Growing PPC Campaigns Is Easy

Posted by: Ian Comments: 4 comments so far

Mar. 01

While I’m passionate about all the topics I discuss on PPC Ian, today’s is toward the top of the list. It’s at the top of my list because I’m about to reveal one of the most fundamental secrets behind success in corporate PPC. My secret is extremely simple, but also extremely difficult at the same time. Let’s jump right to the punchline: Growing pay per click search engine marketing campaigns is very easy! I’m serious here. There’s absolutely zero magic. If you have a basic understanding of business operations and math, you are totally capable of understanding all the mechanics behind PPC.

Easy Road

Of course, this is only half of the picture. If PPC were so simple, why do some organizations fail while others succeed? Why do some managers make it to the top and others lose the game? Here’s the difficult part: You need to be an absolute master of process, systems, and execution to thrive in pay per click. While the fundamental mechanics of pay per click are reachable, building scalable systems and consistent execution (on the right projects) is extremely challenging.

Recently, I wrote all about conditioning your PPC mind to focus and execute on difficult PPC projects. When I say "difficult" in this article I really mean "difficult to execute". In theory, the mechanics of what you’re trying to accomplish (especially on a small scale) are not that difficult. However, the execution side can be extremely challenging for a number of reasons:

  1. You’re tired of doing the same thing over and over
  2. You’re constantly looking for the next big thing
  3. You find it challenging to stay focused through large PPC projects
  4. The scale of your keyword set is overwhelming and you’re having trouble building a system to scale
  5. You and your team become complacent and slow down the pace of execution because numbers are doing really well already

In addition to my tips around search marketing leverage, today I’d like to discuss basic pay per click strategies that are easy mechanically but potentially difficult in execution. I’m going to call out some of the execution challenges behind these projects and how you can overcome those barriers. The goal of today’s article: Let’s grow your pay per click campaigns to the next level by executing on the right projects!

PPC Project 1: Consistently Deploy Keywords

Rewinding to my first day in pay per click, I can remember my checklist vividly. Towards the top of my checklist, my manager had something like this in bold: "Deploy keywords each and every day. Keywords are the fundamental driver of growth." Today, this statement is more truthful than ever. However, it constantly astounds me that very few organizations deploy keywords daily, weekly, or even monthly!

There are a number of things that get in the way. The big ones: categorizing keywords, finding the right adgroups, determining the right bids, and simply doing it! My suggestion: Build a system and then execute on it every single morning, pay yourself (and your campaigns) before doing anything else! Your system may include PPC automation, it may even include hiring an intern or two. The key here is developing the most efficient system possible and then running that system as if your life depended on it, no matter how mundane things may become. (It’s ok if you feel like that guy on LOST pushing the button over and over if the results are powerful.) Remember, numbers going up and to the right are never mundane!

PPC Project 2: Consistently Test Ad Copy

Just like keyword deployment, I’m consistently shocked by the small number of organizations that routinely test ad copy. I’m shocked even more by the small number of organizations that leverage statistical significance in their framework. Just think about it: An improvement in ad copy will not only benefit that campaigns you’re testing on, but will potentially lift all (or many) campaigns across all accounts across all search engines!

My overall advice: Develop a framework (in conjunction with your stats team or someone who’s really great at math) and execute upon it routinely. Never fall into a rut and always remember to retest old copy because trends change over time. As another huge tip (one that applies to ad copy testing but also everything else in today’s article): Never become complacent. I’ve seen it many times: The campaigns are doing extremely well and beating expectations so the team starts to take it easy, focus on non-core activities such as beta tests and meetings, and execution on core projects halts to a grind. PPC is volatile so when the storm hits, the system is broken and the team disappoints. In pay per click, even when things are good, I always like to anticipate the bad days and overcompensate for them in the present. If you always force yourself to execute on core projects (and leverage fear to fuel your execution), it is possible to always hit numbers (even when the storm hits).

PPC Project 3: Add Negative Keywords and Sites Weekly

In my opinion, it’s impossible to make broad match work effectively without the right set of negative keywords. It’s impossible to make Yahoo work without the right set of negative partner sites. It’s impossible to make content match work without the right set of negative sites. The natural solution: Add negative keywords and sites weekly. The challenge: Nobody does it. Just like the other tips, it’s up to you to build a system and execute. A system does not always need to include yourself of your team. Make the case to management that you need to expand your team or outsource certain tasks. I’m a tremendous fan of managing remote India SEM Teams.

