Tulsa Marketing Online Blog » PPC

New AdWords Help From Google Directly

Eric — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:02:15 +0000

This is pretty big news. Google’s just released (on 9/9/10) a new site, called the Google AdWords Small Business Center. This is a site dedicated to helping people learn more about how to use AdWords or how to improve existing accounts.

There are several lessons here, with tips and even a link to the AdWords Beginners’ Guide. It looks to be a good place for people to learn about AdWords, although the site by itself doesn’t appear to be fully comprehensive. However, they do include links to other pages, including a link that allows you to search for an AdWords Pro (such as myself, yes, I am an AdWords Pro) to help take care of all of the work involved in managing your AdWords account.

At any rate – if you’re having trouble with your AdWords account in any way, I recommend checking out Google’s new Small Business Center. It might give you the help you’re looking for.

AdWords Split Test Update, Beta Testing

Eric — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:27:41 +0000

Google AdWords has a new tool they’re trying out. It’s called the AdWords Campaign Experiments (or ACE). It’s taking some testing that normally takes a while and making it faster.ACE allows users to make changes to their campaigns and run a separate instance of the campaigns with changes while still keeping the old campaign settings in place. It’s a simultaneous run, a split test.

It’s a great idea, I think – you can put in changes to your CPC to see how much more traffic you can get, you can restructure some ad groups to see if it helps as opposed to having all keywords in just one ad group, you can even just test out some new keywords to see what effect it will have.

The benefit of doing it as a split test means you don’t have to worry and wonder if the test you ran was effective because of the changes you made or because it was just during a peak seasonal flux in the market. You’ll see them running simultaneously so you’ll know they had the same exposure and impact from external fluctuations in the industry.

Google’s made a video to explain it:

You can find out all the details on Google’s official announcement page for AdWords Campaign Experiments.

Apple iAd May Compete With Google For Ad Revenue Levels

Eric — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:44:34 +0000

Apple has recently revealed news on the iPhone OS 4 update. The more interesting part of this news for marketers is the new development of iAd – an advertisement opportunity to allow ads to be created and used within apps on the iPhone.

What the difference between this and ads being served by Google and Yahoo is is that the ads are allowed to be developed similarly to applications. The ads will be served from inside of apps on the iPhone without ever leaving the app. They will be stand-alone interactive experiences, so a creative advertiser could make an ad with videos, sound clips, even an independent app like a game. The other detail that makes this interesting is that Apple is offering 60% of revenue from the ad sales to the developer of the application hosting the ad.

The potential for this is staggering. iPhone application developers could put in ad opportunity inside of their app, and then give away the app for free, getting revenue fully from the ads in their application. Google may have some new competition to worry about stepping into their established advertising territory.

We’ll have to see how iAd works when OS 4 is released. For more details on specifics of the ad potential, you can check out this Gizmodo article.

Domain Typos Can Be Worth A Lot

George — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:30:33 +0000

As everyone knows, typing in a domain doesn’t always give you the site you intended to hit. And typos like this happen all the time. There are people who have realized this and are making money from it.

There are two ways to make money from domain typos – either by using PPC and bidding on these typos (and then making money from the traffic you get on these usually cheap keywords), or by registering these domains and putting ads on the site for them.

The people that do the latter are called “typosquatters”. And there’s potentially a lot of money in the ads for higher traffic domain typos. Keep in mind that if the owners of the real domain notice you doing this, they can ask you to take the site down.

Whether or not typosquatting is ethical is a subjective question, but the fact is that some people make a ton of money from it, and so does Google. You can find out more about this and the figures involved in this article from Sideways News.

Microsoft and Yahoo Join Forces for PPC Advertising

Eric — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:48:31 +0000

I got an email from Microsoft adCenter promoting the new alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft. They’re calling it “Search Alliance“. The aim is to have their online paid advertising fully unified before the 2010 holiday season, although they did say that they’ll wait until 2011 if they “determine this will be more effective”.

