Changes To Google AdWords Allows Better Content Network Targeting

Inside AdWords announced yesterday a new development in the Google AdWords pay per click platform. You can now use keywords and placement targeting within the Content Network.

There are two ways to make this work for you. You can create custom bids for your ad placements or you can choose to have your ad displayed within the content network only when the keywords and the placements match. I really like that last option because you are really getting into the nitty gritty of targeted marketing there and your leads should be highly targeted leads if you’ve done your keyword bidding correctly.

Let’s say, for instance, that you sell camping equipment with environmental friendly materials. You can select your keywords - obviously, “green camping gear” for instance, and select the sites within the network that you’d like your ads to run on. You’ll want to write an ad that specifically targets the audience you are aiming for. When a member of the content network that matches your criteria shows your targeted advertisement based on the selections of keywords that match your ad and his site then your ad will be shown. This type of targeted should affect your budget positively and increase your ROI, which is the goal.

Some people don’t like the content network and I admit that it can be dangerous, but if you do it right then it will make you money.

Why Pay Per Click Ads Rise And Fall With The Times

we asks a great question:

Is there ever a time when a paid search marketer can stop optimizing their campaigns and just sit back reaping the benefits of a previous job well done?

When it comes to managing pay per click campaigns, you can’t just sit and hope for the best. You can’t get your ads to where you want them then sit back and kick your feet up. You have to “manage” them. That requires constant supervision.

Organic search listings are always changing. One day a web page could be on page 1 of Google and the next day the same page could be on page 4. It’s always been like this and I suspect that it always will. Google makes about 10 algorithmic changes per week, which means that the Web is always changing. Not just organic listings, but paid listings as well.

The paid listings you see as sponsored results are based on the organic listings you see on the same page. Both are affected by search engine changes in algorithm. If Google tweaks its algorithms to combat a particular strategy webmasters use that is frowned upon then paid or sponsored listings will respond to those same changes. That’s why it is important to always tweak your keyword lists, bid amounts, and other pay per click settings. Things are constantly on the move so you should be too.

Where Is PPC Headed?

Now that Yahoo! has its own custom search service - albeit a few days (re: years) too late - and is poised to compete with Google in that arena, will they go the next step and add search marketing adds to the results pages? We’ll see.

The real question is, where will be PPC go?

There have been huge developments in pay per click in the last year, mostly from Google. They’ve add the ability for advertisers to manage print campaigns, radio campaigns, and TV campaigns. Yahoo! isn’t as far behind Google in the PPC arena as they are in search, which makes you wonder just where they are in terms of these same developments. Yahoo! tends to put more emphasis on display banner advertising and is the leader in that market. Will you see any new stretches in PPC from the Yahoo! team?

Yahoo!, I think, is the key to online advertising is so many ways. While Google has been the chief innovator in search and has made more headway in PPC than anyone else, Yahoo! has done its small part in keeping the playing field from becoming a total Google monopoly. Now, they seem to be wavering, what with the Yahoo!-Microsoft brouhaha and the Icahn shenanigans. How we any of us not be left wondering what will happen next?

Pay per click is fraught with click fraud problems and other issues but more and more people still seem to be headed over to the PPC advertising model. Google has recently announced the end of its beta on Pay Per Action, which might seem like a step backward to some. There are new companies popping up to get their small slice of the pie and there is no doubt that, at least for the foreseeable future, PPC advertising will continue to grow. And the developments continue. I’m excited about the future of PPC.

Is Yahoo! Profile Your Ads?

PPC Hero is reporting a new practice at Yahoo! that could seriously affect your PPC account there. The practice is called Ad Profiling.

Evidently, what Yahoo! is doing now is taking low-performing keywords and revising the ads without account holders’ permission. If this is really taking place then Yahoo! is treading into dangerous territory. I can envision a Yahoo! account representative making undisclosed changes to a user’s ad that lead to higher click throughs, which in turn lead to unexpected depletion of budgets long before expected. Can you smell a lawsuit from that?

Another danger to this practice is that these “improvements” may not be improvements at all. What if an account representative at Yahoo! makes changes to an ad that lead clickers to believe they are landing on a page to see a product for X but don’t find X at all? This would lead to an advertiser paying for clicks that he would not have wanted to pay for and could result in another lawsuit.

I understand Yahoo!s desire to be more competitive and to increase its shareholders’ revenue. I fully support those initiatives, but this ad profiling seems like a dangerous practice that could land Yahoo! in hot water. Be careful out there.

WordPress Has Plugin For adCenter Analytics

Users of Google AdWords have had access to WordPress tools for some time now. Now, MSN adCenter users have access to a WordPress plugin that looks to a promising tool.

