This is the second post in a series on the Google AdWords Audience tab. In the first post in the series, we walked through what an AdWords audience really is and the types of audiences you can target. In this post we’ll focus on the reporting options available via the audience tab and what you can do with the data.

Why Wouldn’t My AdWords Audience Reports Show?Before you can determine what to do with your audience reporting data, of course, you need to actually have the data. Many accounts will show something like this:If you haven’t already created and targeted a specific audience, you’ll be presented with the message above (“There are no targets in this campaign”). Similarly, if you’ve chosen the specific targeting method within campaign settings under network setting option... > Read more

Recently we’ve been running a series of in-depth guides to various parts of the AdWords interface. So far, we've covered:AdWords Ad ExtensionsAdWords Reporting via the Dimensions TabAdWords Campaign SettingsCreating & Analyzing AdWords AdsIn the coming days here on the blog we’ll be continuing with this series, focusing next on the Google AdWords Audience tab.

Display ads are now an over $5 billion dollar business for Google and growing rapidly, and understanding how to leverage tools like audiences within your AdWords display campaigns can be a powerful means of driving large amounts of targeted traffic. For that reason, we’ll walk through the audience tab and cover:What is an “AdWords audience”?How can you leverage the reporting data in the audience tab to help optimize your... > Read more

This is the fifth and final post in our series on creating and analyzing Google AdWords ads. In the previous four installments we’ve covered:Creating a Google AdWords Text AdCreating a Google AdWords Image AdUsing the Google AdWords Display Ad BuilderCreating Google AdWords Video Ads & Mobile AdsThis post will focus on analyzing the AdWords ads you’ve created.

How to Analyze Your Ads within the Google AdWords InterfaceIf you’re looking to evaluate the performance of your ads, an obvious first step is to take a look within the AdWords interface to see how ads are performing. Here you can do things like customize date ranges, look at cost, click, impression, and conversion data, and quickly make changes to your ads:This is a very useful view and interface if you’re optimizing... > Read more

This is the fourth post in a series on creating and analyzing Google AdWords ads. Previously in the series we’ve covered a variety of topics related to AdWords ads:How to Create a Google AdWords Text AdHow to Create a Google AdWords Image AdHow to Use the Google AdWords Display Ad BuilderIn today’s post, we’ll be focusing on how to create video ads and mobile ads via Google AdWords.

Creating Video Ads with Google AdWordsThe first step to creating a video or mobile ad is very similar to the way you would create an image or text ad. Go to the Ads tab and select “Video ad” or “WAP mobile ad” from the “New ad” dropdown menu:We’ll start with video ads. The first choice you’re presented with is selecting a video ad template:The templates include:YouTube Promoted Video Templa... > Read more

This is the second post in a series on Google AdWords ads. In the first post we covered how to create and optimize text ads, and in this post we’ll focus on how to create image ads for your Google AdWords campaigns.How to Set Up Your Google AdWords Image AdsFirst we’ll walk through the actual mechanics of creating an AdWords image ad.

Go to the Ads tab in AdWords, then select “Image ad” from the “New ad” drop-down menu:Then you can associate your ad with an ad group, upload your image (more on that below), and fill out a few additional fields:You’re able to upload your image (note the 50k max limit, as you may need to compress some image files) and then you designate:Image Name – This is mainly for your own housekeeping, so choose something logical that would be helpful for... > Read more

This is the first post in a series on creating ads within the Google AdWords interface. The focus of this post will be creating text ads within AdWords.Creating a new text ad is pretty straightforward. From within the Ads tab, click “Text ad” in the “New ad’ dropdown menu:Here you'll be able to insert the text of your new ad.

Once you’ve created an ad within the Ads tab, you can easily customize the text and preview your ad:The components of the ad are well-known to most AdWords advertisers:The Headline – The headline, as you can see from the preview, is highlighted and is your primary opportunity to capture attention.Description Lines – This is your opportunity to better describe your offering and compel the searcher to the action you want them to take next.Display URL – T... > Read more

Over the course of the past few months we’ve created a series of series focusing on various aspects of the Google AdWords interface. Thus far we’ve covered:Google AdWords Ad ExtensionsThe Google AdWords Dimensions Tab & AdWords ReportingGoogle AdWords Campaign Settings & the AdWords Settings TabWhile Google offers their own help sections, the materials there tend to be pretty dry and of course are more geared towards the mechanics of using the interface in the way that Google wants you to use, rather than being centered around best practices for the advertiser.

