Ad copy testing is one of the basic tenets of PPC advertising. The ability to test several ad variations at once is valuable to advertisers. Yet, a surprising number of PPC advertisers don’t take advantage of ad copy testing at all.
PPC conversion tracking has evolved greatly over the past decade or so. In the early days, few advertisers were tracking conversions at all. Web analytics software was a new and expensive proposition, and most companies didn’t take advantage of it.
Most companies aren't eBay: they don't have the marketing budget that eBay has, nor the name recognition," said Melissa Mackey, search supervisor at Gyro. When you're running silly, generic ads, it's no surprise that your results aren't stellar...
I love having a day to celebrate women across the globe,” said Melissa Mackey, Search Supervisor at gyro. For some, such as Mackey, it’s impossible to name just one. Powerful women are a source of constant inspiration to me,” Mackey said.
My last post talked about three big mistakes that PPC pros make, and how to fix them. Believe it or not, when I asked long-time PPC pros to share their biggest mistakes, there were more than I could fit in one column!
Averages lie, as Melissa Mackey pointed out in an earlier SEW post. Search marketers depend on data to make decisions. Bids are raised, keywords are paused, and ad text is changed based on data. Unfortunately many decisions are being made based on...
Everyone makes mistakes. You’ve heard that saying a thousand times, and yet it still rings true. Even seasoned professionals make mistakes; and usually mistakes are the best way to learn. Still, especially when you’re new at something, it’s...
It’s the first full week of 2013, and New Year’s resolutions are in full swing. Some of you are kicking butt and taking names; others may have given up already. I’ll be honest – I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions.
So, you’ve taken the plunge and hired a new PPC manager. Maybe you’ve decided to hire a PPC agency, or maybe you’re keeping PPC in-house but want someone to manage your program full time. Either way, congratulations on the new hire!
Calculating ROI is one of the basic tenets of PPC, and yet many advertisers don’t consider it or even understand it. A lot of advertisers perform campaign optimizations based solely on conversion rate or cost per conversion, choosing the ads and...
OK. You now understand how to use some basic web analytics metrics to optimize your PPC campaigns. What's next? Now it's time to take your PPC optimization to the next level with some more advanced analytics.
If you know anything at all about PPC, you know that campaign optimization is one of the most important tasks a PPC manager can perform. Managers spend most of their day tweaking bids, ad copy, campaign settings, networks, keywords, negative...
Time for a pop quiz! What do the following have in common? You have 30 seconds to give your answer. Ready? Go! Tesla Madonna Prince Washington Sam Adams Chojuro Did you figure it out? If you said “they’re all famous people,” you’re right.
Keyword research is one of the fundamentals of PPC. Keywords are the building blocks of nearly all search-based PPC campaigns. It’s one of the first tasks new PPC professionals learn – without good keyword research skills, one can’t build a good...
News organizations love to report averages. For example, in 2002 the CDC released data about the average height and weight of American adults. According to their data, the average adult woman is 5'4" and weighs 163 pounds.
Melissa Mackey: What gave you the idea to start the petition to overturn the AdWords rotation change? If you’re involved in PPC at all, you’re no doubt aware of the recent change to AdWords ad rotation announced in late April.
If you’re like a lot of PPC advertisers, you’re probably spending most of your time on Google AdWords. That’s because, in all likelihood, you’re getting most of your traffic from AdWords. But if you haven’t used Microsoft adCenter recently, it’s...
Historically, Google Adwords has been known for offering a myriad of campaign settings: levers that PPC managers can pull to tailor their campaigns to meet their needs. For the most part, this is a good thing, recent changes notwithstanding.
Whether you’re in-house or agency, good PPC reporting is a key factor to proving the value of PPC and of the job you’re doing managing PPC. A crucial aspect of PPC reporting is data visualization. We PPC managers deal with numbers all day long – a...
The news was broken by Search Engine Watch contributor Melissa Mackey via Twitter and her blog. Every week we hear about or read another “PPC wish list” that outlines all of the features that Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter or even Facebook...
