Pimp My Keywords

Bad PPC Advice Very Costly: SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 220

Recently, we learned of a local business who received - and accepted - bad advice from a television sales representative who must have given the pitch of his lifetime.

Here's the deal:

Local television station is selling banner ads on their news website for $8,000 for one month. I am certain the sales pitch was way too good to be true, but the local business fell for the scam (yes, it's a scam). The ROI is poor; the impressions were inflated and the click numbers didn't match up to Google Analytics' numbers, and a specific landing page or strong call to action wasn't set up for the campaign. 

Here's why banner ads on television websites don't usually work:

1. What is the intent behind the search?
2. Are visitors coming to the local television website to look for local services and to click on a banner ad? Probably not. Instead, visitors are coming to the site for local news, sports and weather.
3. The banner ad is nothing more than an interruption to the visitor looking for news, weather and sports. 
4. The television website visitor may not necessarily be the same visitor the local business is targeting. Is this website presenting the right audience for the local business? Probably not. 
5. At $8,000, this was not a good investment for the local business.

If the local business spent the $8,000 budget on Google Adwords, the result could have been different. Here's how:

1. The ad appears only when someone is actually searching for specific products and services matching the business' targeted keyword list.
2. The visitor isn't using Google to search for news and finding local services. They are using a search engine to search for someone to solve their problem (fix their furnace; repair their car, etc.).
3. The cost per click (CPC) is much cheaper on Google than on a television website. (Although I am not sure how many clicks the business was able to gain on an $8,000 budget, but in a local PPC campaign, that should result in a ton of impressions and quality clicks on specific keywords). 
4. With Google PPC, the local business can set up a special landing page for the campaign (the local television station could have done the same thing with the banner ad). This helps the campaign become better optimized and allows for special offers for the visitor. It also helps the local business track conversions (sales), clicks, impressions and Click Through Rates (CTR).
5. The $8,000 spent in one month with a local television station could have been divided into several months of advertising efforts through effective local PPC campaigns in Google, Bing and/or other search engines. The local business could easily have tweaked, tested and changed campaigns from week-to-week and month-to-month with PPC campaigns.

So, what's the moral of the story? Before writing a fat check for a one-shot, banner campaign, consider other online advertising options available. Find out where you're going to receive more bang for your buck.

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Bing Pay Per Click Tips: SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 217

How to get qualified PPC traffic with any budget

Bing Pay Per Click Tips: SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 217

Recently, I attended a conference in which Bing (Microsoft) offered some excellent tips on getting into the Pay Per Click (PPC) game with Bing/Yahoo. Here's what they had to offer:

1. Be in the PPC race. Bing currently controls 20-25% of the Pay Per Click market, so you should consider taking advantage of some opportunities there.
2. Bid by match type. If you bid on "broad" types, do not leave "exact" and "phrase" bids empty. Set your bids across the system.
3. For all new terms, bid .40 (cents) minimum. "Phrase" types should be at 75% of the "exact" bid, while "broad" should be 85% of the "exact" bid.
4. Use the incremental bidding feature.
5. Expand your exact keyword list.
6. Use the Bing Excel plug-in for PPC (Microsoft Advertising Intelligence).
7. Use the Bing Desktop tool. This will allow you to import campaigns from Google Adwords.
8. Maintain a balanced budget.
9. Maximize your PPC potential. Manage your mobile campaigns separately. Also, you want to make sure your landing page(s) include a keyword within the URL and within the page content (I'm always surprised when these options are overlooked in PPC campaigns).

Everyone runs to Google Adwords when seeking online advertising opportunities, which makes perfect sense since Google earns more traffic than any other search engines. However, businesses quickly discover Adwords is more expensive than Bing.

Give Bing a chance. It's a good place to start if you're a beginner in PPC, but it's also worth a portion of your online advertising budget.

Only The Best PPC Ad Will Be Shown: SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 198

Something new for consideration with your Google Adwords accounts.

