My Favorite Online Marketing Blogs

I created PPC Ian to empower and educate online marketing professionals. There are many great blogs that cover the tactical side of PPC and SEO. However, I like to think of PPC Ian as the first blog with a primary focus on the career side of things. While I plan to include more tactical tips over time, my core focus will always be accelerating your career in online marketing. Today, I’d like to discuss some of my favorite blogs, those linked to in my blogroll. I encourage you to check out these blogs in your quest to learn as much as possible about PPC, SEO, and online marketing. These blogs are excellent compliments to PPC Ian.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 1: 2 Create a Website

PPC Blogs

There are some people in this world that live to help others. Lisa Irby from 2 Create a Website is one of those people. Lisa’s incredibly successful, a direct byproduct of the plethora of free information available on her site.

I’m a regular reader of 2 Create a Website Blog and highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about making money online. Lisa discusses a plethora of topics including web development, marketing, and the theory behind it all. Moreover, Lisa is a motivator. As you may know from my post about passion, I’m a big fan of passion, excitement, and motivation. I like reading Lisa’s blog to stay motivated towards my personal goals.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 2: Aaron Wall

Aaron Wall wrote the book on SEO! I learned most of what I know about SEO today from Aaron Wall’s book and blog. I am constantly inspired by Aaron’s level of depth and thought. His blog is one of a kind in that posts are very intellectual, keeping you thinking long after reading. As a bonus, I highly recommend checking out PPC Blog, Giovanna Wall’s (Aaron’s wife) blog all about pay per click!

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 3: Shoemoney

Shoemoney is a guy that needs no introduction. He’s an absolute online marketing superstar and celebrity. As one of the most celebrated blogs in the space, it’s hard to find a PPCer who doesn’t know about Shoemoney. I’ve been reading Shoemoney for around 3 years now and am constantly entertained and inspired. There’s nothing more inspiring than the rags to riches story, the online marketing American Dream. Shoemoney represents this dream first hand and I highly recommend following him regularly.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 4: Jonathan Volk

As you may know, I was recently interviewed by Jonathan Volk. As a long time reader of Jonathan Volk’s blog, this marked quite the milestone in my career. I have a lot of respect for super affiliates. Affiliate marketing is tough. Sure, affiliates are more nimble than corporations and can target niche opportunities that just wouldn’t move the needle for a large organization. At the same time, payouts are typically lower than internal teams and competition is fierce. If you’re able to make it big in affiliate marketing, you definitely have my respect. As one of the best affiliates out there, and someone who does it with class, I highly recommend Jonathan Volk’s blog.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 5: Arbel Arif

As mentioned in PPC Ian’s 2010 goals, this year has a clear domaining focus for me. I’m extremely excited about the opportunities in acquiring and developing premium domain names as long term investments (both for their equity and passive income value). Arbel Arif is the first domaining blog I started following, and one of the best by far. In addition to having great content in general, I particularly enjoy the fact that Arbel is very generous about sharing domains that are available for anyone to register.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 6: Dot Jake

Here’s a trend that I love about online marketing: The average age of the Internet marketing rock star keeps decreasing. I like to think of Internet marketing as a level playing field for bright minds of all ages. This makes the industry extremely interesting, one that requires constant innovation to stay competitive. Dot Jake is an awesome blog by a teenager who’s a domaining and online marketing expert. While Jake is still in high school, I have learned an incredible amount from his blog and moreover really enjoy his overall writing style (the posts are quick but very insightful).

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 7: Seobay

As you know, I’m a big believer in the future of PPC as a top career path in India. I recently wrote an article all about managing remote India SEM teams. It’s really interesting: When I first started out in PPC, I managed a team in India that assisted the US team with more manual tasks. A few years into my career, however, I had the pleasure of working with a remote India team that directly managed huge PPC campaigns. I only expect this evolution to continue and am just about the biggest proponent of complementing your US team with a remote India team. Seobay is an outstanding blog by one of my old co-workers, a PPC team manager and expert in India. PPC and SEO have so many parallels and I highly recommend checking out this blog to learn all about PPC an SEO, from an India perspective.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 8: DNPimping

DNPimping is one of the newer blogs on my list and is quickly becoming a favorite. Pimp Jason, a very successful domainer from the LA area, discusses his thoughts on the domaining industry. As discussed above, domaining is clearly on my radar for 2010 and I’ve learned quite a bit from Jason’s blog. Additionally, Jason has a regular comic strip on his site that I always look forward to!

Image of Blog © iStockPhoto – DSGpro

5 Great PPC Campaign Initiatives

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 3 4

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

Breaking Up The Pay Per Click Grind

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 28 1

If you’re in the corporate PPC world, you definitely know that things can get rather crazy. After enough analysis, keyword generation, keyword deployment, bid changes, ad copy tests, landing page tests, account restructures, product requirements, and executive presentations, your head can really start spinning! I’m here to tell you that it’s all about PPC longevity. After all, longevity has been one of the cornerstones of my early success in the corporate pay per click world. Today, I’d like to take a step back and discuss ways of breaking up the PPC daily grind. Whether you’re an associate or director, I strongly encourage you to take these tips seriously. At the end of the day, they will only increase your employee retention and team morale!