And, as many of you have realized, the AdWords interface and managing AdWords campaigns has become really complex and too difficult for many busy AdWords advertisers.As a result, we’re continuing with our collection of... > Read more

Ring in 2012 with these 20 AdWords vouchers to help your small business marketing efforts. Please find below 20 adwords promotional vouchers worth $100 each - for a total of $2,000 in AdWords vouchers! These adwords voucher codes are totally free and you can use them to: If you're an advertiser, you can start a new AdWords PPC Account to get more customers If you're a PPC Agency, Give these AdWords vouchers to your new customers and apply the AdWords credit on their behalf Reduce sales objections: A $100 adwords voucher can help bing on new customers on AdWords without the risk!.

New to Google AdWords? Check out Our Most Popular AdWords Articles! To maximize the value of your free google adwords voucher, read some of our most popular Pay Per Click Marketing tutorials: PPC Budgeting Be... > Read more

This is the second post in our series on Google AdWords campaign settings. In the first installment, we talked about how to name and organize your Google AdWords campaigns. In this post we’ll focus on locations and languages settings within the AdWords settings tab.Google AdWords Location SettingsAfter you name your campaign the first big choice you’re presented with is what location or locations to target:You can use one of the defaults, or choose a specific region.

For this you can also use the map function and target either a specific location or locations, or a radius.In our guide to geo-targeting with AdWords, we talk about a two-pronged approach to targeting a specific region with a cohesive location and keyword targeting strategy (note: the actual functionality has changed since... > Read more

This is the first post in our series on the GoogleAdWords settings tab, where we’ll be looking at various options and best practices surrounding settings within your AdWords campaigns.In this post we’ll be focused on the general idea of what you actually designate as a campaign, and how you settle on a naming convention.

For a lot of first time advertisers this seems pretty straightforward, but there are actually a lot of considerations that go into making a sound decision about how to organize your campaigns and even how to name them so that as your account grows your campaign structure can easily scale with it.Creating an AdWords Campaign Structure: What Do You Need Categories For?In thinking about your AdWords campaigns you want to consider: what actually deserves its own campaign? ... > Read more

We just released a new, free white paper for search engine marketers: "PPC Budgeting Best Practices: 10 Tips for Setting Your 2012 Budget." You can read the introduction and the first tip below. Click here to download the full guide.PPC Budgeting Best Practices: 10 Tips for Setting Your 2012 BudgetAs the end of the year approaches, it’s time to start setting budgets for your various marketing channels in 2012.

If you’re relatively new to pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, you’ll probably find that budgeting for this channel can be a challenge.Setting budgets for your PPC campaigns is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. In this paper, we’ll walk through ten best practices to help you get the most from your PPC budgets in 2012.1. Getting Started: How to Determine Your Ini... > Read more

Over the past few months we’ve been walking through several areas within the AdWords interface in great depth. We started with Google AdWords Ad Extensions and most recently wrapped up a series of posts on Google AdWords Reporting with the Dimensions Tab. This will be the first in a series of posts about AdWords campaign settings:As with each of these series, the main objective here is to help AdWords advertisers better navigate the increasingly confusing AdWords interface, and also to be able to help impart best practices for setting up your AdWords campaigns.

If you can’t wait for the individual posts in the series and want a quick audit as to whether you’re adhering to best practices within your AdWords campaign, WordStream has a free performance grader which will tell you if... > Read more

This is the latest post in a series on Google AdWords reporting from the dimensions tab. In previous posts we’ve covered:Google AdWords Dayparting – The AdWords Dimensions Time Tab ReportGoogle AdWords Conversion Reporting via the Dimensions TabGoogle AdWords Destination URL ReportGoogle AdWords Demographic ReportingGoogle AdWords Geographic ReportGoogle AdWords Search Term ReportIn this post, we’ll be walking through the free click report in the AdWords dimensions tab.

What Are “Free Clicks” According to AdWords?First we need to determine what Google is defining as “free clicks.” The free clicks report provides you with data about how people interact with different components of your ad, and about actions they take. It's important to note that these "free clicks" aren't all c... > Read more

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 ReportGoogle AdWords Conversion Reporting via the Dimensions TabGoogle AdWords Destination URL ReportGoogle AdWords Demographic ReportingGoogle AdWords Geographic ReportIn 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.

