Click Tip - Archive: August 2012

Often times, PPC managers make the mistake of competing with their own organic listings. If you rank in the top 2 organic positions for a keyword, your efforts are probably better off bidding for the 3 or 4th spot with paid advertising, rather than competing with your natural listing. Additionally, your PPC analysis can be great research for improving organic SEO on your site. As you analyze your top performing PPC keywords, you’ll get a great idea of which search terms are most popular. Think about re-vamping your site and expanding on the content centered around these particular keywords.

Improving your quality score starts with knowing your quality score! To check your scores, log into your Google Ads account, and select the campaign you’re working on. Then, click the ‘Keywords’ tab and click on ‘Columns’ in the toolbar just below the Keywords tab. Choose ‘Customize Columns’, select the Quality Score box, and then click ‘Save’ in order to see the quality score. Quality score measures the relevance between ads, keywords, and landing pages and determines you keyword’s actual cost-per-click & first page bid estimate, ad auction eligibility and ad position. Improving your quality score, can mean reduced costs, improved exposure and increased ROI. Here are some tip & tricks for improving your quality score:

• Always have two ads running
• Use specific, targeted ad copy for each ad group
• Use highly relevant landing pages for each ad group
• Create keyword-rich landing page content
• Create a separate ad group for misspelled keywords

Microsoft adCenter has just rolled out their new IP exclusion feature! This tool, much like the Google Ads IP exclusion tool, will allow advertisers to prevent their PPC ads from being displayed to certain IP addresses. Blocking advertisements from suspicious IP addresses can prevent malicious click fraud attacks, pilfered ad copy, and the depletion of your PPC budget. By using ClickReport.com’s IP address reports, you can determine exactly which IP addresses are clicking on your ads, their geographical location, and the number of times they’ve clicked on your ads. Subscribers to ClickReport.com can configure alert settings that deliver instant email notifications of suspicious IP address activity. With our immediate notification system, and adCenter’s new IP exclusion, you can identify and stop a potential click fraud attack in real-time.

Directions for blocking an IP Address(es) in adCenter: 

1. Log into your adCenter account. 
2. Click Campaigns located along the top of the page.
3. Click the Campaigns tab located in the middle of the page.
4. Click the campaign (in the Campaign column) where you want to add the exclusion.
5. Click Settings. 
6. If not already expanded, click Advanced settings.
7. If not already expanded, click Exclusions. 
8. In the second box, enter the IP addresses that you want to be blocked from seeing your ads. Enter one IP address per line. You can also add a range of addresses using a wildcard character (*).
9. After you are done making your changes, click Save. 

adCenter Notes:

• IP exclusions must be added at the campaign level, not the ad group level.
• You can exclude a maximum of 100 IP addresses (or IP address ranges) per campaign.

You can only exclude IPv4 addresses. These addresses must include all four octets, each with an integer that ranges from 0 - 255. Only the last octet can be a wildcard character (*). For example,127.0.0.*. This would include all IP addresses from 127.0.0.0 to 127.0.0.255.

For more information, or to view the instructions on blocking an IP Address in Google Ads, visit our FAQ page

It’s important to create 2-4 pieces of ad copy per ad group to track their effectiveness in driving higher traffic and/or CTRs. Different variations of your ad copy will help you determine the words and phrases that generate higher engagement, from those that possibly drive customers away.

To create different versions of your ad copy, change one main element of your ad at a time. Elements include: Headlines, text phrasing, call to action, price points, or your display URL. Remember to make only one small change at a time so you can measure the exact variable that led to the change in results. The following is an example of a possible phrasing variation for an A/B test. Note the change in ad copy phrasing:

Eric’s Homemade Cookies
Order fresh chocolate chip 
cookies. Same-day delivery. 
www.ericsyummycookies.com

Eric’s Homemade Cookies
Try our fresh chocolate chip 
cookies. Same-day delivery. 
www.ericsyummycookies.com

For any advertiser or small business owner, A/B testing is an easy, accurate way to continue to fine-tune your PPC ads until they perform at their optimal level.