
Whew! This PPC stuff can be hard work. You spend hours prepping the soil (researching keywords and competitors), planting seeds (account creation and settings), watering & fertilizing (bids, match types and testing) and weeding (negative keywords and domain exclusion). Finally, it’s time to harvest and see the reward of your labors.
All your work should result in a qualified person arriving at one of your landing pages. However, their is still work to be done.
Don’t waste all your hard work with a half-hearted harvest. Get those landing pages done right.
Your garden is planted, the seeds have sprouted and the water and fertilizer have really sped up the growth of your garden. However, you quickly notice that your seeds aren’t the only ones that have sprouted. You now have a weed problem.
Just like your garden at home has weeds without any effort, your PPC efforts will have “weeds” in the form on poor-performing keywords and poor-performing domains.
Despite your best efforts to pick only relevant keywords that relate to your products, the sheer size of the internet and diversity of the people using it can create problems. Here are a few reasons those weeds always come up:
There are two main tools you should be using to weed your PPC account; Negative keywords and domain exclusion.
Negative Keywords – If you know common keywords that are unrelated, you can add them in your initial account set up. With our Toto toilets we could add words like “band”, “Dorothy”, “Oz”, etc. right from the beginning. However, as you campaigns run you’ll likely see some new terms you hadn’t thought of. Run a search query report (the new interface makes them easy – here are instructions for running a search query report) to see what terms are triggering your ads. I guarantee you’ll be surprised.
Domain Exclusion – If you’re using the content network you’ll want to see exactly which domains are showing your ads. Inevitably you’ll find sites that A) have tons of impressions buy no clicks or B) have a great CTR but high cost/conversion. Simply exclude those sites to improve your account improvement.
Weeds rob your garden of water and nutrients. In PPC they rob you of your budget, raise your CPC and thwart your efforts to deliver a positive ROI. Do your weeding earlier rather than later because nobody wants this to be their garden:

Plants have 3 simple requirements:
Google provides the sunlight (impressions), you provide the water (budget) and this will start getting you results. However, to maximize the growth potential of your PPC, you need some Miracle-Gro.
Just as fertilizer helps plants grow larger, faster and produce more, testing helps your PPC efforts to get more clicks, better QS and more conversions. Here are some areas of your PPC accounts that you should be fertilizing:
Constant testing and improvement is why PPC should be managed by a qualified in-house resource or outsourced to a qualified contractor or agency. Your competition is always changing, PPC platforms are changing themselves and you can’t afford to just “set it and forget it” with PPC.
Now that you’ve prepped your soil, planted your seeds, and you’re starting to see some sprouts, we need to talk about proper watering.
As mentioned in the previous post on planting, watering = money. Setting your budget is enough to get the seeds to sprout, but to keep them growing you’ll need more consistency. This is where you keyword-level bids come into play.
Remember that house plant you forgot to water for weeks (maybe even months)? If your experience is what I’ve seen, then your plant was a goner. Likewise with your keyword bids. If you don’t set them high enough your ads don’t get triggered and your carefully planted seeds sprout and then promptly die. There are a couple of watering strategies you can use:
This may seem like an oxymoron to some, but too much watering can be just as fatal as too little watering. The problem with over-watering is that plants start to drown and develop fungal growths. With your PPC efforts this usually begins appearing as grumbling from the marketing exec about budget. They see how much money is going into PPC and want to send that money to another effort. I’ve seen companies over-water, feel the spend was unjustified and stop doing PPC for months. Make sure you have tracking installed. Make sure you know your cost/acquisition. Make sure it’s comparable or better than the cost/acquisition of other channels. That is how you keep the water flowing.
How else do you water your PPC crops?

In our last post we discussed how PPC account setup is like planting your farm. However, a savvy farmer knows that you need a few key elements for your seeds to start growing (“germinate” in horticultural parlance).
Every good gardener knows that you need 3 things to get from a dormant seed to a growing plant: Water, Heat & Sunlight.

“She’s a goner.”
“Time of death?”
“Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 3:01 AM.”
And thus was the end of the Google AdWords Professionals (GAP) program.
Before the body was even cold, Google already had their new bride at the altar; Google AdWords Certification. According to the post on the Official AdWords Blog “the new program provides agencies and their employees with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts.” Here are the highlights:
And here is what I think of them:
What have been your thoughts/impressions on the new Google Certification Program?
Now that you’ve done your PPC soil prep its time to plant.
Setting up a PPC account is easy. For AdWords it can even be too easy. The first step in setting up AdWords is to decide if you would like the Starter Edition or the Standard Edition. Even though Google says that the Starter Edition is “recommended for those who are new to Internet advertising”, do NOT commit the Sin of Insecurity and choose Starter Edition. If you chose Starter Edition, just upgrade to Standard (no charge) so that you have full control over the account spend.
Okay, now that we’re on the same page, let’s talk about account structure.

PPC accounts have three main levels of organization. The highest level is the account. The next level consists of campaigns in the account. The lowest level exists in campaigns and is the ad group. Proper planting involves both campaigns and ad groups.
Several options are only applicable on a campaign level. Therefore, here are situations where you’ll need separate campaigns:
Looking at your keyword research and using these guidelines you should have a good idea of where to start with your campaigns. Now what about ad groups?
Here is where you’ll need to get your hands dirty. Ad groups are where keywords, bids and ad copy reside. Most of your time and effort will be spent here.
The ideal ad group has a handful of keywords that are all tightly themed. For example, San Francisco divorce lawyer and San Francisco divorce attorney would go in the same ad group. However, San Francisco DUI lawyer should be in another ad group because the person is looking for two different types of lawyer. Once you have your keywords grouped, you need to write at least 2 ads for each ad group. Use messaging that matches what the keywords. Consider using Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) but make sure that the ad matches the keyword (and as we’ll discuss later, that the keyword and ad match the landing page). And why 2 ads? You want to test which one gets more clicks and more conversions. Get in the habit of testing now, because it’s a big part of PPC farming.
To recap, our planting efforts will give you the potential for a bounteous harvest. You placed your keywords in nicely themed ad groups that were organized into intuitive campaigns. Your ad copy is relevant to your keywords and you’re eager to see your seeds sprout. But what will help them germinate (sprout)?
Just like farming starts with the soil, PPC starts with your keywords. The first step in achieving a successful PPC harvest is to prepare your soil through appropriate keyword research.
Your first step is to figure out what type of soil you have. First, look at your web content, promotional materials, marketing pieces, etc. to find the keywords that you are currently using to describe your service/product/offering. Open up a Word doc or pull out a pad of paper. Write these keywords/phrases down.
Second, log in to your analytics account (ie Google Analytics, Omniture, Statcounter). Run a report on your organic traffic for the last 3 months or so. Look at the top non-brand terms and add the best ones to your list.
Lastly, if your site has a search bar, look at your search log to see what people are typing once they are on your site. This is gold because these terms are exactly what users are looking for ON YOUR SITE! Add these to the list (if they aren’t already there).
This picture is a Troy-Bilt Horse; a 1HP tiller that chews through the toughest soil and leaves behind a path of soil nirvana. Tools like this allow you to prepare more soil with less time. Here’s a list of my favorites:
Proper keyword research will help you create an environment where the seeds of your PPC efforts can grow. So how do we get started planting?
UPDATE: Just yesterday Brad Geddes wrote a great piece on 7 keyword tools. Great supplement!
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