Paid Search Interview Questions

Over the years I’ve conducted more pay per click interviews than I can count. Interviewing is extremely important in the world of search marketing, even more so than other roles. Just think about the extensive training you’re going to invest in your new employee. From my experience, it will take a good three to six months to get a strong positive yield out of your new hire, with the months increasing the more junior the candidate. Precisely because of the large "ramp up period" in paid search (even for candidates that already have experience), I place the highest possible importance on the interview process. Today, I’m excited to share with you some of my favorite interview techniques and questions in an effort to help you get the most out of your PPC interviews.

PPC Interview Strategy 1: Screen For Math Over The Phone

Here’s a fun tip that will save you an immense amount of time: Ask the candidate math questions during your first phone call. In fact, I don’t even wait for my first phone call – I ask my recruiter to ask math questions during the first phone screen. PPC is both technical and creative. Unfortunately, many candidates are very creative but cannot perform mental math. Right from the beginning, ask some questions such as:

What’s 3% of 2,000,000?
What’s 9 * 350?
What is the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5?

Some candidates will immediately ask if they can use a calculator. You’ll want to explain that the purpose of these exercises is to understand their mental math ability and that calculators are not allowed. Reassure the candidate and let them know there’s no rush and to think the questions through. (I’m not testing how well they can work under pressure here but am simply trying to the get to the bottom of their basic math abilities.)

At the end of the day, this strategy is invaluable because it will save you a huge amount of time. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gotten a candidate to the late stages of the interview pipeline only to then find out they cannot perform mental math.

Paid Search Interview Strategy 2: Don’t Delay The Long Case Question

During the SEM candidate’s first in person interview, I always like to start off with a long case study question, one that involves analytical ability, judgment, and of course math. Here’s what I’ve observed from some other interviewers: They either delay the case so much that there’s little time for it or they forget to ask the case altogether. In pay per click search engine marketing, you’re hiring someone to operate on the front lines of your business. The case question is everything, in my opinion!

For this reason alone, I always start with the case during the first in person interview and I allocate it a good half hour of more. Like the first tip, this one can save you a ton of time. Most candidates will pass all of the fuzzy, subjective questions. However, case studies are either right or wrong. Make your pay per click candidate pass all of the difficult hurdles first and save yourself and your organization time in the PPC interview process.

SEM Interview Tip 3: Everyone Needs To Interview The Candidate

PPC is like sales in that we’re directly driving revenue for our company each and every day. Like sales, we make the big bucks. Also like sales, the pressure is on! For this very reason, it’s absolutely essential everyone meets the PPC candidate before an offer is made.

I’ve seen it too many times: Everyone meets the candidate except the one person that is on vacation. Don’t make this mistake! Retaining your current employees is everything and this is not always easy in a high pressure environment. Before someone joins your PPC family, make sure everyone is on board. The last thing you want is to bring someone new on board who may not mesh well with the existing team. Moreover, you want to give your existing team the authority to have a say in the decision as an overall tool for empowering and growing your team.

Search Marketing Interview Tip 4: Assign Take Home Pay Per Click Exercises

Let’s face it: It’s impossible to ask every single question during your interview. Interviews fly by and there never seems to enough time. Moreover, some candidates are very skilled at interviewing and may be more "talk" than "skill". My solution: Assign in depth take home exercises after they pass the first round of in person interviews. I like to ask a variety of questions that test:

Understanding of the industry
Creative ad copy ability
Judgment and overall analytical ability
Attention to detail
Mathematical ability
Excel skills
Persistence and dedication to the process

On a rare occasion, I’ll assign a second round of take home questions if the first round is borderline and the read on the candidate is mixed. However, if you make the first round of questions extensive enough, it will be come readily apparent if the candidate is qualified or not. As with the mental math question and the in person case, I like to give these questions as soon as possible in the process to save everyone time if the pay per click candidate cannot pass the test.

PPC Interview Tip 5: Thoroughly Check References Yourself

I’d like to close out with an important one that’s often overlooked. It actually all goes back to what I touched on earlier: Some candidates are very skilled interviewers. They absolutely ace the interviews and are great and hiding their flaws. For this reason, I take pride in personally checking the candidate’s references (as opposed to outsourcing this duty to my recruiter). Take the time to really chat with the references and learn everything you can. Another positive benefit of the reference check: You get to build out your network and potentially find candidates for other positions that you’re hiring for in the future!

Image of Interview Candidates © iStockPhoto – brainmaster

PPC Ian’s 2010 Goals

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 19 20

2010 is almost here. I’m extremely excited because I feel like my personal and professional growth has been compounding over the last few years. I recently got married, purchased my first home with my beautiful wife, and joined a large publicly traded company as their Director of Search Marketing. In sum, I’m on a roll.

I feel confident that 2010 will be one of my best years yet, personally and professionally, and wanted to take some time to write my goals down for two main reasons. First and foremost, I’m a big believer in the power of writing. When you write your goals down, they become tangible. When you write your goals down, you’re one step closer to making them a reality. Second, this will be a great way to share with all of you, my readers, what I’m thinking about and what’s on my mind as we head into 2010.

