What's happened in PPC over the past 1 1/2 years?

[PoisonJam]

A year and a half ago I left my role as as SEM manager to focus solely on SEO. Now I'm moving back into a role incorporating both SEO and PPC for an online retailer and I feel a little behind in terms of PPC developments.

Can someone recommend some big developments in this time that I should be reading up on, especially with regards to online retail? I think the last big change I worked with was BMM in AdWords! I know I need to get up to speed on retargeting/remarketing for a start.

[SteveGerencser]

Biggest change, it got more expensive.

[zycon5000]

Biggest change, it got more expensive.

Yeah, and it seems like almost every time you bid to "be on the first page" (at least on Adwords), not more than 2 weeks later (sometimes as soon as a day or two), that bid is not enough. So you raise it again, less than 2 weeks later find out it's not enough. Rinse and repeat! At some point, and it sounds like it's happening now, advertisers are just going to get fed up with this game. Is it just competition (one company raises their bid, so their competitors must do so too), Google artificially inflating bid prices and enacting sort of a "price fixing" scheme to appeal to all of the stockholders (so to thereby keep having all of the advertisers raise their bids to remain near the top), or something entirely different?

[PoisonJam]

I think PPC has always been getting more expensive, so I'm not really sure that counts as a big change

Nevertheless, I will still need to do it as long as it remains profitable, so any further insights would be helpful

[Merriam]

Make sure your ad groups are as focused as possible... and if your QS is less than 6, don't increase your bid - increase QS instead!

[ArthurNYC]

Agreed, costs are up. Biggest change is retargeting (at least to Google). Can be very, very valuable. Look to use your pixel on other sites ... great way to get more eyeballs.

Arthur

[john8954]

As SEM professional i will go with PPC because google is updating regularly and not possible to maintain their ranking for ever. So go with PPC while you want money from your website.

I am not against SEO but after updating panda and penguin little bit scared while choosing SEO as profile.

[LD]

As SEM professional i will go with PPC because google is updating regularly and not possible to maintain their ranking for ever. So go with PPC while you want money from your website.

I am not against SEO but after updating panda and penguin little bit scared while choosing SEO as profile.

If you are truly a "professional" you would not be "scared" by SEO. Both PPC and SEO have strong benefits. Whether a situation deserves one or the other - or both, would be determined by your research, presentation to the client and desired criteria as specified by the client.

[LD]

Iyes i m agree but what about regular updates of google? In this conditions what should a SEO professional do?

Sounds to me like you are a beginner, so start here. SEO 101 This is a great forum with tons of great information:

[deepsand]

Make sure your ad groups are as focused as possible... and if your QS is less than 6, don't increase your bid - increase QS instead!

But, click-through-rate is a big part of QS. If you're not high enough to get a satisfactory CTR, you'll not be able to raise your QS!

It's Google's Catch 22 of AdWords.