January 12, 2010 – Scott Orth, from 99SEOReports.com, began this month’s educational event by giving us a high level view of paid search. Before creating PPC campaigns, consider your strategy. Are you local, global or national? What’s your marketing budget? Etc. Later on in the campaign process, Orth advises assigning keyword groups to the landing pages and placing at least three ad variations per group, allowing effective landing page testing.
Among the paid search best practices that EngineWorks’ Steve Burnett added was the importance of keyword research, the lifeblood of any campaign. Continually grow your keywords lists by sorting keywords into tightly themed groups and by reviewing match types. Burnett also stressed creating landing pages that convert. Take the searcher directly to a page that delivers the product you are promoting and build credibility by delivering what you promised.
Anthro’s Josh Patrice gave us his recommendations on testing and reporting once the campaigns are up and running. He noted that while there are key metrics for PPC, it all plays together and is important. There are numerous items to test including keywords, calls to action, day parting and landing pages, all of which can be analyzed in reports. When presenting your campaigns’ data, do so in a way that clearly conveys how the account is doing and how much money is needed.
The evening wrapped up with Anvil Media’s Leisa Hall providing a few tips and tools for effective PPC campaigns. Perhaps her biggest tips were related to quality score. Based on where you fall in the quality score range, the cost per click can be significantly impacted. Among the tools Hall suggested were scheduling and geographic settings. She also hailed the AdWords Editor as a convenient and time-saving tool, allowing easy copy and paste capabilities.
Sarah is a search marketing consultant, helping clients improve ROI through paid search, SEO and social media initiatives. She is also the Official SEMpdx Event Blogger and can be found at all of the monthly events.