Microsoft bought out Yahoo, so now the primary tool behind both search engines will be Bing, and behind the pay per click (and other paid online advertisements) will be adCenter. The Search Alliance has stated that each company will “continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences”. Not sure exactly how they’ll pull that off with the same search engine for both, but they may just mean the search interface.

The support will be broken apart, Yahoo supporting the bigger advertisers, and Microsoft will provide support to “self-service” advertisers. They are combining their platforms for the advertising audience, so ads put together under this new alliance will reach consumers using either search engine. The Search Alliance brags that advertisers of all sizes will now be able to have access to a combined audience of nearly 577 million worldwide searchers.

At any rate, this is pretty big news – Yahoo and MS pulling together to battle the mighty Google. I expect this may be an epic battle.

SEO in Fortune 500 Companies? Not Always Good

George — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:40:32 +0000

It appears that Fortune 500 companies on the whole have not caught up to the internet marketing needed to rank well for their primary keywords. And many of them still don’t use pay per click marketing, even though the combination of the ones that do spend about 3 and a half million dollars daily for their keywords.

The interesting thing here is with those millions being spent, you’d think they would put the money into SEO to push their primary keywords to the top of the listings, but it appears that they are not doing this. The companies are still improving on their listings, but it’s still a minority that are even breaking the top 50 in the SERP list for their primary keywords.

MediaPost has an article with details on the exact figures involved in the Fortune 500 SEO results, as well as their PPC figures.

Put Business Phone Numbers on Cell Phone Ads

Eric — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:38:06 +0000

Google’s made a little tweak to AdWords, so now you can put an ad that will show on cell phones that lists a business number. If the owner of the phone calls that number, that counts as the click that is paid for.

The benefit of this is that it’s a very quick hot lead for anyone who advertises on the mobile network. And it’s easy to do, since it defaults to all devices in AdWords, anyway. To make sure you’re listed, check to see that mobile devices are checked in your settings in the campaign settings in AdWords.

Also, to have your phone number listed, you can either have the business information synched up with your business account or enter it manually, both done inside of the AdWords campaign settings. Make sure whichever you do that you include your phone number.

Then to see the results, just choose the “Filters and Views” drop-down list and choose “Segment by”->”Click Type”. This will show which clicks were URL clicks, and which were calls, from either the Ad Group or Keywords tabs.

It’s just an addition Google’s made to AdWords, and sent out an announcement through email to Google advertisers. This could be a good change for people who use AdWords for markets that actively use their cell phones.

SEO vs. PPC – Will Use of One Increase with Demand of Another?

George — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:12:37 +0000

As companies begin using more and more online marketing, SEO is only going to get more difficult to do well. In some cases, businesses are worried spammers are going to get the organic listings more readily and are starting to look to PPC marketing for their search result answers.

This is something that’s come to notice mainly from Google’s real-time search results that were recently added. This addition favors fresh topical content, over quality results Google’s algorithm can find. This is something that spammers can get into very easily, and this is why more companies are starting to consider PPC and AdWords, where spammers are not able to get into at all.

HighPosition.net has more detail on this story.

SEO Jobs: Demand is Going Up For SEO Skills

George — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:59:40 +0000

It looks like holiday shopping this year has moved even more heavily online. As companies are realizing that more people are actively searching online for their commercial searches, they’re starting to see the value of search engine optimization.

Because of this, the IT industry is starting to anticipate a high demand for SEO skills in 2010. (Yay for us professional SEOs!) In Great Britain alone, demand for SEO and online marketing skills went up by 40% last year.

The skills of SEO, pay per click management, social media marketing and web design are all being looked for, ideally in a combined package. SourceWire has all the details in an article based on this story in the UK. (And I have to add a little something something here – Tulsa Marketing Online does in fact do SEO, PPC, social media and web design. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

Basics on Quality Score – What It Is

Eric — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:20:01 +0000

Just a quick post. I put a tip on DailySEOTip about Google AdWords’s Quality Score. I tried to make it short and sweet, although you do need to understand all of the acronyms (CTR, CPC, etc.) to understand it fully.

