search marketing

MY Top 6 Tips for PPC Success

September 24, 2013 by Darin

I have gotten a lot of requests and questions about PPC these past few days and I though I would put this post together to help answer all of them at once. Remember these are MY top 6 tips and you should use them with caution … they could cause you a lot more work, higher PPC Spend, Higher CTR, Higher Conversions … “you see where I am going with this” … so enough talk, lets get to it!

Oh by the way, i’m on a plane right now heading to ERA Vegas (if your going to be there lets meet up and discuss your PPC needs) with 1 hour to burn so you can thank Delta and GoGo for this POST!

#6 – Organize your Account!

You really have no idea how much this can actually help you! Organization is key to running a CLEAN and profitable PPC Acccount. If you create Campaigns and AdGroups for certain reasons this can help reduce your PPC costs dramatically. One Major Secret to getting lower PPC costs is “Do the work Google wants to do for you”, if you organize and do more in your pay per click account and Google has to do less your costs will become lower. Less brain power Google has to put out, less money you have to put out!

#5 – USE Negative Keywords

The search engines gave you this feature for a reason, USE IT! This can help you stop bleeding money in places that generate clicks which you are paying for but not getting any conversions … here’s a prime example: You own a Baby eCommerce site, and you sell Baby Cribs, there is a famous TV show called MTV Cribs, would you believe me if I told you that people will click on your AD if you have the word [cribs] in your account and you are selling baby cribs however you have nothing to do with the TV show MTV Cribs but your ad still shows …

Not only will this cost you money, it will give your account AD Impressions that are not relevant to your business and HURT your Quality Score … yes I said HURT your QUALITY SCORE !!!

#4 – Your Company name or Brand Names

Do you buy your Company Name or and Brand Names you want to be associated with? Why NOT? If your not, I bet your competitor is buying your names! Protect your BRAND, buy your own KEYWORD and protect YOUR CUSTOMERS … oh and by the way, put it in it’s own Campaign or AdGroup and WRITE the BEST AD YOU CAN about YOUR COMPANY … Your quality score will be high and your click cost will be low.

Mini Tip – Buy Your competitor’s name

#3 – Spelling Bee Champion

I’m not tha besst speeller, I will admitt to that and I’ma sure more than 1/2 of America cant speell eather. If you have tough to spell keywords in your account, grab the misspellings of them and create a new Campaign or AdGroup targeting BAD SPELLERS !!! If they see an ad for something they were looking for your going to get that click at a much lower cost than the correct spelling where all your competition is!

Yes that 1st sentence is spelled wrong, I know … JEEZ !

#2 – Match Types – Not the Dating Site!

Do you know about Match Types? If not, this alone in it self is an entire Blog Post !

Broad Match – This is the default matching option. With broad match, your ad may show if a search term contains your keyword terms in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads can also show for close variations of your keywords.

Sticking with the broad match default is a great choice if you don’t want to spend a lot of time building your keyword lists and want to capture the highest possible volume of ad traffic. You can use it with negative keywords to avoid highly irrelevant traffic.

Broad Match Modifer – You can add a modifier, the plus sign on your keyboard (+), to any of the terms that are part of your broad match keyword phrase. By adding a modifier, your ads can only show when someone’s search contains those modified terms, or close variations of the modified terms, in any order. The modifier won’t work with phrase match or exact match keywords.

Unlike broad match keywords, modified broad match keywords won’t show your ad for synonyms or related searches. For this reason, it adds an additional level of control. Using broad match modifier is a good choice if you want to increase relevancy even if it means you might get less ad traffic than broad match.

Phrase Match – With phrase match, your ad can show when someone searches for your exact keyword, or your exact keyword with additional words before or after it. We’ll also show your ad when someone searches for close variations of that exact keyword, or with additional words before or after it.

Using phrase match can help you reach more customers, while still giving you more precise targeting. In other words, your keywords are less likely to show ads to customers searching for terms that aren’t related to your product or service.

To use a phrase match keyword, simply surround the entire keyword with quotation marks. For example, “women’s hats”.

Exact Match – With exact match, your ads can appear only when someone searches for your exact keyword, without any other terms in the search. We’ll also show your ad when someone searches for close variations of that specific keyword.

Unlike phrase match, if someone searches for additional words before or after your exact keyword, your ad won’t show. Using exact match means that your keywords are targeted more precisely than broad match or phrase match.

To use an exact match keyword, simply surround the entire keyword with brackets. For example, [women’s hats].

PHEW — that was a lot … need more info on that … Read what Google Has to say on the Subject!

#1 – I always save the best for last!

ORGANIZE YOUR ACCOUNT !!! I swear, I have gone into companies where I have actually turned off their Pay Per Click Accounts to organize them, they were hurting for a few days, as I had to stop the bleeding, however when I turned them back on after organizing & optimizing, they couldn’t believe how much money they were throwing away, all because of an unorganized account. This simple tip could account for 1% – 20% cost savings in your account alone.

Well there you have it, MY Top6 5 Tips for PPC Success.

If you have any other questions for me, leave some comments below and we’ll answer as we go, or I’ll write another post!

About to land, just in time

Darin

Darin Wins an AFFY at Affiliate Ball

August 22, 2013 by Casey Kurlander

Darin Carter won an AFFY award this past weekend at the Affiliate Ball during Affiliate Summit 2013 in Philly.

The Affiliate Ball is one of the biggest, hottest parties for internet marketers to network, do business and get crazy at. Each year legendary artists host and perform- this year it was Busta Rhymes and Evander Holyfield.

