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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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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Google Ads
Google’s AdWords Tool Helps with Both Pay-per-click and SEO
February 9, 2010 • Jeff Muendel
Keyword research is one of the pillars of both natural and paid search campaigns. By following the keyword choices used by consumers in the search engines, websites can focus on those terms to capture traffic. This tenet of online marketing and search engine optimization is fairly well ...
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Google Ads
Survey Results: Online Merchants Likely to Use Bing Pay-per-click Advertising
July 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Two thirds of respondents to a June 2009 Practical eCommerce survey said they were either using or would use Microsoft's Bing search engine for pay-per-click advertising, and an additional 25.3 percent said they would consider Bing. Altogether, some 92 percent of survey respondents sai...
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Google Ads
The PeC Review: Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool Lets You See What Spiders See
April 24, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool can help ecommerce merchants find pertinent keywords specific to a given URL, potentially improving search-engine-optimization and pay-per-click-advertising campaigns. Using URLs from your AdWords account, the Search Based Keyword Tool (SKTool) "dis...
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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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Google Ads
My Favorite Pay-per-click Blogs
December 18, 2008 • Bill Hartzer
It seems as though there are a million blogs. In fact, last time I checked, Technorati was reporting that over 120,000 new blogs are created every single day. That's about 1.4 new blogs every second. With so many blogs out there, which pay-per-click blogs are the most helpful? To help...
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Google Ads
Advertising in Recession Leads to Competitive Advantage
December 3, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Economic anxiety and a lack of insight have prompted some online retailers to slash their advertising budgets. However, when fewer of your competitors are investing in advertising, you can step up and command a market, improving sales now and in the long term. In a notable study that i...
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Google Ads
Interview: Pay-per-click Expert On 2nd Tier Ad Sites
October 8, 2008 • Bill Hartzer
Recently I sat down with Jeremy Mayes, the author of PPCDiscussions.com. In addition to writing the PPCDiscussions.com blog, Mayes has used paid search to sell millions of dollars of products and has generated millions of leads for various industries. I asked him about 2nd tier pay-per-...
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