SEM Tips | The SEM Guru

Through my experience as a search marketing professional I have seen many ways to build a PPC Campaign. Many of which I was asked to fix, improve, or just reorganize. From that I have compiled a quick list of 8 things you should keep in mind while putting together your Google Adwords / Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns. I will explain each and give examples as well.

Budget

This is one of the most underestimated puzzle pieces that contribute to a great campaign. Do your research; use the tools available to you. The first thing you need to do is find out what people are spending on bids for the keywords you want to bid on. Google has a tool in their “Tools” section (Go figure) called “Traffic Estimator”. Plug in your parameters and hit go. Voilà! Google spits out the estimated cost per click per day and budget range to support that amount of visibility / clicks. From this you can start with an educated guess of a budget instead of an arbitrary number. This in turn cuts down on optimization time starting your campaign out on the right foot.

Bids

Just like with budgeting people have a hard time coming up with the correct bid prices. I always start with the ad group level then optimize off of conversions (conversions to follow). For this I go back to Google’s “Traffic Estimator” in their “Tools” section. Run the same parameters and see what the range is. Then I bid accordingly. That’s it! This technique as well allows us to start off on the right foot competing for a coveted spot on the search results.

Focus

What is your focus? Know the classifications of your products and which you make money from. If you sell propane and propane accessories, you know that your main product is the propane and anything else is more of fluff (for lack of a better term). Ok you got that. Here is why it matters. Accessories and lower cost items may not be the best to advertise. You always want to make sure the bulk of your advertising goes to your main items. I think a quick way to make my point is comparing it to the candy and drinks at checkout stands. You went to buy a computer at Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics. All that shopping’s really made you thirsty, but you didn’t realize that until you got in line to purchase that computer until you see that diet coke in the icebox. So you purchase it. This is the same for the gas line and regulator accessories in our propane example. Once the main shopping has been done more will follow, if not at that purchase the next.

Keywords

You aren’t eBay… so why are you bidding on the term “eBay”? This is a huge pitfall I have seen. If you don’t get this, then you should probably learn really quickly, this is crucial to be successful at search marketing. Ill explain; The reason everyone else is getting rich off of the search engines is because they understand the connection between the search performed and the results of that search. People know exactly what they are searching for every time they get on a search engine. If they are looking for a product, they search for the product. In order for you to take advantage you need to think like a searcher and create your campaign with that in mind.

Ads

Ads might be the most important part of your campaign. This is the face of your campaign to the world. My first advice would be use all the space allocated; 25 characters for the title and 35 characters for each of the description lines. If you don’t get the perfect ad your first try… revise it. Keep revising until you feel comfortable with the ad, its call to action, and the highest possible use of the character limits. You can even “cheat” and see what others are saying in their ads. You can use the best parts of others and rewrite them to come up with your ad. This is often a trick I will use if I am not completely sure where to start or what the product or service is. I am feeling generous, here is an insider tip. When you write your ad use the display URL to your advantage. Always add a keyword or description word after your domain:
TheSEMGuru.com/Adwords
TheSEMGuru.com/Google
This gives you a better leg up on everyone and if someone uses that word to search it will be bolded:
TheSEMGuru.com/Google

Organization

Organize, Organize, Organize! I organize by separation of thought. I never put more than one keyword set in a single ad group. Ill have the root keyword plus concatenations:
Propane gas tank filler
propane gas tank fillers
Propane gas tank refill
propane gas tank refills
Propane gastank filler
propane gastank fillers
Propane gastank refill
propane gastank refills
Then the root keyword in its own ad group:
Propane gas tank
Propane Gas Tanks

Organization helps with optimization, optimization helps with ROI, and an overall successful campaign.

Landing pages

This is an often-overlooked aspect of the campaign. If you do not have a good landing page, a page where the user is sent after clicking on your ad you may potentially lose that sale. If people have to click too many times to get to what you advertised the user will give up and start over avoiding your site. How do you combat this? First is to make sure the ad group ad is being sent to the most relevant page on your site. If you do not have a very relevant page on your site, it is truly in your best interest to build a landing page. One that either holds the exact product they searched or a capture page with a clear presentation of your service or product with a contact form allowing you to follow up with the user.

Conversion tracking

Conversion tracking is crucial. A must. Not having conversion tracking is like driving blind. Conversion tracking shows you which keywords, ads, and ad groups are performing or not. With this information you can lower the bids on keywords that are not performing and raise the bids for those that are. Obviously there is a bit more that goes into optimizing a campaign but that’s really the start.

Follow these guidelines and you should be on a great path to a successful SEM PPC Campaign.

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