Posts Tagged ‘ Channel: SEM ’

Perfect Your SEM Testing: How & Why To Evaluate Everything: SMX East 2016

Posted on: October 17, 2016 by in SEO
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A wiser man (or woman) than I coined the quintessential acronym of paid search. Rather than the ABCs of sales (Always Be Closing), savvy paid search managers live and die by ABT — Always Be Testing. In a session presented recently at SMX East, three of the brightest in the industry shared their tiers of testing strategies, successes and failures. “Perfect Your SEM Testing: How & Why To Evaluate Everything” featured insights from Ted Ives, owner of Ted Ives Consulting,; Jake Pinocchio, a Continue Reading ...

The ins and outs of keyword research

Posted on: October 14, 2016 by in SEO
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A great way to expand your PPC account is by performing keyword research in order to uncover untapped opportunities. Keyword research is a key tactic for growing an account — especially new accounts, but even mature accounts can stand to benefit from ongoing expansions. When keyword research does & does not make sense Keyword research is sometimes debated as being unnecessary, and it is fair to say that certain methods of keyword research are futile. Back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon to Continue Reading ...

Rethinking today’s attribution problem in digital marketing

Posted on: October 12, 2016 by in SEO
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Attribution is the science behind assigning values to individual touch points throughout a customer’s decision journey. It’s not only a key driver in how we currently optimize marketing campaigns, but attribution is also used for media mix modeling and developing media budgets. Herein lies the problem: marketers tend to look at attribution within our own channel silo, so it’s not easy to understand the full picture of a multi-channel environment. As search continues to evolve in form Continue Reading ...

AdWords rolls out Salesforce account linking for automated conversion imports

Posted on: October 7, 2016 by in SEO
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Early this summer, Google announced it was launching, via invite, a way to automatically import Salesforce data into AdWords. That function now appears to be rolling out generally. Salesforce.com is an option available under the Linked accounts menu. This morning was the first time I noticed it, though it may have started rolling out earlier. Once set up, the linking enables the Google Click ID (GCLID) to pass to Salesforce whenever a user completes a conversion action like filling out a Continue Reading ...

Bing Ads opens pilot for device bidding

Posted on: October 4, 2016 by in SEO
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Bing Ads is testing changes to device bidding in the wake of Google’s move to revert back to distinct device bidding (though the bid adjustment structure remains) for desktop, tablet and mobile introduced in 2013 with Enhanced Campaigns. Even through the Enhanced Campaigns period, Bing Ads had always offered more control with a tablet bid adjustment that could range from -20 percent to +300 percent from desktop. Now, tablets will be separated entirely from desktop. The top range for both Continue Reading ...

What’s new and cool at Google from SMX East 2016

Posted on: October 2, 2016 by in SEO
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At this year’s SMX East conference, which took place this week in New York City, Search Engine Land reporter Ginny Marvin and contributing editor Greg Sterling hosted a conversation with Google executives Jerry Dischler, the vice president of AdWords (@jdischler) and Babak Pahlavan, the global head of products and director of Google Analytics (@babakph). Dischler shared recent updates and changes to the Google AdWords platform, while Pahlavan covered the same for Google Analytics. [Read the Continue Reading ...

Apple rolls out Search Ads for the App Store

Posted on: September 29, 2016 by in SEO
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After a beta period that began in June, Apple is now opening up Search Ads for the App Store to all publishers and developers. It’s currently available for the iPhone and iPad only in the US. While Apple will certainly make money from this program, the main rationale appears to be app discovery. Google has had search ads in the Play store for well over a year. Search Ads will be delineated with a blue background. Apple will generate the ad images and copy from the app metadata supplied by the Continue Reading ...

Google bumps Expanded Text Ad deadline to January 31, 2017

Posted on: September 14, 2016 by in SEO
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Advertisers scrambling to figure out how to optimize expanded text ads and those that have procrastinated even getting started with them are apparently in good company and will be relieved to know Google has extended the transition period for expanded text ads. Google will continue to accept new traditional text ads through January 31, 2017, not October 26 as announced in July with the general release of the new ad format. After January 31, existing standard text ads will continue to run with Continue Reading ...

Tips for when and how to use Feed Rules in Google Merchant Center

Posted on: September 12, 2016 by in SEO
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With Google’s roll out of the new Merchant Center interface came more functionality for Feed Rules. Feed Rules debuted earlier this year to allow marketers to make some changes to their product feed data right within Merchant Center. But what can you really do with Feed Rules and who should be using them? The consensus is that Feed Rules are still best for simple updates, and it’s ideal to make changes to the actual feed. In reality, however, that’s not always possible or timely and Continue Reading ...

The SEM automation primer

Posted on: August 29, 2016 by in SEO
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To varying degrees, my last few posts have flirted with the use of technology in search engine marketing. These posts have resulted in a few great questions regarding tools I’d use, or how to get started with this or that. There was recently a #ppcchat dedicated solely to the role of automation in this field, so I decided it would be a good time to provide a bit of a resource to those wishing to step toward such an approach. Below is a list of entry points, in ascending order of complexity, Continue Reading ...