This is the fifth post in our series on Google AdWords reporting within the AdWords dimensions tab. In the previous installments, we’ve covered:

• Google AdWords Dayparting – The AdWords Dimensions Time Tab Report
• Google AdWords Conversion Reporting via the Dimensions Tab
• Google AdWords Destination URL Report
• Google AdWords Demographic Reporting

The focus of this post will be the AdWords geographic reporting options available in the AdWords dimensions tab (also available in WordStream for PPC!):

What Is AdWords Geographic Reporting & Targeting?

The geographic reporting available in the AdWords dimensions tab offers you a look at how your campaigns are performing in different geographic regions:

As with any of the reports in the dimensions tab, you can look at different data points by customizing columns, but there’s an important customization option available for this reporting feature:

By default, your report will show country/territory data, but for many accounts it’s important to see region, metro area, and city data in the report. For instance if you’re running a campaign that is set up to run nationally but targets different cities and geo-regions such as a national chain or an aggregator, it’ll be critical to break out data at a geographic level to see how different regions are performing.

What Do I Actually DO with Geographic Reporting Data & When Should I Use It?

As with any AdWords report or new feature, we want to identify how (and whether) this is actionable. With geographic reporting, one use of the report (similar to dayparting and demographic reporting) is to tune budget allocation by geographic regions that are performing well (and those that are underperforming).

If you’re looking for more information on how geo-targeting works you can check out a few resources we’ve put together on the subject:

• Our AdWords Geotargeting Guide
• How AdWords Location Targeting Really Works
• AdWords Location Extension Guide
• Analyzing your AdWords Geographic Reporting Using Tableau

Beyond the obvious application of tuning budget to better allocate spend in areas that will perform better, you can also drive better performance by looking for “outliers” and instances where you have:

1. High volume regions (high amount of spend/clicks/conversions)
2. Underperformance from a CPA perspective

As with other instances where you might split out a new campaign to target opportunities that often come with high volume and high CPAs such as network targeting (content versus search) or device targeting (mobile and tablet versus laptop and desktop) there may be some geographies within a campaign that drive a lot of volume for you, but also spend too much per conversion.

You can sometimes salvage some (or most) of this volume while reducing costs per conversion by splitting the region out into its own campaign and tuning bids specifically for that region so that they’re lower and can convert at an acceptable rate for you. As with any optimization effort, you need to take into account:

• Your business’s margins
• How important the volume is to your core business strategy
• The time and effort to create the new campaign in relation to the benefit you can likely get (which the size of the segment of traffic can help you assess)

In the end the geographic reporting options in AdWords can be valuable when used by:

• Well-ordered accounts that have tackled the fundamentals (keyword targeting, campaign organization, and strong landing pages) and are looking to squeeze more efficiency from their campaigns
• Accounts with a strong geo-focus that have products or offerings that are geo-specific (i.e., physical locations, locally focused content, etc.)
• Accounts where a single geographic segmentation happens to be driving a lot of volume at an inefficient cost per conversion

You shouldn’t prioritize geographic data analysis above executing on the fundamentals (check out the Google AdWords Grader to see how your current campaigns stack up) but it can be a very useful report, particularly for geo-focused accounts and more mature accounts looking for additional optimizations that will help them move the needle.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a boutique search marketing agency offering search engine marketing consulting services including pay-per-click account management, SEO audits, content marketing services, and a variety of link building packages such as guest posts or blogging strategy.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help, get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Search advertising is a technique used to connect searchers with your products and services through online advertisements.

Search advertising requires advertising through search engines, each with their own specific advertising management platforms--Yahoo search advertising requires using Yahoo! Advertising!, Microsoft uses adCenter, and advertising on Google requires using AdWords.

Search engine advertising works in a pay-per-click format, in which advertisers pay for each users who clicks on their advertisement. Pay-per-click online advertising requires you to bid on specific keywords that relate to your industry. When searchers type in your keywords as a search query, your custom built ads will appear.

Good PPC search engine advertising is all about bidding on the right keywords. In order to advertise on search engines successfully, you'll need to know which keywords will bring you the best results. Unfortunately, the software used to analyze your site’s traffic and conversions tends to be completely disconnected from the software you might use to create your PPC campaigns for search marketing advertising.

WordStream integrates keyword management solutions with keyword analytics and actionable options to create “actalytics”—web analytics that you can act on. This enables you to use your site data as fuel for your PPC search engine advertising with our easy-to-use, all-encompassing interface.

Advertising With Search Engines : Merging Analytics and Action for PPC Search Advertising

WordStream’s keyword management system integrates vital keyword research with AdWords pay-per-click advertising and content authoring tools. This powerful combination enables you to make informed web search advertising decisions and utilize your data towards actions that will optimize your campaigns. Data is useless unless you can act on it, and WordStream’s “actalytics” approach allows you to implement your data in order to make intelligent decisions in pay-per-click search engine advertising.

WordStream’s analytical tools harvest data and present it to you in an easy-to-understand format that shows you which actions will optimize your web search advertising efforts. You’ll receive valuable PPC search advertising data such as:

• Recommended keywords
• Actual visitors and conversion numbers
• Information from Google AdWords regarding bid pricing and ad performance
• Negative keyword suggestions

WordStream’s gives you all the suggestions and tools you need to transform your analytical data into action that will benefit your search marketing advertising. You’ll gain insight into:

• Creating and optimizing keyword groups
• Turning keyword groups into ad groups
• Crafting winning pay-per-click ads
• Discovering and designating negative keywords

Gathering PPC Search Engine Advertising Data from Actual Site Metrics

Typical PPC tools like Google’s Keyword suggestion tool rely on global statistics and broad estimates, giving you a mixed bag of results that may or may not be useful to you. You then have to manage and analyze this data yourself, organize it into a spreadsheet, and make monetary decisions based off of it. This becomes risky not just for your wallet and PPC search engine advertising, but also for the success of your business.

Alternatively, WordStream gathers its pay-per-click keyword suggestions directly from its trillion keyword data base, with 3,000 times more long-tail keywords than Google’s keyword tool. With WordStream, you imbed a small snippet of code in your site and it collects traffic data, telling you the exact terms you should be optimizing for or avoiding in regards to your PPC search advertising.

Using WordStream’s PPC software for pay-per-click search engine advertising means you’re able to make informed choices about which ads to create and how much to bid on them because you’re using your own, reliable, up-to-date data. You’re making decisions based on actual traffic numbers instead of predictions or old data gathered from sources that may not even relate to you and your online marketing campaign.

Manage Your Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising from One Central Interface

WordStream gives enables you to improve your team’s productivity and efficiency by housing everything you need in one central interface. Optimizing for web search advertising has never been easier.

With WordStream’s integrated dashboard, you can easily:

• Research and add new keywords
• Segment and group your existing keywords
• Blacklist negative keywords and keyword groups
• Monitor your AdWords advertising results
• Create Google AdWords text ads
• Establish your minimum and maximum bid
• And much more!

Operating from this keyword- and analytic-driven shared workspace allows your employees to collaborate without needing to juggle a suite of assorted PPC and SEO tools. Google AdWords is directly integrated so that your updates and changes made in WordStream are automatically synced with AdWords. Analytics and action are joined together to give your team a powerful dashboard with which they can take the reigns of your PPC search engine advertising campaigns.

WordStream’s PPC Search Advertising Solution Makes Search Engine Advertising Easy

Create profitable pay-per-click campaign results with WordStream’s Search Advertising solution. Take charge of your pay-per-click search engine advertising:

• Try WordStream Free Today
• Request a Live Demonstration
• Browse Our Collection of Free AdWords EBooks
• Subscribe to our Newsletter
• Analyze Your Campaigns with the AdWords Performance Grader

"search-advertising.jpg" - Photo Attribution

This is the sixth in a series of interviews we're conducting with AdWords advertisers who got unusually high scores using our AdWords Performance Grader. We're reaching out to high scorers to find out what strategies contribute to their strong AdWords performance. For more in this series, see:

• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 1
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 2
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 3
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 4
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 5

This week’s interview is with Jason White. Jason is the Marketing Director for Stadri Emblems, a company that designs and produces custom embroidered patches. Like other millennial marketers, he tells his company’s story through the use of blogging, social media, and search engine marketing. He’s fascinated by the intricacies of pay-per-click marketing and the multiple challenges that are part of the game. Give Jason a virtual high five via Twitter at @sonray.   

Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agency or an Advertiser? What is your primary goal for AdWords marketing?

I've been using AdWords for about three years but I got really focused last year as an in-house guy for Stadri Emblems. We make custom embroidered patches for the outside of garments and woven labels, like the types that are sewn into the back of your shirt. I get some really funny responses when I tell people I market custom patches, but it’s actually a really cool industry, and I’m constantly blown away with the crazy-awesome designs our customers want made into patches. It’s also a unique challenge: bikers use patches, but so do Boy Scouts – the weekend fun of a motorcycle enthusiast is probably not suitable for a Boy Scout. Our primary goal for AdWords is lead generation. Without leads, we don’t get to eat, and I love to eat.   

There are tons of metrics in AdWords – what are your top 3 key performance metrics in AdWords and why?

You really can drown in the data they give you! There are many metrics I look at but if I could only pick three they would be:

1. Return on investment: If my campaigns aren't making the company money, we're in trouble! I love PPC because it uses analytics and creativity – two very different skills – to reach the goal. It's also a risk; there is no guarantee you will see a return on the investment. The analytics help you zero in on profitable keywords, while the creativity helps you maximize every click. Focusing on ROI helps lessen the risk and makes the gamble a bit more calculated.

2. Impression share: It’s a quick way to get an overview of the account and to see how I’m sticking it to my competition (or how they are stealing my lunch). It helps me decide where I should be spending time.

3. Quality Score: My budget changes way more often than I like. Making sure my Quality Score numbers are healthy enables me to maximize the budget I do have and more accurately predict what I can do when I beg for more money. As a data nerd, I enjoy playing around with ad text and landing pages to see how it affects Quality Score and cost per click. I've seen some dramatic decreases in cost per click by testing different Quality Score variables. It’s all about getting a better placement than your competitor; doing so while paying less than they are is good wholesome fun!

Can you describe your AdWords management strategy? How do you set your campaign objectives, and how do you know what’s realistic or not?

I think David Ogilvy's “never stop testing” quote sums up my strategy pretty well. I'm not afraid to try anything to see what will happen and I'm always driven to better my best. I’ve had some massively embarrassing failures, but I’ve also had some huge gains from wacky experiments. No matter what, I come away with a little more knowledge and some new ideas for yet more tests. I’m lucky that we have an in-house Web Developer whom I drive crazy with my test ideas but you'll never know what can cause the phones to light up unless you test, test, test, reload, and test again. I prefer to make data-driven decisions, but my budget always seems to dictate what is realistic for a given campaign. It’d be great to be like Scrooge McDuck and do the backstroke in my huge budget, but getting more out of less can be equally rewarding when the hard decisions need to be made – or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.  

Describe your AdWords management workflow. When you’re doing your account optimization work, how do you decide what to do next in your account? How do you prioritize your work?

I use a Google calendar to remind me when to check a test and when that test started. If I get an idea for a test or ad copy, I'll often add it to the calendar to be tested in the future. As silly as it sounds, I keep a handwritten journal in a marble notebook. The change history report is great but I’m always left wondering what the past Jason was thinking. Keeping a journal really helps me slow down and get a handle on the mess the past Jason left for the current Jason – or how he set us up for success!  My last tool is a custom Excel spreadsheet that I update daily with many different metrics. It helps me track the five most important parts of our company and address areas that need improvement and more focus. When the boss man is asking why we are doing worse than last week, but no one really remembers what we did last week, having those numbers close at hand is key.     

Any advice or tips for AdWords marketers that didn’t score as well as you?

Staying focused on where your profits are will never serve you wrong. 

Put your budget on your strengths while relentlessly testing or improving your weaknesses.  

Lots of coffee and dance music are imperative to designing and optimizing a successful campaign. Cookies don’t hurt either. 

What did you think about the categories we included in the AdWords Grader – were they fair? Anything missing?

Being an in-house guy, the PPC account falls squarely on my shoulders, and sometimes I’m a total head-case about it. The grader was kind of like having a coach – good for my psyche while giving me some new ideas. I think that overall the grader looks at the account very holistically; it highlighted some areas where I can squeak some more gains. I scored low in the Text Ad Optimization area, but I attribute this to letting some ads run longer to achieve statistical significance – you need enough impressions to have accurate data! It also highlights that no matter what tool is being utilized, you still need to use your brain to interpret the data. I was really impressed with the tool, and will be using it in the future to improve my accounts. The “match type best practice pass/fail” was awesome. There is a ton of information regarding match types but few really grasp the power of brackets, quotes, and plus signs.   

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Online Advertising : How to Advertise Online

Online advertising is a broad category of advertising that can include search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, local online advertising, online video marketing, banner advertising, social media optimization (SMO) strategies and other forms of online outreach.

SEM and specifically pay-per-click marketing (PPC) are fast-growing advertising methods for all variety of businesses, and it's no wonder: PPC is relatively easy to carry out in-house, scalable and extremely cost-efficient. PPC is a huge component of effective online advertising for your business.

So what's the "correct" way to use PPC as part of your online advertising strategy? Implementing a few best online advertising practices will ensure that your online advertising efforts result in strong ROI: 

• Begin with solid keyword research: Keyword research is the core component of effective online marketing and using keywords in advertising. Make sure your research is data-driven.
• Organize and group your keywords: Keyword grouping allows for more strategic online advertising for both PPC and SEO campaigns.
• Commit to Advertising Online: To see continuous benefits, you should regularly update and improve your online marketing campaigns.

The best online advertisers are continuously researching and improving their keyword lists. To really be a successful online advertiser, you’ll need to dig through search query reports and do vast amounts of data mining.

It can be difficult to conduct effective online advertising by yourself, so difficult that many businesses rely on expensive online advertising services. WordStream offers comprehensive online advertising services for those wanting help advertising online with PPC. Learn how WordStream, a leading online advertising company with a unique keyword management and inbound marketing system, can play a role in your search marketing strategy.

	Try WordStream for PPC FREE!
	Get instant access to WordStream's PPC Management and Quality Score Optimization Tools. Risk-free, no credit card required!

Online Advertising 101: Start with Effective Keyword Research 

Many aspects of online advertising, specifically with PPC search marketing and SEO, begin with keyword research—the discovery and analysis of words and phrases that searchers use when conducting a search (via search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN and others) for a particular service or product.

Online advertising success requires you to bid on keywords that are relevant to your business. While this practice may seem obvious, you may be surprised how often beginning online advertisers get it wrong when it comes to keyword research (deciding which keywords to bid on) and search advertising. Effective online advertising requires more than brainstorming and instinct—instead, your decisions must be backed by real-world data and analytics. 

So where can you find helpful online advertising data? There are a number of keyword suggestion tools available to online advertisers, although some databases are more comprehensive than others. WordStream's Google AdWords keyword tool has over a trillion-keyword database, maximizing the number of keywords you can discover and add to your campaigns for online advertising.

WordStream also offers online advertising solutions for business looking to get ahead. Learn more about PPC and online advertising:

• Get Your AdWords Account Graded with the AdWords Performance Grader
• Browse our Collection of AdWords EBooks for Online Advertising
• View our Online Advertising Webinars

Try The Best Online Advertising Tools Today for Free!

See the advantages WordStream’s powerful online advertising tools can have on your pay-per-click account. Learn more:

• Sign up for a free trial of WordStream for PPC
• Try our Keyword Research Suite free, no sign-up required!

Photo Attribution - Daniel Borman - "online-advertising.jpg"

Now that Halloween is past us, it’s time to look forward to the holidays. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and retailers know that there’s more to this holiday than turkeys, football, and disagreeable in-laws.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are holy days for major businesses and online retailers, but small businesses often get left in the dust. Well, small businesses, don’t despair—you have a day of your very own! Smack between Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes Small Business Saturday on November 26.

This week is starting to get crowded.

Small Business Saturday began in 2010, and despite being a holiday created and promoted by American Express, there is some real social media momentum with this, and you’ll be smart to grab on to some of the trajectory.

