• It is very important to choose the appropriate match type for your PPC campaign. Some accounts can thrive off exact match alone, while others need a good mix to drive the best traffic. Read about the pros and cons of each match type from Search Engine Land.
  • This post from Brad Geddes, You are Not Your Target Market is one of the best posts I’ve read in a long time. I would love to send it to all of my clients who think they know how 100% of the world searches for products/services online because they assume everyone searches like they do. It is a must read.
  • Do you have one person in charge of conversions or multiple people? Or maybe even no one in particular? A study from Econsultancy and RedEye says that companies that hire at least one person that is directly in charge of conversions/leads are likely to see improvements in their conversion rates. While this sounds obvious to me, I know there are companies that put no one in particular in charge of conversions and therefore things ultimately fall by the wayside.
  • A note to die-hard Firefox users: some people still use IE. And Chrome. And Safari. So when you’re testing landing page designs, be sure you’re checking page performance by browser in Analytics. If you see that one particular browser has a bounce rate that makes you look twice, it may not be that your site sucks, but instead, users might not be getting the full effect.
  • There’s no point in adding negative keywords to your accounts if no one is actually getting to you via these terms. Bulk-adding suggested negatives just creates noise and potentially wastes your time. Instead, use negative keywords effectively by running a search query report to see how users – both those that should and those who probably shouldn’t –actually arrive to your site.
  • Wondering how your quality score is actually determined? PPC Blog has a post this week on Deciphering Google’s Quality Score. Some of the highlights from the post include suggestions on how to improve your score, how to identify what your keywords’ quality score is, and the importance of being careful when moving keywords around.
  • Are you or your clients using, or considering using Bing’s Cashback program to drive sales? There hasn’t been as much discussion of this as I might have expected- Andrew Morgan at the RKG blog provides some good guidelines regarding how to use it, how not to, and potential issues to watch out for.