I do think it’s worth understanding because of the fact it can make a difference between a $0.30 click and a $5.00 click (seriously). So if you use AdWords at ALL, learn about it – if not from me, then somewhere else, but it’s definitely worth investigating.

Getting Banned From Google AdWords

George — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:35:49 +0000

It’s been mentioned previously that AdWords has been going through some serious changes. Well, it appears that they are also stepping up in their quality check on their advertisers. Google has taken action by banning some of their advertisers that don’t meet up to standards – permanently.

This is quite major news for several advertisers. These bans are hitting hard, and the first major revision on AdWords users and who Google will accept was done yesterday, December 3rd. The Search Engine Roundtable has more information and a good copy of the ban letter that they published today.

What Happened To Google AdWords Customer Support?

Eric — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:15:20 +0000

Google does, in fact, have a customer support line: 866-2GOOGLE. However, this line is intended primarily for AdWords, and encourages all other questions to be handled online (somehow that doesn’t surprise me).

One thing that happened sometime earlier this year is that Google stopped personally supporting most AdWords accounts. So if you call in, indicate you are calling about AdWords help, and put in your account number – chances are you’ll get a message that will tell you they no longer offer personal support, to go online to find your answers in the AdWords online support.

However – if you have certain elements meeting a particular criteria in your account, you can still get personal support. From what I’ve been able to find out from Google, this criteria is based primarily on ad expenditure. That is to say – Google takes care of their big spenders, the advertisers who in turn take care of Google. By giving them a ton of money.

This is not the happiest of news for all AdWords users, but hopefully it does clear things up. As far as I can tell, if you have an AdWords Client Center account set up (have Google AdWords Qualification, etc.), they will also offer support. I do not know if this is purely because you have that type of an account or because you are in charge of so many clients that spend a combined amount above their “trigger” figure. I personally am able to get through to customer service, for one of these reasons or the other.

To sum it up – if you want Google support for AdWords, your best bet (unless you’re spending thousands a month or have a Client Center account) is to just go to their support center online, the AdWords Help Center. They do have a lot of information there that covers most topics, so for the most part this is a great resource. Although, admittedly, not as nice (for some people) as being able to just ask someone to help you out in real-time. But you can ask through their contact forms online, if you can’t find your solution in their help center.

Highest Traffic Keywords Do Not Always Bring Profit

George — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:41:03 +0000

It seems like the focus for a lot of internet marketers is finding that top trafficked keyword. However, this can be a mistake by not focusing on the true marketing involved. In some cases, the top traffic keyword is not one that will bring conversions.

Putting focus purely on the traffic numbers for keyword research is the reason many internet marketers are not able to pull the profit numbers many others do. Making sure you focus on the consumer and their intent more than the pure traffic size is key.

This can be done more quickly using PPC, but at a price. And in SEO, solid keyword research must be done to target proper keywords – a mistake here will cost a lot of time and money.

Evan LaPointe goes into a bit more detail about all of these factors at Search Engine Land. At any rate, it’s good to remember that the focus should be on the human experience, not just the analytics numbers.

More on the Latest AdWords Update

George — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:53:02 +0000

More people are learning about the changes that came with the latest Google AdWords update. One example that I think is a major one is the update combining Google AdWords with Google Local (also posted on DailySEOTip), but there are a few other changes that are visible.

One of the other changes that I haven’t touched on yet is the adding of the Google Merchant account details to AdWords ads. This can actually add product listings into your Google AdWords ad. Videos are also being seen inside ads, as well.

Images of all of these can be found in a post on Search Engine Land. For a lot of people, the way to take advantage of these are very easy, and are very worthwhile.

Using PPC to Help With SEO and Link Building

George — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:32:32 +0000

Pay for link building? What? Yes, the different ways people do their link building vary from totally free to exorbitantly expensive, but one method a lot of people have not really considered is actually sending traffic that will build links to pages that deserve them.

