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You’ve decided it’s time to get online and what easier way than by starting a PPC campaign? Google has made it so simple that with a few clicks you are well on your way to Digital Marketing Success.

Except you seem to be spending a lot of money and you’re not really sure if it’s making you money. Here are the most common mistakes that I see when we take over a Small Business PPC Campaign:

1. Setting up your campaign as per Google’s Default settings. I love Google. Their interface is awesome and their customer service rocks. But let’s face it. The defaults are set up to maximize revenue for Google. Sometimes that means that you’ll make a lot of money too. But sometimes it means that you will not be running as efficient a campaign as you could be.

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Tags: google ppc, ppc

Ever heard of the 90/10 pay per click rule? Basically it says that 90% of PPC success is enjoyed by only the top 10% of advertisers who know the inside methods to getting the most from their PPC campaign. And oddly enough, it’s basically true. Especially when it comes to Google’s AdWords, which offers the most advanced methods to help advertisers get their money’s worth (and then some!)

Some people use pay per click (PPC) as their primary source of search engine marketing while others use it as a way to get steady supplemental targeted traffic. As an SEO professional I’ve developed PPC campaigns for my clients so they get targeted traffic while the organic optimization is ramping up, which often takes weeks or months. Whatever the reason, PPC is a good way for any online business owner to get targeted traffic and a great way for those who know how to use the system to their advantage. And that’s exactly what this article will do for you.

But before we dive in, just why is AdWords so valuable? There are plenty of reasons but for starters…

1.) AdWords listings are seen by more than 80% of all Internet users on millions of sites ranging from Google and AOL to very specific niche locations it would otherwise take forever to research and manage independent advertising accounts with.

2.) Your ads can be targeted specifically by region or language.

3. ) Ads that you can constantly update and test are a great way to test what keywords are really best for targeting in your organic SEO efforts, which can be very time consuming and expensive.

Step 1: Get an AdWords Account

If you don’t already have an AdWords account, it’s easy enough to sign up for at http://adwords.google.com. Once you have your account you can begin creating ads and finding the best keywords. Actually, you can use Google’s free AdWords keyword research tool even without an account by visiting https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

Step 2: Develop a Killer Ad

Here are the things to know about ad development broken out by Title and Body…

Ad Title:

1.) Use targeted keywords NOT your company name

2.) Mention a benefit, rather than a feature.

3.) Take advantage of the “Dynamic Titles” feature by entering the following code in your title “{KeyWord: Your Keyword}” (without quotes.) This allows you to use the same ad body text with a dynamically generated title that matches exactly what the searcher is looking for and makes your and the most relevant it can be. By the way, this is case sensitive; “{KeyWord: Your Keyword}” will make the first letter of each word capitalized while “{keykord: your keyword}” will make it all lower case.

Ad Body:

The body or text of your ad need only do two things; hook ‘em and then reel ‘em in. The hook is something that peaks their interest such as “Increase your Profits with XYZ software.” While reeling them in involves what traditional marketers refer to as a “call to action.” This might be “Download your Free 30 day Trial now.”

Note: Do not over capitalize your ad. At best just capitalize the words you feel are most important to the viewer. It’s OK to capitalize the first letter of each word in the title but not the body.

Step 3: Maximize URL Usage

While we’re on the subject of what the searcher sees in your ad, we need to consider the URL. Google will let you make the visible URL different than the actual URL leading to the landing page where the visitor will end up after clicking your ad. This is huge! Take advantage of it.

This feature will let you test multiple landing pages in your ads to see what pages are converting sales best while showing the visitor the “display” URL for your product. Let’s say the landing page being tested in this particular ad is “…com/XYZ/purchase3.htm.” When that ad gets clicked you will soon see if “/purchase3.htm” is converting better than “/purchase1.htm.” But here’s the magic… By using a display URL of “…com/XYZ/” , and actually having the product there as well, you are building your brand and providing a visual queue for users to manually type in the URL if for some reason your landing page is unavailable.

