How to Login to Bing Ads Using a Microsoft Account

For everyone who uses Bing Ads: 

 Just an update on Bing Ads login and what you need to do:

Bing Ads is changing how you log into their interface.  They're now requiring you to sign up for a Microsoft account to login.  Its kind of like how Google requires everyone to have a Google account to use Adwords.  If you already have a Microsoft account you use to login to your Bing Ads account (not a personal Microsoft account), great.  If not, you'll need to create one.  This is to replace the actual login for your Bing Ads account. 

To do this, you go to this page:  https://secure.bingads.microsoft.com/?skipMigrationFilter=true

Sign in using your Bing Ads username and password.  It will then send you to a page where you will have the option to use an existing Microsoft Account or create a new one.  

Important:  If you already have a Microsoft or Live account that you want to use to logging into Bing Ads, use this if you like.  Don't double sign up using the live account you already use and create another Microsoft Account using your old Live account.

After signing up/in, get the email verification link and then login.  You should be all set and now be able to login to Bing Ads using the Microsoft Account you created.  

After you do this, go ahead and login and see if you can get access to the Bing Ads account and your campaigns.  If not, please let your Bing ads admin know what your Microsoft Account login email is and they can add you as a user if needed.  

Here is the page on this:  http://goo.gl/4GfKY

Big Changes from Google That Make PPC a Must

Google is 15 years old today, Sept 27th, 2013.  With the anniversary, they're announced some big changes that really make doing Paid Search crucial for you:

The 3 bullet points below are really important in this regard:

•     Google has made a pretty big update to their search algorithm.  Article here.
•     Super Important news:  Google is now no longer showing keyword data for any organic search keywords.  This is a pretty big deal.  Now SEOs can no longer know what keywords bought people to a site, what keywords converted best, etc. What this means:  Paid Search (PPC) becomes huge.  The only way to get this very valuable data is by doing PPC and getting the data from that.  Full article here.  Another article and reactions here.
•     Great Report for Showing PPC's effectiveness:  Clients often wonder about Paid Search:  Is it cannibalizing my organic listings?  How much does it really help my overall bottom line?  (In a nutshell:  Its crucial.)  They may feel they want to cut back on PPC but don't realize how integral it is to their business profits across the board.  The guys at Resolution Media (one of the biggest PPC agencies in the U.S., really know their stuff) put together a great report.  Article with .pdf report here.

Bottom line on Google's changes: 

It really hurts traditional SEOs:

1.  If all they track is keywords only and not KPIs- sales, leads etc.  Keyword data from organic simply no longer exists.

2.  They keep taking data away from SEOs as the years go on.  This will only continue.  Why?  They don't want anyone to be able to "game" the system:   5 years ago you could buy links, get a keyword report and optimize your site, put a bunch of real or fake reviews up, and rank well.  No more.  They want to make it so hard to game the system people don't do it anymore, SEOs, regular businesses, etc.  

In a way, this makes sense.  Is your favorite restaurant the best because they did anything besides have awesome food and service?  Not likely.  They just have the best food and service, some advertising and alot of word of mouth.  This is the way Google wants the internet to be.  

Its Awesome for Paid Search Specialists.

1.  If a site wants better organic traffic, they need to do PPC to find the keywords they need to rank for. 

2.  Google loves it when people use PPC.  Google made over $50 billion last year from advertising, over 97% of their total revenue.  They're pulling out all the stops and adding more awesome features for advertisers each month with no end in sight.    

What do you think?  How will you handle the changes going forward.  Please leave a comment below...

How To Choose A Web Designer

Many Clients Want To Do Paid Search But, They Often Notice Something at the Same Time:

What is it?  Well, they're about to budget money for paid search and someone to create and manage their campaigns and notice the website they are going to be sending that traffic they're paying for is just not up to par.   It either needs a refresh or its just kind of outdated.   

In fact, there has been instances where the site needs that total redesign, and we'll recommend this before starting paid search for them.  We don't want to see them wasting money sending people to a site that is confusing or outdated and the visitor not being able to complete the goals we agreed upon because of this.  Once they get this done, then we can help them.

Note:  We don't do web design, just PPC, conversion tracking and web analytics.  But we know a bunch of good people we can recommend to create a website that not only looks great but is easy for your potential clients to find what they're looking for.  Then you'll get the most return on investment for the money you pay for Paid Search.

With all the above in mind, if you do decide to get a new website, the info below will be a big help in finding someone who will do a good job.  We hope it helps! 

Choosing the Right Web Designer:

A Crucial Step

Were do you start?  To choose a web designer, please read the following:

Here are a few popular and common ways businesses get their websites built:

• Designing the site yourself (unless your a web designer)
• Having your cousin, friend, etc. design it for you.
• Having a company do a "free" site for you as an add on.
• Paying alot for a company to built a site for you.

