Google announced the rollout of Google Instant on Wednesday to a chorus of questions and concerns from various member of the industry. While most concerns focus on the impact of Google Instant on SEO, I want to take some time to discuss the impact of this change on Paid Search (PPC) programs. (more…)

While setting up a recent Paid Search (PPC) campaign, the client asked, “Why should we spend money on branded terms? We’re already in the top positions in natural search.” This is a common question, especially for site owners that have spent considerable resources in SEO. Many companies believe that if they’re number 1 in the natural search listings (through SEO efforts), their work is done. There are three reasons we’ll discuss why almost every company should include branded keywords in their PPC campaigns. (more…)

A national chain of hotels came to us asking for advice on how to improve their PPC program. When we took a look, we almost immediately discovered a serious flaw: they had poured a significant amount of money into their PPC campaign without ever stopping to seriously consider where most of their visitors were coming from. Had they been utilizing Advanced Segments, a tool that was added to Google Analytics within the last several years, they would have found this information extremely easy to obtain and could have targeted their advertising to the areas with the highest chance of success. (more…)

For years, MSN adCenter tracking has been a bane to my existence. A large portion of that has been due to the gross inaccuracy of the numbers (somewhat improved with their spring update).  And a larger portion has been due to the fact that, even when we ignore the inaccuracy, we still have to deal with the fact that a very key metric is missing. Really MSN, you want us to run an eComm campaign without being able to report revenue? (more…)

When Google Adwords recently served a Rise Interactive paid search ad for the term “michael head internet sales,” we must admit, we were a little frustrated.  The term we were bidding on was “internet advertising company.”  Since we had the bid set for the broad keyword match type, Adwords felt that “michael head internet sales” was relevant. (more…)

The best way to explain search engine marketing is with an example. Imagine that you sell cell phones and that a prospective customer is searching on a major search engine such as Google for the phrase “free cell phone”. That prospect will probably see a page like this:

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Hello Everyone,

We decided to kick off the year with a list of PPC & SEO keyword research tools that we use here at Rise Interactive.  A number of these are old hat but we feel there are a few new tools in the space that may provide you with that extra insight that you’ve been longing for.

Keyword Ideas – Ever had a hard time flushing out additional variations on keywords with high traffic? Below is a list of some tools we use to get ideas for similar keywords. (more…)