It can be a confusing process to find a good Search firm. If anyone has ever been to an SES or SMX show, you probably find every PPC (Pay-Per-Click) vendor says the same thing. They all say they do the same thing, and they are the best.

Many advertising agencies & corporations outsource their Paid Search (PPC) Marketing. They usually will use a PPC Consultant or a large search firm. Very often there is a RFP process that involves questions and answers.

Below, I’ve put together an organized list of questions that anyone can use when gathering information regarding a potential Paid Search partner.

Conversion Tracking:
Do you have integrated tracking across all media types and all the leading search engines worldwide?
Does your platform have the capability for Transaction tracking based on:
- Using server redirects or direct traffic?
- Unlimited types of tranactions?
- Multiple variables (Order ID, zip code, etc.)
- Organic search results

Bid Management:
Can you set up rules based bidding such as:
- Optimum Keyword Ranking
- Bid Gap Management
- Cost per Acquisition (CPA) targeting
- Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) targeting
- Day Parting Rules
- Manual bidding

Reporting:
Does your platform show both reporting and tracking data for the following criteria:
- Campaigns
- Keyword Groups
- Keywords and phrases
- PPC Search Engines
- Destination URLs
- Date Range (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly)
- Latency Reports

Please attach a sample performance report.
Can we export reports as Excel or csv?

Account Management:
Can your platform handle multiple accounts?
Are there single or separate Logins, or dropdowns for each campaign?
Is there a limit on the number of keywords per account?
How many bid reviews per day? Is there a limit?
How many people will be dedicated to our account?
How is your client services team structured?

Keyword Generation Tools:
Do you have a Keyword Research/Generation tool to suggest relevant keywords and phrases for our campaign based on our input, AND through “crawling” our website?
Do you have a Keyword tool that enables us to build large keyword lists specific to our campaigns by utilizing all potential combinations of keyword phrases?

Ad Creative:
Does your client services team write ad copy?

Testing:
Is your platform capable of handling A/B split tests?
Is your platform capable of Multivariate testing?

Portfolio Mgmt vs Keyword level:
Does your platform offer the ability to choose between a portfolio based management, and keyword level bid management?

Pricing:
How is your service priced? Is it full-service client services, or just advice for do-it-yourself?
Are there multiple pricing models?
How is your technology priced? Can your platform be licensed?
What is the pricing structure for 100 campaigns that need full-service?

International Search Feature:
Does your technology support keywords and ad creative in all languages — including Asian double-byte characters?

Competitive Differentiation:
How do you differentiate your company from the rest of the industry?

Share and Enjoy:

Related posts:

1. Organizational Structure of a Search Team
2. Accurate or Not? Fathom’s Keyword Price Index
3. Keyword Overlap Strategy

Properly optimizing a website is a combination effort of both on-site and off-site optimization. The ole’ 1, 2 punch. This post is about the off-site component of SEO to achieve link popularity and link relevancy.

In the past, I’ve written about how to use a Link Optimization and the Criteria & Time Period for Link Effectiveness. Below, I reveal the “secret sauce” on how to properly structure a Link Campaign to achieve high keyword rankings for your target keyword and target url.

I’ve crafted this as powerful, and permanent Link Campaign “package”:

Custom Blog Reviews
We hand pick higher quality blogs from within our network to write reviews about your website/product/service. The blogger posts their review on their blog. As part of the review the blogger links back to your site 2-4 times (randomizing the number of links will avoid creating a pattern). All of these links are considered permanent.

Custom Article Marketing
We provide an SEO friendly, professionally written, fully optimized Article(s) with 500+ words of content. The Article is submitted for syndication to the top Article sites. Package includes a guarantee of 15 placements. The article includes 2 footer links, embedded within content. [eg: ezine, with links in footer].

Article Plus (A couple targeted blogs):
Longer articles & more textlinks.
We write a full article and embed 4 links within the 500+ words of content. This article is then hosted on the homepage of the website for a minimum of 10 days. The article then archives within the site permanently. We will also backlink boost the archived page monthly, to ensure it continues to receive full search engine visibility and continues to gain trust over time.

2nd Tier Links:
This package includes Comment Links and Social Bookmarking Links on sites that have PageRank and dofollow. 100% of these links will point to your newly created link pages to ensure quick spidering and visibility, as well as support the relevancy using the same anchor text .

- Comment Links:
Make a relevant comment on a blog or other Social Media style site and link back to your site within the comment. Get the links on pages with guaranteed Pagerank from 1-5. You’ll have full anchor text and URL control. Sites are 100% SEO friendly (without nofollow).

- Social Bookmarking Links
Hand build keyword links on Social Bookmarking Sites (web-based sites designed to let users share internet bookmarks). This is a great way to build natural looking links in high volumes at low costs.

Premium Directory Links
Relevant, SEO friendly links on Directory Sites. Get the highest PR web directories available. They provide guaranteed SEO friendly links, regardless of the number of submissions.

Pricing:
Prices varies depending on the budget, and how competitive your industry is.

Share and Enjoy:

Related posts:

1. A Bakers Dozen of Link Building
2. Link Aquisition vs. Content Creation
3. Off-Site Optimization

The couple issued their first statement since 16-year-old died on Friday.

Pastor spends a year eating, working, even voting as he thinks Jesus would.

Most of us will give up on our New Year’s resolutions, but you don’t have to.

Take a look at an Eastern Caribbean secluded paradise.

If you’re Google CPC is increasing daily or you’re looking to lower your Google CPC rate then here is 5 things you can do. The technique is a little art and science. You will need to learn how Google rank ad campaigns and with a few corrections you should see your Google CPC rate decrease. The word on the internet is that a new Google user will experience the growing pain with higher cost per click.

Analyzing Google CTR

Reducing your Google CPC requires you to examine your CTR (click-through ratio) to see how many people have actually clicked on your ad in comparison to how many times Google has shown your ad campaign (impressions). If you find that the impressions are high but click through rates is low then there is a problem and it needs to be corrected or you will continue to see rising CPC rates.

When I set up my first I had no help and no idea I would spend $250 dollars in the course of 3 days.  The funny part is I was advertising a free sign site, and this was the marketing they were recommending.  Since then I read everything I can get my hands on about Google PPC or any ppc.

Do You Have an Effective Ad Campaign?

After you check your CTR (click-through rate) and you find that the numbers are low you have to look at your ad Campaign. Make sure your title and description are relevant to your keywords. Have you included your keywords in your title and benefits section of your ad? Optimizing your ad campaign is all about the relevancy of your keywords to your ad campaign and even your website or landing page.

Is Your Ad Over Stuffed With Keywords?

Your Google CPC keyword group can make or break your reputation with Google. Some people like to jam pack as many keywords as they can find, however top experts are finding 15 to 25 targeted niche keywords are more effective and will lower your cost per click.

Learn how Google take advantage of election keyword extremely high cpc

Also read on Google Quality Score Paradox

Score Big Google CPC Right out the Gate!

Believe it or not your Google CPC campaign is given a report card sort of a rap sheet. They base your ad campaign on your past performance or your current ad or past ads. When you have inactive keywords they require you to pay a high CPC to activate them. This should immediately bring up a red flag to you and you should closely examine your keyword, ad campaign, CTR and content of you website, blog or landing page.

Googel_CPC

Getting your Google CPC is not impossible and can easily be done if you know the right steps to take. It can be very rewarding to your bank account to get it right the first time. Make one mistake and it can cost you dearly and ruin your business, or even got your Google CPC campaign suspected or deleted completely.

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If you want to lower your Google CPC and raise your campaign position click here. Sign up for receive internet advertising tips, tools and effective ways to make money online.