Negative keywords play a vital part in the refinement of any Pay per Click (PPC) campaign. By identifying these irrelevant phrases and removing them from your advertising, you will lower the number of times ads appear for unrelated searches, helping to lower Cost per Click (CPC) and make that budget go further.
When you come to create a PPC campaign [See: What is PPC Advertising] impetuousness can cost money. It isn’t simply a case of identifying a few keywords that you want to appear for, writing a bit of ad text, turning on broad match and away you go. You have to be prepared to go deeper.
Broad match isn’t without its dangers, as discussed in my earlier post – The Danger of Broad Match in PPC Advertising. Whilst it gets you seen by a wider audience, it can also make a significant dent in your online budget. Effective Pay per Click advertising comes from controlled targeting of campaigns, not blanket exposure.
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Whilst exuberance to market your new website is understandable, your inexperience may be costly. Pay per Click advertising offers a great opportunity to attract targeted traffic, but it isn’t without its risks.
Broad match is PPC’s very own siren on the rocks. Whilst it offers you the tantalising treat of traffic, it could also leave your budget in a wreck. Within a well-optimised, closely managed campaign it can help expand your online visibility; unfortunately, for those who are just starting out, a budget can be easily decimated with very little return on your investment.
So what is broad match?
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People aren’t just accessing your site from their desktop PCs any more. They aren’t even just searching on Google or Bing. The mobile Internet is exploding and is bringing with it whole new ways of accessing and interacting with the web.
In the early days of WAP phones, the mobile Internet was little more than a novelty. Accessible sites were few and far between, bandwidth was lower than dial up and networks charged extortionate rates for using it. Today, all this has changed.
Mobile phones are more popular, more technically advanced and more connective than they have ever been. The development of smartphones – think the iPhone, Nokia N95, Google Nexus One – have kicked off an evolutionary leap in how we interact mobiles and the specification that they can now offer. Now they have greater memory, larger, higher resolution touch screens and internet connectivity.
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The shift from static to mobile Internet gathers momentum as Eric Schmidt that Google are a ‘mobile first’ company.
No longer satisfied with conquering the static Internet, Google have now announced their intention to do the same with the mobile form. During a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress, Google’s Chief Executive, Eric Schmidt, announced that their programmers would be “doing work on mobile first”. With the technology, expertise and brand power at their disposal, now is the time to really start taking mobile search advertising seriously.
It’s not only Google moving over to the mobile internet, it is the consumers themselves – in their millions. New devices are flooding the market and providers are increasingly integrating online minutes within their tariffs and contracts. The lines of accessibility, affordability and interest are drawing steadily closer. Mobile search advertising is also a growing market and one that could become hugely lucrative to those who master it first.
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This month, I sat and passed the Microsoft adExcellence exam and am very pleased to have this additional qualification to complement my Google AdWords Professional status.
The Microsoft adExcellence exam is designed especially for individuals (and UK companies in the near future) who have been managing, or are looking to manage, a Pay per Click marketing campaign on Bing (formally MSN Live). As a company, we believe it is important to pass these exams as a minimum standard and to act as a basis to develop our experience of this platform from.
Once you have passed the exam, you become a member of the Microsoft adExcellence official accreditation program and are issued with a member logo and are included within the adExcellence Membership Directory.
adExcellence Member Logo
Microsoft also have another program which companies can become members of, but it is currently not available to the UK. Microsoft have informed us that the membership will be available to UK companies soon and when they do, Impact Media as a company will be taking the steps to obtain the Corporate status.
If you would like Impact Media to help create, manage and optimise your Bing campaigns, why not take advantage of our Bing Pay Per Click Management service.
Have you been sitting there wondering why there is targeted traffic reaching your website but your goals are just not being met?
Is your Pay per Click marketing campaign working well but visitors are leaving the site before making contact with you?
Do you believe that something can be done on your website to improve conversions?
If you have answered yes to any of these questions, read on….
