Keyword Selection

The success of a new Adwords account depends significantly on decisions about keyword selection. Choosing the right keywords and negative keywords, understanding the traffic potential of the keywords you select, and making the right choices, during the selection process, about ad groups and campaigns are all critical factors for the successful launch of any pay per click advertising campaign.

Especially for new SEM Analysts, I’m often asked about how to develop keyword lists. This post is for you.

Yahoo’s Jambalaya SER

One of the things I love about Yahoo is that they aren’t afraid to trash the reputation of their search engine by turning their organic search results into spicy jambalaya. Yahoo Paid Inclusion (also called Yahoo Search Submit, and Yahoo Search Submit Pro) allow almost anyone to purchase listings in Yahoo organic search results.

Hot Debates About Hot Keywords

Yesterday I was involved in another debate about whether Amazon should be buying hot keywords, like its own name, and the word, “books.”

Introducing Keyword Adequacy Quotient

Adwords’ Search Query Performance Report could be significantly improved. However, if you’re using Broad or Phrase Match Keywords, run the report in order to identify ways to improve performance, and calculate your Keyword Adequacy Quotient. Track your Keyword Adequacy Quotient over time, and you’ll find that your account performance will improve as your Score improves.

Framework for PPC Management

We’ve just published our framework for managing Pay Per Click Advertising. We’ve used this framework for the past year to manage Client’s Adwords and Yahoo pay per click accounts and find that it is particularly helpful for our PPC Analysts.

No Accidental Positioning, Please!

Denver PPC Management likes to classify position targets (whether they are used as guidelines or in connection with Adwords’ Position Targeting feature) as follows:

• Ad Position One Point Oh! (loosely = ad position 1 or 2)
• Above the Fold (ad position 3 to 5)
• At the fold (ad position 4 to 7)
• Below the fold (ad position 5 to 9)
• Lost in space (ad position 10+)

What is the Optimal Keyword Length?

If you’re one of those Adwords managers who keeps encountering warnings that you’ve reached the account limit for maximum number of keywords, then this posting is for you. We’re interested in knowing, particularly for online stores, how keywords perform according to length of keyword phrase.

Looking for a Quick Fix?

Evaluating a Pay per Click (PPC) account on the basis of its Return on Ad Spending (ROAS) is akin to evaluating the Bronco’s season performance on the basis of its win/loss record. While it’s the only thing the fans care about, it doesn’t provide the team with what precisely what needs to be done to shut down Manning’s air attack, wrestle Tomlinson for a loss, and convert more third downs. A deeper analysis is required.

Ad Split Testing - Are we having fun yet?

Ad split testing is the process of analyzing how ad variations perform statistically on an absolute and relative basis. Some managers take a strict approach, ensuring that an ad exists for every combination of line variants in each ad group. While such an approach may be appropriate for some ad groups (for some types of accounts), it sometimes result in some pretty ridiculous combinations of ad text. This entry discusses the different methods by which a PPC manager analyzes ad creative content