The adCenter Analytics WordPress tool should allow WordPress bloggers the opportunity to track how their PPC ad campaigns are doing and to be able to track traffic to their blog. All it really does is add the adCenter Analytics code to your web pages. But do you really need it?

There are two ways to add the analytics code to your blogs. I’ve done it both ways. You can add a plugin like the adCenter Analytics WordPress or you can add the code to php page and FTP it to your server. I’d had success both ways.

I’d say it’s up to you which way you do it, but keep in mind that WordPress plugins add additional code to your pages and increases your load time. Too many plugins and your blog will become sluggish. That will affect your SEO. So if you have a lot of other plugins then you might consider just FTPing your code. It will be easier.

If the only plugin you are using is the adCenter Analytics plugin and you don’t see yourself using a lot of plugins then by all means you can give it a shot. It shouldn’t hurt.

Should You Join Google’s Content Network?

Some pay per click managers will warn you not to join the Content Network. There are some good reasons for that advice, but it may be a little misguided. Sure, there are problems and risks associated with the Google Content Network, but there are risks associated with pay per click advertising.

LifeScript recently conducted a case study about the Content Network and had this to say:

Additionally, MySpace’s performance has lead Aloke to reconsider the power of social media sites at driving effective traffic and conversions for his clients. “I think the performance I have seen with MySpace for LifeScript has made me reevaluate the effectiveness of social media advertising. If setup correctly, social media advertising can be a profitable source of traffic.”

There are two things that this could mean:

1. Advertising through social networks may be valuable after all
2. We can learn from advertising in the Content Network

A third thing we can conclude from this case study is that not all Content Network websites are created equal. Some are winners and some are losers. You have to judge whether or not a particular site is valuable to you or not. That requires testing.

If you do decide to advertise through the Content Network, don’t just join the network willy nilly. Find sites that are like yours and test your ads on them first. If they do well in the test then roll your ads out on them for your entire campaign. MySpace might work as an advertising partner for one business and not do well at all for another. But another website might work for someone else and not for you. So do the testing and make your decisions based on real world scenarios, not fantasy.

Landing Page Optimization: Kill Those Exit Links

Do you have exit links on your landing pages? If so, you could be killing your own PPC campaigns. I’d recommend killing the links before they kill you.

When a potential customer lands on your landing page they will try to find a way out if you let them. If you provide exit links to other pages or websites before the “Buy Now” button, they will take them. Even if your links point to other pages on your website, your visitors will leave through those links and they won’t go back to your landing page. Take those links out and don’t provide your visitors with an exit before buying your product or service.

If you absolutely have to include links on your landing page, have those pages open up in a new window so that your visitors are not leaving the page entirely. Also, disable the menu bar in those page because your visitors will likely see that as an opportunity to start browsing other areas of your website and forget about your landing page. They could even close the landing page and start using the open window.

Exit links will lower your conversions. Kill the exit links on your landing page and watch your conversions go up.

How Big Should Your PPC Budget Be?

If you are new to pay per click advertising you may be struggling with deciding the size of your budget. Even experienced advertisers sometimes struggle with these issues so there is no shame. To be sure, you should limit your budget just so you don’t exceed your ability to pay the expense.

The reason you want to limit your PPC budget is because sometimes an ad will fail to get the type of result you’d expect it to get. When that happens you are simply losing money. You want to cap how much money you have the ability to lose so that you don’t end up casting a line into the water only to have the fish snag the bait and rip the pole out of your hands.

So much budget is too much?

Well, I’ve always believed you should start small. For most campaigns, $5 a day is adequate until you can get a handle on just how much you’ll pay for your advertising. You can always, of course, increase your budget as you need to, but one rule of thumb is to take a percentage of your overall advertising budget and devote that to your PPC budget.

Google AdWords Schedules Another Maintenance Day

Is it just me or has Google AdWords been scheduling a lot of maintenance days lately? It seems like they’ve scheduled a maintenance day once a month for the past three or four months and they’ve scheduled another one for two days from now.

Yep, July 12 will be a Google Adwords maintenance day. You won’t be able to log in to your account from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, July 12. Of course, your campaigns will continue to run but you won’t be able to tweak or make any changes to them. So if you a new campaign that you were planning to start on that day you’ll have to get it going before 10 a.m. PDT or wait until after 2 p.m.

I was right. Every month, on the second Saturday of the month, Google AdWords has a scheduled day of maintenance. But I think I told you that last month.

How To Make Your Budget Stretch

The Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog had a great post yesterday on budget smoothing. What that means is they run your ads throughout the day to spread your budget out over the whole day so you don’t run through the budget before the day is out. That’s why you may go up during certain parts of the day and not find your ad running. Truthfully, all the search engines do it.

