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If you’re using call metrics in your Google AdWords campaigns, you should be aware that Google will begin charging you $1 when someone manually dials the number displayed with your ad. There is no charge, however, on clicks from users on mobile devices, so basically this means you’ll only incur the extra cost when someone sees your ad in a traditional Web browser and decides to call in manually.

This extra cost isn’t necessarily a negative against using call metrics in your campaigns, and there are many benefits of adding phone numbers to your ads that outweigh the potential extra $1 cost per click. Adding a phone number to your ads has been shown to increase your ad’s click-through rate by 5-30% . It’s a quick and easy way to give your business credibility online. Also, with the number of mobile searches on the rise, you’ll be want to be sure to give mobile searchers an easy way to click and call. Since these incur no additional cost, they could easily offset the cost of other calls.

But the main reason that the extra $1 charge isn’t such a large set back is that the number of calls to your forwarding number will be factored into your ad’s rank, potentially boosting your ad’s position and lowering your cost per click. With this change, of course, will also come additional reporting metrics on call statistics, including call duration, area code, etc.

So, how can you maximize the ROI on calls generated from your online ads? Just as landing pages are important to capture people who have clicked on your ads, you’ll want to make sure you give the same thought to the conversations you provide with people who are calling in. You’ll want to be best prepared to handle calls appropriately to see those calls convert, so everyone handling the calls should be well versed in what ads and/or promotions you’re currently running in AdWords.

The word from Google is that these changes to call metrics, including the added reporting functionalities, will roll out in mid-May. What do you think about the potential of call metrics to enhance your online advertising efforts? Do you see the extra charge being worth it to be able to have a conversation with your potential customers? Let us know in the comments below!

For additional reading on call tracking in Google, check out this article from Search Engine Watch: The Call for Call Tracking Is Answered.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Alas, the fourth and final installment of the Analytics test series: the regular expression portion. While the Google Analytics test might seem daunting, with a little studying, it really isn’t bad at all. Yesterday, Jessica covered event tracking.  Previously Erin covered e-commerce tracking and Steve the different types of Google Analytics cookies and how they are each used to track activity.  In this post, we’ll cover the  different functions of each regular expression character, along with examples.

Regex can be a lot to take in but when it’s broken out in simplified form, it’s not half as bad as its reputation would lead you to believe.  (I hope you’ll agree!)  Regex was a fairly small portion of the Analytics test, with maybe 3-4 questions, but is a pretty handy knowledge set to maintain, even if you aren’t worried about taking the test.

Regex can be used for several things within Google Analytics, such as:

1. Setting up goals funnels
2. Tracking equivalent pages
3. Filtering data within reports
4. Profile filters

Finally, without further adieu:

Regex Character Guide

Regex Wildcards

. is a wildcard for any single character.

• Act . matches Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, etc. but does not match Act 10
• Act .. matches Act 10, Act 11, Act, 12, etc.

Note:  If you want to use a period as an actual period, not as a wild card you’ll need to use a backslash before the period, as a qualifier.  You would want to do this if excluding an I.P. address in Analytics.   The same rules apply for question marks, which can also be used in regular expressions, as we’ll discuss later.

• U\.S\. matches U.S.
• 163\.212\.171\.123

? matches 0 or 1 of a previous item (Use / as discussed above, if using a question mark in the literal sense).

• 51? matches  5 or 51
• AB? matches A or AB

+ matches 1 or more of a previous character.

• 51+ matches 51, 511, 5111, 51111, etc.
• AB+ matches AB, ABB, ABBB, ABBBB, etc.

* matches 0 or more of previous item.

• 51* matches 5, 51, 511, 5111, 51111, etc.
• AB* matches A, AB, ABB, ABBB, ABBBB, etc.

{} quantifies the number of the previous item.

• 51{2} matches only 511 (the 2 means that there are two of the previous item, which was a 1)
• 51{1,3} matches 51, 511, 5111 but does not match 51 or 51111

Match Set

[] matches one item in a character set.

• [uU]\.[sS]\. matches u.s. and U.S.
• [1-9] matches any number between 1 and 9

^ negates the set.

• ^[uU] will not match u or U
• ^[1-9] will not match any number between 1 and 9

() allows you to group contents as an item, using | to separate grouped items.