Why Supporting Local Business is Important

In a country that is finally starting to get fed up with Wal-Marts and McDonalds, people are really coming to appreciate the value of small and local businesses and how they play a huge part in communities.

Boston is one city that has shown they are eager to promote Small Biz Sat. The Boston Gov site notes:

“Mayor Menino signed a proclamation formalizing November 27th [in 2010, it’s the 26th this year]– which falls between what is traditionally two of the busiest shopping days of the year, “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” – as Small Business Saturday.”

While I’m not sure that you can just “proclaim” a day and wish it into reality, we should all welcome Small Business Saturday with open arms. There’s an “International Pie Day” (not to be mistaken for “Pi Day”) and a “Talk Like a Pirate Day” after all. It’s really important to support local businesses.

Stephanie Meeks, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, notes that:

“When we invest in small businesses, we are investing in places that give our towns and cities a unique sense of place… By celebrating Small Business Saturday and shopping at independent businesses, everyone can play a part in strengthening our economy and supporting revitalization on our Main Streets.”

Prepare Your Store for Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday (or as I am dubbing it, SBS) is snuggled tightly between two other super shopping days, so people will be coming to your store in a full-blown shopping frenzy. Give the people want they want – gifts for their family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and pizza delivery guys (if you order pizza as much as I do).

Here are some tips for preparing your store for SBS:

• Think of how your products can be great gifts, and promote the gift concept like crazy.
• Offer unique items. Try not to have things people could find anywhere online—make it original.
• Play upon the local. SBS is about small, local businesses, and so the people visiting your store are probably all about the “local.” If you have any products that are locally crafted, point them out and promote them. People love sampling local cuisine while traveling because it is something special and unique to the area. Having gift items and products that are unique to your location is a great incentive.
• Put signs up promoting Small Business Saturday. People who see the signs in your store are obviously already shopping in your store and are more likely to come and support you later. American Express offers some free (albeit a bit bland) posters you can print out.
• Make a day of it! This is the chance to celebrate your business for all that it is. Put up some balloons, offer some goodies, make it a party!

My hometown Newburyport hosts “invitation nights” every few months, in which nearly all local businesses in the downtown area stay open late, offering treats and adult beverages to visitors (one place even has tequila shots). These nights are HUGE hits in town and create a lot of business for local stores. Consider taking a similar approach with Small Business Saturday.

Preparing For Small Business Saturday With Social Media and an Online Presence

When using social media, you’ll want to promote Small Biz Saturday itself, so that people know it’s a great day to support local businesses like you. You’ll also want to give additional incentive for people to visit your store on that day.

• Promote the in-store special offers you’ll have November 26^th via Twitter and Facebook.
• Post on Facebook about SBS and how you are preparing. The Small Business Saturday Facebook Page also offers a cute little “shop small” badge you can post to Facebook or your website.
• Take some photos of your best gift items and post them on your FB wall.
• Remind fans that they can get $25 for signing up for Small Business Saturday. They’ll be grateful to you and may even spend some of that cash in your store.
• Post a video on Youtube about what makes your store special. Make it yourself, or use the templates SBS offers on their Facebook page.
• Tweet about #SmallBusinessSaturday, and remind folks of all the cool stuff you’ll be offering that day. Maybe some free pins or stickers?
• Send an email to your mailing list about Small Business Saturday and why it’s important to support local biz.
• Blog about the big day as well and explain what it’s all about.

Using PPC for Small Business Saturday

• Create a “Small Business Saturday” campaign, tailored for this once-a-year-day. WordStream offers free Google keyword generator tools that can assist you.
• Enable location targeting for your PPC ads so that they’ll show up for local searches.
• Implement negative keywords to stop wasted spend and redirect those funds to your Small Business Saturday campaign. Negative keyword tools can help you do this.
• Use the AdWords Performance Grader to get your AdWords account into tip-top shape before Small Business Saturday. Take action on the suggested changes to save money, or consider hiring a PPC agency to do the work for you.

Hanging On to Those New Visitors

Make sure you aren’t forgotten once Small Business Saturday comes to a close.

• On Small Business Saturday, ask visitors to sign up for your mailing list so you can notify them of future special offers and events.
• Take photos throughout the day and then post them to Facebook later. Make sure people know you’ll be posting the pictures—that way they’ll visit and tag themselves later.
• Continue the conversation by asking for feedback. Conversation is a key part of keeping happy Facebook fans.

These tips will help you get the most out of Small Business Saturday, and will transform the success of a single day into long-term benefits for you and your business.

Do you have any other ideas about how to take advantage of Small Business Saturday?

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Take a look at the two ads below. Imagine you are a business owner who is looking for signs that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). You know you've got to buy ADA signs to comply with the law. You're not deciding whether or not to get these signs – only who to buy them from.

With that in mind, which ad would you click on? Which one would be more likely to earn your business?

PPC Ad #1

PPC Ad #2

This is not an easy contest to call. The ad that lost was the control ad for months. It beat quite a few challenger ads. Even though it lost badly in this contest, it's a REALLY good ad.

Surprisingly, there is no difference in the title or URL. The only differences are in the body copy of the ad. It's unusual to see such a large difference in CTR between ads that have the same title/URL.

Alright, made your decision?

The winning ad is ad number two. It was written by BoostCTR writer "SublimeSuccess," and it increased CTR by 164%. Where the original ad was getting 1 click, the new ad is getting 2.64 clicks. That is a HUGE increase in CTR.

So why did the new ad win? And why did it win by so much? Let's take a look...

1. While the losing ad appealed to the benefit disabled persons receive, the winning ad appealed to the benefit businesses receive! This is the single biggest reason for the difference in CTR. "Bold & Clear" is a benefit to the people who will see the signs. "Avoid Hefty Fines" is a benefit the business (and purchaser of the signs) receives. This is a perfect illustration of the importance of getting into your customer's mind.

2. Both ads use a strong call to action. The losing ad appeals to the searcher's good will by emphasizing the signs are made in the USA. The winning ad, on the other hand, appeals to the searcher's fear of hefty fines. The appeal to the searcher's fear is far stronger.

3. The winning ad avoids raising the searcher's buying resistance.The losing ad uses the verb "Buy," while the winning ad uses the verb "Get." Any overt attempt to sell raises a person's buying resistance, so the choice to use "Get" instead of "Buy" was astute.

4. Last but not least, the winning ad uses an exclamation point. It may seem silly, but an exclamation point at the end of Line 1 or Line 2 of the body copy seems to predictably increase CTR. While some may interpret an exclamation point as "hype," I think many searchers interpret it as enthusiasm and urgency. They respond by clicking.

The bottom line: The new ad wins because it appeals to the person who is buying the signs instead of the person who will be seeing the signs. Furthermore, the winning ad is more urgent, more enthusiastic, and avoids prematurely raising the searcher's buying resistance.

And for these reasons, the new ad wins by a whopping 164%.

Such a small space... such a big difference. That's what happens when you concentrate on your market, crawl into your prospect's mind, and use your creativity to come up with a completely new angle.

What's your takeaway from this contest? Feel free to leave a comment below.

By the way...

The BoostCTR writers have collectively spent thousands of hours improving pay-per-click ads on both Google and Facebook. They increase CTR and conversions by 30% on average, sometimes as much as 164% or more. Go ahead and put 'em to work... risk-free for 30 days!

About the Author: Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter and BoostCTR writer. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, business growth, and lifestyle design.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Monday, Google+ finally opened its doors to businesses with Google+ Pages.

That’s right, businesses now have the option of creating a brand page on Google+. You aren’t limited to one page either—if you have several popular products, you might want to consider making different pages for your business, products, and even events.

Google+ also lets you choose from a few different types of pages that break down into many sub-categories. For example, putting yourself in the “local business” category gives you the option of listing an address and phone number. 

What You Can Do With Your Google+ Page

There’s a lot you can do on your Google+ page. There’s the obvious, such as uploading and sharing photos, videos, links, and viewing all your +1s. But there’s plenty more you can do, and a lot of room for creativity.

Hangouts - Google suggests some inventive ways to use the Hangout feature, such as salons hosting how-to sessions, or local bookstores offering author video chats.

