Assignment:
Q1. Refer to f005. Experiment with the top five search engines in the world, plus Duckduckgo. Which ones appear to have some form of paid advertisement scheme? Provide screen-dumps as evidence only for those who do offer a paid ad scheme. Use the TIP given in Q2.
Q2. Choose one Google and one Bing paid ads which are badly written, according to the best practice rules you have covered this week. Rewrite them, fixing the part(s) that are badly written. See the example given in f974 (slide 2). Provide your answer in the same format as this example, for your two new paid ads.
TIP: Start by generating fairly short search queries (for all search engines you have to investigate) on popular/commercial topics, to ensure that you get many paid results to choose from. For example, you could use:
books for sale
home insurance
weight loss pills
Now search inside the resulting SERPs to source example ads.
Q3. You must now start the process of doing keyword research and writing a PPC ad for the target webpage, supplied on Day 1. You do not have to submit anything for a. and b. below, but you must do them!
a. Firstly, investigate the target webpage supplied to you. Read though all the content at least twice. Answer questions for yourself like: What is this webpage about? Which product or service is it trying to market? What are people likely to type into a search engine which should list this webpage high up in the natural rankings? What does the content of this webpage tell the reader?
b. Also, investigate the competition. Type in search queries which you think will bring up PPC ads which should lead to the target webpage, or similar webpages. Inspect the wording of these ads. Answer questions for yourself like: Are these ads well-written? Do they use up all or almost all of the available characters? Is there unnecessary repetition in the wording? Does the ad make a clear promise of what it is advertising? Is that promise fulfilled when I click through on the ad and view the target webpage?
c. Now do some keyword research to identify important keywords and phrases, which you want to include in the text of your PPC ad. Use any two different keyword research tools and show two screen-dumps of your original keyword/phrase, plus whatever the tool provided as suggestions.
NOTE 1: It has been proven that if you use common keyword phrases, Google will regard NOK 100 as "too low a budget" to play your ad at all. Overused and common phrases are, in this case: "online course" "Internet course" "online training" "online marketing course" and some others. It is suggested that you use some other attributes of this course to generate more unique phrases - the fact that it is in English, the fact that you will learn about things like Google Analytics, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram campaigns, do a PPC campaign, etc. Try things like "online digital marketing course in English" "learn about Facebook, Twitter and PPC", etc.
NOTE 2: For your PPC campaign to be successful, your tutor needs to see your ad playing on his screen once, and you should draw some clicks from your ad to the target page. To make the first point noted possible, do not specify your ad to play only in certain countries, or only between certain hours of the day. The tutor might then be excluded from viewing it!
Q4. Start your PPC campaign, using the supplied target webpage in your advertisement. Write your ad using all the best practice guidelines of this week. Provide a step-by-step audio recording (between three and seven minutes) leading the listener through your actions and decisions. Also provide screen-dumps to show your ad, and describe what the tutor must do to get your ad to play in a browser.