Archive for the ‘pay-per-click’ category
Recent Google AdWords Improvements that Make Advertisers’ Lives Easier
At Work Media, what we do can be broadly classified as “Internet marketing,” and underneath the Internet marketing umbrella it breaks down into a few more specific areas such as search engine optimization (“SEO”), social media management, and paid search. Over on the SEO side, things are pretty chaotic these days. Google is whacking websites left and right, causing people in our line of work to scramble to make adjustments to how we do things to salvage our clients’ (and our own) rankings. However, while Google continues making it harder and harder to figure out how to get high organic search engine rankings, the company continues to make improvements to its paid search platform that make it easier and more efficient to manage paid search campaigns (you don’t think it could be that Google REALLY wants you to spend money with them to get your site to appear, do you?). Certain policies notwithstanding (a subject for another day), from a technological standpoint, the Google AdWords platform is more robust and powerful than ever. So let’s talk about some of the newer features that Google has implemented, or will soon be implementing, that make your life as an advertiser easier.
Improved exact and phrase match. Soon, Google will display your ad for an exact match or phrase match keyword even if there is a slight variation in the search query if it is clear that the person was searching for the same thing. These include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stem variants and abbreviations. For example, if the keyword is “personal injury lawyer,” but the actual search query is “personel (note the misspelling) injury lawyer” or “personal injury lawyers (plural),” then it will display. Google was even considerate enough to program the system so that only exact, exact matches affect your keyword quality score.
Improved ad rotation. This is one of the things that has always bugged me about AdWords, and I am thrilled that Google has improved this. Google has always encouraged advertisers to use ad rotation that automatically displays the ads that have the highest click-through rates. But that mechanism always kicked in way too early. A like to see LOTS of data to know FOR SURE that one ad is a better performer than the other, yet Google would always start choking ads before they had been exposed to enough impressions. So now Google is about to unveil an improved ad rotation that first gives equal rotation to all ads for 30 days, and then begins making adjustments based on click-through rates. Major improvement.
Mobile app links in mobile ads. If you have a mobile app, you can link to it from ads that appear on mobile devices. This is a great opportunity to increase your prospective customers’ level of involvement with your company. If you can get them using your app, they could see your company name every day, or at least when the right occasion arises.
Smarter keyword research. The Google keyword tool will now automatically build out distinct sets of keywords to use as the foundation of ad groups based on the keywords returned from your query. While I would certainly look at the suggested ad groups with a critical eye, this is a way to quickly split out your keywords into appropriate ad groups, or just to get a campaign built out if you are short on time.
Google seems to be making changes to their AdWords platform at an increasingly rapid rate. The best way to keep up with new features is to check out the AdWords blog at http://adwords.blogspot.com/. Most of the newest changes coming out are very smart features designed to help you use the platform more effectively, so stay informed about what is possible and take advantage of any new feature that makes sense for your situation.
Why Your Reported AdWords Conversion Data Differs from Your Analytics Data
One thing that mystifies a lot of people who engage in ecommerce using Google AdWords as an online marketing tool is why the conversion data (including revenue) reported by AdWords tends to differ so much from the data shown in their Google Analytics account. We recently (like, yesterday) had to explain this to a client, so it seemed like information that would be good to share.
AdWords places a cookie on the user’s computer when they click on an ad so that it can track a conversion back to the ad for reporting. Analytics does the same thing. However, with analytics, if the user visits various other websites or clicks on any other ads, analytics will associate the revenue with the LAST thing the person did. AdWords still reports it all the way back to the ad, even if they have clicked on other ads or done any number of other things. Up to 30 days, at which point the AdWords cookie expires. To put it technically, AdWords uses “first attribution,” whereas Analytics uses “last attribution.”
