Concentrating on a Single PPC Provider?

It seems that 95% of PPC Advertisers concentrating on Google adwords only. What you think? Is that enough for your online marketing? How will you reach people who exclusively using other search engines like yahoo and msn? So it is better to create PPC account in other search engines also. It is not a must. And do a market research before doing so.

For some product, I have seen yahoo is working better than Google. Especially tax saving, payday and consolidation programs. Normally we are seeing minimum clicks and conversions in MSN when compared to adwords and yahoo. But remember one thing. What you are spending in MSN for that clicks and conversions are also very less when compared to the other two search engines. so try to create account in at least two search engines. But don’t go too risky.

Website Optimizer has Added New Features

If you have not yet used Website Optimizer, I greatly recommend it. It is a wonderful testing tool by adwords and saves you lots of money on ppc campaigns by allowing you test your landing pages before you start driving traffic to them and to minimize money on low conversions. Website Optimizer has added new features to its site. According to AdWords blog announcement, the new features include:

1) Experiment Pruning
2) A/B Offline Validation
3) More Intuitive Reporting

Experiment Pruning: This new feature allows you to disable one or more combinations from taking part in your Website Optimizer experiments. Pruning can help you achieve faster, more meaningful results by allowing you to remove poorly performing or illogical combinations. This is especially helpful in cases where your experiment may have too many combinations relative to the amount of traffic it receives.

A/B Offline Validation: If your test or goal pages aren’t accessible to Website Optimizer then no worries. You’ll now be able to just upload a copy of your tagged page and Website Optimizer will make sure that everything is tagged properly.

More Intuitive Reporting: We’ve enhanced our reports to more clearly show how your combinations are performing, and to better indicate when we’ve found one or more high-confidence winning combinations. This will help prevent you from drawing false conclusions from results or from ending experiments prematurely.

Tips to Increase Ad Quality

It is very important to pay attention to your ad quality. Each search engine that uses a quality score and you can check that very easily. Your keyword bid is inversely proportional to your ad quality score. That means the higher your ad quality score, the lower your keyword bids will be. You can expect a better ROI and save money with higher ad quality. It is nice to see something ensuring you better click throughs. You can do three things to increase your ad quality. Applying these very simple ad campaign management tactics will improve your ad quality.

Select the right keywords – Find maximum number of keywords relevant to your product or service. Some keywords might be appropriate to your whole campaign but only be applicable for certain ads within that campaign and some others might be relevant for every ad in the campaign. Remember to avoid too generic keywords.

Stay with your budget – Never spend too much or go overboard. You can’t reach your expected ROI. You will spend more on low performing keywords also. So always stick on to your pre-decided budget; if the change is not essential.

Group highest converting keywords together in one ad group. In yesterday’s post I have explained it.

Have a look.

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/pay-per-click/2008/08/tips-to-optimize-your-ppc-campaigns.html

How Many Keywords are Enough for a PPC Campaign?

This doubt is a very common among PPC professionals and beginners. The most important aspect of any pay per click campaign is the keyword research and that I have already told it here many times. We have to spend significant time on keyword research. The success of your PPC campaign directly depends on how effective you could choose the right keywords based on search engine statistics and relevancy to your business. I don’t want to explain about the keyword research again. I don’t want you to feel bored.

I have only one thing to tell you. Find maximum number of keywords relevant to your product or service. Some keywords might be appropriate to your whole campaign but only be applicable for certain ads within that campaign and some others might be relevant for every ad in the campaign. Remember to avoid too generic keywords. Otherwise your pocket will be empty very soon. How many keywords is enough for your campaign id depends on you niche. In a narrow niche you have to limit your keywords. But my advice is to use as many keywords as you can without worrying about your niche concept. But I am telling you one-thing again. Don’t go for too generic keywords. Take relevant keywords only. Start your campaigning with an effective keyword research. Success is certainly your way.

How To Find Your Ad In The Search Engines

What do you do to see your live ad in search engines? I know a simple search. Here are tips that make your search easy. Go to your adgroups or keywords. Find the maximum spending keywords from your list. Obviously those keywords are listing top in search results. See if your ad visible on the SERPs when you enter those keywords. Go further than page 1 because your ad may not always appear on the first page. Scroll down several pages till you find your pay per click AD.

After looking through your most expensive keywords, try searching for the most relevant keywords. Those are the keywords that are most often used on your landing page. Pick the top 5. Search for them as well. If you have chosen to show your ads only at certain time of a day, then perform a search during those times. Otherwise, try it several times during the day to see when your ads may be appearing in the SERPs

The following link also will help you search for the sponsored searches.

http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks

The result will look something like this.