PPC Project 4: Update Bids Regularly

I’m leaving my favorite project for last! Everyone updates their high volume keywords regularly. However, when it comes to the mid volume and low volume keywords, bids are regularly updated. Why? There’s never enough statistically significant data when you use the same time offset as with your high volume keywords. The solution: Leverage different time periods to evaluate different keywords. The challenge: You need software to accomplish this effectively. This is where many organizations stop. My challenge to you: Audit the solutions out there, think through the build versus buy decision, and make it happen! Your numbers will be thanking you!

Image of Easy Road © iStockPhoto – Joni_R

Posted in: Campaign Tips, Leverage | Tags: , , | Comments: 4 comments so far, join the discussion!

Quality Score: SEO Tips For PPC Landing Pages

Posted by: Ian Comments: Be the first person to comment

Feb. 22

If you’ve been in pay per click search engine marketing for a while, there’s no doubt you’ve faced landing page quality score issues at least once. I’ve managed AdWords campaigns for dozens of sites. Thankfully, the majority of these sites have been multi-million-dollar category leaders with excellent landing page quality scores. However, a few of them have not been so fortunate. Today, I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts around optimizing your landing pages for Google’s quality score. Specifically, I’ll discuss a few SEO-style tips that directly impact PPC quality scores.

Tip 1: Meta Data Affects PPC Quality Score

Red Matrix

If you’ve optimized sites for SEO, you’ve definitely worked with the title, meta description, and meta keywords tags within the HTML head section. In the SEO world, these tags are extremely important – they directly affect the ad copy of your listing within the organic results. However, I’m here to highlight that these tags also affect your PPC quality score. Just think about it: The existence of targeted meta data shows Google that your landing page is part of "real" website, one that is well thought through and directly relevant to the keywords in question.

Some tactical tips: Keep your title to 8 to 10 keywords (or fewer), your meta description to 156 characters or less, and your meta keywords to 8 to 10 (or fewer). Moreover, make sure the keywords that you’re targeting are included throughout (especially at the beginning), but don’t overdo it.

Tip 2: Keyword-Optimize Your Landing Pages

I’m sure you’ve heard it time and time again: Content is king! This statement is absolutely true for PPC, just like SEO. It’s critical to not only keyword-optimize your title, meta description, and meta keywords, but also your overall landing page. You don’t need to go crazy, but it’s super beneficial to sprinkle your keyword across the page, at least a few times.

So, you have millions of keywords. Does this mean you need millions of custom landing pages? Absolutely not! My advice: Work with your engineering team to build a dynamic landing page (or a series of pages around the major themes), one that renders "customized" depending on the incoming keyword. My preference is to have a table on the back end that maps keywords to the custom, dynamic content rather than passing the content in through the URL string.

Tip 3: Leverage All Major HTML Text Formatting Tags

Another simple, yet very practical tip: Make sure to leverage the common HTML formatting tags. Some examples include <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <strong>, and <em>. The story behind this: You’re trying to show search engines that your landing page is well thought through. By including these tags, your PPC landing page becomes a well optimized SEO experience, one that shows search engines just how relevant your site is to the user.

Tip 4: Include Important Links In Your Footer

From my experience, there are several absolutely critical links that must be present in all of your PPC landing page footers: Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Site Map, and Contact Us. Google is all about credibility and transparency. By including these links in your footer, you’re being absolutely open and honest with your visitors.

If you leverage AdSense on your site, it’s actually required that you have a privacy policy on your landing page discussing Google’s use of cookies. Moreover, new FTC guidelines require Ts and Cs, Privacy Policies, and Affiliate Disclaimers to be more robust than ever. I take all of this stuff very seriously.

Tip 5: Add Alt Tags To All Images

The title of this tip says it all: Make sure your image alt tags are descriptive and relevant. It’s yet one more data point that can help Google determine the relevancy of your landing page. Of course, it’s very important to be accurate and keep your alt tags short.

Tip 6: Make Sure Search Engines Don’t Index PPC Landing Pages

So far, all of my tips have been geared toward improving the landing page quality score of your pay per click landing pages. However, I wanted to close out with a tip that will help maintain your great relationship with your organization’s SEO team.

I highly recommend coordinating closely with your SEO team, informing them of all your PPC landing pages. Most of the time, you will want to make sure to noindex your PPC pages. In PPC, it’s totally ok to have hundreds (or even thousands) of very similar pages that may differ only slightly for the keyword in question. However, such a practice in SEO is very bad, one that would be considered duplicate content. The solution: Orphan your PPC landing pages from the main site while noindexing them as well. The user will be able to go from your landing page to the main site, but a user from your main site will not find your pay per click landing pages (and moreover they will not get indexed by search engines).