Tip 1: Attend Search Engine Marketing Conferences

Daily Grind

Search engine marketing conferences have been extremely good to me over the years. They’re incredibly beneficial from two angles: First and foremost, conferences present the ultimate networking experience. As someone with well over 500 connections on LinkedIn and a big binder of business cards at home, I cannot say enough about the power of networking. At the end of the day, people are everything in terms of finding long term success in your corporate pay per click career.

Second, conferences are extremely worthwhile in terms of staying up with current trends and sparking innovation. The natural tendency in PPC is to think you know it all. Well, at least that’s my natural tendency. The problem, however, is that things change extremely fast. Even if you know everything today, you won’t necessarily know it all tomorrow. Even if you’re consistently innovating and driving the direction of the industry, a great speaker can totally spark new ideas.

Directors, managers, and team leads: My overall suggestion here is that you get your team full passes to the major conferences such as Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), and ad:tech. I’ve been at companies in the past that have unfortunately been cheap about getting full passes. I definitely suggest pushing for full passes. It’s an extremely small investment in your team’s education and morale, one that will pay huge long-term dividends. From my personal experience, I always come back from conferences extremely energized, full of new ideas, and ready to go! Thinking about things through that lens, conferences are the ideal way to break up the daily PPC grind.

Tip 2: Enjoy PPC Team Activities

I like to compare pay per click campaign managers to Wall Street traders. We’re in the details of a very competitive and focused trade. For that reason, we often forget to take a step back and get away from the computer. From my experience, team activities are always a very welcome break from day to day campaign management. Moreover, the bonds formed during team activities can directly improve teamwork within the office.

My suggestion: Plan a team activity at least once very six months and ideally once per quarter. Some great examples include go-karting, miniature golfing, and bowling. I particularly like team functions that involve actual activity because we’re typically at the computer for so much for our day. The key here is that the team activity is held during the workday and that it concludes right around the time people typically leave the office. That way, the team activity functions as a true reward. Also, team activities are always more rewarding if the company pays for them!

Tip 3: Schedule Regular PPC Team Lunches

This tip is very similar to the last one, but I suggest an increased frequency of perhaps once per month. It’s too easy to rush out of the office and grab a quick lunch, only to come back and start working again right away. From my experience, the time savings from a quick lunch does not add any value. If you actually break up the workday and increase the "fun" factor, the entire team gains immense productivity. For that reason, I highly suggest having PPC team lunches to celebrate milestones, birthdays, or really any reason at all. Another great idea: Invite members of other teams as well, it’s a great way to learn something new!

Tip 4: Proactively Assist Other Departments

One of my absolute favorite things about pay per click search engine marketing is the fact that we’re in the center of it all. PPC is an operationally intensive role, one that involves useful data. For that reason, I enjoy thinking about proactive ways to assist other departments. Some simple examples: Share your PPC keyword list with the SEO team, share your top ads with the design team, send competitive benchmarks to the partnership team. At the end of the day, there exists a plethora of ways you can directly help your coworkers in other departments. Not only will this break up your day a bit, but it will help your overall organization grow. Moreover, I truly believe that the more you give, the more you receive. Next time you need help from someone else, you can rest assured that help will be available immediately.

Tip 5: Give Back To The Paid Search Community

I created this blog to give back. I regularly enjoy acting as a reference for old reports. I thoroughly enjoy writing letters of recommendation. At the end of the day, it’s all about giving back in my opinion. The best managers in the world are your manager for life. It doesn’t matter if you’re at a different company. If someone’s a great manager, they will always support and invest in your career. This is how I view management. Unfortunately, this is against the grain of many managers out there.

My strong advice: Invest in old reports and co-workers. I’ve found this to be a very powerful way to help the community while breaking up my day a bit. Like I said in the last tip: The more you give, the more you will receive. Corporate PPC is a very small but rapidly growing community. Give back today and make a real difference, while keeping things fun and interesting.

Image of Daily Grind © iStockPhoto – BeholdingEye

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas 2010 Was Awesome

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 24 6

I’m PPC Ian, the corporate pay per click search engine marketing guru. More than anything, I believe in the power of focusing exclusively on corporate PPC. When you’re dealing with huge budgets and intricate campaigns, often across multiple verticals, focus is everything. However, I’m also a huge proponent learning new things, especially subjects that are related to the world of online marketing. At the end of the day, all of the channels are interconnected and things you learn in the arenas of display, email, SEO, and domaining will only help your PPC efforts. To that end, I decided to attend T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas domaining conference and just got back. Today, I’m excited to share my experience and key takeaways with you. As someone who wants to see you succeed in the corporate world of pay per click, I want to highlight once again that focus is everything. I strive to spend 10% or less of my time on non-PPC activities (but that 10% is very interesting and high leverage). Let’s talk about T.R.A.F.F.I.C.!

What is Domaining and What Is T.R.A.F.F.I.C.?

