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Marketing & Advertising
Pay-per-click Advertising: Five New Year’s Resolutions
January 25, 2010 • Greg Laptevsky
The beginning of a new year is good time to review your pay-per-click advertising campaigns and implement steps to improve their effectiveness. Here are five New Year's pay-per-click resolutions that I recommend. Resolution 1: Improve performance tracking Attached is a spreadsheet ca...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Report Card: BraDiva.com Managing Small Ad Budget
December 1, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
BraDiva.com is a small ecommerce company run by two entrepreneurs who enjoy sports. The company's product line consists of brand-name sports bras in various styles and sizes. The site went live in early 2007. Bra Diva’s main advertising vehicle is Google AdWords. The average monthly ...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Advertising: Seven Pointers for Smaller Campaigns
October 27, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Managing small-budget pay-per-click campaigns (under $3,000 per month) is typically more difficult than managing campaigns with higher spend levels. Lack of “workable” data in smaller accounts often pushes campaign managers to make decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information...
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Conversion
Integrating Yahoo! Search and Microsoft Bing with Google Analytics
September 21, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Many ecommerce merchants use Google Analytics to track their pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Key pay-per-click statistics that can be tracked include revenue per keyword, number of conversions per keyword, average order size per keyword, bounce rates per keyword, and much more. B...
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Conversion
Ten Pay-per-click Questions An Owner Should Ask
August 13, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
If you own or manage an ecommerce business, you may not directly execute your pay-per-click advertising campaigns yourself. Instead, you may delegate the execution of them to an employee or an outside firm. But owners and managers need to know that broad outlines and the successes and f...
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Conversion
Research Your Competitors with These Three Steps
July 13, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Competitive research is necessary for many ecommerce businesses. Larger companies reportedly employ many people to research and analyze what their competitors are up to. Below is a list of three steps to help research your competitors. Step 1: Identify Competitors and Industry-relevant...
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Conversion
Microsoft’s Bing to Win Market Share?
June 19, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Microsoft recently rolled out a new search engine called Bing. This launch appears to be another attempt by Microsoft to win over search market share from its main search rivals, Google and Yahoo! Microsoft is reportedly planning to spend over $100 million on promoting the engine. Bin...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Report Card: BuyAndWalk.com Has Opportunity for Growth
June 8, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
BuyAndWalk.com sells footwear for men, women and children. The owner contacted Practical eCommerce with a request to review his pay-per-click advertising campaigns. He spends about $1,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising, with 99 percent of those monies invested into Google AdWord...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Advertising: Top 6 Rookie Mistakes
May 20, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Here is a quick list of the top 6 pay-per-click advertising mistakes that I’ve seen. I suggest that you print this list and go through it before you start your next pay-per-click campaign. Check for Strange Keywords. You may have accidentally typed-in or pasted an incorrect keyword in...
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Marketing & Advertising
Negative Keywords Improve Pay-per-click Performance, Save Money
May 5, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Implementation of negative keywords to your paid search account is one of the most effective methods to improve its performance. Negative keywords allow you to filter out unwanted traffic and only pay for clicks that have a higher probability of converting. Here’s how it works. Negativ...
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Marketing & Advertising
8 Tips for Choosing an SEO Professional
April 21, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Editor's Note: Greg Laptevsky is a longtime Practical eCommerce contributor and a professional search-engine-marketing consultant. We asked him for tips to help ecommerce companies hire SEO firms. What follows, below, is his response. The checklist below will help you choose the right ...
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Conversion
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Bid Management Strategies
March 19, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
In a pay-per-click world where your Quality Score seems to be controlling the performance of your campaigns, there is one proven method to improve performance. It’s called ongoing bid management. Regardless of whether you’re using enterprise level bid management tools, such as Marin S...
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Conversion
PPC Report Card: ACORN Sales Company
March 4, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
ACORN Sales Company, Inc. requested that Practical eCommerce review its pay-per-click advertising efforts. ACORN sells various notary public supplies, rubber stamps and embossers. Each month, ACORN spends about $1,600 for pay-per-click advertising across Google, Yahoo! and MSN, paying $...
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Conversion
PPC Advertising: Use Dynamically Generated Ad Text, Relevant Landing Pages
February 19, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
When it comes to pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the most important tools are targeted keywords and relevant landing pages. For targeted keywords, it is possible to develop dynamically inserted keywords simply by monitoring search activity on your site and in your ad campaigns. I...
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Google Ads
How to Expand Your PPC Keyword Portfolio
February 3, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
Paid search is all about keywords. The more targeted keywords you have in your accounts, the more sales you are likely to realize from pay-per-click advertising. Invest just 10-20 minutes per day reviewing new keyword ideas – it will pay off big time in the long run. Below is a list of...
