Archive for the ‘Basic PPC Strategies’ Category

It’s natural to be afraid of something you don’t understand. Fear can create distrust, and this can lead to griping and blaming the “problem” and not focusing on the solution. I see this when I read Graywolf’s article “Google Adwords More Pricing BS.” He is blaming AdWords and claims they’re ripping us off for requesting a higher minimum bid due to poor quality score, rather than finding a solution to his quality score problem and educating people on how to achieve lower minimum bids. Granted, I don’t know everything about the AdWords system but at least I try to …

When you load new keywords into your campaign, what is your initial bidding strategy? There has been some recent discussion on the best practices for setting bids on brand new keywords and I thought I’d throw in my two cents. If you want to quickly determine the keywords that will best enhance your PPC efforts, I suggest hitting the ground running, rather than limping.

There are a number of reasons to hit the ground running, and here are just a few:

Get Results Faster: If your initial keyword bid is low, you’ll start off with a low …

Over at Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock has pointed out 5 common paid search mistakes that can make your campaigns sink. She talks about common mistakes like engaging in bidding wars to be in the #1 position for ‘power’ reasons. She also points out having too many keywords with only one ad, focusing on budget and not ROI, sending all traffic to your homepage and not separating content from search. In this post I’d like to append to this list of 5 additional common mistakes one can make when managing their PPC Account.

Beginning where Jennifer …

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 your keyword list, bids, day parting settings, or daily budget. Those precious few words that make up your ad copy …

Below I’ve listed 25 possible reasons why your PPC campaigns may be failing, or at least hurting. While some are light hearted, some are to be taken seriously. I’ve included links to blog posts from PPC Hero as well as other industry specific blogs to further assist you in achieving success for your PPC campaigns. There are many more reasons why your PPC campaigns may be failing other than this list, so by all means feel free to append to this list if you have any!

According to an article written in Newsweek called, Hi-Tech’s New Day, 75 percent of Americans use the Internet and spend an average three hours a day online. So why is it advertisers and marketers feel they have to dumb down their marketing ads with huge, sometimes really ugly buttons telling customers what to do? “Buy here, Shop Now, Subscribe Here, Click Here”, etc. Why? Because it works!

“If you are offering a special promotion or have an incentive based product or …

I have a few questions to pose to you: How often do you hit your PPC budget before the end of the month? If so, how far in advance have you hit your budget: a day, perhaps two, maybe three? If this has happened to your campaigns before, wouldn’t this happen to other campaigns as well? Perhaps even your competitors’ campaigns?

These questions lead me to meditate on a new management strategy and I thought I would share it with you. Here’s the idea: you could save a portion of your budget for the last 2 days of the month, and …

There are two different ways one can pay for clicks in AdWords when setting up an account. One is to pre-pay and the other is to post-pay. But which is better? Here are their definitions:

• Post-pay allows you to pay only after you accrue costs for advertising activity. If you pay by credit or debit card, your ads run almost immediately after you submit valid billing information. If you pay by direct debit, you may be required to submit …