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas

I recently wrote an article about why PPC professionals make great domainers and I highly recommend checking it out. To quickly summarize, domaining is the business of buying, selling, and developing domain names. There are two main schools of domainers. The first school are those that buy domains with the goal of selling them for a profit (this is the more traditional side of domaining). The second school are those that buy domains, develop them, and then enjoy passive income.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is one of the largest conferences for those who participate in the domain game for a living. As you may recall, attending a major domaining conference was one of my 2010 goals so I’m excited to have crossed it off the list so early in the year. More than anything I’m excited to walk away with some new perspectives on online marketing.

How Could I Pass Up The Opportunity To Go To Las Vegas?

I have been interested in attending T.R.A.F.F.I.C. for quite some time. However, as someone who’s not a professional domainer for a living and as something that’s outside the core focus of my company, I could never justify the out of pocket expense. However, this time things were different. As a Bido member, I was able to enjoy a half price ticket of only $897.50! Moreover, I was able to get roundtrip Southwest tickets for only $129.20 total. Last, add in the fact that I was able to stay four nights at MGM’s Signature for an unbelievable rate, and the cost of this great learning opportunity finally made sense. Moreover, Las Vegas is one of my absolute favorite places in the world so that definitely made the decision even more enticing because I was able to combine education with recreation.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Day One Overview: It’s All About Networking

TRAFFIC Conference

There are two events during the first day that were truly invaluable. The first was a session where anyone in the conference could go up on stage and introduce themselves to everyone. Being a guy that gets a real rush from public speaking, I decided to speak and discuss my PPC roots. It’s been a good nine months since my last opportunity to speak in front of that many people so I truly appreciated the opportunity. My advice to you: Try to practice your public speaking skills regularly to maintain and grow them. Get a little nervous up on stage? Conquer your fear and go for it!

The second event that really stood out was speed networking. This was a truly great event where you went around the room and had the opportunity to network and exchange business cards with everyone. It was not only an exercise in networking, but a great opportunity to practice my speaking skills. It was truly exciting to meet some amazing professionals within domaining and online marketing. My advice to you: Place yourself in situations where you can meet other professionals in online marketing as great way to expand your knowledge. I’m really looking forward to following up with each and every person I met.

One of my most interesting takeaways from TRAFFIC Day One: I was truly blown away with how few people were familiar with pay per click search engine marketing. While I was totally out of my element (I’m just starting to learn about the world of domaining), the folks I spoke to were equally out of their element in terms of PPC. The result: It was a great opportunity to introduce everyone to the PPC game while learning just as much about the domaining game. While I personally don’t have the time, I think there truly is a business opportunity for a PPC expert to work with domainers in generating more income for generic keyword domain portfolios. At the end of the day, my overall philosophy is a well-rounded one: Combine all the marketing channels for absolute success.

Some Other Interesting Takeaways From Day One:

In 2009, ccTLDs grew at a faster rate than gTLDs. ccTLDs are country code top level domains such as .ca for Canada. gTLDs are generic top level domains such as .com and .net.

Ron Jackson, the official journalist of the domain industry, had a very interesting presentation. He reported $102 million in domain sales in 2009 versus $116.7 million in domain sales for 2008. Most of the difference came from the very top of the market. Add to this fact that some lagging domain sales for 2009 are still being reported, the gap between 2008 and 2009 could be even less. Given the overall rough economy, the fact that domain sales are only down 12.6% is very encouraging for the domain industry.

The largest and most exciting ccTLDs in order of descending interest: .de, .co.uk, .ca, .fr, .es, .mx, .nl, .pl.

A new ccTLD .co is going live this year. Between April and June, owners of .com.co will have first priority to register .co. Between June and July trademark owners will have the ability to capture their .co domain. Then, in July, 2010 the general public will be able to register .co domains. Personally, I was able to pick up some interesting .me domain names when that TLD was first released. I’m personally excited about .co because it’s very similar to .com and could be a very strong TLD in the future.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas Day Two: Great Motivation and Latona’s Live Auction

Latonas Auction

Just like day one, the second day of TRAFFIC was quite interesting. I’d like to share with you the two key events in day two that influenced me the most. The first was the keynote speaker, Joseph McClendon III. I’m a big believer in the power of motivation and motivation is exactly what Joseph McClendon delivered. I’m excited to have left the keynote with new knowledge that will help me be even more productive and powerful in my corporate PPC career, awesome! In my opinion, success in corporate PPC (or any field for that matter) is all about passion, execution, and drive. The tools I learned in the keynote will allow me to be even more effective in my career. My advice to you: Find a source of motivation in your life and leverage that source. If you can consistently arrive at work totally motivated and empowered, at your peak performance, you’re going to win the game!