Sear... > Read more

This is the fifth 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 1AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 2AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 3AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 4This week’s interview is with Glendon Llewellyn Lloyd, the e-commerce director at Tszuji, an online home storage store specializing in shoe storage and clothes storage solutions for the home.

Glendon manages Tszuji's SEO and SEM, ensuring these efforts are... > Read more

Google rolled out yet another new AdWords feature last week: dynamic search ads.The same day they announced the introduction of dynamic search ads, they also announced that AdWords Express was rolling out to the UK and Germany. Back in August I wrote about Google’s focus on display and talked about how:You can learn a lot about marketing from Google, and if you’re in search marketing paying close attention to what Google says and what types of things they place emphasis on are vital to your livelihood.

This is why Matt Cutts gets 350 comments on a post announcing a change in the algorithm that affects around 2% of queries, and it’s why search marketers have a much keener interest in Google Plus and its integration in SERPs, Webmaster Tools, et al than your average social ne... > Read more

Recently we did a series of posts on AdWords Ad Extensions, complete with a quick follow-up on how Google decides to display ad extensions and a closer look at the following extensions:Google AdWords Location ExtensionsGoogle AdWords Product ExtensionsGoogle AdWords Sitelink ExtensionsGoogle AdWords Call ExtensionsBut after concluding the series we quickly realized that we left an ad extension off the list (the downside to pompously titling something “The Ultimate Guide to X” is that you can easily be guilted into pretty much never-ending updates, so be careful with your hyperbolic in-title-adjectives).

One ad extension we missed was Google AdWords communication extensions. This isn’t available for everyone, but it’s a very interesting extension that could have some serious implicat... > Read more

This post is the first in our series on Google AdWords reporting via the AdWords dimension tab. Today we’ll cover the AdWords time report. This report is pretty flexible and allows you to slice date-based data in a variety of different ways, so understanding how it works can be valuable for anyone managing a pay-per-click campaign.

What AdWords Reports Live within the “Time” Drop-Down?There are seven reports you’ll find within the AdWords time drop-down. Obviously the labels themselves give you a pretty good idea of what unit of time each of these items is focused on, but we’ll walk through what you might use each of these reports for:Day of the Week – This is breaking down a period of time (e.g., the last six months) by day of the week. Your business might (or might not) perfor... > Read more

We recently concluded our series on AdWords ad extensions, and thought we’d take a similar approach to a series of reports that live under the Google AdWords Dimensions Tab. Many people rely on the main AdWords tabs for their standard reports – at the campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad level – but there are a series of reports that offer a ton of great data all rolled up under the dimensions tab.

In this guide to using the AdWords dimensions tab, we’ll be breaking out each of these reports and showing you:How to pull the report and manipulate the dataWhy this report is (or in some cases isn’t) importantWhen the data will be helpful and actionable (and in some cases: when it won’t be)Available Reports in the AdWords Dimensions TabBelow is a brief explanation of each of the repor... > Read more

This is the final post in our series on Google AdWords Ad Extensions. Previously we’ve covered:Google AdWords Location ExtensionsGoogle AdWords Product ExtensionsGoogle AdWords Sitelinks ExtensionsAnd today we’ll be rounding out the series by covering how to use Google AdWords call extensions.What Are Call Extensions & Why Are They Important?Google’s help section describes Call Extensions as follows:Call extensions make it easy for customers to call you directly from your ad and for you to better understand the value of your campaigns by measuring the phone calls that your ads generate.

Call extensions are a type of ad extension, an ad feature that allows advertisers to include additional information about their businesses and offering to their text ads. In the case of call extens... > Read more

This is the second installment in our multi-part series on Google AdWords Ad Extensions. Last time we covered Google AdWords location extensions, and today’s focus will be on product extensions.Product extensions is a feature that allows you to link your Google Merchant account with your AdWords account to have enhanced listings for your products shown in search results on Google properties:In this post we’ll walk through why product extensions are important, how you can use them in your account, and when to use the extensions as well as how best to apply them.

