Google has recently changed its results page, and they have really shaken things up!  The main thing to notice is that Google have only been showing seven organic search results rather than ten.  This is strange news, and troublesome for those of us who are using SEO as they have really moved the posts around.  In some cases, they are showing less than seven, even five.  So, the real question is, how can PPC campaigns take advantage of this change? There are two ways in which this can be done.

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Search marketers can learn a lot from SEO research. The most obvious lessons can be learned from reports done for organic search so as to get ideas for keywords to include that might not necessarily have been discovered through keyword research using keyword tools. It is worth noting though, that some of these keywords may be too general and too expensive use in PPC campaigns.

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What are the most expensive Pay Per Click keywords to bid for on Google Adwords?

A report by Angel Investment Network in mid-2011 found that the keyword Insurance was the most costly, demanding $54.91 CPC. A close second was Loans at $44.28 CPC and Mortgage at $47.12 CPC. The keyword, Insurance, accounted for 24% of the top 10,000 keywords being bid for on Google. Loans accounts for 12.8%, Mortgage for 9% and the next most popular keyword in the top 10,000 keywords was Attorney*. Read more

AdWords create a quality score for each of your keywords.  The quality score is calculated each time your keyword matches a search query (each time your keyword has potential to trigger an ad). It’s important to try and improve your quality score so you can maximize the impact of your campaign. It determines how often your ads are shown, where your ads will appear and how much you pay for every click they generate. Read more

AdWords Automated rules was launched earlier this year and has proved to be a handy feature that  will save time by scheduling automatic changes to your account. With this tool, regularly pausing and enabling ads, adjusting bids and performing other manual tasks in AdWords will become much more efficient. However, it is still important to check and monitor your account performance even though automated rules have been set up. Read more

According to Strategy Analytics global smartphone shipments reached 293 million units in 2010, which is almost doubling the figures from 2008 and 2009. This demonstrates the growing importance of optimising you ads campaigns for mobile phones, particularly for smartphones such as iPhone, Android etc. Read more

As a beginner online marketer there is a tendency to want results right away. Pay per click marketing is one method that can yield results almost instantly if you know what you are doing. However blindly jumping in can result in you losing your shirt and setting you back tremendously. Read more

The following article is an announcement from Google’s Prashant Baheti, AdWords Product Manager:

When we first created custom alerts, we wanted to provide advertisers with a way to be notified when certain behaviours or changes occurred in their AdWords account. Over time, we observed that most advertisers wanted to take action when such triggers occurred within their accounts. Many of these actions can now be done by creating automated rules – a tool within AdWords that enables you to schedule automatic changes to specific parts of your account based on the criteria that you specify. Read more

Google recently implemented changes to the creative rotation of ads in ad groups. Creative Rotation is an option to evenly rotate which ads within ad group are displayed. This allows the advertiser to evenly test the performance of each ad. The other options are to optimise for clicks or optimise for conversions.

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Sometimes people misspell words when they search on Google. When it comes to the organic search results Google will still display results based on the correct spelling of the word, as well as close variants of correctly spelled words, such as singular and plural forms, acronymns (e.g. F.B.I. with Federal Bureau of Investigation), stemmings (cook and cooking), abbreviations and accents and synonyms. Read more