Tag Archive for: AdWords

Meet AdWords’ New Keyword Planner Tool

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Do you use the AdWords tools ‘Google Keyword tool’ or ‘AdWords Traffic Estimator’? If so, this is news you’ll need to sit up and take notice of. Both tools seem to be being phased out by a new tool unveiled earlier this month, ‘AdWords Keyword Planner’.

Keyword Planner is a streamlined, focused way to launch new campaigns. Its easy to use wizard interface guides you step-by-step through the process of creating new campaigns and new ad groups.

Larry Kim, of Search Engine Land, has all the details of how to use the tool and what it is capable of doing. However, you may check your AdWords account and find no sign of the Keyword Planner. Right now, it’s only been made available in about 20-percent of accounts, but more accounts are being added all the time.

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Advice For AdWords Scripts Users

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AdWords scripts offer a great opportunity to personalize your campaigns, but they have their flaws. For instance, you’ll need to write the code yourself and their output logs are not very user friendly. Frederick Vallaeys has some in-depth, expert suggestions for frustrated scripts users to get more out of their campaigns and overcome these flaws at Search Engine Land.

Though you probably don’t need to worry about how to make scripts work for the largest of AdWords accounts, his advice on making scripts accessible even if you don’t know how to write code is particularly valuable information. Check it out if you are already using, or are thinking of using, AdWords scripts.

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Does Your Follower Count Increase Your Ad’s Efficacy?

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You may have already noticed ads with a company’s number of Google+ followers noted at the bottom of them. This is a new feature from AdWords Enhanced Campaigns and one that you, like I did, might be wondering about. Does it really make that much of a difference how many followers you have? Does it make a consumer more likely to click on your ad? According to Google, yes.

Frederic Lardinois reports for TechCrunch that these ads with the follower count ‘annotations’ receive a 5 to 10-percent bump in CTR than regular ads. A large number of followers would likely lend a little more credibility to an ad, but those companies with thousands or millions of followers likely already have that credibility through name recognition.

And this new feature isn’t available to just anyone with an AdWords account. You’ll not only need a “significant number of followers”, but you also need “recent, high-quality posts”. The whole thing sounds a little subjective, but it may be worth putting the time in to build up your Google+ page to get the boost in CTR.

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Keys To Using Long Tail Keywords

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You’ve probably read plenty of articles, including some on this blog, that have informed you how important your keywords are to your PPC advertising campaigns. If you’re using short, broad, generic keywords, however, you’re missing out on a more engaged and qualified audience. Using long tail keywords, which are simply longer, more precise search terms, narrows your target audience.

The PYXL blog has some valuable information about how to use long tail keywords to drive more traffic to your site or blog and get more views and clicks on your ads. This is not only a money making option, but also a money saving option as you can eliminate extraneous traffic and hone in on the users who will convert.

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Bing Fires At AdWords ‘Enhanced Campaigns’

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Bing Ads is the clear runner-up in to AdWords in the search engine advertising game, but they’ve seen a way to set themselves apart and give users something AdWords is not. Recently, Bing jumped on AdWords introduction of ‘Enhanced Campaigns’ and, more importantly, the vocal concerns of some users. The general manager of the search network, David Pann, announced that Bing would not be bundling mobile, desktop and tablet advertising together and would give users the flexibility to control their own campaigns.

Not only is this a clever step by Bing to promote itself while putting down Google, but it also gives advertisers an alternative to ‘Enhanced Campaigns’. There’s never been much of a difference between Bing and AdWords, but now you can trade one for the other based on your preferences. Of course, one still comes with a fairly significantly larger audience.

Read more about Bings recent announcements, including some planned changes and the future direction of the product at Search Engine Land.

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Areas For Improvement In Your AdWords Campaign

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Unfortunately, there’s no magic equation that can turn any company’s AdWords campaigns into efficient, low-cost, money makers. There are so many variables that you simply have to do your own leg work to find what works and what doesn’t. But, you aren’t completely on your own. There are some tips and tricks that will help you find your way and Lisa Raehsler has a handful of them for you at Clickz.

As you may have noticed, you’ll want to focus on keywords and ad scheduling to make the most productive impact on your campaigns. You can save money and deliver a more focused audience by simply paying attention to the details in these two areas.

You may also want to toy with the automatic bidding option to reduce your cost-per-click. Whatever you do, don’t settle. Continue to tinker and improve.

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Investigating AdWords Vs. YBN

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You have probably already seen the statistic that states Google accounts for two-thirds of the world’s search queries. So where do the other one-third go? That would be the Yahoo Bing Network. Gregg Hamilton, at Search Engine Watch, jumped from this realization to investigating the pros and cons of the two dominant PPC platforms: AdWords and YBN.

The conclusion seems to be essentially what you’d assume, AdWords is superior. But, YBN has some merit. Though you’ll get less exposure, you’ll also get less competition. And with that, you’ll see a lower cost-per-click. You likely won’t get as much traffic and you’ll see a lower click-through-rate, but if you’re on a budget, YBN may be of interest to you.

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On Becoming AdWords Certified

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Did you know you can become “AdWords Certified”? It’s news to many people, but there is actually a licensure exam of sorts to test your expertise and acumen.

Bill McCaffrey went through the process and wrote about his experience at Business2Community. While he doesn’t go into much detail about what exactly the exam covers, your interest may be piqued enough to look into it yourself. Having the title, “AdWords Certified”, after your name may not make much of a difference to you, but having the knowledge that comes with it could enable you to better understand PPC advertising. At the very least, you may be able to ask more informed questions of those who handle your online marketing campaigns.

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One-Click App Downloads With AdWords

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Did you know there are more than 700-thousand mobile apps for Android or iPhone? How about that the mobile app industry was valued at an estimated $30-billion in 2012? Those are pretty astounding numbers and they suggest that, if you haven’t already gotten into the app game, you should do so soon.

Now, Google is making it easy to find and download your app too with the introduction of a “click to download” ad template in AdWords. It’s part of the “Enhanced Campaigns” you’ve been hearing so much about. Mobile users can download an app with a single click from search listings. iPhone and Android users only, however, as currently, Blackberry and Microsoft are being left out.

Head over to Business2Community where Larry Kim has the particulars on how to set up your mobile app ad in AdWords.

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New AdWords ‘Similar Audience’ Tool

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AdWords recently introduced a new feature capable of showing your ads to more users, while also delivering a highly targeted audience. It sounds too good to be true, but, as Jeremy Decker reports for Search Engine Journal, the ‘similar audience’ feature makes it a reality.

The new feature picks up where remarketing leaves off. Now, not only will prevous visitors of your site be shown your ads, but also other users who have a similar search history as those users. This means that those who may be interested in your product but have not yet found your site will be shown your message and, hopefully, driven to your site.

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