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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

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 !!!

Pay per click campaigns need to be properly planned

October 27, 2011 by Darin

If you want to market a product or service, the internet is the only place where you can get a large audience. All the other forms of marketing and advertising cost a lot of money. Also, there is no guarantee that you would reach the intended group of people. But with the internet, you can target exactly those people who would be interested in using your product or service. One of the best tools that are available for companies that are looking to market through the internet is the pay per click option.

There are a lot of people who think that the pay per click option is very costly and does not give the desired results. But that is not the case.

When done properly, it would generate a lot of traffic to your website and help you in creating awareness of your products and services. When you use a pay per click service, you would be placing ads on websites that see a lot of traffic and are in some way related to your products and services. You would have to pay these websites money based on the number of clicks that are generated by visitors and users.

For a pay per click campaign to be successful, you need to do proper research regarding which websites to place your ads in. It is also necessary to keep a track of the websites in which you have placed the ads so that you would know where you are getting the traffic.

If a particular website is not being effective and is not generating much traffic for you, then you need to take your ads out of that website and place it in another website that has the potential to generate more clicks.

If you have decided on going for a pay per click campaign, you need to have a proper strategy to make it successful. You can always take the help of professional marketing companies that would be able to place your ads in all the right places so that you would be able to generate a steady stream of traffic to your website. Using the right keywords and having the proper landing pages would help you in your quest for more visitors. Once a visitor clicks on your ad and lands on your website, it would be your responsibility to ensure that you keep him interested.

Darin Carter