Are you referring to a CDN?  We use a CDN for our images.  However we are contemplating using the image url from the manufacturers website, instead of downloading and hosting the image on our domain.

We are building several sites for several clients which will be using images from the manufacturer.  Our dev team wants to insert the manufacturer's url for the images, instead of actually downloading the image and hosting on our server.  There are thousands of images, so downloading images to our server will be time consuming, so we are looking for a shortcut.... however I'm concerned this will cause other issues.

Is using manufactueresdomain.com/12345.jpg going to cause SEO issues?  will this generate Google penalties?  Since we are not able to control the image file name, we cannot optimize it.  We will add Alt text and Title tag for each image, but the file name is random characters.  How important is the file name for SEO?

Competitor campaigns work very well.  Just make sure you are targeting a competitor offering a similar product.

Brian gives good advice...I structure my competitor campaigns similarly..separate campaign...separate groups for each competitor.  Be careful about Dynamic Keyword Insertion....I've used it before in competitor campaigns, and it generated high CTR, but also generated complaints.  I do not use DKI for competitor campaigns any longer.

I found that I can get high CTR if I show why my product is great, not focused on my brand or my competitor.  ie. I will use Coke vs Pepsi in an example.  If I am Pepsi, and I am targeting keyword of "Coke"... My text ads would say thing like, Cold Refreshing Soda, Summer Soda Sale, Refreshing Beverage, #1 Taste Test Winner, Caffeine Free Beverage, etc.  Focus on the product, not the brand.  Why is the customer looking for this product? They are thirsty... show how your product can help the customer...they will click on your ad and buy your product.

My competitor campaigns perform very well...they are a great way to gain market share.

Hi Brett,

EGOL is correct...PPC is really competitive, especially for high volume / expensive products.  John is correct that Re-marketing, PLA and branded keywords are the most profitable.  I also recommend going after competitors names / product name.  PPC is the only way to rank for competitors terms, and since competitors keywords are targeting people looking to buy your type of product, they will convert well.

PPC takes time and money to determine the best keywords for you...it will also take some time/money to establish high Quality Scores, which are essential to the long term success of a PPC campaign.  However I always recommend my clients start with PPC because you can rank at the top of page 1 today; and SEO can take months to get to the top of page 1.  Even when you rank on page 1 organically, having multiple ads in the SERP will increase your overall clicks (1+1=2.25)  i.e. 1 PPC ad + 1 SEO ad = more clicks than  you would achieve with just 1 organic ad.

I also recommend using a high quality PPC manager who has the knowledge, experience and ppc tools to make your ppc campaigns profitable quickly.  There is a learning curve with PPC, as with SEO, or any other marketing niche.  Its better to use a ppc manager who is already over the learning curve. You should also look for a manager that uses Marin Software to manage their campaigns...Marin's bidding algorithm optimizes keyword bids better than any person can.  A person can't optimize millions of keyword bids daily...that's what computers / PPC software is for.

If you would consider working with a PPC manager, please private message me.  I offer a free AdWords review, no strings attached.  To demonstrate my PPC skills, I will give you a handful of actionable ideas that will improve your ppc campaigns.  If you think I am worthy of managing your PPC campaigns, we can start a marketing relationship. If not, you will have a handful of PPC strategies that will improve your campaigns.

Have a great day

Branden

Interesting...I deactivated Platinum SEO plugin and the blog page title changed to "homepage title | Blog page title"

I then reactivated the Platinum SEO plugin and the blog title went to 'homepage title"

Any solutions? ideas?   What SEO plugin did you switch to?

Hey David,

I am using Platinum SEO plugin.

the url of the page in question is www.jkradvertising.com/blog

I have an issue with a few page titles not matching the title I have In WordPress.  I have 2 pages, blog & creative gallery, that show the homepage title, which is causing duplicate title errors.  This has been going on for 5 weeks, so its not an a crawl issue.  Any ideas what could cause this?

To clarify, I have the page title set in WP, and I checked "Disable PSP title format on this page/post:"...but this page is still showing the homepage title.  Is there an additional title setting for a page in WP?

Hi Meghan,

If you want to change bidding by location, you will first need to add lots of cities to your campaign.  Then let the campaign run for a while, so you can accumulate data for each city.  Once you have clicks & conversions for several cities, you will be able to make decisions about conversion rates for each city.  Does this make sense?

After time goes by and you have enough data, just click on the campaign >>  settings>>>  locations.  Do you see the column 'bid adjustment"?  This is where you +/- bids for that location.

Branden

If you want to keep things simple, just go into settings and add more countries to your targeted locations.  However if you want to be able to control separated budgets & bids for each country, I recommenced that you have separate campaigns for each country.  Just create a new campaign, copy/paste your current keywords & text ads into the new campaign.  This will allow you to have separate budgets & bids for each country, which should result in better performing campaigns.   I also recommend that you exclude countries that you are not targeting (both the high risk countries you mentioned, and other countries that you do not want to target).

If you want to make your campaign perform even better, I recommend that you take advantage of the enhanced campaigns 'bidding by location'.  This will allow you to +/- bids based on location.  For example if you have a higher conversion in 1 city, you will want to increase keyword bids in that city.  To be able to achieve this, you need to be targeting lots of cities, not just the entire country.  It will take some time to add all of the major cities in a country, but this will allow you to +/- bids for each city, which is a major improvement.