PPC

Alternate Title: How I doubled Return on Ad Spend in branded PPC PPC 101 – Branded Search The first rule of PPC is to make sure you bid on your branded search terms.  Actually, scratch that – the first rule of PPC is that all must bow down to Earth’s future overlords, Google.  Or was… Read More

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Last year I received an invitation to speak at one of the biggest search conferences of the year, MozCon. MozCon is put on by Moz (formerly known as SEOmoz) an SEO software/tool company in Seattle and MozCon, in the past, has been more commonly known as an SEO conference. As such, I’ve noticed that those… Read More

PPC

Whether it’s SEO or PPC advertising, search engine marketing campaigns should begin with keyword research. This research is arguably the most important task for the foundation of all SEM efforts. It not only gives marketers insight into the mind of their audience, but helps bridge the gap between potential customers and the products or services… Read More

PPC

As a part of our Big Idea series, I wanted to share more detail to a special pilot program that I took part in recently and will be presenting on in Dallas at State of Search later this month. It’s the International Geek Exchange that Toni Voutilainen, a senior PPC specialist of the Tulos Agency… Read More

PPC

Starting in early November, Google will allow advertisers to use local area codes in their call extensions that utilize Google forwarding numbers.  Previously, you had two options: use your own number and lose the ability to track calls in AdWords, or use an (866) forwarding number randomly assigned to your ads. With this new feature,… Read More

PPC

Occupying your competitor’s SERP space with a pay-per-click ad provides the ability to capture traffic and convert visitors into customers who may have had previous intentions of spending their money elsewhere. While bidding on the branded terms of your competitors is not an innovative practice, poor execution is something we see over and over again.… Read More

PPC

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) should be an integral part of every company’s online marketing strategy. Seriously, it’s legit. After all, what marketer wouldn’t like having totally transparent marketing spend and return data available just a few clicks away? Oh, every marketer likes that sort of data? That’s what I thought. Here’s the problem. Most… Read More

PPC

Have you ever stumbled onto a new feature without even realizing it? It just happened to me recently when I told my boss Elizabeth that I had gotten a second, French language, PLA feed going for a client. She looked at me sideways and said “how’d you do that?” Considering she’s covered a PLA base… Read More

PPC

Both pay-per-click advertising and organic listings vie for your attention when you search, but do the two types of search results always have to be at odds, or can savvy marketers use SEO(Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) in tandem to dominate the search results? Making Portent history, Laura Oden (PPC Strategist) and Kaitlin McMichael… Read More

PPC

Problem Ever since Google AdWords introduced enhanced campaigns, targeting mobile traffic effectively using mobile bid modifiers has been an important strategy for all PPC managers.  Some of you may have mobile bid modifiers set in your campaigns already, but aren’t seeing very good results from mobile traffic.  Others may have your mobile bid modifiers set… Read More

PPC

Google AdWords’ recent announcement on the retirement of exact match in favor of the “close variant” default setting not only came as a bit of surprise to me, but definitely garnered the expected outrage from the PPC community, including petitions, Tweets and blog posts like this one. (Strangely enough, we seem to have avoided the… Read More

PPC

What is the Google Display Network you might ask? The Google Display Network (GDN) is a collection of websites that partner with Google to display ads on their web pages.  Advertisers can use this channel to find relevant webpages for their message to appear on and increase their marketing reach. Building campaigns on the GDN… Read More

PPC

“Persona” is not a PPC word, but it’s certainly been seeing a lot more attention as we shift more and more away from keywords to audiences, intent, behaviors and (not provided). Some marketers keep their personas in their heads, some write them on Post-Its and some have fully written profiles with pictures and graphs. I… Read More

PPC

Are you using attribution modeling or assisted conversion data in your PPC reports? If you’re not, you’re missing out on some golden opportunities to leverage data to your advantage. We all know the LNDC model (last non-direct click model—the default used by Google Analytics) is not comprehensive enough for us to see the big picture.… Read More

PPC

When I was just a boy, my mother caught me out behind the garage using broad match. I couldn’t sit for a week. Later, I graduated to the hard stuff: media buys, QR codes, direct mail… bad scene, man. Still, despite her best attempts at teaching me the value of plus signs, quotes and brackets,… Read More