Last week we held our ‘Free PPC Hero Account Assessment Webinar,’ where we held a live PPC optimization clinic where Larry Kim from Wordstream (the creators of the AdWords Grader) and our very own Sean Quadlin reviewed 2 AdWords accounts and pointed out areas of strengths, and uncover opportunities to improve PPC account performance.

There were a couple of questions we were unable to get to in the recording, check them out below:

1) How do I tweak the formula to eliminate waste and increase conversions? Should I eliminate non converting keywords to increase over all quality score?
A: You have to walk a line between smart expansion and hitting your KPIs.  I wouldn’t eliminate non-converting keywords straight up.  The Lin/Rodnitzky Ratio is a good thing to keep in mind in this scenario.  This ratio is CPA of all search queries/CPA of queries with 1+ conversion.  Under 1.5 is too conservative, over 2.0 is too aggressive.  You can get rid of low QS keywords that also don’t convert, but think about ways to improve QS (restructure/increase CTR) if the keywords are worth salvaging.

2)   What are your thoughts on the new search remarketing feature beta testing by Google? Would that be better suited to local advertisers? 
A: The way that I’ve heard this pitched seems appealing for all advertisers, regardless of location.  The returns that I’ve seen on remarketing in display compared to regular display are so much greater that I imagine returns from remarketing for search would also have a higher likelihood of being more valuable.  It’s all about getting people that have already shown interest back to your site to close the deal, and that is appealing (at least to my brain) to all advertisers, not just local.