AdWords Adviser

Archive for June, 2009

An impressive article in the Aztek Marketing Blog called “PPC vs Natural Search? A Cost Comparison Case Study” caught my eye recently. As the title suggests, the post compares the costs of PPC with those of obtaining a first page ranking in the ‘natural’ search listings.

I agree with much of this article’s well reasoned argument, but take issue with the conclusion.

… over time, a high ranking in the natural search results can actually cost less than a high position in the (arguably less effective) paid listings.

Let me explain …

The author rightly points out that searchers typically pay more attention to natural search results than PPC ads. Many studies have already shown that for the most popular queries in almost any niche, the natural listings can be clicked on as many as 10 times more often than any PPC ad.

And yes, as also correctly pointed out, it can take some time to reach the top positions on the results pages for natural search against any meaningful query. In fact, for the more popular keywords, it can take years.

But, once you have that elusive high natural ranking, you can’t just sit back and congratulate yourself on a good job well done!

You see, the search engines don’t play fair with your natural listings. The boffins in white coats at Google HQ are regularly tweaking the way in which they calculate a sites relevance.

This means that one day your listing can be near the top of the first page of results and bringing in lots of good quality visitors to your web site, many of whom will buy from you. The next day, that same listing can be ranked on the third or fourth page of results and all those leads and sales are gone.

And there is nothing you can do about it other than start the whole process again.

Your traffic from PPC may seem to cost more than from the natural listings and you will get less of the available market share from your PPC ads, but the traffic you do get is considerably easier to obtain and keep. Your online advertising is therefore much more predictable.

Most business owners want to start seeing a return from their web site today, not in many months time. And for most online businesses,  a PPC campaign is the quickest and most efficient way of getting a return on their investment fast.

And if you base your campaign on profit rather than cost, it’s not even less effective.

So, should business owners ignore the cost advantages of natural search and put all their efforts into a PPC campaign?

Absolutely not!

The right thing to do is both.

Start an Adwords campaign today, begin to attract qualified visitors to your web site and convert them into sales.

When your PPC ads are making you money, start working on your natural search engine listings with well written and targeted articles, either written by yourself or your SEO copywriter.

You’ll then very soon start to enjoy the best of both worlds. The benefits of a more regular traffic flow from Adwords AND high visitor volumes from the natural listings.

For help with everything Adwords, visit Key Searches, making Adwords more profitable for you.

A common mistake that most new to Adwords make is that they don’t use a keyword tool to discover the full range of keywords available to them. They therefore waste time and budget focusing their advertising on a keyword list that is much too small.

When you’re starting your campaign, a list of twenty or thirty keywords picked at random from what you think people are going to type into a search engine just isn’t good enough.

To have a profitable campaign, you will typically need to start with hundreds of keywords. Then over time, you can pinpoint those keywords that work and remove the ones that are never going to convert.

To create massive lists, you need a good keyword tool that will search out hundreds of different keyword combinations for you.

But, your keyword tool needs to be able to work both vertically and horizontally.

This means that when you’re looking for keywords for your flower shop for example, your keyword tool needs to search ‘vertically’ for phrases like ‘bunches of flowers’ and ‘bouquets of flowers’, but also ‘horizontally’ for terms like ‘mothers day’ and ‘valentines day’, occasions when you might want to give flowers.

Google’s ‘keyword tool’ works like this to an extent, but is left standing by my keyword tool of choice, Keyword Elite.

But, like most experts in my profession, I’m always on the lookout for something better. Selecting the right keywords for your Adwords campaign is so important that you simply must have the best tool to get an advantage on your competition.

During the coming months, I’ll be comparing Keyword Elite to a number of different keyword tools with the aim of finding out once and for all, which is the best.

But, if you need an excellent keyword tool today, then I recommend giving Keyword Elite a go!

What are your favourite keyword selection tools and why? Let us know by posting a comment below.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you had a bid simulator tool that could take all the guess work out of your bidding strategy.

