JumpFly, Inc. – www.JumpFly.com
Elgin, IL – Randall Rd. Just North of I-90
No Off-site Work Opportunities – Must Work from Our Office

We are not seeking just anyone. We are seeking the best. By working with us, you will be surrounded by the most knowledgeable and experienced PPC team in the industry, and we hope you are no exception. We fully understand that our business is only as good as our team, and therefore we take care of our valued staff like family, and expect the same in return. We are looking for someone with a long term, career oriented mindset, and a love for Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

ABOUT JUMPFLY

JumpFly is independently ranked #1 in the USA for PPC account management, and proudly maintaining this title since January 2008. Our rapidly growing company is solely focused on making sure our clients earn the best results available for their advertising budget for as long as they choose to work with us. We pride ourselves on maintaining the highest level of knowledge, professionalism, and integrity available to serve our clients the best we can at all times.

JumpFly maintains a casual, relaxed and fun working environment. Hats, jeans and t-shirts are the norm. However, JumpFly is also filled with very proud, highly intelligent professionals who work very hard and enjoy reaping the benefits of their efforts. We keep very busy, and always have a “get it done” attitude each and every day. JumpFly does not allow personal calls, personal email, or casually surfing the net while at your desk. We are focused on productivity and efficiency which in turn affords the benefits associated with this environment. We treat our team with great care and respect, allow flexible working hours, and offer endless opportunity to grow and earn based on performance.

ABOUT THE POSITION

We are currently seeking a highly motivated, intelligent, hard-working individual with high level PPC Advertising management experience to fill a PPC Account Executive role. If you are new to PPC, please do not apply for this position. We are now adding to a very tight knit team of professionals looking to lead a booming industry for years to come. After evaluation and proper training, this position is responsible for all aspects of the client relationship, and will serve as the direct contact at JumpFly for assigned clients. As the client’s direct point of contact the account manager is expected to professionally represent JumpFly and be responsible to quickly resolve any issues, concerns or changes that become necessary over time. Daily activities will include new client evaluations and setup, dealing with ongoing client issues, managing client expectations, ongoing keyword research and analysis, writing, analyzing and updating effective ad copy, maintaining desired budgets, strategic account analysis to determine appropriate changes to achieve better results, staying on the cutting edge of industry knowledge and much more.

This is a high level position, and is unmatched in terms of potential for the right go-getter looking to constantly learn and improve. Your contributions to JumpFly will be recognized and you will be compensated accordingly throughout your career. If you desire to get in early with a rapidly growing company on the cutting edge of the advertising industry, we may be looking for you.

REQUIRED SKILLS / QUALIFICATIONS

- Friendly, Personable, and Positive

- Experience with Business Consulting in Relation to Advertising and PPC

- A Bachelors Degree

- Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter Account Management Experience

- High Working Knowledge of MS Excel, MS Word, MS Outlook and the Internet

- Excellent Business Communication Skills, Both Verbal and Written

- Detail Oriented, Problem Solver with the Ability to Multi-Task

- Hard Working, Keep Busy Attitude

BENEFITS

- Starting Salary Appropriate with Experience

- High Value, Performance Based Raises – We Offer Huge Raises if Earned

- 401k with 3% Company Match

- $350/mo. Paid to Health Insurance

- Two Weeks Paid Vacation to Start

- Flexible 40 Hour Work Week Between 6:30am and 6:30pm Monday – Friday

- Career / Personal Life Balance – Work Stays at the Office

If you are interested in the above career with JumpFly, please send your resume and unique cover letter letting us know why you want to work with us to Careers@JumpFly.com. We will review your qualifications and contact you if there is a fit.

We Appreciate Your Interest,

The Team at JumpFly

The USCA was established with the intention to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. The organization works exclusively with local business owners, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups to help promote local business activity through public relations, marketing and advertising. JumpFly was selected for the 2009 USCA Best of Local Business award in the Search Engine Marketing Consultants Category based on information gathered by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

Based in the Chicago suburb of Elgin, Illinois, JumpFly has served as the leading Search Engine Marketing Consultants for small and medium businesses throughout the United States for over 10 years. Specializing in PPC Management, JumpFly’s sole purpose is to enable its clients to maximize the results of their PPC advertising efforts while saving time and money. As proven Search Engine Marketing Consultants, JumpFly has earned several industry awards, in addition to the USCA recognition, due to its commitment to client satisfaction and successful client results. In 2009, JumpFly received an “A” grade from the Better Business Bureau and was also proudly recognized as TopSEOs’ #1 PPC Management Company in the US.

