Latest SEM News & Tips

Creating Personas for PPC | Portent

Elizabeth Marsten writes a funny and very useful post on creating personas for PPC. She highlights the value personas provide in helping to ensure that your conversion tactics are correctly aligned with maximising your conversion rates.  In her post, she offers advice on selecting appropriate pictures, names and keywords to represent your personas as well as illustrating how to use tools, such as Facebook, Followerwonk, Customer Reviews, Census data andGoogle analytics to refine them. Read the full post at Portent.

3 Instances Where Best PPC Practices Might Not Be, Well, Best | Clix Marketing

Michelle Morehouse offers an insightful post into becoming aware that best practices are not always the best course of action and that sometimes you need to invest in alternative approaches to achieve your goals. Variables such as account size, verticals and demand, she says, may mean the best practice advice you are following could hurt your account. She highlights three examples where best practices fail to deliver and providers’ alternative tactics to getting round them. These include: Ad Group Level A/B Testing, Standard Bidding Structure and Trying to Maximize CTR.  Find out more at Clix Marketing.

Google Analytics 101: How To Configure Google Analytics To Get Actionable Data | Conversion XL

Georgene Nunn gives us a detailed lesson into the best practices for setting up your Google Analytics accounts to get the best insights from your data. She considers account organisation (using accounts, sites and views), how to unlock hidden features at property level, how to use demographics and interest reporting for remarketing campaigns, integrating your GA account with Webmaster Tools and AdWords and much more.  Read the full post at Conversion XL.

Low Keyword Search Volume? No Problem! | PPC Hero

For those who love working with excel formulas, Eric Couch provides a unique approach to dealing with the low search volume label in Google Adwords, commonly as they result from embedded negatives. He offers a set by step guide to cleaning up your keyword lists in a matter of minutes. Find out more at PPC Hero.

RLSA – 60 Minute Google AdWords Setup Guide | Calculate Marketing

Alan Mitchell provides a 101 guide to using remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA’s) with estimated times for each step.  He provides simple instructions on installing the code, reviewing traffic, defining audiences, selecting keywords, creating ads and applying audiences. Read the full post at Calculate Marketing.

CleverClicks News

How to Work Together With Your SEM Agency for Top Results

If you have decided to outsource your SEM campaigns to an agency, it’s important that you develop a healthy working relationship focused on maximising the profitability of your campaign. In this post, we explain how to work together with your SEM agency for top results.

5 Top Tips for Hiring A Competent SEM Agency

If you want soaring profits while showing your competition whose boss, it’s critical that you hire a search marketing agency that has a proven track record and the industry qualifications that count. The dangers of skipping this step may land you an agency riddled with false expectations, missed opportunities and poor profitability. We provide 5 helpful tips to hiring a competent SEM agency.