. You don’t need a PPC firm – you can easily manage your account on your own. Well, I can’t speak for other PPC firms, but for the same reason that you can’t ‘set it and forget it’, if you don’t have time to manage your PPC account at least weekly (at a minimum) you should probably hire someone to manage it for you. With all technology, things are constantly changing. Like previously mentioned, keywords can become inactive due to quality score issues, ads can be declined due to editorial issues, etc. Not to mention that if you’re putting money towards your PPC account, you probably want to maximize your traffic and revenue potential. Having someone manage your account and make the best changes and keep up-to-date with new features can really help grow your traffic and revenue.

27. You don’t need to use pay-per-click if you’re already ranking high in organic listings. Ranking well on the organic side is great, but also having paid ads can really help increase your branding efforts and can also increase traffic and revenue to your site. Obviously, free is better than having to pay to display your ads, but it’s important to get your name in front of your audience searching the web.  PPC also allows you to target a broader range of keywords than you may rank well for organically, widening your audience and exposure. The average user needs 7 exposures to a brand/product before it really sinks in, so paid search can help shorten this gap. Having organic listings and paid ads is the best way to go.

28. You should not have to spend a lot on your keywords if there are no other advertisers. The problem with this is that just because there are no other advertisers in your area doesn’t mean they won’t pop up, or just aren’t advertising at that time of your search, or that there aren’t other advertisers showing in areas nearby. Google will charge you based on the competitiveness of showing for a keyword over time as well as on your Quality Scores, not necessarily the level of competition at the moment and in the location you decide to run your ads.

29. The higher you bid on your keywords, the better your Quality Scores will be. No, as previously mentioned, Quality Scores are based on click-through rates, landing page quality, and more. It is not based on how high your ads are placed or how much you’re spending.

30. If it works in Google, it’ll work in Yahoo/Bing/etc. Just false. They’re not the same- the algorithms with which they show ads and determine keyword and ad quality are different, and in Google and Bing vs. Yahoo, the match types work completely differently. You can import your Google structure into Yahoo and Bing in order to save some time setting up accounts, but you better believe you’re going to have to think through how your settings and keywords are going to show in one search engine vs. another.

31. The search engines default account settings are just fine, you don’t need to change them. Whether or not the search engine’s default settings are fine or not depends on your goals for your account. Always check your ad rotation settings, and set to rotate evenly if you’re testing ad texts, distribution settings if you want to run on search or content only, and geotargeting settings if you want to only show ads to a certain audience.

32. You should delete keywords that don’t convert. This is a huge myth, especially when you have assists in Yahoo telling you which keyword someone typed in the search to get your ad that ultimately assisted in the conversion of another keyword. Hopefully, in the future, we will have more visibility in all search engines regarding first click and last click metrics to help make more accurate decisions about keyword performance.

33. You should delete keywords that don’t have any impressions. While this is a common practice among search advertisers, our search engine reps have never told us it will improve our Quality Scores. What IS a good idea is to keep track of keywords that gain impressions, but not clicks, as they are decreasing your click-through rates and quality scores. They need to be improved if possible with better ad group structuring and ad texts, or they need to be removed.

34. Negative keyword match types work just like normal keywords. No, they don’t, and if you think they do you’ll either miss out on a lot of opportunities to eliminate irrelevant traffic in your account or unintentionally exclude a lot of relevant traffic.

35. PPC is the cheapest form of online advertising and brings the biggest ROI. Boy, I wish I could say this is completely true. Although I do believe you can get a great ROI from PPC, it’s not always the cheapest form. Running PPC ads can cost you a pretty penny if you don’t know what you’re doing right off the bat. Having a PPC agency or someone who has PPC experience help you run your account will definitely save you a lot of money in the long run.

36. PPC advertising is a must for all businesses. This is only a myth because I don’t believe PPC works for everyone. I think all businesses should try it, for a period of time, put all they have into it (effort wise) and see if it works for them. I’ve unfortunately had some clients where it just doesn’t work.

You’ve diligently worked to create a well-organized, well-rounded PPC account with lots of tightly-themed keywords in your ad groups. You’ve written compelling ads with lots of benefits and a strong call-to-action. You figure you’ve set up your PPC account successfully and it works well for a while.  But then you start seeing your traffic drop and you know that you’re facing trouble ahead.

Here are a few troubleshooting ideas you can use to identify issues in your account:

Verify Your Tracking

If you’re managing a conversion-based account and your account hasn’t converted in a while it’s worth it to double check that you or your programmer has applied the right conversion tracking code to your landing page.

• Go to your landing page and right-click to choose the “View Page Source” option
• Using the control+F function, search for the terms Google, Yahoo and MSN to locate the conversion tags for each search engine.
• Cross-check these conversion tags with what is provided in the Google, Yahoo and MSN interfaces.

Submit A Test Lead

To further ensure that your conversion tracking is working properly submit a test lead. Click on your ad and fill out the form or go through the conversion and have your client ensure that the test comes through on their end.

Review Your Negatives

Whether you’ve inherited an account or built it up yourself, there might be some keywords in your negative list that are blocking relevant site traffic. Comb through your negatives and ensure that you haven’t inadvertently included a relevant keyword or included the wrong match type for a keyword or phrase.

Look At Your Change History

I wish all the search engines had this tool; take advantage of the Adwords “Change History” tool. This is a great way to re-trace your steps to analyze what changes you made that might be impacting your account. This is especially useful when you see a dip in clicks on leads on a certain date. Make sure to look at changes you made several days before the numbers dropped as changes take effect over time. You might have accidentally paused a word that was performing well or decreased a bid instead of increasing it, you never know.

Check for Disapproved Ads or Keywords

Do a regular check of your ads and keywords to ensure that none of them have been disapproved by Google. Typically, the disapproval message has an explanation for the disapproval, so you can address the issue quickly.

Utilize the Ad Diagnosis Tool in Adwords

This tool can be found in the Opportunities tab of the Adwords interface. You can find out which ad is showing for a particular keyword. It also identifies some of the issues that could prevent your ads from being shown such as low bids and duplicate keywords.

Monitor Page Loading Issues

You may be getting clicks on your ads, but seeing no conversions due to issues with your landing page. Subscribe to a website monitoring services such as Dotcom-Monitor and you can get notifications when your landing pages are taking too long to load or even worse, when landing pages are down so you can address the problem with your IT team and pause your account while the issue is being fixed.

It can be frustrating to identify the issues in your account, but keep in mind that there are tools out there to help you and it is thoroughly satisfying when you can finally tackle the problem head-on.