“We are grateful to be recognized for providing a valuable service to our community and our clients. This award is a testament to our staff and their ongoing contributions and dedication. We are fortunate to have a group of committed professionals that all have the same goal in mind, and that is to help our clients achieve success. An over-abundance of self proclaimed search engine marketing consultants often makes identifying truly qualified companies a challenge. This award and others achieved by JumpFly over the past several years, in addition to our clients’ ongoing success, help demonstrate why JumpFly is the PPC Management Authority.”

Conversion tracking is one of the most important aspects of any PPC advertising account and you need to be sure that you have this installed correctly. Conversion tracking allows your account to be managed to the most important criteria for your business – and that is – “What am I getting out of this?”.

What Google AdWords has changed is the name of “Conversions” to “Conversions (1-per-click)” and they have added a new metric called “Conversions (many-per-click)”. The Conversion (1-per-click) field can only be filled once per customer and the Conversions (many-per-click) is incremented whenever any conversion occurs within 30 days after a click.

This can mean a couple of things to you depending on what your conversion structure is.

First, if your conversion is strictly measuring sales, it can mean that you have customers that come back within the first 30 days after their first purchase to purchase again. This is especially common in stores that sell commodities or that cross-sell a customer with more accessories to compliment their first purchase. (By the way – that begs the question – what kind of follow-up do you have with a first time customer to be sure they have everything they need and are you measuring the success of that follow-up?)

Also, if you have setup several types of conversions to be tracked on your site – for example, mailing list sign-up, contact form and sale – the “many-per-click” field will give you information about customers that have performed several goals on your site. You may have customers that do all three and that will show up in the many-per-click field. There are additional fields regarding the type of conversion that will give you the information you need to micro-manage these conversion types as well.

And don’t forget, Google AdWords revenue tracking can be exceptionally powerful for tracking specific revenue achieved for each specific product sold. This is certainly not for everyone, but can be incredibly valuable when applicable and is usually very easy to implement. If you have questions or need help with this, contact a professional PPC Management Company for asssitance.

The bottom line is this – understand what these Google AdWords conversion tracking numbers mean to you and use this valuable information to enhance your sales-funnel on your website.

Every once in a while a new pay-per-click (PPC) advertising client will come in who considers their account CTR to be the benchmark by which their accounts performance is judged. Depending on the keyword strategy, it is most likely not a good idea to use CTR to judge an entire account’s performance.

True, we know that CTR has a big influence on the somewhat mysterious Google AdWords Quality Score(s). It is also a great indicator for comparing performance on your various AdGroups’ different ad copies. There are certainly many instances when Click Through Rate (CTR) is a very good indicator of performance.

Now, what about when low CTR is a good thing?

There are definitely times you want to eliminate a worthless click from a potential keyword, and while this would have a negative impact on the Click Through Rate (CTR) it would certainly have a positive effect on the account.

For example, a strategy that I recently adopted for a client really drives this point home.

One of my client’s competitors has a very common word for a company name. For the sake of confidentiality I will simply call it “widget.” Well, this competitor name “widget” is also the name of a very popular movie, an artist, a location overseas, a highway landmark, and dozens of other completely unrelated things. As you might imagine, the search volume for this popular term is through the roof, while the percentage of people actually using it for the company name we wished to target is extremely small. So small in fact, that it would almost certainly discourage anybody from even trying it as a keyword.

I thought it was worth trying, and to give it the best chance at success I used only the exact match version of “widget” in its own campaign, with a very specific ad designed to only solicit the searchers looking for my client’s services.

The results were surprisingly great. The campaign resulted in my client converting at half of his target conversion cost. The CTR for this keyword was a downright horrible 0.02%, however this was a good thing as it meant the ad was eliminating all of the unnecessary searchers and only targeting the exceptionally small amount of people looking for my clients competitor. In this case, the exceptionally low CTR was a good thing.

The low CTR also had a definite impact on the keyword’s quality score and forced my client’s minimum bid up to $10/click. Even with the the high minimum bid, the conversion cost was cheap and the quality of leads generated tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue for my client. Winner.

