We’re slowly transitioning to the Del.icio.us method of link posting…but here is a current roundup of some of the noteworthy posts every PPC marketer should read/has read within the past few weeks:

Official Blogs

AdWords

Introducing the AdWords Editor forum – Announcement only Google-group…

Website Optimizer Now Out of Beta – This was good news that buzzed around for a little while in mid-April…you can use the Website Optimizer without having an AdWords account now!

Improvements to AdWords Conversion Tracking – Track multiple conversions in AdWords now.

Green tips for the office – Earth Day. 5 tips from the AdWords Team about greening your office.

Place ads on television with Google TV Ads

Tips on converting last-minute Mother’s Day shoppers to customers – Good tips to use for any Holiday.

Additional TV Ads webinar now available for sign up

Landing page load time now available on the Keyword Analysis Page

Yahoo! Search Marketing

From the Ground Up – Find account organizational limits and fundamentals here.

Minimum Bids No Longer Fixed at $.10 – A good change? We think so…some of our clients are doing much better now than ever before and we hope the same happened for you.

Throw the Bad Clicks Out

Min Bid Changes in Your Account Interface

So Happy Together – 5 ways to integrate ppc and display ads.

Green Clicks – “Must read!” Excellent post about selling the ‘green’ side of our business via ppc.

adCenter

Keyword research: what can you learn from a word? – Interesting data you can find with the adCenter add-in for excel…but I think you can find this information with other keyword research tools too.

Ad Copy Testing: Systematically Improving CTR – A very well rounded article about why ad testing is important and a quick tutorial/step system to running a good test. “Must Read!”

Microsoft adCenter Add In For Excel – Overview Tutorial

Keyword research with the adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007

Tips for preventing your budget from exceeding prematurely

Register to beta test the Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta – Awesome! Sign up using the interest form here.

Research Your Way To Business Success

Noteworthy posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

This is going to be a quick roundup because I am way behind…sorry if we missed your post in this roundup!

eVisibility Insider

When do Branded Terms not Work in Your PPC Campaign?

Help Searchers Find Their Way with Local Business Ads

How to Hold Your PPC Firm Accountable!

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

How to Increase Shopping Cart Abandonment – “Must Read!”

Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: March 2008

Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

9 PPC Advertising Crimes Caught On Screen! – “Must Read!”

Top Online Retailers Not Showing Up in Google!

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Make Web Analytics Actionable: Focus On “What’s Changed” – “Must Read!”

The “Action Dashboard” (An Alternative To Crappy Dashboards)

“Dear Avinash”: Stressed Agency Analyst & Robots Are Out To Get Me!

Own Page One

Why Search Engine Marketing can help you Beat a Recession – “Must Read!”

Yahoo! Raises Minimum Bids – I really liked the insight and commentary on the Y!SM min bid change in this post.

Post-Click Marketing Blog

Playing Russian roulette with your landing pages? – “Must Read!”

Your clicks won’t wait for your landing pages to be perfect

Landing Page Ratio (LPR)

PPC Blog by Gordon Choi

Adwords Content Network Traffic Exclusion Options Explained – “Must Read!”

RedFly Marketing

Take The Guesswork Out Of PPC Campaign Setup

Use PPC To Dominate Your Typo SEO Landscape

SEOmoz

Florida Court’s Order on Negative Keywords Will Not Break the Internet

PPC Hero

Expand Your Keyword List For Free: 6 Keyword Tools You Should Be Using (but probably aren’t). – “Must Read!”

5 Pay-Per-click Myths You Shouldn’t Believe – “Must Read!”

the PPC Book

Keyword List Building – Take what the defense gives you – “Must read!”

User Effect

Expectations and Usability: Habits

Official Blogs

AdWords

Tips from our industry newsletters

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Get AMP!’d

adCenter

Keyword Match Types

Search For More Traffic & Conversions From Within!

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

Conversation Marketing

5 Lessons Religion Can Teach Internet Marketers

How To: Get A Derailed Internet Marketing Project Back On Track

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

Bryan Eisenberg on Using Personas to Improve Sales

Stop Paying for Bad Keywords in Three Steps – “Must Read!”

Marketing Experiments

What “ugly duckling” landing pages can teach us – “Must Read!”

Own Page One – Pure Visibility

Stop trying to use Pay Per Click for branding

PPC Hero

Learn How to Track Your MSN adCenter PPC Keyword Data in Analytics – “Must Read!”

