Archives for 2011

It’s All About Exact Match People!

I’m excited to share an AdWords account optimization tip today that will improve your efficiency, grow volume, and lower your CPA. It’s a very simple tip, and one that offers great leverage. It’s also one that few AdWords accounts obey, especially larger corporate accounts. What’s my tip? Simple: Focus on exact match as your primary match type, with broad and phrase as secondary match types. I touched on this concept a bit in my video about launching a new AdWords account and my post about PPC match type strategies. I’d like to elaborate today, however, because it’s a new year and I truly believe this simple tip will drive great results with minimal time commitment. Why am I so certain? I keep seeing this opportunity on a recurring basis as I network and talk to more and more search engine marketers.

Look At CPA By Match Type

First, let’s perform a quick sanity check to see how much opportunity exists in your personal account. Download your Google AdWords (search only) data for the last month. It might make sense to look at Google.com only but you can also include syndication partners if you’d like. Next, go through the data and remove your trademark keywords. These perform at such low CPAs compared to other keywords (and are so heavily weighted towards exact match) that they could bias your data, making exact match look even better than it is. Next, run a pivot table to calculate your aggregate volume of conversions, CPA, and average position (you’ll need to weight by impressions before you pivot) by match type.

What do you see? If your account is like 99% of the others out there, I’m betting exact is operating at a much lower CPA than the other match types. Also if you’re lucky, the majority of your conversions are coming from broad. I’m saying “lucky” because that means your account is under-optimized and offers the ability to easily shift the mix towards more profitable exact keywords. Also, check out your average position data. If the average position of exact is already 1.0 or close to it (and the volume of conversions from exact far outpaces the other match types), you may not have much upside via this strategy, even if your exact CPA is much lower than phrase and broad.

Dig Deeper Into Your Match Type Data

Assuming your exact keywords are operating at a lower CPA than the other match types, your exact keywords are not dominating the traffic mix, and your exact match keywords are not in position 1.0 (or close to it), we should have a big opportunity on our hands! However, it’s not prudent to make conclusions from aggregate data in SEM. It’s time to go to the keyword level!

Look at your top keywords. Try to go through all the big keywords until you’ve covered at least 60%-80% of your account’s conversions by keyword. Validate the same assumptions you did on an aggregate level on the keyword level. I’m betting it will pan out and you’ll quickly see the huge opportunity on exact match.

Now, It’s Time To Optimize Your AdWords Account

At the end of the day, I’m a big fan of optimizing to the same CPA on a keyword level for all keywords except trademarks (especially if you have a large, unlimited budget). There’s rarely a case where you’d want to run broad and phrase at a higher CPA than exact. (I’m more open to running different exact match keywords at different CPAs, especially if there’s a huge volume opportunity, but that’s a different topic.) By operating the match types at the same CPA, you’ll drive added conversions and efficiency (better margins).

How do you do this? Once you have your CPA information by match type, a simple first step might be making aggregate bid changes by match type. Why not adjust the bids down for all broad and phrase keywords while adjusting the bids for exact up? In extreme cases, I have gone as far as pausing broad and phrase and then raising exact aggressively. Having PPC bidding solution such as Marin Software will really help you make these types of bidding changes. (As a side note, you may wish to check out my SEM Automation Buyers Guide.)

The Ideal AdWords Account Is Exact Match Focused

I’ve talked about this quite a bit in the past, but would like to repeat because it’s really important stuff. The strategy above only works if your account has keyword parity by match types. It’s especially important that all keywords in the account that are on broad and phrase match are also on exact. The ideal SEM account in my opinion has the vast majority of keywords on exact with only the head terms on phrase and broad for the purpose of keyword generation. Over time, you then look at your search query report, find the new queries generated by broad and phrase that work, and deploy them on exact.

I hope this framework gives your you and your company a quick win in your Google AdWords account for 2011! Just remember, be cautious and take time to make your changes. Goal number one is always preserving what you already have so I like to phase in large changes over time.