The Unquestionable Relationship between Ad Copy and its Landing Page

Your ad copy and landing pages are very closely attached. If your landing page and ad copy work perfectly together, you’ll have a successful and happy pay per click campaign.

Ad Copy

Ad copy is very important. Your ad copy is the first thing which is giving idea about your product or service to your targeted searchers. In sponsored search and in content network, the following things draw attention of visitors.
In your ad-copy, try to use credible and reliable data. Your adcopy should impose interest and curiosity on your visitors. There should be a call to action. Be honest and target right audience.

Landing Page

Conversion happens in your landing page. It can be an existing page in the web site or you can design 1 for PPC conversion purpose. But that page should have a power to retain your visitor in that page itself. Avoid other attractive links from your custom landing page. Landing page also should contain credible and reliable content. List the most important features of your service. It should be close to the sale. 10 more steps to purchase a product will make visitors feel bored and they will stop the attempt and go to your competitor’s website.

PPC Success Begins With Research

The beginning of pay per click is depends purely on research. There are mainly two types of research in PPC. Keyword research and competitor research. Market research will come under keyword research only. What you think? Which research is more important? Keyword research or competitor research? I think they have the equal importance in PPC management. You have to do some prior research before you start your first campaign.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is simply the selection of best performing keywords which can bring visitors to your website. You may have wasted thousands of dollars on page ranking and conversions if the right keyword phrases are not targeted. Keywords are the back bone of both PPC and SEO. Even if you attain high search engine rankings, you may not get appropriate traffic if the selected keywords are not right.
You can see more about keyword research in my blog post here.

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/pay-per-click/2008/06/importance-of-keyword-research.html

Google’s external keyword tool is the best tool to check the keywords and their average search volumes. Filter 10-20 keywords which you feel most relevant to your business.

Competitive Research

Now make a search for each of those keywords using both broad match and exact phrase match. See what your competitors are targeting and advertising for. Do organic searches to find that. Check who is ranked high in the organic search listings and still paying for top placement with their paid search ad. Those are your most competitive competitors. You can go to their websites and do more research. Please don’t click on any sponsored search ads. As you don’t want people who are not interest in your sales/service to click on your ads, give the same importance and respect to your competitors also.

After completing these stages, you can go for a deeper and comprehensive research.

Try a Call to Action – Your Ads do convert

Simply writing ads are not enough in PPC. There should be some power in the ad that forces the viewers to click on it. That means there should be a call to action in your adtext. The viewers feel that the ad can lead them to the service or product what they have searched for. The call to action can create urgency to the demand. Some examples are –

– Apply now
– Order today
– Download here
– Free quote
– Free shipping
– Request a quote
– Free estimate
– —% discount

This is an easy way to increase conversion. Try it today itself and feel the difference. But something you always have to remember. Your landing page should be informative and include “free” and “% of discount” only if those are available in your website.

Be Familiar with These PPC Terms

After 1 week training, my PPC trainee asked me what is CTR, what is CPC and Quality Score. Then only I remembered that I forgot to explain her these terms. Ok. Here I am explaining some of the common acronyms associated with pay per click advertising. Before starting your PPC advertising, you should understand these terms thoroughly. Otherwise, you might make a conclusion based on an incorrect guess.

CTR – Click Through Rate. This is the number of times that viewers of your ad click to go through to your website. We can calculate CTR by this formula-

CTR=Clicks/Impressions * 100

CPC – Cost Per Click. This is how much you are paying for clicks on your ads. It is usually expressed as an average because most of the time you will not be paying the same amount. The actual cost per click varies depending on many factors like competition and some other factors, but it is always within the range of your pre-set values.

CPC= Costs/Clicks

CPM – Cost-per-thousand Impressions – This is how much you are paying for each 1000 impressions of your ads. That means, for every 1000 views of your ads, you have to set a budget and pay that.

Misspelled and Competitor Adgroups

Include misspelled and competitor adgroups in your campaign. If you are waiting for people correctly knowing the spelling of the keywords or people searching for your company only, your ad is not going to work well in search engines. Try to include maximum misspelled keywords in your misspelled adgroup and top competitors in your competitor adgroup. If someone searching for your competitor gets attracted by your adcopy and apply for your service. Why should we spoil one lead? Suppose your company ad is coming in local radio and someone hearing this ad trying to locate your website. It is not sure that whether he knows the spelling of your company or the product he’s searching for. Our wristband campaign is getting many clicks and conversions for “ristbands”, “wristbands”, “wristbands” etc. So bidding on misspellings is an intelligent way to increase the efficiency of your PPC advertising. Try this now itself if you haven’t experiment this before.