Now, the ad rotation setting which allowed multiple ads to run indefinitely has been discontinued as of mid-May. 

So, after 30 days of testing, Google will only run your ad with the highest number of clicks.

Be careful with this feature as the ad earning the most clicks might not be the ad earning the highest number of sales, conversions, etc.

It makes sense Google wants the best "clicked" ad to be presented the most often (that's how it makes money), but it might not be the best ad for your business.

Keep an eye on your ads, clicks and conversions.

Don't Let Social Media Take Over Your Marketing Efforts: SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 195

Remember your marketing plan? The one you said you were going to stick to in 2012 no matter what happened. Remember?

Unfortunately, everyone continues to run to the shiny new toy and they've forgotten their own website. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, etc., etc., are getting updates daily.

However, when's the last time you've updated your website's content? You know, the one that looks like a brochure.

When's the last time you've contributed to your company's blog? Or wrote and published a press release?

Folks, social media is an additional marketing channel.Yes, your company should be engaging (at some level) in social media, but don't put all your marketing eggs in one basket. It won't work.

Your business:

• Needs an updated website with awesome content.
• Needs a blog with weekly, if not daily, contributions.
• Needs search engine optimization to help increase traffic and rankings in Google and other search engines.
• Needs to be running a search engine marketing (PPC) campaign.

Social media is not a replacement for those things.

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"Pimp My Keywords" is written and published by Purple Trout, LLC, a Cincinnati, Ohio SEO consulting firm specializing in search engine marketing (PPC), international and multilingual search engine optimization and online reputation management.

Reconsider Google Adwords: SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 194

While you're waiting to earn top organic search engine rankings in Google on those golden keywords, perhaps you should give Google Adwords another chance.

Google Adwords, also referred to as "Pay Per Click" or "Search Engine Marketing" is the method by which you advertise in Google.

Face it, Google Adwords is the only way to get in front of your prospects now. Today.

Despite the rumors, Google Adwords is not expensive. Those who have broken the bank and tell horror Google stories at boring networking events are:

• inexperienced with PPC
• didn't perform adequate keyword research
• didn't write quality ads
• didn't use proper broad, phrase, exact and negative keyword match types (or have any clue what they stand for)
• had poor landing pages that didn't convert
• had poor Quality Scores in their ad campaigns
• didn't create a proper budget

Don't let the above list freak you out. Start slow. Create a small campaign with a few keywords and one landing page. Write a few ads and test, test, test. Stick to a limited budget.

As you get started, check your campaigns daily.

Work on improving your campaign ads and landing pages before you tweak your budget.

More to come here on Google Adwords and other online advertising strategies.

* * *

"Pimp My Keywords" is written and published by Purple Trout, LLC, a Cincinnati, Ohio SEO consulting firm specializing in search engine marketing (PPC), international and multilingual search engine optimization and online reputation management.

SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 170

Pay Per Click can be a beast for most people, especially when it comes to setting up a PPC campaign, clicks, impressions, budgets, credit cards and Google.

The best way, in my opinion, is to start slow and dip your toe in the water.

Create a modest budget and stick to it (no matter what).

Target six keywords. Write a minimum of three ads so you can test which ad performs the best. And, above all, track your success.

SEO vs. PPC

PPC - also known as Pay Per click - ends the day you stop paying the bill.

SEO - also known as Search Engine Optimization - lasts much longer. Anything you do for your website today (and tomorrow and the next day and so on...) will last forever. Any inbound links you earn pointing to your website will exist until the hosting site removes them. Content on your website can stay the same forever or until you decide to update it. 

 

 

SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 117

One of the many presentations I attended at Search Engine Strategies Conference, San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, included a great session by the folks at Wpromote Inc. called "Ten Things To Supercharge Your SEM Campaigns."

