Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Internet marketing expert Richard Stokes is the author of three books on web marketing with over 15 years of experience bringing out the best in cutting edge marketing and building innovative teams. He is currently "Entrepreneur in Residence" at AskHoodie.com.

OUTSMART COMPETITORS. SPEND LESS. MAKE MORE.Millions compete for exposure on Google and Bing, but 99% of them fail to get results. As the founder of leading digital intelligence firm, AdGooroo, search advertising authority Richard Stokes is in a unique position to reveal what’s going wrong and provide solutions to fix it. Led by Stokes, master proven strategies from today's search advertising elite, and discover how to drive significantly more traffic to your website. Learn how to dramatically increase click-through rates, steal impressions from competitors, boost conversions, and increase your sales by unbelievable amounts.

The Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising 1 Book Summary 2 Praise for “The Ultimate Guide To Pay-Per-Click Advertising” 3 About the Author 5 About AdGooroo 5 Legal Notes 5 Best Practices in Paid Search 6 Foreword To The Second Edition By Perry Marshall 19 Preface To The Second Edition 22 Acknowledgements 26 Chapter 1. 99% of Advertisers Are Failing At Paid Search 27 A Few Advertisers In Every Country Dominate Paid Search 27 Virtually Every Business Category Is “Owned” By A Few Advertisers 29Chapter 2. The Foundation of Successful Paid Search Campaigns 33Chapter 3. Your Marketing Will Fail without Tracking 36 What Website Analytics Will Tell You 37 Learning More About Analytics 38 Chapter 4. The First Requirement For A Profitable Paid Search Campaign 39 A Better Way to Measure Website Profitability 40 Sometimes Conversion Optimization Isn’t Critical 43Chapter 5. Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising Right For You? 44 PPC Works for Direct Response Marketers and Online Retailers 44 PPC Works for Brand Advertisers 45 Why PPC May Not Work For You 46 When Google AdWords is the least effective way to reach your target customer 48Chapter 6. What If You Already Have a Great SEO Campaign? 54 PPC Visitors Come From A Different Demographic 54 PPC Campaigns Get Faster Results 54 PPC Provides You With Traffic Diversification 55Chapter 7. The Water Is Always Rising in Search 57 Paranoia Is Justified: Your Competitors Are Really Out to Get You 58Chapter 8. The $100 Bidding Myth 60 The “$100 Bidding Myth” 64 Almost Every AdWords Advertiser Is Being Throttled 65Chapter 9. The Little-Known Metric That Can Increase Your Search Traffic 400% 66 Low Coverage = Lost Opportunities 67 Low Coverage Means You Are Overpaying for Traffic 69 Win the Battle at the Bottom of the Page Before You Fight For the Top 71 Coverage Problems Alert You to Campaign Problems 72 Troubleshooting Coverage Problems 73 How to Monitor Coverage 76 Impression Share 77Chapter 10. Clickthrough Rates Explained 80 Why Is Clickthrough Rate So Important? 80 The Difficulty in Estimating Clickthrough Rate 81 Branded and Navigational Terms 83 The Position of Your Ads 84 Similarity Between Ad Copy and Keyword Phrase 87 Overall Competitiveness of the Keyword Phrase 89 Other Quality Score Issues 92Chapter 11. The Ever Changing CPC Formula 93 The Evolution of Pay-Per-Click 93 Advertisers Go Gaga for Google 97 Today’s AdWords Pricing Algorithm 98 Budget and Average CPC Prices 100 Simulating CPC Using Computer Models 101 Key Concept: Avoid Gladiator Bidding 108 Summary Of Key Concepts 112Chapter 12. How Quality Score Works in 2014 114 What Are Quality Scores? 115 Why Is Quality Score Important? 115 History of the Quality Score Algorithm 115 The Official Explanation of the AdWords Quality Score 118 Landing Page CTR 120 Do Landing Page Quality Score Factors Matter Anymore? 121 Best Practice: Managing Quality Scores 123 How to Check Your Quality Scores 124 Limitations of AdWords Quality Score Reporting 124 Best Practice: Monitor For Missing Keywords 126 Quality Score On Bing Ads 126 Bing Quality Score Components 127 How Bing Ads Brings It Together To Calculate Quality Score 128 Recommendations For Managing Quality Score On Bing 129 Absolute vs. Relative Quality Score 130Chapter 13. How Do Shoppers Shop? 131 The Six Types of Online Buyers 133 What These Groups Have In Common 135 Takeaways For Paid Search Marketers 136 Chapter 14. How Do Searchers Search? 