Sahil Jain, CEO of AdStage, reveals a list of killer, free SEM tools to boost productivity and increase results of your Google AdWords & Bing Ads search campaigns.
2. #SMXEast @Sahilio
Sahil Jain is the CEO of AdStage, the
leading cross-network online advertising
platform. Previously he dropped out of High
School to be an Engineer at Yahoo!, left UC
Berkeley to join Corp Dev at AOL and co-
founded YC backed Trigger.io.
A Bit About Me
Google autocomplete reveals popular variations to anchor search queries. However, running through the variations can be timely. Übersuggest will take a root query and will run through the entire alphabet, revealing Google autocomplete data for each letter variation. Pick the ones that best fit, and you can easily copy or download the search queries (keywords) in bulk.
Search queries can vary between different properties. Soolve provides insights into to search results across Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, and Answers.com, in one central view.
There are some keywords and verticals on Google or Bing that are just outright expensive. The Keyword Niche Finder can provide keywords with great opportunity, and ideas into new ad group themes.
Trends reveal the popularity of a search query over time, and can divulge any signs of seasonality. Especially useful for short-window B2C products, such as snowblowers e-comm campaigns.
Answer The Public is a unique search engine because it only reveals results in the form of popular queries in the form of a question. It really help you think of long tail keywords and answers your ad copy should contain.
Can we all have a moment of silence for Google’s Wonder Wheel. Deprecated along with Google Labs, advertisers used to be able to discover new root keywords using this visual model – jumping from spoke to spoke. Search Cloudlet will provide a visual for related keywords, although it doesn’t have the same visual appeal of Wonder Wheel.
For all the SMB and hyper-local marketers in the house, this tool will help add city and zip code level appendages to your core keywords.
Separating high volume keywords into ad groups by match type can greatly decrease CPA (cost per converted click). However, the process is often grueling to do. Luckily, there’s MergeWords. MergeWords is a clean and fast interface to match wrap a long list of keywords. In addition, it can be used to build keyword variations quickly.
SEOBook provides another great keyword wrapping tool. Easy copy & paste of converting keywords from a search query report.
Google Preview Tool, outside of being able to see if your ads are showing in the wild, without burning an impression, can also act as inspiration when trying to differentiate your product/service against competitors’ ad copy.
Creating ad copy in a bulk format, such as in a sheet, can be a painful process if you upload your ad copy and it returns errors for reaching character count maxes. Use simple online tools or Gsheets formulas to ensure you stay within max counts for Google & Bing.
CoSchedule’s Headline Grader helps you craft punchy and powerful ad headlines. Especially useful with the additional space from AdWords Expanded Text Ads.
Just because you receive performance data back, doesn’t mean it’s conclusive. Often, digital marketers will get trigger happy in attempts to irk out gains. The SplitTester calculator can be used to understand if your ad copy A/B test results actually yielded statistically significant outcomes.
Broken links can tank your budget. For ecommerce campaigns especially, it’s important to ensure there is a live landing page for each product line sku. Check all your web links from a bird’s eye view using the ugliest, but still highly used SEO tool – Xenu Link Sleuth. Or automate the process and check on the results in Gsheets using the Link Check AdWords Script.
Let’s be honest, most of our days are spent doing repetitive, monotonous tasks – perfecting that campaign build, crafting variations of copy, or diving face deep into pivot tables. Talk to any old timer, and they’ll reveal a collection of shortcuts, tools, and hotkeys to get the job done faster and efficiently. Tools can be used to save time, provide inspiration, or steamline a process.