The answer depends on what your goals for your PPC campaign are, what your budget is like, what average costs per click are for your industry, and how much time you’re willing to invest into your keywords after you start running your campaign.

As a reminder:

• Broad match keyword trigger search queries with plurals, synonyms and phrases that Google thinks might be related to your keyword. If your keyword is, say, ‘cat tree,’ your ad may show up for people looking for cat trees, cat scratching posts, pictures of cats in trees, instructions for getting cats down from trees, etc.
• Phrase match keywords (”cat tree”) show up when a search query includes the exact phrase, e.g. ‘cat tree on sale’ or ‘buy cat tree online,’ but not for ’trees for cats.’
• Exact match keywords ([cat tree]) will trigger ads only for search queries that match your keyword exactly: ‘cat tree,’ but not ‘cat tree on sale.’ 
• Negative keywords (-pics) prevent your ad from showing when a search query contains a specific keyword. So while a query for ’cat tree’ will trigger your ad, ’cat tree pics’ will not if you’ve added -pics as a negative.

We here at ClickSweeper have seen two types of campaigns achieve success: primarily broad match with a comprehensive set of negative keywords, and primarily phrase and exact match. Here’s the scoop on each:

Broad match with negatives

• Fewer keywords (no need to include every variation or long tail keyword).
• Many negatives required.
• Many impressions and clicks.
• Higher spending.
• Regular updates to negative lists required: go through search queries, Google sktool, and wonder wheel to find new negatives.
• Over time your campaign will net the vast majority of relevant & long tail queries with few irrelevant clicks.
• Good for larger budgets, industries with lower CPC, branding purposes, higher visibility.

Phrase and exact match

• Out of the box precision: few or no irrelevant clicks.
• Longer keyword lists for plurals, word order, and other variations.
• Fewer impressions and clicks; may miss some relevant queries.
• Lower spending.
• Higher clickthrough rates and quality score.
• Lower maintenance time.
• Good for industries with high cost per click, lower budgets, and highly specific products or services.

If you’re somewhere between the two, you can combine them, or even try running the same keyword with different match types within an adgroup. (And if you need help managing your PPC accounts once you’ve got them up and running, we’re here to help with all your PPC management software needs!)

If you’re a web merchant, the problem could very well lie somewhere in the shopping experience you provide. Your landing page, shopping basket, site speed, and pricing could all be playing a role.  Before writing off PPC as a loss, check to make sure these components of your site aren’t the problem.

Landing page. For your first impression, your landing page should be attractive, non-spammy, targeted, and informative enough to make the call to action compelling. If you don’t have relevant landing pages per adgroup or category, it’s a great idea to set some up.

Shopping cart. Shoppers abandon carts (up to 70% of them, by some studies) for various reasons. Some are within your control. Do you require shoppers to register in order to get shipping prices or to checkout? Required registration, long forms, lots of required personal information, high shipping prices, and page glitches will make shoppers think twice about completing their transaction. After all, internet shoppers are always aware that they have other choices.

Pricing. The best run PPC campaign in the world won’t convert well if your pricing isn’t competitive. Your prospects almost certainly comparison shop to find a better deal, and awesome ad copy and landing page text is only going to do so much to distract from the bottom line. You don’t need to have the lowest prices if you offer other value (free shipping, security, more options, great return policies, famous customer service), but you do need to be competitive. Check around to keep your prices up to date.

Site navigability. If your site is slow, full of errors and re-directs, or otherwise difficult to get around on, your prospects aren’t going to stick around. Attention spans on the net are short. You have just a few seconds to make a good impression, and anything on your site that doesn’t do that needs to be fixed, replaced, or discarded.

Trustworthiness. Although this element isn’t confined to one page, it’s extremely important to establish early on and maintain. Your shopping basket should have security logos in prominent places and your privacy policy should be clear whenever you ask for information. Testimonials, memberships in third party industry associations, customer reviews, and warranties are all an excellent way to persuade your prospects that you’re worthy of their trust. (And it goes without saying: don’t even think about pop-ups and auto downloads!) 

PPC management software can’t help you evaluate trustworthiness. But ClickSweeper can make maintaining your PPC ads — while you’re checking for these issues and running the customer service end of things — a lot easier. Try us out for free!