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As the search engines develop, so too do the potential avenues for effective marketing. So what exactly is the most effective Search Engine Marketing strategy?
Traditionally, the two ways in which you could improve your website’s visibility on search engines was through SEO and Pay per Click (PPC) advertising. Whilst they may remain at the forefront of most strategies, SEO and PPC are by no means the only way to get your name where it matters.
As the search engine results pages (SERPs) have diversified, including new facets and restructuring their layout, marketing methods have been quick to follow suit. With Twitter updates, local search results and news items infiltrating the SERPs, the realms of possibilities are more diverse and in greater supply than ever before.
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With the dawning of a new year, we have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start over again with renewed vigour. Search engine algorithms have undergone a significant makeover in the past 12 months, perhaps it’s time your website does the same.
Websites aren’t a static marketing tool. They can’t be left to stagnate and simply tick over. So don’t let lethargy undermine your efforts so far; if your site is to succeed in 2010 than you need to be prepared to take the fight to your competitors, which means investing time and effort into each of your pages.
The Internet is a constantly expanding organism that mutates at a similarly speedy rate. The techniques and principles that worked just a few years ago will be almost redundant today. So if your website is suffering in the search engine rankings or isn’t getting the levels of targeted traffic you were hoping for, perhaps it’s time to take a fresh look at it.
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To join search engine marketing in with the festive spirit, this blog post will provide you with 12 tips for optimising your AdWords Pay per Click campaign.
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Christmas is the time of year where retailers, etailers and marketers go into overdrive. A surplus of consumers means that opportunities for good sales figures are abound.
But it would be churlish to suggest that preparations start as we peel back the first door in our advent calendars; in truth, it goes back to the time where summer is turning to autumn, when ice, snow and Christmas Eve panic buys are the furthest things from most people’s minds. Or at least it should.
Despite still being in the grips of a recession, UK consumers aren’t shy when it comes to parting with their cash at Christmas time; as evidenced by this year’s typically frenzied rush for gifts. More and more consumers are turning to the Internet too when buying goods; with recent reports showing that online shopping in November increased by 11% compared with the same period in 2008 and 25% more than the preceding month of October. So the need for ecommerce websites to be fully optimised as the rush begins has never been more evident.
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Unfortunately not all websites are owned by companies with endless resources and a bottomless pit of money. Most in fact have tight restrictions when it comes to both time and finances. However all sites share a common desire, which is to be the most successful in their field, regardless of the strength of their competition.
To get to the top with limited resources, particularly for SMEs, is no easy task. It requires an acute understanding of your market and effective management of your priorities. Many businesses see SEO as a cure, others have heard about the emerging success stories emanating from social media, whilst some believe that Paid Search (PPC) will get them the targeted traffic they need. There’s plenty of evidence to support all of these viewpoints, but which will work best for you?
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This third and final post in the Quality Score series should provide you with a few ideas when to improving your current Quality Scores. Don’t settle with a Quality Score of seven or eight, set your sights higher and always aim for the top score.
To catch up on why exactly your quality score is so important you should take a look at my previous blog post – The Benefits of a Good Quality Score
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A1 Paintball Limited are one of Scotland’s leading independent Paintball Venues, offering high quality Paintballing in Edinburgh.
We are delighted to have been selected to implement and manage the organisations Pay Per Click (PPC) activity, in order to greatly improve the efficiency of their existing Google AdWords campaign.
To find out how we can increase your ROI from PPC please visit our Pay Per Click Management page.
AE Tuition are in their nineteenth year of operation. They run 11+ preparation courses for State Grammar and Independent Schools, as well as publish a range of workbooks.
We are delighted to have been selected to implement and manage the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy for the AE Tuition website, as well as manage the organisations Pay Per Click (PPC) activity. More…
This is the second post in the Quality Score series and covers probably the most important issue, in my opinion.
Once you are aware of the benefits of having keywords with high Quality Scores, you should have no problem with making the changes required to improve your scores.
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