AdWords Campaign Experiments: Details and Pitfalls

April 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

Back in September, I wrote a brief overview of AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE), and Joe Kerschbaum wrote an excellent post on ways to use the feature.

ACE is a great enhancement that can really take your PPC campaigns to the next level. That said, there are a few important details you need to know before using it, as well as some pitfalls to watch out for. Let’s look at an example to illustrate.

ACE Details

One of the highly touted ways to use Experiments is to try new keywords, and with good reason. Maybe there’s a broad match keyword you’re not sure will generate the results you want, or maybe there’s a keyword that is marginally relevant to your campaign, but you’d still like to test it out.

Pre-Experiments, your only option was to add the keyword and watch it like a hawk while hoping for the best. Now, you can use Experiments to display the keyword on as little as 5 percent of your total traffic. Great news, right?

Yes and no. First of all, using Experiments requires at least a rudimentary understanding of testing principles. If you haven’t conducted controlled tests before, even the terminology in the Experiments documentation will be confusing.

It’s also a little tricky getting your head around the “control,” “experiment,” and “control + experiment” categories. Basically, the “experiment” will only run on the percent of traffic you specify.

So if you only want your test keyword to run 10 percent of the time, you’ll need to set it to “experiment only.” Conversely, if you don’t want a particular keyword or set of keywords included in the experiment, you’ll need to set it to “control only.”

Remember, Experiments run at the campaign level, so if you’re only testing keywords within one ad group, be sure to set the other non-experiment ad groups to “control,” as well.

It gets confusing, to be sure.

ACE Pitfalls

One big shortfall of Experiments is that it can’t be applied to campaign settings. For example, it would be great to test dayparting, networks, devices, daily budgets, and other campaign-level settings, and Experiments would be ideal for this. Unfortunately, it isn’t an option at this time. I’m hoping it will be, eventually.

There are also some pretty big pitfalls to watch out for when using Experiments. The biggest one I’ve discovered has to do with launching changes fully.

So, you’ve run your experiment, and it works great and you get great results. The logical next step would be to roll out the changes to all traffic, right? Yes, but rolling it out involves more than just clicking that button in your campaign settings.


I ran into this unfortunate pitfall in a client campaign recently. I ran an experiment on match types: I wanted to see if modified broad match performed better than regular broad match. But I wasn’t testing all the keywords in the ad group — only some of them.

I added a few modified broad match keywords and set them to “experiment only.” I set the broad match variations of these terms to “control plus experiment.” I set all the remaining keywords to “control only.”

The test worked great: the modified broad match terms, as expected, generated a better cost per conversion with an acceptable loss of traffic (traffic did go down, but not enough to justify the higher cost per conversion). So I clicked “Apply: Launch Changes Fully.”

The next day, when I checked on the campaign, traffic and spend had fallen through the floor. It didn’t make sense: the experiment showed a nearly negligible difference in traffic, but the rolled-out results were more like an 80 percent decrease in traffic.

When I dug into the campaign, I realized that most of my keywords were paused! What happened? Turns out, all the keywords that were set to “control only” were shut off when I launched the experiment fully.

After thinking it through, it made sense. In hindsight, I should have set all the keywords to “control plus experiment” instead of “control only,” and then the test keywords to “experiment only.”

Once I realized the issue, I was able to fix it quickly, and luckily the client lost less than a day of traffic. But the result was unexpected and really caught me off guard.

With these caveats in mind, make use of Campaign Experiments, and you’ll reap the rewards without stumbling!

This post originally appeared on Search Engine Watch on February 22, 2011.

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Filed Under: adwords, pay per click strategy

Ramping Up (or Ramping Down) Your PPC Spend

April 15, 2011 By 6 Comments

Anyone who’s been doing PPC for a while has heard this before: “We’re getting great results from PPC – we want more! Get us more traffic!” And chances are you’ve heard this before, too: “We need to cut our PPC budget in half for a while, starting today.”

While I hope you hear the former rather than the latter, both statements are enough to strike fear in the heart of any PPC manager. Well, I’m here to tell you there are ways to accomplish both, and quickly. Let’s talk about the “ramping down” scenario first.

