Google Adwords

2015.11.03 - HubSpot - How to Use Google AdWords: A Beginner’s Guide to PPC Advertising [Free Ebook] (a blog post introducing the ebook)
- "When done correctly, businesses generally make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords, according to Google."
- HubSpot - How to use Google Adwords.pdf (the actual ebook)
  - What is paid search?
    - Intro
      - If you have a solid understanding of Google AdWords, you’ll be in a good position to understand how the other search engines work.
    - Paid vs. organic search
      - According to HubSpot data, most searchers click on the organic results – in fact, over 70% of people click on the organic search results, while only 30% are likely to click on the paid links.
      - Paid search is a great option if you are not ranking well in the search engines with organic search alone.
      - [A]ll too often, companies -- small businesses especially -- think that if they just pay to be on a search engine, they don’t have to invest time and resources in search engine optimization to rank higher organically.
  - How to use paid search
    - Landing page testing
      - Paid search is a great way to do landing page A/B testing because it allows you to direct traffic to your choice of pages, split this traffic to different pages, and ultimately find the pages that convert at the highest rate.
    - Finding new keywords
      - In addition to landing page testing, you can also use paid search to find new keywords for your campaign. Google AdWords generates a Search Terms report that displays all of the keywords for which your ad has been displayed.
      - Now, this high conversion rate tells me not only that I should be buying this keyword, but also that maybe I should consider using this keyword for search engine optimization as well. Maybe I should make a landing page geared toward this keyword, or an offer built around this keyword. You should use the information in these Search Terms reports, and also in Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner, to discover new keywords that will help you further optimize all of your SEM campaigns. For more information on keyword research, check out this blog post: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide
    - Getting in the game
      - Summary: If you don't show up for a certain keyword but your competitors do, you can use paid search to "get in the game".
    - Paid search can't stand alone
      - When you think about how you should use paid search, one of the best ways to think about it is to use it as a complement to your inbound marketing efforts. You can use paid search to maximize your coverage on the search engine’s result page (SERP).
  - How paid search works
    - Keywords, ads, and landing pages
      - There are three main elements of a paid search campaign: keywords, ads, and landing pages.
    - PPC bidding
      - [PPC] is much better than paying per impression (called CPM) because your ad might be displayed 100,000 times and only one person clicks on it. There is the option to pay per thousand impressions (CPM) with Google, but the only case where this would be a better choice than PPC would be for a “share of voice” campaign, which is when you’re just trying to spread awareness of your brand. For the purposes of paid search, however, especially if you’re just starting out, PPC is the better option.
      - The lowest bid is used as the price for the least valuable (least visible) spot on the results page, and then each spot going up in value (more visible placements) is priced at an incremental dollar value higher (we’ll use a $.05 incremental bid for this example). So in this case, the top bidder ends up paying only $2.50 per click, even though they bid at $5.00 ( vs. )
    - Quality score
      - While your bid does play a large role in determining whether or not your ad is served for a given keyword, Google also uses something called “quality score” in making these decisions. Quality score is an algorithm that scores each of your ads for relevancy – it looks at how closely your keyword relates to your ad and how closely your ad relates to your landing page content. In other words, Google actually scans your landing pages to ensure that you’re not just buying keywords and directing them to totally irrelevant pages.
      - Quality score is on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest rating and 10 being the highest.
      - Quality score can also help you determine what keywords are cost-efficient for you to use.
    - Keyword match types
  - Your Google AdWords strategy
    - Keyword strategy
    - Account structure
    - Setting your budget
    - Optimizing ad copy
  - Measuring your success
    - Defining the four basic metrics
    - Combining the four basic metrics

2015.11.03 - The Atlantic - People's Deepest, Darkest Google Searches Are Being Used Against Them

Imagine again the person who turns to Google with a search term like “need money fast.” Let’s say that person ends up at a lead generator’s landing page, providing various information in hopes of getting a quick loan. “A very small percentage of those folks are actually qualified for a loan,” said Michael Waller, an attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s enforcement division at the FTC. “And so the vast majority—95 percent of those applications, which means 95 percent of the folks whose social-security numbers and bank-account numbers fall to the cutting room floor—are referred to in the industry as ‘remnants.’”
Those so-called remnants aren’t discarded, though. They are sold and resold and resold again. “What’s created over a period of time is the consumers just become suckers,” Waller said in the FTC workshop. “It’s a sucker list. And people will buy that information for all different kinds of reasons.”

Misc ideas

Create ads that people won't click on, but they will notice.
- Examples:
  - Hired.com and web2py
    - I did a search for 'web2py' and the ad at the top was for web2py jobs, with Hired.com.
    - I didn't click on the 'Hired' link, but I did notice it, so they basically got some free adspace there.