PPC Data Provides Real Time Keyword Evaluation

Advertising tools that rely on PPC such as Google’s AdWords are popular with search engine marketers because they provide excellent data with a few customizations to your keywords and tracking settings. Google recently started pulling SEO keyword data which makes PPC all the more important for testing. PPC provides full visitor detail and is 100% accurate.

Use PPC Results to Refocus Website SEO Efforts

As you review your SEO and PPC results and gather a refined keyword list, you’ll now have some excellent tools you can use to improve the SEO capabilities of your website. Ray Comstock writes at Search Engine Watch about four key factors to review on your website in light of your SEO and PPC reports:

1. Page Meta Data optimized around targeted keywords
2. Previously optimized pages that need re-working
3. Pages with duplicate content, page titles, meta data
4. Additional content segments that need to be added to the site

You’ll need to evaluate which changes to your website will bring the greatest return and whether you have the time to invest in these updates. However, at the very least be sure that your page meta data is optimized (Learn how to improve your meta data here).

Identify Opportunities for Business Growth and Clarity

Based on PPC results, consider refining your overall business strategy to focus on the elements that customers find most attractive. Larry Stream writes at the internet marketing blog Word Stream, “By getting a PPC campaign off the ground, you can learn how much actual traffic you can expect, get a feel for how relevant searchers and Google consider your content for your keyword lists, and most importantly: find out if building content for a list of keywords will be profitable.”

If certain products and pages on your website receive the most traffic from your campaigns, you can use your SEO and PPC reports to capitalize on additional revenue opportunities.

Cut Back on Future AdWord Costs

Use PPC informed SEO to limit the number of PPC campaigns you need to pay for. Melanie Mitchell of Digitas suggests, “Based on the SEO performance, identify areas where you could refine the match type to phrase or exact without hurting campaign goals. By refining match types you can bring the media cost down and potentially invest back into the campaign.” In fact, many marketers  have found that improved SEO rankings make it possible to cut back on PPC campaigns since they can accomplish their goals more effectively with better user-targeted content that is informed by PPC data.

Use SEO to Refine Your AdWord Performance

The referring words generated in your SEO statistics can be tested in your PPC campaigns in order to broaden your reach. One of the keys to effective SEO is to optimize more than the top keywords. You need to also look for the long tail of keywords where you can gain an edge on the competition. SEO will help you find the terms that are worth testing in a PPC campaign.

Create an Integrated Search Marketing Program

The key to making PPC work more effectively for your business, you’ll need to set up an integrated search marketing program. Paul Burani writes at Web Liquid that it includes the following four elements:

1. Dedicate 1 hr./week to studying site analytics
2. Evaluate all ad copy on CPA basis (not CTR)
3. Begin planning an editorial calendar
4. Have a presence on social media sites

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing strategist for a company that provides a to-do list tool for business, and who also works for a company that specializes in psd to xhtml service.

Planning:

Although making money on the internet isn’t as easy as some people would like to make you think, it is much better when you have a plan. Going to the gym without a plan will leave you floundering with minimal results. Likewise launching an online marketing campaign without a plan will yield minimal results, but it likely costs more money. You could be left broke and slightly depressed, wondering how others have found success.

Commitment:

Once you have a plan its important that you stick with it. Just like exercising its not easy at first but you will catch on and find success. Login to you AdWords or Analytics account to monitor the campaign. Run reports regularly to help you make wise decisions and you will eventually see success. If you need a “trainer” I know of a company that has the expertise to help you out.

Knowledge:

Online marketing and exercise share something that I call the “everyone-has-a-better-way” principle. No matter how dialed in your workout routine is there is always someone with an “proven” better way. There is no difference when it comes to marketing, someone is always happy to tell you they can do it better, cheaper or more efficiently. To combat this its important that you stay current on your industry and up on the new search trends and tools. There are several blogs, books and people that you can learn from but do it with your specific goal in mind.

So, although marketing and exercise aren’t directly related following some of the same basic principles will help you find success. Remember that its not always easy but the pay off is going to be huge. I think its okay to make modifications to your plan of attack as your knowledge grows. But, be careful not to lose sight of your goal.

Be the Center of Attention Fast

The crowd utilizing public transportation on a daily basis is full of variety. From musicians having concerts in the Subway to my teal coat in a sea of black – there are many ways to be found fast.

During the low point of our economy, Mom N’Pop shops need to be found online. The internet influence is undeniable in every industry. Pay-per-click is the quickest way to ensure that your ads are being seen on the first page of search engines. However, there basic questions that are determining factors in the success of your campaigns. These questions must be answered in your ad copy.

Text ads on SERPs are all the same format. So, why should a consumer pay you? What makes your business different? What makes your service the best? What promotional offer will make you more affordable? Some businesses do not answer these before they outline a marketing strategy. It shows in their lack of results.