1. Test everything. Test button color, text, headlines, images, etc.
2. Do PPC (Pay Per Click) and remarketing. Remarketing is the technology by which you drop a cookie on your site visitors and "follow them" to other web pages where your ad will eventually appear in front of their face again. Very effective.
3. Use the Google Content Network in PPC. When you find winner keywords, go big. When you find loser keywords, make them into negative keywords.
4. With PPC keywords and ad grouping, you're better off grouping by either services or grouping by city (group by location is the way to go).
5. Go for out of the box thinking on link building. Great links are closer than you think. Vendors, partners, users, friends, customers, stores, etc.
6. Creating amazing SEO content. You have control over your website's content. Do something with it. Adopt a page a day mentality to improve your website's content. Ideas can include a blog, resources, FAQs, articles. Be a thought leader when it comes to your website's content. 
7. Be timely, seasonal and hip. Why not try something different? For example, for the holidays, use art work or a seasonal header on your website's home page? Change your colors; add some new artwork and see what happens.
8. Craft the perfect message. Use your website data for analysis. Using the proper keywords + ad + landing page = reinforcing what the user wants to see.
9. Use Google Insights to help find good keywords (and negative keywords as well).
10. Me, You & Social Media. Start with what is being said about you. Use Google Alerts; search Twitter; ScoutLabs.com; ViralHeat.com to monitor the chatter. Then, create a strategic message and integrate it into your website. Consider Facebook and StumbleUpon ads.

PPC Landing Pages & Brief Case Studies

If you want to:

• Measure a specific set of keywords in a Pay Per Click campaign.
• Test a specific ad or pages in a PPC campaign.
• Control the page where your customer lands in a campaign.
• Track your customer's action (conversion; clicking the "Back" button, etc.).

...then you need to strongly consider creating and using landing pages in your PPC Campaign.

Landing pages are web pages specific used for online advertising campaigns. They are not used in organic or other searching efforts, which then allow you to better measure incoming traffic and conversions.

We manage several PPC campaigns (big budgets, small budgets, tons of keywords, etc.), but a landing page strategy can be very effective.

Consider some of our case studies:

• An international S&P 500 firm is using a specific landing page for training registration. The PPC campaigns have been translated into 12 languages and are running in Google Spain (6.54% Click Through Rate); Google Brazil (7.51% CTR) and other countries.
• A local heating and plumbing company is using a landing page to promote an upcoming event. Ads are being tested, but are currently pulling in a 1-2% CTR just one month into the campaign.
• A national medical device company is using specific landing pages to promote specials. The campaign is pulling in nearly 3% CTR.

Landing pages, just like PPC campaigns, can be more effective with a stronger call to action. Make sure the traffic that's acting on your PPC ads is also converting once they see your landing page. If not, then improvements will need to be made on the landing page to increase conversions.

SEO Tactics, Tips & Helpful Advice - No. 116

Now that your Pay Per Click campaigns are up and running, you'll always want to monitor and make improvements.

However, how long should you wait before deciding to change keyword focus; write new ads; create new campaigns, etc.?

Here are some considerations and tips to help you make those PPC decisions:

You may be limited in your campaign changes based on your budget, especially if you try to change keyword focus to more expensive keywords.

• If you're maintaining one of the top three positions for a particular keyword, but the click results are poor, then it's time to rewrite or create new ads. Top positions are great, but they're only as good as the quality of the click. If you're not gaining clicks, the ad copy isn't compelling enough.
• If keywords are expensive, you may want to change sooner than later. Consider "longer tail" keywords such as "free pizza delivery 45202" instead of "pizza Cincinnati" for example.
• Also, if high-traffic keywords are too expensive, give some consideration to keywords that are gaining less clicks at a lower price. If you capture a group of low-click keywords, you may earn more clicks at a better price than trying to compete after expensive keywords that break your budget.
• Always write ads and look to make improvements with the quality of your ad content. Writing multiple ads for the same set of keywords allows you to text which ad pulls in more clicks and conversions.