Why Are AdWords Product Extensions Important?Product extensions are important for much the same reason the other ad extensions are important: they offer increased visibility in search results. This means more clicks – in many v... > Read more

The first post in our series on Google AdWords Ad Extensions will focus on AdWords location extensions. Location extensions are a feature within Google AdWords that allows you to add location data about your business to your ad:In this post we’ll walk through why these extensions are important, how you can use them in your account, and when to use the extensions as well as how best to apply them.

Why Are Google AdWords Location Extensions Important?Location extensions allow you to get more real estate on the SERP and provide more information to local searchers, including a clickable phone number on mobile devices. Given that AdWords location targeting is probably more aggressive than you think, this is a pretty powerful option. Marissa Mayer noted recently that roughly 20 percent of the s... > Read more

This is the third 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 1AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 2Today’s interview is with Rick Archer.

Rick is the founder of Search Summit, an independent search consultancy based in Iowa. You can reach Rich at rick@searchsummit.com.Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agency or an Advertiser?I’ve been using AdWords for about 10 years. I also work with adCenter, and I used to play with smaller ne... > Read more

Sometimes the controls inside of an AdWords account can be pretty overwhelming and confusing. AdWords is constantly adding new features, and it sometimes becomes difficult – particularly for new to intermediate-level advertisers – to quickly diagnose certain specific issues in their account. I think this is particularly the case on the content network, as many advertisers with a limited knowledge of AdWords will have had most of their experience working with search campaigns.

One seemingly simple issue that often frustrates unfamiliar advertisers is how to control cost per click (CPC) on the content network. Today we’ll talk about why your content network CPCs might be higher than they need to be, and how you can correct the issue.Mistake #1: Failure to Split Out Content and SearchThi... > Read more

I’m pretty excited about Google Analytics multi-channel funnel reports, which isn’t always the case for me with new Google features. The interesting thing about this new data being available in Google Analytics is that it allows advertisers to get insight into areas of their online efforts that were creating more value for their business than they’d originally anticipated.

In this post, I’ll walk through some great reports for identifying assets in your AdWords campaigns that you may have been undervaluing.Creating the Reports – Using Channel Groupings, Assisted Conversion Values, & Assisted/Last Conversion Rates to Identify Undervalued AssetsBecause they’re both Google products the multi-channel reporting suite has a lot of nice prepopulated AdWords reports. To grab these ... > Read more

Last week we pointed out that Google Display Ads have been the subject of a lot of Google marketing and advertising attention recently, and of course there is a lot of opportunity on the content network in many verticals. So when Google rolls out a new display network control like topic targeting as they did in March, it’s worth taking some time to better understand how the feature works and when it makes sense to utilize it.

What is AdWords Topic Targeting? Google describes topic targeting by explaining that: Using topics to contextually target your ads offers broad targeting and reach and is a good way to connect with a large audience quickly and easily to generate awareness or drive sales. When using topic targeting, our system looks at all the terms on a page to determi... > Read more

 When I outlined four definitive sources for learning about Quality Score recently on the blog I made the point that:When talking to people who are new to SEO and PPC, one thing I often caution them about is not to get bogged down by information overload. There is a remarkable amount of content to consume pertaining to search marketing, but much of it is:Good but redundantUnique but not really applicable for many peopleHigh-quality, but too advanced for beginnersMisinformationAs a result I really like to introduce people to a very short list of two to four authoritative resources on a subject so that they can get a few different perspectives and a complete picture on the topic, avoid information overload, and ensure that they’re reading quality information.

And the same is true of le... > Read more

Today we're announcing the release of our new AdWords Performance Grader, a free tool that grades your AdWords account performance by analyzing several key performance indicators (including Quality Score, Account Activity, Click-Through Rate, and Impression Share) and comparing your results against those of other AdWords advertisers with similar monthly budgets.

It's like a free, instant PPC audit. The AdWords Performance Grader: Shows you how well your campaigns are really doing Gives you a sense of how you fit into the competitive landscape Provides tips for improving your score and your results The best way to learn about the AdWords Performance Grader is to grade your AdWords account for free, but if you don't have an AdWords account, take a look at the sample AdWords rep... > Read more

Are your PPC campaigns delivering the results you want? Are you struggling with any of the below problems?:Click volume too lowCost per click too highCost per conversion too highLow Quality ScoresLow click-through ratesLow ROIIf you said yes, it might be time to reorganize your AdWords account.The below roadmap will guide you through the process of revamping a campaign to improve performance and lower costs.