Although we anticipate some bumps in the migration of Yahoo ads to Microsoft AdCenter, we think the merge could ultimately benefit PPC advertisers. Yahoo and Bing’s combined search share will be almost 30% to Google’s 65% or so. If you’ve tried advertising on Bing or Yahoo before and been disappointed with the number of clicks and conversions, the increased search share might make it worth trying again. Also, historically lower Yahoo bid prices and CPVs may carry over at least initially, due to less competition. Although we doubt the Yahoo-Bing merge will topple Google’s dominance in paid search, it has definite potential to become a significant source of traffic and revenue.

And it goes without saying that maintenance time for two vendors is less than for three, especially with ClickSweeper’s cross-engine ad and keyword copying features. All good things!

ClickSweeper Chris at SES 2010

The ClickSweeper staff had a great time at SES San Francisco. We talked to lots of expo hall attendees, listened to your PPC management needs and concerns, rolled out our analytics-based feature, and thoroughly enjoyed our time at Moscone West. (Though we probably could have done without the overpriced parking and mediocre conference food.) Thanks for your interest in ClickSweeper. Let’s do it again next year!

P.S. Have you signed up yet for your free trial of our analytics-based bidding feature?

Fully automated analytics-based bidding.

For a while, we’ve known that some of the most valuable information on PPC campaigns comes from Google Analytics. We also know from experience just how time-consuming it is to go through Analytics reports, pick out relevant data, evaluate keyword performance, go back to Adwords, and manually adjust bids or pause keywords. Frankly, we got a little tired of flipping back and forth, so we decided to do something about it.

ClickSweeper’s analytics-based bidding feature imports data from Google Analytics — the same things you would consider when looking at your keywords, including time on site, bounce rate, and conversion info. It then  assigns each keyword to a tier based on performance, and adjusts existing bid prices according to sophisticated algorithms. Keywords with good time on site and conversion performance are rewarded with higher bids for more visibility; spending on underperforming keywords is controlled with lower bids. Since a very high bounce rate usually means that a keyword isn’t highly relevant, you also have the option of setting bounce rate thresholds to automatically pause very poor quality keywords.

If you have an Analytics account linked to your Adwords account — even if you don’t have much experience with Analytics – you’re good to go. The default settings for the feature can be used to start optimizing your account immediately. On the other hand, if you’re an old hand at PPC management and know exactly what you want, you can customize the bid adjustment thresholds or choose more or less aggressive adjustment strategies. Newer users gain all the expertise of a human account manager for a fraction of the price. Analytics pros stand to save a whole lot of time and effort.

And pricing? We’re pleased to announce that ClickSweeper, enhanced with analytics-based bidding, starts from only $100 a month. It’s available to new and existing ClickSweeper clients. Sign up for a FREE 14 day trial today.

SES (Search Engine Strategies) San Francisco 2010 kicks off next Tuesday, August 17.

 But if you don’t want to come just to see us (no offense, we’re sure), you should come for the fabulous seminars and networking opportunities. Here are some of the seminars we’re especially excited about at SES this year:

• Search, PR & the Social Butterfly
• Link Building with Jim Boykin
• Beyond the Click: What Shoppers Need Now
• Deep Dive into Analytics

Visit the SES site for more details and to register online for day passes or free expo hall passes. Hope to see you there!

1. Low budget, high cost clicks.  The days of super cheap clicks are mostly gone. In competitive fields, like insurance, web design, and legal help, you could end up paying $5 or more for a single click. If you’re on a very tight budget, say $10 a day for a total of $300 a month, your advertising money isn’t going to buy many clicks before running out. And if you only get a couple of clicks per day, the odds that any of them will convert are very low. Pair expensive clicks and a small budget with a low profit margin, and it becomes an especially deadly combination. Before you decide to jump into PPC, we always suggest researching keyword prices in your field and, if possible, getting an idea of cost per conversion as well. The best PPC management software in the world can’t reconcile a very low budget with a very high CPC.

2. No time to research or maintain. Even with ClickSweeper to take care of daily maintenance activities, for optimal performance you’ll need to set aside some time to research keywords, develop ads, and add negatives. Or hire an agency to manage it for you. But either way, your campaign is going to require some human time and investment.