Circles - Circles come in handy for businesses, giving you option of segmenting your followers into smaller groups, allowing you to share information with some followers while barring others. For example, you might try creating a “super-fan” circle, and share special discounts and exclusive offers only with the cream of the crop.

In TechCrunch’s discussion about Google+ Pages, they note that:

“If Google provides an efficient and accurate way to sort followers into circles by age, location, and other characteristics, Pages could publish different updates to different demographic subsets of their audience to maximize the relevancy of those updates.”

While this isn’t available yet, it’s certainly a realistic possibility that we can hope to see in the future.

Businesses Being Added to Circles

It should be noted that if someone ‘+1s’ your business, that does not automatically mean they are following you in Google+. Business pages act like regular pages in that a user must add you to a Google+ circle in order to follow your business.

In the screenshot above, you have the option to add Angry Birds to your circles, making you a follower, or +1 them. Currently the +1s shown on a Google+ Page are only the +1s for that particular page, but Google plans on making that number show all +1s across the business’ entire site in the future.

+ Direct Connect

Google has started rolling out a new feature that could mean big things for search—what Google calls Direct Connect. When someone searches for your business with the ‘+’ sign in front of it, they’ll be sent directly to your Google+ Page.

This feature isn’t available to everyone at the moment, but it’ll continue to become more available as Google tries to push this idea. If the ‘+’ really takes off, it will be overlapping the search experience with user engagement in a unique way.

In the New York Times’ coverage of the new Google+ Pages, Google VP of products Bradley Horowtiz imagines a future where the Direct Connect feature gains an increasingly powerful presence:

 “Over time, I expect ‘+Pepsi’ to emerge on every can, on TV spots and on the Web site and become a cult phenomenon…Over a couple of quarters, brands will learn to utilize this.”

There’s Google, thinking big. Google also notes that they plan to find ways to link your +Page to your AdWords campaigns, which can only mean bigger things are yet to come.

Check out WordStream's Google+ Page! You can like us or add us to your circles! Spread the WordStream love.

Do you have any suggestions about how to use Google+ Pages? What do you think of the Google+ Direct Connect idea?

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

If you are managing PPC campaigns in both Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter, then allow me to be the bearer of some good news. The good folks over at Microsoft are finally making changes to the adCenter platform to make it more familiar to AdWords users.

In fact, as this Media Post article describes, Microsoft has conceded that because Google owns the majority of the market share it has become the unofficial industry standard. While this may be a tough pill for Microsoft to swallow, it’s good news for advertisers who are constantly struggling to save time while optimizing campaigns on both networks.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that are changing in adCenter – changes that will make it easier to navigate for people who are currently advertising on Google AdWords:

• Easier account import. You can now use version 8.1 of the adCenter desktop software to import your AdWords account by inputting your Google credentials. (Although, does anyone else feel funny or nervous about giving Microsoft your Google credentials?)
• Elimination of keyword-level negatives. Previously adCenter allowed you to set negatives on the keyword level. While theoretically this could be helpful under certain circumstances, it made managing your negative keywords crazy complicated – if you set a keyword-level negative, no ad group or campaign negatives would be applied to the keyword.

• Introduction of multiple negative match types. Before this change, all negative keywords were phrase matched, but now you can set the negative match type to either phrase or exact.

There are still several differences between AdWords and adCenter, some of which are significant and make account management unnecessarily difficult. However, it’s a good first step at bringing the two platforms more in synch and allowing advertisers to more easily access 95% of the eyeballs searching on the Internet.

This is a guest post by Adam Shain, an associate product manager at WordStream, where he works primarily on expanding and improving the PPC management platform. Previously he worked at J-Town Productions and served in the Strategic Planning and International Cooperation Division of the Israel Defense Forces. He holds an MS in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and an MBA from Babson College. Adam lives in Sharon, Massachusetts, with his wife and two adorable children.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

This weird owl turned up when I searched Flickr for "Friday." Let's just go with it.

Google and Other Forms of Corporate Evil

Eric Schmidt Is Right: Google’s Glory Days Are Numbered – At TechCrunch, Dan Kaplan quotes from Eric Schmidt’s letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights (“History shows that popular technology is often supplanted by entirely new models”) and explains why Google is headed for a downfall.

Google Freshness Update: The Real Winners & Losers – Google recently announced a new update that delivers “fresher” results for about 35% of queries. Patrick Altolft thinks will be bad for brands, whose own properties will get pushed below random news and reviews.

Google May Penalize Your Site for Having Too Many Ads – At PubCon this week, Matt Cutts said that Google may penalize sites with too many ads, especially above the fold, obscuring your content. At Search Engine Watch, John Rampton points out that this is odd, since Google advises AdSense users that “All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold.”

Evil Social Networks – Getting away from Google: Charlie Stross argues that Klout is the most evil type of social network:

Klout [analyzes] your social graph and create accounts for all your contacts without asking them for prior consent. It also appears to use an unwitting user's Twitter or FB credentials to post updates on their Klout scores, prompting the curious-but-ignorant to click on a link to Klout, whereupon they will be offered a chance to log in with their Facebook or Twitter credentials. So it spreads like herpes and it's just as hard to get rid of.

PPC Potpourri

Are You Creeping Out Your Customers With Remarketing? – Remarketing can be an effective technique, but when do you cross the line into stalking? Brad Geddes shares some strategies, like frequency capping, to avoid leaving a bad taste in potential customers’ mouths.

How to Pick a Winning Ad – Sometimes it’s hard to know whether to favor the ad with higher CTR or higher conversion rate. Mike Boudet at SEJ runs some numbers in this case study.

Google Bottom Ad Placements Eroding CTR – Jeff Allen at PPC Hero notes that the new bottom-of-the-SERP placements for AdWords ads seem to have a negative effect on CTR. Since lower ad revenues aren’t good for Google, he reasons, they must know something he doesn’t.

SEO & Content Marketing

Jedi Mind Tricks: 17 Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People – Speaking of creepy, these “tricks” for getting people to buy stuff made me feel a bit ooky about being a marketer (a legal conman?), but still, they’re good tips! And interesting – for example, “swearing can help influence an audience” and “your customers will buy an upsell 60 percent of the time for up to 60% of the original purchase price.” So if someone buys a shirt, you should try to sell them a tie, not a suit.

#1 Rule for SEO Success: Build Spaceships – How can you resist a post with a title like that? I sure couldn’t – I had to know what the heck Cyrus Shepard was talking about. Turns out, he’s talking about NASA and their bangin’ link profile. “By all accounts, NASA should be terrible at SEO. Their title tags are horrible. They use flash everywhere and the hierarchy of the site’s navigation is a spider nightmare.” Nonetheless, they have huge domain authority because they’re good at building spaceships. In other words, spend less time doing “SEO” and more time building something great.

The Right and the Wrong Way to Use Video for Blogging Success – Video is great, says Aman Basanti, but make sure you’re using it for things that are better expressed visually than in writing – for example, makeup tutorials or guitar lessons.

Content Marketing Essentials: Tactical Advice From A To Z – 26 hot tips on content marketing from the amazing Marty Weintraub. (One is “We love link roundups” – good news!)

What Content Writers can learn from SkyMall – Tony Verre thinks that content writers can learn a lot from SkyMall, the ridiculous catalog in the back of every airplane seat, like exactly what a product is and why you need it in 100 words or less.

Grab Bag

I'm Sorry. I Messed Up. – In this refreshingly personal post on the Ontolo blog, Ben Wills explains his life philosophy –  “I decided I'd rather *do* things than _have_ things” – and apologizes for letting his link building tools get away from his principles by including too many features.

What Do a Bunch of Old Jews Know About Living Forever? – In totally-unrelated-to-marketing news: New York Magazine has an interesting profile on a group of Ashkenazim Jews who seem to possess some kind of magical anti-aging gene. One, Irving Kahn, “hasn’t skipped a day of work in more years than he can remember” (and he’s 105).

Have a great weekend!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Online Marketing : Conducting Your Online Marketing Strategy

Online marketing is a broad category of marketing that can include search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, local online marketing, online video marketing, banner marketing, social media optimization (SMO) strategies and other forms of online outreach.

SEM and specifically pay-per-click marketing (PPC) are fast-growing marketing methods for all kinds of different businesses, and it's no wonder why: with proper knowledge, PPC delivers impressive results, is scalable, and is extremely cost-efficient. PPC is a huge component of effective online marketing for your business.

