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Google Ads

Google Ads’ campaigns are a primary traffic and sales channel for many ecommerce businesses. Our vast library of Google Ads’ articles addresses setup, tag management, Google Shopping, structured data, automated bidding, and more.

Google Ads
Surviving Google AdWords’ New Enhanced Campaigns

March 4, 2013 • Scott Smigler

In "Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?," my article from Feb. 2012, I questioned whether the then unprecedented decline in cost-per-click rates would be a blip or a trend. One year later, Google apparently thinks it's a trend, as Google is requiring all advertisers to adopt its new Enh...
Google Ads
6 Rules for Pay-per-click Ad Profits

January 28, 2013 • Scott Smigler

I often hear from merchants that have tried pay-per-click advertising, but it wasn’t profitable for them. So they abandoned it. In my experience, however, many merchants could turn unprofitable campaigns into profitable ones by adopting the six rules that follow. Rule 1: Commit to PPC...
Google Ads
Pay-per-click Advertising: 7 Predictions for 2013

January 3, 2013 • Scott Smigler

2012 was a big year for pay-per-click advertising. Many online retailers saw their PPC budgets, conversion rates, and return-on-ad-spend grow nicely. At the same time, cost-per-click rates dropped precipitously for Product Listing Ads and mobile ads. Looking forward, here are my top sev...
Google Ads
7 Last Minute Holiday Marketing Improvements

November 28, 2012 • Scott Smigler

Christmas is less than five weeks away. Here are seven last-minute holiday marketing improvements you can make to maximize sales. 1. Shop Your Site from Mobile Devices Smartphone and tablet users accounted ...
Google Ads
Google Shopping: 5 Optimization Tips

October 31, 2012 • Scott Smigler

With the Google Shopping transition completed on October 17, all of Google’s organic, free product listings — those that showed a product thumbnail and price in search results — disappeared. If you want your product listings to appear in Google, you now have to buy Product Listing Ads t...
Google Ads
Primping Your Holiday Pay-per-click Promotions

September 28, 2012 • Scott Smigler

A passive approach to pay-per-click advertising often results in missed opportunities. But achieving optimal returns from your PPC campaigns isn’t complex. For holiday PPC promotions, maximizing profits means doing three things well. Create a calendar. Plan your holiday promotions wit...
Google Ads
Google’s Product Listing Ads: Cheaper, More Profitable

August 30, 2012 • Scott Smigler

I’ve previously written about why you should make Google’s Product Listing Ads a priority. If you’ve followed my advice in "Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?" and, more recently, "5 Steps to Prepare for Google Shopping," there’s a good chance you’ve observed a sharp increase in pay-pe...
Google Ads
5 Steps to Prepare for Google Shopping

July 31, 2012 • Scott Smigler

In "Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?," I encouraged merchants to try Google's Product Listing Ads because they produce exceptional results. They are the paid version of Google’s free product listings, which for many merchants are a major source of sales. Google recently announced, in...
Google Ads
Google Shopping’s Impact on SEO

July 6, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Over the next several months, Google’s free Product Search feature will start costing ecommerce sites a lot more. Since the launch of Google’s Froogle in 2002, Google has provided a free product search service. The newly launched Google Shopping marks the first time that the company has...
Google Ads
Remarketing Renaissance Helps Ecommerce Merchants

May 30, 2012 • Scott Smigler

The idea of targeting ads to visitors who leave a site and continue surfing the web always made sense to me. Until recently, however, this "remarketing" was an afterthought. It just wasn’t producing enough traffic or sales to be valuable. That’s likely to change. When Google got into ...
Google Ads
Google AdWords Ad Extensions Basics

April 10, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Google AdWords extensions give potential shoppers more information about a merchant and more options to engage with that merchant before clicking a search ad. Although ad extensions have been around for a couple of years, Google recently added conversion tracking data to extensions, ma...
Google Ads
Boost Pay-per-click Profits in 5 Easy Steps

March 29, 2012 • Scott Smigler

The difference between a profitable and an unprofitable pay-per-click advertising campaign can be the post-click conversion rate. We've run hundreds of conversion rate optimization tests at my firm over the past decade. Below I’ll share five optimizations that have consistently driven c...
Google Ads
3 Basic Ways to Improve PPC Advertising

March 28, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Pay-per-click advertising is a staple of ecommerce marketing that can play a key role in increasing site traffic and sales when managed well. Pay-per-click advertising can also be very expensive and labor intensive as marketers seek to find the best combination of ad copy, audience, ke...
Google Ads
How to Optimize a Pay-per-click Landing Page

February 29, 2012 • Armando Roggio

A pay-per-click landing page should be a sales conversion engine, tuned to help consummate an order. Landing pages “are one of the strongest tools you have to convert visitors to customers,” wrote Brandon Eley and Shayne Tilley in their book, Online Marketing Inside Out. “Much of your ...
Google Ads
3 New Google AdWords’ Features Worth Trying

February 28, 2012 • Scott Smigler

Google continues adding new features to AdWords. "Enhanced Ad Sitelinks," "Offer Extensions," and "TrueView" video ads are three examples. I have tested each of these, and recommend them to merchants. Online retailers who use them first can start profiting before their competitors. The...
Google Ads
Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?

