The first expenses you should examine are the campaign costs. You should have separate campaigns targeting your Google search ads and your content network ads. If you have this, you will be able to manage budgeting and adjust ad and keyword bids for each of your networks separately. In addition, for your content campaigns, using category and site exclusions to preserve your click dollars is highly recommended. This will prevent your ads from showing up on unrelated websites.

The next thing to do is to determine your most successful keywords and then redo bids if necessary. Additionally, for your existing keywords you can also add distinctive query match types, particularly for keywords that are expensive or have high CPAs (costs per action). This will let you set individual bids for each different match type.

You should also look at your keywords’ Quality Scores. Any keywords you find with four or less for the Quality Scores and have zero conversions should be put on hold. The Quality Score will affect the keyword’s CPC (cost per click) and bid estimate for the first page. It will also have an effect on the ranking of your ad and whether or not the keyword is eligible for entrance into the ad auction.

However, you may find that you’re working with thousands of keywords. This could even be hundreds of thousands of different terms. In this case, you will require at least partial automation to assist you in managing and controlling the expenses of the many long-tail keywords you may have. Below are numerous bid management tools to help you succeed in doing this.

Acquisio Search

The Acquisio SEARCH platform includes a effective campaign and bid control module based on rules. Among many other functions, the tool reveals to you which keywords will need to be paused. It also sends you an email when your keyword terms have insufficient Quality Scores. In addition, it lets you determine the best CPCs.

Clickable

Clickable ActEngine examines your PPC campaign and will automatically come up with recommendations for the best performance, specifically, it will propose raising your bids on the most successful keyword terms, and decreasing bids of your worst performing keywords. It can also alert you of keywords that gone below the original first page estimations.

Podium adCore

This is an algorithm for bid management that can alter bids at both the ad groud and keyword levels. It can also assist in testing various ad creatives. It also has a keyword cleanup option for eliminating poor keywords.

DoubleClick DART Search

This automated tool for bid management, which is part of DART Search, is able to bid on the keywords you want as many as 12 times daily. This lets you come up with a strategy for bidding by picking two rules you would like to apply in a specific order. The bid rules for this includes ROI and those based on position.

Omniture SearchCenter

The Search Center is a portion of the Online Omniture Marketing Suite for applications. This bid engine is automated and the presents different tactics for bid management. This includes both portfolio and rules-based tactics.

Even if you are using automated tools, you should still practice regularly scheduled manual management of your campaign expenses. The above described methods should assist you in keeping all your PPC costs in line.

About the author:
Michael Ramirez is a freelance web consultant living in Montreal. He can be reached at mikejoeramirez@gmail.com

The Yahoo Search Marketing affiliate program is managed by CJ.com. And this Yahoo affiliate program actually earns me affiliate checks. Not a lot of money but still good pocket money.

Thank you for reading my blog and visiting those sponsored links.

I didn’t expect many people would be interested to use Yahoo Search Marketing in Southeast Asia. It was as popular as 3 years ago when Yahoo search had more than 50% market share. Still, Yahoo is the number 2 and there is still a lot of traffic going to Yahoo search.

Now I think it is time to consider and use Yahoo search marketing because:

1. it is pay-per-click, you pay only when people visit your page
2. there is lesser competitors compared with Google AdWords
3. people who use Yahoo are less tech savvy (actually less geeky)
4. your cost per customer is likely to be lower than AdWords or Facebook

So if you need an alternative to Google AdWords, go try out Yahoo Search Marketing. Click at the banner below and register today.

So what happened?

Did anyone hear anything about the “re-branding” of googlereseller.com.sg to clicktrue.com.sg?

Apparently, the people at HWZ who came up with the new site did not say why the name change. The announcement was simply…

“With this re-branding, it hopes to strengthen itself as a leading service provider of Pay Per Performance online advertising.”

Google Trademark Infringement

Do you think a subsidiary of a public listed company in Singapore just go spend ten of thousand of dollars to “re-brand” with no good reason. Afterall, googlereseller.com.sg is a keyword rich domain name and the domain name alone is worth thousands in the domain name aftermarket.

Here’s the old screenshot of www.googlereseller.com.sg:

I guess it was more likely that SPH got a lawyer letter from Google for trademark infringement. Indeed, it was a sneaky, rotten deed for a company to blatantly use another company name in the domain name and profit from it.

Google has a team of lawyers going around sending nasty letters to owners whose domains consist of word/words related to Google, Adwords, Adsense and so on.

Why It Was Not A Genuine Re-Branding Exercise?

HWZ has been using googlereseller.com.sg since May 2006 and building its brand even before SPH paid S$7.1 million to acquire Hardware Zone.

Being a search marketing company, I am sure they realize the important of protecting their website search engine visibility. Unfortunately, just 2 pages were left in Google search index.

GoogleReseller.com.sg cached page showing the pricing of Adwords campaign packages.

Also, there are existing links from other websites still pointing to www.googlereseller.com.sg. A proper re-branding exercise will need at least 6 months to switch over to the new URL and allow time for the permanent re-direction of www.google.com.sg to the new www.clicktrue.com.sg to take effect.

Google took over the domain and killed website. All the time and effort invested by HWZ team over the past years is now wasted and a loss to SPH.

So what’s your take on this fiasco?

Write your thoughts in the comment box below.