• (U\.S\.|US| u\.s\.|us) matches U.S., US, u.s., or us

Regex Anchor String

Match a string of characters using ^ to start the series and $ to mark the end of a string

• ^US matches ‘US Holiday’ but does not match ‘Monday is a US Holiday’ because it does not start with ‘US’.
• Holiday$ matches ‘US Holiday’ but does not match ‘US Holiday Dates’ because it does not end in ‘Holiday’.
• ^US Holiday$ only matches US Holiday

Regex Shorthand:

\d matches any number just like [0-9]

\s matches any white space

\w matches any number, letter, or underscore like [A-Za-z0-9_]

Now let’s try something a little more comprehensive.

What does \d{1-5}\s\w* match?

1. 1234 Johnson
2. Johnson
3. 132344 Johnson
4. 123

If you guessed ‘a’ or ‘d’ then you are correct.  Here’s why:

\d means that there is a string of numbers, which knocks out choice b, and {1-5} means that the string of numbers can only be one to five characters long, which knocks out choice c.  These are the kinds of questions that you will need to prepare for. \s represents the space and \w represents the word ‘Johnson’, however, as we know * means there could be an infinite number of  \w, which matches any character, or it can mean that the last character may not be present, so choice ‘d’ works also.

Although it isn’t an extensive part of the test, be prepared to answer a couple questions on regex when you’re taking the Analytics test.  Much like this last question, you will need to be able to identify what a sequence of characters and numbers will match.  As I said earlier, it is helpful to have a guide so that when you are setting up profiles, filters, goals, etc. you can be sure to do it correctly, without accidentally skewing your data.

For more tips on regular expression, check out the Analytics help section.

I’d love to hear any tips, tricks, or questions!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

This is the third in our series of collaborative PPC Hero/SEO Boy series which aims to coves the most important aspects of the IQ Test and prepare you to earn a high score. Steve started us off with Cookies in Google Analytics and Erin continued with Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking.

Why should we care about event tracking?

Because. Event tracking can give you lots of power.  Experienced online marketers understand that the more data you have about what’s going on in your accounts/on your site the more decision-making power you obtain. So if you have site elements that can’t be tracked with standard Analytics goal tracking, you should consider event tracking as a means to gather data about how people are interacting with them and the value you’re receiving from them. Examples of these elements include:

• Any Flash-driven element, like a Flash website, or a Flash Movie player
• Embedded AJAX page elements
• Page gadgets
• File downloads
• Load times for data

Let’s take a moment to discuss the two basic ways that you can modify your Analytics code to measure goal metrics aside from the URL destination, time on site, and pages/visit goals that are trackable with the “standard” Analytics code. The first is the virtual pageview (_trackPageview())method. This allows you to track clicks on elements of your site that don’t actually lead to new pages loading, but isn’t as flexible as event tracking and has some downfalls like making other reporting in your Analytics account more complicated (as virtual pageviews are combined with actual pageview count stats). Generally, unless you have specific goals that require virtual pageview tracking, using the event tracking (_trackEvent()) method can get you more detailed, more-segmentable information.

(Aside: Making your flash and silverlight content Analytics-event-tracking-friendly can be somewhat more complicated than the creation of the tracking code; this isn’t our concern for the test (there were no questions about this issue in our experience) but I’m just telling you because it’s important to know.)

The event tracking method is fairly flexible in terms of accommodating the structure in which you would like to track your events. The code looks as such: _trackEvent(category, action, optional_label, optional_value) where category and action are always required, and the others are available to give you more segmentation ability. Category, Action, and Label are customizable as you’d like, and value is a numeric value you can determine for that action. Before you start event tracking, it’d behoove you to write out the eventual “ideal” structure for your tracked events to ensure that you don’t name a category “Videos” if you would have been better off naming it “Kids’ Videos” since you have 50 video types on your site.  Same for action, for example, if you consider a video being “50% Watched” differently than one “80% Watched”.

Unlike virtual pageviews, event tracking implementation won’t skew your pageview results, however, it’s helpful to understand the differences in event tracking reporting between total events (I like a video and watch it 9 times and I have 9 total events) and unique events (each event is only counted as one per visit no matter how many times it happens).

Event tracking on the Google Analytics IQ Test

If code implementation confuses you, that is pretty okay. As a marketer, you need to understand the principles of what you can DO with event tracking, but the Analytics IQ Test does not cover its implementation in extreme detail.