Goal 1: Set Myself Up For VP of Marketing

Reaching Goals

As you may already know, I’m the biggest proponent of the corporate pay per click search engine marketing career path out there. I’m passionate about corporate SEM. Corporate PPC has been extremely good to me and I’ve grown from Marketing Associate at a startup to Director of Search Marketing at a large publicly traded company in only 5 short years. As an ambitious guy, I’ve set my sites on the next level: Vice President of Marketing. I obviously don’t expect VP in 2010. As you progress up the corporate ladder, it’s very typical for each transition to take increasingly more time. Making the transition from Senior Manager to Director of Marketing, for example, took me about two and a half years. However, I really want to focus on the set up this year. My corporate SEM career is extremely important to me and I’m going to do whatever it takes to reach the VP level over time. Following is short list of the items I want to focus on this year:

Exceed my goals: At the end of the day, numbers are everything and success is very measurable in PPC.
Make my manager look good: I have been consistently rewarded in the past by always making my manager look good.
Get more exposure to senior management: Spend more time celebrating my team’s successes to senior management and get more experience in general with my company’s management team.
Expand my team: Hire more pay per click campaign managers and build out the best PPC team in the industry.
100% Employee retention and growth: My team means everything to me. I will continue to focus on employee retention, training, and growth. I will only feel successful at the end of the year if everyone on my team has grown significantly.
Expand process: Continue to build out documentation, infrastructure, process, and technology to make our PPC an absolute machine. Listing this one last because this stuff is child’s play to me at this point.

Goal 2: Speak At One Major Search Marketing Event

This goal actually ties into my first goal very much. In terms of growing your career in search marketing, public speaking is a great lever. It’s a great way to build up your reputation as an excellent marketer while giving back to the community. I have found time and time again that the more you give, the more you receive.

Last year, I had the honor of speaking to several hundred Google engineers at Google’s client forum. I was told by several Googlers that I was the star of the panel, a definite boost to my ego. The event was an absolute rush and I’m shooting to increase my public speaking in 2010.

Goal 3: Attend At Least One Major Domaining Event

I’ve been a behind the scenes domain investor for a few years now. While I’m a domainer more from the "development with intent of learning new stuff that I can apply to my corporate career" side of things versus the "buying and selling" side, I really identify with the domaining community. Interestingly, I never really became part of the community until recently because I didn’t classify what I was doing as domaining (I more classified it as affiliate marketing). I’m glad I found the domaining community in 2009 and must say that I really identify with these guys.

In 2010, I’m considering attending the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference or another big event such as Domainfest. While these conferences don’t come cheap, I see them as a great investment in my education and networking. Additionally, I plan to make personal connections with more people in the domaining industry and plan to attend some of the Southern California Domainer MeetUps organized by Domainvestors.tv. As more of a stretch goal, I’m also pondering the idea of helping organize some Domainer MeetUps in the SF Bay Area.

Goal 4: Develop Six Domain Names

I’m a big believer in moonlighting to advance your corporate SEM career. There are only so many hours in the workday and it’s not possible to learn SEO, PR, and web development while doing the best possible job managing your company’s PPC campaigns. However, I have found all of this added knowledge is critical in advancing your career. How do you learn it all? Develop some web properties during your spare time. Currently, I have six live websites including this one. In 2010, I plan on doubling the number. How am I going to do this while working full time? I’m going to outsource 99% of the development and fund it through cash flow from my current sites. It will be a great exercise in delegation (skills that will directly help my corporate career) and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Goal 5: Six Pack Abs

My wife and I spent a lot of time with our personal trainer in 2009 and it has worked wonders for my energy. I’m now at the point where I can see some real progress and I want to take it to the next level in 2010. I can see the six pack abs happening and it will all come down to exercising regularly (at least 4 times per week) and eating right. I find that the healthier I am, the more energy I have to succeed.

Goal 6: Spend A Lot of Time With My Wife

Online marketing is absolutely great but it’s important to never lose sight of the bigger picture. I have so much fun with my wife when we go the movies, go out to eat, and enjoy vacations on the weekends. In 2010, I’m going to challenge myself to put down my computer and enjoy life with my wife.

On thing is for sure: I’m pumped about 2010! What are your goals for the new year? I highly encourage you to write them down. It’s amazing what can happen if you plan ahead and go for it! I wish you and your family all the success in the world as we head into the new year.

Image of Man Jumping © iStockPhoto – coloroftime

Online Marketing Diversification

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 15 5

As an investor at heart, diversification is one of my favorite risk mitigation tactics. From day one, I quickly learned that diversification is your safety net when crafting a well-rounded portfolio of stocks. Today I wanted to highlight just a few exciting ways that diversification is directly relevant to your career in online marketing.

Diversify Your Campaigns Across Search Engines

Stocks and Bonds

I’ll start with the obvious one. In today’s search engine marketing landscape, it’s not uncommon to be dramatically over-weighted on Google. Just think about it: Google is the 800 pound Gorilla in the space. It’s only natural that search teams focus their efforts on Google first (it all goes back to leverage). However, once your Google campaigns are established, I’d like to argue that an incremental conversion from another search engine is worth disproportionately more to your company than an incremental conversion from Google.

It’s all about mitigating risk. What if Google changes their algorithm? What if Google gets too competitive? Anything can happen and I urge you to treat your paid search campaigns like stocks in a well-balanced portfolio. Diversify amongst all search engines including Yahoo, Bing, and second tiers – your employer will thank you for the added stability.

