• The Yahoo Search Marketing blog wants you to get ready for the back-to-school season. One tip on getting prepared is to focus your keywords on your searchers, not the buyers. What??? Yes, they say that the kids are the ones typing in ‘clothes for kids’ or ‘pc laptops’, then they ask for the parents to go online and buy them. Another tip is to go for the long tail and write your ads as if you have a variety of products to choose from.
  • Some good news for those Google conversion optimizer users – the new limit on how many conversions you have to have to use this free feature has been decreased to only 15 conversions in the past 30 days. Before you had to have 30 conversions in the past 30 days. This is still required for each campaign, not at the account level.
  • Not sure how to track your call conversions? Brad Gedded, at Search Engine Land writes on 5 Ways to Track Phone Calls Generated from PPC Clicks. The detailed list includes pros and cons of each strategy.
  • Reconsidering some of your keywords? Shawn, over at PPC Without Pity posted on an easy way to find which keywords are working for you right now. All you need is Google Analytics installed and linked to your AdWords account, which will do so much more than help you with keyword research. The keyword performance report Shawn mentions is a good way to learn how helpful analytics can be.
  • Ever wonder what the experts are saying? Now you can listen in and watch as the Google experts talk about Analytics. These discussions will cover everything from web analytics to design to testing.
  • Writing convincing and engaging ads is a cumbersome task even for a seasoned PPC ad text copywriter. Jeremy Lamothe of Microsoft gives us five tips for creating successful PPC ad copy. Check these out and keep them in mind for your next ad text writing extravaganza!
  • As Tim Ash so truthfully points out at Search Engine Watch, to be effective as an online advertiser, you need to let performance data outshine your parental love for your account structure, ad text, or landing pages. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how pretty you think it is.
  • We all want to write more effective ad copy, need to add relevant keywords to our accounts, and should in general know just what our customers are looking for when they find us. Ann Smarty gives a few ideas for how to determine what questions people want answered about your niche at Search Engine Journal. It’s an interesting way to approach discovering customer needs that I hadn’t considered very much before.
  • Scott Brinker has created the Landing Page Wonder Wheel. There are 8 dimensions to excellent landing pages and Scott has laid out a helpful “how to” in order to analyze your landing pages and generate new ideas and inspiration.