Now, the 0.02% CTR dramatically lowered the whole account’s CTR. If that figure had been used as a benchmark to judge performance, it would have been a huge mistake that would have cost my client a considerable amount of revenue. In this case, the actual conversion cost/rate was a far better benchmark than the pathetic CTR.

The bottom line here is that a low CTR can be a good thing in some strategies and is not always the best indicator of an entire account’s performance. Every account is different, just as every marketing strategy is different. Helping to determine the best strategy for your PPC marketing campaign is just one of the many unique skills that JumpFly PPC account manager brings to the table.

What’s your benchmark?

When you open AdWords Editor you should be prompted with the upgrade screen automatically.

Now before you upgrade, there are some important things to consider. If you have comments or unposted changes, I would recommend you click “Backup then Update” when you see the automatic prompt to upgrade. This allows AdWords Editor to create a backup file that includes any unposted changes and/or comments. Once you have installed the new version you can simply import the backup file. Google Help has a great article on the steps needed to correctly import a backup file (AEA). Personally, I always recommend backing up any files before upgrading any software.

It’s also important to note that after you upgrade to AdWords Editor 7.0, you will need to download your account(s) again.

There are some notable improvements to AdWords Editor 7.0.

First page bid estimates are now shown for keywords. The first page bid estimate is the approximate max CPC bid it would allegedly take for your ad to be shown on the first page of Google results. Previously minimum cost-per-click bids were displayed.

Keyword Quality Scores are now displayed in the Keywords tab. This column will display a number from 1 through 10, with 1 through 4 being poor, 5 through 7 being OK, and 8 through 10 being Great. There is a great help article on how AdWords calculates Quality Score, for those interested in jumping down the rabbit hole.

The Keyword Opportunities Tool, still in BETA, now uses your AdWords Editor 7.0 language and location settings. You can change the Keyword Opportunities locale used for the results by clicking the very small blue “Edit” link that appears at the very upper right of the Keyword Opportunities tool window. The sentence will read “Results are tailored to…” There is also a great help article with more information on how to change the Keyword Opportunities Tool’s language and location targeting.

Speaking of Language and Location settings, you can now view your campaigns targeting settings on the Campaigns tab. Now, these columns are hidden by default, however you can select them with the column chooser.

The Keyword Expansion tab now shows “absolute numbers” instead of the odd scaled values previously seen. The numbers supposedly reflect the traffic for the last month.

Adwords Editor 7.0 now has optional usage tracking. This allows Google to collect completely anonymous statistics about how you use the different features. The statistics do not include personal information or any of the contents for your AdWords account. The idea here is that the information gathered will help the design team further understand what needs improvement. This feature is turned off by default, and can be enabled, or disabled, by going to Tools menu/Settings, and then select “improve AdWords Editor by enabling usage tracking.”

When it comes to PPC management, Adwords Editor 7.0 is truly a must have tool. It could very well be the most popular software on my machine. It’s great to see the AdWords Editor design team continue to release new improvements on a regular basis. In a recent meeting with Google, I also submitted my personal AdWords Editor wish list that included separate data for Content and Search, as well as the ability to compare data from different time periods, along with graphical representations, as seen in the Account Snapshot tool. Considering the recent improvements, perhaps my wish list is not too far off in the future.

I recommend you download AdWords Editor 7.0 today.

This is good news to hard alcohol and beer manufacturers who can now take advantage of the increased holiday traffic, as well as the new opportunities for branding in the online marketplace.

The biggest difference between the ability to market beer and that of hard alcohol, is that beer is allowed to be marketed for sale through PPC advertising, while hard alcohol and liqueurs must “promote the information about the hard alcohol and liqueur that their websites contain.” Any ads that directly promote the actual sale of hard alcohol or liqueur are still not allowed on AdWords. This means that the sale of hard alcohol and liqueur cannot be promoted in your Google AdWords ad copy or be the purpose of your website. Ads for the purpose of branding hard alcohol and liqueur are absolutely allowed to target the U.S.

In other words, you can sell beer with Google AdWords, however you can only brand or use the promotion of hard alcohol and liqueur for non-sales related websites.

Its important to note that Google considers beer, wine, champagne, hard alcohol, and liqueur to be products intended for sale to, and consumption by, adults. Therefore, any ads promoting these products will be given a Non-Family Safe status. From a PPC management aspect, this means that anybody who has activated their “Google SafeSearch filter” will not be able to see these ads.

