If you have a landing page that you’re sending AdWords traffic to, you should include relevant (and even better: relevant & unique) images with relevant captions to your landing page.
Google likes that and it will be a plus for your quality score. You also want to give these images relevant filenames. So if you are selling wooden toys, then you want to have images of wooden toys and name them accordingly.
Now, this one is important: do not name unrelevant images with relevant names.... Read Full Story
I often get taken in to optimize existing campaigns by people who make enough money with their business so they can afford losing a lot on marketing without getting any results.
Oftentimes, these people just read a magaazine article or heard that Google AdWords is a much better way of marketing and then they set up their campaigns.
And they don’t have a clue about what it is they’re doing. It shows….
one thing: ALWAYS (without exception) separate your search network campaign... Read Full Story
By now you’re probably using the Google keyword tool like 99% of the time, and then maybe something like wordtracker.
But a tool that I often find to come in handy is Keyword Browse, which represents keywords in a visual way, almost like a mindmap. This works really well for me, because I’m a much more visual type, and I think that everybody in general can process information better if it’s presented in that way.
Here’s a screenshot for you (click for large size):
Now... Read Full Story
Google’s changed it’s rules again a bit. This time it’s disallowing the use of multiple display domains within the same ad group.
You can still use multiple domains, but they have to be in different ad groups then.
Not a major, but a minor ouch - split testing display URLs has been important part of optimizing CTR & conversions, and conveniently simple within the same ad group previously. Read Full Story
It’s something that I heard so often, from so many different people, that I never really questioned it.
“Google hates if you drive AdWords traffic to a squeeze page.”
“Squeeze pages will destroy your quality score.”
“Squeezepages from AdWrods? You’ll pay through your nose!”
That kind of stuff.
And in fact - I heard it from many people who I usually tend to trust. Even friends.
But finally, when working for one of my clients who insisted on using... Read Full Story
What do you really need to know about Google having exposed it’s numbers of search occurences, instead of those green graphics that would just give you a very rough estimate of how often a search term was looked for?
Well, many people have written about this, but two blog posts really stand out: Jerry west wrote “Google Updates their Keyword Tool” and Jim Morris wrote “The Initial Assessment of Google Unveiling Approximate Search Counts In Google External Keyword Tool&... Read Full Story
Now granted, this post is almost a little off topic.
It’s not exactly about PPC, but it’s what happens AFTER PPC: once a prospect has clicked your ad and landed on your site.
Do you convert this visitor into a member of your list, or better yet, a paying customer?
After all - even if you could get one-cent clicks on the term health insurance, what good would it do you if you had a 0% conversion rate? It would do you no good at all, you’d still be losing money.
Now a lot of t... Read Full Story
If you send people to your website via pay-per-click advertising, you know that it’s all about quality. Google want’s to see that your sites are relevant, thus matching the title with the searchphrase is often a good idea, and so is having the searchphrase in the body text of the website.
But you can in fact get a better quality score (and thus cheaper clicks) without having to change one word of copy - just make your site look neat and professional.
Every website that you send tr... Read Full Story
While my stay in Berlin I was looking for restaurants to eat. So I googled “restaurants in berlin”.
And guess what I found? Well, of course googles local search listing, but what else? In the sponsored listings, in the number one spot? Again Google’s local listings - an advertisement for maps.google.de !
I thought that is really interesting. Considering that they are one of the biggest data mining companies worldwide they must have a pretty good grip on where the profits are... Read Full Story