The Clix Marketing Blog

The Best Content Keyword List Method: The Files

The Invesp Blog

Challenges of optimizing an enterprise e-commerce website

Sales pages review

the PPC Book

Adwords Call Tracking

The Search Insider

(4 Letter) Keyword Insertion – “Must Read!”

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

Search Engine Land

Spy On Competitors, But Don’t Copy Their Mistakes – “Must Read!”

Yahoo To Acquire IndexTools Web Analytics Service

Confirmed: Yahoo To Test Google AdSense For Search Ads

Study: 80-Percent Of Searches Or Informational, 10% Are Navigational & Transactional

Search Engine Roundtable

Will PPC Ever Reach a Tipping Point?

Is Google AdWords Really Enforcing The URL Policy? No!

SearchEngineWatch

A Look at Demographic Bidding for AdWords

Official Blogs

AdWords

Google Analytics 101 (Part 3) – This is a quick overview of the Google Analytics dashboard.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Common Enemy – Y!SM is teaming up with Click Forensics to combat click fraud. It looks like Yahoo! is adding a “click filter” report soon so we can see how many clicks we aren’t getting charged for due to suspected fraud.

Make Your (Mother’s) Day – Take advantage of the Holiday trends when you can. Check out these 8 tips on improving profitability around Mother’s Day.

adCenter

Dynamic Text in adCenter – You can add these dynamic variables to your destination urls to better understand adCenter paid search traffic in Analytics packages. “Must read!”

Focus on Non-Brand Terms to Boost Performance & Revenue – Find out a little bit about the Purchase Funnel, Keyword Expansion, Account Structure and Targeting.

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

(EMP) E-Marketing Performance

Aren’t Dogpiles Supposed to Stink? – Did you know that your ads are probably being displayed in the regular search results from DogPile.com? “Must read!”

Conversation Marketing

Internet Marketing Training Course, Lesson 1 – Feedback please – Check out this content while it’s free and give Ian some feedback please.

In Marketing, There Are No Guarantees – The best way to comment on this post is to simply quote the author: “A internet marketer can no more guarantee the results of a campaign than predict the weather.” “Must Read!”

Avoid Featuritis: Selecting the Right E-Commerce Package – Manage the customer experience from the beginning by choosing the right cart package.

Copyblogger

Copywriting Maven’s Creative Plan Marketing Makeover #1 – “Must read!”

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

Net Gain: Latinos Are Going Online More Than Ever – This is a very well written, relatively in-depth post about the Latino market on the web.

How Virgin America’s Banner Ads Work, Even on Facebook! – Virgin is a fantastic example of how to improve and increase results from banner ads. “Must read!”

Big Impact, Small Changes on Amazon

Jennifer Slegg

Increase pay per click conversions & ROI by including a price in your ad

Using geolocation targeted keywords in PPC ads for consumer confidence

Own Page One – Pure Visibility Blog

How to Get a Big Pile of Cash – Excellent summary of how to jump start your profitability on the web through pay per click ads and analytics.

PPC Blog

Google Changing Trademark Policy In The UK – The change will simply reflect the US policy…UK advertisers can start advertising on trademarked terms but will not be able to include those terms in the actual advertisement.

PPC Discussions

Dear AdWords, Please Change These 2 Things – 1. Display the Quality Score column by default; 2. Don’t automatically enable the content network when we start new campaigns. “Must Read!” Jeremy outlines some excellent thoughts behind these two requests.

PPC Hero

The Secret of Tracking Yahoo! Keyword Data in Google Analytics – This post is very easy to follow and should hopefully take less than 15 minutes to implement. “Must read!”

Want Your Business to Be Around in 450 Million Years? Manage Your PPC Campaign Like a Shark – I love the analogy.  ‘Predatory ppc management‘ has a nice ring to it.

The Invesp Blog

New white paper: The state of online marketing and advertising

the PPC Book

Murphy’s Law of campaign management – This post made me lol. “Must read!”

The Search Insider

The “Brand” Effect – Outlines the idea that search marketing is making headway for a branding model on top of the relatively lucrative direct response model.

Pay Per Call – The ‘Other’ PPC – We have been doing pay per call tests for quite some time now…and the volume isn’t as high as we would like and the impact hasn’t been noticeable yet. There are still several things we can and need to do to prove/disprove that statement as a fact instead of a mere observation.

User Effect

Expectations & Usability: Introduction – “Must read!” This is a fantastic post by Dr. Pete. Quote from the post: “…expectations are the unconscious predictions we humans constantly make…

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

Search Engine Land

Will You Be Sued Over Your Ad Copy Usage?

