It’s no secret that Ben Kirshner is an SEM whiz (we love spreading his tips, like in this video). But today, in his presentation at eTail West, 2012, the CoffeeforLess.com founder and Elite SEM CEO distilled his tips into a takeaway treasure trove, sharing 35 ways that online retailers can make more money from their Google Adwords and Bing Accounts.

CoffeeforLess.com homepage, 2/27/12

Below is the full list – all 35 of them. Take a deep breath, take a seat, take a sip of coffee, and dive into these bad boys. Surely at least two or three of them will help you in your quest for SEM greatness.

SEGMENT, SEGMENT, SEGMENT

1. Don’t forget desktops, mobile devices and tablets in the same campaign, separate them!

2. Create separate campaigns for brand and exact match keywords. Often times, you will find exact match keywords perform better so you want to have the option to limit the money spent on broad match keywords and allocate as much as possible to exact match.

3. Use Google Adwords segmenting tool.

4. If opted into the Google Display Network, make sure it is also in its own campaign as
performance will vary from search!

USE THE DIMENSIONS TAB

5. Day of week analysis – use the dimensions tab (on Saturday and Sunday you might want to raise your bid by 10%, for instance.)

6. Conduct time of day analysis

7. Do geographic location anaylsis

RUN SEARCH QUERY REPORTS

8. Find/add broad match negative keywords. -Keyword

9. Find/add exact match negative keywords. [Keyword]

10. Find/add phrase match negative keywords. “Keyword”

11. Look for ways to expand keywords within existing ad groups.

12. Look for new ad group themes and ideas.

UTILIZE AD EXTENSIONS

13. Implement call extensions.

14. Implement sitelinks.

15. Add product extensions.

16. Add location extensions.

17. Add social extensions.

TEST NEW FEATURES, TOOLS, AND USE OUTSIDE-THE-BOX STRATEGIES

18. Test broad match modifier for branded campaigns.

19. Try bidding on competitor brand names as keywords. (Separate campaign.)

20. Utilize Google Adwords Editor for bulk changes, optimizations and new capaign launches.

21. Add typos of main, high-traffic terms using a typo tool: http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi

IMPROVE REMARKETING EFFORTS

22. Create audience of site visitors that have already converted, and exclude them from your remarketing audience.

23. Set impression cap to avoid over-saturating prospects.

24. Further segment existing audiences.

“Most people outside this room think remarketing is super creapy and spooky – it actually works really well!,” said Kirshner. “You’ll start to see dynamic remarketing in Google soon – it’s coming down the pipe.”

ENHANCE AD COPY

25. A|B test ad copy.

26. Include keyword in display URL.

27. Ensure all ads are using call to action phrases.

28. Use trademark symbols to establish credibility on branded terms.

29. Capitalize the first letter of each word.

30. Use exclamation points!

31. Create custom landing pages.

32. Advertise price in ad text.

OPTIMIZE GOOGLE DISPLAY NETWORK

33. Run placement performance reports to identify and exclude your ads from showing on poor-performing and irrelevant sites in the GDN.

34. Add negative keywords to display campaigns if you notice Google showing your ads on groups of irrelevant sites with the same theme.

35. Ad groups should be granular and contain no more than six to eight keywords each. You shouldn’t have 30 keywords in an ad group.

Phew! Now, print this out and circle five to focus on this year. Accomplish three consistently and you’re bound to see some positive results.