Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design » ppc

Anatomy of a Real Time Google PPC Auction

CVOS — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:23:53 +0000

Every time you do a Google search, each ad spot is auctioned in real time.

This is an amazing amount of calculations: up to 11 ad spots are auctioned off simultaneously, just in time to show up on the results page. This is why if you refresh the search results page the ads will change.

Here’s how Google’s auction based advertising system works

create bid – you select chosen keywords and receive an estimated minimum bid. the highest bid doesn’t guarantee an ad will appear at the top of page.
assess quality score – Google creates a quality score for your ad based on a scale of 1 to 10. Quality score is based on relevance (how well the ad matches a user’s query), the quality of the landing page that the ad links to (content and load time), and the ad’s past clickthrough rate (if it’s new, the rate of a similar ad).
calculate ad position – order in which the ads will be displayed is determined by this formula: Rank = bid x quality score.
set price for the ad – cost of each ad is tied to the bid of the advertiser ranked below them. The final price is determined by the math formula below:

The next time you do a search on Google, checkout the ads on the page and try to guess how much each advertiser is paying per click. Then think of the amazing server infrastructure that must be used to perform these millions of calculations per day to create real time ad auctions for all web searches.

Read more about the Google Adwords real time PPC auctions at Wired.

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Webmasters Purchasing Google Adwords Accounts with High Quality Scores

CVOS — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:20:13 +0000

I recently received an interesting unsolicited email looking to purchase used Google Adwords accounts. This individual is hoping that users with trusted PPC accounts will let him buy a good Quality Score and receive lower cost per click charges for his online gambling websites.

It is unlikely that anyone would want to sell an aged Adwords account, but this demonstrates that everything online has value, even a free Google PPC account.

Good morning,

I am looking buy old google adwords accounts an can pay $300 per account. Do you have any that you are willing to sell?

Ideally I am looking for…

Has been opened over 3 months

A budget spend of over $100 – $200 a day for some time

Account has less than 10 disapproved ads.

Account has not run any forbidden adverts.

Regards

Player Account Manager

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Finer Points of Dynamic Keyword Insertion

CVOS — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:56:53 +0000

Pay per click management and PPC bidding is most effective when the process is automated. The goal is to have the most relevant ad appear for each keyword search. It is impractical to create a unique ad for each keyword phrase variation, so we use a technique called Dynamic Keyword Insertion. DKI allows us to insert the exact keyword phrase used in the search query into our ad.

Keywords targeted and that triggered the ad were in BOLD in the ad. You can see that not only is the keyphrase in the title of the ad is bold, as well as the keyword in the ad copy and the display URL is also bold. This increases your ads CTR and will improve your Quality Score in Google, resulting in a lower CPC.

The standard format for dynamically inserting your keyword: {keyword:yourdefaulttext}

Additional variations allow the use of capitalization to dynamically inserted keywords:

Keyword – The first word is capitalized
KeyWord – Every word is capitalized
KEYword – Every letter in first word is capitalized
KEYWord -Every letter in the first word AND the first letter of the second
KEYWORD – Every letter is capitalized

Read more about PPC tricks and maximizing pay per click advertising at Redfly.

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Efficient PPC Management Paid Search Tool

CVOS — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:01:21 +0000

Pay Per Click management is a unique art and can drastically change your business. Hiring an search engine marketing expert who can dial in PPC campaigns is an unfair advantage.

The tenets of PPC success:

Keyword research – not bidding on broad and low converting keywords
Landing Pages – the more topically focused landingpages you have the better your ROI will be
Bid Management – overbidding will bleed your budget, underbidding will generate too few clicks and allow your competitors to steal your business
Conversion Tracking – use software to track conversions. the built in adwords conversion tracking works very well

EfficientPPC has created a tool to generate thousands of keywords, custom ads, and manage lists of campaigns.

Efficient PPC uses a sophisticated engine to take your basic keywords and phrases, and combine them into tens of thousands relevant key phrases. You can also use the built in keyword lists to make your campaigns even more relevant. Efficient PPC then takes these key phrases and divide them into Ad Groups and campaigns, and creates AdWords Editor readable files you can copy directly to AdWords Editor.

US $99.00 One time setup fee + US $19.00 Monthly subscription (quit anytime you want) or US $347.00 Single Payment (no more payments) includes:

Efficient PPC software
Efficient PPC video tutorials
Access to ready-to-use word lists
Dynamic landing page example
Access to Efficient PPC support forum

Updates & Upgrades and 30 Day money back guarantee. Go watch their free video that demonstrates this excellent paid search program. Heck if the PPC maestro Shoemoney recommends this tool, it is a no brainer.

Learn more about Google Adwords advertising and online search marketing programs.

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6 Percent Of Surfers Generate 50 Percent of the Clicks

CVOS — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:11:05 +0000

Bad news for the pay per click industry – all those clicks you’re getting may be worthess.

Heavy Clickers Distort Reality of Display Advertising Click-Through Metrics – Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’s “Natural Born Clickers” findings suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns

Approximately 6% of Web users generate 50% of the click-throughs based on the comScore search engine marketing study. Hold on advertisers, it gets even worse: these clickers are not representative of the general population, most have incomes under $40K, and their clicks are not related to any offline buying. The number of clicks on an ad campaign is also not strongly correlated with brand awareness for the ads’ subject, according to the study. Advertising-supported websites such as online newspapers and video sharing sites need to carefully consider their revenue models.

More about the “heavy clickers”

heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

What is missing from this marketing press release is a clear definition the content of the ads. The article does not specify if the ads are banners, flash/rich media ads, interstitials, or videos. The article only mentions generic display ads. This ambiguity is one reason to keep a healthy dose of skepticism for statistics.

The good news about the Comscore-Tacoda research project is they have likely coined a new phrase: Heavy Clickers.

#note: hardcore search engine optimization fans will notice that this is a dead end article, with no links back to the original site. This is a fantastic piece of linkbait that is drawing a lot of mentions, including from TC & slashdot, and the page is a link sink. Unless Starcom creates links back to their core website, much of this viral traffic spike will be lost.

This is a huge missed SEO opportunity for Starcom. Maybe a savvy SEO will pitch them on their optimization services.

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