There are different ways to use PPC to target your landing pages, but if you have good enough content you can use the traffic you attract to help create more links. The cost will vary based on the keyword you choose, but in some cases this can be very beneficial for your SEO.

Julie Joyce at Search Engine Land has 8 tips to help you fine-tune this approach.

How To Put AdWords on Google Maps

Eric — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:19:52 +0000

Google AdWords has had an update recently, and it now appears you can actually advertise and have your address appear on Google Maps with your ad:

Example of AdWords on Google Maps

This involves having Google Local set up (also known as Local Business Center). If you don’t know how to do this, you can check out my earlier post on putting your business on Google Maps.

Once you have a business account set up and associated with the same address you have on your AdWords account, you can get your ad to show up on Google Maps by editing your Campaign settings and then under Locations, open the “Show relevant addresses with your ads (advanced)” option.

AdWords Campaign Setup

Here the easy way to do it is to choose the first option, which is to select your Google Local Business Center account, which will put your address information into your ad and also put a matching blue “pushpin” on Google Maps for you.

The alternate choice you have (if you don’t have an associated Google Local account set up) is to put in the address and phone number manually, in the second option here. This will also display this information with your ad.

Keep in mind, the only way this will work is if the keyword that is being searched on is relevant to the locality your address is in. For example, a city name. (Just the way Google Maps normally appears in search results.) If your keywords match this type of query, then your address and phone number will appear with your ad, in addition to a little point on Google Maps. And this is great news for anyone who does local advertising.

AdWords in Google Maps

Eric — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:39:53 +0000

It looks like with the latest AdWords update, they’re starting to put any local advertisements in Google AdWords into Google Maps. You can see images of some examples of that here, in Search Engine Land.

The ads appear almost the same as Google Local listings, only with blue numbered pushpins instead of red lettered pushpins. I’ll most definitely have to look further into AdWords to see exactly how to take advantage of this new update.

AdWords and SEO, Together

George — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:37:12 +0000

When doing SEO, one of the most underutilized tools I know of is actually Google AdWords. The benefits of how running an AdWords campaign can help SEO in various ways are numerous, and a lot of straight SEOs aren’t even aware of it.

Dave Davis of Redfly is a PPC pro, and he covers the crossover nicely in this post.

Some Recent Google AdWords Updates

Eric — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:18:17 +0000

So Google made a few major updates this last weekend to AdWords. I manage several different accounts, so I’ve seen first-hand what kind of impact this has had.

First of all, they updated the AdWords Editor – a great tool, by the way, I highly recommend it. You can find it here: AdWords Editor. But yeah, they made a few tweaks, in particular I noticed changes to the Campaigns tab. You can now affect the ad schedule from here, location changes, so forth. And if I remember right, the “Keyword Opportunities” option in the Keywords tab is new, as well. It’s the Google machine offering suggestions on keywords that might be relevant to your ad group.

The other big change I saw was Quality Score. The Quality Score on a lot of my keywords dropped. In some cases, heavily. Google is getting tighter when it comes to looking at relevance between keywords, ads, and landing pages. In particular, the landing page. The average QS used to be around 7, you had to be pretty far off to drop much below that.

Well now I’m seeing an average closer to 5, and only very relevant pages are getting 7 or higher. A page has to be completely relevant and contain a lot of solid info (as well as be on a high quality site) to get a 9 or 10 now.

Not sure how this will affect advertisers, but it may be interesting to watch. It does mean that I’ll have to be a lot more careful with the quality of pages I point my ads to. I recommend you do the same.

How To Improve Quality Score For AdWords

Eric — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:05:29 +0000

As anyone who’s done any serious work with Google AdWords knows, Quality Score plays a major role in ad expense in AdWords. Understanding how it works and improving it can reduce your costs by major levels.

To start, what exactly is Quality Score? Quality Score is a figure between 1 and 10 set by Google. It’s set uniquely for each keyword in your AdWords account. 1 is very, very bad, and 10 is as good as it gets.

