PPC Strategy | Question & Answers for Lead Generation Client
What should be strategy for keywords with company names (i.e. teledirect call center)?
It really depends on the situation. In some industries companies have locked down branding terms, so there is little or no chance you can bid on these keywords and maintain a good CTR, because often the company itself, there partners, resellers, and even there affiliates are bidding on these keywords. However, in some cases the company may be small enough, or the industry lacks SEM saturation so biding on company names would be advantageous. Of course it also matters about your bid tactics as well. You may be unable to compete in the Google Paid SERPS, but you may dominate the other lesser known engines.
How about using keywords that contain location names (i.e. call center San Diego)? Currently we don't have such keywords in campaigns but allow such traffic i.e. we don't have company names nor do we have location names as negative?
Location names are covered when you use broad and phrase match, for instance phrase keyword bidding on call center leads will yield the search results call center leads plus call center leads in San Diego. Even though you will capture these search phrases, if the search volume is high enough to yield useful statistics I recommended breaking these long tail keywords out into their own ad groups in order to have more control over these more targeted ads.
As far as negatives, if there is an area that is found to be not so desirable for leads, then it would be advantageous to consider adding a negative for the underperforming region in order to increase the overall campaign ROI.
How should we use broad modifier in our campaign? How should we select keywords to be broad modifier? Analysis has shown that most categories, broad modifier
It is advantageous to use the broad modifier as a catch all keyword trap. Use the broad modifier then inspect the logs to find keyword opportunities that you didn't before see. For example in the past I used shoes for as a broad match trap and came up with the highly profitable keyword phrase shoes for nurses and shoes for teachers.
As far as selection goes, in the Google Keyword tool, use it as normal except that you would want to make sure the option to only show closely related keywords is checked, then toggle this between Broad, Phrase, and Exact match to see the differences and pic a list that is a good starting point.
What should be the strategy, if any different, for handling plurals? Should we have plurals ONLY as phrase or exact? e.g. phone and phones, call center and call centers.
In the past I bid on plurals, but I have read that Google automatically takes care of plurals now in days, so if time was a constraint then I would stick to no plurals and let Google take care of the plurals. However, if a campaign is not maximized, and if there is enough search volume to yield valuable statistics, and if you do have plenty of time to optimize a campaign, then I would take the time to do this.
What changes do you think on the landing pages will have an impact on quality score? How about tags on that page? - URL Removed for Cofidentiality -
What elements in our landing page would you do M/V?
Ideally you would want to test everything you can isolate easily. Again this depends on volume, but a good starting point would be M/V testing different Headings, and action buttons.
Do you think customizing the content of each page like you did has an impact on quality score?
Yes, without doubt this is the case. Studies of anpective domain wide due to many duplicate pages. However, I have seen in the past where a page I optimized for PPC ended up ranking very well in the SERPS for SEO.
What element in our landing pages would you change?
I would start with the Major headings and action buttons and go into more detai from there.
Are there any reasons to use the position preference feature?
I don't see any, especially when you are managing large campaigns. In some rare cases it may be advantageous, but this would be a case by case scenario backed by extensive analytics. I can say I would like to experiment with this further, maybe shoot for postion 6-7 in keywords where I am normally bid out of the niche.
What times of the day should are campaigns be live?
This descion should only be made after in depth analysis of statistics. Day parting should only be done when it is supported by stats. Blind day parting may exclude valuable placements.
Have you ever used the Google Adwords API?
I have downloaded the Google Adwords API and installed it on my own server in a Sanboxed environment for testing and application development. I belive there is great potential with this API, however currently I have read that the Google API doesn't offer any features that you can't already get from the free tools available. However, being able to pull data directly from Adwords into a PHP backend and manipulate the bids with rules that you set up yourself would be advantageous.
Have you used the Experiment Beta feature in setting?