Step 4: Use Special Keyword Advantages

Obviously keywords are a very big factor in the success of your campaign. Choosing the best keywords is extremely important and using Google’s “Keyword Matching Options” can help take your great keywords one step further. Just click the “Advanced option: match types” link when setting up your ads and choose from the following…

1.) Broad Match: Is the default and will show your ad each time all of the keywords in your keyword phrase are entered.

2.) Phrase Match: Looks for the order of words in your keyword phrase and only shows your ad if the order matches. Your ad will still show if your phrase is any part of the search query, but only if the word order is the same.

3.) Exact Match: This is the most stringent and will only present your ad if your exact keyword phrase, and ONLY your exact keyword phrase, is used.

4.) Negative Match: This is a nice feature that will stop your ad from showing if a word appears in the search query that you don’t want to get clicks for. The most common example is “free” which would eliminate you paying for clicks from people who just want a free version of what you offer.

Step 5: Find and Use the Best Keywords

Now for the most important aspect of your pay per click campaign; keyword selection. The more targeted keywords you can find, the better. Google offers a great free keyword tool as we discussed early on. Here are the qualities to look for in your keywords:

1.) A good “Average Search Volume” rating (check out the blue bars)

2.) A high search volume for the previous month (especially true for seasonal topics)

3.) The lowest possible “Advertiser Competition” rating

4.) Look for common misspellings and use the “exact match” feature to get plenty of low cost targeted traffic.

5.) Scroll down the page and find hidden gems that others miss. There are a lot for those who look carefully enough.

Insider Tip: You can also collect hundreds of low volume keywords, put them in a spreadsheet for easy upload and use the “Dynamic Title” feature we discussed earlier to generate hundreds of low cost highly targeted leads.

Professional Tip: SEO professionals typically use specialized keyword selection and spy software because it does weeks worth of work in a matter of hours. Keyword Elite (http://www.KeywordEliteWeb.com) for example, can generate thousands of valuable keywords in minutes and does “ethical spying” that exposes the competition and makes placement takeover easy.

That’s all you need to know to join the top 10% of PPC advertisers getting the most out of their campaigns with minimal effort. Best of luck!

Scott Jason has been an SEO professional since 1999 and is the founder of http://www.BestSEOcopywriting.com . He has developed and managed PPC campaigns for both small companies and corporate giants alike.

Tags: pay per click, ppc, website marketing

This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter. Each engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these. The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the three, MSN Adcenter. Interface One of the things I like about working within Adcenter is the clean look. Although from time to time I wonder if the uncluttered interface is more a product of its relative youth, there’s no denying it’s easier on the eyes than either of its competitors. In part, this appears to be due to the lack of clutter that plagues both Panama and AdWords. Perhaps Microsoft hasn’t had time to fill every gap on each page as seems to be the case with the others. Part of the reason however, is the use of bullet links. More often than not, clicking on these causes the additional information to appear in place, without having to navigate to another page. This is a refreshing change, as most of my time using these seems to be spent hitting my back button and waiting for complete pages to load. The layout of subsections is based on 4 tabs; Campaigns, Accounts & Billing, Research and Reports. Clicking on these takes you to exactly what you would expect, no more no less. Everything is laid out in a logical format and it’s pretty quick and easy to find what you’re looking for. After struggling to navigate through Panama in particular, I find this refreshingly simple. Campaign Setup Setting up is a 5 step process.

1. First off, you lay out your basic campaign structure by naming the campaign and initial ad group. One of the nifty features at this stage is a checkbox allowing you to copy an existing ad group. I have found this can be a useful time saving feature. Network targeting, campaign scheduling, language and regional targeting can all be set up on this same page. Also, conversion tracking can either be set up here or later in the campaign interface with a single click.
2. The next step is writing ad copy. The biggest advantage I have found in this stage is that the interface allows you to paste the entire ad description in one line rather than having to fuss with the character limitations for 2 lines of ad text, such as in both Google and Yahoo.
3. Now you can add your keywords. This is a very straightforward process, You have the option to add your own pre-made list of keywords and/or using a keyword tool that scans a site, or the ad destination URLs. This tool can generate a list of synonyms based on a suggested term, including the number of searches conducted in the previous month.
4. The last main step is to determine pricing settings. This includes setting a budget (see annoyances and oddities section), bidding and setting bidding options, such as incremental bidding. Here also you can set bids specifically targeting for location, day, time, age, or gender.
5. The final step is simply a review of all the information entered to this point and the option to change settings. I find this a bit annoying, as opting to change anything takes you back to that stage and after making your adjustment you have to cycle back through the entire process to the review page once again.