Diversify Your Team’s Skill Set

I’ve managed a multitude of search engine marketing teams over the years. There are two competing management philosophies that I’ve tested and experienced: Specialize and generalize. Under the specialize school of thought, each team member owns a particular task or search engine and acquires an immense amount of skill in that area. Under the generalize school of thought, each team member understands all of the search engines, campaigns, and skills, contributing across a broad array of projects.

You probably already know which one I’m going to recommend! Managers, please go the generalize route. Diversify each team member’s skill set. Every member of your team should understand all of the search engines, processes, and initiates. Going the diversified route keeps morale high (because it’s easier for everyone to learn new things) while mitigating risk in case someone leaves (you’ll have backups who understand all the details). We’re already in a specialized line of work and diversification keeps things interesting and leveraged.

Diversify Your Personal Skill Set

How do you rise quickly in pay per click search engine marketing? You become an absolute master of PPC while learning the other online marketing channels as well: SEO, display advertising, email, and PR. I’d actually go beyond this and also encourage you to learn sales as well, an incredibly valuable skill in getting to the Director level or above. There are rarely enough hours in the day to do this at work and I recommend starting your own small business on the side to acquire these diversified skills (check out my post on SEM moonlighting). Some other tips to diversify your skills and get on the fast track to promotion:

Have regular lunches with people on other teams.
Work on cross-functional projects that benefit both teams.
Once you’ve been at a company long enough and have driven results, ask your boss for the favor of an "educational" week spent working on a completely different team for a completely different boss.

Diversify Your Private Company Investment Portfolio

Disclaimer: I’m not a licensed investment adviser and this is just for your entertainment. In my opinion, one of the largest benefits of working in our field is the ability to accumulate stock in rapidly growing private companies. I personally own shares in three private companies thanks to my 5 plus years in PPC. This strategy has already paid off quite handsomely. While it should never be your core reason for career transitions, this is a very important factor often overlooked. In my opinion, a well-diversified portfolio of fast growing private companies is every investor’s dream. SEM provides the perfect avenue to realize this diversification dream without having a million dollar bankroll to approach VC funds as an investor.

To close out, I encourage you to think each and every day what you can do to diversify. Diversification is a tremendous tool to mitigate risk while driving growth in your search marketing career.

Image of Stocks and Bonds © iStockPhoto – VisualField

Rap Music Drives My Online Marketing

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 8 4

Anyone who knows me knows that I cannot live without rap music. I’ve been a fan ever since I started listing to Young MC back in 1989. I truly relate to many of the recurring themes in rap, especially the unrelenting drive to accumulate wealth. More than anything, I feel that the insights in rap are directly applicable to online marketing.

10 Rap Tracks That Influence My Online Marketing

Today, I’m excited to do a fun post and share ten of my favorite rap songs currently in my playlist and how their lyrics inspire great online marketing. I’m only including ten and I’m definitely leaving out quite a few others that have truly inspired me. Perhaps I’ll update this post later or even do a follow up post with more titles. If you’re in online marketing I highly encourage you to check out these rap tracks. The insights hidden in them and parallels to online marketing will astound you.

Turntable

Track: Gimme Your’s
Artist: Az
Album: Doe or Die
Key Lyrics: "It’s realism so I visualize it to live it."
Why I like It: I can never listen to this track just once. In fact, it’s hard to listen to it less than 5 times in a row. The knowledge contained in the lyrics is simply amazing. It all comes down to Az’s relentless drive towards making more money and the fact that he calls out core teaching of "The Secret" 10 years before it’s mass marketed (see key lyrics above). PPC and affiliate marketing are all about making money and this track embodies that mentality.

Track: Mr. 25/8
Artist: DMD
Album: Thirty-Three: Live From Hiroshima
Key Lyrics: "I’m DMD and I’m a hustler 25 hours a day 8 days a week…"
Why I Like It: PPC as a career and online marketing in general requires extreme dedication and longevity. DMD clearly points this out in this "25/8" mentality. If you want to make a big name for yourself within search engine marketing, it’s all about pushing yourself 25 hours a day, 8 days a week.

Track: Good Life
Artist: Kanye West
Album: Graduation
Key Lyrics: "I always had a passion for flashin’ before I had it / I close my eyes and imagine, the good life"
Why I Like It: My career in pay per click search engine marketing has been my means of achieving the good life. I have seen this industry change lives and that’s one of the core reasons I’m such a proponent of the PPC career path.

Track: Making Moves with Puff
Artist: Craig Mack
Album: Project: Funk Da World
Key Lyrics: "Gotta get the cash, gotta get the dough / Gotta keep my flow"
Why I Like It: They lyrics above really say it all. It’s all about focusing on the prize and doing everything you can to ensure success, while maintaining your composure and professionalism. Above and beyond this particular track, Diddy’s unrelenting drive and work ethic is truly inspirational. This is my personal mentality towards my career in online marketing.

Track: Hope I Don’t Go Back
Artist: E-40
Album: Project: The Element of Surprise
Key Lyrics: "Hope I don’t go back to slangin ya-yo"
Why I Like It: Having graduated Stanford and enjoying the Bay Area for 10 years, this list would not be complete without E-40. Seriously, however, this track embodies the risk element of business. No matter what industry you’re in, it can all be gone tomorrow. In my opinion, this is even more relevant in a new and dynamic industry like online marketing. What can you do? Hedge your bets every way imaginable.