Image of Search SEM SEO © iStockPhoto – MacXever

Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 14 5

I’m excited today to share an amazing free eBook with you, Acquisio’s Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model. I’m really excited about this eBook and highly recommend it because it really got me thinking. In today’s PPC landscape, it’s imperative to understand agency pricing models. Whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder, looking to hire an agency, or even looking to start your own agency, this eBook will prove invaluable.

Cost-Based and Performance-Based Agency Contracts

Acquisio’s Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model discusses two types of agency pricing models, cost-based and performance-based models. Each of these models can actually get quite complex, there are 5 different types of cost-based agency models and 4 different types of performance-based agency models discussed in the eBook. The eBook covers some really interesting topics including: the agency perspective, the advertiser perspective, and the pros and cons of various models.

I’m here to say that it’s more important than ever to understand SEM agency pricing models. Why? First and foremost, the agency career path is a great one. (You can learn all about the agency career path in my post about three different PPC career paths.) Second, it makes a lot of sense to hire an SEM agency, even if you have an in-house team. It’s all about leverage in paid search and SEM agencies provide just that! Third, SEM agencies are a great business and you may even want to consider starting one yourself. This whitepaper will provide great information to start modeling out your own SEM agency business.

Acquisio, The SEM Platform of Choice For Agencies

I wanted to close out today’s post by giving a quick intro to Acquisio, the company behind this awesome free eBook. What is Acquisio all about? They are the SEM platform of choice for SEM agencies. If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m a huge fan of SEM automation. I even wrote my own 12 page SEM automation buyer’s guide. When you’re an agency, automation is more important than in any other situation. It’s simply not possible to scale and give all your clients the level of service they require without the right platform. That’s exactly where Acquisio steps in.

Want to learn more about Acquisio? I highly recommend checking out my exclusive interview with Marc Poirier, CMO and co-founder of Acquisio. When you’re done with that, you’ll also want to check out Acquisio’s display advertising eBook. Last, but definitely not least, I can’t say enough about Acquisio’s new eBook: Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model.

How PR Can Drive Great SEO Results

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 11 14

When it comes to building the SEO ranking of PPC Ian, I’ve been working really hard on multiple fronts. Some of my strategies include great on-page SEO, tons of in-depth blog posts, link building by getting on the blogrolls of my friends, and link building via article marketing. However, there’s one specific strategy that’s added a disproportional amount of value that I’d like to discuss today: Making a concentrated effort on PR. That’s right, I’ve established great relationships with the online marketing community. These relationships have turned into interviews and guest reviews that have provided great exposure (and inbound links) to PPC Ian.

PPC Ian In The Press

I’ve had success over the last few months with some great PPC Ian reviews and interviews including: D3so and Dino Vedo. Excitingly, I also just interviewed Dino Vedo myself.

Also, if you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a long time, you may also know that I got featured on some other really big blogs: John Chow, Jonathan Volk, Teen Domainer, and ZK’s Web Traffic ROI.

The Two Key Benefits of The PR SEO Strategy

First and foremost, big PR hits drive substantial traffic and new readers. Each time I got featured on one of the blogs above, my RSS subscribers and eBook subscribers grew considerably. Moreover, I started getting comments from new people! In short, an strong mention on a big blog (within your industry) will drive great results. It’s said that blogs can drive even better quality traffic than paid search. It makes sense: Loyal readers will trust and follow the recommendations of bloggers.

Second, big PR hits drive link juice. We all know how important inbound links are when it comes to SEO and your blog’s ranking within search engines. When you get interviewed or reviewed on a major blog, the links within the posts add a lot of value. They are in-context links that are trusted by search engines. It makes perfect sense to me: Search engines trust sites that are well respected in their niche. How do you prove to search engines that you’re part of the community? You get quality in-context links from high profile sites in your niche.

So, How Do You Get Featured On Major Blogs?

