Head of PPC
The ability to start with a keyword bid and layer on increases or decreases in aggressiveness based on conversion rate of different user groups is a fantastic development for AdWords advertisers. Make sure your bidding strategies can cope.
Product listing ads can be deceptively easy to set up, but there are still simple steps to take to make the most of them. Here are some of the simplest things you can do when it comes to bidding and optimizing your PLAs to maximize your returns.
Average position is the most misleading and least helpful metric in AdWords. Clients and stakeholders must understand ROI, not position, is the most important PPC metric. Here's why you should wean yourself and your clients off average position.
Display campaigns haven't been enhanced in quite the same way as search. It's harder to converge devices around display, because of the differences in capabilities. However, some sexy new features are making their way into your accounts.
There is good in this announcement and the motivations are good. Devices are converging and we do need better ways to handle that. Unfortunately the removal of control from the advertiser at keyword level makes this a bitter pill to swallow.
Advanced segments are the tool that expands the repertoire of possible Google Analytics analysis up to near-unbelievable levels. If you want to know anything about how different types of users behave on your site, then segments are the way to do it.
The new bulk edit facility in the AdWords interface is a long overdue move that replicates some of the best features of AdWords Editor. We look at some of the key use cases for this new tool and why it's going to be so helpful for your campaigns.
Split testing is a powerful way to trial two or more options for an element of your campaign and be reasonably confident that the results are accurate. For best results, your account needs to be built with these principles in mind from the start.
Google AdWords Auction Insights offers advertisers unprecedented keyword data about their competitors. Learn what awesome things are available and how PPC campaign managers can use them for actual improvements in campaigns.
AdWords remarketing is incredibly accessible, but not incredibly sophisticated. Using remarketing in sophisticated ways can give fantastic results. Improve your results by segmenting your ads based on a visitor's original traffic source.
Where you were previously looking at cost per keyword, comparing against traffic volumes and conversion rates, you now need to add some new metrics into your AdWords data mix: bounce rate, pages per visit, visit duration, and bid management.
You spend time extracting data about AdWords campaigns to send to your clients, your boss, and other stakeholders. But more important is the data you extract for yourself, to really analyze issues. Here’s what you should take into consideration.
The Google AdWords search partner network is fantastic and terrible. There is good quality traffic to be found, but Google hates you knowing what's going on. Not every site will work well, and it's tricky (not impossible) to know how to optimize.
Reporting the performance of your PPC campaigns to your stakeholders is a vital task, but it's not time spent improving performance. Learn how to keep your reporting brief but helpful by focusing on key factors and employing some dos and don'ts.
AdWords' biggest advantage over other display networks is the extreme granularity of targeting available. There is no reason it can't work as well for you as search. Here's everything you need to know about bidding, optimization and much more.
Red Herrings abound when you're looking at your AdWords data. Information overload is a risk. The last thing you want is to see a relationship between a couple of your PPC metrics, make a decision, and later rue that you didn't investigate further.
Information on how the populace at large behaved and interacted with AdWords ads by day during the holidays. Christmas traffic was much lower than most days of the year on average, but 2011 traffic levels recovered a day before they did in 2010.
If you want to start applying bid management to your AdWords campaigns to optimize for conversions, you're going to need certain ingredients and a framework before you start. This information will give you all the basic starting points.
Conversion tracking is a must-have. If you can, you should. In AdWords you have a choice to use the built-in conversion tracking or to import goals from Google Analytics. Take a look at why you'd want to choose each method.
Having a lack of good conversion data is no excuse for not optimizing bids in a campaign. The campaign can still perform better. Optimizing a PPC campaign without conversion tracking data doesn't have to be difficult with this simple set of rules.