Image of Red Matrix © iStockPhoto – FONG_KWONG_CHO

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5 Great PPC Campaign Initiatives

Posted by: Ian Comments: 2 comments so far

Feb. 03

So far, I’ve been talking quite a bit about high-level pay per click career tips. After all, the charter of PPC Ian is just that: Empowering pay per click professional by focusing on career tips and strategy. However, the time has come to start including some specifics as well. Pay per click is a very operational role, one that requires initiatives to grow campaigns. It’s actually quite interesting: After all these years, many of the core initiatives are the same. Today, I will highlight 5 great PPC initiatives that will immediately grow your Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft campaigns. This is a random group. I’m not saying these are the best initiatives or the only initiatives, but they are certainly ones that will jumpstart any PPC operation.

PPC Initiative 1: Brainstorm Keywords With Your Vertical Manager

PPC Initiatives

I’m listing this initiative first because it’s a fun one, an initiative that can totally break up the PPC grind while driving value. Automated keyword generation (via the Google Keyword Tool, third party solutions such as Trellian, and your site’s catalog) is absolutely essential in capturing the basic keywords, those keywords that get you into the game. However, if you want to go above and beyond the basics and win the game, you need to get creative. My suggestion: Form a partnership with your vertical manger, category director, or whatever your company calls the person who runs your business unit.

Specifically, set up a structured brainstorming session (or a series of sessions) and generate keywords on the whiteboard. You will be amazed at the creative keyword ideas you brainstorm, keywords that will change the game for your organization because they lack competition and are not available via automated generation platforms. My other suggestion: Think about very creative ways to leverage broad match keywords with aggressive negative matching. There are many innovative strategies waiting to be uncovered, some which can make or break an entire vertical.

PPC Initiative 2: Write Custom Ad Copy For Your Mid-Volume Keywords

I like to call this initiative the one keyword per ad group strategy. I actually coined that term about 3.5 years ago and am quite proud of it! Surprisingly, when I first started championing the one keyword per ad group strategy, it was a little difficult to gain supporters. These days, I can’t find a PPC organization that does not use the strategy in one form or another. My advice is simple: Target your mid-volume keywords and write highly customize ads (hundreds of them) with the goal of optimizing click through rate.

You may ask: Why the mid-volume keywords? My answer is simple. The very high volume keywords are generic enough that your current ads are already very customized. Just think about it: Your ad for the word "mortgage" is already targeted enough because the word is so generic that it defines the entire category. Now, let’s say we’re talking about the mid-volume keyword "California Mortgage Loan". Because this keyword contains "California" and "Loan", we’re perfectly set up to write a custom ad, one that has a custom title, body, and also display URL. One of the challenges with this strategy is nobody wants to sit down and write the hundreds of ads. My suggestion: Split the efforts across the team, everyone needs to participate in the effort!

PPC Initiative 3: Analyze Top Performing Keywords From Last Year

A lot of stuff can happen over the course of the year. Campaign managers come and go, campaigns change hands, mistakes are made, and business models can change. All of this change can create some serious opportunity if you take the time to look back. My suggestion: Run a quick keyword level analysis comparing last month to the same month in the prior year. Look for keywords that used to drive significant conversions but are now lagging behind. I’m often surprised to find keywords that are unintentionally paused, underbid, or simply have ad copy that’s no longer beating the competition. This analysis is a super way to generate a queue of tactical PPC work that can drive real results.

Search Marketing Initiative 4: Focus On More Granular Targeting

If you’re in financial services, you’re no stranger to geo targeting. Taking mortgage as an example, a lead form in California is clearly worth more than one in North Dakota. Why? It’s much easier to split the lead in California and sell it to multiple different lenders (the demand for that lead is higher). For this reason alone, geo targeting offers a great way to bid more efficiently.

However, I’d also like to suggest that you test more granular targeting even if you’re in a vertical like product shopping, one that doesn’t have a clearly different product value by geo. I’ve seen it many times: Users in different geographies convert at different rates. Often times, users in highly populated metro areas like San Francisco convert the best. For that reason alone, you can bid more effectively by geo targeting your campaigns. My only word of caution: Only change your bids by geo when you have statistically significant data. The more you segment your keywords, the longer it can take to accumulate statistically significant data.

Search Marketing Initiative 5: Achieve Match Type Parity

As a closing tip, I highly recommend a regular look at your match type parity. Parity is a very simple concept. Basically, you want to look at your global keyword set and make sure you’re fully deployed on all match types. Because it offers the highest conversion rate and profitability, I’m a huge fan of exact match. Consequently, I always enjoy performing a parity analysis and making sure all of my keywords are deployed on exact. I’m often amazed how many campaigns are overly weighted on the broad match side. This creates a great opportunity to take those broad match keywords and also deploy them on exact, at slightly higher bids, for added control, coverage, and profits!

Image of Initiatives © iStockPhoto – marekuliasz

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