Ramping Spend Down

You’re probably thinking, “Well that’s easy – just cut your campaign daily budget in half.” And you’d be right – if you literally have one minute in which to get the change made. Of course you should reduce your daily budgets in half, if that’s the directive. That’ll keep you from overspending. But if that’s all you do, it’ll likely cut your conversions in half, too – or worse.

If you take a little bit of time to look at your campaigns, you can probably squeeze more than half the original amount of conversions out of half the budget. Here’s how:

1. Start big, and get smaller. Look at your ad groups first: are there one or two ad groups that are really underperforming compared with the average? Pause those right away – especially if they’re not generating any conversions at all. If you have some that are converting, but at a higher cost than you’d like, lower your bids.

2. Then look at your ad copy. When was the last time you reviewed the results of your ad copy tests? Now’s a good time to take another look. Keep the winners and ditch the losers. I still recommend testing, even with a reduced budget; but if you’re really skittish, just keep the winners to get the most conversions for your reduced budget.

3. Then take a look at your keywords, the same way you looked at your ad groups. Pause the keywords that are getting a lot of clicks but no conversions; and lower bids on those that are not converting at a good cost.

4. Add negative keywords. It’s common to discover that you’re getting significant traffic for irrelevant search queries. Run a search query report and mine it like crazy for irrelevant terms. If you have time, you can comb through the entire report; if not, filter for terms with a minimum of 5-10 clicks and check that. Be relentless in adding negatives! When the budget is tight (and even when it’s not), there’s no reason to pay for irrelevant clicks.

5. Consider advanced features like dayparting, Conversion Optimizer, or Experiments – but be forewarned, these take more time to implement and more time to monitor, so if you’re short on time, hold off on these techniques at first.

Ramping Spend Up

Surprisingly, this can be more difficult than ramping down! But it can be done, and here’s how:

1. Increase your campaign daily budgets. If I really want to maximize spend, I’ll set each campaign to a daily budget of $1,000 per day, even if I know it won’t actually spend that much. I’ve found that setting lower budget caps can limit spend to far below what you’d really like, whereas setting it at $1,000 seems to max things out.

2. Adjust Ad Delivery Settings to Accelerated in Google, and remove the daily budget cap in adCenter. It’s surprising how much of a difference the Accelerated setting can make in increasing traffic & conversions.

3. Increase ad group and keyword bids. This is basically the reverse of what you did in the “ramping down” section: find the top performing ads and keywords and crank up the bids.

4. Add new keywords. I like to start with the search query report for this step. Just like you’d comb through it for negatives when you need to reduce spend, dig for high-converting variations that you’re not currently bidding on.

5. Consider the Display network. While this isn’t as easy as clicking the “show on all available sites” campaign setting, the Display Network can be a great source of incremental traffic and conversions. We’ve had clients who get as many conversions from Display as from search, at as good a cost.

By using these quick steps, you’ll be able to make your boss (or your client) happy, and get great results from your campaigns at the same time!

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Google’s Display Network, Part 2: Resources for Success

March 18, 2011 By 2 Comments

So, you’ve read last week’s article about Google’s Display network and its pitfalls and myths, and you’re ready to give it a shot. Great! Despite my pointing out pitfalls & myths, it really is worth testing for most advertisers.

In this installment, I’ll give you some resources to help you on your journey to content network success. Remember, though, that the best resource is your own vigilance. No book or tool can replace the careful attention of a smart PPC manager.

Resource #1: Articles on search marketing authority sites.

When I’m researching PPC features, I always start with the big 2: Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land. Both sites have a huge library of informative articles by industry pros. (Disclosure: I write a regular column for Search Engine Watch.)

Resource #2: David Szetela’s books.

My good friend David Szetela has written 2 great books on PPC. The first one is PPC: An Hour A Day, which came out last year. While the book covers much more than just Display advertising, it devotes a decent amount of space to Display and how to succeed in this channel. If you’re a PPC manager and this book isn’t in your library, you’re missing out not only on great Display Network tips, but overall PPC best practices as well.

David has also published a free e-book that covers the display network exclusively, called Customers Now. Even old pros like me will find new and helpful information in this book – and it’s free!

Resource #3: Shelly Ellis’s website.