Click the image to enlarge the roadmap. You'll find links to helpful resources at each road sign, so if you need more help in a given area of PPC, click on the green sign for more tips and information.If you're looking to get a free assessment of your AdWords account, try our AdWords Performance Grader. It grades your AdWords accounts on key criteria, showing you where and how to make ... > Read more

An issue that is becoming more common as PPC gets increasingly competitive is escalating costs per click (CPCs) in niches that had previously been relatively uncompetitive. The problem here is that PPC campaigns that had once been profitable or that may have been viable become untenable for advertisers.

If a conversion becomes profitable for you at $75 and you’re paying $15 a click, it’s very difficult to run a profitable campaign.In this post, we’ll look at five things you can do to try to push down those AdWords costs per click.1. Focus on Improving Quality ScoresWe usually like to start here, as a focus on Quality Score affords you an opportunity to compete in the auctions you want to be in for a reduced rate without shifting your keyword or network targeting. Many times if you’... > Read more

If you’re managing pay-per-click campaigns, Google’s AdWords Editor is a really handy (but fundamentally limited) free tool provided by Google to help you with certain PPC tasks. It’s a free, desktop-based application, currently in the 9th version of the tool (check out the changelog here and get the application itself here).

In this post we’ll walk through a series of valuable resources pertaining to AdWords Editor to help you get the most out of the tool, but before we do it’s important to understand what the tool is and what it isn’t. AdWords Editor is a free resource provided by Google that can help you with several bulk editing tasks within your AdWords campaigns, such as: Raising or lowering bids on a number of different keywords Copying l... > Read more

In a few recent posts on how to get more volume on the content network and on getting more leads from PPC, we talked about leveraging the content network to expand AdWords campaigns and attract more prospects via PPC. Most advertisers know how to get started with Google’s search network, and even with creating specific content network campaigns, but an area that often trips up advertisers – particularly new advertisers or those who are looking to expand beyond their initial structures – is building out “display” campaigns using Google AdWords, or creating banner ads for display on the content network.

Many times the stumbling block here is more around designing the creative (banner ads) than around the mechanics of creating a structure for your content network... > Read more

This is the final post in my series on Re-Creating the AdWords Dashboard in Excel. For the rest of the series, see below: Re-Creating AdWords Campaign Performance Charts in Excel, Part 1: The Data Re-Creating AdWords Campaign Performance Charts in Excel, Part 2: The Transformation Re-Creating AdWords Campaign Performance Charts in Excel, Part 3: Making the Scorecard Re-Creating AdWords Campaign Performance Charts in Excel, Part 4: Making the Charts In part four of this series, you learned how to build the charts for the AdWords dashboard.

In this article, I will show you how to make the dashboard dynamic by teaching you how to: Add a dynamic campaign filter. Add a dynamic date-range picker using a Data Validation list. Building the Campaign Filter As you may rec... > Read more

In part two of this series, you learned how to transform the data we will be using to create our dashboard. In this article, I will show you: How to build the scorecard. How to use conditional formatting. How to use the camera tool. Presentation (the “P” in “DTP”) Again, we are using the DTP framework created by the smart folks at Juice Analytics.

The presentation layer for our exercise consists of all the pieces of our dashboard: Dynamic charts and scorecards Dynamic controls for date ranges and campaign filtering Building dynamic dashboards in Excel can be a challenge, but if you’ve already completed the steps from the first two posts in this series you’ve done the hard part. Now we are ready for the fun stuf... > Read more

Interesting things you will learn in this how-to: How to prepare data for year-over-year analysis in Excel How to use the Excel INDEX-MATCH formula How to use the Excel ISNA formula A few weeks ago I showed you how to compare date ranges in AdWords, and then a few days later I came across an article on Search Engine Journal about using the new AdWords dashboard located on the "Home" tab.

  In the article the author mentioned how, in the new version of the Home tab, you couldn’t do date range comparison like in the previous version. See the image below: So, I thought it might be interesting to try and recreate this chart and summary in Excel. The finished dashboard will look something like this: For this exercise I will be using a variation of the Ju... > Read more

We've written here about some of the things to be aware of with regard to the AdWords opportunities tab, and we've talked in depth about AdWords Campaign Experiments. AdWords recently announced a new feature that enables advertisers to run campaign experiments against AdWords opportunities. This is a really interesting feature combo -- both from a pure functionality standpoint and in thinking about where AdWords is heading, so let's unpack it.