On the test itself, most of the event tracking questions (our team seems to each have had 3-4) focus on knowing what types of site elements you would use it for, the general requirements you must have in the code as described above, and understanding the ways in which virtual pageviews and events differ and which you should use.

I didn’t get any questions about which version of the code you need to be using (ga.js, not urchin.js) but it’s worth knowing. If you’ve experienced any additional/different event tracking question types on the Google Analytics IQ Test, let us know!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Google’s own Inside AdWords blog announced yesterday afternoon that the ever-expanding world of their Instant Preview feature has finally made it’s way to advertising. Their news release explains that the Instant Preview feature for ads works in the same way it does for organic results. A small magnifying glass now appears next to the headline of each ad that populates for a user query, allowing the user to preview the landing page before clicking the ad.

The above screenshot was taken after I queried ‘wedding shoes.’ I clicked on the magnifying glass directly to the right of the first ad that came up and Google showed me the landing page for that ad. I can easily see by the preview that there are, in fact, wedding shoes available on this website. That is the goal: give users the opportunity to preview what they are about to click on and verify that the page contents match what they are searching for, thereby hopefully increasing user satisfaction and providing more highly-qualified traffic to websites.

But, you may be wondering, doesn’t that mean people can spend your PPC money without actually getting through to your page? Well that wouldn’t be very fair now, would it? Your PPC account is not charged for the Instant Preview clicks, only the clicks directly on your ad, which take the user to your website, so not to worry. However, it is likely that you will see a drop in traffic to your websites from your ads, as users will now be able to see if you are sending them to a generic landing page or to a page without the content they are searching for. To that end, make sure you take a little time to double-check your ad landing pages to ensure they are as user-friendly and content-focused as possible!

It may take some time to see the results of this additional feature, but we want to hear from you! As you monitor your accounts in the next week or so, take a look at overall clicks and report back to us here at PPC Hero! Did you clicks go down or increase? Was there a large change or does the change seem minimal? What about the future? Could Instant Preview for ads hurt or help PPC account holders? Post your ideas below in the comments section!

For further information about this topic, check out the following links:

• The SEO Impact of Google Instant Previews-SEO Boy
• Google Instant Preview Ads Fully Launched for Search Ads-Search Engine Land

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more news updates from PPC Hero!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

This is the second installment of a collaborative series between PPC Hero and SEO Boy to help readers prepare for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) Test. This series covers the most important aspects of the IQ Test and will prepare you to earn a high score.

While the Google Analytics test might seem daunting, I am here to say it isn’t nearly as difficult as one might think, as long as you do your homework. Yesterday, Steve covered the different types of Google Analytics cookies and how they are each used to track activity.  Now that you understand how Google Analytics tracks information with a user, let’s go through how e-commerce data is passed into Google Analytics.

If your site sells any sort of products or services online, you should have e-commerce tracking in place. If not, it is time to start! E-commerce reports will allow you to track your site’s transactions, revenue, products purchased, e-commerce conversion rate, the number of times people visited your site before purchasing, etc. If you have your account synced with your Google AdWords account, you can also review revenue data by keyword to help with PPC optimizations. The e-commerce tab appears on almost every data page within Google Analytics, so you can break down revenue in just about any way imaginable.

There are three steps to e-commerce tracking:

Step 1: Enable e-commerce reporting in your website profile.

To do this, go to the edit profile information page and then choose edit in the Main Website Profile Information section. From there, change the “E-commerce Website” option to read “Yes”

Step 2: Add the Google Analytics tracking code to the receipt page.

Make sure the same Analytics code that is on the rest of the site is added onto the receipt page. You will need to make a few modifications to the code, which is covered in Step 3.

Step 3: Add tracking into the Google Analytics code, in order to correctly track each transaction.

For this, you will first use the _addTrans() method which signifies a transaction has occurred. From there you will also have to add arguments, that provide details such as order ID, total order amount, and the amount of tax charged.  Your code will need to dynamically retrieve the values from your merchant software in order to populate the correct information. Below are the specific arguments to fill in, the ones with an * are required.

Order ID*, Affiliation, Total*, Tax, Shipping, City, State, Country

Let’s look at an example from the Google Analytics learning center:

The other piece shown above, is the _addItem method, which helps pass along the details on each item a visitor purchases. If they purchase more than one item, this will be called multiple times. Again, there are arguments that need to be added in order to pass along the details. The arguments with an * are required. Note that the Order ID should be the same as in _addTrans.