Shelly Ellis is considered by many to be one of the preeminent experts on the Display Network out there. Shelly frequently speaks at search conferences. She also offers a couple of free content network guides on her website. Like David’s book, these are free, so there’s no excuse for not getting them – and reading them!

Bonus Resource:

Hot off the press, published just yesterday, is a great post by my Twitter friend Robert Brady asking whether the Display Network is the Black Hole of PPC. He concludes that it’s not – and offers up several best practices for success. Give it a read!

What are your favorite Display Network resources?

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Google’s Display Network, Part 1: Best Practices & Myths

March 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Just last week, I had a call with one of our Google reps. He was quite knowledgeable, and made several helpful suggestions on Adwords features we could try for our Fluency Media clients. While I was aware of most of the features already, he explained them in detail, and suggested which clients should try which features.

One of the features he brought up was the Google Display Network. The conversation with our rep reminded me that many new advertisers don’t know how to use the Display network, which then prompted me to outline some of the best practices and myths.

When Google launched the Display network about 7 years ago, it was like the Wild West: the network was full of MFA sites, and there were none of the great features like site exclusion that we have now. It was a huge gamble to even thinking about running ads there.

Thankfully, Google listened to advertiser feedback, and made huge improvements over the years. Still, though, the Display network can be a money pit for advertisers who don’t follow best practices.

Best Practice #1: Realize that Display isn’t search.

The first concept to understand is that Display isn’t search. Ads aren’t served based on keywords typed into a search engine. Instead, ads are served on websites where the content matches the content of the ad. Because of this, Display campaigns should always be separate from Search campaigns. Although Google allows advertisers to run ads in both Search and Display in the same campaign, don’t be tempted to take this shortcut. It’s not unusual for ad groups & campaigns to perform very differently in the two networks, so you’ll want the control you get with separate bidding for Search & Display.

Best Practice #2: Use small, tightly-themed ad groups.

This is good advice for search campaigns, too, but is critical for Display. It’s your job as an advertiser to make it abundantly clear to Google what your ad group’s topic is, so Google can show it on appropriate pages. Using tightly themed ad groups will accomplish this.

Best Practice #3: Make heavy use of the placement performance report & site exclusion.

Probably the best thing Google did to enhance advertiser performance in the Display Network was to create the placement performance report. I remember literally whooping with joy when this launched – finally, advertisers would have the transparency to see where their ads were being served, and what the results were on a site-by-site basis! Use this feature to your advantage. The report is easier than ever to run in the new Adwords interface – just go to Networks, set your date range (I use All Time to give the largest data set, and start excluding.

There are a few myths out there about the Display Network that advertisers should be aware of, as well.

Myth #1: Display is an inexpensive source of traffic & conversions.

OK, so this isn’t a total myth. Frequently, Display is a great incremental source of conversions at a very low cost. However, this is by no means always true. Click costs can rival those in search – in fact sometimes CPCs are higher in Display than in search, depending on the vertical. So if you’re looking for a quick way to grab incremental conversions, Display is definitely not the answer. You’ll get traffic, but it may not be inexpensive, and it may not convert.

Myth #2: Display is for everyone.

Again, this isn’t a total myth. We have several clients who get as good or better results from Display as from search. But it’s not a given. For every client who gets great results in Display, we have at least 2 who got horrible results, despite our best efforts to optimize. I firmly believe that there are some businesses for which display is just not a good fit. But you wouldn’t know this from talking to Google – every time I talk to a Google rep, including the conversation last week, they try to pitch me on trying Display for every client.

Myth #3: Site targeting in the Display network is easy.

First, a brief explanation. There are a few targeting options in the display network: keyword targeting, interest category targeting, and placement, or site, targeting. With site targeting, an advertiser can choose exactly which sites they’d like their ads to appear on. So if you want your ads to appear on about.com, you can target that site using site targeting.

Sounds simple, right? It’s not. First of all, there are thousands upon thousands of sites in the display network, so choosing the right sites is a daunting task. Secondly, advertisers tend to gang up when site targeting – everyone wants to target the same popular, high-traffic sites. And what happens when inventory is short and demand is high? You got it – the price goes way, way up. So not only is it challenging to figure out what sites to target, it can be challenging to get conversions at a good cost when the bids are so high.