So in Analytics, some of the revenue generated after a visitor clicked the ad is being reported as coming from another source. In addition, AdWords actually back-dates revenue to the date that the original click occurred, even if the conversion happened the next month. For this reason, the revenue reported by AdWords for a particular month may actually increase if you look at the report at a later date. To see this effect closer, if you log into AdWords and then go to Tools/Conversions, and look at the list of conversions, each one has a little text balloon that you can mouse over that shows you the “last reported conversion date.” If you look at that data some time after the end of the month, you may notice conversions showing up for that month that actually occurred the following month because that is when the click occurred. And that is why the total revenue reported by AdWords for a given month may increase over time. This does not happen in Analytics because it only shows revenue when the conversion actually happens.
As far as total revenue from all sources, it should be a wash. But the revenue and conversions reported by AdWords reflects the actual number of transactions that occurred after someone clicked on an ad in Google.
So there you have it! Mystery solved. Which one is more accurate? If you are most interested strictly in AdWords conversions, go with the AdWords data. But for a more “big picture” view, go with Analytics.
Four AdWords Strategies You May Not Be Using
Despite what you hear these days about Facebook domination, search engine marketing is alive and well. Since I’ve got AdWords on my mind, I thought I would take this opportunity to pass along some strategies that might help you be more successful using Google to promote your business.
1. Bid high in the beginning. I’ll admit that I hate to make this recommendation. Higher bids just make Google that much richer. But a big part of your Quality Score (a metric Google uses to rank competing ads) is your historical click-through ratio (“CTR”). How do you generate a high CTR? Assuming you’ve done everything else right (with a strong congruency between the keyword, ad and landing page), a higher CTR will get your ad positioned higher at a lower bid. So the idea is that you bid high at the start to accrue a high CTR and then back off of your bid over time. I should point out, however, that if your keywords and ads are not well-chosen, this strategy will only cost you money.
2. Use alerts. Alerts are emails that Google will send to you when some aspect of your account meets some particular criteria. For example, if an ad group’s click-through ratio declines by X%, Google will alert you via an email so that you can make whatever adjustments are necessary. These devices help you stay on top of your account.
3. Track your conversions. Conversion tracking is critical. Before you even think about starting up a pay-per-click account, you need to decide exactly what action it is you want the visitors to your website to take, and how you are going to measure that action. If you are selling products directly from your website, this should be a no-brainer. If you are not selling products directly, then you may have to be inventive. Create something that people want to view or download, which will create a conversion event that can be tracked back to a specific click for a specific keyword and ad.
4. Make use of dynamic keyword insertion. This is a very easy way to make your ads more effective, and something I don’t see many amateurs doing. Having the exact search term that triggered your ad appear in the ad copy causes Google to highlight the keyword in your ad. People also like to click on ads that contain their exact search term. So it is often a good strategy to insert the search term into the ad headline or body. However, if the search term is too long to fit in the allotted space (such as the 25 characters you are allowed for the headline), then the ad will not show unless you supply an alternate keyword to use in its place. The Google syntax for inserting a dynamic keyword makes this quite easy: {KeyWord:Default keyword}
For example, let’s say you own a hotel in Orlando, Florida. You might use something like this as your headline: {KeyWord:Orlando Florida Hotel}. So if someone searches for “Orlando hotel,” then the headline in your ad would be “Orland hotel.” But if the person searches for “The best four star Orlando Florida hotel,” then the headline will be “Orlando Florida Hotel” because the search term contains too many characters.
Google has made so many changes to the AdWords interface in the last couple of years that we have barely scratched the surface of features and strategies that can help make your account more successful. But these are four tips that could make a profound impact on your AdWords performance.
Watch Your Capital Letters
Here is something most people reading this probably don’t know because it doesn’t make a lick of sense: Google treats duplicate keywords as separate if they have different capitalization. For example:
PPC
ppc
These two words would be considered different keywords even if they were both in the same ad group. So you might say…what’s the big deal? Here’s the problem. It has been our experience that there are times when Google seems to greatly favor keywords that are all lower case. It would not be unusual for the first keyword above to have a quality score of 5 while the lower case version had a quality score of 10.