Track: Searching
Artist: Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
Album: The Main Ingredient
Key Lyrics: "Searching, searching, searching…"
Why I Like It: First and foremost, I think Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth are extremely underrated. Second, how could I not include a song titled "Searching" in a list of rap songs related to search engine marketing. I wouldn’t be where I am today if people weren’t searching online!

Track: The World Is Yours
Artist: Nas
Album: Illmatic
Key Lyrics: "Picturin my peeps, now the income make my heartbeat skip"
Why I Like It: I’m a very ambitious search engine marketer. This song always reminds me of the big picture, my lofty goals. Nas vividly portrays the American dream, a real life rags to riches story. The American dream is alive and well within the world of online marketing.

Track: Out for the Cash (5 Deadly Venoms)
Artist: DJ Honda
Album: H (Japanese Version)
Key Lyrics: "We want it all so we out for the cash"
Why I Like It: DJ Honda is extremely underrated, another gem in the world of hip-hop. Seriously, however this song reminds me of my unrelenting desire to make money (for myself and my employer). Online marketing is all about driving measurable results. Make money for yourself and your company and the rest is easy.

Track: Still Can’t Stop the Reign (feat. The Notorious B.I.G.)
Artist: Shaquille O’Neal
Album: You Can’t Stop the Reign
Key Lyrics: "You can’t stop it, block it, when I drop it"
Why I Like It: Pay per click search engine marketing is often a zero sum game, meaning the winner takes all. It’s very important to have a number one mentality and absolutely dominate the competition. This track embodies that mentality.

Track: UMI Says
Artist: Mos Def
Album: Black On Both Sides
Key Lyrics: "My umi said shine your light on the world."
Why I Like It: This track always puts things into perspective. No matter how crazy things get in online marketing (and believe me, they definitely get crazy), we all need to stay focused on what matters: Making a difference in this world.

All lyrics in this article are copyrights of their respective owners.
Image of Maze © iStockPhoto – jimikuk

Focus on Difficult SEM Projects

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 2 2

When I started working at my first search engine marketing job, the CEO gave me very valuable advice. One day, I was working late with one of my co-workers and the CEO came by. We started talking and eventually asked him about his advice around success. His advice was very simple, yet powerful: Focus on the projects that nobody else wants to do. If you master the difficult, unattractive projects, your career will be incredibly successful. To this day, I follow this very advice and it has worked wonders for my career in search engine marketing. Today, I’m going to discuss a few ways I take advantage of unattractive SEM projects.

SEM Career Tip 1: Really Know Your Numbers

Difficult Maze

It goes without saying that you can’t be in search engine marketing without knowing your numbers. It’s an operational role, one where you’re responsible first hand for your company’s bottom line. However, there are varying levels of understanding that range from knowing that the numbers were down yesterday to knowing they were down specifically because conversion dropped 20% on x keyword and you’re working on y strategy to fix the problem with ETA z. Surprisingly, many people in SEM don’t know the numbers as well as they should and this creates a great opportunity for your career. I recommend always knowing the following numbers off the top of your head:

Yesterday’s conversions by channel
Yesterday’s CPA
Today’s intra-day conversions
How yesterday’s numbers compare to last week, two weeks ago, and the same day last year
Specifically why yesterday’s numbers were up or down
Your month to date run rate and how it compares to your targets (You have set targets for yourself and your team, right?)
Specifically why you’re above or below your targets
The same level of detail for any campaigns you might not be directly managing.

This may sound like a time consuming, excruciating level of detail and it is! However, that’s exactly why you should focus on this essential task in your effort to break away from the pack and embrace challenging projects. I promise, you will build intuition around your numbers over time and it will get easier. In the short run, take good notes and bring them with you so you’re always able to answer questions that may get asked of you.

SEM Career Tip 2: Spend 10-20% of Your Time Planning

I really enjoy this tip. While it’s super easy, nobody follows it, creating another great opportunity to set yourself apart from the pack. I can totally relate with those that don’t like planning. We’re on the front lines of operation and have infinite opportunities at our fingertips. We just want to get out there and execute. However, I can tell you from years of management experience that there is simply no substitute for good planning. Planning will make you (and your team) more efficient, improve communication with senior management, and yield improved results. Even though you’ll have 10-20% less time for the execution side of things, planning will set you up for success and will greatly improve the leverage senior management has over you (and your team) which is a huge benefit on its own.

SEM Career Tip 3: Volunteer Yourself

In search engine marketing, we all have more projects than we can handle. This relates not only to the infinite opportunities out there, but also the fact that SEM is typically understaffed in proportion to the value we drive. In light of this, most people in SEM are reluctant to sign up for more work. We’ve all been in the those meetings where action items start coming up and the meeting leader starts asking who will take them on. We’ve all been in the situation where we just want to look down and let someone else take it on. My advice to you: Fight your instincts and volunteer yourself! Of course, you can’t take on everything but leveraging this strategy at the right time can work wonders for your PPC career. Just think about it, everyone is stretched. Sure, some are stretched more than others, but at the end of the day everyone could use more time. If you step up and take on these projects in a team setting, you’re communicating that you’re an SEM leader. This goes a long way!

