Adwords
Top 10 Pay per Click Search Engines
Google AdWords – https://adwords.google.com/select/Login
Yahoo! Search Marketing – http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/onlinemarketing.php
Microsoft adCenter – http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising
ABC Search – http://www.abcsearch.com/advertisers.php
SearchFeed – http://home.searchfeed.com/rd/index.jsp
7Search – http://7search.com/advertise/
MIVA – http://www.miva.com/us/content/advertiser/overview.asp
Enhance Interactive – http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1465425-9777481
Findology – http://home.findology.com/business/advertisers.html
Ask.com – http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com
What about adding negatives to your AdGroups?
It is seen that people are adding all broad-matching keywords without negatives. Broad match can create thousands of search results and majority of them will not be relevant to your ads. So its a powerful way to include negatives. You can include -ves either in campaign level or in adgroup level. That will help to stop your ads from showing for irrelevant searches. So find maximum negatives for your keywords.
Targeting homepage only?
It is not advisable to send all your traffic to your home page. Suppose you are a florist and running an online floral ordering site. It will not convert much if you are dropping people who are searching for “orchid” in your homepage which contains details about hundreds of flowers. It is better to drop them in a page which contains details about most wanted orchid species like Anguloa, Cattleya, Cymbidium, Laelia etc. Give website user the opportunity to find their result at first click. A messy home page will tempt them to close that site and go back for a new search. Remember you have to pay for each click. Better send the visitors to the page they asked for in the first click itself.
What you think Content Network should be on in adwords?
In Google’s default settings, there’s a content search and bidding option. If you want to use that, my recommendation is to give a lower bid than the search bidding. Content network is not right for every business. If you are keeping the place for content bid blank, Google will assume your maximum CPC of search network as content bid and a significant portion of your daily spending limit will flow that way without much conversions. Place a lower CPC for content network when you start your campaign. If it seems working effectively, you can gradually increase your bids. It’s better to review daily report of your keyword performance in search and content networks.
Recent changes in Adwords My Client Center
Some changes have made to Google Adwords – My Client Center (MCC) Dashboard
“We’ve made some changes to make managed account information more accessible and useful from the highest levels of the MCC. Performance and Budget statistics for managed accounts are now broken into separate tabbed pages, giving you a faster view of key stats across managed accounts without requiring you to drill down for further information.
On the Performance page, you’ll find stats on clicks, conversions and conversion rates, as well as separate columns for Search and Content CTR, allowing for easier comparison of performance based on network placement. On the Budget page, you’ll find detailed information about start and end dates, percent of budget spent and total spend for each account. MCC performance statistics will now be more frequently updated (within 2-3 hours). Please take some time to put the new MCC Dashboard to the test, and tell us what you think by following the feedback link on your MCC.”
Adwords editor 6.0 Released
Adwords editor 6.0 released with lots of new features and upgrades.
Following changes are in Adwords editor
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Account statistics
Export statistics to CSV: You can now export a CSV file that includes performance statistics. First download the statistics, then go to the File menu > Export to CSV.
Update minimum CPC bids: To refresh the minimum CPC bids for your keywords, click ‘Get Recent Changes > Include Min. CPC Bids.’ Note that this option takes more time than the basic ‘Get Recent Changes’ option.
Improved stats download: When you select an interval with ‘Choose Stats Interval,’ AdWords Editor downloads fresh statistics and displays a progress bar during download. Editing tools
Spell check: Check the spelling of text fields (such as keywords and ad text) by right-clicking the field and selecting ‘Spell check this field’ in the right-click menu. Available for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch.
Append text: Add text before or after existing text in a specific column, for all selected rows. Select the rows you want to edit, then click the ‘Append text’ link at the bottom of the edit pane. For example, add the word ‘New’ at the beginning of the headlines in your selected text ads. Learn more about this tool.
Drag and drop: Now you can drag and drop ad groups within the tree view. To move an ad group, select it in the tree view and drag it to another campaign. To copy an ad group, select it and drag it while holding the Control key.
Use formula words in the Replace Text tool: Review these instructions before using this advanced feature. AdWords feature support
CPC placement targeting: Create a new CPC placement-targeted campaign or edit your CPC bids for placements. Placement CPC campaigns are labeled [Placement CPC] in the tree view.
Conversion Optimizer campaigns: You can download Conversion Optimizer campaigns and edit their contents (keywords, bids, ads, and ad groups). However, it isn’t possible to enable or disable the Conversion Optimizer in AdWords Editor. Learn more about support for bidding options in AdWords Editor.
Ad group negative sites: Add and update negative sites at the ad group level. Duplicate keywords
Select duplicate keywords: After running Find Duplicate Keywords, you can now quickly select all the duplicates that meet certain criteria. Click ‘Select duplicates by’ in the tab tool bar and choose one of the menu options. For example, select all the duplicates with the lowest CTR, then edit or delete them as needed.
