Search Engine Marketing White Papers

Our free search engine marketing white papers provide critical business information and technical insight into the key challenges facing the SEO and PPC industry and the tools and strategies marketers need to overcome them.

How to Choose a PPC Software Platform: A PPC Buying Guide

This buying guide will arm you with the information necessary to choose the PPC management platform that's right for your business. After reading this guide, you’ll be able to answer key questions like:

Is PPC software worth the investment?
How could the right platform help you increase ROI?
What areas of your campaigns need extra help?
What kinds of tools would address your specific needs?

If you’re ready to find the PPC management platform that will take your campaigns to the next level of success, download our free guide today. Includes a checklist to help you evaluate prospective PPC vendors.

A/B Testing: 24 Expert Tests and Results Revealed

A/B testing and optimization are critical to improving marketing performance and growing your business – and you don't need to be a scientist to get great results! A seemingly small lift in conversion rate can have a huge impact on your bottom line. But to reap the benefits, you need to live by the mantra "Always Be Testing!"In this guide, you'll hear from 24 marketing experts who each share their most surprising, profit-boosting test results, including:

A web form that lifts site profit by 76%
A button design that increases conversion by 11%
DPPC ad copy swap that drives 10x results

Download the guide now, and get inspired for your next round of tests!

Google AdWords Ad Extension Guide: Updated for Enhanced Campaigns

One of the simplest ways to improve your AdWords click-through rates, Quality Scores, and ROI is to implement ad extensions – a set of features that make your Google ads bigger, more compelling and more clickable. But do you understand all the different extensions and when and why to use them? If not, The Ultimate Guide to AdWords Ad Extensions is perfect for you. It contains:

An overview of each extension type, including sitelinks, product extensions, and location extensions
How, when and why to use each extension type
Tips for implementing high-performance ads for mobile, local searches and other use cases

Download the free guide, today.

PPC Bid Management Guide 2013

Bid management is one of the most complicated parts of PPC, so many advertisers choose to automate using Google AdWords or a dedicated third-party tool. Neither approach is perfect – Google’s automated bidding feature is free, but forces you to give up control and transparency. Dedicated bid management software is more robust, but may cost more than your budget can bear– especially for help with just one piece of the PPC management pie.So what's the best bid strategy for you? For our new free e-book, we asked our favorite PPC pros to answer three questions:

Do you use automated bidding in Google AdWords? Why or why not?
If not, when do you raise and lower keyword bids?
What’s your best PPC bid management tip?

This guide is packed with tips for managing your keyword bids to maximize value for your paid search dollar.

7 Steps to Mobile Marketing for Paid Search

Mobile search is up 200% year over year, and by 2014 mobile Internet use will overtake desktop Internet use. Are you and your marketing strategies prepared!? Download the Free Guide, Mobile Marketing and PPC for a 7 step review which includes:

Overview of AdWords Enhanced Campaigns
Setting Goals & Analyzing Results
Designing Mobile Ads & Landing Pages
Mobile Friendly Ad Extensions and Sitelinks

This guide will outline the 7 steps to mobile PPC setup so that businesses of any size can reap the rewards of the ever-growing mobile market to expand audience reach, enjoy a lower cost-per-click, and increase paid search revenue.

How to Choose a PPC Agency: Finding the Right Pay-Per-Click Marketing Agency for You

This buying guide will walk you through a process to determine which PPC agency is right for you and your campaigns, arming you with a series of questions to help you make the right decision. After reading this guide, you'll understand:

If you really need to outsource your PPC campaign management
What qualities to look for in a PPC agency
What questions to ask potential PPC agencies

Download this free guide and checklist today to find the best online marketing agency for your business.

Quality Score Toolkit

With WordStream's Free Quality Score Toolkit, you'll have the resources you need to improve your Quality Scores, so you can reach more people while lowering costs. This free toolkit includes:

Quality Score Worksheet: Plug in some key numbers to get a full analysis of your AdWords account from a Quality Score perspective. You'll get a fast, easy, visual overview of how your campaigns are performing and what needs improvement.
Video: Mastering Quality Score. A comprehensive Quality Score 101 session from the comfort of your own desk.
Quality Score White Paper: Learn how Quality Score is calculated, why it's important and how to optimize your campaigns for the highest score.
Quality Score Cheat Sheet: All the information you'll need to master Quality Score.

Tricks to Get the Click: 10 Tips for Writing Better PPC Text Ads

A great PPC ad is a combination of best practices and little details that get you noticed. In this free guide, co-authored with Hanapin Marketnig, we’ll share 10 tips for crafting more clickable text ads, including information to help you develop:

Eye-grabbing headlines and descriptions that scream “I’m relevant to your needs!”
Specific calls to action that reinforce desires and create urgency
Well-structured ads that earn high Quality Scores and boost your whole PPC account

The 20-Minute PPC Work Week: Making the Most of Your PPC Account in Minimal Time

Most small businesses get weak results from PPC for one simple reason: They don’t spend enough time in their accounts.The reality is, you don’t have to spend days or even hours per week working on PPC to make a difference. You can make a real impact on your PPC performance in just 20 minutes per week. Really! Learn how in this e-book.

The 20-Minute PPC Work Week: Weekly Checklist

We believe you can see steady improvement in your PPC performance in just 20 minutes a week. Use this workflow to help you along; it's still a great guide as to how to best spend your time for maximum results. Download this checklist, print it out and pin it to the wall by your desk. We encourage you to follow this workflow every week. Then use the AdWords Performance Grader to see how much your results have improved!