PPC Career Tip 4: Work Long Hours When It Makes Sense

I’m typically a proponent of working smarter and not harder. However, there are times when this simply breaks down, especially around deadlines. It’s easy in SEM to push a project off a day or so. However, if you push enough projects off enough days, you slow down the growth of your entire organization. My advice to you: Fight your bias to push deadlines out, no matter what. After you hit your deadline, then give yourself a break and get some rest.

PPC Career Tip 5: Focus Very Little Time On Beta Tests and 2nd Tiers

This is a classical PPC time trap. I haven’t met anyone in SEM who doesn’t like exploring new initiatives. There’s an affiliate marketer inside all of us who wants to uncover that jackpot. My advice to you: Focus on the big levers. Beta tests and 2nd tiers are rarely big levers. If you must try experimental stuff, try it on your off-time and consider SEM moonlighting to expand your knowledge base. I’m not alone on this, any seasoned Internet executive will tell you that they don’t want their SEM managers focused on this stuff and it will rarely reflect well on your career even though it’s super fun and appealing.

Condition Your Mind To Enjoy Difficult Search Engine Marketing Projects

While these are just five examples, I really want to highlight the recurring theme here: Consciously fight your instincts each and every day. Look objectively at the projects before you and understand if it’s a difficult or easy project. More often than not, the difficult projects are the ones with leverage. Condition your mind to enjoy the difficult challenges in SEM and you’ll quickly get promoted. I personally like to mix it up and include at least one or two easy, fun projects in my day to break up the difficult stuff. Moreover, I like to take breaks to move my work location to change my mindset. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you simply approach projects with the right mindset! After a while, you will start actually enjoying the difficult stuff and then you’ll be in a league of your own.

Image of Maze © iStockPhoto – chromatika

PPC Domain Strategies

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 27 6

As you may know from my blogroll and also some of my previous posts, I’m a big fan of domaining. In my opinion, domaining is the natural extension of pay per click search engine marketing. Today, I’m going to look at domain selection from a different perspective and offer my personal advice on domaining specifically for pay per click websites.

PPC Domains Versus SEO Domains

Blue Network

Let’s start off with an interesting distinction: Sometimes it makes sense to have separate SEO and PPC websites. Whether you’re like me running pay per click campaigns for a large corporation or are a small business owner, there are often cases where you’ll want to have separate domains (and websites) for PPC and SEO. Now, this definitely is not the case all the time. In fact, most of the time, I’m a proponent of leveraging the same website for PPC and organic. Why? You keep a unified brand and get compound effects in your brand equity. However, there are cases where it makes perfect sense to split your domains for these two media channels. I’ll briefly highlight a few of them:

Your SEO site gets a ton of traffic and is very old, but the name doesn’t include the most important keyword(s) from your vertical. For PPC, it’s essential to include the keywords in your URL. Otherwise, your click through rate may be low and you’ll get priced out of the market.
Your vertical is incredibly competitive and you want multiple if not hundreds of PPC websites targeted toward niches within your vertical. Many of the most sophisticated affiliate marketers out there leverage this strategy.
You’re make a lot of money in SEO and want to shield your established SEO site from potential bans against your pay per click activity. Please note that I never advise pushing the limits. It’s all about the long term and your relationships with the search engines. However, recently I have heard stories about advertisers getting banned from PPC with little recourse. Some of these advertisers believe they were banned by mistake. If you’re making a ton of money organically, you may choose to play it safe and only send PPC traffic to new sites that shield the risk.
You’re an affiliate marketer with very little SEO presence, but a huge PPC presence. If you’re in this bucket, you’ll be thinking primarily about URLs that will improve your PPC click through rate and conversion.

PPC Domain Strategy 1: Keywords Are Critical

So we’ve established that there are times where you’ll want to have a separate PPC versus SEO domain strategy. In the remainder of this article, I’ll highlight a few strategies that can work wonders for your PPC click through rate and conversion rate.

First and foremost, make sure the most important keywords in your niche are actually in your domain name. It’s that easy! Google and other search engines will bold each part of your ad that matches the user’s query. The display URL is considered part of your ad. If the keywords are in there, you will see an improved click through rate (and therefore position) not to mention possible improvements to your conversion rate because the ad is more relevant to the user’s query.

Now, you may find when you search for keyword rich URLs in verticals such as insurance, mortgage, debt, education, and others that they’re all taken. My suggestion: Consider the dot net or dot org versions (these work well in PPC), buying your domain on the aftermarket, or leveraging dashes (see next tip).

PPC Domain Strategy 2: Leverage Dashes In Your Domain Name

This is one of my favorite tips because it’s counterintuitive and can save you thousands of dollars while adding huge value. The tip is simple: Consider PPC domains that have dashes in them. In the SEO world, URLs with dashes are often frowned upon as cheap domains for those that can’t afford "real" domains.

However, dashes can really help in PPC. When you separate the words in your URL with dashes, it makes the URL easier to decipher and can improve your click through rate. Moreover, URLs with dashes are cheaper and widely available because at this time they hold little value on the resale market.

PPC Domain Strategy 3: Buy Domains That Read Well With Subdomains

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to include the important keywords in your display URL to improve your click through rate. Now, one way of doing that is registering hundreds of domains and creating hundreds of corresponding microsites for all of the sub-niches within your vertical. However, there exists an easier way to do this: Buy short PPC domains that follow well with subdomains.