Given that you don’t really know which keyword will trigger your ad, it is best to always use the version which might give you an advantage in ad positioning. So even if you decide to experiment to see what happens with capitalized versions, always test the lower case version as well.
Another problem with having keywords in your ad groups that are the same except for capitalization is that it aids in making your account more unwieldy and difficult to manage. Accounts that are fine-tuned to the best (and smallest) set of keywords are much easier to manage, so we suggest only using lower case keywords, but have each in your account as both exact and broad match.
This is just one example of how something that seems very insignificant can have an impact on your overall paid search account performance. It is important to pay attention to the details.
Got questions about search engine marketing? Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
A Lesson in Keywords: How Many Keywords Do You Need?
There is a client we have worked with for a long time who has a Google AdWords campaign that has not performed as well for parts of this year as it has in the past. In general, 2009 was somewhat of a difficult year due to increased competition for paid search traffic and poor economic conditions. In other words, there have been more advertisers chasing fewer customers. And this particular client definitely experienced the effects of that.
After trying many different strategies (account keyword expansion, keyword contraction, higher ad positioning, ad split-testing, etc.) we’ve finally stripped the account down to the barebones.
We’re now only bidding on four keywords. I’m really not a big fan of bidding on so few keywords. It’s the whole “eggs in one basket” thing. But in this case, looking backward, I can see that if we had concentrated our client’s budget on that very small set of keywords, our performance over the last year would have been substantially better. We bid on many, many more than just four keywords. Throughout the year, we bid on fewer and fewer. And finally, this month, we’re down to the final four contestants.
Should we go down to a single keyword? In theory, if you place all of your budget on the number one performing keyword, then all else equal, you will maximize the performance of your paid search account, up to the point where you run out of traffic. So there’s one problem with this strategy. It is best employed in a limited budget situation.
If you have $10 thousand to spend, but bidding on a single or very few keywords only soaks up $1 thousand of your budget, there are likely many more opportunities you could be exploiting by spreading your budget around. But if you only have $1 thousand to start with, then spending the entire $1 thousand on a single keyword makes sense if it provides the best return on your investment.
Another problem is that keyword performance does tend to fluctuate. If you’re all in on a single keyword, then if conditions change and that keyword’s performance declines, your overall account performance will decline right along with it. So in our case, I don’t see us dropping to a single keyword. We will stick with the four keyword basket, but you better believe if we start to see a trend of declining performance, we will open up some other keywords.
I guess the core lesson here is the importance of allocating your budget so that more of your budget is consumed by keywords that provide the best return for your advertising dollars. The only way to do that is by carefully examining your historical keyword performance. One caveat is that keyword performance can be affected by where your ads are positioned, so your analysis will be most accurate if your ad positioning is relatively steady across keywords.
Paid search management sometimes requires some imagination, and it definitely requires a watchful eye. Work Media have a lot of experience doing this stuff, and we’re pretty dang good at it. We would welcome the opportunity to work with you on your search engine marketing. Contact us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.
Same Old Problems with Microsoft Paid Search
I really want Microsoft to be successful in the paid search business. I think it would be wonderful for all of us involved in the search engine marketing game if Google had some viable competition for search engine ads. Unfortunately, Microsoft continues to shoot themselves in the foot.
For example…
We have a new client for whom we are running paid search ads on Microsoft’s adCenter platform. But Microsoft insists on billing for paid search in $50 increments. As a result, our client has his credit card revoked by his credit card company because they thought it was suspicious that his card kept getting charged $50 at a time.
This is the SECOND client for whom we have had this same problem! Why does Microsoft insist on billing this way? They are the largest software company in the world…and they can’t figure out how to charge someone’s credit card for more than $50?
It makes my company look bad when this happens because we have to explain the whole problem to our client, tell them why Microsoft sucks so bad, have them go and get another credit card, etc.
Come on, Microsoft…
You’ve been promoting the hell out of Bing, spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to boost your search engine business…
Fix your billing!
Google’s New Automatic Matching Feature: Good for Google, Good for the Advertiser?
