That’s right, this store is named “Utah Idaho Supply Map World” and is located in Lehi, UT. #fail
Keyword Stuffing In Real Life (Funny Pic)
March 31, 2010 By 3 Comments
That’s right, this store is named “Utah Idaho Supply Map World” and is located in Lehi, UT. #fail
10 Ways to Increase Your Google Quality Score for Your PPC Campaign (Guest Post)
March 30, 2010 By 3 Comments
Quality score plays a key role in the minimum cost per click in your pay per click campaigns. It also is integral in the position of your search results; if it’s too low, your ad might not even display. Since it’s such a fundamental aspect of PPC campaigns, it makes sense to optimize it as much as possible.
But what is quality score? Google defines quality score as, “the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.” This is practically the same for the other first tier PPC networks, including Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter.
Here are 10 ways you can improve the “basis for measuring” your campaign. This article will focus on Google Adwords quality score. Adwords accounts show scores as “Great,” “OK” or “Poor,” reflecting the other options in Yahoo! Panama. Read on to learn how to be “Great!”
1: Split Your Keywords into Smaller, More Targeted Ad Groups.
Adwords comes with a built-in keyword grouper tool that will group keywords into 15 groups of 20 related words. Take advantage of this to make targeted ad groups for your campaign.
2: Create Ad Copy That’s Relevant to Each Ad Group.
The copy of the pages these PPC campaigns direct to must remain relevant to the targeted keywords used in the ad groups. Titles in the copy should be upper case and implement keywords.
3: Optimize Creatives.
Use different verbs and calls to action in each ad group. This will let you test all the ad groups for the most effective creative. This will allow you to delete the others. Weed out what works and doesn’t work and you will find an increase in the campaign click rate. Optimizing your creatives is a never ending process; even an extra 0.01% CTR is a bonus, and it’s only found through a little tweaking.
4: Experiment with Matching Options.
Use broad match, exact match, and phrase match keywords in each ad group to find out which of the three has a better quality score. Delete whichever option isn’t working out.
5: Gets Your Hands in Link Building and SEO.
Once you have your PCC campaign on its way, run a deep linking building campaign with the highest performing keywords for both volume and conversion rate. This will help your quality score and will also help your organic SEO campaign in the coming months.
6: Implement More Keywords into the Copy.
Take a moment to implement most of the successful keywords you’ve discovered thus far into the copy.
7: Split Test Landing Pages.
Set up several landing pages and test the different conversion rates. Google Analytics can make a write up on the major elements affecting your conversions. This multi variant testing and optimizing is too complex to elaborate upon in this article, but it would benefit any PPC campaign to learn how to master this step.
8: Check Your Meta Tags.
Add the keywords with the best performance and conversion to the meta tags of each page. Also, place the exact ad text from the best performing creative in the meta’s description. The best keyword should go into the title tag.
9: Implement the Essentials into Your Site.
Make sure your site has a privacy policy somewhere in the header or footer. Additional pages worth consideration are: about us; terms and conditions; newsletters; and contact us.
10: Double Check Google’s Relevancy.
The Site-Related Keywords tool provided by Google will check that the landing page is relevant to the keywords being targeted. Google should see each landing page as VERY related to the keywords implemented throughout the PPC campaign.
By following this strategy, your keywords should go from “Poor” to “Great” and your cost per click costs should drop down extensively. Make sure to delete any keywords with a poor quality score after a month of working on your PPC campaign; cutting off the excess fat will lead to a lean and successful pay per click strategy!
About the Author
Jessica Kerr is an SEO and SEM specialist from Southern California. Her area of expertise is in the education industry. She enjoys reading international news, freelance writing for a variety of different columns, and walking her dog. Contact Jessica at jessicakerr@yahoo.com.
