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Google Ads

Google Ads’ campaigns are a primary traffic and sales channel for many ecommerce businesses. Our vast library of Google Ads’ articles addresses setup, tag management, Google Shopping, structured data, automated bidding, and more.

  • Google Ads

    Primping Your Holiday Pay-per-click Promotions

    September 28, 2012 •

    A passive approach to pay-per-click advertising often results in missed opportunities. But achieving optimal returns from your PPC campaigns isn’t complex. For holiday PPC promotions, maximizing profits means doing three things well. Create a calendar. Plan your holiday promotions wit...

  • Google Ads

    Google’s Product Listing Ads: Cheaper, More Profitable

    August 30, 2012 •

    I’ve previously written about why you should make Google’s Product Listing Ads a priority. If you’ve followed my advice in "Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?" and, more recently, "5 Steps to Prepare for Google Shopping," there’s a good chance you’ve observed a sharp increase in pay-pe...

  • Google Ads

    5 Steps to Prepare for Google Shopping

    July 31, 2012 •

    In "Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?," I encouraged merchants to try Google's Product Listing Ads because they produce exceptional results. They are the paid version of Google’s free product listings, which for many merchants are a major source of sales. Google recently announced, in...

  • Google Ads

    Google Shopping’s Impact on SEO

    July 6, 2012 •

    Over the next several months, Google’s free Product Search feature will start costing ecommerce sites a lot more. Since the launch of Google’s Froogle in 2002, Google has provided a free product search service. The newly launched Google Shopping marks the first time that the company has...

  • Google Ads

    Remarketing Renaissance Helps Ecommerce Merchants

    May 30, 2012 •

    The idea of targeting ads to visitors who leave a site and continue surfing the web always made sense to me. Until recently, however, this "remarketing" was an afterthought. It just wasn’t producing enough traffic or sales to be valuable. That’s likely to change. When Google got into ...

  • Google Ads

    Google AdWords Ad Extensions Basics

    April 10, 2012 •

    Google AdWords extensions give potential shoppers more information about a merchant and more options to engage with that merchant before clicking a search ad. Although ad extensions have been around for a couple of years, Google recently added conversion tracking data to extensions, ma...

  • Google Ads

    Boost Pay-per-click Profits in 5 Easy Steps

    March 29, 2012 •

    The difference between a profitable and an unprofitable pay-per-click advertising campaign can be the post-click conversion rate. We've run hundreds of conversion rate optimization tests at my firm over the past decade. Below I’ll share five optimizations that have consistently driven c...

  • Google Ads

    3 Basic Ways to Improve PPC Advertising

    March 28, 2012 •

    Pay-per-click advertising is a staple of ecommerce marketing that can play a key role in increasing site traffic and sales when managed well. Pay-per-click advertising can also be very expensive and labor intensive as marketers seek to find the best combination of ad copy, audience, ke...

  • Google Ads

    How to Optimize a Pay-per-click Landing Page

    February 29, 2012 •

    A pay-per-click landing page should be a sales conversion engine, tuned to help consummate an order. Landing pages “are one of the strongest tools you have to convert visitors to customers,” wrote Brandon Eley and Shayne Tilley in their book, Online Marketing Inside Out. “Much of your ...

  • Google Ads

    3 New Google AdWords’ Features Worth Trying

    February 28, 2012 •

    Google continues adding new features to AdWords. "Enhanced Ad Sitelinks," "Offer Extensions," and "TrueView" video ads are three examples. I have tested each of these, and recommend them to merchants. Online retailers who use them first can start profiting before their competitors. The...

  • Google Ads

    Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?

    February 1, 2012 •

    Google's average revenue per click from AdWords' advertisers dropped for the first time in two years for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2011, according to Reuters. Analysts projected a 3 percent increase in cost-per-click revenue, but Google reported an 8 percent decrease. As a result, man...

  • Google Ads

    Creating a Killer Post-Holiday PPC Strategy

    January 5, 2012 •

    Now that the holiday shopping season is over, here are some New Year's pay-per-click advertising tips to help you continue the growth of your online revenue. Review Cost-Per-Acquisition Data on a Category Level It’s often a good practice for online retailers to organize their pay-per...

  • Google Ads

    Formatting a Product Spreadsheet for Google Merchant Center

    December 20, 2011 •

    Google has created a service that helps online retailers list and submit products to Google's Product Search, Product Ads, and Commerce Search offerings. This service, called "Google Merchant Center," can accept a data feed of product information. In this article, you'll find a descrip...

  • Google Ads

    The 20 Most Expensive Keywords

    December 8, 2011 •

    Google makes a lot of money from online advertising. In the twelve months ended June 30, 2011, Google made $33.3 billion in revenues. Of that, 97 percent ($32.2 billion) was from advertising. WordStream, a provider of software for keywords and pay-per-click marketing campaigns, has don...

  • Google Ads

    Pay-Per-Click Advertising Becoming More Important?

    November 28, 2011 •

    Ten years ago a business could thrive by focusing on organic search engine optimization. My rule of thumb then was that organic rankings garnered roughly 80 percent of the clicks on search result pages while paid listings garnered less than 20 percent. A smart SEO strategy seemed to out...

