Search Engine Marketing Best Practices?
1/10/2009
Best Practices are Best Practices for a reason. One of the issues with Search Engine Marketing today, however, is that people are catching on to the best practices. When it comes to Pay Per Click, you only have so many characters to work with. There are still ways to break through the clutter, however, even when everybody’s Pay Per Click ads are stuffed with keywords, benefit driven, and use keyword insertion.
1. Take advantage of the 40 character ad titles in Yahoo.
No advertisers do this. Despite the difficulty of using the Panama interface and the cumbersome nature of the Yahoo Bulksheets, Yahoo can still yield excellent results -- many times you can achieve CPL/CPA’s lower than with Google, and at a substantial volume. Most advertisers just dump their Google exports into Yahoo. But look at this screenshot -- Position 1’s title really stands out from the crowd, and I am sure it has a much higher click through rate for it!
2. Take advantage of new Google features
I might be shooting myself in the foot by putting these out there, but they aren’t a secret -- people just aren’t using them (yet). One unique new feature is to display the address of your business in your ad (if you appear in Google’s top 3 positions). This is only good for small business or something with an actual location, however. For e-commerce, take advantage of Google Checkout icons, which boost click-through-rates as well. Always keep your eyes out for Google’s latest and greatest options in AdWords.
3. Use Unique Characters
When writing ad copies, use characters that stand out from the crowd, especially with Branded Campaigns. Parentheses. {Official Site}. Or use a reserved trademark symbol, or a copyright symbol.
4. Employ a display URL strategy
Many SEM campaigns aren’t properly using display URLs. Associate your display URLs with the keywords in your ad group to boost your click through rates.
5. Don't forget the best practices!
Finally, don’t abandon the best practices! I have come across those that want to be out of the box for the sake of being out of the box. If you do this, you will most likely fail. Best practices work. You can do all of the aforementioned, but usually those crazy out-of-the-box ideas from the HIPPO aren’t going to work. But look for ways to properly differentiate your ads. Tell a story. Make it simple. Do something different, but keep to the best practices as well.
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