Order ID*, SKU/Code*, Product Name, Category, Price*, Quantity

Finally, at the end you will need to call _trackTrans() in order to send all of the information to Google Analytics. This is highlighted in yellow above.

For most e-commerce sites, the actual checkout process takes place on a separate domain or subdomain. In this case, you need to also add code based on the steps for tracking activity across domains and subdomains. I won’t go into that portion here, but you can watch the step-by-step video if this applies to you.

Now that you understand how to do the e-commerce tracking, how does this apply to the Google Analytics IQ exam?

While this wasn’t an expansive area of the exam, there were certainly questions that asked you to review the code provided and determine if it was correct or not based on what the question is looking to track. It is important to understand all of the different elements or arguments that are tracked and which arguments go with each of the call methods.

It is also important to remember, that the standard Google Analytics tracking code automatically knows when an https protocol is being used, so there is nothing for you to modify as your site moves between http and https.

To learn more about e-commerce tracking, visit to Google Analytics IQ Lessons to get more detailed step-by-step instructions.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

As Co-founder/Director of MeasuredSEM and former Director of Marketing with Wordstream, Tom Demers (@TomDemers) is one of those PPC experts that many PPC marketers want to talk to.  That’s why we chose him to participate in our first-ever live #Heroview – real-time discussions with industry experts via Twitter. There are many SEM experts we at Hanapin Marketing want to meet and learn more about, so we thought you, our readers, would want to hear their advice too! Our Heroviews will be available on Twitter (@PPCHero) and here on our blogs every month. Our interview with Tom Demers, below, is about PPC ad strategy, ad copy, and ad metrics. It’s amazing how much insight Tom was able to cram into 140 characters!

Thank you to everyone who participated on Twitter this past week. Stay tuned for more Heroviews coming your way soon!

April 22, 2011

PPC Hero: Hello everyone and welcome to our first live interview! Today, we’re featuring Tom Demers to see what his take is on ad copy/testing.

Tom: Thanks for having me guys.

PPC Hero: So without further ado, lets get started! How are you today Tom?

Tom: Great, thanks guys! Very sunny here in Boston

PPC Hero: To get started, tell me a little about yourself. How long have you been working with PPC?

Tom: I’ve been working in search for over five years – in-house, agency side, independent consulting and I’m currently doing PPC & SEO consulting full time at MeasuredSEM.com.

PPC Hero: Impressive. Given the theme of our interview today, how would you rate your experience writing ad copy and testing?

Tom: Pretty extensive, particularly since I’ve started doing some work with the folks BoostCTR- an ad writing network. They write ads for a variety of clients and have a lot of different copywriters, so have a lot of ad tests lately.

PPC Hero: So what is your typical thought process when going about testing different ads?

Tom: I try to think about the audience, and then look at what the data is saying – do I need more conversions, more clicks, or?

PPC Hero: How many variations of an ad do you prefer to have running at any given time?

Tom: Depends on the volume of the ad group – ideally 4-5, but for lower volume groups I run two to get to stat significance faster.

PPC Hero: How should the ad copy for branding campaigns differ from ad copy that’s meant to bring in conversions?

Tom: First, you know: mention the brand , and also be more disruptive. You want to be remembered.

PPC Hero: What are the most important metrics YOU take into consideration when evaluating ad copy?

Tom: For me it’s: ROI first, conversion volume and costs second, CTR third.

PPC Hero: So what are some red flags that an ad is doing poorly? Perhaps something not as obvious as poor CTR, etc.

Tom: Consistently low quality scores within a tight ad group are a bad sign, and ads that perform worse than their peers. This is a great peer calculation worksheet: http://www.chadsummerhill.com/calculate-peer-comparisons-ppc-data-analysis/.

PPC Hero: Should your ad copy strategy differ between Google, Bing and other third tier engines?

Tom: My approach is typically similar to begin with, but then you’re reacting to different data, so your iterations should be unique.

PPC Hero: How should your ad copy strategy differ between the search network and the display network?

Tom: Completely! Display network ad copy should be disruptive & seductive because of the different level of intent. On the other hand, Search network copy should be relevant & satisfying.

PPC Hero: What is your ad copy advice for PPC accounts with low traffic, in terms of testing ads and writing content?

Tom: Test fewer ads & use tested approaches. If you have a high traffic part of your account, try to transfer successful lessons from there into lower volume portions of your account.

