Image via CrunchBase

This is a guest post by Nupur Birla

Most of you PPC Analysts would spend your time in evaluating and optimizing your clients’ accounts periodically for 2 simple and important reasons – Lower Costs & Better ROI! Of course every advertiser has a different goal and hence the optimization techniques involved would differ. It can involve ad copy enhancement, additional keywords to be targeted, more organized campaign structure, strategic changes to bids, etc.

While doing so have you ever been in a total state of confusion on identifying your first step to begin with? Here is a ready checklist to make your in-depth performance analysis faster & simpler.

• Historical Account Performance

You basically run an Account performance report for different durations to ascertain how the account has been performing over the past few years/quarters/months/weeks. It helps you understand if there had been a sudden spike in Conversions/CPA or any other metrics during a given period. Then you could be looking out for all possible reasons for that change. It could be seasonal or due to certain changes in the Adwords campaign like geo-targeting, budget, landing page, incentives, etc

• Campaign Performance

Normally an account is divided into several smaller campaigns. A campaign summary report would help you judge the strong/weak performing campaigns in the account. Have a look at the daily spends of these campaigns to check if any of them meet their daily budget on a regular basis and if there is scope for overall budget reallocation to further boost the number of sales for the account. Dig a little deeper into the ad groups/keywords for these campaigns to see if there are specific set of ad groups or keywords that are responsible for the overall damage/progress of that campaign.

If these are top ticket items, they should be structured in a campaign that can have an uncapped budget.

• Search v/s content

It’s essential to know which network for the account spends the most and is profitable. An account performs differently on both Search and Content network and hence the plan of action would get altered accordingly. The first and foremost step would be to split the Search and Content campaigns for the very basic reason that both the networks function differently. Search is more intent oriented where a user types what he/she is looking for whereas Content is more theme based i.e. your ads get placed against the most relevant content on the sites which are Google’s properties.

The keyword themes need to be tighter and more specific in a Display network campaign compared to Search-based for Google to comprehend your keywords and showcase ads accordingly on the most relevant partner sites.

More competitive & popular are your keywords, higher would be the CPC’s on Search. Similarly, more well-known or niche are the partner sites, the bidding strategy would vary to get ads placed on such websites. Also, bids can be altered at keyword level in Search campaigns whereas in Display campaigns (keyword contextual targeting) the bids are adjusted at ad group level

• Bidding Strategy & Match Types

A recent keyword performance report will help you check the latest positions and competitive bid pricing for all your keywords. It will also help you filter the high/low performing keywords/themes across all your campaigns.

Once the best/worst performing keywords have been filtered out, it’s time to take action against them. You could either pause the worst performing one’s or drastically lower their bids as the first preventive step to bring your CPA under control! Push bids for the stronger one’s gradually (this is one of the very effective techniques to improve the quality score of your keywords!) Make sure that your high converting keywords are active in Exact match type so that you are spending efficiently on more targeted and relevant traffic.

• Placement Performance

Like a keyword performance report, a placement report would assist you in identifying the kind of placements/sites where your ads were displayed. Of course not all these placements would be of relevance to the product you sell or the service you offer. Eliminate the one’s which are of no importance and build out a strategy on integrating the one’s which have significance. A simple solution would be go through the pages of such sites, study the content on these pages and put the URL in the Google Keyword Tool. This will help you discover some completely new keyword themes to target!

• Negatives

Ensure that the campaign has a healthy list of negatives to weed out irrelevant clicks. It’s very simple; run a search query report to identify the kind of searches that triggered ads for the campaign and then keep adding relevant negatives (preferable single word in broad match unless they prevent relevant clicks!) Similarly, negative placements/sites can be deployed after running placement reports.

• Reach of the campaign

The keyword structuring within a campaign can be classified into different categories

• Keywords targeting all products/services (for e.g. wedding shoes, debt settlement, etc)

• Keywords related to your Brand & Competitors (for e.g. wedding4you.com, www wedding4u, etc)

There are various tools to help you identify newer keyword themes. The best one would be the search queries, for a simple reason; they tell you what your potential customers are typing to find you!

• Ad copies

Compare the ads across all relevant ad groups and decide which one had the best CTR’s. Analyze the various elements in your copy that would have driven the CTR’s up and try incorporating those in your new set of ads.

• Landing Pages

Firstly, check if there were multiple landing pages used. If yes, identify the best performing landing pages by comparing their respective conversion rates. You could also attempt to find the best ad copy/landing page combination and try maintaining that arrangement. Perform a brief audit for the pages which seemed to have had a lower conversion rate to discover areas that could be worked upon from the usability perspective.

There are definitely a lot of areas which would have to be looked in detail based on the type of business you advertise for, the way your account has been structured, the history associated to your campaigns/keywords, etc. I hope all of these above pointers would give some direction in executing your thought process in action.

Author Bio:

Nupur Birla is a professional writer and blogger, associated with Offshore Ally – A premier virtual assistant and link building company. She has contributed many posts on PPC and other related topics.

There doesn’t seem to be a common consensus on what keyword tools are useful or whether you need to use them in the first place, but there are a lot and we will get to them. Sometimes I used them, sometimes I don’t.