February 1, 2012 • Scott Smigler

Google's average revenue per click from AdWords' advertisers dropped for the first time in two years for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2011, according to Reuters. Analysts projected a 3 percent increase in cost-per-click revenue, but Google reported an 8 percent decrease. As a result, man...
Google Ads
Creating a Killer Post-Holiday PPC Strategy

January 5, 2012 • Scott Smigler

Now that the holiday shopping season is over, here are some New Year's pay-per-click advertising tips to help you continue the growth of your online revenue. Review Cost-Per-Acquisition Data on a Category Level It’s often a good practice for online retailers to organize their pay-per...
Google Ads
Formatting a Product Spreadsheet for Google Merchant Center

December 20, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google has created a service that helps online retailers list and submit products to Google's Product Search, Product Ads, and Commerce Search offerings. This service, called "Google Merchant Center," can accept a data feed of product information. In this article, you'll find a descrip...
Google Ads
The 20 Most Expensive Keywords

December 8, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Google makes a lot of money from online advertising. In the twelve months ended June 30, 2011, Google made $33.3 billion in revenues. Of that, 97 percent ($32.2 billion) was from advertising. WordStream, a provider of software for keywords and pay-per-click marketing campaigns, has don...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising Becoming More Important?

November 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Ten years ago a business could thrive by focusing on organic search engine optimization. My rule of thumb then was that organic rankings garnered roughly 80 percent of the clicks on search result pages while paid listings garnered less than 20 percent. A smart SEO strategy seemed to out...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Ads: 5 Tips for Higher Clicks this Holiday Season

October 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Google’s paid-click revenue grew by an astounding 28 percent last quarter, thanks in part to a 5 percent rise in click prices. It’s likely that Google will set ad revenue records this fourth quarter also, due to the increase in holiday ad spending. To online retailers, Google’s surge i...
Google Ads
Paid Search: Can Anyone Challenge Google?

October 12, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

We can end the suspense right now. It's not likely that any other company is going to be a real contender in paid search anytime soon. The Search Alliance formed by Microsoft's adCenter and Yahoo! makes Bing the default search engine on Yahoo! pages. Although Microsoft has spent a good ...
Google Ads
Ramping Up Your Holiday Pay-Per-Click Advertising

September 29, 2011 • Scott Smigler

The holidays are coming. For many online merchants, this means dramatically increased revenue and conversion rates. Start ramping up for holiday pay-per-click advertising now to ensure that you maximize your profits — and build momentum for 2012. Below I’ve provided six tips that shou...
Google Ads
10 Pay-Per-Click Details You Cannot Delegate

August 29, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Many ecommerce merchants manage their own pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Others use in-house PPC managers, or outsource to PPC consulting firms. Regardless of how pay-per-click advertising is managed, there are some aspects of it that need direct involvement from merchants — or t...
Google Ads
Google Study Finds PPC Traffic ‘Incremental’ to Organic

August 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A new Google study reports that pay-per-click ads tend to generate new site visitors and do not simply divert traffic from organic search result links, as some marketers have feared. PPC ...
Google Ads
For Google AdWords, It Pays to be on Top

July 27, 2011 • Scott Smigler

The new “Top vs. Side” segmentation report announced by Google has led my firm to valuable new AdWords’ insights. We confirmed just how important it is to ensure your ads ...
Google Ads
How to Hire a Pay-Per-Click Manager; 10 Common Mistakes

June 7, 2011 • Scott Smigler

My firm is in the pay-per-click advertising business. We've managed PPC accounts for hundreds of companies for roughly a decade, and we've developed strong opinions as to what makes for a good PPC manager, and what does not. To be sure, there are many terrific PPC management firms othe...
Google Ads
5 Tips for Increasing Pay-Per-Click Conversion Rates

May 27, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Google’s Farmer/Panda update serves as a reminder to online merchants that their non-paid search traffic is subject to an algorithm that constantly evolves. Pay-per-click advertising, on the other hand, allows ...
Google Ads
Mobile Pay-per-click Advertising: 5 Ways to Improve Performance

April 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

“Mobile” and “social” have received a lot of hype over the past few years. To a large extent that hype has been warranted. Sales of smart phones are setting records, and according to Alexa — the web-traffic-ranking firm — socially driven websites account for five of the ten most popular...
Google Ads
Using Pay-Per-Click Advertising to Sell High-Ticket Items

March 29, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Online retailers often overlook the potential of pay-per-click advertising to drive sales of expensive products. Campaigns that target these items often bring the double whammy of low conversion rates and a high cost-per-click. There are several ways you can adjust your PPC advertising ...

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