For the first time ever, the Windows operating system has dropped below 90% market share, according to recent data released by Net Applications, Inc., a popular Web metrics company. Last month, only 89% of the users who connected to websites did so from Windows powered systems. This drop was the largest dip by Windows in the last two years. Meanwhile, Apple Inc.’s Mac OSX posted its biggest gain, growing to 8.9% market share. This was the third month in a row that Mac operating systems remained above 8%.

My grandfather used to say, “It’s hard to be all things to all people,” and he was most likely correct. This statement also holds true when it comes to online business. Your website needs to be as compatible as possible for every visitor, and this can be hard to accomplish. When it comes to PPC advertising, you’re paying for every visitor. If that visitor can’t use your website due to compatibility issues, you have just wasted your money.

Let me ask you this; What does your website look like on a Mac? How does it work?

Last month Internet Explorer’s market share dropped below 70%, while Firefox increased to 20.8%.

How does your website look and work with Firefox? How about Safari?
(Safari now has 7% market share)

I recently had a PPC management client whose website worked great with Firefox but had problems with Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, the designer only used Firefox and never bothered to check his design work on I.E. He just assumed it would work. Can you imagine? This client was missing out on 70% of his traffic until this issue was fixed.

It’s not uncommon for a shopping cart to work perfectly in Internet Explorer, yet have serious functionality problems in other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Chrome (BETA). Different browsers react to code irregularities in different ways. Without checking, you will have no idea how your website behaves on different operating systems and browsers.

Ok, so you basically have two options for checking compatibility; check it out yourself, or use a tool.

There are tools available that will show you how your website looks through different browsers and on different operating systems. A free option is an open source tool called Browsershots.org. It can show you how your website looks on 4 different operation systems with dozens of different browser variations, with the ability to download screen shots for review. Of course, this will only show you how it looks, not how it works.

The best and most accurate solution is to actually check your website out yourself. This can be as easy as downloading the latest versions of these alternative browsers onto your own computer. Of course, you might not have a MAC system at your house, so a visit to a friend’s house might be needed. Your local library might have a token MAC available, or you could always demo one of the cool new systems at your local Apple store.

It doesn’t matter if your visitor is arriving from a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing campaign, or from a well placed organic listing, if the visitor can’t use your site you are going to miss out on the lead or sale. By checking your website’s compatibility on the different operating systems and browsers you could be opening up your business to a substantially wider audience while providing the best user experience possible to your new visitor.

Our friends from Google stopped by the JumpFly offices yesterday and we had a long discussion on the AdWords Quality Score process. So, this information is straight from the source. I’m only addressing the Quality Score and Landing Page relationship today, and will leave the other important aspects of Quality Score for other articles. Trust me, there is a lot to know when it comes to learning about Google AdWords Quality Score.

First, it is important to understand that there are actually two separate Google AdWords Quality Scores: QS1 & QS2

The first Quality Score, QS1, is the score to see if the keyword is even qualified to show. In the Q1 score, the quality of the landing page is factored into this algorithm. The biggest factors being relevant and original content, how you intend to use a visitor’s personal information, and navigability. Mostly, Google is trying to eliminate the type of poor quality websites that have shown a history of consistently providing a poor user experience from advertising on AdWords.

Once the Q1 score is factored and the keyword is able to enter the auction, the process moves along to the Q2 score.

The 2nd Quality Score (QS2) determines AdRank and CPC. I could go into great detail on all of the aspects of this very important Quality Score, however for this topic it is important to note that landing page quality is absolutely NOT a factor in QS2.

This was sure news to us, and I’m sure many of you might also find this to be unbelievable, however it is true. We spent a great deal of time talking about this and even watched a nice PowerPoint presentation to back it all up.

Of course, this new information directly contradicts some of Google’s online help documents. For example, on the Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines page it says:

Furthermore, following our site guidelines will help improve your landing page quality score. As a component of your keywords’ overall Quality Scores, a high landing page quality score can affect your AdWords account in three ways:

Decrease your keywords’ cost-per-clicks (CPCs)
Increase your keyword-targeted ads’ position on the content network
Improve the chances that your placement-targeted ads will win a position on your targeted placement

So, what does this all really mean?

Well, it doesn’t change the fact that a well optimized webpage that is focused on a particular keyword will definitely help convert that visitor. It doesn’t change the fact that a landing page that falls short of Google’s initial Landing Page Quality guidelines might not even trigger the keyword.