The second event that I truly enjoyed during day two was Rick Latona’s live domain auction. While the auction had some technical difficulties with online bidding and had to stop early (it resumed on day three), I truly enjoyed the auction while it lasted. This was my first experience ever attending a live auction. It was a true rush! As someone who loves to buy domain names (and stuff in general), I decided not to register as a bidder. I felt that it would not be prudent to bid at my first live auction. So, I decided just to watch and observe. While I didn’t participate in the action, the education around the live domain auction process was invaluable. I especially enjoyed the human element of the auction. As a PPC professional, I’m involved in keyword bidding each and every day. Watching people bid on domain names was a very interesting parallel to my career in trading keywords. I absolutely love the psychology of it all. Whether it’s online or in person, I’m hoping to participate in a future T.R.A.F.F.I.C. live domain auction.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas Day Three: This Is When It All Hit Me

Day three of TRAFFIC Las Vegas was actually the most powerful day for me. This is the day where I finally took a step back and realized that I have a lot to learn about domaining. As a Director of Search Marketing at a large public company, it’s easy to have an elevated ego. Because I’m the best at PPC, I naturally have the tendency to think I’m the best at everything related to online marketing. However, day three really hit home that I have a lot to learn about domaining. At first, this scared me a bit. However, after a while I began getting extremely thrilled that I have yet another media channel and discipline to study over the coming year! My advice to you: Try to stay humble and never stop learning.

There were many specifics that I learned over the course of day three. I started out learning all about parked pages and the 0 click, 1 click, and 2 click models. I was also thrilled to learn that type in traffic converts extremely well (nearly double PPC). I also got a super introduction to the drop name market, a super way to acquire great domain names that I’m currently not leveraging at all.

Perhaps most exciting, I learned that the major parking companies (such as Sedo, Skenzo, and Parked.com) actually have deals with the major search engines (Google and Yahoo). They have feeds with the search engines and will trigger your parked page if the search engine does not have more relevant results to deliver. This absolutely shocked me! As someone who’s always focused on quality score and always been told that those pages of links are bad, this was a real eye opener. Repeat: The search engines approve of parked pages (and have special processes in place to index them) as long as the system is not abused. Go with a quality parking company and you can make money with your parked domains via search engines! This all sounds super simple, but for someone who has been extremely focused on PPC quality score for years and years it really was eye opening.

To close out, I had an amazing time at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas 2010. It was an energy-packed three days of learning all about domaining. I’m thrilled to now have some new tools in my online marketing toolkit. Moreover, it was really amazing to make some great new friends! I’d like to close out and advise you to closely focus on the core area of your career while always leaving 10% of your time to learn new things. Domaining, in my opinion, is a great compliment to PPC, SEO, display, and email, the most popular corporate online marketing career paths!

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com

Pay Per Click Automation

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 22 29

As you may know from my about me page, I majored in computer science at Stanford University. I truly feel like my computer science background prepared me perfectly for the corporate pay per click career path. Why? When you’re dealing with extremely large campaigns (especially across a portfolio of verticals), it’s nearly impossible to scale without automation of some sort. As someone who’s product managed several internal automation tools and who has worked with third party solutions, I’m thrilled to start discussing PPC automation today. I’ll start off with an overview of my automation thoughts and will follow up with a series of in-depth PPC automation articles over the coming months.

Why Automate Corporate Pay Per Click Campaigns?

Automation Gears

What’s the key difference between affiliate marketing and corporate pay per click marketing? There are a few, but the big one is scope. In the affiliate world, you can make quite the decent living by focusing on a very specific niche. However, in the corporate world, it’s all about going big. You’re dealing with millions of keywords, unreal budgets, extremely complex accounts, often across multiple categories.

As a computer science guy at heart, I like to equate manual campaign management to The Mythical Man Month. After a certain point (usually after 5-10 campaign managers), throwing more marketing professionals at your corporation’s campaigns will simply not help. Actually, more people at a certain point can actually slow you down! Here’s where automation comes in: Automation will take your program to the next level. Automation will assist your human team in executing certain aspects of PPC faster and more accurately than possible through manual campaign management. Automation will get you over that plateau your team is facing.

Another critical point: Corporate PPC is an extremely competitive field. You need to assume your competitors are investing in automation. If you’re not, your PPC campaigns will fall behind. You simply cannot keep up without automation. For this reason alone, it’s extremely important to automate aspects of your PPC campaigns to maintain your edge against the competition.

What Aspects of PPC Should You Automate?

I want to be clear from the beginning: I’m not one of those guys that recommends automating all aspects of PPC. In my opinion, that’s a recipe for disaster. I’ve seen it play out before: You automate everything, the campaigns start trending down, and then a manual manager needs to jump in and fix everything. What I am arguing however is that automation should play an absolutely critical role supporting your human campaign management team. Below are just a few aspects of PPC that are totally worth automating.

Automate PPC Bidding: Biding is perhaps the primary aspect of PPC that should be automated. Bidding is very tedious, it’s totally based on data, and it’s very time consuming. In my experience, it’s very easy for humans to make major mistakes with manual bidding.

Automate PPC Reporting: There’s no doubt about it, reporting is extremely important. Corporate PPC is all about data analysis and data-driven action. If you automate your reporting, your team can spend more time analyzing and driving action versus pulling numbers together.

Automate Keyword Generation: I have mixed feelings on this one because some of the best gains in PPC have been a direct result of creative keyword generation. At the same time, you simply cannot scale your keyword set effectively without automation. In a product shopping vertical? Leverage your catalog to generate keywords as new products are released. Looking to deploy more exact match queries for increased bidding efficiency, targeting, and position? Deploy exact match versions of all raw user queries that drove conversions. Looking to leverage the competitive intelligence of your industry? Pull keyword lists from tools such as Trellian, Wordtracker, and KeyCompete.

