Should I Have More Than One Landing Page?

I highly recommend multiple landing pages and I have reasons for that. Different pages will do well in different search engines. It is because each search engine has its own ranking criteria. For Google, we can create a more text content oriented page with all the product descriptions, service offerings and provided benefits of using this service. For yahoo, we can create a landing page with images, testimonials and content in a brief form. Use bullets to show features and benefits. Think which are the keywords you are optimizing your landing page for. We can create two separate landing pages with similar keywords and each could rank well for their respective keywords in the same search engine. To do this, you have to write a separate ad for each landing page. Sounds bit odd right? But I’ve heard many companies who use this tactic quite successfully. Normally, I use more than one landing page. You have to decide which campaign needs a second landing page and set goals according to that.

Google TV Ads partnering with Bloomberg TV

On September 25, Google announced that they’re partnering with Bloomberg TV to offer Bloomberg TV’s national inventory to advertisers through the Google TV Ads platform. Bloomberg TV is a 24-hour business and financial news channel with more than 54 million listeners in the US.

This builds on Google’s partnership with NBCU( see my previous post –
Google & NBC Universal Partnering Up), and will provide advertisers with broader audience reach and access to desirable viewer demographics. Google TV Ads advertisers will have access to premium inventory on Bloomberg TV very soon, so stay tuned for further announcements. Currently, advertisers can target Bloomberg TV through Google DISH Network inventory available on the Google TV Ads platform. Google’s partnership with Bloomberg TV means that advertisers will be able to reach all Bloomberg TV viewers in the US.

Integrative PPC Campaigns

What will you do when you start a new PPC campaign? I mean whether you keep your new campaign as a stand alone one or integrate it with your existing campaigns? You might try being more integrative with your practice and see whether you get better results or not. If you integrate your new PPC campaigns into your current marketing scheme, what you already do should be successful enough to benefit from an add-on. If it is not successful and beneficial enough then there is no point in doing that. PPC integration is one of the crucial aspects of your total marketing plan. The true meaning of PPC integration is taking the most successful parts of your other marketing campaigns and making them work together with a PPC advertising. Even if you are using off-line marketing, article marketing, blogging or display advertising, you want your pay per click advertising to compliment your success. If you are using the same keywords and landing pages for your campaigns then you can measure the difference in results using an analytics application like google analytics. It is better to Take your pay per click campaigns and integrate them.

Elements of a Landing Page Design

Many times we have discussed about the importance of landing page in PPC. The following elements on your landing page should be considered for every landing page design you undertake:

* Call to Action – Your call to action is one of the most important elements of any landing page. This is the content that will ask for the sale. Without a strong call to action you will not see as many conversions as you expect.

* Page Content – Your content must be clear, enough descriptive and keep them reading.

* Headline – Your landing page headline must grab your readers’ attentions. They’ll never read your outstanding content if you don’t get their attention first.

* Overall Design – The design of your landing page is very important. It should be attractive to stick the visitors in your website.

* Landing Page Layout – Page layout is one of the most important component of building a quality landing page. Place your photos and graphics optimally. You should not have exit links that encourage page visitors to leave before making a purchase. You should make good use of bullet points, headlines, sub-headlines, and other page elements.

These points will help you building better landing pages. You have to determine which of elements will give a rise and down to your conversion.

Google & NBC Universal partnering up

Source – adwords.blogspot.com

September 09, Google announced a strategic partnership with NBC Universal in which NBCU will offer a limited amount of advertising inventory across all days and times on several of its cable networks. Advertisers using Google TV Ads will be able to place their ads on CNBC, Sci-Fi Network, MSNBC, Oxygen, Sleuth and Chiller starting in early 2009.

Read the full details of the partnership in the blog post on our Traditional Media blog. You can also read about how other advertisers are finding success with Google TV Ads, and check out our product demo to learn how to launch your own TV campaign.

We’ll also be holding a free webinar that will cover tips on how Google TV Ads can help drive more web traffic and increase your sales volume, turning TV viewers into your customers. The webinar will be held October 1st at 10AM PST, and you can sign up here to reserve your spot.