One of the other highlights of the Affiliate Ball is when the party’s organizer, Darren Blatt, gets up to present awards to those in the industry who have made an impact and achieved big things.

The last award of the night went to a guy who “represents the Google Glass, has Barack Obama following him on Twitter, and works with Crush Ads… Darin Carter!!” Check out the full video of Darin getting his AFFY here:

Google Penguin Update

May 9, 2012 by Darin

Have you noticed lately that your rankings mysteriously vanished once Google released its new Penguin update? Well, you’re not the only one frustrated with disappearing search results. Since the Google Penguin update, Google has changed the game yet again in the SEO industry and has generated a huge buzz among SEOs and bloggers.

The central purpose of the Penguin update, which was launched in late April, is to put a deep freeze on web spam in Google’s search results. The Penguin update is proposed to fight web spammers who use shady techniques to rank websites. However, research shows how useless and horribly designed the update actually is. Countless amounts of Google users have declared that Google Penguin by all measures “is the worse Google update that has happened yet.” Lately, many have discovered that it seems like while Google is targeting “black hat” SEOs, the “white hat” SEOs are being affected as well.

According to Glenn Gave at G-Squared Interactive, the Penguin update “lacks natural links.” The Google Penguin update has 5 types of link issues harming some affected websites, including paid text links using exact match anchor text, comment spam, guest posts on questionable sites, articles marketing sites, and links from dangerous sites. So where do you go from here? How do you avoid the being targeted by Google? Here are some helpful tips to move forward and dodge the twists and turns that Google is doing in the SEO industry:

• Stop building exact match anchor links- Google is going to eventually catch on to what you’re doing and penalize you for exact match anchor links. Your links should never be an exact match to the anchor text. Instead, focus on links that mention your brand.
• Make link building constantly unpredictable- you want to make your link count grow by a different number each month. If you link count is growing by the same number each month, Google will notice this consistent pattern.
• Differentiate the quality of the sites you are buying links from- Your target should be for pages that are big, small, popular, unpopular, no page rank, high range rank, etc.
• Purchase blogs- the blog will then be yours and you won’t run into the result of being punished for buying paid links.
• Search for broken links- you will be surprised with how many broken links out there are free.

Don’t always rely on Google. It may be a very powerful search engine, but there are ways to optimize outside of Google to keep your website looking fresh. Explore the SEO life beyond Google to gain more online visibility:

1. Post helpful, shareable content through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. You want to create and publish content that viewers can socialize over.
2. Blog more often. Connect with businesses and contribute your ideas and opinions by posting blog posts.
3. Interact daily on relevant businesses Facebook pages.
4. Purchase social ads on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln so that you can grab the attention of your targeted demographic.
5. YouTube serves as an excellent source that brings in traffic. Create videos often to educate viewers. Videos will create one-on-one engagement with you audience.

Always keep in mind that not all your SEO eggs should be placed in Google’s basket.

This article was written by Jennifer Rodino – New Memeber to My Search Marketing Team !!!

Social Marketing Wishes it Was Search Marketing

April 17, 2012 by Darin

Over the last few years, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Youtube has been taking the Internet by storm. More people are going with the trend and focusing on social marketing and it’s quite understandable why. But what’s surprising is that marketers are ignoring search marketing in favor of using social media as a marketing strategy.

There are many reasons why marketers are going with the social media route. First, social media really has the potential to snowball from small campaigns. Second, social media is one of the most cost effective ways to market your business online. Third, there is a huge audience in the social media sites and it would be foolish not to take advantage of the user base that is available.

But what’s shocking is that when you run the numbers, search still produces better results than social media in terms of return on investment. The marketers that are having success with search are making a bigger impact on their bottom line than marketers that are using social media as an advertising/marketing platform.

There are several factors for this. While social media is more budget friendly to start with, it requires more commitment in terms of how much time you invest. Social media is very active and you need to constantly monitor and develop campaigns to keep up.

On the other hand, search marketing requires a bigger investment up front. It does require a big commitment to start a campaign but after you’ve got it going, you pretty much have a regular revenue stream set up. It’s also easy to manage whether you are running pay per click campaigns or getting traffic through organic search. It is very affordable to ramp up a winning campaign.

Another reason why search may be producing better results is that it is easier to target your audience. You can target your audience through keywords. There are various filters you can use to really hone in on your most important prospect such as day parting, negative keywords, and more. This allows advertisers to really optimize campaigns and make it as profitable as possible.

Probably the biggest reason search performs better is because there is an intent to buy from the user. People on sites such as Facebook are not on the site with the intent to make a purchase whereas a person searching Google may be typing in the model of a product to compare prices and look at reviews.

If you were hesitant about using search before, then there’s some news that may want you to start a campaign. Studies are also showing that the click costs have decreased over the last few years. This may be because more marketers prefer social marketing over other methods.

In contrast, the costs of advertising on sites such as Facebook have gone up with the increasing demands. The rise of other marketing methods such as mobile marketing can be another contributing factor to lowering costs of search. Keep in mind that everything may vary from industry to industry and the overall changes in costs are a generalization.

As you can see, search marketing is still effective and is still one of the most profitable marketing strategies for online businesses. This doesn’t mean that businesses should solely focus on it as social marketing and other advertising/marketing channels are still profitable. It just means that you shouldn’t jump on the social bandwagon without putting in a decent effort in using search.