Build Versus Buy and a Few Great SEM Platforms

As discussed in the introduction, I’ve both built and bought PPC automation tools during my career. While building was the only option when I first got started (there were simply no tools available on the market for purchase), buying is a lot easier these days (thank goodness).

As a general rule, I’m much more in favor of buying versus building for smaller organizations. Small organizations need to focus on their core business, they simply don’t have the resources to effectively build and maintain automation tools. There’s actually quite a bit of overhead in simply maintaining SEM tools due to search engine API upgrades that happen regularly. Moreover, the tools available on the market these days are absolutely astounding. Two tools that I highly recommend are Marin and Kenshoo.

Now, if you’re at a larger organization, the decision can become a bit more difficult. Because most SEM platforms out there operate on a percentage fee model, buying at a large organization can become very expensive (unless you’re able to negotiate a great deal). There may come a point where building becomes more cost effective than buying. One thing is for sure: SEM automation is very high leverage and should be an important decision that every corporate SEM team considers regularly.

Image of Automation Gears © iStockPhoto – sbayram

PPC Ian Interviewed By Jonathan Volk

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 16 8

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to point out a large milestone in my career: Super affiliate Jonathan Volk interviewed me yesterday! Please make sure to visit Jonathan Volk’s blog and read PPC Ian’s interview. I worked very hard on the interview and it really means a lot to me as someone who has been glued to Jonathan’s blog for a while. For those of you that are new to Jonathan Volk, he is one of the most celebrated affiliate marketers on the Internet and has an extremely well known and useful affiliate marketing blog. As a new blogger, it truly means a lot to me that I am featured on this blog. It is an honor and a milestone in my career.

Results

While we’re on the topic of milestones, I’d also like to celebrate the fact that I now have 50 recommendations on LinkedIn. This is a long-standing goal that I set for myself a while back, one that took countless late nights to achieve. As you may already know I’m a huge proponent of LinkedIn as a great way to build you career in PPC. I even wrote a huge post all about my PPC LinkedIn strategies. I truly encourage you to apply these strategies to your own LinkedIn, you will start getting pay per click search engine marketing job offers daily.

My last milestone for today: I reached my 30th post with my request that all online marketing professionals please help Haiti. If you’ve been around here a while, you know my posts are typically really long (at least 1,000 words) so it’s quite fulfilling to hit the 30 milestone. I’m looking forward to next focusing on the goal of hitting 100 posts!

What milestones have you set for yourself? I would truly love to hear them! I always like to keep raising the bar and enjoy setting milestones (another example being my 2010 goals). In my opinion, having concrete goals, both professionally in your PPC career and personally, is a surefire way to achieve success in life.

Thanks again for your support and please check out my interview with Jonathan Volk!
Sincerely,
PPC Ian

Image of Results © iStockPhoto – gocosmonaut

Online Marketing Professionals, Let’s Help Haiti

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 14 1

Dear PPC Ian Reader,
Thank you for reading my blog, I truly appreciate it. As online marketing professionals, we are extremely lucky. Taking myself as an example, I have a roof over my head, a stable and amazing PPC job, a beautiful wife, more than enough food, and so much more. Not everyone is so lucky. As you most likely know, Haiti is in serious trouble right now. As current and future leaders of this world, a world that’s becoming more globally interdependent than ever, it’s our duty to give back. I’m asking you to please text HAITI to 90999. This will allow you to donate $10 to the American Red Cross Haiti relief fund. The process only took me 2 minutes and is amazingly simple. I truly believe that every little bit helps out and it’s up to us as online business professionals to give back to those in need. Thanks to my buddy Morgan Linton over at Domainvestors.tv for sharing this with me. I have a banner below that links to the American Red Cross official blog detailing this Haiti relief program and the donations that have been made by state so far.
Sincerely,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)

Controlling Your PPC Mind

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 13 0

So it’s 2010 and you’re looking to get promoted in your PPC career. At the same time, you value your work-life balance. You can’t imagine working 80 or more hours a week, trading your personal life for promotion. Well, I’m here to tell you that you absolutely don’t need to! In my opinion, it’s totally possible to ascend the corporate PPC ladder while enjoying your personal life, on a 40-60 hour workweek. How are you going to do this? It’s simple: You need to work smart by programming your PPC mind. Today, I’m going to uncover three of my favorite mind games to unleash leverage in your PPC career.

Force Yourself To Work With Extreme Efficiency In Pay Per Click

Blue Lightbulb

I honestly wrote 40-60 hours above to be conservative. As someone who’s ultra-efficient, I totally believe that the 40 hour workweek is possible in PPC. Just think about the time that gets wasted during the day when you’re:

Surfing the Internet (unrelated to work)
Logging into your Facebook account
Taking a really long lunch
Chatting with friends
Working at a slow pace
Getting distracted and jumping between projects
Just sitting there (or even dozing off) without actively doing work

Now, just think about what would happen if you were incredibly focused the entire workday. You came into the office with the "I’m here to work hard" mentality. You actively fought against your mind when it tried to tell you to lose focus. (Believe me, my mind’s natural tendency is to defocus.) The answer is simple: You would get promoted faster and reduce the duration of your workday, dramatically.

