With more and more companies starting paid search campaigns everyday, as well as more emphasis placed on SEO, many question whether it is worth it or not to bid on branded keywords. From a per-cost standpoint, it seems very cut and dry – people searching for your branded term are going to click on your organic link, so why give them a choice to click on a paid link? However, this high level outlook is not as accurate as it may seem. (more…)
A new year to many people means a fresh start in their lives, careers, and relationships. In the coming year I hope that everyone achieves their planned goals and maybe even succeeds in a few new year’s resolutions.
Small and large businesses also look at the new year to develop goals, marketing objects, budgets, and more in hopes of increasing business and generating more revenue. In this day and age, more companies will look online to meet these goals, and if this trend continues, more businesses will start advertising online in 2010 then ever before. If you or someone that you know is looking to start up a new paid search marketing campaign or revamp an existing campaign please take a look at what I believe are the 4 top level tips to remember about paid search. (more…)
Over the course of this month Google has slowly released image ads for some of their paid search advertisers. This will become a great feature for any e-commerce advertiser that wishes to display some of there top selling items along with their prices. For an example, try searching for “hard drives” into Google. As seen below one of the top advertisers has the option for searchers to click below their display URL to “show products from this advertiser”.
While this is good news for the few who have it now, it will be interesting to see how it plays out once everyone gets their hands on it. From current reports, Google claims that advertisers with images displays are getting a much higher click through rate and conversion rate. Yahoo has tested this option out with their paid search ads and have claimed to see click throughs go up as much as 20%.
This makes sense now, but what will happen once all of the advertisers get their hands on it?
I had a chance to talk with a Google Adwords rep and he seemed to think once it rolls out paid search ads with images will require no additional cost. If this information is correct, then once everyone has the image ads then the click through rates will go back to standard levels.
I am a bit skepical now of how image ads will play out in the future, but I am excited to see how Google and Yahoo are constantly updating to make their systems more robust.
This guide will show you how to link your Google AdWords account with Google Analytics so that you can look at important data to better understand how your AdWords campaign is performing. If you are not seeing AdWords data in Analytics this guide is for you.
AdWords provides you with how many clicks, impressions, and other data telling you how your keywords and campaign is performing. However, by integrating with Google Analytics you will be able to drill down to the keyword level to get data such as: time on site, page views, and bounce rate. This will help you determine which keywords are performing so you can allocate more of your budget towards those that are profitable.
Ready to dive in? Read on! (more…)
