Paid Search Marketing (PPC)

Do Not Overlook the Importance of the Display URLs in PPC Ads

When creating a pay-per-click ad (PPC) ad, it is easy to overlook the importance of the display URL. However, search engine marketers have only a limited number of lines of text to work with and should take maximum advantage of each of them. This article summarizes the results of an eye tracking study and reviews the findings of two other tests of display URLs. The eye tracking study demonstrated that the display URL in PPC ads captures a significant portion of the gaze time allocated to the ads. The results of the other two tests showed that display URLs can have a meaningful impact upon click-thru rates.

The Big List of PPC Resources and Articles

This post needs very little introduction. I’ve scoured the web, my bookmarks and Twitter (thanks guys!) for all the very best articles about PPC that I can find. I’ve broken the links down into several categories to make it easier to read. Enjoy!

The Disconnect in PPC vs. SEO Spending

There's a big disconnect in the way marketing dollars are allocated to search engine focused campaigns. Let me highlight: Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013. - Source: ...

Adwords - Monitoring Your Impression Share

Having been inspired by the fantastic paid search posts which I’ve been seeing on here recently, I decided to chime in with one of my own – hopefully you’ll find this useful :)What is impression share?You can calculate your impression share by dividing the total number of search queries relevant to your campaign by the total number of times your ...

Paid Search Lessons from David Szetela

Today I sat in on a webinar taught by David Szetela, the founder of Clix Marketing. He gave some great tips about common PPC and paid search mistakes, and I thought I'd share them below. Don't mix search and content campaigns. David recommends turning off the content network and not mixing search and content...

When You Should Pause Your PPC Campaign

After our dismal experiment with trying to track impressions, Rand's course of action was to have me dive in headfirst and manage our PPC campaign for our Premium memberships. I half-assed the campaigns in August '07 and retooled them in November, when we redesigned our landing page and added a few targeted pages. The clickt...

New Features in Google AdWords & Google Analytics

There have been a number of updates to Google Ad Words and Google Analytics lately so I though the SEOMoz community might want a summary of them. For the most part, I am impressed with the new features and Google should be applauded for listening to their user base and responding with these additions. Improvement #1 - AdWords Geographical Targeting with Google Maps...

Failed Experiment in PPC Arbitrage

I wanted to learn about PPC arbitrage. I'm lazy though, and didn't want to bother with going to all the work Michael Gray suggested in his much more intelligent PPC arbitrage articles. My goal was to sit on my ass, set up a simply PPC campaign and make money off it. So I checked my parked domains f...

Bidding on Branded Terms: Good idea? Bad idea?

Here's something I wanted to pick some minds on: Microsoft (Atlas) recently released a study stating that bidding on branded search terms is probably a waste of budget since users intended to go on the site anyways. And they say half of the b...

The Economic Motive Behind Google's New Advertisement Algorithm

Economics is the study of relationships between supply and demand sprinkled with an understanding of human behavior.Pricing is something that most business owners GUESS, and they typically fall within the average area where the demand curve intersects with the supply curve.<img src="http://www.apollosem.org/images/normal-supply-demand.jpg">Then, the distribu...

Four Recent AdWords Changes You May Have Missed

Over the last few weeks, Google has introduced without a lot of fanfare several important features into the AdWords platform. And they're not just cosmetic changes, so it's worthwhile for advertisers to become familiar with them. Here's a recap of what's new.Content Network Placement ReportOne of the reasons that many advertisers have been he...

We Add Words to AdWords... Google Subtracts them.

(Note from Rand: Tonight, I introduced Mystery Guest to the wonderful word of AdWords. Needless to say, she went a little wild. This one's just for fun, folks)Ads that Weren't Approved: Ads that Google Allowed: ...