It does mean that no matter how many times you stuff your keyword into a webpage, or change the keyword density, it will not help lower your cost per click for that keyword at Google AdWords. That, I’m afraid, is determined by other factors involved in QS2.

The bottom line here is that a well designed and focused landing page is a very useful and much needed aspect of any Sponsored Search campaign. Nothing will change that fact. All this simply means is that your groovy new landing page is not going to influence the price you pay per click for that keyword.

There is definitely no shortage of cool tools designed to make Internet Marketing easier, and our friends at Google AdWords certainly have their own fair share of these tools available for your use. Two of these tools that I find myself using more and more are Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.

Google Trends has the ability to show you historical search data for keywords, as well as the popularity for these terms across geographic regions, cities, and languages. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it provides a nice way to see seasonality and other trending factors for your search terms.

Google Trends for Websites, announced last week, not only provides traffic data for popular websites, it also compares and ranks site visitation across different regions, and related websites and searches. I have found this tool useful for evaluating potential websites for placement targeting, as well as finding other optional websites and search terms related to the websites users. Unfortunately, less popular websites with low traffic volume and those that have chosen to not be indexed by Google through the use of the robots.txt exclusion file, simply do not provide enough data to make this tool very useful and will result in the message: “Your websites – do not have data to display”.

Google Insights for Search provides a little more flexibility and functionality than Trends, along with some interesting additional features. For example, Google Insights for Search not only provides volume patterns over time, it also provides top related and rising searches. You can compare this data by different locations, time ranges, and search terms. You can even see a map of your selected regions with hot spots showing search activity in those areas. I prefer to use this tool over Google Trends for search, since it provides much more detailed information.

For example, I have a client who does “basement waterproofing.” By doing a quick search in trends, I was able to see that historically during the 4th quarter search volume for this phrase drops dramatically. Since I can see the trend going back as far as 4 years, it is safe to say that he will experience the same drop in traffic during this time period.

On the same note, I was able to determine that this particular search phrase generates a substantial increase in search volume during the 2nd quarter of each year. With this in mind, we can anticipate this spike in traffic and consider its effect when developing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies.

Since my client’s Google AdWords campaign is regionally targeted, I used Google Insights to compared the trending on “basement Waterproofing” in his location to the rest of the United States. Also, by selecting his region in the drop down, I was then able to see hot spots indicating higher search volumes on the local map.

Google Trends and Google Insights for Search are just two of the many tools that JumpFly PPC Account Managers use to help optimize ROI. A well thought out keyword strategy is just one of the many skills a qualified PPC account manager brings to the table. Contact a professional PPC Management Company today about how these tools can be used to benefit your next campaign.

As you might know, click through rate (CTR) is arguably the most significant component of Quality Score, and ads in higher positions tend to earn better CTR than ads that display in lower positions. Google decided that to accurately calculate the Quality Scores, the “influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score.”

As a result, Google has now updated the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounted for ad position. It is their belief that this new adjustment will result in a more accurate Quality Score and ensure that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, while rewarding high-quality advertisers with better ad positions.

In the past, here at JumpFly, we have certainly seen the advantage of placing some clients’ new keywords in prominent positions to start, and then pull them down later based on performance. The advantage of the increased CTR from the higher initial positioning would work to their advantage down the road. From the sound of this latest update, this particular strategy may no longer be necessary. It will be interesting to see.

The second update going live today is an “improvement” in the way Google determines which ads show in the prominent yellow region directly above the search results. Google believes that given the prominence of these positions that it is especially important for ads to be high quality. Therefore, to appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold.

You may have noticed that sometimes Google chooses not to display any ads in this position. Previously, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the necessary quality threshold, they would not show any ads in these positions. With the new update, Google will now allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to actually jump over an ad in a higher position and be displayed in this prominent position. Again, quality plays a very important roll in being able to show in higher positions.

There is no doubt that these new algorithm changes by Google will cause some ads to experience a change in position, spend, and/or performance. Changes in Google’s ranking algorithms can affect even the most stable Google AdWords PPC account. Talk to a professional PPC Management Company today about how this recent update might affect your Google AdWords account.

To access this new tool, simply go to your content campaign. You do have separate campaigns for content don’t you? Then click the “Ad Variations” tab. Next to “Create new ad:” you will find the usual selections of: Text ad, Image ad, Local business ad, Mobile ad, Click-to-play video ad and the new Display Ad Builder. You really can’t miss it since it has NEW! in large red letters right next to it.