In my opinion, all it takes is a little conscious effort and the recognition that you need to force your mind to focus. When you accomplish this, the amount of work you can get accomplished in the normal workday is astounding! While all of this is applicable to any job, it’s especially applicable to PPC because we’re often juggling more priorities than we can count while facing the pressure of hitting numbers. We’re in a situation that promotes defocus. Force your mind to focus and you’ll be on your way!

Two other tips to stay focused in PPC: First, Make sure to vary your workplace. I like to switch between my company’s two offices and even spend some time working at Starbucks. The variety really keeps my mind from defocusing. Second, take time off when you need it! PPC is like a sport, especially when you’re ultra-focused. This amount of focus can be quite draining. If you’re able to really force your mind to focus, I suggest scaling back your hours and taking off days when you need it. Your mind needs time to recover.

Force Yourself To Be In a Charged, Positive Mood Every Single Day

I absolutely love this tip. Are you naturally happy every single morning? Of course not! Even if you’re like me, in the career of your dreams, sometimes you’re tired and grumpy. It’s ok and perfectly natural. Now, I’d like to highlight another awesome opportunity to control your mind. Take a step back and realize that you’re the one in control, not your mood. My strategy: I like to hype myself up. I’ll straight up lie to myself. "Ian, you’re not in a bad mood. You’re in a good mood. You’re the man! You’re PPC Ian!" I’m serious here. After a while, I’ll believe the lie. I’ll program my mind.

Now, let me let you in on a secret. In my opinion, positivity is one of the greatest factors in promotion. Nobody wants to promote the disinterested employee. They want to promote the employee who loves their job, the person who lives for the company. It’s as simple as forcing your mind into a hyped up state even when it’s not. It almost becomes a game. How hyped up can you be when facing difficult situations? As I mentioned in a previous post, PPC perception is reality. If you’re always in a positive mood, you’re carefully crafting the best possible perception.

Some other great points about positivity in your search engine marketing career:

Enthusiasm is very contagious. You’re not only hyping yourself up, you’re setting the mood for the entire team. You’re acting like a PPC leader.
Those that have a positive outlook tend to realize their goals. When you start thinking negatively, you’re stepping away from your goals. I’m a big believer in The Secret.
I’ll consistently hype myself up before any meeting or call that involves sales. Sometimes people think I’m crazy talking to myself in a conference room but it totally pays off.

As a closing piece of advice, make sure to give yourself extra rest. It can be very tiring if you’re in a charged mood all day. You need time to recover so you can consistently deliver results.

Force Yourself To Avoid Conflict and Anger

There’s no way around it. Even if you’re a nice guy like me, you’re likely to get into a situation once in a while that has conflict potential. It’s probably not even your fault. Someone does something (either unintentionally or even intentionally) to step all over you and you’re upset. My advice: Do absolutely whatever it takes to be the bigger person. I repeat, never show emotions of conflict and anger at work.

This is very important in your PPC career. We’re naturally under a bit of stress in pay per click. We’re managing to stretch goals and have a plethora of projects in mix. Now, throw on top of that the fact that someone might not be playing by the rules and you have the potential for career disaster.

However, if you’re smart and have perspective you will always handle the situation gracefully. My two pieces of advice: First, never react right away. If you feel like you’re going to get upset, take some time to really think about it. Sleep on it. Never start sending that nasty email before it’s really well thought through. In fact, once you think it through, you will never send that email, trust me. Second, make sure to exercise regularly. If you get upset at something, it’s very easy to take out your aggression at the gym and then come back to work the next day in your charged, positive attitude.

While this is probably the most difficult mind-controlling trick, it’s the one that shows the most maturity. If you’re able to consistently work efficiently, stay positive, and avoid conflict at all costs, you are playing the PPC game to win and will be promoted to the top. These are all attributes of the most effective pay per click leaders out there. These are all mind games that are directly under your control.

Search Marketing Interview Tips

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 9 12

I recently wrote an article highlighting my favorite paid search interview questions. The article focused on the PPC interview from the interviewer’s perspective. Today, I want to flip the tables a bit and discuss my favorite tips from the interviewee’s perspective. While these tips are applicable to any PPC job interview, they’re especially relevant to those of you interviewing for a PPC role at a larger company. 2010 is here. Is finding a new online marketing job one for your 2010 goals? If so, I hope the following tips help you find all the success in the world.

PPC Interview Tip 1: Focus Exclusively on PPC

PPC Dream Job

If you’ve been reading my blog a while, you most likely know that my interests within online marketing are quite varied. While my heart is in large corporate PPC, I’m also an SEO and domaining entrepreneur in my spare time. Given that context and the general perception that a varied skill set is better, the following tip may seem a bit counter intuitive: Focus exclusively on PPC in your interview and avoid expressing an interest in dedicating significant time to SEO, email, and display advertising.

At large companies, there are separate departments for PPC, SEO, email, and display, typically reporting into the CMO or VP of marketing. The pay per click budgets are large enough that 100% PPC focused employees are mission critical. Without exclusive attention, the campaigns will fail. I’ve been in a plethora of interviews where the interviewee talks at length about their plans to learn the other marketing channels, almost to the extent that shows they’re bored with PPC and looking to move on. My advice to you: Avoid giving this impression at all costs!

