The end of the month can cause frustration or joy for PPC managers as we see how close we are to meeting monthly goals. Adwords offers us many different tools we can use to help lower costs and increase clicks and conversions, but which ones work the best? David Iwanow of Search Engine Journal has written a post about his experience using different costing methods in Adwords. He walks us through the different processes he used to try to optimize one of his Adwords accounts. The lessons he learned are beneficial for any PPC manager.

As if the holiday season wasn’t hectic enough for us advertisers, PPC Blog has reported that quality score is acting strangely, so don’t change your bids! Instead of combating the issue with clear communication, Google has responded to the issue with Adwords support forum answers and a few Tweets. Basically the message is that CTR and CPC (the quote “core metrics”) should be the two main ways to monitor your account, with less focus on QS for the time being. So be careful how you bid this holiday season!

It happens to every search marketer.  There you are, happily monitoring your manageable, well-behaving accounts, when suddenly a gigantic client appears on your to-do list.  What’s the best way to tackle a huge, unknown PPC account? Matt Lawson at Search Engine Land advises to break the account down into quadrants based on efficiency and exposure.  After seeing how different campaigns relate to each other, in terms of average position and average CPA, it is possible to make an orderly plan-of-action that helps you understand how the account is performing and the most urgent fixes that need to be made.

If you’re a seasoned PPCer you know the importance of including negative keywords in your accounts. …And you probably also know that sometimes clients are against negative keywords and think that you are maybe, somehow scheming to keep business from them. …And there are also those clients who are just a little timid about the idea. If you’re a new PPCer or an old PPCer looking for ways to explain why negatives are needed, check out Michael Mostert’s post on the adCenter Blog.