Let’s say you’re in the education vertical. If you have a long URL like ApplyForOnlineCollegeDegrees.com, you’re not going to be able to do too much with subdomains because the URL is already getting a bit long and there’s a 35 character maximum in Google’s display URL. Now, let’s say you own the URL Degrees.com. Obviously, this is going to cost you quite a bit of money, but you will have incredible flexibility in using subdomains for your PPC campaigns. For example, you can use Nursing.Degrees.com for your nursing keywords, Law.Degrees.com for your law degrees, and Accounting.Degrees.com for accounting. As an important note, Google does not care if you actually have a site present at these subdomains. The only requirement as of right now is that the root domain Degrees.com works. In sum: Short and flexible domains are awesome for PPC.

To close out, I sincerely hope these tips help in your quest to acquire and build out PPC-specific domains. Many times, your PPC domain strategy has strong parallels to your SEO strategy. However, other times your PPC domain strategy might be very different!

Image of Bull Market © iStockPhoto – enot-poloskun

Investment Expertise Will Boost Your SEM Career

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 26 1

As you may know from my about me, I was co-president of The Charles R. Blyth Fund, Stanford University’s prestigious real money investment club. My passion for investments actually dates all the way back to my high school days. I’m still addicted to the game and can’t get enough whether we’re talking public companies, private companies, or even commodities. You may be thinking, "What the heck does this have to do with pay per click search engine marketing?" Surprisingly, it has a whole lot to do with your SEM career.

Connect With Internet Executives on an Investment Level

Bull Market

I have a natural ability to hold lengthy conversations with executives. I’m very proud of my ability and it’s something that I’ve been leveraging since day one when I interviewed for my first PPC job in 2004. For a while, I didn’t really know why I had such successful relationships with senior executives. Now, I do. What am I typically talking to executives about? All aspects of investing!

At the end of the day, all executives are investors. All executives enjoy talking about investments. From my experience, all executives are passionate about investing in their personal portfolios, but let’s put that aside for a minute. Focusing just on the operations of your organization, executives are in strategic roles where they’re often making investment decisions for the company. They need to know the market thoroughly and are always thinking on a merger and acquisition level. From that perspective, it’s impossible to be an Internet executive without being an investor. Now, If you’re a passionate investor, you immediately have a common point of interest that you can leverage to make a great name for yourself and increase your odds of promotion.

Your Investment Knowledge Will Add Value To Your Company

Now, you may be thinking, "Ian, this sounds a bit superficial. So I’m supposed to shoot the bull with the executives about tomorrow’s hot stock and I’ll get promoted?" The short answer: Yes and no. There are two important takeaways here. As you get promoted, you’ll become a visible leader within your organization. You need to prove you can hold a conversation with the decision makers (and investing allows you to connect and prove your abilities).

Second, I truly believe your knowledge about investing will add serious strategy level value to your organization, which is exactly what leaders need to do. There exist a multitude of ways your investment knowledge could pay off greatly. I’d like to highlight just one small example next.

I’m passionate about sifting through thousands of small company stocks. One day, I took this passion to the next level by searching for small Internet businesses that could make great acquisition opportunities for my employer. I started frequenting sites like Buy Sell Website to find website investment opportunities. One day, I came across a perfect acquisition opportunity for my current employer. I drafted up a proposal and after our due diligence we ended up acquiring my recommended investment. Needless to say, this definitely helped my career.

Learning About Investment Essentials – A PPC Manager’s Guide

So this all sounds great, but you’re not sure where to start. First, there’s absolutely no reason to worry at all. You’re a pay per click search engine marketer. The tasks that you’re performing every single day are precisely the same skills that will help you become a great investor. You’re great with numbers, modeling, Excel, operating to a solid margin, and identifying growth opportunities. PPC is the quintessential operational role and it sets you up to become an investment superstar.

In terms of building your investment toolkit, following are my top pieces of advice specifically for those in pay per click search engine marketing:

As soon as you hit your stock option vesting cliff (typically one year after your start working for your employer), exercise at a least a percentage of your stock options. This will give you access to your company’s annual report, not to mention putting a little bit of your personal wealth on the line. Spend time reading your company’s annual report at length. You’ll learn a whole new dimension about your organization and will be armed with the very information that decision makers are pondering daily.
Know all the players in your industry, both public and private. You’re probably already familiar with your competition from the PPC landscape. Take it to the next level by researching them from a strategic investment perspective. A great place to start is Yahoo! Finance. The ties you’ll start forming between your operational knowledge and the strategy side of things are astounding. The ties will help you formulate and communicate your PPC strategy on a whole new level.
Read as many investing books as you can. I know, you have limited time. You need to make time. Robert Kiyosaki is a great introductory author and my favorite financial mentor. Over the years, I’ve read a huge number of investment books. Because you love PPC odds are you’ll get addicted to investment books like me!
Last, make sure to invest a few of your own dollars. There’s no better way to learn that putting your own money at risk. Never risk more than you can afford to lose and start small. Your company-sponsored 401k might be the best place to start. Then, consider a brokerage account and start investing in individual stocks. This experience will greatly reinforce everything else.