So how do you use PPC as part of your online marketing strategy? Utilizing a few best online marketing practices will ensure that your online marketing efforts result in strong ROI: 

• Begin with solid keyword research: Keyword research is the core building block of effective online marketing. Make sure your research is data-driven.
• Organize and group keywords: Keyword grouping enables more strategic online marketing for both PPC and SEO campaigns.
• Commit to marketing online: To see continuous benefits, you should regularly update and tweak your online marketing campaigns.

The best online marketing strategies involve continuously researching and improving keyword lists. To really become a successful online marketer, you’ll need to dig through search query reports and conduct large amounts of data mining.

It can be difficult to run an effective online marketing campaign by yourself, so difficult that many businesses rely on expensive online marketing services or costly online marketing consultants. WordStream offers comprehensive online marketing services for those wanting help with online marketing for PPC.

Learn how WordStream, a leading online marketing company with a unique keyword management and inbound marketing system, can play a role in your online marketing strategy.

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Online Marketing Plan: Start with Effective Keyword Research 

Many aspects of online marketing, specifically with PPC search marketing and SEO, begin with keyword research—the discovery and analysis of words and phrases that searchers use when conducting a web search (via search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN and others) for a particular service or product.

Online marketing success requires you to bid on keywords that are relevant to your business. While this practice may seem self-explanatory, you may be surprised how often beginning online marketers get it wrong when it comes to keyword research (deciding which keywords to bid on) and search marketing. The best online marketing strategies require more than instinct and hunches—instead, your keyword decisions must be backed by real-world data and online marketing analytics. 

So where can you find helpful online marketing data? There are a number of keyword suggestion tools available to those looking to develop online marketing plans, although some databases are more comprehensive than others. WordStream’s Google AdWords keyword tool has over a trillion-keyword database, maximizing the number of keywords you can discover and add to your campaigns for online marketing.

Online Marketing Software

WordStream's comprehensive online marketing software makes it easy to run your PPC campaigns. Our software has been developed by online marketing experts and is packed with all the online marketing tools you'll need to be successful at PPC. 

WordStream for PPC Online Marketing Software offers a number of advantages:

• Competitive Intelligence: A continuously growing repository of private, highly relevant keywords to use in online marketing campaigns.
• Better Targeting with Keyword Tools: Keyword discovery, analysis, and grouping tools help you optimize your keywords and create more search-specific ads coupled with relevant landing pages.
• Strong Campaign Structure: Campaign management tools help you reach higher click-through rates (CTR) and improve your Quality Scores, lowering your bid spend while improving ad placement in online marketing.
• Increased relevance to your audience: Not just more clicks, but better conversion rates.
• Improved productivity: Savings alerts and actionable analytics save you time and reduce lost online marketing opportunities.

Our online marketing software provides everything you need to optimize your online marketing campaigns and gives you the tools to succeed at PPC. But tools are only powerful if you have the knowledge of how to use them.

Online Marketing Services : WordStream's Online Marketing Managed Services

If you are new to online marketing or don’t have time to manage your online marketing campaigns personally, WordStream offers comprehensive services that can help. Consider checking out our Online Marketing Managed Services.

Our team of online marketing experts can provide you with the knowledge and insight you need to develop a winning online marketing strategy.

Online Marketing : Free Online Marketing Tools

WordStream offers a number of free tools to help you with your online marketing strategy:

• AdWords Performance Grader - Get your AdWords account analyzed and graded on important metrics like Quality Score, landing page optimization, CTR, and other vital factors. You'll also get the chance to see how your account compares to those of a similar spend range.
• Free Keyword Tool - Get access to thousands of keyword suggestions from a continuously updated database of more than a trillion unique search queries.
• Free Keyword Niche Finder - Discover your most profitable pockets of keyword opportunities.
• Free Keyword Grouper - Paste in your keyword list and get back an organized keyword structure ready for relevant online marketing campaigns.
• Negative Keyword Tool - Erase waste in your online marketing campaigns by identifying irrelevant keywords that could destroy your ROI. 
• Online Marketing Webinars - Look for upcoming online marketing webinars or download our slides of previous webinars.

Online Marketing Help : Free Online Marketing EBooks

If you're looking to learn more about online marketing, browse through our vast collection of Online Marketing EBooks. They're yours to download and keep--and they are absolutely free!

Online Marketing Help : Online Marketing Articles

Our online marketing blog is a fantastic resource for those looking to learn more about online marketing--it's regularly updated and packed with valuable insight and knowledge. Read it to learn more about online marketing solutions and tricks of the trade. You'll be an online marketing expert before you know it!

Try The Best Online Marketing Tools Today for Free!

See the advantages WordStream’s powerful online marketing tools can have on your pay-per-click account. Learn more:

• Sign up for a free trial of WordStream for PPC
• Try our Keyword Research Suite free, no sign-up required!

Photo Attribution : Kevin Dooley

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from looking at our analytics over the years since we launched this blog, it’s that People. Love. Link building. Articles about link building consistently drive the most traffic over time. Why? It’s not the only thing that matters for SEO – you also need great title tags, strong information architecture, etc., etc. Those posts do pretty well too, but there’s not as much to say about them.

My theory is that link building is more like a game, and I bet a lot of SEOs grew up as gamers. SEO link building isn’t just a matter of learning a few basic best practices and applying them. There will always be new ways to score links, and getting a great link is a triumph for an SEO. It’s like a new top score on Donkey Kong.

Are you the King of Kong?

Since we’ve published so many popular link building posts here, I decided to round them up for easy reference.

Our Top 10 Most Popular SEO Link Building Posts

1. How to Create Amazing Backlinks – Why build mediocre links when you can build amazing ones?! This post outlines a five-step process for discovering what people are linking to, who’s linking to it, why they’re linking to it, and how you can get in on the action.
2. How We Got a Link from The New York Times – A case study on a successful example of link bait. Link bait’s not a dirty word around here!
3. How to Get Do Follow Links from Wikipedia Articles in Four Simple Steps – Yes, yes, we know that Wikipedia links are no-follow. This post is actually about “a means for accumulating passive, recurring, and authoritative links to content by leveraging the popularity and search prominence of Wikipedia.”
4. Want More Link Juice? Here’s an Easy Way to Get It – This post explains how to find pools of link equity in your site and “drain” them to other pages.
5. What are the Top Article Submission Websites for Link Building? – In addition to his four favorite article submission sites, Ken Lyons shares some tips for getting your articles accepted and syndicated.
6. Advanced Link Building: Clone Your Most Successful Link Profiles – You know it’s worthwhile to analyze links on competitor sites, but did you know you should also be examining your own link profiles for link opportunities? This post explains how to replicate the success of your strongest ranking page on your weaker ranking pages.
7. Five Experts on SEO Link Building – Garrett French, Ben Wills, Wiep Knol, Debra Mastaler and Julie Joyce answered eight questions on link building tools and strategies. Expertastic!
8. Link Building Magic: How to Turn Citations into Links – Take a day off from trying to get a link from the NYT every now and then and tackle some low-hanging fruit, like turning mentions of your brand or products into valuable links.
9. Five Myths About Link Building – Larry tries to dispel some persistent link building myths – for example, that reciprocal links are always bad.
10. Link Building 101: 5 Simple Ways to Build Links that Have Authority AND Great Anchor Text – A lot of the above posts are pretty advanced. This one’s for you link building beginners!

Link Building Wild Cards

Here are a few more that didn’t make the top 10, but that I think you’ll like anyway:

• Link Popularity Case Study: The Domino Effect of Inbound Links – I wrote this post on the tendency for one or two really big links to produce a string of additional links back to your content.
• Real Life Link Building: Three Real Relationships You Can Turn Into Virtual Votes – It’s just as important – heck, more important – to build relationships as your grow your website and business. The bonus part is, relationship often result in links!
• 10 Super-Quick Link Building Tips for Bloggers and Site Owners – This is the one to read if you’ve only got two minutes to spare.
• How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website – Not a link building post exactly, but an important step for site maintenance.
• SEO Lab: Testing Anchor Text Links – This was a test to see if Google only counts the first instance of anchor text it encounters on a page to the same URL, and if Google counts "nofollow" anchor text. (Fair warning: The results may not longer be valid as this post is more than a year old.)