Search Engine Roundtable

Is it Better to Be Ranked #10 or #11? – This question is universal in terms of PPC or Organic results. I suppose everybody will have different results so this is more of a relative question.

Is an SEM Ranking System a Bad Idea?

SearchEngineWatch

Content Ad Campaign Keyword Strategy Revisited

A Look at Demographic Bidding for AdWords

Official Blogs

AdWords

Demographic bidding now available

CPC: Maximum, average and minimum. An earlier post re-visited

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Vote for Better Search in ’08

New Guidelines for Questionable Products – lol…I guess Fake ID makers have to stop using Yahoo! now…dang it (tongue completely in cheek Napoleon Dynamite style!)

Chasing our Long Tails – Interesting thoughts about effectively targeting the long-tail keywords so they don’t weight down the quality level of your ad groups and campaigns. “Must read!”

adCenter

Your adCenter Questions Answered: Part I – Negative Keywords, Excel Bulk Uploads and Editing

Understanding goals part 2: keyword metrics and the buying cycle

Use dynamic text to keep your ad text within limits

Your adCenter Questions Answered: Part 2 – Demographic Targeting

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.com

How to Sell Remnant Ad Inventory

Conversation Marketing

Internet Marketing Is About Discoverability (Not Yelling)

The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

Can Marketers Keep Their Eyes on the Ball?

Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: February 2008

3 Steps to Recession-Proof Your Online Marketing – “Must read!” I really like the second step entitled “the cost of NOT improving your conversion rate”. I think marketers and business owners forget to weigh the opportunity costs involved with choosing not to do something about conversion rates.

Get Eleastic Ecommerce Blog

Tips for Tracking Offline Orders: PPC & Catalog

Bare It All Online for Male Shoppers

Marketing Sherpa

How to Use Personas to Lift Revenue 500% in 7 Easy-to-Follow Steps

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Context Is King Baby! Go Get Your Own.

Excellent Analytics Tip #13: Measure Macro AND Micro Conversions. “Must Read!”

Own Page One – Pure Visibility

Quality scores: padding Google’s bottom line, or protecting consumers? “Must Read!” This post is very well rounded, even sounding and thoroughly enjoyable. Check it out!

Post-Click Marketing

How trustworthy is your post-click marketing?

Google Quality Score vs. Human Quality Score

PPC Blog

Yahoo Promoting Viagra – lol! I wonder if this will affect the MSN bid…

PPC Discussions

Paid Search Resources: The List

Oh the Irony – New Guidelines for Questionable Products

SEOmoz

Paid Search Lessons from David Szetela

I Hate the Advertising Bait-and-Switch, But There’s a Lesson Here

StraightUpSearch

The Tortoise Didn’t Win the AdWords Quality Score Race

Google To Prohibit Bidding On Competitor Names?

PPC Hero

Get More Business on Business.com: How to optimize your business.com campaign “Must read!”

Who Else Wants to Increase Conversions From Their Landing Pages?

Use these 5 Tips to Increase Last Minute Traffic, Conversions & Sales!

The Clix Marketing Blog

10 Lessons Learned about Paid Search

The Invesp Blog

DaveRamsey.com: Optimization review

the PPC Book

Unrealistic Expectations Jeff shares his thoughts about Google’s “decline” in click volume. My favorite quote from this post is this: “Google is not listening to the street at all when making decisions about how they tweak their platform.” I second Jeff’s thoughts about this – the moves Google is making right now will pay off in the long run…at the same time, there are a few things that overtly appear that they are designed for the street – one example that comes to mind is the extended/advanced broad match beta.

Traffik

The Long Tail Not Always Good, If Quality Score is Your Thing

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

Search Engine Land

Don’t Click Here: Pre-Qualifying B2B Clickers

Lowering Your Quality Scores To Increase ROI

Ten Strategies For Avoiding Search Marketing Burnout

Google AdWords Video Ads Now Live & In the Wild

Drilling Into Google’s Decline In Paid Clicks – “Must Read!”

Search Engine Roundtable

Quality of Microsoft adCenter Traffic Falling?

Do You Know the Breakdown of Your Competitors’ Paid and Organic Traffic? Hitwise does.

Google AdWords To Limit Site Exclusion Feature To 5,000

An Update on Yahoo Search Marketing

adCenter Editor Beta (ACE)

Microsoft adCenter Keyword Limits

Have You Ever Recovered from a $10 Google AdWords Quality Score?

