PPC Academy: A One-Year Paid Search Course

First published in 2010, PPC Academy is a complete guide to getting started in pay-per-click (PPC) based search advertising, covering a wide range of paid search tips, tools and tactics. a

Due to the constantly evolving nature of  paid search platforms, some of the example PPC tools and dashboards may have changed, but the basic concepts and fundamentals still apply. PPC Academy teaches all of the basics needed to build, steward and optimize a paid search account following industry best practices.

Stay on top of the most recent SEM news and check How To: PPC for more recent tips and tactics.

Get Started With PPC Academy

• View the PPC Academy: Complete Course Table of Contents

Even though this is meant to be a complete manual for beginners, there will be plenty of advanced tips and tricks for search veterans. Even if you have been doing paid search for some time, you may find this guide to be a good refresher course.

The first few posts will just focus on the basics: what paid search is, some of the key definitions, and who are its players, tools, and platforms. Then, for the rest of the year, I’ll move onto the practical execution of a paid search account via the various phases of:

• Immersion
• Research
• Building
• Launching
• Stewardship
• Reporting
• Testing & optimization

PPC Academy will not only cover the fundamentals of paid search management, but also highlight technology and tactics that are the hallmarks of top paid search success stories. As well, it will introduce best-practice and time-saving techniques that will help you fly through your paid search tasks like a pro.

Vital to the value of this course will be the comments section where past readers asked questions of each other, share tips and debate each week’s topic. A question will be asked at the end of each post to help facilitate this feedback.

This week’s question: “Which of the paid search phases above do you most want to learn more about and why?”