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.

What Are the Most Important Criteria for a Good PPC Campaign

Recently I have come across a nice article. It says there are mainly 7 criteria for a good pay per click ad campaign. Here are the 7 criteria:

* Use conversion tracking
* Don’t use Google’s default settings
* Keep a fixed schedule when optimizing keywords and ads
* Study the competition before you begin
* Treat your keywords, ads, and landing page as one unit
* Be selective in capitalization
* Keep it simple with a strong call to action

My doubt is whether one of the criteria is more important than the others? For example, is being selective in capitalization more important than avoiding Google’s defaults? In my view all these are important. But I will give more preference to these aspects –

* Use conversion tracking
* Consider your keywords, ads, and landing page as one entity
* Keep it simple with a strong call to action

These are basic to any successful campaign. You cannot run a successful campaign without calculating conversions and you should understand how they relate to ROI. Optimization means your keyword usage in your ad with the keyword usage in your landing page and making the two work together. A strong call to action associated with a well-written, highly optimized ad is the best treat for an average performing campaign.

Conversion Tracking – The Best Tool to Measure Your ROI

One tool that you have to be included in your pay per click advertising is conversion tracking. This tool will help you test how healthy your campaigns are performing. By seeing the conversion tracking, you can easily find whether your ROI is positive or negative. If you aren’t making money from your advertising then it is not worth. There are times when you can achieve a greater benefit by losing money in order to gain branding and top-of-mind marketing results. For most advertisers, ROI is very much important. ROI is measured by subtracting your pay per click spend from the revenue earned from your advertising hard work. Suppose you spent $50 on advertising and as a result of that advertising you made $60 back from sales. Then your ROI is $20. Conversion tracking is a tool that tracks the buyer on your site to find out when they make a purchase. As soon as a customer clicks on the ad to go to your site, they have a cookie dropped on their computer and when they make a purchase, a conversion is logged. By using this tool, you’ll know in an instant whether your advertising is truly being effective. You can take conversion tracking code from PPC service providers. MSN adcenter’s and Adwords’ conversion code you have to place in between Body tag of the html of your tracking page. But yahoo search marketing conversion code you have to place in between head tag of the html of your tracking page.

Preserve Keyword integrity in Your Ad Groups

It seems that people are keeping same keywords in different adgroups of the same campaign. Never do that. What is the point in doing like that? You want them competing against each other? You’ll get much better performance from all of your keywords if you don’t use the same keywords in multiple ad groups. Suppose you are running a wristband campaign. Keep the keyword “silicone wristband” in only one adgroup not more than that. If you want to do some experiment, then pause the ad group with that keyword and experiment your keyword in the new ad group. If you want to move it, move it completely. Don’t copy it. If the issue is critical, then stop the adgroup. But don’t do that too often. The keywords that you feel right to be together should stay together. You should keep the integrity of your keyword groups as much as possible.

Will Google Chrome Affect My AdWords PPC?

Google has released a browser called Google Chrome. Yesterday we downloaded it and is really user friendly. I was using IE and don’t like to use Firefox at all (no reason for that). I heard chrome is an interesting application and many of my friends started to use it. So I too started a test use yesterday. Didn’t get much time to experiment. Then suddenly my thoughts went the way that whether my adwords ppc will be affected by this new browser. But inside AdWords blog I could see a blog post telling that Google Chrome shouldn’t affect our AdWords. What they mean is your landing pages should appear the same way in Google Chrome as they do in Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft IE. You don’t have to do anything new for your landing pages to look exact the way before. Waiting for the development and popularity of Chrome. What you think? Chrome will catch up to Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft IE? Even if it is from google, I will take its own time to reach the top. But I believe that one day it will reach the top. If you like to download the software, download it. Don’t worry about your existing landing pages. I feel it is almost the same way as top browsers. When creating a new landing page, make a look at this new browser before make it alive.

Make a look if you haven’t seen it yet.

PPC Summit Los Angeles September – 25 & 26

Early Bird Registration cut off date is September 18.

Pricing – Includes full summit access, all sessions, keynotes, Continental breakfast, lunches, breaks, comprehensive “How-To” manuals, promotional items, networking opportunities etc.

Individual Passes Regular Early Bird*
One Day Pass (Day 1 or 2) $699 $599
Best Value!Two Day Pass $1199 $999

Additional attendees from the same company get a DISCOUNT ($100 off) when registered at the same time!

Company Passes Regular Early Bird*
Two Day Pass Only Not Available $899

* An additional 10% discount may be granted to account holders of Sponsors on Individual rates when the appropriate Invitation code is entered during registration. This discount is not reflected in the pricing above.

* This discount applies to the Early Bird rates only and will be deducted at checkout when you enter your Invitation code

* To be eligible for a Company Pass, all company attendees must register prior to the Early Bird deadline, at the same time and with the same credit card. If registering separately you must use the individual pass rates. No regular or On-Site registration is allowed with this group discount.

For more details and registration Visit http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=172278 or mail to registration@ppcsummit.com