A Few Link Building Guest Posts

And finally here are some of our best link building articles from guest authors:

• Using Educational Linkbait to Get Valuable .edu Links – I love this guest post by Rebecca Haden on a smart strategy for getting high-value links from stingy .edu domains.
• 3 Ways to Scale Linkbuilding with Google Docs – The dreaded words from any manager: “That’s great, but does it scale?” Here are some tips on scaling your link building efforts from Distilled’s John Doherty.
• Visualizing Link Flow Within a Site – A.D. Srikanth shares this tip for using Xenu and Graphiz to help you see how your link architecture is working.
• Giving Your Links a Boost with Tiered Link Building – Kieran Flanagan contributed this article on building secondary “booster links” to your higher-quality inbound links.
• The Problem with Footer Links in SEO – This guest post by Lior Levin points out some potential pitfalls with getting links in a site’s footer as opposed to the body of the page.

Now go forth and build some links!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Online Marketing Agency

WordStream for Your Online Marketing Agency

Online marketing agency solutions from WordStream are designed for PPC advertising agencies that want to manage their clients Google AdWords campaigns more efficiently. WordStream's in-house online marketing experts help online marketing agencies reach their clients' goals by providing comprehensive PPC and online marketing services.

Our Results with Online Marketing Agencies:

• Decreased monthly cost by $1000 while maintaining click volume
• Spend reduced by 33%, while maintaining consistent volume of traffic
• CPC reduced by 25% with increased impressions
• Tripled the click-through rate of an ad group from 2.79% to 7.36% through optimization of ad text.
• Increased Quality Score averages to 7, which provided 43% lower cost-per-click (CPC) while maintaining conversion volume.

What An Online Marketing Agency Can Achieve With WordStream's PPC Agency Software:

Our platform allows online marketing consultants to manage various paid search campaigns through a single interface. Our software will help you improve your PPC management workflow and automate pay-per-click marketing tasks, saving your internet marketing agency valuable time. With a combination of hands-on account work by your dedicated online marketing expert Account Manager, and a team of search marketing professionals, WordStream helps you achieve your pay-per-click marketing goals and  improve your agency's online marketing management.

What Makes WordStream's Online Marketing Agency Solutions Different?

At WordStream we do more than create great software for internet marketing agencies that makes pay-per-click marketing easier and more profitable; we live, eat and breath PPC marketing.  We constantly research the latest best practices and work hard to deliver the best PPC results for agencies and give search engine marketing agencies the online marketing tools they need to succeed in their online marketing business.

FAQ's About Our Experience With Online Marketing Agencies

How knowledgeable are WordStream’s Account Managers and how do they manage web advertising for online marketing agencies?
WordStream's Account Managers are incredible knowledgeable about pay-per-click marketing and online marketing strategies. In addition to utilizing our PPC platform and Quality Score technology to power their work with you, the online marketing expert Account Managers are Google AdWords Certified and incorporate a team approach. Your Account Manager will work with your online marketing agency to set up a new PPC workflow and teach you what you need to know to drive cost efficient PPC campaigns for your online marketing consulting business.

What type of clients does WordStream work with?
WordStream works with online advertisers in many different industries. Most of our clients are spending between $10,000-$50,000 per month in Google AdWords.

Is WordStream a Google AdWords Reseller?
No. Unlike Google resellers who combine their fees with your AdWords spend, WordStream’s fees are 100% transparent. Your online marketing consulting business pays for your AdWords spend. This enables you to always know how much spend is going towards AdWords advertising.

Will WordStream use my existing AdWords account, or will you create a new account for my PPC marketing agency?
The choice is yours, but typically we use your pre-existing Google AdWords account.

Do I get monthly reports about my account?
Yes! We strive to be transparent in the work we do with your online marketing advertising agency. Not only will your search marketing agency receive reports and scheduled calls from your dedicated Account Manager, you will have a free subscription to our PPC agency software so that you have complete access to your data.

What if I want to take over management of my account at some point in the future?
No problem! Your internet marketing agency account is managed using our online marketing agency software which you will have access to. You can transfer from full PPC Management Services to our do-it-yourself platform easily if and when you choose.

Does my PPC marketing agency have to sign annual or long-term contracts with WordStream?
No, there is no long-term commitment required. Your online marketing advertising agency should understand that building and managing effective PPC campaigns takes time, commitment, and consistency. However, if you do not see the results you need you can discontinue our online marketing tools at any time with a 2-week notice.

What happens to my account once I sign on?
We can begin immediately! Usually, we will start things with a kick-off call with your dedicated online marketing PPC expert Account Manager to discuss your goals and online marketing strategy.

What does it cost to have WordStream manage my Google AdWords account?
Pricing for online marketing agencies starts at $750/month. Click here for more details, or contact us for a detailed quote.

Is there a set-up fee to start working on my online marketing agency's account?
No, there are no extra or hidden one-time fees with WordStream's online marketing services. Simply sign on with your first month payment.

How do I get started?
Request a consultation and pricing quote online. Or call us at 855.967.3787
 

Advertise on Google : Search Marketing Strategy

Advertising on Google with AdWords is an excellent way to gain brand exposure and bring qualified visitors to your website. How do you advertise on Google and how do you get placement with their sponsored links?

In the below example of a Google search engine results page (SERP), you can see two paid links sections. One sits above the organic or "natural" links section and one rests to the right of the organic results.

These sponsored results are different from the organic Google results in that they're paid for. Companies can enter an auction to have their ad appear in Google sponsored links if it's relevant to a user's search query by setting up an AdWords account.

How to Advertise on Google : Using AdWords

AdWords is Google's pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform and its main source of revenue. In the AdWords paid search advertising model, users bid on the keywords they want to trigger their sponsored ads, and Google decides which ads are displayed and in what position based on each user's maximum bid and Quality Score. Quality Score is determined by a number of factors:

• Relevance of ad copy to the keyword
• Relevance of the ad to its corresponding landing page
• The ad's click-through rate (CTR)
• Historical account performance
• Other relevance and performance factors

A higher Quality Score equates to more impressions at lower costs, lowering your cost per click and cost per action. 

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This might seem like a lot to keep track of, but search advertising on Google doesn't have to be overwhelming. WordStream's PPC management system is a unique tool specifically designed for search marketers that simplifies and improves your PPC marketing processes so you can maintain high Quality Scores and collect search-driven profits by advertising on Google. WordStream also offers online marketing services for web marketers looking to hand over their PPC accounts to experts. 

How to Advertise on Google : Use Keyword Grouping

The single most important, and yet often overlooked, thing you can do to ensure successful advertising on Google is keyword grouping. Grouping your keywords makes your keyword research far more valuable and allows you take action with your data. The key is to segment your keywords into small, manageable groups and subgroups by relevance, forming a logical hierarchy.

How does this help you successfully advertise on Google? Converting your close-knit keyword groups into AdWords ad groups primes them for pay-per-click success. Effective keyword grouping improves Quality Score (and sponsored link placement) in these ways: 

• More relevant ads: Ad groups with tight semantic relevance make it easy and natural to write relevant and eye-catching ads. For example, it's much easier to speak directly to users searching for "cheap dog houses" than general "dog supplies."
• More relevant landing pages: Similarly, you'll be able to create specific and compelling landing pages based off of these tight keyword groups, giving searchers a destination to land on and an opportunity to convert.
• Compounding PPC benefits: More relevant ads and landing pages will raise your CTR, improving Quality Score, and leading to more traffic and more conversions with a lower CPC.

Advertise on Google with WordStream : Get Better Results for Less Money

Advertise on Google and get better sponsored link results for less money: It may sound too good to be true, but WordStream's PPC tools make it possible. WordStream helps online advertisers structure campaigns according to best practices that optimize your Quality Score, enabling your ads to get more exposure. The WordStream software is tightly integrated with Google AdWords, making it fast and easy to improve your campaigns.

With WordStream, advertising on Google is easy. You can organize thousands of keywords in seconds and receive smart suggestions for ad groups that generate relevant traffic.

