Competitors’ Names are Tangential Keywords

Some Advertisers like bidding on their competitors’ names as keywords.  We don’t bid on them for search, because we’ve never been able to convert them efficiently.  But then, that’s for search; what about buying tangential keywords, like competitors’ names, for content advertising?

Decrease Bids to Improve ROAS

Your Adwords CPC prices are set by auction.  What if the economy were slowing?  If 2 of 15 advertisers were to withdraw from your ad space, or slow their ads, then why shouldn’t the results of that be felt in your actual average CPC?  Maybe it can be.  When is the last time you tried DECREASING your Adwords bids?   

Today a client told me that PPC is becoming the betamax of SEO.

Keyword Quality Scores

Quality Scores should be monitored weekly at the keyword level.  Include a list of poor quality scores in each report and describe what you will do to remedy the scores (if anything).  Sometimes PPC Analysts struggle with finding recommendations for monthly reports.  However if you are performing your daily maintenance in a thorough manner, you’ll almost always find ways of improving the account by focusing on keyword quality scores.

Measuring PPC Returns - ROAS vs ROI

Return on Ad Spending (ROAS) and Return on Investment (ROI) are often interchanged as though they mean the same thing.  In this respect, Google is the biggest culprit.  While Yahoo characterizes Pay per Click (PPC) spending as “Spending!” Google glibly refers to it as an “Investment.”  Calling Pay per Click spending an investment is like calling a joy ride on a ferris wheel an investment.  The return lasts for one revolution of the wheel.  Enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t expect to derive a lasting benefit from the experience.

PPC Versus SEO

Pay per click (PPC) or Search engine optimization (SEO)?  It’s a question every Internet Marketing professional answers in one form or another almost everyday. For most companies, we recommend doing some form of both.

Managing Shooting Stars

Aside from your predictable actual Geo Market Competitors, Ad Spaces can sometimes be littered with blundering passers-by who have unwittingly purchased 20 short, 8 digit broad match keywords nationwide with no negatives.  While it may only take each such Shooting Star 20 minutes or so per day to torch through his $100 ad budget, still, for that glorious 20 minutes your Ad Space will be cluttered with an inappropriate ad.

Applying the Adwords API

We’ve been an MS Gold Certified Partner for the past few years, and sometimes we are rich in developers. We assigned a couple of our developers to apply the Google Adwords API in developing some tools for use by our PPC Ad Managers.

If you loved the book . . .

then Position Preference is the feature for you! Google transforms the otherwise mundane job of applying position preference into (when applied to an online store) an epic adventure.

Coping With Shooting Stars

Aside from your predictable actual Geo Market Competitors, Ad Spaces may be littered with passers-by who obviously don’t belong, either by virtue of having set the wrong geo-scope for their ad campaigns, or by having chosen to purchase ridiculously general keywords. We call these Advertisers, Shooting Stars. While it may take a Shooting Star only 20 minutes or so per day to torch through his $100 ad budget, still, for that glorious 20 minutes your Ad Space will be cluttered with a bogus ad.