Official Blogs

AdWords

Webinar: Introduction to AdWords Editor

Webinar: Getting The Most From Your Print Campaigns

Yahoo! Search Marketing

The Quality Impact

adCenter

Microsoft adLab Tools Review Part 2 – Keywords & Content

Understanding goals

adChamps 2008 Interview: Jonathan Hochman

Welcome to the new adCenter Blog

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

(EMP) E-Marketing Performance

trackur Online Reputation Monitoring Tool

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.com

By 2009 Google Will be More Dominant in Online Display Ads Than Search!!!

Conversation Marketing

Multivariate Testing: What it Is, Why You Need It – “Must Read!”

ExpertSEM

Hispanic Search Marketing – in English?

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

Using Funnel Reports to Get a Head Start on Optimization

Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: January 2008

Website Optimization and the Price of Perfection

Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

Checkout Process Split-Testing Tip from Bryan Eisenberg – “Must Read!”

Marketing Experiments Blog

PPC seasons’ greetings: It’s never too early (or too late) to plan

PPC Discussions

I assume this was a joke (SES NY)

Search Engine Guide

28 Resources For Paid Search Strategies – “Must Bookmark!”

PPC Hero

The Google Content Network Isn’t So Scary: Here’s How To Make It Work – “Must Read!”

7 Things I Learned From Enquiro’s B2B Expert Series Webinar, “Coaxing the Conversion”

The Clix Marketing Blog

Google’s New Ad Manager: Accelerating the Growth of the AdWords Content Network

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

Search Engine Land

Google Tests More TV Ads With AdWords Integration

Utah Backtracks Search Ad Trademark Keyword Law

Keyword Intent: Tidy Campaigns Avoid the ‘Dump and Chase’

10 Tips For A More Effective Paid Search Campaign

Search Illustrated: The Anatomy Of Successful Paid Search Ads

Google Expects To Be “Very Significant” In Display Ad Segment

How To Improve Site Conversion, Minimize Google Ad Cost, And Reduce Your Carbon Footprint – “Must Read!”

AdWords

Google Audio Ads, Meet Google Analytics

Google Closes DoubleClick Acquisition

Helpful tips on our new content network tools – Good tips that can be implemented quickly with the new content tools released within the past year or so. “Must read!”

Yahoo! Search Marketing

More (Keyword) Power, Please – This feature is similar to what AdWords has had at the ad group Keyword level for a while…Yahoo! keeps Googlizing themselves and I love it.

Crunch Time – Excellent advice on how to prepare for and handle the minimum bid changes that are going to roll out for the next month or so. “Must Read!”

The Good, the Bad, the Creative – Seven tips to help you make sure you are on target with the search queries. “Must read!”

adCenter

Focus On Exact Match – Outlines the benefits of using exact match.

adCenter Analytics – How To Run Basic Traffic History Reports

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

MindValley Labs

Speedup or kiss AdWords goodbye – Commentary on the update/addition of landing page load speed to the AdWords QS.

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Standard Metrics Revisited: #5 : Conversion / ROI Attribution – Excellent post, albeit a little salesy surrounding the great content. This is a “must read!” Find out who gets “credit” for a conversion when there are multiple ways somebody may have visited/viewed your website.

PPC Blog

Understanding When To Bid On Your Own Brand – There are always exceptions to bidding on your brand.

PPC Discussions

AdWords Quality Score FAQ – Definitely one of the best, most up to date posts on the current state of AdWords QS. “Must Read This Post!”

Small Business SEM

Game On: March Madness contest for SEO/PPC folks – Have a little fun this month!

PPC Hero

How Landing Page Load Time Affects Your Google Quality Score – Commentary on the load time QS change in AdWords.

Save Time in AdWords – Copy Your Campaign Settings – Yes! Yes! Yes! I use Copy & Paste constantly…I love it. “Must read!”

2 Major Reasons Why You Should Run a Search Query Report Today! – Keyword expansion is a very important part of consistently improving your competitive edge and ROI.

The Clix Marketing Blog

My 10 Biggest Mistakes – Sign up for the March 25th webcast where David Szetela shares his biggest PPC mistakes. I think this will be an excellent webcast – a “must attend” event!

the PPC Book

Load Time and Quality Score – I like the concise reminders in this post. “Must read.”

Official Blogs

AdWords

Category Exclusion for the Content Network

Landing page load time will soon be incorporated into Quality Score

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Many Happy Returns

Slice up Your Advertising Pie

adCenter

Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta Upgraded

adCenter Analytics – Getting Started!

