PPC Blog

Most PPC pros spend the bulk of their time on the biggest “bang-for-your-buck” PPC campaign elements, such as account setup, settings, ad creative and strategies. And that makes sense.

However, it’s also worth their time to take a second, closer look at more subtle optimizations. These optimizations may not take accounts from “zero to hero,” but they can still add up to significant improvements.

In my August Search Engine Land column, I pointed out some of these smaller optimizations in the Search Network.

More recently, I used my September column to point out a few similar optimizations you can make in the GDN.

Fortunately, many of these optimizations don’t take a ton of time to implement. So when you find yourself with even a few moments to spare, I invite you to dive in!

Ready to take your career to the next level?

Group Twenty Seven is hiring a Google AdWords – Paid Search Advertising Associate.

We’re a boutique digital agency and Google AdWords Certified Partner specializing in the strategy and management of Google AdWords paid search and display campaigns.

We’re building our team! Group Twenty Seven is 100% distributed with most team members living in Colorado, Arizona and Massachusetts.

We’re looking for the ideal candidate to join our team and grow with our company in a paid search advertising associate role.

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Not long ago, one of my clients asked me to make sure their paid search ads weren’t displaying on sites featuring hate, fake news or extremist views.

This is an entirely reasonable request, of course. Most advertisers don’t want their brand, products or services to be associated with these sites, especially in our current overheated political environment.

But actually, fulfilling such a request is not so easy.

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For many of us, summer is almost over (sigh.). You and your marketing team may already be looking ahead to a busy fall PPC season (especially if your business is in B2C).

But summer isn’t done yet. Don’t let the few remaining days and weeks go by without using the time to make a few adjustments to your AdWords account.

In my recent Search Engine Land column, I pointed out three ways to optimize your AdWords account this summer to get better results in the fall and the following year.

In isolation, none of these small changes will rocket your campaign performance forward. But together, they can add up to significant improvements.

When you’re knee deep in paid search advertising, you get pretty familiar with the many different ad types and variations out there. But occasionally, something will pop up that surprises me or (more often) reminds me of a particular ad “flavor” that I had forgotten about.

This happened to me recently when I was doing some work for a client and up popped a competitor ad with a double structured snippet.

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Back in the days of AdWords standard text ad format, marketing teams and PPC agencies would commonly create mobile-preferred ads as a way of tailoring messaging for mobile users.

With the rollout of expanded text ads, we lost this “mobile preferred” option. With expanded text ads, messaging is the same across all devices. If we want to tailor our ads to mobile users, the best we can do (in expanded text ads) is assign a separate “mobile” landing page for them.

Outside of expanded text ads, we have a few workaround options, such as device-based ad customizers and building mobile-specific ad groups or campaigns.

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When your company finally gives its marketing team the green light to expand into paid search—and taps you to head the initiative—you know you have to get it right or risk your company taking paid search off the table for good.

But getting it right isn’t easy. Paid search is notorious for causing marketers (including those well seasoned in other channels) to stumble and fall.

However, if you know in advance which PPC areas are most problematic—and where most errors are made—you’ll know what you can do to dodge those problems.

In my most recent Search Engine Land column, I describe the five most common mistakes made by paid searches novices and how to avoid them.

Find out what you need to know to keep your company’s paid search campaigns on track—and keep PPC on the marketing table.

For as long as online advertising has been with us, people have complained about its impact on user experience. Granted, ads have come a long way since the internet’s early days and aren’t nearly as obnoxious as they used to be (for the most part). But that said, you don’t have to look hard to find examples of bad online advertising.

What do I mean by bad online advertising? The industry group Coalition for Better Ads lists some of the most egregious examples:

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Of course, you want only the best for your PPC programs. After all, you put a lot of time, effort and thought into them, and you expect good results in return.

But sometimes, without being aware of it, we employ certain strategies and tactics—or don’t employ certain strategies and tactics—that doom our PPC programs to failure.

In the course of working with business owners and marketing teams across a wide variety of industries, I’ve identified four missteps that can seriously undermine PPC programs.

As a result of these missteps, PPC campaigns can fail spectacularly. Or, more likely, they’ll lurch, sputter and fade into oblivion. But all of them will leave your team wondering… “Where did we go wrong?”

In my latest Search Engine Land column, I identify four ways in which you can inadvertently set up your PPC program up for failure—and what you should do instead.

Most of us are familiar with commonly used AdWords extensions, such as sitelinks, call extensions and callouts. We know how they work and where they work best.

And because we’re familiar with them, we tend to go back to them again and again. Which is fine! If they’re working for your business, why stop?

However, there may be other extensions in AdWords that might also be useful. Extensions that you may not be aware of. Or that you’re aware of but haven’t considered. Or that you’ve considered but have written off.

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