Category

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
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 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 ...
Google Ads
Comparing Facebook Ads to Search-Based Advertising

March 2, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Could Facebook Ads become a viable alternative to traditional search-based pay-per-click advertising? Facebook’s investors seem to think so, given its reported $50 billion valuation. So far, however, Facebook Ads have not proven to be a scalable, controllable, or profitable source of ad...
Google Ads
7 Pay-Per-Click Advertising Mistakes to Avoid in 2011

February 1, 2011 • Scott Smigler

2010 was a big year for pay-per-click marketing. Google made significant changes to AdWords, and Bing integrated PPC advertising from Yahoo! into its adCenter. Now, much to the chagrin of advertisers who prefer a “set and forget” approach to their advertising campaigns, the bar for eff...
Google Ads
Microsoft adCenter: An Initial Reaction

December 1, 2010 • Scott Smigler

In late October, Microsoft’s Bing began powering all of the natural and paid search results in Yahoo!. Now, advertisers who wish to purchase sponsored search ads in either Yahoo! or Bing must do so through Microsoft adCenter. Given that the alliance has a combined market share of almost...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: 12 Tips to Boost Holiday Performance

November 2, 2010 • Scott Smigler

A well optimized pay-per-click advertising campaign can lead to gigantic increases in both revenue and profits. Conversely, a campaign that is neglected can lead to missed opportunities or significant financial losses. To help you prepare for this holiday season, here are 12 tips that ...
Google Ads
Google Instant and Pay-per-click Advertising

September 30, 2010 • Scott Smigler

Many online retailers take the "ready, fire, aim" approach when structuring their PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. However, as competition intensifies and search engines evolve, online retailers who fail to organize their campaigns in more thoughtful ways will be penalized. Those who “aim...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Six Metrics that Drive Performance

August 30, 2010 • Scott Smigler

Editor's Note: We welcome Scott Smigler as our new pay-per-click advertising contributor. Smigler is a pay-per-click expert, and he's the president of Exclusive Concepts, a prominent pay-per-click, search-engine-optimization and ecommerce-conversion consultancy. If you are committed to...
Google Ads
Transitioning from Pay-Per-Click to Organic Search

August 10, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

If you are spending too much money for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, then you likely have considered moving away from PPC and towards organic search results. After all, if you rank well in the organic, or natural, search results, you can spend a lot less money on PPC. But how do you ...

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