A Wizard for Paid Search (PPC) Optimization

Posted by Akin Arikan on December 02, 2009

This wizard is for any marketer looking to get more results from their search engine pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns (and who isn’t?).

It walks the analyst through a series of steps for increasing results, e.g. by eliminating wasted spending, identifying missed opportunities, improving the persuasion process, or optimizing budget allocation.

Click here to start the wizard Click here for a bird’s eye view summary flow chart

The wizard is the second example of an expert system that aims to help web analysts with their complex work. Just at the beginning of this month I had released the first wizard, namely for troubleshooting a drop in conversions on a website.

Couple comments and observations:

• Just like a clinical decision support system isn’t meant to replace doctors, this wizard has no way of replacing the need for experienced web analysts, search marketers, or helpful consultants.
  • Doing the optimization still requires significant time and attention.
  • The wizard is just like a good adviser that has helpful hints but won’t do any of the work for you.
• While releasing the troubleshooting wizard I had been wondering whether the idea of an expert system would lend itself to problems that aren’t “troubleshooting” in nature but more of general “optimization” nature.
  • It turns out the idea makes total sense for optimization as well.
  • But you can easily see a big difference if you compare the bird’s eye view of the PPC wizard vs. troubleshooting wizard. Namely, the latter is a decision tree whereas this new one is more an exploration of various optimization areas.
• I still highly recommend the use of automated paid search management solutions such as SearchForce or Marin software. But if you review the wizard you will see that many areas for optimizing paid search involve tasks that cannot be automated.

I am not an SEM myself. So, this wizard will only become truly exciting with the help of user comments that can be added to any step of the wizard.

Look forward to hearing what people think and hope that this proves helpful.

Tags: Bid Management, PPC, SEM