3. No one is looking for what you’re selling. Maybe your product is too new to generate a large search volume. Or maybe your target audience isn’t online much. Or maybe people don’t know they need your product and need to be educated before they can start looking for it. Either way, search based advertising isn’t going to cut it for you. Research your product’s search volume, and remember: just because it’s been around longer doesn’t mean traditional marketing can’t be successful.

If none of these sound like you, PPC advertising could very well be a good fit for your business, as it is for many others. Don’t forget to sign up for a free trial of ClickSweeper!

Get started by thinking about the main products or services your business offers. Next, think about what questions your potential customers are asking or what they’re looking for. Let’s say you sell cookies and cakes for dogs. You could have one adgroup for dog birthday cakes, another for dog cookies, another for custom dog treats, another for low fat dog biscuits, and so on. Divvy up your existing keyword list into your new categories, creating more if necessary. (Get rid of the keywords that haven’t generated any impressions in the last few months or aren’t worth their salt while you’re at it.)

Now here’s where the fun begins. Free tools! Here are some useful tools to generate good new keywords and round out your adgroups:

• Google Search Keyword tool. Provides keyword ideas relevant to your site based on actual search queries.
• Google Wonder Wheel.Generates search topics related to the one you enter. Useful for coming up with new adgroups as well as new categories of negative keywords.
• Wordtracker Keyword Questions. See what questions have been asked around the term you enter. Great for getting a glimpse into the psyches of your potential customers and for adding longer tail keywords.

After you finish going through these, you should have several well-rounded new adgroups and plenty of negatives to screen out irrelevant terms. Don’t forget that your new adgroups are still only as good as their ad copy and landing pages. If you’ve gone from very few adgroups to several, you’ll need to write more specific ad copy and link ads to more relevant pages.

ClickSweeper can’t create awesome adgroups for you, but it will ensure that your new adgroups run at their top potential. Want to check out our PPC management software for free? Sign up for a free trial today!

In fact, you can copy your Google ads over to multiple adgroups, campaigns, and vendors in a matter of minutes. Here’s how easy it is to use. Login to ClickSweeper and click the Ads tab. You’ll see three options in the right hand corner of every Google ad: edit, create, and copy. Click on copy. This editor will pop up:

Just pick your target vendor, adgroup, campaign, edit the ad if you like, and click save. The window will refresh and confirmation will appear in the Successfully Copied Ads box. You’ll be able to use the drop down menus to copy the same ad to other adgroups without navigating between different campaigns, adgroups, and vendors.

Try out this new ad copy feature and let us know what you think! And if you haven’t yet signed up for a free two week trial of ClickSweeper, we hope this exciting new feature will persuade you to give us a try.

1. Being able to see landing page URLs without navigation. One of the things we hated about Adwords was not being able to see the landing page URL without actually clicking on the ad. Landing pages are so important to the success of your campaign that you need to know which one you’re testing for which ad. Likewise, if you need to update a particular URL, you can identify the ads that share a URL at a glance. Believe us, when you have lots of ads, not having to click on each one is a major bonus.

2. Seeing your most clicked-on keywords in the ad editor window. You know when you’re faced with the blinking cursor in Google’s ad creator and you have absolutely no idea where to go with your new ad copy? ClickSweeper gives you a list of the top 10 most clicked on keywords from your adgroup right in the pop-up ad editor/creator. Incorporating keywords that are most likely to lead to clicks into your new ad copy becomes a cinch. 

3. Being able to view all adgroups that only  have one ad. It’s always a good idea to test two ad copies against each other for every adgroup. If you or ClickSweeper’s ad copy evaluator pauses underperforming ads, you’ll end up with some orphan ad copies. You can easily group them with a pulldown menu option and create new ad copies to test without any further navigation.

4. Cross-engine keyword addition. Our latest feature makes it faster and easier to add keywords to multiple accounts without multiple logins or navigation. Did you miss our blog entry on it? (Screenshots! Color!)

Don’t forget to check out a free 2 week trial of ClickSweeper. And if you’re already a user, we’d love to know what you think of these features and any others you’d like to see.