In the quest to create a truly epic pay per click campaign, our intrepid search marketer often runs the gamut of keywords, from the obvious to the creative to the downright silly.

But no matter how stupid “paper click” might sound as a keyword, there’s at least one person out there who’s going to search that exact phrase, right?

Right?

Oftentimes, depending on how enthusiastic the search marketer might be, an account can accumulate hundreds of keywords that never get any impressions at all, leaving one to wonder: is it really worth it, keeping all these zero impression keywords?

Maybe.

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to cull any non-performing keywords, especially since a large number of them make it more difficult to manage your account. For the most part, they’re really not adding anything of value, since their click through rate is technically at zero percent.

On the other hand, a CTR of zero percent doesn’t necessarily lower your Quality Score, at least according to our Google sources. While CTR plays a major role in determining a keyword’s Quality Score, it’s not the only factor, not by a long shot. The historical performance of the keyword across Google’s entire system, the past performance of your display URL, the overall performance of your account—all of these go into the equation that churns out your Quality Score.

So while it’s safe to assume that most zero impression keywords are clogging up your account, it’s the Quality Score that ultimately decides whether a keyword is worth keeping or not. If the Quality Score is less than five, or otherwise significantly lower than the rest, your best course of action is to delete the keyword.

And if the Quality Score is good? It definitely doesn’t hurt to let it hang around a little while longer. A high quality keyword is better than nothing, right?

Right.

On December 22, 2009, Engine Ready’s Brian Lewis and SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin arranged for a holiday networking party for the local San Diego SEO community. About 35 internet marketers showed up at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in San Diego to join in some great networking, beer sampling and appetizer munching.

Rumor was that there were even isolated pockets of SEO related discussions going on … imagine that …

1. Open the Adwords Editor and download the newest version of your account

2. Export desired campaigns, if not all, to as .csv file

3. Open the exported csv file in Excel

4. Remove all negative keywords(without sorting)(

• Select All(Ctrl + A)
• Turn on the “Filter”

• Filter the “Keyword Type” column to only include negative keywords

• Once only the Negative Keywords are showing select all rows(excluding row 1) and delete.
• Clear the filter

5. Save file as UNICODE TEXT and click YES on the warning screen that pops up after clicking save

6. Close the file in excel and DO NOT save changes

7. Login to your Yahoo Search Account

8. Click the Campaigns Tab

9. Click on the “Import” link

10. Click on “Convert Third Party Campaigns”

11. Hit the browse button

12. Find the unicode txt file you saved and Click once to edit the file name.  Add .cvs to the end(VERY IMPORTANT).

13. Select the file and click “Open” to add the file into the converting box

14.  Once you receive the confirmation screen, click on return to import history

15.  Open the converted file and look at the error columns.  If there are no errors you are done, if you have errors see below.

POSSIBLE ERRORS

Error Message: The Short Description Is Too Long. Please Enter A Valid Short Description. This means that your 70 character ad in Google turned into a 71 character Ad in Yahoo, because Yahoo forces a period at the end of every ad. Play with your ad and get it to fit within the 70 character limit with a period. Yes, exclamation and questions marks are fine too.

Error Message: The Keyword ________ Was Not Added Because It Is Covered By An Existing Keyword In Your Ad Group.

This means that your keywords is already somewhere in the account, and Yahoo won’t allow duplicates. If you really want it in there twice, call your rep and ask to have your account switched to an umbrella account, with a new account opened as a child account (there will probably be small fee involved). Redo the campaign import with the new account instead of the original account. (Remember you’ll need to load conversion tracking for the new account)

Error Message: Cannot Determine Which Campaign/Ad Group Is The Parent

I really hate this one. It means that you probably tried sorting the columns when working on a project and didn’t put it back precisely the way it was. Unless you’re working with only one or two accounts, it’s usually fastest just to start over.

