These days Ask.com seems to be flailing, desperately trying to control the bleeding of is its’ visitor base and PPC advertisers. In the world of PPC search engine marketing, I have found increasingly less value from Ask’s paid search advertising program and stopped using their service altogether for several clients. If you cannot get a… Read More

The whole fuss around buying competitor’s keywords in pay per click marketing campaigns is stupid. Moronic. Foolish. Wasteful. Did I mention bad? And stupid? There is nothing wrong with bidding on a competitor’s brand name. Let me say it a different way: If you’re Infiniti, it’s perfectly OK to make sure your ad shows up… Read More

Much like the mystery of the Big Mac’s secret sauce and Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices, we’ve all speculated what exactly makes up the closely guarded formula that determines Google’s PPC Quality Score. What are all the factors? How much weight does each factors carry? How can I exploit this to my advantage?! Last… Read More

Once in awhile you get a client who’s site offers a lot of little specific products that is great for niche keywords but low traffic. Those keywords are great when they convert, but the real traffic is in the high competitive keywords that bring the visitors to the site. These visitors that search by the… Read More

PPC, at times, can feel a bit like going to Vegas and pumping nickels into the slot machines. Except imagine the nickels are dollars, or sometimes several dollars. Ouch! Pretty soon you’ve squandered your dinner money, and the forgiving 7-7-7 has eluded your grasp all night. Fortunately, there’s a way to hedge your bets in… Read More

But give the actual interface a star and a half. (On a scale of four stars, Google being four.) Almost every time I call MSN adCenter support for my various issues, be it basic account editing, billing, ad approval, keyword status or a general “what just happened?!”, I get top notch support and “I’m sorries”.… Read More

Per my post last week regarding Solving the (not set) in Google Analytics and Yahoo, we’ll continue this week bridging the gap between MSN AdCenter and Google Analytics. I did ask a MSN AdCenter representative once how come my two biggest keywords (in impressions, spend and clicks) didn’t register at all in Google Analytics, but… Read More

Today’s tip comes from two sources: Alex L. Cohen and PPC Hero, with their mystery solving and publicly sharing their solution on how to import data and increasing compatibility between Yahoo PPC and Google Analytics. As with any search engine that isn’t Google, you have to expect a certain amount of disparity in reporting data… Read More

We all know that the biggest part of attracting a potential customer to clicking on your ad is the headline. They see that bold text, what they searched for and are drawn in like a moth to a flame. But in the continual quest that is a PPC Analyst’s career, we have to think of… Read More

Once upon a time, the Content Network seemed eternally damned to represent hundreds of thousands of impressions, a few too many hundred clicks, no sales or leads and no idea where in the universe your ads were showing up. I used to just opt out the content network every time since it just seemed to… Read More

If you’re spending money on pay per click marketing, you must buy your brand name! Ignore those who say otherwise. Make damned sure you’re bidding on the name, misspellings, and the like. Even if you rank #1 for your own name. Do it anyway. Here’s why: It’s cheap. PPC engines’ quality scoring algorithms mean you’re… Read More

PPC

My staff are a bit of a sick bunch. That’s why I like them. The PPC team has put together a PPC worst practices site: PPCVillain.com. There are plenty of best practices sites, after all. Here’s the first of what we hope will be many instructional videos:

Why do some PPC ads rank well, and others fall no matter what you spend? There's more to your pay per click ad ranking than your bid and your clickthru. Read on to learn what we know matters, and how you can get a better paid search ranking.

PPC

Google Adwords and other major pay-per-click providers have a tool called dynamic keywords. It lets you place a variable in your ad, so that the search phrase entered shows up in the ad. Unfortunately it’s become a tool for lazy PPC marketers, leading to ads like this: And this: Please, if you must use dynamic… Read More

For all you Adwords users out there: Google’s released a new advanced adwords scheduling tool. It lets you increase or decrease your bids on a given day of the week. In this tutorial I review how to use it, and when to use it: How to Use It Log into your Adwords account. Check the… Read More