Facebook Promoted Page Likes: How to Get Started Monday, May 13 2013

Facebook’s Promoted Page Likes advertising rolled out globally this week, offering businesses worldwide a simplified way to get more Likes to their Facebook pages.

Here’s what you need to know about Promoted Page Likes ads:

• Initially offered to U.S. businesses in December 2012.
• These ads invite people to like an organization’s official Page on Facebook.
• Unlike the more sophisticated Facebook advertising, these are more accessible, beginner-type ads.
• Promoted Page Likes is only available to Pages with a location and profile picture.
• After purchasing, Facebook creates three different types of advertisements for you that show in desktop and mobile news feeds, and on the right-hand column of Facebook.

Leave a Response »

 

Keyword Planner, Flexible Bid Strategies Coming to AdWords Ahead of Enhanced Campaigns Friday, Apr 19 2013

Several pay-per-click marketing leaders gathered in Austin, Texas, for HeroConf this week and shared their top tips and tricks on PPC topics including retargeting, product ads, and PPC abroad.

Also at the search conference, Paul Feng, product management director, Google AdWords, shared a couple pieces of news during an afternoon keynote:

Web-Hosting

• Keyword Planner: This new tool is a combination of the keyword research tool and traffic estimator. It features a new integrated workflow, so users can find new keywords and get traffic estimates at the same time. It’s available in beta in about 5 percent of accounts as of this writing. This tool was developed in response to feedback that the current system, which consists of two tools, is awkward and clunky, requiring PPC marketers to navigate and work with a single keyword lists in different screens. You can expect this tool to be released “soon”.
• Flexible bid strategies: This new feature was cooked up as a response to the enhanced campaigns backlash. Advertisers can set bid adjustments at campaign, ad group, or keyword level. For example, you could adjust bids based on a user’s place in the sales funnel. One major feature of this flexible bidding to PPC marketers will be the ability for advertisers to set specific bid strategies, such as bid to top of page or to the first page. This is not bidding to a specific position on the page.

We also now know when all AdWords campaigns will become enhanced. The upgrade, originally slated for mid-June, has been pushed back to late July and assigned an exact date July 22, 2013, according to a note at the bottom of an AdWords blog post discussing a coming update that will allow advertisers to set mobile bid adjustments at the ad group level.

PPC marketers have had strong feelings about the enhanced campaign upgrade because it limits mobile and tablet targeting options. You can learn more about enhanced campaigns in these posts:

• Google AdWords New Enhanced Campaigns Connect Ads With Multi-Device Consumers
• Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: The Good, Bad & Uncool
• AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Hands-On
• AdWords Enhanced Mobile Campaigns: 5 Things PPC Marketers Need to Know
• Google Sells Enhanced Campaign Benefits … But Are SMBs Buying?

AdWords product announcements were only a small part of the search marketing conference. Several speakers shared tips and tricks. A few takeaways are featured here:

Leave a Response »

 

SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site Thursday, Apr 18 2013

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

What are search engines looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your visitors/customers, as well as Google, Bing, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?

During the Introduction to SEO session at SES New York, Carolyn Shelby (@CShel), Director of SEO, Chicago Tribune/435 Digital, fully explained the extreme value SEO can deliver to a site, and stressed the importance of basic SEO using the following analogy:

“Skipping the basics and spending all your time and money on social and ‘fancy stuff’ is the same as skipping brushing your teeth and showering, but buying white strips and wearing expensive cologne,” Shelby said.

Although the Introduction to SEO session was intended for industry newcomers, Shelby’s tips offer important reminders for even experienced SEO professionals who have been optimizing sites for years.

What is SEO, Exactly?

The goal of foundational SEO isn’t to cheat or “game” the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to:

• Create a great, seamless user experience.
• Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.

1. Your Website is Like a Cake

Your links, paid search, and social media acts as the icing, but your content, information architecture, content management system, and infrastructure act as the sugar and makes the cake. Without it, your cake is tasteless, boring, and gets thrown in the trash.

Leave a Response »

 

Google AdWords vs. Yahoo Bing Network – A PPC Performance Comparison Monday, Apr 15 2013

Every search marketer knows Google dominates in U.S. search volume, handling two-thirds of all search queries. And yet, less is known about the entity that reportedly accounts for roughly theother third of searches – the Yahoo Bing Network (YBN).

This brings up a number of interesting questions for paid search marketers. For example:

• Is Google dominant in every vertical?
• How do the two engines compare on click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC)?
• Are paid search auctions as competitive on YBN as on AdWords?

AdGooroo (disclosure: I work there) addressed these questions in a recent study comparing the paid search performance of advertisers on Google AdWords and Yahoo Bing across six verticals in the U.S. during Q3 2012:

• Shopping & Classified (composed of a broad range of retailers)
• Financial Services
• Travel
• Education
• Computer & Internet
• Business to Business (B2B)

These vertical categories account for the majority of total search traffic and click-throughs in the U.S. search market.

AdWords Leads in Paid Search Spend, Clicks in All Verticals

AdWords delivered significantly higher impressions in five of the six categories studied – especially in the Shopping & Classified retail category, where it displayed 1.6 times as many first SERP ad impressions as YBN (an incremental 7.3 ad million impressions) during the quarter.

However, in the sixth category, Financial Services, YBN actually displayed more ad impressions than AdWords (although AdWords still yielded more total click-throughs within the vertical).

Leave a Response »

 

How to Make Money With Adsense : Adsense Success Tips and Things to Avoid Tuesday, Oct 23 2012

It is too easy for some people to decide that in order to learn how to make money with adsense, they should cut corners on some of the rules and common sense assumptions if they want to have adsense success. This is more likely to get them in trouble with Google administrators.

There is no doubt the thousands of good webmasters have adsense success because they have found a good way to learn how to make money with adsense. By following their lead, you can add your name to the list of successful entrepreneurs using the Adsense principles. However, there are some things associated with the Google program that you should avoid at all costs. These may be specific to the program, or they may be just common sense prohibitions. Take the time to know and understand these things that can destroy your revenue source before you are well started. 

Getting the cart before the horse 

Before attempting to place ads or make money with adsense, be certain that you understand the concepts and the reasoning behind the actions that you will take. Newcomers often get so excited about the prospects of a good work-at-home income that they will leap into the program and then wonder why the revenues are not as substantial as they are reputed to be. It is because the program is not being followed according to the best rules and practices as set out by Google. Obtaining a good tutorial that will walk you step by step through the process of identifying potential revenue sources and place the appropriate ads will mean more profit for you in the long run.

Leave a Response »