How to Use PPC Impression Share

If Google AdWords were a piece of juicy pie, your impression share would be the size of your dealership’s slice… Tracking impression share is important, since it shows exactly how much you’re showing up in local searches. If you’re not measuring how big your slice of pie is, you won’t know if it could (or should) be bigger! Watch our latest video to learn more about PPC impression share and how you can use it to boost your dealership’s performance online.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another DealerOn Wednesday Workshop. This week, we’re talking about impressions in SEM campaigns. Impressions are not achievements, so how important is impression share to your SEM campaigns?

The answer is – VERY important… but you might not know why.

Impression share is basically the comparison of opportunity and reality. Google defines it as the number of impressions you’ve received, divided by the estimated number of impressions you were able to receive. Pretty simple – but why is it important?

Think of the automotive online advertising landscape as a delicious apple pie. You and your competitors are all trying to grab the biggest slice. When you track your impression share metrics, you’re keeping tabs on the size of your slice compared to the whole.

The most important factor regarding your impression share is your ad rank and quality score. If your quality score is poor, your ads will not show – regardless of what you’re willing to spend.

Tracking your impression share is a great way to determine when budget increases are necessary. If your piece of the pie isn’t as big as you want, increasing your budget can help grab more pie. Plus, maximizing your impression share helps your campaigns generate more traffic and leads.

How do you track impression share? Here’s a couple of tips:

Sign in to your AdWords account and click the campaigns tab. Then, click the columns button above your statistics table and choose “Modify Columns” from the drop down. Click competitive metrics and then add the impression share columns you’re interested in.

Another way to view impression share data for specific ad groups and keywords is to enable the “impression share” column in the Ad Groups and Keywords tabs.

Decreasing your targets can increase your impression share, but comes with the trade off of reducing the size of the pie. The fastest and most effective way to grow your impression share is by increasing your campaign budgets and bids.

If you want a serious competitive advantage, be sure you’re chasing the largest impression share in your market.

If you have questions about impression share or SEM in general, jump down to the comments section and leave your questions there. We’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.

Thanks for stopping by to watch – we’ll see you next week with another DealerOn Wednesday workshop!

PPC Tip – Use Micro Ad Groups

Most PPC accounts are set up in a way that saves lots of time – but saving time isn’t your goal! This week’s Wednesday Workshop explains why the “every keyword in one ad group” strategy isn’t a great idea… and then explains why “micro ad groups” are the right way to set up your account. If your dealership does any PPC advertising, you don’t want to miss this video!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to the DealerOn Wednesday Workshop. Today we’re talking about paid search, also known as SEM or PPC.
And specifically we’re addressing campaign performance tips.

Since the beginning of automotive SEM campaigns, agencies and providers have employed Ad Group strategies that cram hundreds of keywords into each Ad Group, usually using dynamic keyword insertion. This is not optimal, but it is easy.

Typical automotive campaigns are set up this way to save time – it’s definitely not for optimal performance. You should avoid throwing every keyword into one ad group with a few generic ads. Sure, it saves time… but saving time isn’t your goal.

If you want to get the best results from your campaigns, use a micro ad group structure. With micro ad groups, there are only a few keywords in each ad group (both modified broad and exact match) that relate exactly to your text ad.

Space permitting, the ad should include the keywords in the headline, and the ad copy must speak to the keywords and land on a related page on your site. You should never have an ad land on your site’s home page. This will help your quality score and overall ad performance.

If you have questions about micro ad group structures or SEM in general, jump down to the comments section and leave your questions there. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks for check out this week’s video – See you next week with another DealerOn Wednesday workshop.

See Greg Gifford at Affiliate Summit West 2016 in Vegas!

Our very own Search Expert, Greg Gifford, is not only speaking, but keynote speaking at the Affiliate Summit West 2016, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at Paris Las Vegas.

Greg is a regular speaker at search, social, and automotive conferences all over the world; he’s speaking at brightonSEO in England later this month. Not only is he incredibly knowledgeable, he has an insane amount of movie trivia packed into his brain, and his presentations are hilarious and well worth your time. Check out this recent webinar he did on Local Search Tips with an impressive amount of 80’s movie references.

 

He’s also a member on the Board of Directors for the DFWSEM, an organization dedicated to promoting search engine marketing through best practices.

Affiliate Summit provides educational sessions and conferences focusing on the latest affiliate marketing issues and strives to create a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Google’s Recent Map Pack Update [VIDEO]

You’ve probably noticed the recent update to the map pack on Google’s local search results. We all had a collective freak-out when we saw that the traditional 7-pack had been replaced by the new 3-pack that doesn’t show addresses or phone numbers. Even worse, a click on a pack listing now leads to the new Local Finder page, where competitors are stacked right next to you.

Our latest Wednesday Workshop video outlines all the changes, so you’re up to speed on how the local pack works now. We also talk about getting your dealership into the pack, or skipping it altogether and focusing your efforts on dominating organic results.

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How To Do Barnacle SEO [VIDEO]

Have you ever noticed that a ton of directories and 3rd party sites show up in a lot of the automotive searches in your city? That’s one of the results of last summer’s Pigeon update. While all of your competitors are still sitting around whining about the fact that there are fewer spots on page one of Google than ever before, you can use Barnacle SEO to take advantage of the directory sites!

This week’s Wednesday Workshop video explains the concept of Barnacle SEO and then walks you through exactly how to do it. Learn how to target both types of barnacle opportunities – getting your listing on another site to rank well in searches, or getting your listing to show up well in internal searches on a site that shows up well.

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