Keywords The only tool this interface has at the moment is the keyword research tool. This can be accessed under the research tab or when editing keyword settings. I have found this far less awkward and time consuming to use than either of the other 2 engines. One thing to note about adjusting keyword settings is how robust the options are generally. When adjusting existing keywords it is simple to add negative keywords to individual keywords, as well as adjust the match types and specific destination URLs by keyword. Another interesting feature is the trend charts, viewable by keyword. With this handy feature you can view individual keyword trends by age and gender, geographical location, social class and affluence. One major difference with keywords between MSN and the others is the level of editorial control exerted. Recently I was managing a campaign with a particular ad group that had quite a few different ads. Some keywords were reported by MSN as being declined for certain ads, but approved for others. This is certainly a departure from my experiences with either AdWords or Panama, where if a keyword is declined for any reason, that’s that. Reports The reporting feature is also quite robust. One can run single use reports or create saved templates for performance, accounting or targeting. It allows for quite a number of specific report types from account overview down to specific ad or keyword performance. A report can be set to display information from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Additionally, filters can be set to customize reports to only display information you wish to view. Automated report scheduling is also an option if you wish to receive emails periodically, without having to fetch them personally. The format for these reports are limited. Currently downloading one gets you a zipped csv file. Hopefully they’ll expand that to allow options for other file formats. Annoyances and Oddities These are some of the gripes I have with Adcenter.

• For some reason, they’ve incorporated the option to select campaign settings for either daily budgeting or monthly. While this isn’t really a bad thing, if you select daily budgeting, it requires you to set a monthly budget as well. In my experience, doing this seems to have little effect on the amount spent on a given day. For example, I had set a daily budget of $10.00 while selecting a monthly cap of $310.00 to reflect 31 days in a month. Day by day this particular campaign was spending regularly up to and in excess of $20.00 daily. No amount of fiddling seemed to change that behavior, so consequently the monthly budget was used up in half the time.
• Normally, when optimizing ads and keywords, I like to pause poorly performing ads. Pausing them, rather than deleting them, allows me to retain the statistics for later viewing. This is handy because sometimes I do not wish to drop an ad or a keyword entirely, but just want to turn it off for a time, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there is no option to pause either an ad or a specific keyword. There is no way short of deletion to stop displaying a specific ad and the only way to “pause” a keyword without deleting it, is to drop the max CPC to the absolute minimum.
• There is a limitation on viewing data at campaign, ad group or even ad or keyword level. One can only view yesterday, this month, last month, this year, last year or entire time. I find it very strange that unlike anywhere else in this interface, you cannot specify a custom date range. To get around this, you have to go to reports and create and run a report specifying what start and end date you wish to view data for. This can be time consuming and is an obvious flaw that will hopefully be worked out soon.
• The timeout is quite short. Many times while working in Adcenter, I’ve tabbed back after only several minutes, only to find the system has logged me out and I have to re-login and navigate back to what I’d been working on.

Summary Overall, I’d have to say that MSN Adcenter is quite easy to use. Although MSN gets the least amount of traffic of the 3 engines, this isn’t entirely disadvantageous. One result of this disparity is that spend for a given campaign is generally significantly less than in either Adwords or Panama. Given that, when a conversion is achieved the difference in ROI is notable. This engine is certainly worth advertising on and with some improvements will be a fine choice.

Tim Rule is a PPC Specialist at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Tim’s articles and those of the StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/, Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198

Tags: Marketing, ppc