I recently had the opportunity to attend the Visibility_14 conference hosted by Searchmetrics in Chicago and it featured a great lineup of speakers covering a range of search and content marketing topics. It is always great to attend shows and bump into industry leaders in our “backyard” here in the Midwest.
Over the course of this week, I’ll provide specific notes, insights, or key takeaways that I think are worthy of sharing from the conference.
This post features a presentation titled:
“5 Steps to AdWords Profit” by Bjorn Espenes of Finch.
It was great to see Bjorn and Finch on the agenda at a primarily SEO and content marketing focused conference and get some great PPC info. The philosophy presented through the five steps in the presentation were supplemented with a lot of graphics and details. This recap doesn’t include the graphics, but does embody the philosophy and tactics and seems very powerful when fully implemented.
Step 1: It’s the Outcome
Get a scorecard to measure performance based on everyone’s goals
Step 2: The Magic Wheel of Google
- Match types and using exact match as it converts better…be willing to bid more on exact match terms
- CTR is important as it is measured with how much I’m willing to pay to determine quality score
- Watch search terms to start building out exact match terms for those that resulted from broad match so that I can shift match types and focus over time
Step 3: Actionable Data
- Tracking and how to know what you’re looking at…understand different conversion types as they are all aggregated by default. Tools > Conversions
- Ad Group Structure:
- For each keyword we have, separate into 4 ad groups by match type
- 1 Keyword to 1 Ad
- Sort by impressions and do this by ads that drive the most traffic
- Within the isolated exact match clicks, put mobile modifier on it and visitor behavior targeting
- Do this for all the match types as well…provides granular detail
- Implement profiles and bid aggressively.
Step 4: Kill Your Competition
- CPA vs CPV
- CPA: 90%+ of your competitors using this
- CPV: Bids based on revenue and dynamic options based on revenue goals per keyword/product/target
Step 5: Everything Changes
- Grow keywords (exact match –> keyword bank)
- Improve ad CTR
- Use all possible extensions
- Check out competitor landing pages as they might be changing stuff and that could cause my CTR to go down
- Tune bids on performance
Want to hear more about this presentation, the Visibility_14 conference, or learn about my philosophy on topical search engine optimization versus keyword-based optimization? Please reach out as I’d love to chat!
Read the previous posts from Visibility_14:
The Future of SEO-a business view
Content Marketing & Link Auditing
Chicago photo by Bernt Rostad, modified by Voltage.