Landing Page Copywriting Like a Pro
March 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Roberta Rosenberg is one of the best copywriters in the business and yesterday she gave 10 tips on how to write awesome landing page copy. Here are my top 3:
Copy That Converts
- Write in the 2nd person – This means using words like You and Your instead of I and We. By default this will help you write with you user in mind. How a feature helps them. What benefits your product/service confers upon them, etc.
- Write for clarity and persuasion – No matter how witty or clever you think your copy is, it will convert better if it’s clear and persuasive. If you find yourself admiring your writing prowess, you need to rewrite it. And also, if you need even more simple guidelines remember that Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments trumpets the phrase “Clarity trumps persuasion” (and here’s the data to support his claim).
- Don’t ask for what you don’t need – How many fields do your forms have? Do you need every single one (emphasis on need, not want)? Could you get that information during a followup call instead?
Conversion Rate Webinars You Shouldn’t Miss
March 24, 2010 By 1 Comment
Today I attended a couple of fantastic webinars. The first was put on by ion interactive titled “Copy that Converts” with Roberta Rosenberg. The second was a Marketing Experiments webinar titled “Social Media Marketing in 4 Steps” and presented a road map for any business that is using or is going to use social media in their marketing mix. Both were fantastic, but there are more on the way.
Upcoming Webinars
Marketing Experiments runs a new webinar every two weeks. The site doesn’t have registration for the next one live yet, but I highly recommend their free subscription. You get access to over $10 million dollars worth of research (which includes months worth of webinars, all archived and searchable) and you’ll be notified of upcoming webinars. These guys are a research company and back up everything they say with test and rock-solid metrics.
Ion interactive has taken it a step further and are offering a month’s worth of conversion optimization webinars. Below are the topics with links directly to the registration page:
- B2B Conversion Optimization: From the Search Query to the Landing Page – Register
- Landing Page Makeovers – Register
- Landing Page Analytics 101 – Register
- Landing Page Bloopers & Best Practices – Register
If you know of some other webinars, add them in the comments below.
PS If you want a chance at winning a free ticket to a Marketing Experiments live training, comment on Boris Grinkot’s latest blog post here.
The Holy Grail of Search (Guest Post)
March 23, 2010 By 2 Comments
In the online world, the hunt for a pure source to heal all wounds is found, like the Holy Grail, in the journey. In online search, however, the Holy Grail isn’t a cup used to consume holy water, but rather a process of testing and optimizing. Just like in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which centers on a search for the Holy Grail, it is important to know who can be trusted and when they can be trusted.
In the paid search market, the number of experts is growing at an increasing rate, but you should be careful of who you trust and when you trust them.
Account Structure: It might seem like a pretty straightforward topic. An Adwords account is structured hierarchically starting with an account, which branches into up to 25 active campaigns, with each campaign having between 1 and 100 active ad groups. Setting up your account in a sophisticated way can save you big dollars and drive your quality scores higher. Two areas impacting quality score most heavily are:
- Relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
- Relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
Most search marketers will tell you that the best way to optimize account structure is to take your best keywords and separate them into their own ad groups, so that ad copy and keywords are most relevantly matched for highest CTRs and quality scores (and by default, lower per-click costs). While I won’t say that isn’t a good approach, you need to fully understand both sides of this coin to see which is most valuable to your search program. Let me layout 3 scenarios:
Scenario 1: An account’s top keyword (performance and volume) has a quality score of 10 and is in an ad group with semi-relevant terms that have average QS of 6. The top keyword makes up 50% of the total query volume for the entire ad group. Overall, the ad group pays $0.50 / click and receives 10,000 clicks / month (total cost of $5,000) and converts those clicks at 10%. This scenario creates 1,000 conversions at a $5 cost per conversion.
Scenario 2: To improve quality score, the ad group in Scenario 1 is broken down into two ad groups. Ad group 1 is a one-word ad group with the account’s top keyword. Ad group 2 has all other keywords from scenario 1. Ad group 1 has a QS of 10, receives 5,500 clicks (10% lift from scenario 1) at $0.60 / click ($3,300) and converts at 12% (660 conversions) at a $5 cost per conversion. Ad group 2 has an average QS of 4, receives 4,500 clicks (a 10% decline) at $0.50 / click ($2,250) and converts at 7% (315 conversions) at a $7.15 cost per conversion. Overall, this scenario produces 25 fewer conversions at $5.70 cost per conversion.