So, you’re convinced and want to make PR a part of your personal SEO strategy. Great choice! When it comes to getting featured on top blogs, I have a few suggestions. First and foremost, you’ll want to start commenting on major blogs, and become a top commentator. You’ll want to read about my blog commenting strategy.

Second, I recommend writing great, quality posts on your blog that make others look good. When you promote products and blogs you believe in, it will often come back to you in the form of a positive review. Third, I recommend doing reciprocal guest interviews. Basically, you interview another blogger and they interview you too! It’s an easy and effective way for both of you to increase your PR and SEO. Last, I recommend building out an incredible network by going to conferences in your industry. The stronger your offline, in-person network, the more opportunities you will have to get featured online!

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D3so logo © D3so.com

Exclusive Interview With Dino Vedo

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 8 11

I’m thrilled today to interview one of the top commentators on my blog, Dino Vedo! Dino Vedo is a very popular blogger in the affiliate space, I frequent his daily and have learned numerous affiliate marketing tips from Dino. Above and beyond his blogging expertise, Dino is a full time college student and a young millionaire. Very impressive stuff! It’s been a real honor getting to know Dino over the last year, he’s a great friend and business partner. I know many of you reading PPC Ian are interested in PPC careers. Dino is someone you’ll want to pay close attention to because he can definitely teach you some strategies than can help with your online marketing career. Without further ado, let’s get into the interview…

Please tell PPC Ian readers a little bit about yourself

I’m currently a student at University of Michigan and I’m super busy juggling both affiliate marketing and my school work. College life is fun, don’t get me wrong, but it can get quite overwhelming when you need to attend clubs, hang out with your friends, study for tests, and then check over your campaigns before you go to sleep! Most of my friends have no idea how to make money online, nor exactly know what I do. Most of them think the only way to make money online is to scam, but as we all know that definitely is not the case. Anyways, I’m studying in the School of Business at U of M, and later plan on transferring maybe to a different University as this will be only my sophomore year and I’d hope to get into a much more prestigious school to finish my studies.

How did you get started in affiliate marketing and blogging?

For me, it all began around 3 years ago, when I was just turning 16. My mom encouraged me to start selling stuff on eBay to make some money as I was always asking her for some and apparently she got sick of it. Ha. A good friend of hers was already selling a lot of things on eBay and already was well experienced with how eBay works, and agreed to help me get started. After weeks of selling some of my old stuff around the house, I came to see the huge potential in this and wanted to expand and make a lot more money just like any teenager at that time would. So I ended up going over to Liquidations.com and buying huge amounts of auctions in bulk, such as electronics and video games and who knows what else. On a per item basis, the items were being liquidated for only a few bucks, and I knew I could sell them for maybe double or triple for what I got them for. So that is exactly what I did, and in a few months I quickly became a eBay Power Seller, and before I knew it my basement was turning into a large scale warehouse! At that time, I was making a few thousand per month with minimal work. Sure you had to take pictures of the items and write descriptions and then ship and package them out, but I honestly did not mind as I liked what I was doing and was making good money with it as well.

But of course, after around a year of two of this, all good things came to an end. PayPal had limited my account and froze my funds inside the online account. Not only that but since they work directly with eBay, they had my listings closed, and my eBay account was put on hold. Now why did this happen? My eBay account was in good standing, I had close to 5K in positive feedbacks and close to 98% positive feedback. Well, at that time eBay was going through drastic changes in their policies, and numerous sellers were complaining. If you had an eBay account a few years back, I’m sure you can remember that the eBay feedback system was completely fair. By that I mean the seller and buyer both had the right to leave positive or negative feedback. But that was changed a few weeks before I got in trouble, and the reason, my best guess is (as eBay or PayPal aren’t allowed to tell you the reasons..) that I had too many bad reviews or ratings in a short time frame. Sure I was an eBay Power seller, but eBay at that time did not care, or was their system broke? I have no idea but they ended up limiting my account and ruining my business for a good month or two. I was able to get the account back after I had verified that the stuff I was selling was legit and after I sent numerous paper work to prove it.