There are ways to keep those ads running longer. Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog recommends increasing your spend limit or selecting less popular keywords that don’t cost as much. Those are good recommendations, but there are other ways to keep your budget in check as well.

One way is to use the phrase match and exact match keyword match tools. And you can also use negative keywords to tell the search engines not to display your ads if certain keywords show up. For instance, if your targeted keyword phrase is “silver bullet” then you can use “silver spoon” as a negative keyword phrase to keep your ads from showing up for that phrase.

Put a little more thought into keyword matches and try to think like a searcher. What will they see when they search for certain phrases? Is that what you want?

Google AdWords Shows Search Statistics For Keywords

If you log in to your Google AdWords account and perform keyword research on your niche, you’ll find some excellent search statistics through the keyword research tool. Among the statistics that you’ll be able to see are:

• Estimated Ad Position
• Estimated Average CPC
• Advertiser Competition
• Search Volume for Previous Month
• Average Search Volume
• Search Volume Trends Graph
• The Month Of Highest Search Volume

And you can see these statistics for broad, phrase, and exact match for each keyword that you research and add to your list.

These statistics are designed to help you make important decisions regarding your PPC campaigns, but you can also use them in your organic search marketing efforts as well. Pick the most profitable keywords for you niche based on the statistics and get to work. I love the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool.

Should You Use PPC To Drive Traffic To Your Videos?

The secret is out: PPC is a great way to drive targeted traffic to any landing page. But should you use it to drive traffic to your videos? Possibly.

It is possible to monetize your PPC traffic to your videos if you follow a few simple guidelines. The key to any Pay per click marketing is to get a return on your investment. Are your videos used for selling and do they make conversions? If so then they’ll be very apt for PPC traffic.

Here are a few tips to help you gain the most from your video marketing/PPC combination efforts:

• Have a strong call to action in your videos that will get the customer to buy something, join a list, or spend some money
• Don’t include more than one video per landing page
• Surround your video with optimized text so that you don’t rely on PPC alone and attract organic traffic as well
• Don’t just rely on the video alone; use other sales text on your landing page because not everyone will click to watch the video and if you don’t have a way to reach those people then you’ll spend money only to have them leave your site without doing anything
• Give your visitors a compelling reason on your landing page to watch the video
• Mention the video in your PPC ad title and/or description so that clickers know to expect it on your landing page

It is possible to monetize a video on a landing page through PPC traffic, but it’s best if you use the video in conjunction with other sales tools and don’t just rely on the video alone. The most important thing to remember is to include a strong call to action in the video that will motivate your viewers to buy what you are selling.

Are Your Ads Getting Clicked On (Why Not)?

The surest way to ensure that your ads are getting clicked on (outside of using the right keywords) is to write ads that demand a click through. In other words, the content within your ads are of prime importance.

If your ads aren’t being clicked on and you know you are targeting the right keywords, you might want to tweak your ad content and write better copy. Here are some pointers that will help you do that better:

• Make it compelling and clear
• Test your results and compare ads
• Use optimization techniques to make your ads achieve higher quality ratings
• Separate ads into ad groups
• Target your keywords to correct destination URLs
• Block keywords that don’t apply to your ads
• Use keywords in your titles and descriptions

Your ad quality score is one of the most important things for determining ad success. Be sure you pay attention to the quality score and keep tweaking those ads until you get them right.

What Format Should Your Display URL Have?

David Szetela brings up a very important point when he mentions in this article that the display URL on your ads don’t have to conform to a single web page URL on your web site. He gives to examples, which are reprinted below:

Outdoor Furniture
Durable Patio Beauty. See
Low Prices on Top Brands!
www.FranksFurniture.com/Outdoor

and the second example is:

Outdoor Furniture
Durable Patio Beauty. See
Low Prices on Top Brands!
Outdoor.FranksFurniture.com

Notice that in both examples you can add the keyword to before or after your URL. If you put it after your URL you’ll have to precede it with a forward slash to make it look like a folder on your URL. If before, place it in front of a period as if in a subdomain. Keep in mind that these pages have to actually exist. In other words, don’t just throw in the keyword for the heck of it. Create the page that the URL corresponds to and make that your display URL. The display URL does not have to be your home page.

But the side benefit to doing this is you have your keyword in the ad one more time. You have it in the title, you have it in the description, and then you have it in the display URL. Employ this technique and watch your click through rate go up.

Driving Traffic: Does Your TLD Matter?

I’m not sure what the purpose of this post from PPC Blog was supposed to be, but I’m sure I don’t agree with the title. I don’t think you necessarily need the .com TLD for your domain name. It’s nice if you can get it, but you can build a solid business without it.

The following comment, though, near the bottom of the page is definitely not correct:

Getting all relevant TLD’s for each country in my opinion can still be the safest way to go.