Tag Archives: adwords

Mike Fitterer // 27 Jan, 2016
PPC Management When Time and Sanity Are Scarce
I was recently blessed with the birth of my 2nd child. We’re almost 7 weeks in and both mother and child are doing well. And to celebrate this beautiful, life-altering change I’ve pledged to sleep much less and have very little free time for the next few years. Whoo-hoo!!! Since there are sadly still only 24… Read More

Chad Kearns // 9 Oct, 2014
Six Ways to Win on your Competitor’s Branded Keywords
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

Ryan Moothart // 5 Sep, 2014
Getting Started with Mobile Bid Modifiers
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

Elizabeth Marsten // 17 Aug, 2014
Unexpected Loss of Control: Google AdWords Exact Match Controversy
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

Portent Staff // 1 May, 2014
Harvesting Bulk Negative Keywords with Excel
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

Chad Kearns // 21 Mar, 2014
Exploring the Potential Impact of Google AdWords Online Video Ads
Last December, PPC Essentials, Portent’s pay-per-click service offering designed for growing small businesses, took a leap of faith in positioning ourselves as an entity offering services separately from Portent’s enterprise-level internet marketing services. One essential element of this transition was to create a new website for ourselves that would completely separate us from Portent’s main… Read More

Portent Staff // 9 Jan, 2014
An AdWords Wishlist for 2014
This post is brought to you by our special guest, Toni Voutilainen. Toni is a passionate PPC practitioner from a Finland-based Internet Agency Tulos Helsinki, operating in Scandinavia. Tulos and Portent are conducting a pilot of an International Geek Exchange program – this article is the culmination of Toni’s visit here to Seattle. This October, AdWords… Read More

Portent Staff // 9 Oct, 2013
Waste-Per-Click: 10 Ways You’re Losing Money in PPC [VIDEO WEBINAR]
This webinar was given June 27, 2013. Transcript: Ariana: Hello, and welcome, everyone, to the next installment of the Portent Webinar Series. My name is Ariana and I will be your moderator for today’s webinar, which is Waste-Per-Click – 10 Ways You’re Losing Money on PPC, with our very own Elizabeth Marsten, Senior Director… Read More

Elizabeth Marsten // 24 Jul, 2013
So You Want to Do PPC When You Grow Up
When I was 8 years old I wanted to be a paleontologist. So…very…badly. I even had a jean jacket with dinosaurs painted on it with jewels and sequins. (Hey, it was the ’80s.) Then I discovered the amount of biology and sciences (mostly the dissecting and looking at the insides of living animals) that turned… Read More

Chad Kearns // 14 Jun, 2013
Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Tracking your Success
In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. This is the last post of the six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow… Read More

Portent Staff // 12 Jun, 2013
Google AdWords – Third Party Sitelinks
One of the most exciting (and frustrating) parts of PPC marketing is that it’s a constantly changing landscape. A big part of anyone’s job when working in PPC is to keep up on the latest changes to the systems you’re using. The only problem is that Google releases roughly five billion changes to AdWords every… Read More

Timothy Johnson // 7 Jun, 2013
Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Ad Extensions
In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. We’re in week five of our six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow along… Read More

Chad Kearns // 17 May, 2013
Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Understand your Campaign Settings
In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. Over the course of the next six weeks, Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson will be laying down the knowledge in a six-part blog series detailing… Read More

Chad Kearns // 10 May, 2013
Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Account Structure
In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. Over the course of the next six weeks, Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson will be laying down the knowledge in a six-part blog series detailing… Read More
Ryan Moothart // 19 Apr, 2013
Why Re-Organizing Your AdWords Account Can Fail in the Beginning
If you have ever re-organized an inherited AdWords account to get in line with best practices by moving keywords into new campaigns and creating new ad copy, you may have noticed how you don’t immediately get the results you were expecting. In fact, you may have concluded that all of the work just made your… Read More