In Part 2, I’ll share some display network resources that will help you make the most out of the network.

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The Dos and Don’ts of PPC Testing, Or, “Days Are Not Data”

March 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Last week, I wrote about the new Adwords option to optimize for conversions, and I talked a bit about testing principles. In my experience, PPC testing is one of the most misunderstood aspects of PPC. I’m always surprised by how many advertisers don’t test at all – which is, to be blunt, a huge missed opportunity. Yet many advertisers just put one ad variation into each ad group and let it go, never knowing whether it’s really the best variation or not. Wouldn’t you rather know what ad message generates the most traffic & conversions for your money?

I’ve also frequently seen inexperienced advertisers overreact to normal daily variations in performance. Even the best-managed campaign will have ups and downs on any given day; traffic, conversions, CTR, and any other metric can vary, sometimes wildly, on a day to day basis.

At a recent SES, my good friend Andrew Goodman made what was probably an offhand comment in one of his presentations, yet it stuck with me because it was so profound and true: “Days are not data.”

I love it – it’s brilliant. And true. You don’t need to be a statistician to realize that day-to-day fluctuations do not represent statistical significance in any way. Yet I regularly hear from clients, and even PPC managers-in-training, when results go up or down in a day’s time. These fluctuations, especially at the keyword level, should almost never be cause for alarm.

So how do you know when you have meaningful data? Here are some rules of thumb, based on best practices and years of experience.

Look at a large enough set of data.

If an ad group or keyword got 2 clicks yesterday and 10 clicks today, I can tell you right now that you don’t need to worry about it. Not only are the total numbers too small to be significant, at a minimum you should be looking at week over week data. I’ve written about dayparting recently, and the whole premise behind dayparting is that performance varies from day to day. So don’t make any judgments until you have at least a full week of data, if not more.

Another good rule of thumb is to make sure your data set has at least 100 clicks. You may need more than a week to amass that much info. Be patient – it’s worth the wait to know you’re looking at significant data.

Don’t guess – use statistical tools.

At SMX Advanced last year, I spoke about evaluating PPC tests using SuperSplitTester, which is my favorite easy-to-use statistical tool. But you don’t have to use that one. Just use any tool – but make sure to run the numbers and don’t guess. I’ve used SuperSplitTester enough to guess the winning ad correctly a lot of the time, but not all the time. Don’t guess – your clients and/or employer will thank you.

Evaluate test data systematically.

Yeah, that sounds like a stats prof talking, but what I really mean is set a schedule to review test data, and stick with it. We’ve found that a monthly review is enough for most advertisers when you’re talking about ad tests – even our high-volume clients often don’t reach statistical significance before a full month has passed. Having a set schedule to follow not only ensures the work will get done, but also ensures that the test periods are relatively similar from month to month.

And if you’re really freaked out, only change 1-2 things at once.

One of our clients recently shifted their business goals and strategy, which required a pretty big shift in their PPC campaigns, as well. We launched 3 new campaigns all at once. (I don’t always advise this, but in this case it made the most sense.) When I checked it the day after launch, spend had gone through the roof. Like a good PPC tester, I didn’t panic – but I did lower the campaign daily budgets a bit, just to improve my comfort level. What I didn’t do is go in and start pausing keywords and ad variations, and making a bunch of bid changes – it’s too early for that. The point is, if you’re freaked out, do make a couple changes, but then give it at least a couple days to gauge the effect.

Using systematic, smart testing processes will really pay off in PPC campaign success, I promise!

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Using Dayparting Effectively in PPC, Part 2: Advanced Tactics

February 11, 2011 By 2 Comments

In Part 1, we talked about basic dayparting techniques, such as turning off ads during days or hours where results are poor. But what if you don’t want to turn things all the way off?

For instance, let’s say you get some conversions on the weekends – but the conversion rate isn’t as good as it is during the week. Or maybe you get lots of conversions on a Monday, but it’s really competitive, so your CPCs, and therefore your cost per conversion, are higher than you’d like. In these instances, you don’t want to shut off the weekends or Mondays entirely, because you’d lose sales, right? What to do?