So problem solved huh? Nope not at all. Since eBay closed my listings, some items were in transit and some were sold and not shipped yet. So what does eBay do for those buyers? They send them a message stating that the seller may have been fraudulent and they are investigating him. Wow thanks eBay right? So imagine what happened, I got even more negative ratings and feedback, some complained they never got their item when they paid, which at the time was true, but there was nothing I could do as PayPal froze my funds and said not to ship anything until the investigation was complete. So my eBay account was in horrible standing afterwards, and I could barely get a sale and ended up giving up after that, enraged at eBay.

As an entrepreneur at heart, I never admit failures, but rather look at them as opportunities to learn or to make something better out of it, and that’s truly what happened. I ended up reading about other ways to make money online, read tons of eBooks on various subjects such as internet marketing and blogging. Starting creating websites and products, and before I knew it I was making just as much, if not more than on eBay. Not to mention, it was much easier to do as I had no items to ship, and no customers to deal with! Now it was all just a matter of scaling up, learning more, and trying out different affiliate strategies to get traffic, whether it was paid or through organic searches.

How are you able to balance your coursework in college with Internet marketing?

This is definitely hard and I would be lying if I said anyone can do it. I do believe that anyone can learn internet marketing and make money online, but to attend college and do it at the same time? No definitely not easy to do and you can trust me on that. Being a full time college student and living there is hard to start with, but now add girls, partying, studying, more girls, homework, tests, more girls… alright I think you get it by now and see where I’m getting at.

But yeah, it definitely is hard to do, and I manage it somehow. I’m always in class multi tasking. I think that is the biggest difference from me and another student. I have my laptop whenever I got to class, and I’m always doing something on it, while listening to the instructor. Risky huh? It sure is but I’ve managed to listen and learn, while optimizing campaigns and reading up on new posts on blogs such as Ian’s! So take it from me, it can be done but its hard!

When you graduate, do you plan to get a job or pursue affiliate marketing full time?

I really don’t know about this one. I guess whatever happens, happens. I enjoy what I am doing now, so if I get job opportunities that are similar and I see that there’s a huge potential in it, I may as well bite. But to say that will happen anytime soon, would be a lie as I see myself being self employed and working from my own home/office for the next few years for sure.

What advice do you have for affiliate marketers in high school or college looking to make it big online?

Perseverance and determination is key in my opinion. I see lots of my friends wanting to do what I do, they start asking me what is best they do first and this and that. I’m a good friend so I tell them what to do and how to do it right. But after a few days of maybe losing money or not making what they hope, they give up and say its impossible and pointless. I think that’s the attitude of around 99% or so of everyone who tries to make money online and fails at it. So if you fail, look at what mistakes you made learn from them and try again. If it fails again, reconsider what you are doing and research a better niche or try something else. The opportunities are so vast, that if you give up it truly is no one but your fault.

What are your long term goals?

To make lots and lots of money. That and enjoy the internet lifestyle and all the good things that come with it. I really enjoy networking with people and learning about the successes and failures of others. It truly is the best way to further your understanding of how affiliate marketing really works and how to be successful. I also plan on expanding the niches I am currently in, develop a few authority sites, invest in more domains, create a few products to help people out, and who knows what else…

I also plan on moving out from Michigan as soon as I finish college or transfer. I hate the cold climates and would do anything to be able to live in a place like California, so you can definitely count on seeing me there in 2-3 years. Specifically a city such as San Francisco. I’ve heard lots of internet marketers are there and there are lots of things to do, both on the entertainment and business side.

What’s the future of Internet marketing?

