At the end of the year, people come out with lists about a myriad of things; the top ten searches of 2008, the top five celebrities of the year, the most popular travel destination, and so on. Search engine marketers aren't exactly staying away from the end-of-the-year-hoopla, with some great suggestions incorporating our yearly "let's put everything in a list!" hysteria. Brian Carter came out with a helpful 4-step process to optimize ad copy, while over on the SEO side of street, Rand Fishkin shared the ten ways he's been using Linkscape to help SEOmoz's SEO projects.
So in the tradition of many who have come before me (and after me, I highly suspect) - three relatively quick ways to make your PPC life a heckuva lot easier, making you look smarter in the process.
1. We all make reports. Every day, we're tasked to be reporting on something, whether it's daily sales, CTR, conversion rates - anything. Do yourself a huge favor and automate those things if you don't have some sort of automation process in place already. I can't (for the life of me) figure out why Yahoo! hasn't set up an e-mail option, but Google and MSN make it dead simple for the daily grind stuff to be sent directly to your inbox. It also amazes me how few people actually automate reports that take under 60 seconds to set up. Give yourself a Chrismukkakwanzafest gift. Set 'er up.
All of a sudden, you've streamlined your morning report to ten minutes instead of thirty. Smarty pants.
2. RSS feeds. I know, I know. Most of you have them. Do you use them? In your Monday morning company meeting, why not look like the next SEM rockstar by spouting off a bunch of industry news nobody else knows? Compile a list of goodies that you read throughout the day and send them out at five o'clock. You're keeping your colleagues up to date, but you're also sifting through important developments and educating yourself. It's a win-win. Seriously.
3. So you've done all the reporting and the RSSing and you're scratching your head for thoughts on what do do next. Restructure. That's right. The project you've been putting off for centuries, but kinda sorta need to fix at some point in the future. Start small, and start simple. Taking an oft-repeated example, why not build each campaign out by products, and then associated keyword modifiers. Your company sells blue widgets. You're already skirting rockstar status by expanding your negative keyword lists - you've sorted the -red, -green, -yellow and -rainbow. The thing is, you've only got two campaigns - Brand and Generic. Here's an easy fix:
Brand: Remember that kid in school who you whispered how to spell words to? He still can't spell. Only you're not around to mutter under your breath that it's w-i-d-g-e-t-s; he's typing wedgets, widgits and a bunch of other brand variations and Google hasn't recognized that he's making spelling mistakes yet. This doesn't mean that you type Kerstin's Blue Widgits in your ad copy title (you still feel a tad smug after being crowned the grade two spelling bee champion back in the 80s), but it means that your old classmate can still find the amazing new product you've just come out with.
Generics: Come on. Admit it. When you first set up the campaign, you were so gosh darned excited to get your AdWords account up and running so people could Google you that you dumped all your generic keywords into one ad group. Your product works for tons of people across all walks of life, but they don't want to be served a generic ad that looks like you don't care about them.
This is ridiculously easy, but very often overlooked - build your keywords out into separate, GRANULAR ad groups. You might have all the keywords already, but why don't you make your customer feel valued by tailoring your ad copy to them? Break out your keywords into niche groups. Put "blue widgets for sem" alongside "sem blue widgets", but don't lump SEOs in the same group. That way, you're not relying on those funny looking brackets to make the ads look relevant (and half the time they don't really work because your long tail is just that: LONG). Three years ago, you would've heard a lot about keyword insertion. "It's a fix-all," they proclaimed from the rooftops. "Now you can target your long tail without a lot of work," they evangelized. Here's the thing: you're going to need to actually put in a bit of grunt work that will literally pay dividends once you've set it live.
Then, as if by magic, your life gets just a bit easier. You can optimize your campaigns more granularly because they make sense to you. Your morning reporting gets a bit quicker. You look like a semi-intelligent SEM while you bust out your breaking news about Google's latest AdWords addition.
There you go - not earth-shattering tips, just a wee slice of easy for a Tuesday morning.
