Comments on: What Not to Do When Managing PPC Campaigns

By: JT

JT — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:28:28 +0000

Here’s another one – Don’t bid on your own URL as a keyword. You would usually rank top in organic results and if your adrank is top 2, users will click on the ad instead of the organic result resulting in a waste of budget!

By: MR WINDOW

MR WINDOW — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:55:50 +0000

I would like to see some articles on “What’s a Newbie to do.” Instead of what NOT to do. It always appears to us Non Techies that are business people in the sense of running a day to day business as opposed to just surfing the Internet contually. I had an IT guy who was a complete screwup and has left me with a web page just started and I have asked for someone to evlauate it and give me some advice and it just seems like a vicious circle of rambling on and on and link after link to everything except what needs to be done. See http://www.cunninghamwindows.net for further proof of what I am referring to. I am not a computer nerd, but I do have some 30 plus years of business experience and am somewhat computer literate, but not wanting to spend my life doing computer learning, it is frustrating to try to comprehend this and I keep finding the rotten apples in the barrel. I am not trying to attract this group, but they seem to be very rampant. It has almost

By: Nathan

Nathan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:47:05 +0000

Don’t ignore the outside world. Things may happen that makes your keywords lose relevance.

A real life example was when the film Bruno came out, I had to add in many negatives to a campaign that targeted a brand term. If I hadn’t of added in negative keywords then we may have spent money on irrelevant clicks.

By: John

John — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:50:25 +0000

@ PPC For Hire,

Thanks for the additional points (and the comment)!

By: PPC For Hire

PPC For Hire — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:53:38 +0000

Don’t take your Google campaigns and push the same account live on Yahoo and MSN. Tailor your campaigns to each engine and do keyword research seperately for each engine.

I would also say don’t ‘auto-optimize’ your ads. It prevents a true A/B test from occuring.

By: Tom Hale

Tom Hale — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:21:35 +0000

Don’t say never. Say usually.
Cuts down on crow in your PPC diet.

The longer you do it.
The humbler you get.

-Tom Hale

By: Kalin

Kalin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:26:59 +0000

You guys are awesome and enjoy the blog…

By: John

John — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:23:45 +0000

@ Kalin,

You’re exactly right. Auto-optimization does not take into account your conversion rates. So if you are testing ads for conversions, you absolutely need to have your ads set to rotate evenly.

Thanks for commenting!

By: Kalin

Kalin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:39:45 +0000

Another issue with allowing Google to Optimize ad copy for your account is that they base a better performing ad on CTR rates, not Conversion Rates. Thus, the ad that is possibly filtering out unqualified traffic through the ad copy and leading to better results will get less impression share because of the lower CTR…..

By: John

John — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:21:39 +0000

@ Chris,

Nice – poorly researched day-parting is definitely a don’t! Any time you limit your ad’s exposure, you should have a pretty good reason (i.e. conversion data) for doing so.

As for writing boring ads – your first priority is to the basics: benefits, calls-to-action and keywords (relevancy). Beyond that, especially in a creative-squashing environment, you will need to think outside the box. Review what your competitors are doing – and be different. What about your client’s services/products makes them stand out – write that into your ads. It’s the little things that will help your ads to become exciting and extraordinary!