I’m certainly not advising you to lie (ethics is everything in this world). If you truly have interests in diversifying your skill set and moving on from PPC, I highly suggest interviewing for a general marketing position at a startup. However, if you’re interested in becoming a Director of Search Marketing at a large company, it’s all about focus.

Of course, it’s important to show that you’re an expert on multiple fronts. As you get to the Director or VP level, a varied skill set is critical. However, it’s important to portray yourself as someone who knows all of the different channels (learn them during your spare time), but is interested in a heavy PPC focus (95% or more of your time). As a real life case study, my personal exclusive focus on PPC over the last 5.5 years has propelled my career from Marketing Associate at a startup to Director of Search Marketing at a large publicly traded company.

Pay Per Click Interview Tip 2: Dress Professionally

A while back, I wrote a post all about the benefits of dressing up for your search marketing job. I truly believe in the power of PPC perception driving reality. No matter how good of a job you’re doing, you can’t ignore perception and the game in general. Since perception and first impressions are everything, please dress up for your interview. Even if you’re interviewing at lunch and have another job try to change before you arrive and then change back before going to your old job. The power of professionalism is often overlooked in my opinion.

Search Engine Marketing Interview Tip 3: Passion Is Everything

The first post on PPC Ian was all about my passion for PPC. This was my first post for a reason: Passion is everything in this world. Whether you’re interested in becoming a pay per click corporate leader, a successful entrepreneur, or a world class athlete, you won’t get too far without passion. For this reason alone, passion is one of the first things I measure when conducting a pay per click interview. Sometimes we’re all low on energy. I can totally relate as someone who’s routinely up late at night. However, take control of your mind and get hyped up for your interview. Get rest the night before, eat a good meal, drink an energy drink, do whatever it takes! Passion will get you very far in the corporate world.

SEM Interview Tip 4: Polish Up On Your Mental Math Skills

As an interviewer, I place a very big emphasis on math. From experiences at other leading companies in the space, I know I’m not alone. I like to ask mental math questions starting on the phone interview, building all the way up to large half hour case questions during the in-person interviews. If you’re a bit out of practice, make sure to polish up on your math skills. The investment will not only help your interview, but will pay dividends in your PPC career in general. The ability to perform quick mental math can make the difference between looking unconfident and like an absolute PPC superstar.

Pay Per Click Interview Strategy 5: Proactively Demonstrate Your PPC Skills

At the end of the day, pay per click is a highly technical trade. There are many moving parts and skills are critical. While I always do my best to get a comprehensive understanding of the candidate’s Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter skills, sometimes time will run out and I’m not fully convinced of the candidate’s ability. I’ve been able to get around this by sending follow-up questions via email. However, what always impresses me are candidates that take the time to clearly spell out their skills proactively. I’m always excited to interview candidates who talk at length about their experiences with the various platforms and the PPC levers: Keyword generation, keyword deployment, negative words, ad copy testing, landing page testing, reporting, analysis, technology and automation, and niche tricks. One of your greatest assets is your trade specific knowledge, make sure to spend the time showcasing it!

Online Marketing Interview Strategy 6: Highlight Your Investment Hobby

This is a simple, yet powerful tip. The vast majority of great corporate PPC employees I have known over the years enjoy investing during their spare time. When they’re not investment hobbyists, they at least know the companies in the space extremely well. As a general way to retire young and accumulate wealth while also looking like a strong businessperson in your PPC interview, I recommend building up an expertise in investing and showcasing it a bit during your interview. From the interviewer’s perspective, we’re hiring SEM managers to basically run an operationally intensive business. Investment experience is a great way of showing judgment and maturity.

Search Marketing Interview Strategy 7: Research The Company and Interviewers

The competitive benchmarking aspect of PPC is very high leverage. If you’re really good at research, you’ll uncover nuances that others miss and make the company a ton of money. For this reason alone, I really like candidates who do a thorough job researching the company and the actual interviewers. Some candidates recently have even mentioned that they read PPC Ian and like it a lot. While some would say that has nothing to do with the job, I’d argue that it does. Candidates who have researched me on the Internet are making sure their future manager is right for their career (see next section) and also are demonstrating their ability to benchmark. Take the extra time and do your research!

Online Marketing Interview Strategy 8: It’s All About You

At the end of the day, the main person looking out for you is you. Make sure to ask the questions that are important to your happiness and career. One of my personal favorites is finding out as much as possible about my future boss. As I blogged about a while back, your manager can make or break your PPC career. My advice: I’d rather have a great boss at a not so great company versus a poor manager at a great company.

It’s still a hot job market for PPC right now since PPC is a recession proof career. Take advantage of this situation to find the absolute perfect match for you. I know from my perspective as an interviewer, I always want the match to be perfect from both sides. I want to hire employees that will be at the company at least a few years. For that reason alone, I always want to ensure the fit is ideal for both parties.