The best illustration on why its so important to hire a web designer:

How much did you pay for your car or business vehicle?  $5000.00?  $10,000.00?, $20,000 +? 

You likely knew that its a no brainer to spend the money on a reliable vehicle, especially if you use it for work.  You make money with it.

Your website is your "vehicle" to get you more sales, leads and more.  Yet many people cut corners and skimp when having one built.  In a word:  Don't.  Spend the money for a pro to build you a clean, simple, professional looking site that is both easy to navigate, easy to update and search engine friendly.  You'll be glad you did. 

But who should you choose as your web designer?  You've probably heard of horror stories of people dropping $5000-10,000 and getting a bad looking site.  The truth is you don't have to spend a ton for a great looking, great functioning site.

We recommend getting a referral.  Check the site designers website out, check their portfolio out and see if it matches with what look you're going for.

Ask us:  We know of a number of designers that are professional and build sites you will be proud of.

One final question:  What questions should you ask a web designer to make sure you're getting a professional?  Below is an article from Entreprenuer Magazine on this very subject.   Print it out and bring it with you.

5 Questions to Ask Your Web Developer

If you want your site to work--and keep working--consider these factors before you build it.

Entrepreneur Magazine

Jennifer Shaheen | July 30, 2009

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/202862

Building a website can be a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle--sometimes the picture looks good, but when you look closely, pieces are in the wrong places. A website might function, but as soon as you make a change or an update, the picture falls apart.

How do you avoid hiring a designer or developer that builds a website like this? Here are some questions you can ask and some feedback to help you understand their answers.

1. What web standards do they follow?

This is a great question that will fluster someone who doesn't have standards. What are web standards? This is the way of designing and coding a website that allows the website to grow with technology and the web visitor. This means using clean code and technologies like:

• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): a simple mechanism for adding style like fonts, colors, and spacing to web pages
• XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language): a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax
• ECMA Scripts: the standard version of JavaScript used on most web browsers.

You don't have to know how to write the languages; you just have to know what the standards are to understand the answer.

A simple way to help you connect to this question is to remember that people online don't all use the same web browser or operating system. Designing and developing to standards gives your website the ability to look and function the way it should on different platforms.

2. Do they design for SEO best practices?

It's no secret today that everyone wants a website that can be found on search engines. Implementing search engine optimization may not be what you want your designer or developer to do for you; however, how your site is designed or coded can affect your strategy when you are ready. When you interview developers, this is a great question to ask and see if the person you're interviewing is familiar with how to code to meet SEO standards. Here are a few items that affect SEO best practices:

• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): Designing a website to meet SEO best practices means using style sheets to cut down on the amount of code on your web page. Search engines like text, not code.
• Script files: When you use dynamic items on your site like image galleries or mouse-over menus, usually these are created through JavaScript. To follow proper SEO standards, script files should be created for pages instead of having the script on your web page.
• Web page content: Your text or content should be on the page as much as possible this can even include your website navigation. There are ways to make text visually appealing without having the designer put it inside an image. Images that contain words are not picked up as content by search engines.

If SEO is a strategy you are considering down the line, it's a good idea to make sure your site will be built with this strategy in mind.

3. How do they plan for change or growth?

One of the most stressful lessons learned is that the website you built yesterday will not allow you to grow tomorrow. Being told you have to start over is one of those statements every business owner can't bear to hear. Before you begin, ask the question, "Does the technology you're using allow me to grow or add additional functions?" You may even want to take this further and think about tools you'd want to add down the line. You can also ask designers or developers to provide you with a brief list of tools they have already integrated with sites like yours. This allows you not only the opportunity to see if they are knowledgeable, but also whether they're supportive in providing you with ideas.

4. How do they test their work?

As I mentioned above, not all of your consumers use the same technology. But to ensure things are operating the way they should or displaying correctly, web developer need to test their work. This issue might seem trivial, but you'd be surprised how many firms only test for one web browser. I recommend you ask specifically what web browsers and versions they test for during the development process. If you're building an online community, social or e-commerce website, testing is an important part of your success. Secure payment gateways need to be tested in a real environment. Be sure to get the specifics of what your firm considers to be part of a test phase and what it's being held accountable for after the website has gone live.

5. How do they handle support requests?

After a website has officially launched inevitably there will be a problem--it's technology; it happens. The question you want to know before you put pen to contract is how does your new firm handle support or bugs--technical hiccups with the website? Every firm will approach this differently, so pay close attention to how it phrase its response and commitment.

Building a website depending on the functions you need can be a lot like putting a puzzle together. The key to success is finding the right firm who understands the pieces that need to come together for your business.

Jennifer Shaheen, the e-marketing and Technology Therapist, has more than 10 years experience working with small- to mid-sized businesses on their e-marketing and web development needs. You can learn more about her by visiting her web site, TechnologyTherapy.com

How to Track Adwords Video Remarketing in Google Analytics

Hopefully you're trying and testing out Adwords Video Remarketing.  Adwords for video is right in the main campaign area but Adwords Video Remarketing is separated out a bit.  

