MLM Online Training Resource

How to Optimize Your Content Campaigns Using The Placement Report

Posted on 15. Aug, 2009 by admin in Online Training

This article will attempt to explain what steps are necessary in order to optimize a content campaign in Google Adwords. You can then apply these same steps to other search engines like Yahoo and MSN (Bing).

Once you content campaign has been running for about a week, you should run a Placement Report.

To run a Placement Report:

1. After logging into your account, you should see a tab that says, “Report”.  Click on this tab.

• You should see a list of report types below.  Select “Placement Report”.

• Select a date range.

• Next, you should see an option to run for every report in your account or run manually.  You want to run manually.  This will allow you to select the campaign you want to run the report for.  So, after you select to run the report manually, be sure to select the campaigns.

• There are various levels to select from.  If you only have one ad group, then select “Campaign” level.  If you have more than one ad group, then select “Ad Group” level.

• There are other options you can choose from; such as whether you want to save the report and have it run automatically for a particular day.  This is up to you.
• After making your choices, go on and run the report.

2. After your report has been generated, sort it by clicks and export it to excel.  There should be a link on the left-side of your report that will allow you to export to a .csv file.

• When it is done, be sure to give it a name and export it.  In naming the report, I would include the name of the campaign, indicate “Placement Report” and then include the date the report was generated.  This will help just in case you want to refer back to any reports.

3. Review your report.  Pay special attention to cost per conversion and identify non-performers. (NOTE: You must have conversion tracking enabled.  If you do not, then have this done immediately, because you will be wasting your money if you do not. )

4. You will notice a list of rows that contain the words “Domain” and “Error Page”.  Ignore these for the time being.  Just focus on the performance data; clicks, cost, cost per conversion, etc.

5. One of the things you will see is the length of the domain lists.  Here is a Rule Of Thumb:

• If the number of sites is less than 10, then your content campaign is targeted too narrowly.  Try using fewer negative keywords or increase your ad group’s bid price to merit appearing in more sites.

• More commonly, the list of domains will be very long, from dozens to hundreds.  Often this means your ads are appearing on inappropriate sites; ones with subject matter that bears no relation to your market.  If any of these ad groups have 20 clicks or more, you should exclude the domains that have generated clicks, but no conversions or have low CTR

6. In fact, you want to optimize those ad groups with 20 or more clicks and here is how this should be done:

• Exclude any sites with low CTR below 0.10%.  To exclude sites from your campaign, you will see below “edit campaign settings”, you will see a link that says, “No excluded sites: add:” Click on add and input the domains you want to exclude.
• To increase traffic from sites that are performing well, consider creating a new placement-targeted campaign.  You want CPC, not CPM.  The Placement Report will indicate which sites have been performing well for you in a particular ad group.  You can add additional sites to your campaign.  To do this, do the following:
  - Click on the name of the campaign that includes the ad group you want to work with.

- Click on the ad group name

- Select the tab titled Placement

- Click the link titled Add Placement

- Add you list of domains that you have received from your Placement Report and/or add
new domains to your ad group.  Use the placement tool to find and add placements.
Once you are done, Save and Continue.

- Your new placements will appear on the Placement tab.

7. You will continue to execute these same steps for all of your content campaigns and do each campaign repeatedly.  This means optimization is a continuous process.  Every week, every month, run the Placement
Report and optimize your campaigns for the life span of all of your content campaigns.

8. If you want to be even more aggressive and generate more leads for any particular content campaign, you can also setup the optimized campaigns that you just created in Google Adwords and migrate them to MSN (Bing).  Just keep in mind that the rules and process of setting up a campaign in MSN is going to be different than in Google Adwords.

• I say MSN and not Yahoo because Yahoo, during the time this article was written, does not provide tools and reports for managing content campaigns.  Of course, there are various tools that you can purchase that will allow you to manage your content campaigns in Yahoo, but this would require additional costs.  Ultimately, the choice is yours.

Understanding how to optimize in Google, Yahoo, and MSN will bring you phenomenal results in your pay-per-click advertising.

In conclusion, pay-per-click advertising requires a lot of testing, continual optimizing, and learning. Nothing stays the same in pay-per-click advertising, but if you are committed to learning and improving your skills, your experience in pay-per-click advertsing will be much more positive and can lead you to attain a lifestyle others only dream about.