Vancouver's PPC Experts
The Google Display Network, formally known as the Content Network, will separate the men from the boys when it comes to managing PPC. Honestly there is no easy way to do well on the display network other than test and spend money. I have spoken to a few pay per click gurus lately and they have admitted that you have to set high CPCs to break in and get impressions.
Here are the best practices for setting up a display network account:
Probably the best pay per click landing page analogy I have heard was that a website is like a Sears store. You can go in the through the main entrance, which is like landing on a website’s home page. There are many irrelevant departments right in front, so you will have to walk a bit to get to the department you want. But what happens if you want to just go into the hardware department? Well at Sears there is a side door for the hardware store. You walk in and go directly to the hardware department and are out the door with minimal effort. This is exactly the same concept as a PPC landing page, where you know exactly what the searcher is searching for. So why would you send them to the front entrance, if you know they want to go to the side entrance and go to the hardware department?
With PPC landing pages you want to send the searcher to the most relevant page as possible (side entrance). In a perfect world you would have a custom landing page for each keyword in your account. Since this is not very practical you should start making custom PPC landing pages for your most profitable keywords. So what makes a good landing page?
Landing Page Best Practices:
I recommend trying out variations of each landing page element through A/B testing. This is made very easy with PPC because you can have two of the same ad copies in an adgroup with different destination URLs. Make sure that you have at least 100 clicks per landing page before making any judgments. But if you want to be sure which landing page is statistically the winner you can use this A/B tester calculator.
Test test test…
A client of mine was on a really tight budget and wanted to run a Halloween PPC campaign. The problem was that their main site needed a lot of work. There wasn’t enough time or money to create a whole new site. So we just created a stand alone page that contained all the basic information to get people into their store and buy Halloween costumes.
Elements of the PPC landing page:
* Halloween themed header
* Quick intro
* Simple product gallery
* List of Benefit
* Call to action
* Map to locate store
* Trust icons at the bottom
That is all you really need in a landing page….If you are looking for Halloween Costumes please visit their site, or should I say landing page!
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I get asked all the time “how did you learn PPC and SEO?” Well you should probably read at least two books in any internet marketing field just to learn the basics. That way at least when you start reading blogs you will be able to spot the snake oil BS that it all over the net. I highly recommend the following books:
1. “Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day”
by David Szetela is actually on my desk as we speak.
2. “Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies”
by Peter Kent was my first PPC book
3. “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies”
by Peter Kent was also my first SEO book
4. “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” and 5. “Web Analytics 2.0”
by Avinash Kaushik
I don’t care how long you have done web analytics for, you can still learn a lot from both these books.
So Google is changing up the search game by giving you instant results (or so they claim). This is how it works, when you start to type in a search query the search results will change right before you eyes. The idea is that you will only have to partially type in a query and Google will predict what you are looking for. This feature will probably be tied into your search history, in the near future, which will make the predictive nature even smarter and more useful.
I find it funny that Google thinks that someone would spend 30-90 seconds to type in a search query and that was their reason for the innovation. See their page on Google instant.
Any ways lets look at how this will impact Pay Per Click advertising. I was very nervous when I first heard that Google was going to show numerous search results for a single search result. This could really hurt your quality score and drive up costs. But Google has spelled it out that it shouldn’t effect your PPC campaigns at all, which is a relief.
The following is from the Adwords Help:
“New predicted query
Although Google Instant won’t change the way ads are served, ads and search results will now be shown for a new “predicted query.” For example, if someone types “flow” into Google, an algorithm predicts that the user is searching for “flowers” (the predicted query) and therefore displays search listings and ads for flowers. Those results will continue to show unless the next letters that the user types lead to a different predicted query.
How impressions are counted
When someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations:
- The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
- The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.
The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.”
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Have you ever wondered what those funny looking sponsored links are when you search on Google? Well those are Google Adwords paid text ads. Google Adwords is an Internet marketing program that allows you to place advertisements on either search result pages or websites.
These ads are relevant to what the people are searching for. So yes these ads actually help people find what they are looking for. Most people don’t even realize that they are clicking on a sponsored link. This is good for you because they think you are showing up in the #1 spot in Google organically which gives you credibility.
So how does Google Adwords work?
At the most basic level Google Adwords works by having the advertiser bid on keyword phrases that potential customers are searching for. When a potential customer searches for the term you are bidding on you ad will show up in the sponsored link section next to the organic rankings. Your ranking in the sponsored links is based on your bid and on how relevant your ad is to the searcher (AKA quality score).
The best part about Adwords is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. If people don’t like your ad and don’t click you don’t pay. Another benefit of pay per click advertising is that you can track the number of people that click, but most importantly take action on your site. This can be used to determine if Adwords PPC is right for you.
Why advertise on Google Adwords? Continue reading “What is Google Adwords Pay Per Click?”
Ok so in this blog post I will try to make the case for why you should use a Pay Per Click consultant to manage your account vs going with an one stop shop internet marketing provider. Just to clarify a one-stop shop internet provider will do your website, SEO, PPC, social media and maybe even hosting.
One Stop-Shop
Pros:
Hey you are getting all your internet needs met through one company which makes things a lot more convenient for you. In theory your whole marketing effort should be an integrated marketing machine that should work smoothly together to meet your needs. Finally most people tend to trust bigger internet companies because they have an established reputation and brand name.
Cons:
The one big con (no bun intended) is that most one stop shop internet providers charge you an astronomical amount of money to give you the privilege of even sitting down to get a quote with them in the first place. Secondly they usually charge an extremely high monthly fee or even worse a % of your pay per click spend to manage your accounts. This can be a problem because you can get tied into long contracts that are difficult to get out of.
The biggest thing I have seen is that they try to get you to fork out $10,000 to $15,000 for a new website when in most cases your existing site just needs face lift. That money can go along way towards PPC and SEO initiatives.
Continue reading “One-stop-shop Internet Marketing vs Pay Per Click Consultant”
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So if you are not sure which pay per click networks to advertise on or even start with, this post should help.
Google Adwords Search
By far the biggest and in many respects best PPC Network is Google Adwords. Your ads can run beside relevant search result or on the Display network where your ads will show on other people’s websites. The disadvantage with Adwords is that it has the highest amount of competition right so you will end up paying a higher cost per click than on other networks.
Vancouver Pay Per Click recommends starting with Adwords for search first. The amount of traffic is high and very targeted which helps with testing keywords and ad copy. Within 4 of 6 weeks of advertising on Adwords search you will have enough historical data to build out your account. I have seen accounts go from 1 campaign with a few hundred keywords to 20 campaigns with tens of thousands of keywords in as little as a month. The first month requires a lot of work and expertise to prevent you from going in the wrong direction.
Adcenter & YSM
There are many tools that a PPC manager will use to make their lives easier when it comes to pay per click management. The great thing about all the tools listed here are that they are FREE.
Adwords Editor
My favourite tool is Adwords editor. This is the first tool you should download even before you create your first campaign because it will save you so much time. The time saver is the ability to copy and paste any elements of your account and then search and replace it. Common keyboard shortcuts work seamlessly in Adwords Editor. Not only can you make campaigns for Adwords but Yahoo and Bing both allow you to import CSV files directly from Adwords Editor.
Adwords Keyword Tool
The online Adwords Keyword tool is great for keywords research. Just go to the opportunities tab of your Adwords account. The nice thing about this tool is that you can set the location or your choice, so that you can get a good idea of traffic and competition levels in your own area. Another advantage is the ability to export data to Excel, which allows you to see competition values instead of the ambiguous graph online.
PPC Keyword Generator Continue reading “Free pay per click management tools”