About Adwords Video Remarketing:  One of the nice differences with Video Remarketing is you can remarket to people who have interacted with your YouTube channel or page and serve them ads.  For full information, see Google's info and start testing:  

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2545661?hl=en

This post is about tracking traffic and engagement from your Adwords Video Remarketing to your site.  Did your Video Remarketing campaigns result in more traffic to your site, more conversions.  

Problem:

After running a number of Video Remarketing campaigns I noticed that I was getting alot of views of the clients videos and even clicks to the site, which is great.  

However, when I went into Google Analytics (GA), I didn't see any stats from these video remarketing campaigns, traffic numbers, or other data.  I contacted Google and they said that, unlike regular Google Adwords where everything is tracked automatically in GA if you have GA and Adwords linked,  at this time the tracking is not really up and running for video remarketing as a source of traffic you can measure in Google Analytics.  

Since its so important to track all your advertising to see if its brings good ROI, there had to be a workaround, and there is.  And in looking around in finding a solution to this workaround I found a couple of other cool things and tips that can benefit your tracking efforts.

Solution:

Use Google's URL Builder: GA has a feature that allows you to track anything on the web you set up and see the data in your GA account.  You use utm tracking parameters to tell GA where the traffic came from.  For example, if you have an ad on a site, you can add info to the link in that add that goes to your page.  So in the ad it goes to perhaps your sites URL:  www.mysite.com when they click on that ad.  If you want to add important information to the ad so you can track it in GA you'd use the utm parameters and add the campaign, ad, and more like this:  www.mysite.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=campaign 1&utm_content=new video

It looks confusing but its not.  You use Google's URL builder to set it up, its very easy.  Link here:  https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

Use this to track your Video Remarketing Campaigns:  You can then use the URL builder to add the correct tracking tags to your Video Remarketing list campaigns so you can then see them in GA.  

But I thought Google already automatically tags Adwords, won't this mess up the numbers in GA?  Yes, BUT only if you simply dropped in the tagged URL you created, such as the one you see above.  There is a cool workaround that allows you to tag a URL and not have it mess up Google Adwords auto-tagging.  How?  Use a url shortener.  

Use a URL Shortener to Shorten Tagged URLs:   You're probably familiar with URL shortners like bit.ly or goo.gl.  They take a long, ugly URL and make it real short.  Did you know you can take a long URL that is tagged like the above URL, drop it into goo.gl and shorten it?  The coolest part about this is that the tags you set up still work in the shortened URL!  Super cool!  Even better, now you can track your Adwords Video Remarketing campaigns in GA and not have Adwords Auto Tagging mess up.  

So Let's Recap:

To track Adwords Video Remarketing campaign in GA: 

1. Use Google's URL builder to correctly set up a tracking URL. 
2. Drop that tagged URL into goo.gl URL shortener. 
3. Use that shortened URL as your destination URL in your Adwords Video Remarketing ad. 

Questions?

1.  Great I set this up, Now where do I look for my data in GA? 

Good Question!  In GA go to Traffic Sources>Overview>Search>Campaigns:

Then you'll see your Video Remarketing data there.   

Question 2:  Is there an easier way to create the utm parameters and then shorten them?

Well, its really not that hard going to Google's URL Builder then dropping them into goo.gl to shorten them.  But since you asked- yes!

There's a cool tool from savio.no that not only creates the tagged URL but can shorten it on the fly, download it to Excel, make a QR code from it and more.  Check it out here.

Here's a screenshot of the tool with an example URL:   

Of course, you can use this technique to track anything you'd like, Facebook ads and posts, Tweets, anything else you'd like to track.  See this great article to learn all about utm parameters and all the things you can track:  

How To Use UTM Parameters In Google Analytics 5

So, what do you think, will this help you track your Video Remarketing ads in Google Analytics? 

 Update:  I noticed that in Google Analytics (GA), there were a number of keywords showing up as (not set).  I figured out that it was the URLs from the above Adwords Video Remarketing campaigns.  The only way I know to have it not show up as (not set) is to add a utm term or utm keyword parameter.  

You could put it like this (see bold are in URL below):  http://www.mysite.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=mycampaignname_video_remarketing&utm_content=my_ad&utm_term=no_keyword_video_ad

Its not a perfect workaround but at least you won't have many visits showing up as (not set) and clients wondering why this is the case.

Google Adwords Image Ad File Size Now 150kb

​Putting together a new Summer Campaign for a client and have been back and forth with them regarding image and Flash Adwords ads for a Display campaign.  

​It used to be those ads had to be 50kb or less or you couldn't upload them to Adwords.  But now it seems the allowable file size has been tripled.  Its now 150kb for regular image, animated image and Flash ads.

​Here's the link:  ​

https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176108?hl=en#