Mon Jan 07 08:02:44 PST 2019

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Use Keyword-Rich URLs to Your Advantage
The URL is one of the most important parts of an ad. The ad title sticks out the
most, but many people factor in the URL more than the copy. By changing your
URL to a descriptive URL, you can sometimes raise your click-through rate by 50-
200%. A new throw-away domain name only costs $8 at GoDaddy.
Bid on Competitors? Names
I believe this is illegal in France (and maybe some other areas
, but trademark laws
still have not been firmly set in this field in the U.S. Unlike Yahoo!, Google allows
U.S. and Canadian advertisers to bid on trademark names of their competitors.
The competitors? trademark names may not appear in the ad (unless the landing
page is relevant to it
, but they can be used as the ad trigger word.
If you use competitors? names as the triggering word, then you need to group that
in an ad that is not using dynamic keyword insertion, or your ad title will put you in
trademark violation.
Keep in mind that since the laws are gray in this area, you may run into some
problems if you push the envelope and do not respond to complaints. I believe
that in the U.S., trademark owners are required to inform you of the problem and
give you a chance to fix it before they have a chance to sue you for damages.
(Whether or not they can sue you is still somewhat up in the air.
.
I did this particular technique and ticked off about a dozen SEOs who made a few
hate threads in various forums. I primarily was looking for AdSense ad space in
articles, but some SEOs offered nasty comments about the technique, even though
it is a rather common technique.
You may want to ask people before using their names if you think they may take it
the wrong way. Another good way to appear on many content sites is to run your
ads on phrase match for some of the more popular article titles in your industry.
A way to avoid the controversy associated with bidding on competitors' names is
to only bid on their names on content-matched ads (i.e., disable search ads in the
ad groups focused on competing products
.
Viewing Geographically Targeted Ads
You can target ads to a specific country. If you are not in the country you will be
advertising in, you can view the country-specific ads by adding &gl=country
code to the search string (?ca? for Canada, ?us? for the United States, ?uk? for
United Kingdom, etc.
.
If Google is mixing in state regional ads, it will list the state name at the bottom of
the ad.