Navigate the Tunnels

Though I am not fluent in Russian, riding the metro in Moscow was easier than the NYC subway. Why? The Russian metro system has color coding, route maps blown up on every level, and blatant line names 50 feet long protruding from the walls. New York routes have a small digital sign that updates the name and time of the next train.

Apply these comparisons to your website usability – what is the most important thing on your site? Is it easy to find? When you receive traffic from your marketing campaign is it as easy as possible to get from point A to B?

Finding the most efficient transportation from the city to the airport in a short time frame resulted in using the service whose website was easy to navigate, understand, and I could ensure an appropriate time frame. Having the necessary information for a consumer to buy your service most obvious will provide a quick and efficient consumer experience.

When you start advertising on AdWords, you will get some basic data, including impressions, clicks, click through rate, CPC, and several other pieces of data that are all great if, and I mean IF, you are tracking conversions, too. One of the greatest things about marketing online is the ability to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. But if the tracking isn’t in place, all you can do is make a guess at what is or isn’t working. Let me remind you: just because you are getting clicks on your ads doesn’t mean people are buying what you are selling. You have to dig much deeper than that.

When you decide you want to start marketing online, you need to consider all the channels that people will use to reach you. For example, if your ad is leading them to a page with a phone number, how are you going to track the phone call to a sale? Consider a form on your website. Are you going to track form fills and sales? I hope so. The problem I often run into is the tracking hits a dead end before a sale can be attributed to it. What is the value in that?

Things to consider…

• Can you put tracking codes on your website? (hopefully, this isn’t a problem)
• How are you tracking phone numbers?
• How are you tracking form fills?
• Can you tie phone calls or form fills to a sale?

If your online marketing can’t tie a lead to a sale, it’s likely that you will wonder how effective it really is and eventually stop your campaign. Conversely, if you have set up tracking right from the start, you will know how effective and awesome marketing online can be. It makes it easy to justify spending more of your marketing budget when you know it exactly how valuable it really is.

First, the purpose of the display network needs to be clearly understood. Using search engines to reach customers, focuses on users that are in a “ready to buy” stage of their shopping. The display network, and all of its gadgets, targets “browsing” users based on websites they like, blogs they read, and sites they are purchasing from. This initially requires convincing that browsers need to purchase from your industry but results in useful brand association. By giving browsers association with certain types of websites, the classic reason to use the Display Network is branding your company.

Second, If there is not comprehensive tracking on your site, having a campaign set up for the search network, and not removing settings of showing ads on the display network, will blur your ability to know what people are searching for- or stumbled upon and were convinced to click.

Lastly, some awesome features every display campaign should utilize are as follows:

Site Specific Placement

Google’s comprehensive targeting gives us the option of deciding which websites display our ads. This ranges from blogs that contain AdSense, to retail sites across the web. This ability narrows your browsing audience to associate your company brand with whatever you choose. However, when you haven’t chosen specific websites, Google associates your ad with the content on relevant sites based on your keywords. Keeping the impressions completely relevant is slightly more challenging if your keyword lists are broad. Luckily, you can exclude websites as well.

Multimedia Ads

AdSense also offers the options of uploading video ads and image ads. This is one of my personal favorite features of the network. Being able to make your ads interactive and eye-catching is a great way to advertise online. They also bump out competition for each impressions by covering a much larger space on each webpage. For guidelines visit the AdWords Policies.

DoubleClick Ad Planner

This tool is similar to the Insights for Search Beta tool, except specialized for display websites. You can see daily visit trends, demographics of visitors, common subdomains, and ad specifics for any website in the network. The other half of the tool is reverting those statistics into options. You can narrow the selection of all websites in the network, to the specific type of browser you want to target. After you compile a list of sites you want to use, you can directly implement them into your AdWords campaign targeting.

Sometimes you have to set a different goal

When I started the campaign I had the goal to get people to buy the coupon offer right away. Everything worked perfectly on Google but on Facebook I was not converting at all. I was converting at .096% I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I checked and rechecked to ensure tracking was in place, I just couldn’t believe the contrast between Facebook and Google. When I looked at the analytics I found that the email blast marketing was converting at just over 14% So, I changed my goal from immediate conversions to getting people to submit their email address.

Consider your audience

As soon as I corrected my goal I started to see success. I made the mistake of not considering the Facebook audience. Facebook users are not looking for my deals with specific search queries like Google users instead, they are served my ads based on their profile. It turns out that people coming from Facebook are more than willing to sign up for the email offers (the same email offers that convert at over 14%).

So, don’t make the same mistake I did and remember to consider your audience. I stressed for two long weeks trying to figure out what I was missing, and stress gives me a headache. It turns out that my goal was misguided, I needed to look at different conversion path and I would have seen success from the beginning.