As a closing tip, I’d also recommend keeping your interviews extremely confidential. Again, it’s all about you and your job security. Don’t let your current employer think you’re interviewing. Don’t start slacking off and doing poor work at your current gig. Many times, interviews take longer than expected or don’t work out at all. Your first responsibility is to you and your current employer. Your second responsibility is to your exploratory discussions with other potential employers. Of course, should you decide to leave, please leave gracefully. This will be the topic of a whole other PPC Ian post in the future.

BlueHost, Add-On Domains, and .htaccess

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 6 50

As mentioned in my 2010 goals, I’m extremely excited about the domaining industry. My 2010 goals have me attending at least one major domaining conference in addition to developing at least six websites. (Honestly, I’m sandbagging a bit and hope to develop quite a few more websites than six.) Domaining and web publishing in my opinion are excellent ways to master SEO while building up some passive income. (You may wish to read my article about moonlighting your way to success in your PPC career.)

In today’s article, I’d like to feature a low level discussion on hosting multiple domains within a single web hosting account, a cost effective method for anyone to develop multiple websites this year. Specifically, I will be sharing my BlueHost story. I hope to save you the many hours it took me to figure out configuration of the .htaccess file to optimize SEO for add-on domains with BlueHost. Sound confusing? Don’t worry! I will explain in full detail below!

BlueHost Web Hosting

Why Sign Up For BlueHost?

Programming Matrix

BlueHost is a very trusted web host, one that I’ve heard great things about over the years. They are extremely reliable and moreover offer the ability to host multiple domains within a single account (with unlimited bandwidth) for only $6.95 per month (or possibly less if you have a coupon). This is a dream come true for all you domainers out there! So, I signed up and thought it would be super easy to instantly host multiple sites within one simple account.

As a side note, I’m a big proponent of online marketing diversification. As you publish more and more websites, it’s extremely important to go with multiple hosts and registrars. Looking to diversify, it made perfect sense for me to give BlueHost a try. In your quest to diversify, I recommend GoDaddy, BlueHost, and Host Gator on the hosting side. On the registrar side, I recommend GoDaddy and Moniker. As your side business expands, diversification mitigates risk of downtime.

BlueHost and Add-On Domain Confusion

Signing up for BlueHost with your initial domain is super easy. You point your nameservers to BlueHost, open an account, link in the domain, upload your website, and you’re done. When you want to start hosting an additional add-on domain, however, things can get a little tricky (but I will fully explain all the steps to make the process a breeze for you).

Specifically, BlueHost stores files for your add-on domain as a sub-folder of your main domain. For example, let’s say I have two sites, example1 (main site) and example2 (add-on site). All files for example2 will be in a subfolder under example1 (you can name the subfolder whatever you want but I recommend just keeping it simple and sticking to the site’s name).
http://www.example1.com/example2/

To make things even more confusing, BlueHost also makes example2 a subdomain of example1 (you can name the subdomain whatever you want but I recommend just keeping it simple and sticking to the site’s name).
http://example2.example1.com/

Of course, example2 will also function as a URL on its own.
http://www.example2.com/

SEO and Duplicate Content Do Not Mix Well

As you may already know, Google and other search engines hate duplicate content. The fact that your example2 website now shows up three times at three different URLs opens you up to all sorts of duplicate content issues. If Google indexes all three URLs, you will immediately have SEO problems.

However, this can all be prevented with the use of 301 redirects in your .htaccess file. 301 Redirects are the SEO friendly way to tell Google and other search engines that the files for your website have permanently moved to another location. Because you never intended to have a site at http://www.example1.com/example2/ or http://example2.example1.com/ you will clearly want to 301 redirect these two domains to http://www.example2.com/. As someone who has previous experience with .htaccess, I thought the 301 redirects would be a breeze in this case but they actually gave me a run for my money.

How To Configure Your BlueHost .htaccess Files For Add-On Domains

I’d like to close this article out with the actual code you’ll want to use in your .htaccess files, both the one in your root www folder for your main domain and the one(s) in your add-on domain folder(s). I first tired to leverage cPanel’s redirect GUI to make this happen, but it didn’t fully work. The code below is a combination of my use of cPanel’s GUI and my own trial and error.

Your Main Site’s .htaccess File

(In the following code, example1 is your main site and example2 is your add-on site.)

Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On


Redirect 301 /example2/ http://www.example2.com/

Redirect 301 /example2 http://www.example2.com/

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example1\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example1.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Your Add-On Site’s .htaccess File

(In the following code, example1 is your main site and example2 is your add-on site.)

Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example2.example1.com$ [OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example2.example1.com$

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http\:\/\/www\.example2\.com\/$1" [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example2\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example2.com/$1 [R=301,L]

An Extra 301 Redirect To Help You Out

If you’re an .htaccess wizard, you may have noticed that I not only help you out here with the above discussed 301 redirects, but I also help redirect non-www versions of your site to the www version (via 301 redirects as well), another common SEO duplicate content issue for many sites. I sincerely hope this helps you out. It’s truly amazing that for only $6.95 per month you can now host multiple sites in an SEO-friendly manner with just a little up front work understanding and configuring your .htaccess file.

Disclaimer: Please use this code at your own risk. Your .htaccess file is a very powerful tool. Before making any changes, please back up your entire site. PPCIan.com is not liable for any problems that may arise from following these examples.