Once inside the Display Ad Builder Tool you will find dozens of unique animated templates to use as your starting point. There are several pre-designed ad formats based on different industries like; travel, finance, automotive, ecommerce, etc. These all make excellent starting points for your new display ad, and Google promises to be releasing many more as the feature moves out of beta.

After you pick your new template you will be taken to the page that allows you to customize the ad with all of your own information. There are text fields for headlines and descriptions, and you can easily change the font colors if you wish. As you proceed, there is a button labeled “update preview” located underneath the ad, and you will want to periodically click this button to see the results of your modifications.

Tip* Depending on the template, you may need to have some custom logos and product images available. If your logo’s file size is too large, you may need to reduce it to the maximum size shown. Usually this is about 50k. If this seems too daunting of a task, simply choose one of the other templates that does not display a logo. There are plenty to choose from.

So, you have customized your new display ad. The next step is to click “Continue” located at the bottom of the page.

You are now on the preview and ad variations page. As you will see, the Display Ad Builder Tool automatically generates your new ad into several of the common sizes including medium and large rectangles, leader boards, as well as the popular skyscraper formats. Different templates are automatically converted to different sizes, so depending on the template you have chosen, you may or may not see all of the formats mentioned.

If something doesn’t look correct, you will want to click back and adjust as needed. If it looks good, click “save ad” and you now have impressive new animated display ads running in your content campaign.

Many AdSense websites do not have layouts that accommodate these display ad formats, so you will always want to have text ad versions available in your campaign. I have found that in some of the AdWords accounts that I manage, display ads perform very well with higher CTRs than the text ads. In some of my accounts they simply do not see enough volume. Give the Display Ad Builder a try and see how it works for you. You may want to monitor results using Placement Performance Reports.

Creating Google AdWords Content Network Campaigns requires a unique strategy and keyword list. Contact a qualified PPC Account Manager to discuss your content campaign.

In the Campaign Summary and AdGroup view you will see a new drop down menu labeled “Statistics.”  There are several combinations of views including the summary view, split views, and individual views. For example, if you were to choose “Split: Google search/search partners/content network,” you will now see three rows of data representing the different performance metrics from all 3 sources of traffic.

When it comes to PPC management, I love data, and this new data from the search partners is a welcome addition to the AdWords interface.

Comparing this data among the different accounts that I manage has shown a wide variation of results; with some accounts generating substantially lower cost per conversions from the search partner network and others doing just the opposite. None of my accounts have shown horrible results from the search partners; certainly I haven’t seen any red flags.

The biggest problem here is that there really isn’t much you can do with this data other than to use it to help decide to turn on or off the search partners. At this time, it is still impossible to realistically separate the budgets and bids between Google and the search partners. Just like your first high school party, if you want to go, big brother has to tag along.

While this new data is a definite step forward, I would still love to be able to separate my budgets and bids between Google and the search partners. There are a lot of good reasons to do so, and this new data supports this rationality even further. Let’s face it, you don’t always want big brother to tag along to the party.

Google account logins were introduced in 2005. They let you use a single email and password to access the many Google services available like AdWords, Gmail, Google Checkout, etc. Until now, switching an AdWords account to a Google Account was completely optional. For security reasons, Google is now requiring that everyone use a Google Account login for their accounts.

To update your old AdWords login you basically have several options available that depend on if you manage your AdWords account yourself and if you already use other Google services. Both options require that you first login to your Google AdWords account. You will most likely be automatically directed to their update wizard. If not, simply click the “Update your login to a Google Account” link which is located at the top of the page. There will be a short introduction to read, and then click “Continue.” Next, follow the steps that best relate to your situation and remember to pick a new unique password at the end.

For more detailed step by step information, Google provides a great help page on how to update your AdWords login. If concerned, contact a qualified Google AdWords management company.

Additionally, it is always a good idea to regularly change your passwords for security protection. View a recent article by Nikki Kuhlman discussing common phishing email scams.

View more Google AdWords articles

Here at JumpFly, we were excited to discover the new Keyword Opportunities tool, enabling Keyword Expansion and Keyword Multiplier functionality at the AdWords Editor.