Scenario 3: Scenario 3 is similar to Scenario 2, but is an example where the top keyword is a larger percent (80%) of total volume; this changes the outcome. Ad group 1 is a one-word ad group with the account’s top keyword. Ad group 2 has all other keywords from scenario 1. Ad group 1 has a QS of 10, receives 8,800 clicks (10% lift from scenario 1) at $0.50 / click ($4, 400) and converts at 12% (1056 conversions) at a $4.17 cost per conversion. Ad group 2 has anaverage QS of 3, receives 1,800 clicks (a 10% decline) at $0.55 / click ($990) and converts at 6% (108 conversions) at a $9.17 cost per conversion. Overall, this scenario produces 164 more conversions at $4.63 cost per conversion.
As you can see from the examples above, things aren’t always so cut-and-dry. There are times when the “experts” are right and there are times when going against the grain is the best idea. But don’t trust me–trust your tests.
To learn more about paid search techniques evangelized by the Siftable search marketing team, visit our search blog written by James Green.
Mining PPC Campaign Keywords from Underutilized Sources
March 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This post was written by Matthew Umbro from http://theppcblog.com. Matthew has been in the PPC industry since August 2007 and has earned his Google AdWords and MSN adExcellence certifications. He can be reached via email at matt@theppcblog.com or through Twitter @Matt_Umbro
Mining PPC Campaign Keywords from Underutilized Sources
There comes a point in most pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns where you are much less frequently adding in new keywords. After running a campaign for several months, the “keyword well” can dry up. You’re doing all the right things – you have used all the keyword research tools, harvested keywords from your site (and competitors’), and created Search Query Performance reports – but it seems that there are no more keywords to purchase. You still want to add more keywords to your campaign in order to get a greater number of ad impressions, but you don’t know where to find them.
More keywords can be found, but the key is that you have to know where to look. The list below offers four sources for new PPC campaign keywords. It is important to note that many of the keywords you find from these sources will be niche terms and may not have high search volumes, but they will help to capture more ad impressions.
Industry Blogs and Articles
Sites like eweek.com and informationweek.com have a wealth of great information. Aside from industry news concerning several verticals, they also contain blogs from some very knowledgeable industry representatives. These sites speak to the ins and outs of the industry and will help you in your quest to find highly relevant keywords and will introduce you to new terms that are starting to be used within the industry.
Site Form Submissions
Most website forms contain a comments field. Similar to a Search Query Performance report, this field allows users to tell you exactly what they are looking for when they come to your site. For example, say you are bidding on terms related to “baseball cleats,” but a user refers to this item as “baseball shoes” in the comments field. This keyword might have never entered your mind. Now you not only have a new keyword, but a theme to expand upon.
Site Search
Many sites make use of an internal search engine, but it is alarming that not everyone reviews the queries that are being entered. By using this feature, users are directly telling you what they are looking for! Whereas keyword tools will give you estimated search volumes based on historical data, the site search report gives you hard data on what was actually searched on your site. Aside from grabbing keywords from this report, you can also use it to determine any additional pages you might need on the site.
Competitor Email Campaigns
Many companies have email marketing campaigns, and most likely that includes your competitors as well. One way to find out what keywords they are using in their campaigns is to sign up to receive their emails. You may find that they use different variations of your keywords or are using terms that you had not thought of previously. Either way, mining keywords from these emails is worthwhile.
These four keyword sources are not utilized to the extent that they can be. By digging a bit deeper and by utilizing these resources, you can find new keywords to add to your PPC campaign, which will help you to secure additional ad impressions. Ultimately, the more times your ads shows up for relevant searches, the better your chances are of getting more conversions.