What Exactly Does Opportunities & Experiments Combining Mean? So how does this play out, exactly? Basically all Google's done (from the end-user perspective anyway) is make the campaign experiments functionality visible and available as you're browsing the opportunities Google is presenting you with: (Funny aside: this is the screenshot from the... > Read more

If you're a PPC software company, one of the best opportunities to add value on top of the AdWords interface is by thinking more about advertiser pain points than Google is able to. Google frequently has to balance features that help their advertisers generate more revenue against features that help Google generate more revenue, and frequently since Google isn't an advertiser, even when they build something that seemingly has optimizing for conversions in mind, they don't always get it quite right for the advertiser.

Just as it's important to realize which new AdWords features aren't necessarily worth implementing, it's equally important to identify gaps in AdWords' feature set and reporting so you can find ways to fill it. Today we'll talk about one of these gaps: reporting on multiple 1-... > Read more

If you work at a PPC agency – or simply manage PPC at a large or multi-faceted company – you may find yourself managing multiple AdWords accounts. The added complexities can make your job tricky, and your results may suffer in the process. Below are a few tips to make the management of several client accounts smoother and more efficient.

1. Log Into Each AdWords Account at Least Once a Day PPC can sometimes be unpredictable, and it’s important to make sure that the house isn’t burning down. When managing several Google AdWords accounts, a My Client Center (MCC) account can provide a useful dashboard for getting a quick daily overview of all of them simultaneously. On the MCC dashboard, there is a top-level view of key performance indicators including stats for impre... > Read more

Over the past few weeks, I’ve come across more than one comment or statement about how powerful the AdWords Automated Rules are for bidding and how this could really put pressure on the third-party software companies, be the death of bid management software, etc. I don’t agree. Over at Ad Innovations, Google gives us the example of using Automated Rules for raising your bid (by 20%) based on a keyword’s position (worse than 4).

They also say, “Modify your Max CPC bids based on CTR or conversion rates,” but offer no real direction for how to do this. Brad Libby talked about shooting your eye out with automated rules, which doesn’t sound too profitable. What I haven’t come across is any examples of how to bid intelligently with this new feature. Where are the rules for the Aut... > Read more

Earlier this week in digging into some Google insights for search data we learned that an increasing number of you are looking for information about Google's AdWords Certification program: The impetus for all this new-found search interest is likely a rebranding of Google's partner program and a series of changes on Google's end to how the AdWords certification process works, including several eligibility standards.

As with the need for free AdWords videos mentioned here recently, not all of Google's help materials are immediately helpful, and the same is true for the documentation around the AdWords certification program (possibly another reason for a jump in search traffic here). In this post we'll try to represent some of the nuts and bolts information around getting google adwords cer... > Read more

This is a guest post by Chad Summerhill, author of the blog PPC Prospector, provider of free PPC tools and PPC tutorials, and in-house AdWords Specialist at Moving Solutions, Inc. (UPack.com and MoveBuilder.com). When you have to read a help file to understand how to use a feature, doesn’t it bug you? Don’t you wish that things were a little more intuitive and easy to use? For whatever reason, the AdWords team seems to be masters at releasing very useful features (sometimes awesome features like Broad Match Modifiers) and then making them a pain to use.

You may remember my concerns about  ACE for ads a few weeks back. Again, ACE for ads is great, but no fun to use. I hate to be negative about negative keywords, which I love so much (see my posts on search query mining... > Read more

If you're new to AdWords, the platform can seem overwhelming, and like anything you'll likely look for help in the form of forums, tutorials and books. There are a lot of great training programs (like PPC Blog and Certified Knowledge), a number of excellent books (like Brad Geddes' Advanced Google AdWords and David Szetela's Pay Per Click Marketing an Hour a Day), and of course AdWords' own help resources.

One challenge people new to AdWords sometimes face is that the help materials can be a bit dry, and the complexity of the AdWords platform can be a bit intimidating. As a result a lot of times videos can be a good way to get going and can help you understand how your ads are served. Once you understand the basic idea behind pay-per-click marketing these videos will help you to get a more ... > Read more

AdWords is getting very complicated. There are new features being churned out constantly, and if you're a new advertiser or simply not a paid search expert, it's difficult to keep up with what's in the interface, let alone make use of all the tools. Obviously we can't review the utility of every single new feature for every single advertiser here on the blog, but I thought it would be useful to walk through a specific feature for a specific type of advertiser.