This is where bid adjustment comes in. Bid adjustment is a wonderful feature, available in both Google and MSN/Yahoo, that allows you to raise or lower bids on certain days and/or times. With bid adjustment, you can increase or decrease your max CPCs, using a percentage, during days or times that you choose. Here’s a screen shot of the adCenter bid boost screen, found under Campaign Settings.

Let’s take the “weekends aren’t great” example at the beginning of this post. Let’s say your weekend conversions are only worth half what your weekday conversions are worth. Use the bid adjustment feature to set Saturday and Sunday’s bids to 50%. The PPC engine will automatically reduce your CPCs by half. Pretty slick, huh?

As I mentioned in Part 1, when you’re thinking about dayparting, it’s critical to make sure you’re making the right decisions using good data. To make the right decision, you’ll need to look at a large enough set of data. As I mentioned in Part 1, you’ll need at least 100 clicks in each segment to even begin thinking about bid adjustments.

Google makes it easier to get at this data than MSN, at least the day of week data. In Google, just choose Segment by day of week and export the result. However, adCenter’s reporting by hour of the day includes conversion data, while Adwords’ reports by hour do not. (Google is missing the boat on this one, in my opinion!) If your adCenter campaign gets a lot of clicks, you may even want to review conversion data by hour, and then apply that to your Adwords campaigns, as well.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to use a statistical tool to make sure the difference in results is statistically significant. Even if you just look at conversion rate, check the day or days you’re thinking about eliminating, and compare with the other days. If the difference is significant, then go ahead and adjust your bids. If the difference isn’t significant, don’t do it! Even if you have to set the date range to the past 12 months, it’s worth it to make sure you’re making the right decision. Nothing is worse than reducing bids (and getting less traffic & conversions as a result), only to find out you’ve ended up cutting way into your sales.

When used correctly, dayparting and bid adjustment can really improve campaign performance. Look at your data and give it a try!

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Filed Under: adwords, MSN adcenter, pay per click strategy

Beyond the Paid Makes the Best PPC Blogs List

February 3, 2011 By 2 Comments

Yesterday, the good folks at Boost CTR published The Best PPC Blogs – The Definitive List of Pay-Per-Click Blogs. It’s a list of 45 or so blogs that cover PPC, and it’s full of heavy hitters: Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, Clix Marketing, Click Equations, and more.

I’m honored, thrilled, and just a bit overwhelmed to be included in the list that’s loaded with just about everyone I look up to and respect in the PPC industry. I owe a debt of gratitude to Matt Van Wagner, Andrew Goodman, David Szetela, and the great folks at Search Engine Watch for their encouragement and support over the nearly 9 years I’ve been doing PPC. Thanks, guys!

If you’re doing PPC at all, you should be reading the blogs in the Boost CTR list. Go add them to your reader now!

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Using Dayparting Effectively in PPC: The Basics

January 14, 2011 By 2 Comments

PPC conversions happen around the clock, right? I mean, that’s the beauty of PPC and the internet in general – people can shop at any time of day or night, right from the comfort of their own home (or office), without worrying about whether a business is “open” or not. Internet sites are open 24/7, right?

Right. Sort of. Like everything else in PPC, it’s critical to take a look at your performance on a granular level. While conversions can theoretically happen at any time, it’s pretty common for certain days and/or times to work better than others – sometimes dramatically so.

Take a B to B organization, for example. Most of our B to B clients get the bulk of their traffic, and nearly all their conversions, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday. And when I worked in in-house e-commerce PPC, fraudulent orders skyrocketed during the wee hours of the morning.

This is where PPC dayparting comes in. Using ad scheduling as it’s called in PPC, you can set your PPC ads to only show at certain times of day. As usual, Adwords is more robust than Microsoft adCenter when it comes to dayparting: in Adwords, you can select by the exact hour, whereas in adCenter, it’s blocks of hours (like 10 a.m.-2 p.m.).

Great, are we done yet? Not yet. This is yet another place where you don’t want to make decisions based on assumptions alone. Review your analytics data before changing anything!