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Business
Pay-Per-Click Report Card: Loriswigsite.com
October 10, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Lori’s Wigsite sells various brands of wigs for men and women. The owner asked Practical eCommerce to review her pay-per-click marketing efforts and examine how the company’s current agency does the job. Loriswigsite.com is running advertising campaigns on Google AdWords and Yahoo! Sear...
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Conversion
Tools To Detect Slow Load Times
July 24, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Don’t you hate when it takes, seemingly, forever for a website to load? Here’s why the load time of your site matters Slow load times constitute poor user experience. People are paying upwards of $50 a month for their high-speed Internet because they don’t like to wait. If you ma...
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Conversion
PPC Report Card: Learningbreakthrough.com
June 11, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Learning Breakthrough Program is a specialized exercise routine that improves cognitive functions for those diagnosed with developmental, behavioral and learning disabilities. This exercise program is offered via Learningbreakthrough.com, and staff of LBP (Learning Breakthrough Program)...
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Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Tools Improve Productivity
May 19, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Daily pay-per-click management routine is not a lot of fun. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there that make the work much more efficient and allow search engine marketing professionals to look at the big picture. Below is a list of software tools that every pay-per-click account o...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Report Card: Vxb.com
March 12, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Vxb.com sells ball bearings of various types and sizes. The company is based in California and requested a review of its pay-per-click campaigns on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Vxb.com's monthly ad spend is around $9,000 in Google, $2,000 in Yahoo! and $150 in MSN. Average conversion rate (...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Ads Impact Google Checkout and PayPal
March 5, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
If you're running an ecommerce store, you've probably heard of PayPal and Google Checkout. The following is a quick rundown of things you might not have known about the two. Google Checkout You can process 10 times your ad spend in Google AdWords for free. For example, if you're spend...
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Design & Development
Pay-per-click Spyware and Other Scams
March 3, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
If you thought click fraud was bad, consider this: your Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing ads and Microsoft adCenter accounts are new targets for spyware applications, hackers and scam artists. If thieves obtain access to your pay-per-click account, they are in complete control o...
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Conversion
Advertising On The Google Content Network
January 28, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
The most common mistake Google AdWords advertisers make is assuming that Google’s search network and Google’s content network are the same. In reality, the two are very different. Below is a checklist of how one should go about settings up a content network campaign. Getting Started A...
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Conversion
PPC Report Card: Homeexchange.com
January 16, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Homeexchange.com helps people exchange homes while on vacation. The site has two conversion events: A $99.95 registration for one year and a $50 house-listing fee. The site’s owner recently asked Practical eCommerce to review its pay-per-click campaigns in Google and Yahoo!. In its cur...
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Conversion
Google AdWords: More Than Text Ads
January 14, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Google AdWords offers a number of different ad formats and options in addition to the standard text-based ads. I’ve summarized these formats and options below. Standard Text Ads These are the regular text ads that we most commonly associate with Google's pay per click ad program....
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Google Ads
Negative Keywords For Your PPC Campaign
January 9, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
Keywords are an integral part of any online advertising campaign. However, what is sometimes overlooked is the equal importance of negative keywords, which are word filters that disqualify ads from being triggered by users’ search queries. For example, if the term “iPhone” is one of you...
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Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Account Tools
January 7, 2008 • Greg Laptevsky
A daily pay-per-click management routine can sometimes be a source of frustration. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there to streamline the process. What follows is a list of software that every pay-per-click account owner should consider. AdWords Editor AdWords Editor is Google’...
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Conversion
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Alternative PPC Venues
December 12, 2007 • Greg Laptevsky
In the world of pay-per-click advertising, there are three well-known players: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. However, there are several other interesting pay-per-click sites you may not be familiar with, which you might find useful. Clickriver Clickri...
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Conversion
PPC Report Card: Cheapbowlingballs.com
November 27, 2007 • Greg Laptevsky
Cheapbowlingballs.com is a three-year-old ecommerce business that sells bowling balls and accessories. The site has Google and Yahoo! pay-per-click campaigns running with ad spend of $2,000 and $1,000 per month, respectively. Cheapbowlingballs.com has approached Practical eCommerce for ...
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Conversion
Google Expands Ad Reach
November 14, 2007 • Greg Laptevsky
In another advertising venture offline, Google recently announced an extension of its Print Ads initiative. The program, which Google originally began testing in 2006, now includes more than 225 newspapers, with a circulation of roughly 30 million. It’s what is being promoted as newspap...
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