expertSEM

When managed well, a content-targeted campaign can be a fruitful compliment to your paid search campaign – from a perspective of both conversions and visibility. I recently wrote about how to use negative keywords to optimize on the Google Content Network. For this week’s tip, I thought I would follow that up with how to use Google’s Placement Performance Report (PPR) to optimize content campaigns. Here are three ways that I use the PPR (lucky you, 3 tips in one!):

1. To identify sites to exclude – Find and exclude sites that are above your spend goal without a conversion.
2. To extract more narrow themes – Pull the sites which are your top converters and browse through them. What are their main topics? Try testing a more targeted ad group around those more specific themes, narrowing your keywords and tailoring your copy. For example, you own a bike shop in Denver and your original content campaign is broadly themed around bikes. You discover in a PPR that some of the top converting placements are blogs with content on cruiser and commuter bikes (as opposed to mountain bikes, competitive road bikes or triathlon bikes). Try testing an ad group with more tightly themed cruiser bike keywords and copy to target other similar sites to the ones where you’ve already seen success.
3. To isolate top-performing sites – When you see placements that are converting exceptionally well for you, try separating these out into a placement-targeted campaign. That way, you can better control your bid and test tailored ad copy specifically for that high-performing placement.

If you’re new to this report, you might also want to refer to the Placement Performance Report Best Practices in AdWords Help.

Have other tips for optimizing a content-targeted campaign? Please share in the comments!