Category: SEM

Barbara Coll welcomed us, well there are not too many of us here. She started with SFO Regions (Search/Find/Obtain) is just starting, search is really early in the stage. She explains that Search marketing, to be taken to the next level requires education of corporations, consumers and channels. SEMPO has educated the media publishers, the press, the members, and the advertisers. SEMPO does it providing a “huge” amount of materials on the site. Recognition for search marketing this year was huge; Google IPO, MSN Investment, Large Agency Adoption, Advertisers expected…

Read More

This week, some marketers noted that Google’s organic “People also search for” box of suggested queries is showing up within the paid search results after a user clicks on an ad and then goes back to the search results page. We hadn’t noticed this feature displaying within the paid search results before either, but it turns out the inclusion of these suggestions in the ads section isn’t all that new. We’ve learned Google began showing the “People also search for” suggestions in paid search results on mobile in September 2017…

Read More

Today’s news landscape makes it tough to separate truth from fiction. Between news hackers and special-interest propaganda, it’s harder than ever to find a source of information you can trust. Search marketing should be immune to it all. After all, we’re a metrics-first business. We count clicks, we tally conversions and we do difficult math to calculate return on investment (ROI). But did you know it’s super-easy to fake your way to seemingly good performance, due to rookie errors, bad habits or dirty tricks? Here’s how to arm yourself against…

Read More

Since the dawn of AdWords (now Google Ads), low Quality Scores have been the bane of every account manager’s life. Not only are their inner workings a mystery to us all, they’re also a real eyesore and annoyingly hard to fix. To help with this, I’ve written a Low Quality Score Keyword Alert script! If low Quality Score keywords are wasting your money, this script will help you find out where they are in order to tackle the problem head-on. What is Quality Score? One of the ways Google measures ad…

Read More

As search marketers, we are well aware of the power of audience targeting. We got a taste of it with remarketing, which blew away our conversion rates and left us scrambling to restructure campaigns. For years, I’ve been chronicling the shift toward audiences in articles such as Searching for searchers and Developing your audience targeting strategy. Search marketers have long been preparing for a new era of search based on more targeting, more personalization and more intelligence, even though it’s been unclear exactly when or how it would come. Demographic…

Read More

Want to know how to turn unorganized data into compelling presentations? Contributor Keri Morgret recaps three SMX Advanced speakers as they share how to transform data into valuable insights. This session focused on using data-driven storytelling to support and promote paid search marketing campaigns. Bill Hunt, Back Azimuth Consulting Bill started the session by sharing experiences he’s had in trying to sell stories about his data. To be effective in telling stories with your data, the data must be adapted to your audience. Executives tend to see things one way,…

Read More

As my company (Merkle) reported just a couple of weeks ago, Amazon has exited US Google Shopping auctions for all advertisers that had consistently seen it as a competitor for the last few quarters. While the rationale behind this decision remains somewhat of a mystery, those brands competing against the e-commerce giant are certainly not sad as a result of the recent development. Shopping Actions One update that may have played a role in Amazon’s decision was Google’s announcement of Shopping Actions in late March, which places ads for products…

Read More

We knew it was coming, just not this soon perhaps. In March, Google announced that it would retire the old AdWords interface by the end of the year. This week, some advertisers received notifications from Google that their accounts will be switched over to the new interface only, starting in July. At that point, “the new AdWords experience will replace the previous one” completely, and those advertisers will no longer be able to jump back to the original interface. A portion of the notice from Google is shown in the…

Read More

Google has updated its Ad Settings feature to give users more options for limiting ad personalization and is expanding the “Why this ad?” notices across all services that display Google Ads. With the changes, users can turn off some of the interest signals that Google uses for targeting ads. The options are located in the “Personal info and privacy” section of users’ account Ad Settings. The feature allows users to manage their ad settings and opt out of allowing Google to personalize ads per data it collects on users, including…

Read More

Most common PPC campaign mistakes can be easily rectified. With extra awareness, time and effort, you can adjust your optimization strategy to focus on ROI instead of CPA and get better results. With some changes to the way you approach your PPC activities as a whole, you can fine-tune your funnel and get higher-quality conversions. PPC marketers are only human, after all, but by avoiding some common campaign mistakes, you can become a number-crunching PPC machine. Want to know if you make the PPC grade? Take this short quiz below:…

Read More