138 The Visitor Intention Model 138 Identifying Your Visitors’ Purchase Intention 143 The Brand Ladder 144Chapter 15. How To Increase Your Clickthrough Rate By Nearly 50% With Search Refinements 150 Multiple Impressions Leads To Higher Clickthrough Rate 151 A Real-World Example 152 Think About Search Refinements When Creating Your Campaign 156Chapter 16. Building Your Keyword List 158 H2 The Four Most Common Keyword Research Mistakes 158 H3 Quantity Is Important ... to a Point 160 Start With Broad Keywords, Then Expand Into Niche Terms 162 To Come Up With Keywords, Think Like Your Customers 162 A Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Generation 163 Summary 180Chapter 17. How to Plan A Paid Search Campaign 182 Two Common Campaign Setup Mistakes 182 Start by Categorizing Your Keywords 183 The Advantages of Planning Ahead 186 Don’t Create Arbitrary Ad Groups 189Chapter 18. Cut Campaign Waste with Keyword Matching 190 Google and Bing Match Types 190 H2 Advanced Negative Matching 193 Which Match Types Should You Use? 195 A Simple Refinement to your Spreadsheet That Will Save You Hours of Work 196Chapter 19. Create Your Ad Groups 198 What About Ad Copy? 199 Use A Desktop Editor To Manage Your Campaigns 199 Your Campaign Will Continue to Evolve Over Time 200 The “Peel & Stick” Technique Explained 200Chapter 20. The Art and Science of Setting Bids 207 What About Bidding Tools? 207 Figuring out how much to bid 208 Upward Sloping CPC Curves 211 Downward Sloping CPC Curve 213 Irregular CPC Curves 221 Average Position and Conversion Rates 228 Summary 232 Chapter 21. Drag Visitors to Your Site with Killer Ad Copy 233 Write Your Ads to Mirror Your Visitors’ Intention 234 Write Ads Which Mirror The Organic Search Results 236 Ten Quick Techniques To Increase Your Clickthrough Rates 236 Seven Approaches To Writing Better Ads 242 Nine Ways to Write Terrible Ads 245 A Note About Dynamic Keyword Insertion 246 Paint a Bulls Eye on Your Ads 249 “Borrow” the Best Ads 254 Split-testing 263Chapter 22. Landing Page Design 266 Optimization Goals 266 The Eight-Fold Path to Conversion Nirvana 267 A Real-World Conversion Optimization Example 303Chapter 23. Monitoring Your Campaign Performance 310 Why it’s Important to Stay on Top of Your Campaign Data 310 Key Statistics to Watch 311 How to Use Impression Share 314 Don’t Blow It Off! 320Chapter 24. Put the Competition to Work for You 323 Prioritize Otimization Efforts 323 Peek Into Competitors’ Business Models 324 Benchmark Against The Competition 325 Plan New Campaigns 327 A Good Estimate Is Hard To Find 328 Estimating Search Volume 331 Estimating Impressions 332 Estimating Clickthrough Rate (CTR) 333 Estimating Cost-Per-Click (CPC) 333 Estimating Conversion Rate and Order Size 334 Estimating Competitors’ Traffic 335 Other Uses 335 Third-Party Tools 335 Limitations of panel data 340 Summary 341Chapter 25. Don’t Starve Your Campaign 342 How to Set Your Maximum Daily Budget 342 How the Maximum Daily Budget Feature Works 343 Would You Let a Stranger Run Your Marketing? 343 Missing Out on High-Traffic Periods 345 Diverting Your Budget to Low-Profit Keywords 346 Summary 348Chapter 26. Don’t Blindly Trust the Search Engines 349Chapter 27. Open All Night (Day Parting) 352 The Demographic Marketers 352 The Cost Cutters 353 Dayparting Ignores “Assists” 354 Dayparting Doesn’t Cut Costs As Much As You Think 354 Dayparting Helps Your Competitors 355 Dayparting Adds Management Overhead 355 But Sometimes Dayparting Works... 356 Summary 357Chapter 28. Product Listing Ads 358 A History of PLAs 359 Who Should Use PLAs? 360 Targeting Options For PLAs 363 Why manually target specific keywords for PLAs? 364 Anecdotal Research 365Chapter 29. Mobile Search and Enhanced Campaigns 367 Does Mobile Search Really Matter? 367 Will Mobile Search Overtake Desktop Search? 373 So Should You Care About Mobile Search? 377 Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns 378 Enhanced Campaign Settings 379 How Bid Modifiers Work 383 The Downside of Bid Modifiers 384 Mobile Ads on Bing 385 Comparing Mobile Ads on Google And Bing 386 Mobile Advertising Recommendations 387