The aim will be to offer advice for how to evaluate new features and whether there's utility in leveraging them for your own AdWords campaigns. Evaluating a New AdWords Feature: The Ad Interactions Report AdWords announced the introduction of a new report in the dimensions tab (the reports' having moved to the dimensions tab is ... > Read more

If you're a paid search expert focused on managing pay-per-click campaigns, you're likely up to date with Google's constantly expanding feature set. But if you're new to AdWords or are managing paid search campaigns as one of multiple responsibilities, it's likely there are some important things going on in your account that you aren't even aware of.

In this post we'll call out five key things that many PPC advertisers don't realize about their Google AdWords accounts. 1. Keywords Aren't Actually What Searchers Are Typing Mining search queries is a crucial part of the paid search management process, but many advertisers aren't aware of the fact that keywords aren't search queries: the keywords you bid on frequently aren't the things people are actually searching for. Because of the way mat... > Read more

We recently did a post on how to use AdWords Campaign Experiments and why they have the potential to be so powerful. In that article and in Joe Kershbaum's post over on Search Engine Watch, one of the biggest complaints was what a hassle it is to export AdWords data and report on it from Excel. It certainly is significantly more work than it needs to be, but because I think this is such an amazing tool (it can be as valuable to a PPC campaign as Website Optimizer, in many ways) I think it's worth walking through how you can actually get at the output of your campaign experiments so that you can act on the insights.

Defining the Problem - Why AdWords Exporting of ACE Needs Help Let's imagine we've set up a nice AdWords campaign experiment. How do we view this data? Well, we can start by cre... > Read more

One of my AdWords accounts got an interesting AdWords class action lawsuit notice today (bolding is mine):   Subject: Google AdWords Class Action Settlement Notice Google is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a creator of an AdWords campaign between October 2007 and July 2009.

This notice is being sent to you by Court Order so that you may understand your rights and remedies before the Court considers final approval of the proposed settlement on March 11, 2011. This is not an advertisement or attorney solicitation. A settlement agreement has been reached by the parties and is pending approval by the Court. Under the proposed settlement, Google will pay a total of $3,500,000 to the settlement class, including attorne... > Read more

This is a guest post by Martin Röttgerding, Head of SEM at Bloofusion Germany. Learn more about Martin at his blog at www.internetkapitaene.de or follow him on Twitter.   A new wave of Quality Score drops is troubling AdWords advertisers again. A thread on the AdWords help boards suggests that it started last Friday, just before the weekend.

A Google employee has confirmed that fixing the problem is now a priority for Google's engineers. I used the Excel sheet from WordStream's Quality Score Toolkit to analyze the changes that occurred in one of our accounts. Below is the account's usual Quality Score distribution: The red bars show how often a Quality Score occurs in the account. The green line is an average Quality Score distribution according to WordStream's worksheet. The gr... > Read more

It looks Google has rolled out a new tab/feature called auto targets. It looks like the feature leverages the Google Merchant Feed and allows you to create product sets and link them to ad groups, but as Matt Umbro points out the help page appears to be a blank document: Anyone have any more info here? If anyone has a write up drop it in the comments and we'll update the post with any links.

UPDATE: The feature doesn't appear to be that new after all :). Thanks to Chad Summerhill of PPC Prospector for the link to Elizabeth Marsten's awesome in-depth walk through on Portent's blog and for dropping in the help rollover info (for some reason that help menu never loaded for me):   Auto targets Auto targets allow you to target your ads to search terms by specifying attributes th... > Read more

When analyzing the performance of your pay-per-click ads, one of the main factors you'll want to concentrate on is click-through rate (CTR). Ads with high CTR are desirable because they drive more traffic to your site in less time. In addition, a high CTR contributes to a good Quality Score, and that helps lower your cost per click.

It's also an indication that you're targeting a relevant, qualified audience, which can improve your conversion rate as well. (Of course you'll want to keep an eye on both metrics and make sure you're not sacrificing one in favor of the other.) Recently I scanned through the ads in our own AdWords account and identified some patterns in the ads with the highest click-through rates. Note that I've changed the examples so I'm not giving away our best creative, bu... > Read more

I’m sure by now that most of you have heard of Google AdWords’ new feature, Broad Match Modifiers (BMM). In short, by adding a simple “+” before a word in your broad match keyword, Google requires that word (or a close variation) to appear in the user’s search query. If you’re not excited, you should be.