Online advertising with Google becomes easy-- when you like what WordStream suggests, you can create the group with one click. Next you can map the group to content on your site and make it into an ad group. Then head over to the PPC campaigns tab in WordStream to set up your first-page bid and write text ads that will be your online advertisements on Google.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising with Google : Writing Clickable Text Ads

WordStream gives you all the tools you need to advertise on Google. WordStream helps you craft winning text ads that attract users, raising your CTR and Quality Score. The text ad generator tool automatically populates the fields of your Google ad with the most popular and relevant keywords in your ad group, helping you hone in on keywords and phrases that will appeal to your potential customers. You can then review and publish your ad right within the WordStream platform. 

Adjust the language to create a message that grabs the searcher's attention when it is advertised on Google. Be sure your ad takes the user to a landing page that is relevant to the advertisement you have written and the keyword you're bidding on. Higher relevance is rewarded by Google with higher Quality Score. 

Advertising with Google AdWords through pay-per-click marketing and keyword advertising can be difficult, but with the right tools and expertise, it can be a breeze. With PPC software to help you group keywords for ad groups and write Google-friendly advertisements, you can have great success advertising on Google with minimum time investment and maximum cost-efficiency.

Advertise on Google with WordStream

Learn more about WordStream's Google AdWords keyword management and pay-per-click marketing solutions: 

• Sign up for FREE trial
• Request a Google AdWords Assessment

Want to Learn More about How to Advertise with Google?

WordStream offers a array of tools and learning material for business looking to learn more about advertising on Google.

• Download our collection of free AdWords EBooks
• Watch our educational marketing webinars
• Try our Free Keyword Tools
• Assess your current AdWords campaigns with our free AdWords Performance Grader

This is the seventh in a series of interviews we're conducting with AdWords advertisers who got unusually high scores using our AdWords Performance Grader. We're reaching out to high scorers to find out what strategies contribute to their strong AdWords performance. For more in this series, see:

• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 1
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 2
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 3
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 4
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 5
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 6

This week’s interview is with Danny Wood of Canada’s Web Shop, an online marketing company that offers pay-per-click advertising and SEO services.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agency or an Advertiser? What is your primary goal for AdWords marketing?

I’m an Online Marketing Consultant for Canada’s Web Shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Our AdWords clients are mostly of the lead-generation kind, as opposed to e-commerce, although we do service both. In addition to working in PPC, I also carry out search engine optimization and develop social media marketing plans for our clients. I’ve been using AdWords for several years, and am a Certified AdWords Qualified Individual in Search Advertising.

My primary goal with AdWords is to drive conversions for clients, whether they are sales or leads. A secondary goal would be to provide the client with market research data collected from AdWords and analytics, as even in a campaign that isn’t yet converting, there can always be value for clients with a PPC campaign.

There are tons of metrics in AdWords – what are your top 3 key performance metrics in AdWords and why?

My top three metrics are:

• CTR – The most important factor in determining Quality Score. Good CTR means you are targeting the right keywords, you have the right ad copy, your clicks will be (relatively) affordable, and you will be able to get conversions.
• (Good Quality) Conversions – The true mark of success in AdWords, conversions prove that AdWords is the right kind of advertising for a client. I put the emphasis on high-quality conversions, as bad leads that are generated for a client should not be counted as success.
• CPC – Getting the best advertising rate for clients. PPC advertising differs from other forms of advertising in that a PPC account that is well managed will cost less for the client. I agree strongly with PPC experts who advise PPC managers to treat client money as if it was their own personal cash.  

Can you describe your AdWords management strategy? How do you set your campaign objectives, and how do you know what’s realistic or not?

In a nutshell, I would say that my strategy involves going big with lots of different tests in terms of keywords, ad groups and landing pages, then cutting back to what appears to be the best quality traffic of what was brought in from expanding, and then repeating this process until the best quality traffic is being driven and converted. Campaign objectives are always around eventually driving conversions for the client.

Describe your AdWords management workflow. When you’re doing your account optimization work, how do you decide what to do next in your account? How do you prioritize your work?

I make sure to check in on accounts at least once a week. Being a WordStream user, my first task is usually to check for new negative keyword opportunities, in order to cut out traffic that isn’t useful. After all negative keyword opportunities are accepted or rejected, I usually go by any issues that are easily identifiable, such as an Ad Group that is receiving low CTR. I am also constantly looking for insight into what kinds of queries users are seeing my ads from, and from that, finding new opportunities to break down campaigns and Ad Groups to be more specific and have less keywords per ad. Obviously, priority goes to reworking poorly performing campaigns and to client requests.

Any advice or tips for AdWords marketers that didn’t score as well as you?

My advice:

• Break down, break down, break down. I see the ultimate optimization of a campaign as having 2-3 [exact match] keywords per Ad Group. Obviously when you are managing 300-400 keywords this can be a difficult goal to achieve, so dynamic keyword insertion can work in place of such small Ad Groups. Research proves that ads that are this specific to their keywords are the ones that perform the best, so it’s the way to go!
   
• Modify every aspect of your campaigns to make sure you are taking advantage of all the customization that using AdWords affords you. Change times your ads show, geographical locations they show to, networks they are displayed on, devices they are displayed on, and continue to watch the data to see what changes improve your results to help you in the future. Additionally, if you are showing the same content to multiple networks or devices, make sure to create separate campaigns for each type!
   
• Always use a “Brand” campaign. Going after keywords such as the name of your company/client can seem like a waste of money, but it is entirely possible to get clicks for as little as $0.01. The resulting high Quality Scores from having perfectly matched keywords will have a ripple effect throughout your campaign, helping your other keywords to achieve better Quality Scores themselves.

What did you think about the categories we included in the AdWords Grader? Anything missing?
Perhaps conversion performance? If AdWords users could be categorized by lead vs. e-commerce sale, type of product/service and then value of conversion, it would be interesting to see how accounts measured up against one another.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Keyword Marketing : How to Use Keyword Based Advertising

Keyword Advertising is a method of advertising on search engines by utilizing keyword research.

Almost all of search marketing revolves around keywords. Choosing the right keywords for advertising can mean the difference between thriving or diving in the SERPs.

The most important element of keyword search advertising is to bid on highly relevant keywords.

You must select keywords that relate to your business, and then craft text ads that incorporate these advertising keywords. When visitors click on your ads in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), you pay the amount that you've bid on the keyword. This process is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

WordStream's Keyword Research Suite is a set of value-added keyword research tools based on our industry-leading trillion-keyword database. You can try the Keyword Research Suite free!

Online Keyword Advertising : Searching for Keywords

Keyword marketing is an investment—while you must spend money bidding on keywords and pay for the clicks your advertisement receives, ideally the revenue you’ll gain from visitors and the resulting conversions will make your keyword advertising investment well worthwhile.

The amount you must spend buying keywords when you advertise on Google through bids is determined by how competitive a keyword is. The secret to keyword based advertising is discovering your sweet spot of less competitive (and therefore less expensive) and yet highly relevant keywords through keyword research. These valuable keywords are often referred to as “long-tail keywords.”

Creating a successful PPC keyword advertising campaign is largely dependent on discovering these high-value keywords. WordStream offers keyword advertising software that can help you discover and utilize these top-notch keywords to optimize your online advertising campaigns.

Keyword Search Advertising : Using Ad Groups for Keyword Targeted Advertising

Organization is essential for keyword targeted advertising. It's not enough to simply generate a list of keywords—even with a list of profitable long-tail keywords, to receive your maximum return on investment, it's crucial to group your keywords effectively.

Grouping keywords into a semantically and logically organized hierarchy makes prepares your for easy ad group creation. Semantically organizing your keywords makes creating PPC ads significantly easier because you can write ad text that applies to all related terms simultaneously.

By organizing your keywords into small themed segments and bidding on relevant keywords, you can expect many valuable benefits for your pay-per-click keyword advertising campaign:

• Lower bid costs for keywords
• A higher Quality Score
• Better rankings in search engines
• Improved click-through rate (CTR)

Keyword Search Advertising : WordStream's Keyword Advertising Solutions Make it Easy

WordStream’s powerful keyword research suite allows you to take advantage of all that keyword advertising has to offer. Our keyword advertising software uses expertly crafted keyword tools that make advertising with keywords on the web simple and easy. Our keyword advertising software is suggestion based, providing you control and customization. Our software enables you to:

• Research Keywords - Discover relevant keywords, long-tail keywords, and advertising keyword suggestions with our keyword suggestion tool.
• Analyze Keywords - Harness the power of keyword analytics to discover how to create keyword groups that will obtain the most relevant web traffic.
• Group Keywords – Organize your keywords into themed keyword groups, improving relevancy and Quality Score.