Google doesn’t make this easy. While it’s simple to run reports (in the Dimensions tab,) by hour of the day, Google only shows impression and click data – not conversion data. Even if you have Adwords conversion tracking enabled, you won’t get it broken down by the hour. You’ll need to go to your web analytics program to get conversion data. You’ll be able to easily get data from your analytics package on conversions by the hour. (“But I don’t have web analytics!” you cry. Stop reading right now and go sign up for Google Analytics – it’s free, so there’s no excuse not to use it. Get your web team to implement it on your website NOW and make sure it’s linked to your Adwords account. Then come back and finish reading this.)

This is a critical step, so don’t skip it! Even if you’re a B to B advertiser, you may find that you’re getting lots of leads in the evenings. Maybe your customers are too busy during the work day to do much searching, and they’re doing it from home after hours. Or maybe not. Point is, make decisions based on data, not assumptions!

Not only can you daypart by hour of day, but you can also daypart by day of week. Google makes this a lot easier, since they do share conversions by day of week. Go to Segment in Adwords, and choose “Day of week.”


Make sure you’re looking at a big enough data set – each day of the week should have 100 clicks at a bare minimum. Again, you may find that the weekends aren’t converting, or maybe Wednesday is a bad day. Whatever the info, you can use Settings to turn ads off on days that don’t perform.

An important caveat: Use these techniques to eliminate hours of the day or days of the week that aren’t converting at all, or are converting so poorly that you can’t justify spending any of your budget on them. This technique is especially effective if you have a limited PPC budget: it enables you to focus spend on the times & days that are converting best, and not waste precious dollars on times & days that aren’t. But be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater! If you’re getting conversions (even if it’s only a few), and you have the budget, don’t shut off your PPC! In Part 2 of this 2-part series, I’ll show you how to use bid adjustments to hone in your PPC spend and get those conversions at an acceptable cost.

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3 Gift Ideas To Give Your PPC Agency

December 17, 2010 By 1 Comment

If you celebrate Christmas, you’ve probably at least started your shopping by now. If you’re looking for a gift to give your PPC agency, here are some ideas for you. Best of all, they’re all free!

Tell them everything.

Your agency will have tremendous difficulty running a successful PPC campaign if you don’t tell them what your business goals are. We’ve been surprised many times by our clients when they tell us that their #1 goal is something we’re not even touching with PPC campaigns. While not everything is easy to promote in PPC, nothing is easy if you don’t know what you’re promoting.

Along the same lines, tell your agency when you make changes to your website. It’s not uncommon for PPC managers to discover that the landing pages they’re using for paid traffic all of a sudden don’t exist anymore. Remember, you’re paying for this traffic. If you’re not going to keep your PPC agency in the loop, you may as well use your money to buy lottery tickets instead.

Take their recommendations.

You probably hired a PPC agency because of their knowledge and expertise in the field. You realized that they’re experts in PPC, and you’re not – so you’ve decided to pay them to put their expertise to work for you.

Ignoring your agency’s recommendations is like ignoring doctor’s orders. Sure, no one’s holding a gun to your head to make sure you follow directions, but if you don’t, things aren’t going to get better. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So if your PPC agency recommends changes to your campaign or landing pages, you’d be “insane” not to listen to them!

This doesn’t mean you have to blindly do everything your agency says. But at least have a conversation about it. Talking things through and compromising is better than just blowing things off.

Respond to their communications.

Any PPC manager can tell you about the one client who never responds. Emails and reports go unread; voice mail messages go unreturned. We PPC managers are pretty good at keeping things rolling along with little direction – again, that’s probably why you hired us. We pride ourselves on being able to manage your campaigns without needing daily direction from you.

All that said, we’re not contacting you to chit-chat, and we’re not spending hours producing reports to clog your inbox. The most successful PPC campaigns are born out of collaboration – back and forth conversations between agency and client. So if I’ve called you 4 times and you don’t respond, or I send emails that never get a reply, it’s hard for me to get the best results for your campaign.

Trust me – we PPC managers don’t want to add to your workload. We understand that you hired us to take the burden off your shoulders. But success in PPC (or any marketing effort, for that matter) comes from collaboration and communication.

So take the time to share and respond to your PPC manager. Your bottom line will thank you.

