Trimming Your PPC Fat

In order to meet your conversion objectives in a pay per click campaign with AdWords, it will be of critical importance to manage the costs of your campaign. Controlling spending throughout your campaign occurs at a number of levels. You can make a small number of manual changes that can cut your costs. A more practical solution though is to employ automatic software— particularly software that has control over bid management—as these programs are able to automatically adjust costs for keywords.

First you will want to determine your costs on the level of the campaign. If your campaign is utilizing both Google’s ad networks as well as its content networks, then you will want to set up a campaign that exclusively targets the search aspect and a duplicate campaign that focuses on the content side. Creating these separate campaigns will allow to you control spending for each one separately, so you can find optimum costs that maximize the utility of each campaign. In your content based campaigns it is also important to use exclusions for both site and category terms that will prevent your click dollars being spent by putting your ads on unrelated websites.

When your campaign has gotten started and you are seeing some results, you will want to analyze the data coming back on your top performing keywords, and adjust their spending so that you can see even more returns on them. In addition to this, you can also add new query match formats for your existing and underperforming keywords to boost their functionality, allowing you to develop a unique bid for every match type that you are using.

Be sure to monitor the quality scores of all of your keywords. Stop using terms that have zero conversions and/or low quality scores, as they are essentially wasting your time and money. Remember, that your keyword’s quality score will affect its cost per click and its estimate in bids for the first page. Quality Score also affects the ranking of your ad and its eligibility to be featured in an ad auction.

When you are working with an insurmountable number of key words, it is simply not possible to manage them by hand, you will require the assistance of software to help manage your spending for each of your selected terms. The following list details a number of management tools that will help you to adjust your campaign spending in the most efficient manner possible:

• Acquisio SEARCH. This is a top of the line, well programmed pay per click bid management tool. It is able to offer suggestions on which keywords should be paused, alerts you by email to keywords that are given low quality scores, and allows you to set programmable cost per click values for your keywords.
• Clickable. This tool is able to offer performance enhancing recommendations for your campaign. It will indicate calculated and reasonable bid increases on high performing keywords, a reduction of bids on your lower performing keywords, or alerting you when keywords have not met their first page estimates.
• DoubleClick DART Search. This tool is able to automatically bid on any of your keywords a maximum of twelve times daily. You can create a bid strategy that is executed based on a variety of factors concerning your keywords.
• Omniture SearchCenter. This tool offers the standard bid management tactics that you find in such software which includes portfolio based or rules based routines. This tool also features day-parting, but this comes standard with almost any modern pay per click engine.
• Podium adCore. This tool can adjust your bids on a wide level and will allow you to remove underperforming words that do not meet specific performance requirements.

Though these tools sound like they will have your campaign running itself, it will still require regular human intervention, if only to collect your earnings. Though these tools will help maximize your profits, they still require solid human generated ideas to be truly effective. If you give your campaign the human touch that it needs and employ the tools above, your campaign will really start gaining steam and really getting your ads out there!

A Model Site for Getting to the Point

Sometimes while investigating sites and industries I am struck by the simplicity of a site ranking well.  It’s often the case that the largest sites with complex linking structures and visually appealing content management systems rank at the top for competitive terms.

There is more than one way to accomplish the goal of ranking well.  A concise, straight to the point site, can do very well.  TeenModelStar.com is a site with few pages, but seems to be a top ranked site for terms such as teen model.  The lesson here is:  keep it simple, if simple is all that your visitors require.

What’s Your Google Rank?

If you own a business “what’s your Google rank?” will be a question you hear more and more frequently. A commanding position in the top search engine can dramatically increase sales and raise awareness of your brand.

The Big Three search engines continue to increase their percentage of total search volume. In August ’08 Google produced over 70% of all searches. This is over a 10% gain from the August ’07 figures.

Search Engine Aug 08 Aug 07

1. www.google.com 71.01% 64.03%
2. search.yahoo.com 18.26% 22.89%
3. search.msn.com 5.32% 7.98%
4. www.ask.com 3.45% 3.50%

Source Hitwise

Sure, you may already rank for “YourBusinessName.com” – but when it comes to attracting new customers you must rank well for the keywords your customers are using to search for information about your industry.

Everyday you delay working for a top 5 spot is another day your competition has to solidify their positions. As more and more customers turn to Google before any other source, you will be allowing your customers to develop a relationship with your competitors.If you need an SEO Company, BloomSEO is here to help.

What Now for Internet Marketers?

House bailout failed to pass.  The economy is reeling from the lack of action from congress.  It’s unclear to me whether this is a good or bad thing.  Generally I believe government is best kept at a minimum, so it’s possible this is the best course for our country.

As internet marketers we are in a position to shift our focus from market to market, nation to nation.  I’m not saying America is on a slippery slope, but if you have the ability to spread your risk, it’s time to move into the emerging markets of more stable economies around the world.

Do we need to learn Mandarin?  It couldn’t hurt!  It’s not required though – many English speaking nations are in a more stable position.  Canada and New Zealand come to mind.  Now is the time to globalize your business.  Too many webmasters have a narrow focus on just one country.  Use the medium to your advantage.  Diversify and grow!

What You Need To Know About Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the process of tagging and storing a website so it can be accessed at a later time. Instead of saving it to your browser like a traditional bookmark, you are saving it to the web. Because they are stored online, social bookmarks can be shared with friends and make great marketing tools as well.

For a website with abundant content, adding social bookmark invitations to pages and other media can lead to strategies that leverage volumes of traffic along with points of visitor contact. The momentum of thousands of web pages, each with an open invitation to share, has the ability to drive in links and traffic 24/7.

There are a number of social bookmarking tools strictly designed for online marketing. SocialPoster.com provides an environment where its easy to submit news and link submissions in various industries. They also use a frames option that is very helpful at submitting links faster and keeping your submissions unique.