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 Part 1, which includes the introduction and the first tip, in yesterday's post. Below you'll find tips 2-5.2. Base Your Budget on ProfitabilityThis tip seems pretty straightforward, but with all of the nuts and bolts and minutiae that go into running successful PPC campaigns, managers sometimes forget to focus on the most important metric: profitability.

As with all things PPC and marketing in general, remember to base your decisions on profitability and the way your business actually runs. Areas of your account that are more profitable should get more attention and more of your budget.3. Don’t Arbitrarily Cap Profitable SpendIf your cam... > 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 AdWords campaign audit as to whether you’re adhering to best practices within your AdWords campaign, WordStream has a free performance grader which... > Read more

This is the last 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 ReportGoogle AdWords Free Clicks ReportIn this post, we’ll be walking through the call details report in the AdWords dimensions tab.

What Is the AdWords Call Detail Report?The Google AdWords call detail report offers data around AdWords-enabled call tracking via call metrics or AdWords call extensions.In general call extensions from AdWords leverage Google Voice to allow you to track not just activity on your site (v... > 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

If you own a small company and use or are considering using Google pay-per-click (AdWords) for your goods and services, this article is meant for you. I’m including two practical Excel techniques in this article: How to write Google PPC ads using Excel.How to estimate profit/loss for a Google PPC campaign.

Fun Stuff – Writing Google PPC Ads with ExcelFirst the fun stuff. Seven years ago when I ran my one and only Google PPC campaign (a profitable one), I really didn’t enjoy writing Google pay-per-click ads. I hated counting the letters in the ads to meet Google’s criteria.Ad line #1: 25 characters.Ad line #2: 35 characters.Ad line #3: 35 characters.I wrote the ads on scraps of paper when I had creative flashes. Naturally I lost some of the slips of paper and started using ... > Read more

This is the latest post in an ongoing series on AdWords reporting in the AdWords dimensions tab. In previous installments of the series 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 ReportAnd in this, the seventh post in the series, we’ll be focusing on the automatic placement report in the AdWords dimensions tab:What Is the Automatic Placement Report and Why Is It Important?The placement report is similar to the search query report in that placements are the targeting lever you use on the content network to determine where your ads will show.

This report is also ... > 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

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. In the off chance that they tell me advertising on Google does not work, I tell them that our whole company exists because it does work.how does google adwords work?Since there ... > Read more

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 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 4AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 5This 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... > Read more

This is the fourth installment in our guide to reporting via the Google AdWords dimensions tab. In the first three posts we covered:Google AdWords Dayparting – The AdWords Dimensions Time Tab ReportGoogle AdWords Conversion Reporting via the Dimensions TabGoogle AdWords Destination URL Report The focus of this post is AdWords demographic reporting functionality within the dimensions tab.

What Is AdWords Demographic Reporting?Demographic reporting in AdWords allows you to look at the demographics of the prospects you’re targeting on certain sites. One of the powerful things about Facebook advertising is that you’re able to build a demographic profile to target your ads to; AdWords offers similar insights into who your ads are being served to for certain sites that have this type o... > 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 AdWords expert 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 th... > Read more

This is the third installment in our series on AdWords reporting via the dimensions tab. Previously we’ve covered the dimensions tab time report (aka AdWords dayparting) and AdWords conversion reporting via the dimensions tab. In today’s post, our focus will be on Destination URL report within the dimensions tab.

What Is the Destination URL Report?The destination URL report is pretty straightforward: it’s showing you a list of the various destination URLs (i.e., your actual landing pages where you’re sending traffic – not your display URLs) in your AdWords account. As with any report in the dimensions tab, you can customize the columns in this report to give you a variety of different data points:In the screenshot above we’re focusing our column selection on two key components o... > 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

This is the fourth 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 3This week’s interview is with David Semprun.

David is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Priority Pass, the world’s largest airport VIP lounge access program. Follow him on Twitter at @semprund or visit his website, davidsemprun.com.Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agen... > 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 is the second in a series of posts on the Google AdWords Dimensions Tab Reporting Options. In the first post in the series, we covered AdWords Dayparting with the Google AdWords Time Report, and in today’s post we’ll walk through the conversions reporting options in the dimensions tab. This report offers you a couple of different views of your conversion data that can be helpful in reporting.

What AdWords Reports Live Within the “Conversions” Report?As you can see the conversions report drop-down offers you two reports:Conversion Tracking Purpose – This is the purpose, or “category” of your conversion. AdWords offers you a few different options here:Purchase/SaleSignupLeadView of a Key PageOtherConversion Action Name – This is obviously what you’ve actually named your... > 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

Sadly, not every keyword you attempt to target in your AdWords accounts will work. The good news is, because PPC offers a fountain of immediate feedback in the way of data points, it’s possible to identify poor choices in your initial targeting and take swift action.In this post, we’ll walk through the two major examples of keywords you’d be better off pausing, as well as some potential pitfalls to consider in thinking about actually shutting down these keywords.

Keywords that Spend Money but Don’t ConvertThis is probably the most immediately obvious and intuitive example of a keyword that should be paused: keywords that are costing you money but not converting into a lead or a sale. But even within this classification of keyword, there’s a bit more nuance than meets the eye.Let�... > 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

Last week we concluded our blog series on AdWords Ad Extensions with a post on Google AdWords Call Extensions, and got an excellent question in the comments of that initial post:Thanks for the information!  I have always received conflicting information from the Google AdWords reps regarding running multiple ad extensions at a time.

  How does Google decide what to display if you have sitelink ads, product extensions, and call extensions all running on the same campaign?  It doesn't appear that more than one extension can be displayed at one time.  Is there a disadvantage to running multiple extensions in a single campaign?Thanks,AshleyThis is a great question and may explain why certain campaigns that have one ad extension set up wouldn’t see another that they’ve al... > 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

In the first two installments of our series on AdWords ad extensions we covered AdWords location extensions and Google’s product extensions. Today we’ll walk through AdWords sitelinks, namely:What are AdWords sitelinks and why are they important?How do I use AdWords ad sitelinks in my account?When should I use sitelinks in my AdWords account?We’ll also provide information on why sitelinks may not be showing in your account and how best to leverage sitelinks in your campaigns.

What Are AdWords Sitelinks and Why Are They Important?Ad sitelinks are a feature in AdWords that offers you additional links to pages beyond the destination landing page in your ad. In the above image, “Free Shipping,” “Free Personal Engraving,” “3G or Wi-Fi models,” and “10-hour battery” are all ... > Read more