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Everything you must know to optimize your search ads, increase your profits, and help customers find exactly what they’re searching for
• The truth about the search tax
• The truth about competitive and network click fraud
• The truth about testing and expansion
The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising is a valuable resource for Internet marketers at both the tactical and strategic level regardless of company size. While PPC search engine advertising in Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other engines looks easy, competing successfully against competitors in a real-time auction for consumer's attention, clicks and dollars is no simple task. There are two kinds of PPC search marketers at the top of the paid placement results: brilliant marketers and irrational clueless amateurs. This book is designed to make sure that the reader becomes one of the brilliant marketers and learns how outmaneuver the competition. This book arms the reader with proven tactics and strategies that ensure success.
This book provides concrete, easy-to-grasp concepts, strategies, and tactics designed for both the hands-on search marketer as well as the supervisor focused on strategy. However, a basic understanding of some key search marketing and Internet marketing fundamentals will be helpful, though not essential, to the reader. To empower readers of all levels, the book contains a basic glossary of often-used terms (CPC, CPM, MaxBid, SERP) to ensure accessibility to all readers. Conversely, even the most seasoned paid search marketing professional will learn a great deal from this book.
To win in today's SEM PPC auctions and to continue to thrive, marketers need to figure out how to allocate budgets effectively and efficiently. The future of their business may depend on a good understanding of paid search and auction-based keyword-targeted media.
Beaten at Your Own Name: Buying Your Brand
Part I: The Truth About Why You Need Paid Placement SEM
Truth 1 Paid placement search, supply, demand, and auctions 1
Truth 2 Intrusive media versus the psychic postal carrier 5
Truth 3 Search: Beyond the "new Yellow Pages" 9
Truth 4 Search: It's like the stock market 13
Truth 5 Top organic position: It's not enough 17
Part II: The Truth About the History of Paid Search
Truth 6 The rise of search 21
Truth 7 GoTo.com and the birth of PPC search 25
Truth 8 Google introduces relevance and yield 29
Truth 9 The rise of content and context 33
Part III: The Truth About Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft
Truth 10 PPC search: CPM in disguise? 37
Truth 11 The search tax: Are search engines leeches? 41
Truth 12 Search versus keyword-targeted versus behavioral 45
Truth 13 Competitive and network click fraud: Problems and solutions 49
Truth 14 Better targeting with Microsoft adCenter 53
Part IV: The Truth About Customer Acquisition, ROI, Profit, and ROAS
Truth 15 Search engine sales versus search engine marketing 57
Truth 16 Manage your campaigns for maximum profit 61
Truth 17 ROI and profitability: Beyond ROAS to lifetime value and CRM 65
Truth 18 Missing conversions, offline conversion tracking, and SEM 69
Truth 19 Search marketing as a metric 73
Part V: The Truth About Branding and Search
Truth 20 Branding metrics for SEM 77
Truth 21 Search and the buying cycle 81
Truth 22 Branding opportunities in keywords 85
Truth 23 Paying for shelf space in the search supermarket 89
Truth 24 Brand discounts at the major search engines 93
Part VI: The Truth About Technology and Analytics
Truth 25 Dirty data equals bad bids 97
Truth 26 Should you be using web analytics to manage search? 101
Truth 27 Who's watching the bids? 105
Truth 28 The click fraud conundrum 109
Truth 29 Broad match keywords 113
Truth 30 PPC backward and forward 117
Part VII: The Truth About Best Practices
Truth 31 In-house versus outsourced SEM: The CMO's guide to the outsourcing debate 121
Truth 32 PPC search: Create, influence, capture, and harvest demand 125
Truth 33 Moving beyond campaign efficiency to campaign effectiveness 129
Truth 34 Keyword testing and expansion done right 133
Truth 35 Test or die: Tune your Google ad campaign 137
Truth 36 Best practices for PPC: Capturing the search curve tail 141
Truth 37 Improve site usability to enhance conversion rates 145
Truth 38 Beaten at your own name: Buying your brand 149
Truth 39 Brands, trademarks, and the brand marketer's dilemma 153
Part VIII: The Truth About Optimizing Your Bids
Truth 40 Start at the ad: CTR improvement with better creative 157
Truth 41 Day-parts, day of the week, and other cherry-picking techniques 161
Truth 42 Power segments deliver powerful results 165
Truth 43 Better account structures deliver better results 169
Part IX: The Truth About Landing Pages
Truth 44 Creating new PPC search landing pages 173
Truth 45 How to make landing pages better 177
Truth 46 Best practices for landing page excellence 181
Part X: The Truth About Second-Tier Engines and Non-Search Keyword-Targeted Media
Truth 47 Beyond search: Keyword-targeted media taps the power of Google's AdSense 185
Truth 48 Quasi-search: Contextual and behavioral marketing 189
Truth 49 Behavioral marketing: Behaviorally retargeting searchers 193
Part XI: The Truth About B2B Paid Search
Truth 50 Keywords are not enough for B2B marketing 197
Truth 51 B2B search best practices 201
Part XII: The Truth About the Future of Keyword-Targeted Media
Truth 52 Mobile keyword targeting 205
Truth 53 Social search 209
Truth 54 Are organic results an endangered species? 213
Truth 55 Search beyond the browser 217
About the Author 220