There are tools that can build a mass of keywords and cost some money like Keyword Elite. I myself see no use of having 5000 keywords on a niche. I did maybe at one time. But it is much better to build a general overview of your niche with a knowledge of a few of the keywords people would use to find it. Then write articles that gravitate around a few main topics of the niche.

Since I currently write in niches that I originally learned online, I know what I was looking for when I was initially lost. I used phrases that I no longer use because now I know the correct terminology. Some of the articles on this blog were written during research using a lot of incorrect terms. I figure that if I write in the midst of learning, I will pick up a lot of search hits that I will be losing later and what may look sloppy to my direct peers may reach the audience I am intending to reach.

Then start using your own keywords from your stats. As your base of articles grow, your pool of long tail key phrases for future, more directly target articles grows. Or optimize your titles. Or hunt down these phrases in your post and use the Alinks module to hyperlink the post getting the hits. One way to use Alinks.

But eventually you get the psychology behind the search phrases and the word patterns people use. Some only make perfect sense after you see them.

So I see these keyword tools as exactly what they are, tools. Use them to learn how people search. If you are writing a post, check your topic out first. A little insight into what people are looking for can help a lot. That’s about as technical as I get with keyword tools unless we’re talking about Pay per Click.

Just Cool and New

• The Rarest Words – Read the article at Techcrunch

Keyword Services

• WordTracker
• Compete
• Keyword Discovery

Competitor Keyword Spy Tools

• KeywordSpy
• SpyFu
• KeyCompete
• AffSpy
• SeoDigger – A tutorial

Pay Per Click Company Site Keyword Tools

• Overture – The old standby, no longer that reliable.
• Adwords – Good for everyday blog posts.
• Miva
• MSN – There are some cool keyword tools you would have never thought of here.
• 7Search

Keyword List Processors

• Google Adwords Wrapper
• Geo Targeted Keyword Lists
• Keyword Lizard

Typos, Brainstorming, and Misspelled Keywords

• Mistypes
• Typo Generator
• Urban Dictionary
• Keyword Map
• Visual Theasaurus
• Wordnet
• Lexical Free Net
• SearchRadar

Other Keyword Tools

• SeoBook – This one combines a lot of the other tools on this list together.
• Wordpot
• Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics
• Niche Warehouse
• 123 Promotion

Time is money. It may be something we all agree on, but what does it really mean.

Fixed costs are nice. One of my fixed costs is hosting. When I make $4000 in a month, my hosting is $125. If I triple that, it will still cost me the same and the ROI triples.

On the other hand, PPC advertising moves with the income. If I make more through PPC this month, chances are I spent more too. Yes, I can increase ROI. But for the most part, I have to spend more money to make more. And it doesn’t help that the amount of money I spend on ads is limited by my credit.

Now there are a few campaigns that I currently have running that have not been tweaked for months. But for the most part, I have to babysit. Not much now. But if I were to increase my Adwords spending to the point it replaced all the other sources of income, I would have no time to do anything else and I would be stuck in the same rat race I am trying to remove myself from.

I ran into a similar problem with the direction my blogging was going. A post a day may be recommended for a lot of bloggers. It isn’t going to work for me any more. Don’t get me wrong, I most likely write a post or more a day, but not on every blog. And this blog, which is mainly a journal of my journey makes no real money. And I like it that way for now. I am not looking for money here yet.

Building links is like hosting and social media marketing is like PPC advertising. Both have their place, but my time is limited, so I had to work out a balance.

A link I get to a site today will most likely be there tomorrow, next month, and next year and since I know a little SEO, the traffic results of that link may be less volume than I would expect from a Stumble but the quality of that traffic will be much greater.

Don’t get me wrong. You can’t just build some links and then go take a nap for the rest of the year. But here is what I know. I made $25,000 in the last 12 months from the results of links that were already there. Not John Chow money but it beats being a 24/7 internet hustler.

And all links are not created the same. Some take more time to build. A directory links takes a minute. If you want to release software to promote a site, it’s going to take some time but that time will come back to you once the ball is rolling.

I am writing this post to beat something into my head. I have a weird relationship with money. I spend in the range of $100 in Adwords a day and have to pry my wallet open to buy software and hire people to speed up the link building process. Money spent there will free up time and possibly lower the need for so much advertising. It is basically a fixed cost. Spend the money and see the results for months or even years. You cannot say that for PPC advertising.

This has also forced a weird relationship with time. If I am doing my own grunt work because I refuse to hire someone than I am basically paying myself what I would pay the other guy to do it for me. So if I refuse to pay $10/hour, that is what I am paying myself. If I buy software that speeds up a process, than I am effectively raising my hourly rate. If a job that took 3 hours now only needs my guidance for 20 minutes, I just gave myself a 900% raise for that time period.

It’s a way to look at things and a way to start putting money and time in balance. Hopefully it works.

Got an email from Adwords today. It seems that they just opened a beta program where advertisers can bid on specific groups of people.

Demographic bidding is a way to help your ad reach audiences of a certain age or gender. If you want your ads to be seen by women aged 18-24, or people over 55, demographic bidding can help. Demographic bidding is a new feature which is now available to a limited number of AdWords users.

