Marketing on the Web Google just published updated information on 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated. Quality Score is a major factor in determining what advertisers pay for ad phrases. I believe this is the clearest information so far on this import, evolving algorithm. What is 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated? Past Articles: How Google AdWords Bidding Works - Quality Score Landing Pages to Improve Quality Score PPC Campaigns and Quality Score Chasing the Long Tail
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Microsoft AdCenter Desktop Beta
I have been participating in Microsoft's AdCenter beta program. This type of desktop PPC management tool is essential to managing PPC programs. I have participated in, and managed several beta programs in my career and you expect things to be a clunky at first. if you have used the early releases, I am sure you would agree, there was room to improve. A Little History We were once satisfied to manage out PPC campaigns in an excel spreadsheet. Tabbing, cutting, pasting, searching and replaci...
MoreHow Google AdWords Bidding Works – Quality Score
Great article that explains Google's AdWords auction process. No real insight into Quality Score here, but it does explain how it figures in the mix. Google Quality Scores and Ad Auctions Added 11/08/2008 More on Quality Score woes here: The Account Quality Score: Money Pit for the Uninformed Google's Ever-Evolving Quality Score Added 11/11/08 Google AdWords Quality Score -- That's Old-School for SEO
MoreBuilding National Campaigns for Local Business
I attended an Advanced AdWords seminar last week and am revisiting the topic of Building National Ads for Local Needs . This seminar was sponsored by Google and lead by Brad Geddes of BG theory . While most of the Advanced Class was more a refresher than anything new, it has prompted me to make a change in my national campaign strategy for local business. In addition to the negative terms I use (listed in the original article), I now also use exclude cities, regions and metro areas in the cam...
MorePPC Campaigns and Quality Score
Google recently announced changes to its approach to Quality Score. Quality Score is the bane of my existence. It turns previous 'best practices' into bad practices and dooms the long-tail to obscurity. Sure it makes sense to have the keywords relevant to the ad and the landing page relevant (duh!), but in practice Google weighs click thru rates (CTR) in the overall campaign to judge what you should be paying and if your CTR drops too low for the ad group, you'll receive a Quality score minim...
MoreStarting your SEO Efforts
When optimizing your site for traffic, you will need some means to see where you are, track your progress (or your lack there of), and help identify mistakes. Here are the core elements I recommend: Sign-up for a Google Analytics (GA) account, it's free and it some if the best information you can get about visitor activity and how they got to your pages. If you do PPC marketing on AdWords and don't have Google Analytics installed you can add it under the Analytics tab in AdWords. If you a...
MorePPC Management Options
I handle pay per click campaigns for most of my customers. The front-end, setting up and tuning the campaign is the most time consuming part of the effort. Finding the right words and then determining which words best convert. After the initial set-up maintenance requires fewer hours, with much of the time spent, testing new ad copy and adjusting bids to improve acquisition cost. However diligence and attention are important as search phrases should be constantly evaluated and the results fed ba...
MoreDon’t Count Yahoo out
I had a meeting at Yahoo this week. The meeting was targeted at companies heavy into affiliate programs. We heard from a number of program managers, but because I am under NDA, can't disclose all the great stuff they are working on. However, I will say these guys are not sitting around worrying about Microsoft. They are firmly focused on the future and presented an impressive list of products and upgrades. Most interesting was some of the stuff going on with PPC management and while I can't be ...
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