Paid Search agencies typically charge a percent of spend for their services. So if you’re spending $50K to $100K a month, your fee could be anywhere from 6% – 8%. What if instead of paying the fee, you managed your paid search account yourself, took the money you were paying to the agency and rolled […]

I think the distinction between queries and keywords is important. A keyword is the flat, literal, lowest-common-denominator word that you want as much commercial intent in it as possible. A search query is the actual phrase that the user puts in the search box. More often than not search queries are absurd. The keywords you […]

There are four main categories to think about when you categorize your keywords into campaigns: retailer, manufacturer, product and category. And then there are the multiple inter combinations of those four. Prioritizing which category you should focus on depends on which category your business falls into. If you’re a brand manufacturer than the Manufacturer bucket […]

Targeting at the Product ID level is the most granular but depending on how many products you have it can be unscaleable. The next best option is to use category combinations. For example: combine the brand target of Fender and the adwords_label you’ve made for acoustic guitars so that you can place a specific bid […]

Modifying a bid for someone who not only has been to your site before but you also have an idea of their activity on your site is powerful. So a site that sells guitars can create a remarketing list for a certain brand of guitar by making a list based on any URL that contains […]

Paid Search strategies can vary widely. There is a different blend of direct response and branding that each company employs. How much does a company value educating new customers as opposed to getting sales from each click? How often are they testing new keywords to reach different and new target segments? How much are they […]

This template is a snapshot for a particular month. It doesn’t show trends or give you the context of growth/decline over time. You can pull the Auction Insights report out of AdWords from a campaign or adgroup and then plug in the top 10 competitors to get these results. Ideally the first bubble chart gives […]

Bid management tools (Marin, Kenshoo, Acquisio, DoubleClick For Search) tout productivity, and increased efficiency but not without a hefty cost – charging 3% – 5% of spend. So is it worth it? Here are some of the pros and cons these tools promote and a comparison of what you get for free from AdWords:  Cross-Publisher […]