PPC Hero: From your experience, what are the biggest mistakes PPC ad-writers tend to make?

Tom: Ignoring the search query/targeting options and leaving off calls to action: be relevant and tell people what to do next!

PPC Hero: Are there any particular types of ad copy experiments more people should be trying?

Tom: I really like things like symbols (http://bit.ly/fXNupg). You can also try a JARRING, challenging headline as a test too.

PPC Hero: Interesting.. Recently you’ve been working with ad text crowdsourcing. What is the most surprising thing you’ve found so far?

Tom: The most surprising thing is the consistency with which small tweaks have double to triple digit impacts on CTR & Conversions. There are lots of good examples here: http://bit.ly/gswdcU.

PPC Hero: Something to look into. Well, that wraps up this month’s #heroview. Are there any questions the audience might have for Tom?

• @JARooney8423: For display network ad strategy, do you mean surprising/distracting disruptive, or inciting disruptive? Can you go too far?

• Tom: Yeah depends on the objective – for direct response & attention I like disruptive but depends on the client too.

• @JARooney8423: Interesting! Do you find that you don’t need a call to action if your content is really eye-catching all by itself?

• Tom: I think a CTA never hurts but particularly on Facebook I think a lot of times the image does the work.

• @SEM_PPC_MattV: Where do you see the PPC industry going? (I’m being intentionally un-specific here).

• Tom: More display/content, more creative-based (focus on ads and landing pages) & dramatically better tracking.

Tom: Thanks guys! This was fun – cool format and great questions!

PPC Hero: Thanks again for your time, Tom. Some very good insights!

Tom: Anytime! Stay dry!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

This is the first installment of a collaborative series between PPC Hero and SEO Boy to help readers prepare for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) Test. This series covers the most important aspects of the IQ Test and will prepare you to earn a high score. Our writers in this series have all scored at least 90% on the test and will provide their personal insights for success.

Cookie Monster has said on numerous occasions that C is for cookie and that’s good enough for him. But as Internet marketers, we know that cookies are so much more than that! As a matter of fact, they are one of the most important concepts covered in the Google Analytics IQ Test and you have to understand them if you want to pass the test. Fortunately, cookies are also one of the easiest concepts in the test to learn about and understand.

In order to pass the Google Analytics IQ Test, you need to score at least an 80%. There are a total of 70 questions on the exam, so you need to correctly answer at least 56 questions. Based on what I’ve personally observed, you can expect that about 15% of any given exam will pertain to cookies, so it’s worth spending some extra time studying them. I’ve organized the rest of this post into two sections: what you need to know about cookies and what you can expect on the exam.

What You Need To Know About Cookies

Google Analytics generates data about users who visit your site through pieces of text exchanged between browsers and servers called cookies. They are established when someone enters your site and analytics data is generated when they click off of your site.  Google Analytics cookies are first-party cookies, which means that they are established by your website. This allows the data generated by cookies to only be viewable by the website owner.

There are four cookies that Google Analytics establishes, _utma, _utmb, _utmc, and _utmz. (If you establish custom variables to define additional segments of data, you will use the custom variable cookie, _utmv as well) Let’s look at these cookies individually. Keep in mind that the most important things to remember for the test are the names of the cookies, how long they last, and what triggers their expiration.

_utma: This cookie identifies unique visitors by assigning them a unique ID upon their first visit to your site. It will last 2 years so long as the user does not delete it. At the 2-year mark, it will expire.

_utmb: This cookie generates data about a visitor’s session. It establishes or updates a session every time a page of a site is visited. If it is not updated, it expires by default after 30 minutes.

_utmc: This cookie works hand in hand with _utmb. It expires only when a user quits a browser.

_utmz: This cookie determines what brought a user to your site. This cookie tracks things like PPC ads, organic search, and referring links.  It also tracks page navigation so that you can see how visitors move through your site. This cookie expires after 6 months unless it is updated. Updates occur when a page view initiates.

Each cookie contains unique code. For example, the _utma cookie looks like this:

_utma= 17334963. 432099211. 1115376676. 1115376676. 1115376676. 1

The first number set is the domain hash and is followed by the random unique ID, the time of the initial visit, the beginning of the previous session, the beginning of the current session, and the session counter.  It’s important to note the time of the initial visit can be the same as the beginning of the previous session and/or the beginning of the current session if the visitor is there for the first time or they deleted the _utma cookie in the past.  These times are set in UNIX, which is seconds since January 1, 1970.

