Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of a properly structured geotargeting strategy to the success of a good percentage of PPC campaigns.  We’ve discussed geotargeting for PPC many times before on the blog, so if you are confused, go ahead and read about it. But to get the value out of this post you need to know that there are basically two reasons geotargeting could make or break your account:

Everyone Can’t Be Everywhere

Some products or services can only be offered to people within a certain distance from your actual physical location, so you better only show your …

Anyone who has been working on a PPC account for a while- whether it be your own or a client’s- probably reaches a point of inspiration deficiency. A new PPC account can be like a new toy (if you’re not as nerdy as us, as I’m assuming you are, and this does not hold true for you I apologize); it’s fun setting it up and seeing what it does and how the world responds. But after a while, you have other new accounts to play with. Or you don’t, and this is the one account you’ll be handling forevermore. Either …

Happy New Year! 2009 was a rough year for the country with the economy and all, so PPC Hero is cutting loose! Okay, maybe a bit too loose! But you can’t blame him… he has the PPC world resting on his shoulders. He is the sentinel being, the chosen one, who watches over the land of PPC to make sure all is fair and just. That is a lot of responsibility! So, even our fearless hero needs to get gussied up and have some bubbly everyone once in a while! …

Brad Geddes is one of my favorite bloggers, and he has a really interesting link to a YouTube video that talks about how you can get information at the keyword level in Google Analytics that shows what conversion rates you get at what position in the SERPS. You can view the video here:

I have wondered at times for a particular account that recently lowered its budget if our positions are just too low now to generate the …

Since we’re only a couple days away from the end of 2009 and many of us are working a short week this week, it seems like a good time to pull out a classic end of year cliche: the Resolution List!  Like many people, I don’t like New Year’s resolutions.  I usually don’t make them, partly because choosing an arbitrary date – January 1st, for example – to begin making life changes always seemed a bit disingenuous, and partly because, like most people, I rarely keep them anyway.  However, this year, instead of making promises about my personal life – …

Yeah! Perhaps we’re in the minority, but we love the weather at this time of year. You can have snowball fights, go skiing, make a snowman, go ice skating… and don’t forget sledding! Sledding is the best. It isn’t really a sport and it doesn’t require any skill aside from sitting and holding on, and you get to go really fast! PPC Hero is taking full advantage of the snowy hillsides, but Ms. Clicks looks unimpressed. What?! She’s hard to please! Happy holidays everyone!

Late last week Search Engine Land posted an article on how Google is planning to stop allowing companies to create local business ads, and for anyone who currently has a LBA will stop displaying mid-December. Now the post did say that Google’s LBA’s will be coming back in the future, but declined to say when exactly.

This could potentially hurt some local advertisers, especially the ones who rely on the local business ads but do not run any PPC ads. However, if you are running PPC ads there is a mini solution to this issue until Google gets their LBA’s …

We’ve spoken before about using Google website optimizer to test different elements of your landing page to help increase conversion rates. But the other day the team here at Hanapin Marketing came up with a full list of those elements to test using the multivariate testing option in Website optimizer.

The multivariate testing allows you to add in a piece of code to your landing pages and test showing that change 50% of the time to your users.  Meaning, 50% of the time users will see the updated or changed landing page, and 50% of the time users will …

After spending the past few years working in PPC marketing, I’d like to believe I’m exceptionally competent at managing effective search campaigns.  Based on the ROI and profit margins associated with many of those campaigns, that may be true.

For companies that handle all of their own search marketing internally, it’s possible, and likely, for the search manager to be an expert on not just the best practices for running a Google or Bing campaign, but also an expert on the product and target market.  However, working for an agency with dozens of clients and hundreds of products presents a different …

This information was presented in a webinar by Yahoo last week. I went into it hoping to learn something new but wasn’t expecting to learn something new – but it turned out to be a very insightful webinar full of good stats that you can cater your PPC advertising campaigns to this holiday season.

General Holiday Shopping Stats:

• Women this year are planning to spend less.
• More comparison shopping will be done this year over any other previous year to try and find the best deals and offers. This means it’s likely your click-through rates will decrease due to an increase in impressions …