This is exactly the type of feature that we advertisers have been asking for and can benefit greatly from. BMM gives us more visibility and control over how we spend our money. (Check out Alan Mitchell’s blog post on using Modified Broad Match and its effect on CTR and CPC if you still need to get pumped up about trying out this new feature.) So who should use this exciting new feature? Anyone who has been afraid to use Enhanced Broad Match (EBM)... > Read more

Selecting targeted keywords is the first step to setting up a PPC campaign in Google AdWords, but the keyword matching options that you use can also have a large impact on your success. There are five AdWords match types: Broad Match, Modified Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match, and Negative Match.

All match types have advantages and drawbacks, so we'll discuss each in detail to help you choose the most advantageous options for your goals. For our discussion of the different AdWords matching options, we'll use "Gel Batteries" as the example keyword to illustrate how different options affect when your advertisements will be displayed. Broad Match Broad match is the default matching option for keywords used in your AdWords campaigns. A broad match keyword will be entered as Gel... > Read more

For a while now, we've been offering a free Quality Score Toolkit that rounds up our best resources for marketers looking to learn more about Quality Score. This toolkit includes: A white paper on improving Quality Score by increasing relevance A "Mastering Quality Score" video (a recording of one of our most popular webinars) A Quality Score Cheat Sheet, a one-pager dense with information about Quality Score And we've just added a fourth element that makes this toolkit even more useful for search marketers.

One of our resident PPC experts, Andy Stefano, has put together a Quality Score worksheet that will give you a quick overview of where your AdWords account stands from a Quality Score perspective. Just plug in some key numbers in the first page of the worksheet, and a dashb... > Read more

Google recently introduced a new AdWords feature that lets you create keywords that are more targeted than broad match, yet have a greater reach than phrase or exact match. With modified broad match, you put a plus sign (+) in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. The words that are preceded by a (+) sign must appear in the user’s keyword phrase exactly or as a close variation.

  The words that are not following a (+) sign will trigger ads on more significant query variations. This feature can drive more traffic than phrase or exact match, and attract more qualified traffic than broad match. What are examples of modified broad match phrases? Say your broad match phrase was “red purses.” That phrase could prompt ads on relevant query variations like &ldq... > Read more

If you are a savvy AdWords advertiser, or at least someone who wants more control over your AdWords account, you may want to consider setting maximum cost per click (CPC) for your keywords and keyword groups. AdWords offers automatic bidding for those who aren’t interested in setting their cost per click amounts manually.

But for those of you who are, you can follow these steps to formulate your maximum cost per click:   1. For each keyword or keyword group, determine your desired profit margin for each corresponding sale or sales lead. So, if you are selling oil paintings on your website, figure out how much you want to make on each one. Maybe that figure is $20, for example.   2. Determine the amount you are willing to spend for each conversion tied to a particular keyword or... > Read more

This is a guest post by Alan Mitchell. Alan Mitchell is a Brisbane PPC consultant specializing in highly granular long-tail PPC management. Follow him on Twitter: @alanmitchell. One question which is regularly asked to any PPC consultant when managing Google AdWords PPC campaigns is whether ads should be set to rotate or optimize.

Google's default setting is "optimize," so if you have multiple ads in one ad group, your better performing ads (generally those with a higher CTR) will be shown more often. This might seem great -- you will automatically receive the maximum number of clicks for your ads. But the more experienced PPC advertisers out there will know that clicks are not generally considered a good measure of success. Instead, conversions -- sales, leads, sign-ups, downloa... > Read more

The following is a guest post by John Lewis, one of WordStream's client services representatives. John helps customers overcome challenges and hone PPC performance. Pay-per-click marketing is a continual process and there are always ways to expand your presence and improve performance. The following are five ways you can explore different PPC opportunities even after you have thoroughly segmented your keywords into an effective structure: 1.

Advertise on the content network: A good form of spreading your brand name to a relevant audience. Select verticals of websites that are related to your product to reach out to the most qualified audience. A study conducted by Forrester indicates that display advertising in the content network increases brand awareness and results in higher click-thro... > Read more