To close out, I want to underscore the importance investing as a tool to accelerate your SEM career. PPC and investing go and in hand. Armed with the two, you’ll start seeing major strategy opportunities and will climb the corporate ladder to become a PPC executive in your own right.

Get To Know Your PPC Team Personally

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 24 0

Even though the economy is rocky right now, those of us in pay per click search engine marketing are very lucky. If you’ve built out an impressive SEM LinkedIn profile, you’re most likely getting job offers regularly (if not weekly). Now, this is great from the standpoint of job security and opportunity, but it places PPC people managers and team leads in a difficult situation.

Just when you think everything is working perfectly, all of the sudden you get notice that your star player found a better opportunity and is leaving in two short weeks. As a manager, what could you have done differently to prevent this situation? Today, I’m going to discuss one of my favorite management strategies, one that can help you retain your entire team even in this competitive recruiting environment. The tip is actually quite simple: Develop a personal relationship with everyone on your team.

Break Free From Your Work and Chat With Your SEM Team

Learn and Lead

If you’re anything like me, you have a strong internal instinct to sit in front of your computer and power through work all day, ignoring any and all distractions. If you do this, don’t feel bad. The vast majority of PPC campaign managers do the same thing and it’s really a function of our role. However, now it’s time to take a step back and break free from this habit.

As you may know, I’m a big champion of attending SEM conferences at every possible opportunity. I’m going to give you the same advice here: Take every opportunity possible to break free from your work and have regular side conversations with your search marketing team. Sound crazy? Trust me, from 5 years of SEM team management this is totally essential. While you may feel like your productivity is decreasing, it really isn’t. Your entire team will be more productive and energized. After all, as a manager your personal output just isn’t that important. It’s all about your team’s total output. Moreover, this technique will work wonders for your employee retention in an industry where everyone’s trying to take them away from you! (Just remember how long it took you to train your last new employee and that quickly shows just how important employee retention is for your long term productivity.)

The Importance of Forming a Bond With Your Team

Relationships are very important to all humans. Positive relationships help us thrive. They keep the day interesting. They help us connect and form bonds with others. They help us get through challenges. They simply keep us going and give us essential social interaction. We all know how addictive social interaction can be from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The point here is really simple: Take your relationship with your SEM team seriously. If you form a strong bond with your team members, you will experience all of the benefits of a strong relationship: loyalty, excitement, employee retention, increased productivity, and so much more.

You may be thinking, how do I build a solid relationship with my team? It’s actually easier than you think. Take a few minutes each day to chat. Make sure you can answer the following questions:

What did your report do last weekend?
What’s their favorite hobby?
What are they doing next weekend?
What do they enjoy doing outside of work?

Who Qualifies as a PPC Team Member?

I wanted to make the point here that I define "PPC team" very loosely. In my opinion, almost everyone is a team member: Direct reports, search engine reps, co-workers, superiors, and vendors. The more people you get to know, the larger the network effects of your relationships. Everybody likes a personable manager. Develop that reputation today!

Where To Draw The Line

In closing, I wanted to draw attention to a very important point: Never forget that you’re a people manager. As a manager, it’s always your duty to give both positive and negative feedback. It’s your job to call out mistakes and help your team grow. To that end, you want to develop a great relationship with your team but you need to know where to draw the line. You can’t forget you’re a people manager. The best people managers in the word walk this fine line each and every day and get the benefits of both bonds: the manager bond and the friend bond. If you’re new to this, my advice is simple: Predominantly wear your manager hat but try to spend a few minutes each day wearing the more personable friend hat. Investing just a little bit of time could make all the difference the next time your star player gets a call from a recruiter!

SEM Career Progress and Your Manager

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 22 4

When I first started my career in search engine marketing, I thought salary, title, and company were everything. Don’t get me wrong, all of these things are super important. However, at the end of the day, I now advise placing the most emphasis on selecting the right manager.

Where is Your Search Marketing Career Going?

As you might know by now, Robert Kiyosaki is my favorite financial author and mentor. One of the things he constantly highlights is the velocity of money. The rich keep their money moving. It goes from one solid investment to another and doesn’t sit still. This velocity keeps the portfolios of the rich growing. Through this lens, it’s not really about where you’re investing now, but where you’re going to be investing next.

I really like this concept because it applies perfectly to your career in SEM. Seriously! Our industry is moving very fast. The best strategies today will be commonplace tomorrow. If you’re not thinking one step ahead, you’re destined to plateau. I personally place significantly less importance on where I am today versus where I’m heading tomorrow. Now, the crux of the issue: Without a great manager, you’re not going to have sufficient velocity to achieve that next level of excellence. You’ll be stuck. While your current salary, title, and company are important, all of this is worth a lot less if you’re going to plateau in the high velocity industry of SEM (where the value of tomorrow is tremendous).

Bad SEM People Managers Will Hold You Back

As you may know from prior posts, I place tremendous emphasis on good people management. People management gets me up each and every morning! There’s nothing better than mentoring my team to success and promotion. Unfortunately, not all PPC people managers think like this. We’re in a very young industry with many SEM team leads having just a few years of work experience. I’ll cut right to the point: A bad manager can wipe all the velocity out of your promising SEM career.