Google has a new AdWords feature that is available as a beta trial to certain advertisers. It will probably be rolled out to all users within the next few weeks. The feature is called automatic matching.
Automatic matching is intended to help you capture relevant traffic that you may have missed based on your campaign keyword lists. When it is activated, Google analyzes your account and begins showing your ads for search queries that you have not specified as keywords.
The feature is not supposed to effect any of your existing keywords. In other words, keywords you have set up in your account should not get robbed of traffic in order for the system to automatically display your ads for other keywords. The point is to display your ads for alternate keywords whenever you have budget left over.
This is obviously a good thing for Google because it keeps your ads online for more keywords, which means more clicks and more revenue for them.
But is it good for advertisers?
Maybe, maybe not. You don’t really want to relinquish control of your account to Google. That’s asking for disaster. BUT…if you have budget left over every month and would rather have your ads running than not max out your budget, then this is a way to make that happen.
If you have the feature available, and you are currently not spending all of your budget, then you may want to give it a try. BUT…
Watch your numbers, especially your cost per conversion. If your cost per conversion rises to an unacceptable level because of extra money being consumed by automatic matching ads, then you should turn the feature off immediately.
Here are a couple of web pages that contain good information about pay per click placement:
http://www.zimbio.com/placing-ppc-ads/articles/2/Pay+per+Click+Placement+Control+Yes+Follow
Useful New Google AdWords Features
Google has a couple of new features that you should check out. The first is a new keyword research tool that analyzes a supplied web site URL and seed keyword to show keywords that might be relevant for promoting that site (that are not already being used), along with traffic and bid data for each keyword. The main caveat is that you must be an existing advertiser. It’s a great way to instantly generate a list of new keywords for a particular landing page along with the data you need to make decisions regarding what keywords to use and how much to bid. It’s a great tool for advertisers, and certainly a great tool for Google since it will encourage bidding on more keywords.
The URL to try it out is: http://google.com/sktool/.
Another new feature is that Google has increased the number of unique results returned for a query report. These are reports that show you the actual search terms that are triggering your Google AdWords ads. Historically, the reports have always featured line items labeled “Other queries” that contained a large portion of the total queries. Now, there should be fewer results included in the Other queries line and more unique keyword results. This increases the knowledge that advertisers have about their Google accounts, improving their ability to make adjustments based on performance data.
Google is constantly releasing new features. The better you understand these features, the better you will be able to manage your account and maximize your AdWords performance.
Here are a couple more links to pages devoted to the topic of law firm Internet marketing:
http://lawyerwebsitemarketing.wetpaint.com/
Last night I read an article about American Express. Apparently, it is becoming a bank holding company, which will allow it to take deposits as well as give it access to government rescue programs. Isn’t that nice?
They also laid off 7 thousand workers last month. So yeah, American Express is going down the toilet, and based on the way the company treats its customers, I’m fine with it. Like I said yesterday, we will no longer do business with American Express. I advise you to do the same, lest you get screwed like we did.
OK, now we’ll talk about something related to Internet marketing.
Most businesses really don’t understand the concept of targeting as it applies to search engine marketing. SEM is a science of specificity. Forget about hoping that your web site just magically appears for any search related to your business. You have to choose specific keywords and then do specific things to cause your site to appear for those keywords.
The rule of specificity also applies to paid search. Don’t just run your PPC campaigns wide open, all the time, to every possible set of eyeballs. Pick your battles. You have lots of targeting options: by time of day, day of week, by geographic market. For content ads, you can even target by things like age and gender. The more finely you target your paid search campaigns, the better will be your results.
So don’t think in terms of generalities. Think in terms of specifics. You will get much better results and a higher return on your investment.
Here are a couple of articles that deal with PPC targeting in relation to the promotion of law firm web sites:
http://targeting-search-marketing-attorney.wetpaint.com/
http://www.zimbio.com/sem-lawyer-targeting/articles/2/Using+Targeting+Improve+Attorney+Search+Engine