Where else do you find new PPC campaign keywords?
Google Conversion Room Tutorials
March 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
If you’ve talked about conversion rate optimization, you’ve likely heard about Google’s Website Optimizer (GWO). And if you’re considering using GWO here is a resource you should definitely spend a few minutes with: Google’s Conversion Room blog. This blog offers “tips on tracking and improving conversions online” but I wanted to point out a specific resource.
Online Tutorials
Today’s post from the Conversion Room talks about several online tutorials from the AdWords Online Classroom. A couple titles that might be of interest to you include “Maximise your advertising ROI with Conversion Optimiser” and “Get the most from your website with Website Optimiser”. Many of the courses are available on-demand for free and they also have a lineup of live sessions throughout the month. If you need a little extra push to get your conversion optimization efforts started, take one of these courses.
Mobile PPC On The Rise
March 11, 2010 By 3 Comments
Since AdWords allowed advertisers to specifically target “smartphone” users, mobile PPC has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention. So why all the fuss?
Mobile Is a Horse of a Different Color
Typical PPC ads reach users in two ways. They show up on search engine results pages (and I’m lumping in search partners here) or as AdSense ads on content pages of other sites. The user sees these ads in a standard browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari) while seated in front of a computer. They’re on the internet for a reason and you can decipher at least some intent with keywords and ad copy. This is the PPC world in a nutshell and it’s awesome for people who know what they’re doing. But mobile doesn’t fit the mold.
Mobile users see PPC ads (and landing pages) in a much different way. First, the screen is much smaller. For some phones this means that the #1 ad on Google's SERPs is 20-25% of the space above the fold. For other phones this means that many users will never even see your ad even though you got an "impression." Second, smartphones have browsers that do all kinds of weird things. Some can handle Flash, some can't. Some have Javascript enabled, some don't. Some are full HTML browsers, some aren't. So not only could your PPC ads being shown in vastly different ways, but imagine what is happening to your landing pages. That video or Flash content may be worthless. Your images might be taking too long to download. As you can see, mobile needs to be treated differently.
Is It Worth the Effort?
The AdWords blog has a case study from Razorfish that shows a 7.5% lower cost/conversion on mobile advertising and a conversion rate boost of 9.3% for their mobile-specific ad copy. So in this situation, yes, the effort definitely paid off. If you’re still not convinced, here are the most critical areas to consider:
- Intent – Mobile users are probably looking at your site for different reasons than a desktop user. They may be looking for a phone number, address or hours. They likely won’t be going through a lot of page views (3G is fast, but not that fast) so think of what tasks that eliminates and what is left.
- User Experience – I will reiterate, smartphones are slower than computers so consider a mobile-friendly subdomain (ie http://m.linkedin.com) to serve a better user experience.
- Situation – The definition is in the name: MOBILE. These users are seeing and clicking your ads in a much different physical situation. Speak to that in your messaging.
What have been your experiences with mobile?
Wanted: PPC or CRO Guest Posts
March 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Recently I reviewed my New Year’s resolutions (yes, I do those) and realized that I was falling behind on my goals for Righteous Marketing. Therefore, please accept my public apology and help me rectify one of my major goals.
The Goal
I said I would post 3 times/week (which I have been doing) but I also said I would get one guest post each month (which I haven’t been doing). So this is a call for guest posts and here are some guidelines:
- Topic: Anything PPC or CRO related
- Length: 250+ words, pictures always help
- Links: Link to anything legit, I’m not picky
- Byline: Yes. Gotta give yourself some love
Last year, my most read post was a guest post, so I’m taking that as a sign that you like to see some variety. So, first things first, I need a post for March and it’s first come first serve. After that we’ll work something out (I wouldn’t be opposed to doing a couple guest post each month either.) If you’re interested send an email to robert “at” righteousmarketing “dot” com or you can reach me on Twitter here: @robert_brady.