After you correct these errors you need to re-download the Yahoo template and paste ONLY the corrected items. Then…

• In Excel, Click On “Save As” And Save The Template File As A .Csv File With A Different Name Than The Imported Campaign (Even If You Haven’T Saved The Imported Campaign)
• Again, Click Yes On The Warning Window That Says Formatting May Not Be Compatible With Unicode Text
• Close The File Without Saving Changes
• In The Yahoo Interface Click On The Browse Buttons On The Import Campaigns Tab
• Hit The Browse Button And Find The File To Upload
• Click Once And Add .csv To The End Of The File Name
• Give It Any Import Name (Can Be Identical To Your Conversion File Name) And Click Upload
• Once You Receive The Confirmation Screen, Click On Return To Import History
• You Will See The Status Be Labeled As “In Progress” For A While. Refresh Every 10-15 Seconds Until Completed

It’s possible that you get an additional error file, but it should be smaller than the original. Keep repeating the above steps until all errors are gone and you’ll be done! Congratulations!

Keep in mind some important issues:

• Bulk uploads are limited to 10mb/day/account.
• A day is defined by 24 hours, not a business or working day.
• If you are making account updates instead of 3rd party conversions, DO NOT try to upload anything that you don’t intend changing. Attempts can kick back error messages that will make things tedious.

An interesting study has been recently released that shows the growth in mainstream acceptance and use of social media as a tool for shoppers.

According to a comScore survey, 28% of respondents indicated that social media has influenced their purchases. Of those influenced, most had read consumer reviews and expert product reviews. Interestingly, almost 1 out of 10 of those people mentioned that they were influenced by postings on Twitter, from either a company’s Tweet or friend’s tweet.

A similar study was performed by a search marketing agency in 2007, and at that time, Twitter was not even on the radar as a tool for holiday shoppers.

So, it’s pretty obvious that retailers will need to increase their attention to their social media strategies including the 3 primary movers: product reviews, Facebook, and Twitter. For those who have yet to jump in, here are some tips:

1. Identify your social media goals (customer service, branding/awareness, marketing, product update communication), and the metrics by how you’ll evaluate campaign success.
2. Identify the “players” in your industry, and begin to follow their Tweets. Get a firm understanding of the conversations taking place about you and your competitor’s products. It’s important to do a thorough job of listening before jumping in.
3. Setup up auto alerts in Twitter with your company name, name of your products, and those of your competitors, so you can quickly stay on top of the incredibly dynamic nature of conversations relevant to your products.
4. To maintain and grow your follow list without alienating your readers, be sure to provide a ratio of tweets of at least 4 to 1 of “value or information messaging” versus “marketing messaging”.
5. Whenever possible, provide links to the source of your information messaging.

There is a fantastic formula in Excel which I find myself using quite often when creating ads for Geo-Targeted campaigns.  Its called: Substitute

SUBSTITUTE(text,old_text,new_text)

To demonstrate how it works, here is an example.  Keep in mind that your campaign structure will most likely be different than how it is outlined below.  You will need to take this strategy and contour it to fit your needs.  The concept is what is most important here.

*Columns F & G would contain the Display & Destination URL

To instantly create unique ads specific to the State and City follow these instructions:

1. Write the creative and use “XXXX” to signify the State and “YYYY” to signify the city.
2. Select Cells C1 through E10 >> CTRL + D
   1. This copies the creative down for each adgroup.
3. In Cell H1 write the following formula Result: “New York Cleaning Srvc.”
   1. =Substitute(C1,”XXXX”,A1)
   2. Result: “New York Cleaning Srvc.”
4. In Cell I1 write the following formula
   1. =D1
   2. Result: “Home, Office, or Vehicle.”
5. In Cell J1 write the following formula
   1. =Substitute(E1,”YYYY”,B1)
   2. Result: “Servicing the Manhattan area.”
6. Select Cells H1 through J10 >> CTRL + D
   1. This copies the formulas down for each adgroup.
7. Select Columns H,I,J >> Right Click >> Copy
8. Select Column C >> Right Click >> Paste Special >> Paste Values >> OK
   1. This converts the formulas you wrote to text.

Here is the result:

Positives: It may be hard to see the value in using this method to create ads for 10 adgroups, but when you have campaigns which work on Towns within Cities within States, you can have hundreds of Adgroups.  At that point you will see the value in creating ads in this method as this only takes a few minutes to complete.

Negatives: Once you create ads for all of your adgroups, you will find that you have exceeded the character limits in a few locations.  These will need to be manually adjusted to make them fit.  Try removing a period: “area.” To “area”, abbreviating a word: “North” to “N”, or rewrite the entire line of text.