aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Welcome do Day 3 of aimClear’s coverage of #SMX East! Retargeting a.k.a. remarketing, a relatively new (and seemingly popular) online advertising technique, requires marketers to get inside the minds of users to define search intent, follow said users around across various websites, and serve tightly focused search & display ads that remind them, oh-so-subtly, that you’re still there, waiting, and ready to turn you into a conversion.

In other words, retargeting requires you to be a bit of a cyber-starlking geek-creep. Right? *Shrug* Maybe so. But the spoils of retargeting, namely a more close-knit relationship with your customer/potential customer, are pretty sweet, and if you do it well, you can side-step that creep-factor altogether!

Moderator Pamela Parker, Q&A moderator Marty Weintraub, and speakers Dax Hamman, William Leake, Bibi Mukherjee, & Alan Osetek took the stage on the final morning of #SMX East 2011 to share insight on this new breed of advertising, as well as tips, tactics and top-notch best practices for creating campaigns that get real results. Many of them encouraged attendees to embrace our inner-stalker and to have fun doing it.

aimClear live-tweeted this session via @beebow. Read on for the full effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Day 2 of aimClear’s #SMX East 2011 coverage! The heavyweight battle between SEO and PPC has long graced the stage at mainstream online marketing conferences. Organic optimization in the red corner, paid search in the blue corner – powerful opponents seemingly fighting for a greater stake of your company budget.

Despite the provocatively titled session, suggesting a gloves-off bloody-nosed to-the-victor-go-all-my-marketing-dollars type scenario, attendees often walked away with a deeper understanding of and respect for the powerful combined forces of PPC and SEO. Yes, speakers would make their case for one or the other, but in the end everyone would agree that it just doesn’t make good sense to have one without the other, and that the most companies integrate a healthy blend of both PPC and SEO to ensure sustainable success online.

It’s often all sunshine and pussy cats after the end of these sessions… but that harmony doesn’t always translate back in the office. Allowing intra-office competition between PPC and SEO teams is a surefire way to shoot your business in the foot, miss opporutnities, and make life shi more difficult.

Fortunately for marketers at #SMX East 2011, moderator Brad Geddes, Founder, Certified Knowledge, Q&A moderator Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance, and speakers Tim Mayer, Chief Strategy Officer, Trada, David Roth, Sr. Director, Search Marketing, Yahoo and… Brad Geddes again, were ready to set aside the debate and share profound tips for getting SEOs and PPCers to not only coexist peacefully, but learn from one another.

aimClear live-tweeted this lively Day 2 session via @beebow. Read on for the full effect. Read the rest of this entry »



In late 2009 we published a blog post, “Is Your PPC Expert Asleep at the Switch? 6 Minute Self-Audit.” The post generated a bunch of happy-buzz as laypeople (non-PPC professionals) finally had the means to grab a peek to see if their current PPC agency of record or in-house team might be comprised of smelly carpetbaggers. Though the AdWords PPC UI has changed some, the 2009 suggestions are still applicable. Today we’ll cover how to instantly finger absolute waste using 2011 preset tools.

That said, things have changed a lot in AdWords and there are hot new screening filters built right into the UI. What follows is a quick test that can easily indicate your PPC firm is fat, dumb, lazy and/or all of the above. Best of all, it takes less than two minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SESSF 2011! The ever elusive PPC Quality Score, often regarded as enigmatic a mystery right up there with the ancient sphinx, has attracted, baffled, bewildered, and haunted many a marketer since the dawn of paid search. Day 3 of Search Engine Strategies, San Fran edition brought about the Ads in a Quality Score World session, where moderator Matt Van Wagner led panelists Fred Vallaeys from Google, Paul Corkery from Microsoft, and Craig Danuloff, Founder of Click Equations and author of the bookQuality Score in High Resolution, who dropped some serious Quality Score knowledge. If SES sessions had a Quality Score, this one would certainly be a 10. And I’m thinking of ways to weight those variables Read on for the full recap. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have heard, LinkedIn has updated its previously anemic DIY advertising platform to include targeting specific job titles and companies. LinkedIn PPC is now useful for a range of paid b2b direct-response and branding tactics. We’ve been getting our hands dirty to gratifying success.

Even aside from the flaky UI that (poof) vaporizes half-hours of work from time to time and high CPCs, I just have to say, “Here we go again…” Back in the day it was Overture PPC’s inconsistent editorial process that stunk up the room, making search marketers’ lives miserable.  Then the Paid Stumble(Upon) social media advertising fire drill confused many of us with editorial decisions that stupefied. Facebook’s ad screening process is a bit convoluted, if not outright queer and only predictable in  its unpredictability.  Now we’re finding that LinkedIn Ads PPC ads editorial process is hardly ready for prime time. This is a story of ads approved, run, rejected, and then approved unchanged again. Read the rest of this entry »