When:

Wednesday, November 10^th

10am-12pm

Where:

Salt Lake City Public Library

210 East 400 South

Salt Lake City, Utah

What:

A light breakfast will be served, and then we will jump into the main event, where a few speakers will teach how businesses should use PPC ads to get the most out of the holidays.

Find Negative Keywords

Search query reports are the best resource we have to do negative keyword research because it showing actual date from your campaign, how awesome is that! After a campaign has been running long enough to gather data this report needs to be run and without fail you will find some strange search queries that are triggering ads. These strange queries are damaging your campaign in a few ways

• Increase the average CPA
• Lower you CTR which will effect you quality score
• Every wild click you get is a missed opportunity for a conversion
• Impression share for the right keywords is being wasted on junk keywords

After this report is reviewed an analyzed its time to ad those strange queries as negative keywords. Refining the negative keywords for any PPC campaign is one of the best ways to ensure you are spending wisely. In my opinion this report needs to be run a bare minimum of once a month but I like to run it every two weeks.

Find Converting Keywords

Search query reports are equally good at mining new keywords. No matter how perfectly crafted the keywords you have chosen are I guarantee there are more. People’s search habits change over time and seasons. Also, as a searcher gets deeper into the purchasing funnel search terms get refined and are likely more long tail. A search query report can help you identify those changes and take advantage of those long tail queries. Once those new keywords are identified you may be able to ad them to an existing adgroup or you may decide create a whole new one based on the relevancy. It is my opinion that each keyword added to an adgroup due to a search query report should be placed on exact match because you know exactly what search provided the conversion, take advantage of it.

Pictures are King

When I set up my first Facebook campaign I made two ads with the same image and set it loose. The result was a quick spike of traffic for a few days and then it just quit producing. My solution was to get more images from my client and test those against the ones that I started with. This resulted in a jump in traffic that held for a couple weeks. So when starting a Facebook campaign make sure you have plenty of images. I recommend starting with at least 10 images. The more I test, the more I feel that I could replicate the same ad copy 20 times as long as there was a new image and I would continue to get results.

Targeting Adjustments Forces Ads Through A Review Process

Targeting changes put the ads through a review process, which is far different from the Goog. Google will allow changes to targeting options without having to review the ads for approval because it’s done at the campaign level. Facebook targeting options are set for each ad, so be aware of this before you make those types of strategic changes. It could take 24 hours for your ad to be active again.

One more thing that I found very helpful and one-of-a-kind is Facebook gives me the approximate number of people in my audience for each targeting option and bid amount I set. This is updated live and readjusts each time I change my targeting or bids. For example, Facebook is telling me that one of my ads says its potential audience is 1,014,700 and my highest impressed ad has actually received 1,199,165 so far this month. So, the targeting seems to be pretty accurate.

1.Use geographic qualifiers in keyword lists

Choosing the right keywords is important for any PPC campaign. When competing in local PPC marketing, it’s important to test a keyword that includes the names of the cities you are trying to target. For example, test “Scranton paper company” rather than “paper company.” Adding “Scranton” significantly decreases both the amount of competition and the cost per click.

2. Use ad copy to show that the company is local

The ad is the only part of the creative process the customers will ever see. Spending several hours to create a perfectly crafted keyword list can be a waste of time if the ads are no good. People spend mere split seconds scanning the entire SERP to find what matches their query best. That’s why something in the ad copy (I prefer the title) has to scream “local business!”

3. Save face and money with ad scheduling

Speaking of ad copy, when an ad’s call to action is to “call right now” or “come in today,” it’s important that the ads only run when someone can actually call or come in. It’s embarrassing when businesses make a promise they can’t keep. “Call now” showing up at 11:30PM or even 5:30PM is pointless, wastes your money, and honestly makes you look like a tool.

4. Set your geo targeting correctly

AdWords makes a few options available for geographic targeting, but not all AdWords are created equal. Targeting for local PPC marketing is a bit tricky because the internet doesn’t see areas as a physical map with county lines and city limits. So asking Adwords to target a 30 mile radius from any given point is not the most accurate way to target. I like to work with locations that the engine already knows by selecting a bundle or using the search tab to select several cities by name that encompass the desired area. That’s where tip #5 comes into play.

5. Geographic report

Because the targeting isn’t perfect, it’s important to take advantage of the geographic report. This report gives insight into where the clicks are coming from and sometimes they are out of the area you want to target. This is especially true in urban areas like parts of California where there are several cities packed in very close to each other.

6.Negative keywords

Negative keywords is one of the most important elements of any successful local PPC marketing campaign. Negative keywords can be especially useful to ensure ads don’t accidentally show up in places they aren’t supposed to. It’s a good idea to add every state’s name and abbreviation except the one you are targeting as a negative keyword. This practice reduces wasteful spending. You don’t want to make decisions for your campaign unless the data you gather is relevant, so excluding the irrelevant searches gives you the most accurate information.