Our keyword advertising tools save time spent manually managing keywords, improving productivity and for your business while helping improve your ROI.

Finding Keywords for Web Advertising with WordStream's Free Keyword Tools

Our free keyword tools help marketers:

• Discover New Keywords - Discover advertising keyword suggestions
• Organize and Group Keywords - Group your keywords to make ad text creation easy
• Find Profitable Keyword Niches - Find advertising keyword niches that are valuable to your business
• Utilize Negative Keywords - Weed out irrelevant or ineffective words and phrases with our negative keyword tool.

Try WordStream's Keyword Solution Today!

WordStream's Keyword Research Suite offers enormous benefits for marketers and business owners looking to advertise on Google, such as:

• Exclusive Keyword Research - The Keyword Research Suite provides deep access to WordStream's industry-leading database of over 1 trillion search queries.
• Actionable Keyword Data – Our tool offers more than just keyword list—you get structured, actionable data that is ready to utilize in search marketing campaigns.

To start capitalizing on the best, most relevant, and most profitable keywords for your business, try the Keyword Research Suite free today.

If you work in the search marketing industry, you may have found yourself having a conversation somewhat like this one (the same conversation I have every time I tell a "regular person" what I do):

Regular Person: So, what do you do?

Me: I work as a writer for a software startup.

Regular Person: What kind of software?

Me: Um, search marketing software?

Regular Person: So ... like Google?

Me: Well, yeah, sort of. We make software that helps people advertise on Google.

If this regular person is curious enough to know more (rare), I usually find it helpful to explain that Google advertising functions similarly to an auction.

Since there are so many people out there who don't really know how this "AdWords auction" works, we thought it would be helpful to illustrate it. Below you'll find our latest infographic, "How Does the AdWords Auction Work?" This infographic illustrates how exactly the AdWords auction works, including:

• What gets entered into each “auction”
• How Google determines which ads are shown where
• How Google determines what advertisers pay

And lots more interesting tidbits about how Google AdWords works. Click the image to enlarge.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

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Take a look at the two ads below. Imagine you're a middle-aged man or woman who's interested in sharpening your memory and increasing your brain power. You go to Google and type in "brain games." Which ad do you click on?

PPC Ad #1

PPC Ad #2

Of course, the ad YOU click on may not be the same ad the majority of people click on. So perhaps a better question is: Which ad do you think would generate almost twice as many clicks?

And THAT is not an easy question to answer. On the one hand, you've got a matter-of-fact keyword-rich ad. On the other, you've got an ad using mental imagery and emotion. Two distinctly different approaches.

Alright, made your decision?

The winning ad is ad number two. It was written by BoostCTR writer "Cult Classic," and it increased CTR by 95%. Where the original ad was getting 1 click, the new ad is getting 1.95 clicks, nearly twice as many as before.

So why did the new ad win? And why did it win by so much? Let's take a look...

1. The losing ad gets the job done with a straightforward cerebral approach. It leads with strong benefits ("Sharpen Memory and Attention"). And it reveals the mechanism through which these benefits are achieved ("Scientific Brain Games and Tools"). The core keyword phrase is used in the title and the body. Overall, it's a strong ad, but not too exciting.

2. The winning ad leads with a strong benefit instead of the thing being searched. In this case, the benefit "Boost Your Brain Power" gets more attention than the actual thing being searched, which is "Brain Training Games." Yes, they're searching for brain games... but what they really want is to boost their brain power.

3. The winning ad also employs a strong visual and emotional approach. The first line of body copy states "Every Brain Needs a Gym." This is a powerful metaphor that implies I need to "work out" my brain. If I accept this metaphor as being true, then I'm automatically predisposed to agree with what comes next.

4. What comes next in the winning ad is an appeal to emotion. And thus the ad cleverly blends two very different concepts: 1) That I must exercise my brain, and 2) that this exercise can actually be fun! Think about it. What sounds more appealing? "Scientific Brain Games and Tools"... or... "Fun, Web-Based Training Program!" If you're like most people, the idea of having fun is the more appealing approach.

5. To make up for its lack of keywords in the title and body copy, the winning ad includes "BrainGames" in the URL.

6. Last but not least, the winning ad uses punctuation at the end of line one (which takes advantage of Google's extended title format), and includes an exclamation point at the end of line two. The exclamation point is especially relevant since it concludes a sentence that is talking about having fun. This enhances the enthusiasm of the ad.

The bottom line: The new ad wins because it abandons a keyword-heavy approach in favor of strong visuals and emotional language. What was originally a strong ad becomes a great ad.

Question: Have you been relying on facts and keywords to write your PPC ads? If so, it may be time for you to experiment with some strong images and emotional copy. Who knows... you might just crush your control ad without much effort!

And, of course, if you'd rather not write new PPC ads yourself, you can always call on the BoostCTR writers. They've collectively spent thousands of hours improving pay-per-click ads on both Google and Facebook. They increase CTR and conversions by 30% on average, sometimes as much as 95% or more. Go ahead and put 'em to work... risk-free for 30 days!

About the Author: Ryan Healy is a direct response marketer and BoostCTR writer. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, business growth, and lifestyle design.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been walking through the Google AdWords dimensions tab with a series of posts highlighting each of the reports you can find within the still relatively new AdWords dimensions reporting suite. The first five posts in the series covered:

• Google AdWords Dayparting – The AdWords Dimensions Time Tab Report
• Google AdWords Conversion Reporting via the Dimensions Tab
• Google AdWords Destination URL Report
• Google AdWords Demographic Reporting
• Google AdWords Geographic Report

In this installment, we’ll be focusing on the search terms report in the dimensions tab:

What Is the Search Terms Report? Why Is It Important?

The search terms report is similar to the search query reports you used to find in the AdWords reporting center in the old Google AdWords interface. Search queries are certainly an extremely important piece of online advertising as they show you not only the keywords that you’re bidding on, but the actual queries that are driving traffic to your site. Search query data offers you insight into which queries aren’t working (even when they may be associated, at a higher level, with keywords that are) and which queries are working better than you thought.

That said, an important thing to note about the search term report is that you can now find very similar data in the default keyword tab reports, and that from those views you can designate negatives right from the AdWords interface:

If you’re looking to quickly pull a report for a glance at query data and want the option to immediately set negatives and add queries to your campaigns as keywords, you’re better off leveraging the campaign tab and looking at search terms there. The value of the search term report is really in pulling larger volumes of search query data into Excel to manipulate the data there. You can get similar data from the keywords tab, but often getting a mass of data for this purpose is much quicker and easier within the search term report:

As you can see from the options around downloading a report, the options from within the dimensions tab allow you to create a really robust report where you can:

• Customize the columns/data you’re shown in the report
• Layer on additional segments like conversion, time, or network data
• Schedule the reports to run every week or month so you can have the same report queued up for use in your normal optimization process.

What Should I Do with the Data Once I Get It Out of the Search Query Report?

Once you’ve exported this data, what you do with it on an ongoing basis could really be a series of posts in and of itself (***corny segue alert***). And as a matter of fact, it was!

Chad Summerhill wrote a great five-part series right here on the blog about search query mining:

• Part 1: The Power of Search Queries
• Part 2: Getting the Right Data
• Part 3: Preparing Your Data
• Part 4: Mining Your Data for Insights
• Part 5: Acting On Your Insights

And of course, if you’re either not comfortable mucking around in Excel with large volumes of search query data or simply don’t have the time, WordStream’s PPC product automates a lot of the work of mining search query data to bubble up important insights about your campaign. You can try the product free or check out a demo to learn more.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM LLC, a boutique search marketing agency offering search marketing consulting services including pay-per-click account management, SEO site audits, content marketing services, and a variety of link building packages such as guest posting packages and blog strategy.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help, get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.