So how’s this number set and what effect does it have? The exact way it’s set isn’t really known for sure, except by those who wrote the algorithm in Google. But the basics of it are known. By understanding exactly what goes into the score, you can then increase your QS (Quality Score) for any of your keywords.

The main part of the QS is based on the relevance the keyword has to the page that the ad in your ad group is sending the user to. If you’re bidding on the keyword “dog food” and are sending them to a page about diesel engines, chances are your QS will be a 1 and you’ll have to pay at least $10/click. Google likes relevance, because it makes visitors happier with what they’ve found.

So basically, the more relevant your landing page is to the keywords in that ad group, the higher your Quality Score will be. Ideally, the keywords you’re bidding on actually appear somewhere on the landing page. This will help a lot, but is not the only part of a good QS.

To get a solid QS, you need to also have a solid web SITE. Not just the landing page, but it appears that the whole site has to meet certain needs. I’ve actually talked directly to Google about this (through AdWords reps) to make sure of this – but there are a few things you want your site to have to get a good QS: A contact page, a privacy policy, and at least three pages of solid content. The contact page means that there’s really someone there to talk to, that it’s not all automated. This means, in Google’s eyes, a higher quality site. The privacy policy is just to cover everyone’s butts and is just a good idea. And the pages of content just shows that there is actual material on the site and it’s not a single page affiliate redirect for pure profit.

Google cares about the quality of the site – this is why the QS is called Quality Score. So as long as you have a good, high quality site, and the page you’re sending the searcher to matches with what they’ve typed in, you can get very high QS’s.

On average, a basic QS will start at 7. If you have the keywords you’re bidding on specifically mentioned on the page, this score begins to go up. How this can affect cost is amazing. I have some examples:

On one of my client’s AdWords campaigns I have an ad group with a mix of keywords. In this ad group the lowest QS is 7. The CPC for the keywords with the QS of 7 is ranged, but the higher costs are around $0.20-0.50. I have several keywords in this ad group with a QS 10, and the highest CPC for ANY of these is… $0.01. You can do the math on how much this can save.
On another client’s account I have an ad group with mixed keywords. I’m paying a default of $0.30/click on these keywords. For the keywords with a QS of 7, the average position is 3-3.5. For the keywords I have the QS of 10 with, I’m paying no more, but the average position is 1.5. This means I can drop my CPC for the QS 10 keywords and pay much less for the same position as the other keywords.
And for a third client who has an AdWords campaign with particularly pricey keywords, I have one ad group with a mix of keywords. The keywords with a QS of 7 require a price of $1.50-2.50 per click to appear on the first page. The keywords with a QS of 10 have a first page bid of $0.55-0.85. This is about one third of the cost.

Now that you have an idea of what kind of impact a proper QS has, you should be motivated to make sure you’re sending searchers who type in certain keywords to the appropriate pages.

To check and see what the QS is for your keywords, you want to go in to customize your columns in your ad group. In the new beta AdWords interface, you click on the button on the far right above your keywords inside of the ad group that’s labeled “Filters and views” and then click “Customize columns”. Here you’ll activate the “Quality score” column and then arrange it to where you want it.

If you still are using the older AdWords interface, then when you’re inside the ad group, you click on the “Customize columns” text on the far right side, above the keywords. Then click on “Show Quality Score”. In this interface the QS column will show things like “Poor”, “OK”, or “Great”. To get the exact figure for your QS, mouse over the icon with a magnifying glass and a triangle right by each keyword. Then a display will come up giving you the exact figure of the QS for that word, as well as information about whether or not your ad is showing for that keyword, and why.

By properly breaking your keywords into appropriate ad groups, you can put up ads to send the visitors to appropriate pages. This will help your conversions, reduce your cost by increasing your Quality Score, and also help you customize your ad copy appropriately to increase your CTR. Trying to increase your QS is good for various reasons, but I’d highly recommend understanding all of this to improve your AdWords experience.

