A Beginner’s Guide to Pay-Per-Click: Quality Score

I used to work for adCenter support and you can always call them up to help you with some basics of PPC and running a good advertising campaign. Google now has a phone number so I hear, so they also might be of some assistance. Also, if your monthly budget is $500 or more you can get an 'optimization specialist' (buzzwords I never cared for) to work with you for up to 45 days on getting a campaign up and running (it's a free service).

Unfortunately all that won't help you much with finding an SEM, but if need be it'll allow you to effectively self-manage.

My recommendation is to go on LinkedIn and search for people you might be connected to who are working at a large advertising agency. Most of the large agencies pick a few non-profits to work with pro-bono in a consultative role. If you have a grant to provide the media budget, hopefully you can solicit some manpower from someone with a connection to your cause. If you want to, send me a DM on Twitter (see my profile) about your organization, and I'll see if I it makes sense to put it in the hands of someone in my org.

Try contacting the people behind that blog and other blogs related to the subject.

Hey something on HN I can actually help with haha. Now I won't build entire campaigns for you, but if you have specific questions, send me a pm or email and i'll try to help. I've been working in SEM for almost two years now since college, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it.

All good ideas. Thanks so much.

Have you explored http://catchafire.org/ ? They have an interesting volunteering model. I've seen them demo in the past and was impressed.

I'll help you out. Drop me an email to discuss

I'd recruit someone that is learning SEM, and just let them have a blast with your account (it is free, right?). It is hard to learn SEM without an account, and the only way to create an effective campaign is to spend a lot of time and try many different things.

IMO, for most organizations Google Grants is a waste of time. SEM is a useless tool for building "awareness", which is what most organizations try to achieve with Google Grants.

Hi vaughanhedges, If you still need some help, let me know. My agency works with several Google Grant clients and we also offer discounted rates for nonprofits. http://www.kinseystreet.com

Contact me and I will see what we can work out.

You should checkout the 'Pop Grants' at ROI Pop ( http://roipop.com ). We specialize in PPC campaign management for nonprofits.

There's actually quite a lot of little details that get speculated on in SEM. The fact is, until you test it yourself, you won't know for sure. One interesting thing about QS for phrase and broad is that the QS you see is not the real QS; it is only the QS for queries that match exactly to your keyword. The real QS is weighted appropriately, based on impression distribution.

I thought QS was independent of match type and account wide for that KW...