Track Conversions And Traffic

By tracking user activity in your website, you can easily understand the performance of your website and can take necessary steps to improve your PPC campaigns. Now there are means to measure the traffic and its sources. You can track how much traffic you get on a daily basis, where your traffic is coming from, what links your traffic clicks on, and how many people actually make a purchase. It is interesting to know how many people come to your website, how many of them g through each step of processing and how many of them make a real time purchase. You can easily understand at which step-i mean page-your visitors loses interest in purchase. Some times in between a purchase process some other links in the page attract the visitor and force them to exit the current page and lead them to a new page. There are so many tracking software available. Statscounter and Google Analytics are some of them. I recommend Google analytics. You can get a detailed report of your website by including “Urchin code” given by your Google analytics account in all your web pages. You can set goals for a purchase processes. This will help you to find people’s entry and exit point in your purchase process steps. Along with Google analytics, use the conversion tracking given by PPC providers in respective pages.

Import Bulk Ads Into Microsoft adCenter

Step-by-step process of MSN bulk uploading

1. Log in to your Microsoft adCenter account
2. Click on the Campaigns tab
3. Pick an advertising campaign that you want to upload your ads to.
4. Next, pick an ad group into which you want to upload your ads.
5. Select the Ads tab.
6. Now click Import ads.
7. You can import ads from another PPC provider or you can upload ads from your desktop. Manually input the data or choose between Excel or CSV.
8. Click Import file.
9. Select the file in the Choose file option box and click Open.

Now your pay per click ads will import into MSN adCenter without difficulties.

Are Meta Tags Important For PPC?

You are sure that there are some value for meta-tags in SEO and then what about PPC? Your ads are not going to use them. But landing pages? I’ve seen landing pages without meta tags. But I think landing pages with carefully associated meta tags can do much better. The 3 meta tags you need to consider for your landing page content are –

* Title
* Description
* Keywords

Don’t spoil your landing page content with meta tags that aren’t helpful like robots tag, author tag, copyright tag, etc. These tags don’t help the search engines at all. Ensure that your title tag has your keyword in it somewhere near the beginning. The title of your page will appear at the top of your reader’s browser and should be well-written. That will be seen in the SERP for your organic listings so make sure you have a well-written and optimized title. Your description tag will be the description that comes in your search engine listing. This is important, particularly if your pay per click ad appears on the same page. If you have a well-written description then you increase your chances of getting the click-through. Don’t add a huge list of keywords to your keyword tag. If the keyword doesn’t appear in your content then don’t include it in this tag. Not only will that affect your organic listings, but it will also affect your quality score. Meta tags are just one way of influencing your quality score. Give them the value they deserve.

Should I Bid On My Competitors’ Brand?

As you know pay per click advertising is keyword-based advertising. Your ad text is based on a cautiously selected campaign is created based on the best keywords for your business. Whether those keywords involve your competitors’ brand names? There are currently no laws that say you can’t bid on brand names as keywords (at least in the U.S.). Some people say it is a controversial practice to bid on competitor’s brand in pay per click advertising. I too agree that they worked so hard to get that place in market and advertising. But a lot of companies are now trying to guard their copyrights and trademarks by following the search engines and advertisers whenever their brand names are used for advertising. If you compete with a huge company with big pockets then you could lose. That’s a risk that you’ll have to take (if you want to). In TV advertising, you can’t use a competitors’ brand name. In ppc advertising, you can -with a few limitations. But it is dangerous and you should consider the risks carefully before you do it.

Should I Use 301 Redirects?

John over at PPC Hero reported an experience he had with 301 redirects. This is a chapter worth telling because the Google AdWords Help Center tells you the point bare that what John experienced will happen. This is what happened actually. John paid for ppc and kept Page A as his destination URL – landing page. Page A has a 301 redirect to Page B. When John looked at his Google Analytics to see what traffic he is getting from his paid search campaign, he saw all those clicks are registered as organic search result. Is that a problem? Yes. It’s a big problem if you wish for accurate tracking and reporting. This seems to be a problem in the communication structure between Google AdWords PPC and Google Analytics. And nothing has seen from Google AdWords fix this issue any time soon. It is better not to use 301 redirects in your landing pages. I mean if you are so particular about your report, then you should never. Otherwise no problem.