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Filed Under: agency sem, pay per click strategy

Top 5 Free PPC Tools

December 3, 2010 By 1 Comment

It’s December, and around the world the holidays are upon us. For many, the holidays bring a spirit of giving. In keeping with that spirit, I thought I’d list my top 5 favorite free PPC tools. Think of it as my PPC gift to you. (wink)

#1: Adwords Editor

Without a doubt, Adwords Editor is #1 on my list. All the other tools are, well, not useless, but much more difficult to put into practice without Adwords Editor. When I train new Fluency Media PPC staff, the first thing I have them do is “download Adwords Editor.”

If you’re new to PPC, or are a PPC Luddite, Adwords Editor is a downloadable application that lets you edit your Adwords campaigns offline. So if you’re without an internet connection, you can still work on your campaigns, and then post the changes the next time you’re connected.

Adwords Editor is also great for creating campaigns, copying campaigns, ad groups, or keywords, moving keywords or ads from one ad group to another, and making changes in bulk. It was originally developed as a tool for Adwords staff and was built off the Excel platform, so it has many of the features we all know and love from Excel, including find & replace, sorting, filtering, appending, copying….. You get the picture. I literally could not do my job effectively without this tool.

#2: Google Keyword Tool

While the Google Keyword Tool has undergone several recent changes, and is notoriously inaccurate at times, it’s still my go-to tool for finding keywords. I like to start with the “website” feature, entering a URL and letting the tool tell me what keywords it thinks are relevant. Not only does this give you a lot of keyword ideas for your PPC campaigns, it alerts you to potential issues with the page that could negatively affect your PPC and SEO results. In other words, if you think the page is about one thing, but the keyword website tool tells you it’s about another, you’ve got a problem – and you’ll need to address it if you want to earn the best Quality Score and organic rankings.

#3: Acquisio Modified Broad Match Tool

I just discovered the Acquisio Modified Broad Match tool about 2 weeks ago, although it’s been around since July. The guys at Acquisio are awesome – I consider Marc Poirer, their co-founder, to be a great friend in the SEM industry – and this tool is simply incredible.

Earlier this year, Google introduced Modified Broad Match and SEMs all said, “Finally!” It’s long overdue, and is easy to implement if you’re only modifying a couple of keyword or keyphrases. However, applying modified broad match to a long list of keywords is daunting. Excel’s Concatenate function won’t do it, Adwords Editor won’t do it, and the thought of typing that “+” sign over and over is enough to make my stomach hurt.

Enter the Acquisio tool. Just copy and paste your keywords into the box, indicate whether you want all words modified or only specific words, and click “generate.” Voila! It’s that simple. I recently created a huge holiday campaign with several hundred modified broad match keywords in a fraction of the time it would have taken me otherwise, just by utilizing this tool.

#4: SplitTester and SuperSplitTester

If you’re running ad copy tests (and you should be), you’ll need a tool to tell you whether your test results are statistically significant or not. There are several good tools out there that fit the bill, but I like SplitTester and SuperSplitTester.

If you’re just looking at one metric, i.e. CTR, conversion rate, or whatever, use SplitTester. Enter the number of clicks (for CTR) or conversions (for conversion rate) and the CTR or conversion rate percentage, and it tells you whether the results are significant, and at what confidence level.

SuperSplitTester takes it a step further and incorporates CTR, conversion rate, and cost per impression. It runs all those metrics through its super-secret algorithm, and tells you which variation will make you the most profit over time. We use this free tool for almost all of our clients’ PPC tests, and the results speak for themselves.

#5: Twitter

Twitter? Yes, indeed – Twitter is one of my favorite PPC tools. It’s not a tool like the other 4 I’ve listed, in that it doesn’t take in data and spit out a result. Nonetheless, Twitter is my go-to place when I’m having a PPC problem that I can’t solve, or when I want to get quick feedback on something. It’s also become my news reader: I get breaking PPC news from Twitter before I see it anywhere else, and it aggregates everything into one place. Not only is it a great way to keep up with friends in the industry, it’s really become a valuable PPC tool.

Bonus Tip:

Since I’m feeling especially generous, here is a bonus tip: My good friend Alex Cohen from ClickEquations wrote an article for Search Engine Watch not long ago on 43 Paid Search Tools. It’s long, but as always, highly educational. Check it out!

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Filed Under: adwords, pay per click ad testing, pay per click strategy, search engine marketing
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