  • Google Ads

    Pay-Per-Click Ads: 5 Tips for Higher Clicks this Holiday Season

    October 28, 2011 •

    Google’s paid-click revenue grew by an astounding 28 percent last quarter, thanks in part to a 5 percent rise in click prices. It’s likely that Google will set ad revenue records this fourth quarter also, due to the increase in holiday ad spending. To online retailers, Google’s surge i...

  • Google Ads

    Paid Search: Can Anyone Challenge Google?

    October 12, 2011 •

    We can end the suspense right now. It's not likely that any other company is going to be a real contender in paid search anytime soon. The Search Alliance formed by Microsoft's adCenter and Yahoo! makes Bing the default search engine on Yahoo! pages. Although Microsoft has spent a good ...

  • Google Ads

    Ramping Up Your Holiday Pay-Per-Click Advertising

    September 29, 2011 •

    The holidays are coming. For many online merchants, this means dramatically increased revenue and conversion rates. Start ramping up for holiday pay-per-click advertising now to ensure that you maximize your profits — and build momentum for 2012. Below I’ve provided six tips that shou...

  • Google Ads

    10 Pay-Per-Click Details You Cannot Delegate

    August 29, 2011 •

    Many ecommerce merchants manage their own pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Others use in-house PPC managers, or outsource to PPC consulting firms. Regardless of how pay-per-click advertising is managed, there are some aspects of it that need direct involvement from merchants — or t...

  • Google Ads

    Google Study Finds PPC Traffic ‘Incremental’ to Organic

    August 11, 2011 •

    A new Google study reports that pay-per-click ads tend to generate new site visitors and do not simply divert traffic from organic search result links, as some marketers have feared. PPC ...

  • Google Ads

    For Google AdWords, It Pays to be on Top

    July 27, 2011 •

    The new “Top vs. Side” segmentation report announced by Google has led my firm to valuable new AdWords’ insights. We confirmed just how important it is to ensure your ads ...

  • Google Ads

    How to Hire a Pay-Per-Click Manager; 10 Common Mistakes

    June 7, 2011 •

    My firm is in the pay-per-click advertising business. We've managed PPC accounts for hundreds of companies for roughly a decade, and we've developed strong opinions as to what makes for a good PPC manager, and what does not. To be sure, there are many terrific PPC management firms othe...

  • Google Ads

    5 Tips for Increasing Pay-Per-Click Conversion Rates

    May 27, 2011 •

    Google’s Farmer/Panda update serves as a reminder to online merchants that their non-paid search traffic is subject to an algorithm that constantly evolves. Pay-per-click advertising, on the other hand, allows ...

  • Google Ads

    Mobile Pay-per-click Advertising: 5 Ways to Improve Performance

    April 28, 2011 •

    “Mobile” and “social” have received a lot of hype over the past few years. To a large extent that hype has been warranted. Sales of smart phones are setting records, and according to Alexa — the web-traffic-ranking firm — socially driven websites account for five of the ten most popular...

  • Google Ads

    Using Pay-Per-Click Advertising to Sell High-Ticket Items

    March 29, 2011 •

    Online retailers often overlook the potential of pay-per-click advertising to drive sales of expensive products. Campaigns that target these items often bring the double whammy of low conversion rates and a high cost-per-click. There are several ways you can adjust your PPC advertising ...

  • Google Ads

    Comparing Facebook Ads to Search-Based Advertising

    March 2, 2011 •

    Could Facebook Ads become a viable alternative to traditional search-based pay-per-click advertising? Facebook’s investors seem to think so, given its reported $50 billion valuation. So far, however, Facebook Ads have not proven to be a scalable, controllable, or profitable source of ad...

  • Google Ads

    7 Pay-Per-Click Advertising Mistakes to Avoid in 2011

    February 1, 2011 •

    2010 was a big year for pay-per-click marketing. Google made significant changes to AdWords, and Bing integrated PPC advertising from Yahoo! into its adCenter. Now, much to the chagrin of advertisers who prefer a “set and forget” approach to their advertising campaigns, the bar for eff...

  • Google Ads

    Microsoft adCenter: An Initial Reaction

    December 1, 2010 •

    In late October, Microsoft’s Bing began powering all of the natural and paid search results in Yahoo!. Now, advertisers who wish to purchase sponsored search ads in either Yahoo! or Bing must do so through Microsoft adCenter. Given that the alliance has a combined market share of almost...

  • Google Ads

    Pay-Per-Click Advertising: 12 Tips to Boost Holiday Performance

    November 2, 2010 •

    A well optimized pay-per-click advertising campaign can lead to gigantic increases in both revenue and profits. Conversely, a campaign that is neglected can lead to missed opportunities or significant financial losses. To help you prepare for this holiday season, here are 12 tips that ...

  • Google Ads

    Google Instant and Pay-per-click Advertising

    September 30, 2010 •

    Many online retailers take the "ready, fire, aim" approach when structuring their PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. However, as competition intensifies and search engines evolve, online retailers who fail to organize their campaigns in more thoughtful ways will be penalized. Those who “aim...

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