How might a bad manager accomplish this? The worst PPC people managers:

Take personal credit for everything their team accomplishes
Spend little or no time coaching their team
Have low energy and are perfectly fine with a boring work environment
Rarely give their team exposure to senior management
Feel the need to compete with their own team members
Focus exclusively on themselves

Great PPC People Managers Give You Velocity

Now, how does a great SEM people manager differ from a bad one? Basically, they avoid every single thing on the above list! It’s really fundamental: The best SEM people managers give you velocity. They give you education. They give you visibility. They set your SEM career up for long-term success. They are selfless and take no credit for your work. They take full credit for your training, your morale, your progress, and your contribution to the organization. Moreover, a great SEM people manager will be your mentor for life regardless of whether you still report to them.

To close out, I’m writing this article because I have been blessed with great managers. My first manager is my mentor and friend to this day and I owe a lot of my own success (and managerial style) to him. If you take one thing away from this article, please place all the emphasis in the world on picking the right manager in your next SEM career move.

Domain Investing and URL History

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 18 2

I enjoy investing in domains during my spare time. In my opinion, domains are an amazing investment, just like real estate before the market got crowded and efficient. Each and every day there are awesome inefficiencies in the domain market that give savvy investors the opportunity to unlock great value. However, as with any investment you can quickly lose serious money if you don’t do your due diligence. Today, I’ll discuss one of my domain due diligence checks: The importance of investigating your prospective domain’s PPC search engine history.

Search Engines Store PPC History on a Domain Level

Domain Investing

Google has been focusing on permanently removing websites from AdWords that do not adhere to their policies. Whether a webmaster intentionally violates Google’s policies or does so unknowingly, it’s actually very easy to create bad search engine history for an otherwise good URL. Moreover, when a URL accumulates bad history, that history follows it forever. It doesn’t matter who owns the URL or who’s AdWords account you’re using, the bad history will always be there. The bottom line: Don’t Buy a domain that has bad search engine history, period. I will show you how to test a URL’s history later, but let’s first illustrate the problem with an example.

Example: A Domain With Bad AdWords History

Hypothetically, let’s say Domainer XYZ buys a one-word domain in the financial services industry for $20,000. Domainer XYZ doesn’t feel like developing the site so he simply creates a "doorway page" that basically asks the user to enter their zip code before redirecting to another site that has an affiliate offer. Thin sites like this are clearly against Google’s policy. However, because masters of PPC can make a quick buck (especially if their domain is good), this type of thing happens every single day. Now, let’s say Domainer XYZ advertises this thin user experience on Google AdWords for months and make a few thousand dollars profit.

Months go by and everything is fine. However, one day Google finds out what’s going on and they assign the URL a quality score of 1. Immediately, all of Domainer XYZ’s PPC traffic dries up. Because he has a ton of things going on, Domainer XYZ decides to abandon this site and work on other projects. A few months later, Google emails Domainer XYZ and says his site is permanently banned from Google AdWords. Sound unrealistic? It’s not, trust me! This amazing $20,000 domain is now tarnished forever. Regardless of who owns it, this domain will never be valid in AdWords again. History is stored on the domain level so it does not matter who owns it or which account is used for AdWords.

Now, let’s say you’re a new domain investor and decide to buy this domain from Domainer XYZ. If you haven’t done your due diligence, you could end up with a URL that has been banned from Google AdWords without even knowing it! (Side note: If you’re happening to read this too late and this has already happened to you, I highly recommend calling Google AdWords support. Google is there to help and they may be able to help in your situation, but it’s much easier to walk away from this type of deal than hope you’ll be able to get the quality score reversed after buying.)

Google Makes Quality Score Mistakes From Time To Time

I want to point out that this is just one example of how a domain could accumulate bad history. In my experience, Google is large enough these days and has enough automated processes that innocent websites can get assigned poor quality scores as well. I’ve actually seen this several times. Thus, if you run across a low quality score website, I wouldn’t just assume the seller is a malicious webmaster. At times, it’s just a function of Google’s algorithm making a mistake. The unfortunate part: Google will rarely be able to reverse a quality score mistake unless you’re a huge spender. However, if this does happen to you, never give up! Make sure to contact Google and explain your situation. At the end of the day, they are there to help and please keep a positive and optimistic attitude.

How To Protect Yourself As A Domain Investor

Now, let’s get to the fun part. How do you make absolutely certain that you don’t buy a bad domain that was previously used to abuse AdWords? It’s actually quite easy. First and foremost, just open a Google AdWords account and send traffic to the site (even before you own it). Send traffic to the homepage, but also a variety of deeper landing pages. Invest some real time in this. Let the campaigns sit for a few days. If you’re not seeing good or great quality scores (7 or better) and are not getting consistent click volume, you may have a red flag. Important Disclaimer: Do not send traffic to the site if it’s undeveloped. If you’re buying a URL that currently just has a list of GoDaddy ads, you could do some damage to the site’s history if you send traffic.

In addition to the AdWords check, I highly recommend running your site through the Way Back Machine. Understand the site’s look and feel over the years. Was it ever used as a thin affiliate website? If so, you may have a red flag. However, I don’t like this check as much as the last one because the seller can still hide "marginal activities" underneath and otherwise solid site.

To close out, I hope I’ve helped mitigate some potential downside in your future domain investments. Due diligence can be a long process, but it’s totally worth it. Invest the time and test the pay per click validity of a URL before investing your hard earned money.