Posts About ‘adwords’

Advanced PPC Techniques

SAScon - Gilli Goodman from Google UK

Next up for me at SAScon is the Advanced PPC panel moderated by Yahoo’s Jon Myers.

Duncan Fisher, Latitude – Quality Score

First speaker is Duncan Fisher from Latitude and he’s talking about Quality Score (QS). The Quality Score of your keywords is a vital aspect of your AdWords campaign, ensuring only the most relevant ads are shown on Google’s search results. It’s a ‘complex mathematical formula’ scoring the relevance of your ad & landing page to the keyword you advertise on. From the advertiser’s point of view it helps determine how much you end up paying per click. (more…)

The Fallacy of the “Don’t Rely on Google” Argument

Google Owns You

Every time Google decides to deliver another collective bitch-slap to the SEO industry in the form of an update named after a cute monochrome animal, we see the usual eruptions of debate and arguments among SEOs about the hows and whys of it all.

One argument that is consistently put forth, usually by smug SEOs whose sites have escaped the sledgehammer of Google’s wrath unscathed, is that “no site should be too reliant on Google’s traffic”.

That particular argument grinds my gears to no end. It really does. In my opinion it’s just not a valid argument. (more…)

How to Keep Control over the New and Improved Exact & Phrase Match in Adwords

full-control

Last month, I spoke alongside Brad Geddes in a panel at the SMX Munich about “Large Scale PPC“. One of the subjects in my presentation was the account structure and how to use your structure to keep control over the account. In the near future after the introduction of  “improved exact and phrase match options” in Adwords, control will be even more important. How can you use this new feature to your benefits and prevent the account from “slipping” out of your hands?

Not nearly 3 years ago, the maximum number of campaigns an advertiser could build in Adwords was 25 campaigns in a standard account and 50 campaigns in an “enhanced” account. Today, we can build 10.000 campaigns in a standard account. Why did Google increase this amount so rapidly? The answer is clear: today we have so many options and settings on a campaign level, that we just have to build more campaigns than we did a few years ago!

Think about the use of mobile and tablets, the changes in the display network, remarketing and especially all the ad extensions that we can use today. In the last months, Google kept on pimping the sitelinks, increasing the number of sitelinks in some cases from 4 till 6 sitelinks and introducing even enhanced sitelinks, which give you the possibility to cover a bigger part of the search result page. (more…)

Google AdWords Filters and How to Use Them

lifting-google-adwords

It seems like a long time ago now that Google AdWords introduced filters to their browser environment and I want to spend some time in this post going through some of the filters that should be set up and used for all campaigns.

For those of you who don’t know about AdWords filters, they are available at campaign, ad group, keyword and ad text level and they can help you to identify any problems areas that may require attention.

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Google AdWords Features From 2011 You Should Be Using In 2012

Product Listing Ad

Welcome to my first post as a full time blogger for State of Search. In this post, I am going to recap on some of the features within Google AdWords that have been launched over the past year which we should all be considering when managing campaigns in 2012.

With Paid Search (PPC) costs continuing to rise, it has become more important than ever to pay attention to how you are managing PPC campaigns. Google AdWords in particular has seen Cost per Click costs increasing significantly over the past year and this is set to continue as more advertisers start joining the PPC marketing game.

In addition to rising costs, PPC platforms are continuously adding new features and tools, which we all need to be aware of to ensure campaigns are running efficiently and are not wasting money. (more…)

Using The New Adwords Landing Page Algorithm to Improve Onpage SEO

AdWords-Quality-Score

It’s been a few weeks since Google announced changes to the Adwords Quality Score algorithm, and although PPC isn’t my main discipline, I can certainly see the effect that update has had on the five PPC accounts I’m involved with. Some keywords that previously had a Quality Score (QS) of 5+ have dropped to a score of 2+, and this has had a direct effect on their placement, despite the same amount of budget spend. I know there’s still a huge school of thought that insists that PPC and SEO are separate entities and never the twain shall meet, but the latest move by Google is forcing the gap between the two to close even further. So, what is Quality Score and why is it so important? Well, if you’ve ever had working experience of Adwords, you’ll know that Google uses QS to ascertain both the relevance of an ad as well as the relevance of the keywords and landing page of the destination URL of that ad. Other determining factors include a decent Click Through Rate (CTR) as well as the ad/campaign’s historical performance. (more…)

Be Careful: Google Adwords Phishing Going Around

adwords-phising-intro

Just a quick warning that some people have noticed there are phishing mails out there who are targeting Adwords account owners. In the e-mails (see examples below) the Adwords account owners are warned that their ads have stopped running based on “a number of issues”.

The owners are asked to verify the status of their Adwords accounts and notify Google if the ads do not appear online. When they go online they are led to a place which looks a lot like Adwords where they have to fill in their account details. (more…)

The Keywords On Which Google Makes Its Fortune

The Top 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google AdWords Advertising

Google’s business model used to be only Adwords. And it still is their main source of income. They make a fortune out of the keywords we type into Google. A very smart business model. But which keywords are the ones making Google the most money? This infographic from Wordstream shows us where Google is making the most money. (more…)

Will Google move Adwords ads toward the bottom of the SERPs?

Google has been experimenting a lot with the lay out of the search interface. Last friday they introduced a new search interface for tablets. This new interface differs from the desktop interface in many ways, but one important difference is that the AdWords advertisement will only be shown at the top and the bottom of the SERPs. In the landscape mode there will be a maximum two ads at the top and three at the bottom, in the portrait mode there will be a maximum three ads at the top as well as at the bottom. Side ads will be disappearing completely. (more…)

Branded AdWords advertising boosts total site traffic

Whenever a company publishes research that casts its own products in a positive light, my sceptic-alarm goes off. Often this type of ‘research’ is just poorly veiled PR spin disguised as a scientific study.

There are some exceptions fortunately, and Google is one of them. For all the criticism I often levy against the big G, I have to admit that their computer scientists regularly come up with some fascinating stuff. (more…)

First mover advantage in PPC

intelliad

Last week at SMX Munich I spoke in a session called “First Mover Advantage or Living on the Edge”. The people from Rising Media asked me to update the audience on the new features in Adwords, but does that really have to do with the session’s subject? Just some thoughts about it….
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