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

Conversation Marketing

Don’t Drive Angry: Stepping Back from a Failed Internet Marketing Campaign

Defend Yourself: Bid On Your Brand Name in PPC

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

The Good, The Bad & The Pay-Per-Click Ugly

Marketing Sherpa

Case Study:: How to Double Leads With a Video Landing Page

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

4Q – The Best Online Survey For A Website, Yours Free!

PPC Blog

Page Load Time? What’s The Point?

SEOmoz

Whiteboard Thursday-Marc Poirier on PPC Campaign Management

The Clix Marketing Blog

Yahoo! Free Search Marketing Webinar Series

The Invesp Blog

What can Hillary Clinton learn from conversion optimization?

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

Search Engine Land

comScore Paid Search Data & How The Sky Might Not Be Falling

Official Blogs

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Search Is Opening Up – I am excited to see the impact on ROI this might have with organic search…I love the yelp example in this post, very clickable.

adCenter

Boost your adCenter traffic with Microsoft Content Ads – Content ads definitely drive a little extra traffic but we are having a hard time gathering enough data via Microsoft Content Ads to determine where it is promising vs not promising…but adCenter has been reliable as far as ROI goes – albeit a very very small conversion volume compared to Yahoo! and Google.

Negative Keywords – It’s All Positive

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

(EMP) E-Marketing Performance

How to create a Negative Keyword list – A quick ‘how-to add negative keywords‘ guide for each of the 3 major players.

Conversation Marketing

Handier Than Hobbits: Why You Need An Internet Marketing Pro – The title says it all…

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

How to Prioritize Your Optimization – Excellent post that outlines what should be optimized first. “Must read!”

PPC Hero

International PPC Campaigns: How to Target Outside the US With Success

Dynamic Landing Page Content: How to Increase Conversions through Increased Relevancy

Selling PPC Services: How to Present PPC to C-Level Executives

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

SearchEngineWatch

Contextual Advertising Best Practices: Banners and Video Ads

AdWords

Webinar: Website Optimizer, What Should I Test?

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Reserve Prices – This is VERY big news…”must read”!

adCenter

Your questions answered: contacting adCenter Support

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart – “Must Read!” Excellent post about the changes and tests that Amazon did with their Shopping Cart.

Google Analytics Blog by Mangold Sengers Analytics

5 tips for getting the most out of Google Analytics – Good, basic tips.

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Lack Management Support or Buy-in? Embarrass Them! – “Must read!” You will find a list of ways to embarrass management in this post – and it’s not the humiliating kind of embarrassment either, it’s constructive.

PPC Hero

PPC for B2B: Real World Recommendations You Can Use – Basic sage advice from PPC Hero regarding PPC for B2B. “Must read!”

the Clix Marketing Blog

Download the World’s Largest Negative Keyword List – “Must Read!” Awesomely huge list of negative keywords to download and a pretty nifty tool for writing ads. Great finds!

The Invesp Blog

Which converts more: Long copy vs. short copy – This is an old argument because it always “depends” on a variety of factors. This is a good post with a step by step way to determine what might work for you.

the PPC Book

What would you do? – Jeff weighs in on the report that Google’s click volume dipped below Wall Street expectations in January.

User Effect

Top 5 Lessons from AdWords Training – Dr. Pete is now an AdWords Qualified Individual so he weighed in on what his favorite lessons were from the training. Like Dr. Pete, I went through every single learning module possible in Google’s training when I first started and found some lessons very bland while others were very useful.

AdWords

Introducing Analytics Seminars for Success – I reviewed a few of these and they look awesome! I wish it wouldn’t take me 3 days to attend a 1 day seminar though…

Favorite posts from the people/bloggers/companies we admire (alphabetical) -

Future Now’s GrokDotCom

70% of Online Shoppers Read Multiple Product Reviews – Wow! That is a lot more than I expected…one of the first bold statements in this post states that “Almost 70% of customers looked at more than 4 reviews before making a purchase.” This is definitely a “must read” post!

PPC Hero

PPC, Trademark Laws, and Copyright Laws: How to Play Fair and Still Win – First part of a five part advanced week in PPC at PPC Hero. These are probably going to be “must read” posts all week long! This one is definitely a “must read”.

Social Media/News Feeds That Posted Stuff Related to PPC -

Search Engine Land

Ask.com Adds More Sponsored Ads, Pushing Organic Results Below Fold

Search Engine Roundtable

Have Extra Money in Your Google AdWords Account? Google May Spend it With “Automatic Matching” – “Must read” the post and comments.

Google Releases Online Marketing Guides for Google AdWords