The future is what we all make. Sure some say mobile and some say applications like on Facebook, but who really knows. There could be a shift in the mobile industry that changes it for good, maybe Facebook dies off, or maybe the internet and SEO changes? Most would say yeah sure, but if you look just a year or so ago, everyone was on Myspace and it was huge. Now in only a year, Facebook is bigger than Myspace and even bigger than Google in traffic. Would anyone have guessed this? So the future is really in our hands, and is truly what we make of it. With that, be the future and create something that will change it. I’m sure there is money to be made in that…

Check Out Dino Vedo’s Blog

Dino, awesome interview! Thanks so much. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview, you’ve got some amazing stories, accomplishments, and true value to share with the online marketing community. PPC Ian readers, you’ll definitely want to check out Dino Vedo’s affiliate blog.

PPC Ian’s 2011 Goals

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 2 19

Happy 2011! It feels like I was writing about my 2010 goals just yesterday. It’s truly amazing how quickly 2010 flew by. Looking back at my 2010 goals, I totally crushed them. Why? Two reasons: First and foremost I worked really hard. Second, I wrote them down. That’s right! I’m a huge proponent of writing your goals down. When you write them down, it’s a lot more likely they will come true. To that end, I have my biggest and most important goals written down on a small piece of paper that I carry around in my wallet everywhere I go. Moreover, I’m excited to write down my shorter term goals for 2011 in today’s blog post. I couldn’t be more excited and I’m wishing you a great and prosperous 2011!

Goal 1: Continue To Set Myself Up For Vice President of Marketing

Happy 2011

I wouldn’t be PPC Ian if I didn’t place my corporate online marketing career at the top of the list. After all, I’m the biggest advocate of the corporate online marketing career path around! I’m Director of Search Marketing at a large, public company, and I have my sights set even higher. 2010 was all about preparing myself for VP of online marketing. And, I did just that. 2011 marks more of the same, getting even closer to my goal of hitting the VP level. I couldn’t be more excited, the opportunity in the corporate online marketing world is unparalleled.

Goal 2: Grow My Affiliate Marketing Revenue By 5x

2010 was a great foundational year. I had the original goal of launching 6 websites, but I actually ended up launching about 80. It was truly crazy! Moreover, the original sites I launched in 2007 are firing on all cylinders. In short, I had a record year in terms of affiliate revenue. However, I’m setting my goals much higher for 2011 because I’ve figured out a system that works and have the history and foundation in place to make it happen. As such, I’m going for it: I want to 5x my affiliate marketing revenue (on a run-rate basis) by the end of 2011.

Goal 3: Focus On Fewer Websites

Goal 3 really ties into goal 2. 70% of my affiliate marketing revenue comes from my top website. If I want to scale my affiliate marketing revenue by 5x, I truly need to focus on my top websites because they offer leverage. In short, I want to focus on this top performing website and PPC Ian, spending no more than 10-20% of my affiliate marketing time (which is very low) on any other sites.

I’m writing this goal out because it’s going to be very difficult. I’m obsessed with domain names and have many in my portfolio with huge potential that are just waiting to be developed. I love developing new websites. However, this year it’s going to be all about focus in hitting my big goals. Also, I plan to rely on smart outsourcing to continue to develop my other websites with scale and efficiency.

Goal 4: Half Marathon, Here I Come

I really got into fitness and running in 2010. My wife and I consistently met with our personal trainer each and every week. Moreover, we consistently went to the gym and running. I’m in the best shape of my life. I even wrote on PPC Ian about how I ran the 5K San Carlos Fun Run. By the end of 2010, I built up to the 10K and ran two of them. 2011 is my year to run the half marathon and start building up to the full marathon. Running is so much fun: I come up with my best Internet marketing ideas while running.

Goal 5: Great Vacations With My Wife

It’s so easy to get caught up in the online marketing game. Between my amazing job and my affiliate marketing business, it’s easy to forget the big picture. Internet marketing is fun and addictive. In terms of keeping my eye on the big picture, I’m planning to take a multitude of great vacations with my amazing wife this year. The two at the top of our list include Hawaii and Las Vegas. We’ll probably end up going to Las Vegas multiple times. Fun times ahead!

So there you have it: My 2011 goals. I have them written down and now it’s time to start working towards them. What are your 2011 goals?