When I first read this, it gave me the creeps. Google must really be mining its user’s data. Then I took a breath and read some more. It is only for contextually targeted or placement targeted campaigns. So those sites that you visit, that run Adsense, and have you sign up are the ones using the data to gear ads specifically at you.

They say that only publishers that have permission from their users to use theit data can be involved on the Adsense side. Makes you want to read that fine print a little quicker before you hit submit. I know I never do.

What does that policy look like? "We will be giving your information to third parties, so sign right up."

But if you have read this blog for a while, you know I am just going off, half humorously.

But now this will give contextual advertisers the ability to bid higher on certain demographics of their choice, to have their ads show for only certain demographics, and to see demographic based reports showing which age and gender groups clicked the most.

It’s beta right now. We all know how that goes. Sign up and see if you win the drawing. They invite everyone though and then only allow a few in, just to make those people who didn’t get in feel loved.

I am not really sure what to do with this one, but I went to my Adwords reports menu and found this today:

I guess Ebay got tired of their affiliates trying to get a jump on new Ebay niches like Dead Steve Irwin. Just trying to step on a few innovative spammers toes. After all, everyone I know needs another dead body in their house.

Or maybe this has something to do with the new StumbleUpon acquisition. Who knows? But I am pretty sure there is a lot of affiliates scrambling for ideas right now similar to the time the government cracked down on internet gambling and the affiliates of those programs.

I would think that Ebay would update their terms on their CJ terms and conditions page which still mentions rules for using Adwords and the like or maybe their affiliate program is just a basement operation that they don’t really give a crap about. Or maybe they don’t like telling new affiliates that this is now the case.

I got the email two days ago. Great. Two days notice. This is unacceptable. I have never used PPC to promote Ebay, but I may never deal with the Ebay affiliate program after seeing the consideration they give affiliates, who I am sure bring them boatloads of cash.

Google AdWords: Ad Creation Marketplace

Start a radio campaign from Google Adwords. Just saw this new link in my account today.

Google Advertising

There are now case studies and tips available for specific industries. Some interesting information. There’s a lot to learn there, more than you get with most $39 Clickbank ebooks.

I had slacked off on using Adwords lately until this week. I got tired of it. It seemed so much of a hassle coming up with keywords. Not so much that but before as I started running more and more campaigns to make more, I had less patience tweaking them and streamlining them to product the profit I wanted. Instead I settled with spending a buck to make two. And instead built more and more campaigns.

And then I left them totally alone until they trickled off to nothing.

But I am back now with better keywords and more knowledge by watching my own stats from all of the sites I own, instead of keyword tools. Eventually you begin to see speech, I am sorry, typing patterns in each sites demographic. You begin to know how they think when they look for things. You slow down more when you do your own searching just to see if you fall into similar patterns.

After that, you can see how useless throwing a whole crapload of keywords at a campaign, only to forced to drop your bids to make any cash. I have seen 50% clickthrough, spending 1% of my potential profits per click, #2 average rank, but walking away with 6000% profits. How about a day with twenty clicks and 3 $30 sales?

There are still ways to make money using Adwords still despite the seemingly endless ebooks on the subject that no one seems to read. You just have to footwork. It is no five minute a day thing either, but if you don’t have a degree, it might seem like it after what you’ve done to make ends meet.

Google AdWords Case Study – Improving Landing Page Quality » eWhisper.net

I had to reference this page when I ran into a problem with a new adwords campaign. I had been adding campaigns here and there over the last two years with enough success to keep it up. I’m no Rich Jerk, mind you, and I know I can make more, but my focus has to remain with other endeavors when my time is limited.

But last week I found the perfect product to promote. I went through the whole process of finding keywords, and writing ads and then sending the ads directly thorugh an affiliate link while I developed a landing page. But I found the minimum bid on each and every keyword to be $10.

It was then I discovered the whole “Is Adsense Dead?” thing and “Landing Page Quality”. My affiliate link was not liked by the Google system. Yet 2 other affiliate were using the same type of direct link to the same exact product.

Using a direct link in an Adwords campaign should only be a temporary fix while you develop a landing page to begin with. Because you are essentially in a timeshare for your ad space. Google only allows only one link to the same domain per one set of query results. And the system detects redirects. So if you are promoting an affiliate link directly and 9 other affiliate of the same product are doing the same and using the same keywords, you are only getting 10% of the traffic you could get through your own landing page. But I digress.

Net neutrality seems to be one of the badges that Google wears. But in my case of “Landing Page Quality” Google seems to be using the same practices they claim to be defending against by standing behind net neutrality. But don’t get me wrong. Net neutrality is a good thing. But it seems that a rating system that allows one person to buy a link to a page but denies anothers link to the Exact Same Page is flawed.

Well, in the end, creating a landing page helped. I actually have a few sites with similiar products and multiple landing pages linked to a central index and contact page. The article linke to above suggests a paranoid route to similiar results in my opinion, but if nothing else works, try it all.

I have no privacy policy as of yet, but I collect no customer info on my sites.