Sorting duplicate keywords: Now when you sort duplicate keywords, the groupings are preserved. AdWords Editor sorts within each group, and also sorts the groups themselves. AdWords Editor settings
Diagnostic logs: Diagnostic logging is a troubleshooting mode. When enabled, it creates reports that can help our engineers better understand technical issues you may encounter. Go to the Tools menu > Settings.
Show posting progress: When this option is enabled, AdWords Editor displays a progress bar when you post changes. You can also disable this option to help decrease the time it takes to post your changes. Go to the Tools menu > Settings. Other updates
Advanced search: Add and remove restrictions for your advanced search. In the dialog, click ‘Add’ next to the Settings or Performance Statistics fields. Once you’ve added one or more restrictions, click ‘Remove’ to remove them.
Tab structure: The four tabs for ads (text, image, local business, and mobile) are now grouped under a single ‘Ads’ tab. This update was also included in version 5.0.1.
Backup archives: AdWords Editor automatically creates a backup, including unposted changes and comments, when you re-download an account with ‘Get Full Account.’ You will also be prompted to back up accounts before upgrading from version 6.0 to a subsequent release.
Updated keyboard shortcuts:
Replace text in selected items with Ctrl+H (formerly Ctrl+F).
Append text to selected items with Ctrl+Shift+H.
Move to basic search box with Ctrl+F.
Open advanced search with Ctrl+Shift+F (formerly Ctrl+Shift+S). See more updated shortcuts for Windows and Mac.
www.google.com/support/adwordseditor/bin/static.py?page=release_notes.html
Paying for clicks how much do you pay for clicks in adwords?
I always wondered what different people pay for their clicks in Adwords. We manage about 20 campaigns and the average click ranges from 0.3 $ to 15$ per click. For some niche areas we spend atleast 3$ per click and 1000$ budget we set for that client runs out just in 4 hours. Similarly for an other client we set the Max CPC to 7$ and the average position is 1-2 .
Average CPC for his site is around 5$ and his budget of 1000$ runs out in less than 2 hours. But the phone keeps ringing that time since most of the clicks area valid and people tend to call the number listed during that time.
One thing i have noticed is our ads never went below 0.3$ which is very surprising i have seen many webmasters report clicks in the range of .05 cents to 15 cents but the Business areas we work on never had clicks in that range. I feel its because we tend to bid for higher spots and we have spend more for higher spots.
Any one else have active campaigns getting clicks less than .10 dollars please post here
PPC blogger
Sudden hit with bad quality score in Google Adwords.
Recently one of our client account was badly hit with lower Quality score. It was difficult to figure out what the possible reason is. Quality score of some 200 keywords suddenly went poor which is not health for our campaign. We researched a bit and found in some forums people facing similar problems. Most probable reason most of the advertisers guess is the problem with the landing page.
If the Adwords Bot visits the site when the website is down Google adwords slap the account and relevant keywords with a Poor quality score. We do agree with this point since the site we are working on was down for about 2 days due to hosting problems and since it was a weekend we didn’t pause the campaign and it resulted in bad quality score. But the status returned back to Good when the site was live back again.
So be careful when your site goes down its important to pause the campaign is something like this happens.
PPC blog team
Google conversation tracking for dynamic websites
I cant find a better tool than Google analytics conversation tracking tracking visitors on their navigation to a website. We use conversion tracking for all the dynamic websites we optimize and it works great. Especially installing the code on correct pages like the checkout page or the cart page etc will show where you loose the users where they get stuck, what are the problems they are facing etc.
For example one particular client gets 1000s of visitors per but his conversation was very low he contacted us to find out the problem. Initially everything looked pretty fine and it was very difficult for us to find out the problem. Later we used Google analytics conversion tracking code on important pages like the shipping page, cart page, checkout page etc. After 2 or 3 days of monitoring we were able to identify that the users get stuck on the checkout page since for some browsers the checkout button javascript throws an error and redirects to the cart page again. Even after multiple clicks the potential customers were unable to go beyond the page on certain older version of IE and Mozilla browsers. Since our client and we use IE 7.0 we didnt find any problem but the conversion code showed us the problem since users were unable to go beyond the checkout page.
Immediately we checked with older version of the browsers identified the problem and were able to fix it. So I recommend when you have a dynamic site make sure you use conversion tracking its available in adwords too and also helps track Adwords conversions.
Craigslist counter sues ebay Inc, Ebay gets fired back by craigslist
Ebay recently had a lawsuit against craigslist now craigslist has counter sued ebay,
Lawsuit by craigslist and its claims read here http://blog.craigslist.org/etc/cl.vs.ebay.html
I am on Craigslist side. I love craigslist and hope they come out of this crisis soon,
Craigslist official blog post
“We filed a complaint in California today, charging eBay with unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty.
We respectfully ask the Superior Court in San Francisco to enjoin this conduct and order eBay to (1) make full restitution to craigslist, (2) disgorge their related profits (3) restore to craigslist all shares of the company acquired by means of, or for the purpose of unfair competition, and (4) pay punitive damages for their malicious behavior.”