Which Search Engine is Best?

Eric — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:43:48 +0000

This is a question posed by various people – SEOs, internet marketers, online business owners, and even just people browsing the web: which search engine is best?

Well, this really comes down to depending on what your approach is. If you are just browsing, it’s really a personal preference. But if you’re in internet marketing, then it comes down to understanding the varieties of users who are using each.

To start, Google is still controlling the search engine market, with 64.2% of all searches in April (according to ComScore). Yahoo is second with 20.4%, and Microsoft is third with 8.2%.

As most people know, the bulk of traffic can be gained through Google. Doing SEO or AdWords can take advantage of this traffic. It’s been seen through PPC marketing that Yahoo does not get quite the same traffic but does tend to get a higher percentage of conversions. This varies based on market, but it’s worth noting.

So what this means for internet marketers is this – definitely use Google if you’re interested in traffic. For SEO or PPC, it’d be good to start with a focus on Google, and follow up with adjustments for Yahoo (and with PPC, start advertising with Yahoo) after a set plan is set for Google. Microsoft is really an extra option to take advantage of, but in some cases may not be worth too much extra time/effort unless the amount of traffic gained through them is notable.

Make sure to realize that it’s worth it to go beyond just looking at Google. One fifth of all internet search engine users use Yahoo, so the numbers there speak for themselves. Be sure to keep that in mind when focusing on your internet marketing endeavors.

What is Google AdWords Qualification?

Eric — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:15:47 +0000

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s a link on the left of the main site pages that says “AdWords Qualified Individual”. Yes, I’ve been certified by Google as AdWords Qualified. So what does it mean?

Well, in order to get that fancy logo, it’s more than just a cut and paste of the image. In actuality, if I did that and Google found out about it, I’d be in very big trouble. Legal ramifications, I’m guessing. But I had to earn it before I could put that logo up. How do you go about earning your own fancy logo, to put where you would like?

The first step is to set up an AdWords “My Client Center”. This is basically a super-user level in AdWords; it allows you to have multiple AdWords accounts underneath, run by separate entities. What this means for me is that I can have my clients’ accounts set up either by them or myself, and then I can manage each one, while they are still in complete control of their account. As an AdWords Client Manager, you have full access over the client’s account, to optimize to your (and their) heart’s content. Don’t break any of Google’s rules, and you’ve completed step one.

Once this is set up, you then need to have at least one client (can be yourself) in your account and manage it for a minimum of 90 days. During these 90 days you have to build and maintain at least $1000 total ad expense for your whole My Client Center account.

Now all of this establishes that you actually have some experience with AdWords, but it’s a little more than that. The final step is to pass the Google Advertising Professional Exam. And this isn’t exactly super easy – it takes about an hour and a half, and has over 100 questions in it. To pass, you have to get at least 75%. Plus it’s $50 for each try. I’ll tell you now – if you don’t have a lot of experience with AdWords, it’s worth your time to study a bit before trying to pass this exam.

After all that’s been done and taken care of, you’re Qualified! Then, as long as you maintain the requirements, you can stay that way. The nice thing is that at this point, you can use their logo on your site (as long as you say specifically how many people are qualified), and you can use it to some degree on marketing products, including business cards. That, and Google will set up a nice page for you, so you can show off your achievement.

I realize not everyone loves playing with AdWords as much as I do, but if it’s something you really like – I’d recommend aiming to get Qualified. It’s a very good achievement to have, especially if you want to do pay per click advertising as a service.

Free Google AdWords Tool for Google PPC

Eric — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:31:42 +0000

Brad Callen is an SEO guru and a PPC guru (as well as one of my heroes). He’s released a new product for Google AdWords. It plugs into Firefox as a plugin and allows you to do a few things.