The _utmz cookie is organized slightly differently and allows you to generate a wonderful code to track your PPC activity. It begins with the domain has, but is followed by a timestamp instead of the code contained in the _utma cookie. It also contains a session number, a campaign number, and source values for things like PPC tracking (which you use in a PPC destination URL). It will look something like this:

_utmz= 17334963. 1115376676. 2. 3.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(campaign)|utmcmd=ppc|utmctr=keyword

If you have additional questions about cookies, feel free to comment on this post or visit Google’s page on cookies in Analytics.

What to Expect on the Exam

Once you understand the ins and outs of cookies, you’re technically ready for questions dealing with them on the IQ test. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand what kinds of questions may be asked about particular topics. Every IQ test question I’ve ever seen about cookies has been a multiple-choice question dealing with one of four things; the names of the cookies, when they expire, what they track, and how they are organized.

Names of Cookies:

You can expect a question or two about the names of the cookies. A common one I’ve seen is, “What are the four kinds of cookies used by Google Analytics?” The answers are, of course, _utma, _utmb, _utmc, and _utmz, but occasionally you’ll see answers like _utmd and _utme.

Expiration:

In my experience, common questions about the expiration of cookies have dealt with multiple cookies at once. For instance, a question you might see asks which will not expire if there is a new page view while they are active? The answer to this is _utmb and _utmz.

What Cookies Track:

The most common cookie questions address what each cookie tracks. For example one question might ask “The _utma cookie tracks what aspect of a visitor’s activity?” Answers could include what brings a user to a particular page on your site and when a user quits their browser, but the correct answer is that it assigns visitors a unique ID.

How Cookies are Organized:

I’ve only ever seen questions about the different components of the _utma cookie, but I recommend reviewing the slides on the Conversion University site to understand each component of each cookie. I’d also suggest having this page open when you take the exam.

In the next few days, some of my colleagues will discuss other key aspects of preparing for the Analytics exam. Stay tuned to PPC Hero or SEO Boy for these helpful tips and as with any of the concepts we discuss on our blogs, leave us comments if you have any questions. Good luck!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

PPC Hero is really trying to get into the Easter spirit! But…brown just isn’t his best color. And it looks like SEO Boy agrees – PPC Hero should stick to his usual costume! Happy Easter from all of us at PPC Hero and SEO Boy!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Good news! Managing your geo-targeted campaigns in Google just got a lot easier!. Remember the days of concatenating geo-modifiers to long lists of keywords to nab searchers not physically located in your target market? Well, as of this week AdWords will now let you target people geographically in three ways: physical location, search intent or a combination of both, which means your days of long concatenated lists are over (or at least as far as geo-targeting is concerned).

How, you ask? Targeting your selected locations by search intent means the locations selected in your campaign settings will be automatically applied to search queries. For example, your ads would show for anyone who is searching “hotels in Chicago” regardless of their physical location. This alleviates you from having to plug in keywords for all relevant location names. Conversely, you can also exclude traffic by search intent, which could be incredibly useful in large metropolitan areas where services really are borough specific.

Implementing this new method of geo-targeting for your campaigns is easy.  If you’re in Google AdWords, click into one of your campaigns, and then choose the “Settings” Tab. Under “Locations and Languages” click “Advanced location options.”

Next to “Targeting method” you can choose how you want to filter searchers geographically (location, search intent, or both). From there, you’ll just select your locations as you would have previously.

Not only does this change save you time, but it also makes your targeting effort more exact. You won’t have to try to come up with all the different phrase variations people might use in their searches for location-based services to target them. Plus, without having to manually create lists of keywords for this type of targeting, your keyword lists will be easier to manage and track since you’ll only be dealing with your core terms.

All in all, this is a great update that will allow you to more easily target people nationally searching for services within your region. And I’m sure you’ll be able to find something worthwhile to do with all the time you were spending on geo-modified keywords. Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

We can always count on PPC Hero to help! Today he’s supporting the Earth, and so should we! You don’t have to be a superhero to help save the planet. Get out there and plant a tree, or pick up trash in your neighborhood, commit to driving your car less and taking public transportation instead, or join in on a community Earth Day activity. Let’s join PPC Hero in being good stewards of our Earth and its resources! (Check out what SEO Boy’s doing to help!).

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.