Whenever I see a Google beta, I try to make it a point to give the beta a try and learn it before it is released to the masses. This has often paid off for me as I was the first to use a feature that many others were not yet using. And example of this is when I jumped on remarketing as soon as I saw that it was available. Furthermore, Google has the best keyword research capabilities of anyone, so if they are releasing a beta product, then there is little doubt in my mind that their internal keyword reasech algorithms show a great demand for a given feature, and therefore it is only a matter of time before the masses adopt the new feature or service.
Have you used the option for Google to rotate ads by conversion instead of clicks?
No, I have not. This is an interesting option and I intend to investigate it further starting tonight!
Have you used the new rules based feature by Google?
No, I have not. This is an interesting option and I intend to investigate it further starting tonight!
How should we use negative sites in search campaigns?
Yes, I have. I supported myself for 6 months as a content network affiliate on this tactic alone.
Do you understand all the mechanics of setting up and optimizing a retargeting campaign?
Yes, as far as I know.
Do you understand the mechanics of setting up a mobile campaign using Google's display network?
Yes I do.
How do you do M/V testing of ads?
I have used the Google tool, I have used excel, and I have even used third party PHP scripts, and I am currently developing my own custom php script in my spare time.
We have talked about two different keyword suggestion tools that Google has? Do you use other tools for keywords? Which of the two you prefer and why?
I have tried just about every tool out there, just to make sure it wasn't better than what I am already using. One great tool I used before was the tool from hubspot which showed the bid prices three years ago. Since then Google has included bid prices and thus the Hubspot tool has lost its appeal. I have also enjoyed using keyword spy to investigate the competition. This is especially useful as an affiliate where your commission margin is very small or in a highly competitive market.
How do you figure out a time of day based bidding strategy?
I would only implement a day parting strategy that was heavily supported with metrics I gain from insights from statically significant analytics.
Is there any reason to keep keywords that have not had traffic for one to two months? Keep such keywords that have a certain quality score?
As long as the quality score is good, and as long as there is plenty of room in the account for more campaigns, I don't see any reason remove these underperforming keywords. The only case would be when I was losing statistics from another valuable ad group or keyword. If the quality score turned bad, I would delete or pause it in order to preserve account wide quality score.
What criteria should we use to ONLY keep keywords that have converted?
I would look at full account history since the day the keyword was added, and then if there were no conversions, with a negative ROI I would pause or delete them until I found a way (possibly a new landing page) to make them convert.
If we keep keywords active that have NOT converted, then what should the strategy be for those keywords?
If a keyword is getting plenty of impression, but not converting, and as long as it is not costing a whole lot of cash, and as long as is is relevant to my goal, I would keep in active purely to reinforce branding.
How to decide to keep in account active ONLY conversion keywords ONLY?
If I was going to only keep keywords that were converting active, then I would sort by cost per conversion, then draw a line at an appropriate cost per conversion. Everything cheaper that this I would keep, things that were close I would optimize on at a time, and things that were far I would pause or delete (after backing up the data elsewhere for future reference).
How to use negative keyword types?
The same as regular match types, except now then yield a negative result.
What is the best way to come up with negatives at the ad group level and what should be the strategy for this?
Use the Google keyword tool to show negatives. Export the logs into an excel file and data mine the excel file with custom scripts or operations or functions.
What is your experience setting up retargeting campaigns?
I introduced retargeting to Gravity Defyer Shoes, they have since yielded it increased profits from this tactic.
Have you had success using the display network for using keyword based campaigns?
Yes, I supported myself for months based only on display network bidding as an affiliate. If I had the money to experiment here, I belive I could do so again once I found good places to advertise.
How should the tactics for these campaigns differ in terms of keywords, negative, ads and bids compared to search campaigns?
Conceptually it is similar, but in practice very different. Conceptually I would still use negatives, branded keywords, ad variations, and even landing pages targeted toward a certain ad. However in practice, you are now making ads based more on visual aspects, and your placement are even more important that they were with purely keyword bidding because 95% of the time spent on the internet by the average user is away from the Google SERPS, so you can spend a whole lot of cash fast if you're not careful.