It works any time you do a Google search, and it affects the “Sponsored links” results. One nice perk he’s put in is an option to show the destination URLs for the paid ads. Now not everyone realizes this, but every time you click on one of these ads, the person/company who placed that ad has to pay a certain amount. Hence the term “pay per click”. The option he put in lets you check out their pages without making the advertiser pay. This is just polite, but lets you learn from other marketers who may be bidding on your terms, when you can check their landing pages.

But the nice thing, the huge perk of this tool is a little “View Keywords” button underneath every ad. When you click this, it displays every keyword that that advertiser is bidding on. I’ll let that sink in a moment. Yes, every keyword – this means that you can see all keywords that any one advertiser is bidding on. You can use this information to add new keywords to your own PPC campaign, use those keywords to test out for conversions in a particular ad group. There’s a good chance the keywords that experienced advertisers are bidding on are converting keywords, and you can learn quickly from this.

Yes, it’s a little sneaky. You’re taking all the work that the other advertisers did to do their keyword research and learn what keywords convert, and you’re just jumping past all that work and getting a list of keywords. But it’s legit – and there’s nothing illegal about it.

Brad’s decided to go ahead and give this tool away. I’ll go ahead and forewarn you, he does do an upsell, but the basic functionality of the tool are all present in the free version. If you have Firefox and do any PPC at all (or just want to see what kind of things PPC advertisers are bidding on), it may be something you want to check out. The name of Brad’s new plugin is PPC Web Spy.

If you do check it out, let me know what you think, and if it gets you new conversions. I already got it myself, and I’ll definitely be using it to try advancing my own AdWords campaigns.

AdWords Basics – A PPC Tutorial

Eric — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:14:53 +0000

At a start, Google AdWords looks like an advertising dream. You put in your keywords, choose what you’re willing to pay per click, and then let the traffic come flooding in. In reality, most people don’t know what they’re getting into; often not until it’s too late, and a lot of money has been spent.

One of most basic elements of AdWords that you need to be aware of is the different keyword matching options. To begin, you need to make sure you have your ad groups broken into separate categories (so you can have targeted ads and keywords), but that’s a different topic. For each ad group, you’ll want to have your keyword matching options carefully selected.

There are four different keywords matching options in Google AdWords: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match. They can all be used together, but don’t need to all be used.

The broad match is what the “default” option is. If you enter a basic keyword or keyword phrase, it’s shown in your list as a broad match. This means any match to any of the words in your keyword phrase will cue that keyword. Your ad will show. The search phrase can have the same words in a different order, the same order, or in some cases, even contain completely different words (based on what Google thinks the words are related to). So if you’ve put in the phrase “buy dog food” (with no quotes), the search phrases “buy dog food”, “dog food buy”, “buy Alpo dog food”, and “where to buy dog food” will all trigger this keyword.

The phrase match is entered by using quotes. So you put your keywords in with quotes around them, this is known as a phrase match. It will only be triggered by searches that have that exact phrase in the search, uninterrupted. If there’s an extra word in the middle, it won’t be cued. So “buy dog food” will be triggered for the phrases “buy dog food” and “where to buy dog food”, but not “dog food buy” and “buy Alpo dog food”.

The exact match is entered using brackets. You put your keywords inside brackets to look for exactly that keyword phrase, nothing more, nothing less. For [buy dog food] in your keywords, only “buy dog food” in the search will trigger it. “where to buy dog food”, “dog food buy”, and “buy Alpo dog food” will NOT be caught by that keyword.

And a negative match is done in one of two ways. You can either put in your negative keyword with a negative sign in front of it, or else put it inside your Campaign’s negative keywords group. Either way, a negative match works the same way as the other three – you can either have broad, phrase, or exact. Just put a dash in front of them. So if you entered -”buy dog food” (with quotes), any search with that phrase in it will NOT show your ad. This is something that should be done often, especially if there are particular words you don’t want your ad showing for. Common ones people tend to use are “free” and “crack” (the latter especially for software).

This is just a basic tutorial on PPC with Google’s AdWords, but they’re some of the most crucial details in making sure your own pay per click campaign is set up properly.

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