PPC Budgeting Best Practices: 10 Tips for Setting Your 2012 Budget

In this new, free guide, we’ll walk through ten best practices to help you get the most from your PPC budgets in 2012. You’ll learn:

How to determine your initial budget
Why you shouldn’t arbitrarily cap spend
How to maximize different budgetary controls
The effect of seasonality on your PPC budget

And many more tips to help you plan and optimize your PPC budget in the coming year.

Controlling PPC Costs with Negative Keywords: An Expert's Guide

This e-book is packed with information to help you understand, find, and implement negative keywords, including creative applications beyond the obvious. The e-book includes:

Negative Keywords: How to Put an End to Waste & Maximize PPC Profits - Our updated white paper on the basics: what negative keywords are, why you should use them, and how to find negative keyword candidates using negative keyword tools.
Fighting Cross-Campaign Ad Poaching with Negative Keyword Lists - Are your campaigns poaching impressions from each other? Learn how to prevent it by using campaign-specific negative keyword lists.
Advanced Search Query Mining: A Five-Step Guide - This long article by Chad Summerhill explains in detail how to dig into your search query reports and perform some Excel magic to find both negative keyword candidates and new keyword opportunities.

Four Signs that You Need PPC Software

Is it time to invest in a PPC management platform? This new, free guide reveals four signs that your business could benefit from PPC software. These signs include:

You have the budget – you’re just not spending it well
Your PPC campaigns aren’t profitable yet – or are just squeaking by
Your workflow is a mess because you don’t know what to do next

Download this free guide to learn whether PPC software could help your business.

3 Signs that You Need a PPC Agency

Does logging into AdWords make you nervous? Can't find the time to work on your PPC campaigns? It’s not impossible for a small business to manage their PPC account in house, but it is extremely difficult. If you're struggling to succeed with AdWords and beginning to wonder if you should outsource PPC, check out our guide, 3 Signs You Need a PPC Agency. After reading this guide, you’ll know what to do if:

You don’t have the time to effectively execute PPC
You don’t have the expertise to get ROI from AdWords
You’re not meeting your goals, and you’re out of ideas

Could you benefit from hiring a PPC agency? Download this free guide to find out.

Measuring the Long-Term Value of PPC

Learn tips to evaluate and improve the long-term value of your campaigns. After reading this white paper, you’ll have a better understanding of:

Why search engine marketing campaigns are chronically undervalued
Questions you should be asking about your SEM campaigns
How to measure the long-term ROI of your PPC campaigns
How you can improve the effectiveness and profitability of your SEM efforts with better tools and techniques

Keyword Research Kit

Our keyword research kit includes:

The Keyword Research Cheat Sheet – This PDF offers a bird's-eye view of what keyword research is, what it isn’t, and why it’s important.
The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Competition – 35 of the biggest names in SEO weighed in on how to best determine the competitiveness of a keyword.
Guide to Keyword Research for Social Media – In this guide we offer tips for leveraging keyword research to generate more traffic and attention through social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Keyword Monitoring Worksheet – This tool allows you to plug in your keyword data every month and monitor trends in your rankings, traffic from SEO, and ultimately how your organic search engine marketing efforts are helping to drive your business.
4 Steps to Better Keyword Grouping – This white paper explains how to organize your keywords into actionable, Google-friendly groups in an easy four-step process.

7 Steps to a Better Search Campaign

If you’ve got seven days, you’ve got the time to create a hard-working, high-performance search campaign. These seven steps will help you build a comprehensive, relevant, dynamic campaign. As soon as next week, your business could be seeing:

An increase in traffic
More qualified leads
Lower costs and higher ROI

Complete Guide to AdWords Match Types

The keyword matching options that you use in Google AdWords can have a major impact on the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of your pay-per-click campaigns. After reading this guide, you'll have insight into:

The different keyword match types offered by AdWords
How, when and why to use each match type to get the best results
How negative keywords can save you money and raise CTR
Best practices for applying each match type

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Best Practices

Proven methodology, workflow, and tools for maximizing return on investment and simplifying the management of PPC marketing campaigns.

4 Steps to Better Keyword Grouping

If you only have time for one change to improve the overall performance and value of both your pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization efforts, turn your attention to keyword grouping. Better keyword grouping and organization can transform every aspect of your search campaigns, resulting in greater efficiency, more conversions and higher profits.

Improving Quality Score: The Value of Being More Relevant

This white paper provides an in-depth look at Quality Score, including how it's calculated, why it's important, and the specific advice that Google offers on how to optimize Quality Score. After reading this paper, you'll have a clear understanding of what work needs to be done to realize the benefits of higher Quality Score, and you'll know exactly where to start.

Negative Keywords: How to Put an End to Waste & Maximize PPC Profits

Negative keywords offer an opportunity to strategically restrict your PPC advertisements, so they only reach your best potential audience. Effective PPC management means consistently expanding your keyword portfolio while simultaneously refining the list of keywords you're already bidding on in order to maximize relevance—and consequently, profits. This white paper outlines an effective strategy for creating a negative keyword list that will boost click-through rates and PPC profits.

10 Ways Keyword Management Improves Search Marketing

Learn ten benefits of implementing keyword management best practices, turning your keywords into qualified traffic, leads, and sales, in this in-depth white paper, which discusses:

Keyword Discovery
Keyword Grouping and Organization
Ways to Structure Campaigns for Maximum Reach and High ROI

Additional Search Engine Marketing Resources

In addition to informative white papers, WordStream also offers a series of resources to help you get the most out of your search marketing campaigns:

Also, learn how to get more out of your Keywords:

About Larry Kim

Printer-friendly version