That’s a quotation from Loretta Young, and it fits the theme well this month of highlighting accomplishments. We’re now at the 180-day mark of our blog re-investment, and the team at Hanapin continues to make great progress toward our goals! Comparing the previous 180 days to the same time frame before that, we’re now up 31% and 47% in visits and pageviews, respectively! Last month, we were at 25% and 37%, and the month before that, we were at 23% and 32%, so we’re making great strides.
Our specific company goal is to increase monthly pageviews to 91,906 by December 1. August finished at 66,838, so we’ve achieved about 72% of goal. Considering we were at ~42K pageviews in March, I’m very please with the progress the team has made.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST
There are a handful of blog posts that performed really well in August, and I’d like to give credit where credit’s due! Our “Starting An AdWords Account From Scratch” series brought in the highest pageview day (8/10) for 2010-2011 with 3275 pageviews. That week was also the highest pageview week ever with 16,614! Our Ultimate Guide to Quality Score was the most-viewed article for the second month in a row, so we’re planning another “Ultimate Guide to….” If you have topic suggestions, please post in the comments. Last but not least, Bethany wrote a whopping eight blog posts last month, and her post about her top five AdWords filters was the second-most viewed.
ARTICLES FOR SEPTEMBER
We’ve noticed that the articles that seem to generate the most interest are the ones that cover core topics of PPC – things like keyword research or keyword bidding, which are both essential to understanding PPC well. So, two of our articles (out of 20-30) will focus on those core PPC topics this month! We’ll reveal our techniques for SQR (search query report) mining in adCenter, and we’ll look at the reliability of first page bids and how much weight you should put on them as an account manager. We’ll also have some coverage of a Bing/Yahoo! workshop in Chicago that Dave and Felicia attended yesterday. Hopefully, we’ll have some insightful and never-before-seen information for you!
BLOG SERIES
At Hanapin, we love the Display Network. Properly done, it can generate a huge amount of traffic and conversions and really help grow an account once your Search Network is largely tapped. Many advertisers shy away from it either because the leads aren’t that good (not necessarily true) or because they simply don’t know how to properly advertise on the Display Network. We’ll cover the basics that every PPC manager should know and cover some advanced techniques for improving performance. The potential traffic from the Display Network is larger than that of the Search Network, and if you’d like to learn how to fully taking advantage of it, look for this series toward the end of the month.
CUSTOM IMAGES
This month, we have four days that PPC Hero will be celebrating! September 13 is “Defy Superstition Day.” Dave already told me that he’s dressing up as Stevie Wonder for the day. He was such a good sport for SEO Boy, and I hope he’ll do the same for this one! September 21st is “World Gratitude Day,” and I know I’ll be appreciative of Dave dressing up as Stevie Wonder on the 13th. September 27th is Google’s birthday, and regardless of there being different days of when Google was founded we wouldn’t be here without them, so we’ll be celebrating them regardless!
Last but not least, we’ll have a special PPC Hero image to commemorate 9/11. It’s the 10th anniversary, and I still remember where I was when I heard the news. I was about a quarter mile away from work, driving north on 37 and listening to Bob & Tom. When the first plane hit, they weren’t sure what was happening. After the second plane hit, they said they assumed it was terrorists, and I actually thought how irresponsible it was to say that without verifying first. Wow, how small I acted, and who knew all of the terror that would happen that day.
On a much lighter note, I’d like to highlight the video our team posted last Sunday. It was for “Race Your Chair Around The Office Day!” and who knew that Abby and Bryan has such a rivalry! We work hard and like to have fun too, and we’re adding several more Account Executives to our team. Today is the last day to apply!
VIDEOS
Speaking of videos, Amanda has been doing a great job with “Whaddya’know Wednesdays” She rolled up her sleeves and with little direction, has been cranking out some great videos. In particular this month, she’ll look into the lives of PPC managers and how we prioritize our PPC tasks. The multi-interview format has been pretty popular so we’ll be following that same format for this one too! (BTW, we’re trying to secure the ppchero username for our YouTube channel to replace ppcheroblog. If anyone knows how to expedite a request and make sure the right people see it, please post in the comments. Thanks!)
As always, thank you for reading PPC Hero!