When you open AdWords Editor 6.5 for the first time, you will notice a new button on the Keyword tab appropriately labeled “Keyword Opportunities”. Clicking this new button SHOULD open the Keyword Opportunities (Beta) window, however if you try to use this feature in an account that you previously opened with an MCC login then the feature will not work.

We found that if you open an account in AdWords Editor 6.5 that was previously imported into your Open Account window using your MCC login information, the Keyword Opportunities feature will fail to work and result with an “Authentication Failed” error window. Even after I tried the “Switch User” feature and used the original account login, the feature would still not work.

The solution to this minor bug, remember this is a Beta feature, is to first remove the account and then click “Add Account” entering the original account login information. Once the account is imported fresh using the original account logins, the new Keyword Opportunities button will work. Several of our AdWords Editor updates also failed to work after the update was installed. Completely removing the older version, rebooting, and re-installing the new version solved the problems.

We have notified our Google contacts regarding this bug that seems to only affect people like us who use a My Client Center (MCC) to manage multiple Google AdWords accounts. Everyone else should have no problems using this new Beta feature.

Now, once the Keyword Opportunities window is open, you will notice 2 tabs: “Keyword Expansion” and “Keyword multiplier”

The Keyword expansion tab should look somewhat familiar to anybody that has used Google’s Keyword Tool through the online interface. There is a field at the top where you can enter your search phrase. By clicking the “Get Keywords” button, similar keywords are then displayed in the window below.

Next to each keyword are two fields with indicators for volume and competition. Numbers from 0-5 will show in these fields with 5 indicating the highest amount of competition/volume. The data for estimated CPC and position that can be seen in the online keyword tool are not available in AdWords Editor’s Keyword Expansion window. The best part is that chosen keywords can easily be dragged into any AdGroup over on the right hand side of the window. If you don’t have a campaign or AdGroup ready, you can easily create one with blue hyperlinks located at the bottom of the window.

The Keyword multiplier tab opens a window that many of us in PPC management have seen before in the dozens of free keyword generation tools available all over the Internet. It has 3 fields across the top for your individual keywords and a button that will combine the 3 fields into their various combinations. While missing the ability to quickly switch the order of the 3 fields, this simple tool does do a good job combining keywords quickly and easily.

I found both tools to be welcome additions to the latest release of AdWords Editor 6.5. The ability to quickly add new keywords to AdGroups without the need to use the online tool is a real time saver. I’m sure our friends at Google will eventually iron out the bug that prevents MCC logins from using these new tools. In the meantime, any account that is active using the original logins will have access to these valuable new keyword opportunity features found in AdWords Editor 6.5.

Download AdWords Editor 6.5 here.

Several of my clients have been notified that they will be included in the new Google AdWords BETA test called “Smart Positioning” which started October 1st.

The goal of Smart Positioning is to place an ad in the most cost-effective position each time it is displayed on Google and the search network, with the end goal of achieving more clicks for the same total cost. Now, it is based on an auction model that does differ slightly from the current auction model, and this is one of the reasons why it is still a BETA feature that is only open to a limited number of accounts.

At first glance, Google AdWords Smart Positioning may seem very much like the position preference settings already found in the Google AdWords campaign settings, however there is a big difference. Smart Positioning calculates incremental CPCs to evaluate the effects on cost and click through rate that would be associated with a higher position for your ad. Once the system determines the incremental CPC for placing your ad in a higher position, it compares the incremental CPC to your maximum CPC bid. Your ad is then placed in the highest position possible, as long as both the actual CPC for that position and incremental CPC are less than your maximum CPC bid. Position Preference simply limits the positions where your ad is displayed without any evaluation as to traffic, incremental cost, and/or benefit.

If you choose to enable Smart Positioning in an existing Google AdWords campaign, Google suggests a one-time increase of your maximum CPC bids that is based on the historical performance of your campaign. New campaigns with Smart Positioning can be launched with whatever bid desired, however Google recommends setting a slightly higher bid than you would otherwise use. It sounds like the extra headroom helps the feature perform better.

Even though Smart Positioning does seem like a great way to test a more automated method to control and optimize bids, I am recommending that my eligible clients do so only on a limited basis. BETA tests are notorious for having difficulties and issues and I would never suggest jumping into this situation with a campaign that is already performing well. It would be best to create a new campaign with a limited budget designed specifically to test this feature in your account.

If you’re interested in learning more about Smart Position and how it may impact your Google AdWords Campaigns, contact a PPC Management specialist today.