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Ten Reasons Why PPC Is The Best Form Of Advertising

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Featured, PPC

I was idly surfing the other day, when I came across a very interesting article, which claimed that “Search Is the Worst Form of Advertising.“ You can read it here, if you’re interested: http://bit.ly/hphC9r

I won’t go into the details of everything that he said that was patently ridiculous, though if you’re interested, Melissa Mackey has covered most of the salient points on Search Engine Watch here: http://bit.ly/mCBAvw

Instead, I’ll offer a counter-argument as to why PPC is a really great way to advertise for many (most?) businesses.

Firstly, I should make it clear that the title is intentionally ridiculous – there is no ‘best’ or ‘worst’ form of advertising for everyone (whatever Mr Shatkin-Margolis believes), as different businesses may find a variety of advertising media to be the most effective.  However, there are many advantages to Paid Search, that may explain why it’s become a multi-billion dollar industry in just a handful of years. (more…)

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Google Correlate, Swine Flu And The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Google, Industry News, Tools

Once upon a time, some clever people at Google decided to see whether they could find a correlation between the number of people searching for flu-related keywords and the number of cases of the flu. Not surprisingly, they did find a correlation, and as a result, they’ve been able to predict outbreaks of the flu far more quickly than traditional methods (which could take weeks to log cases).

Now I’m not a doctor, but Scientific American declared last year that Google Flu Trends is “nearly on par with CDC surveillance data.” And if it’s good enough for them, clearly there must be something of value there.

Of course, now that they’ve done the analysis for the flu, everyone has been beating a path to Google’s door trying to find a way to predict their data. So Google decided to release a tool so that anyone that wants to can try to find searches that correlate to their data. Cunningly, they’ve called it Google Correlate. (more…)

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Google AdWords Expert Part Seven – Optimising Your Bids

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Featured, Google AdWords Expert, PPC

You might have been expecting this to be one of the first blogs in this series, but the simple truth is that the amount that you bid is very dependent on your conversion rate, and is strongly influenced by your click through rate and Quality Score. Until your account performance has stabilised, i.e. you’ve grouped and regrouped your keywords until you are happy with them, found some adverts that work, and your account has sufficient history for the Quality Score to be quite stable, your optimal bids are likely to change on a day-to-day basis. I certainly wouldn’t make major changes to your initial bids until the account has reached quite a stable position, unless your budget is running out (in which case, reducing the bids is a no-brainer).

So what is the best position to put your advert in, and how do you calculate it (this is effectively what you are choosing with your bid)? (more…)

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Google AdWords Expert Part Six – Quality Score

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Featured, Google AdWords Expert, PPC

Maximising Your Quality Score

At the start of the last blog, I identified the three things that you need to do in order to optimise your account (assuming that it’s correctly set up) – Maximise the Conversion Rate, Maximise the Quality Score, and optimise your bids. I’ve looked at the conversion rate, and now it’s time to look at the Quality Score.

How Adwords Uses The Quality Score To Decide Your Advert’s Position

Most people understand that Google Adwords assigns a Quality Score to your keyword and advert, and that this is combined with the cost per click to somehow decide how much you have to pay per click, and what position your advert appears in.

But few actually understand exactly how it happens, and just how important your Quality Score really is, or how it works. (more…)

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Google AdWords Expert Part Five – Optimising Your Campaign

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Conversion Rate, Featured, Google AdWords Expert, PPC Campaigns

Welcome to Part Five of Google AdWords Expert. Missed the previous four parts? Find them here: Part One, Two, Three and Four.

So, you’ve set up a campaign, and now you want to start fine-tuning it? Understandable, though depending on your business, optimisation may mean slightly different things…

For the majority of businesses, their ultimate objective is profit - making as much money as possible. And for most of these, the purpose of their PPC campaign is the same.

There are a few cases where this isn’t true. If you have a bricks-and-mortar store somewhere, you may run a PPC campaign to get people to visit you. This would make a lot of sense if you’re selling something that people aren’t likely to buy online, such as a second-hand car. (more…)

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