AdWords Account Management

August 24, 2016August 19, 2016

The Real Value of a Google Partner for AdWords

Google Partner Badge — McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

As a Google Partner specializing in AdWords, I want to share several key benefits with readers as to why working with a Google Partner in AdWords is important.

1. Google Tests Us Yearly
Each year I have to recertify with Google to keep my Partner status. I take the AdWords Fundamental Exam every year and every other year I take the Advanced Search Exam. These are not “gimme” tests. I study over 30 hours for each professional certification examination.

These exams are hard, they are comprehensive, and studying the materials is key to staying up-to-date on AdWords features and their use. I personally feel that I benefit tremendously from these intensive refreshers and so do my clients. This study puts me at the top of my game and has rewarded me with top 5% status of Google Partners.

2. Google Evaluates Our Account Management Practices
Once you and your firm are Google Partners, Google monitors activity in your MCC (My Client Center) account. It reviews how frequently you are in client accounts, the benefit of the changes you make to account performance, and the features you are using for each account.

It gives a customer service rating of your management and performance. I am ranked by Google as being in the top 5% of all Google Partners.

3. Google Evaluates What We Do for Clients and How We Market Our Services
As part of initially establishing my firm as a Google Partner, Google had a third party review all my reports to clients, my marketing materials, how I marketed Google Products to clients. Google means business when they share their name with firm and allow Partner Status. We are held to a higher standard than others who sell similar services.

If you want peace of mind that your AdWords account manager is skilled to provide quality services, Google has done the vetting for you before awarding Google Partner status.

I invite you to visit our AdWords services page to review pricing, our program, and our client ratings. We serve clients in Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota and all the way to California. Experience for yourself the difference having a Google Partner on your side can make in your AdWords account management. Call us today!

August 8, 2016August 4, 2016

Are You AdWords Adverse?

I Don't Want to Do AdWords! — I Don’t Want to Do AdWords!

I was chatting with a long time blog writing client last week and he told me that his SEO efforts were not paying off. He wanted more leads but as he stated that he was “AdWords adverse”.

With the advent of mobile being a huge business disrupter this year and significant changes made providing highly personalized search results, it is time to move from AdWords adverse to AdWords advocate.

Google is making it harder for business owners to consistently garner organic placement and especially when it is nearly impossible to place on a wide variety of keywords and build organic traffic in a very competitive landscape.

That being said for the AdWords adverse of my readers, here’s what I recommend to leverage the power of Google without feeling like they are stealing your hard earned cash.

Get into Remarketing
You can generate great leads with remarketing and people only need to visit your website to set the cookie. They do not need to have clicked your ad to get on your cookie list. Targeting the display network, remarketing is fondly called by others “stalker ads”. I find them low cost and valuable to every single business to have.

Get into Dynamic Search Ads
Again harnessing the power of Google at relatively low cost dynamic search ads allow you to advertise on Google without creating a keyword list. You can even set up settings to only target pages where the word services are contained or in the meta title. Dynamic search ads are a great way to identify areas of marketing opportunity and are relatively low cost. These ads show in the search network. Google will create a title for the ad text dynamically reflecting the users search query and will direct the user to the exact page on your site that features that same content.

AdWords has lots of other great ad options, but for those that are AdWords adverse, these ad formats are excellent tools that will rebuild your trust in AdWords.

There is never any time better than now to try out these two options. Get with us at McCord Web Services to find out how easy we can make it for you.

July 18, 2016July 16, 2016

Solving Escalating AdWords Click Costs

Falling money, hundred dollar bills — Not Made Out of Money? Tips Lower Click Costs on AdWords.

In the last 30 days, I have seen an escalation of click costs in AdWords across the board. Here’s how you can combat that trend and get lower cost clicks.

Move to Maximum Click Bidding
If you have been using manual bidding with an eCPC component, now may be the time to try moving to Maximum Cost bidding. Although I love the option to bid to the first page of search results using manual bidding, I am finding that I am not getting more conversions, just more expensive conversions.

Pause All Broad Match Keywords
Make sure you have taken a careful look at the queries that are triggering your AdWords ads. You may be shocked at some of the search queries that are triggering ads for expensive broad match keywords. You have two options, try to stem the outpouring of cash through negative keywords or start to move our of broad match keywords. I do not mean move out of broad match modifier keywords, but rather true broad match terms.

These two simple actions will bring your cost per click costs under control rapidly.

Need other savvy advice or AdWords account management? Check out our programs and pricing.

June 29, 2016June 24, 2016

How to “Do” AdWords on a Low Budget

Got less than $500 a month to spend on AdWords clicks?

Want to promote your business on AdWords but don’t want to pay an account manager?

Don’t want to use AdWords Express as it has not worked for you?

You can still use the professional grade AdWords program even with a low ad spend budget.

• Once you set up your AdWords account, go to the Shared Library in the left navigation flyout and set up your first audience. Grab the code and install it on all pages of your website. When your lists gets up to 100 cookie sets you can show ads. Then set up a campaign and ad group in your account to target remarketing in the Display network. People do not even need to have clicked an AdWords ad to see your remarketing ads as they surf around the web.

• Set up Dynamic Search Ads. This is another low cost great way to get coverage for your services without setting up keyword lists. Just set up a Dynamic Search Ad campaign, tell Google AdWords your domain name, and set up a dynamic search ad. Google does all the work. It knows what your pages are and services from indexing your website for Google.com organic searches. AdWords will then use this power to serve ads based on what you offer and have on your website, dynamically creating an ad title and linking the ad and person who clicks your ad to the exact right page on your website.

• Consider showing your ads only in the Display Network. For pennies a click you can get wide exposure on quality websites. Just take a little bit of time to opt out of mobile games and mobile apps or you will bleed cash into mobile and not see any tablet or desktop activity.

There are lots of other great ways you can get exposure and keep your AdWords budget low. Consider call only campaigns, scheduling your ads only in the evening when others have run out of budget, running ads only at certain times during the day, and limiting your geographic area.

If you need professional, experienced AdWords account management, check out our service offerings at www.McCordWeb.com.