Imagine what it would be like if instead of adding or removing a few pennies from your bid every day to get your ad always showing in the right position on the results page, you could just type an amount into your magic bid simulator and have it show you exactly where your ad would appear.

And what if the same tool could also tell you the effect that changing your bid might have on how often your ad is shown. You’d instantly be able to reason the impact that any increase or decrease in bid price would have on your conversions.

Believe it or not, such a useful tool now exists and Google have been beta testing it with a select group of advertisers since the end of May.

My thanks go to Elizabeth Marsten and her informative article “AdWords Bid Simulator Update” posted in the Portent Interactive blog which brought this to my attention.

AdWords Bid Simulator Update

As we all already know Google AdWords has beta testing the AdWords Bid Simulator feature since late May/early June. So what’s new since then? I’ll show you: …

Naturally, after reading Elizabeth’s article, I had to find out more about the tool. Here are two more articles, this time from the popular Rise to the Top blog, that explains some more. Matt has also revealed a very interesting insight into the inner workings of Adwords here that we all should keep in mind. Good work Matt!

Google AdWords Tests Bid Simulator

What The Bid Simulator Does This bid simulator tool will review Google AdWords data from across the system over the [...] Related posts: Google Now Allows Tracking of Multiple Conversions Through Adwords; Google Adwords – Trend Reviews …

My Opinions Of The New Google Bid Simulator

While reviewing the presentation, I noticed something interesting, and it seemed to verify that ad impressions do increase with higher per click bid prices as well as moving ads up in the paid search results on SERPs. …

At the Search Engine Round Table you can find an interesting post on the Bid Simulator that also includes Google’s positioning on the tool.

Google AdWords Testing "Bid Simulator"

Some advertisers are noticing a new feature in Google AdWords. The feature is named.

In the Actionable Insights blog Matthias Blume writes another informative article on the subject.

Maximize Incremental ROI with Google's Bid Simulator | Actionable …

A few days ago, Google rolled out a beta version of its new bid simulator tool to additional accounts.

With so much excitement on the web about Bid Simulator, I had to give it a try for myself. How disapointed was I to learn that Google was only beta testing in the US.

Hey Google!!! I know you’re reading this. We in the UK have useful opinions to give too …

I guess for now I’ll just have to follow what others have to say on the Search Engine Watch forum.

Possible *NEW* Beta Feature GOOGLE – New Tool – "Bid Simulator" in …

Possible *NEW* Beta Feature GOOGLE – New Tool – “Bid Simulator” in GOOGLE old UI. Google AdWords.

We’ll be keeping a watch on this story and posting on developments in the future.

If you have an opinion on Google’s Bid Simulator, why don’t you share it by making a comment below.

What’s more important, an Adwords Professional that has the official certification from Google or one that has years and years of real experience and satisfied customers to back it all up.

I found these two articles on Google Certification today and it got me wondering, is certification really worth the effort?

How to Become a Google Authorized Adwords, Analytics or Website Optimiser Consultant

Google Authorization is a topic which crops up a fair amount in our day-to-day search wanderings. Not really because clients are asking if we’re authorized but more because they always claim that previous SEO companies they received pitches from claimed to be Google Authorized SEO consultants. Unfortunately (fortunately?!) no such certification exists so we have to set them straight….

Become a Google AdWords Professional with Free Training from Google

It’s not often that you can find a gift handed to you on a silver platter, but the Google AdWords Professional training program may just be such a gift.

What do you think?

Let everyone know by posting your comments below!

Google started rolling out it’s new Adwords interface to users back in April. If you’ve not received your invitation to change, then watch out for their email in your inbox.

Anything new from Google generates opinion and I think it’s fair to say that opinion on the new interface is very mixed at the moment.

For those that are still waiting to make the change, or just want to get a feel for what others think, here’s what it’s all about:

Byron Gordon, SEO-PR, interviews Ariel Bardin, AdWords Product Lead and Angela Lai, AdWords Engineering Lead, about Google’s new AdWords Interface at Search Engine Strategies New York 2009.

Head to Head: Old and New AdWords Interfaces

In the old interface going from the reports tab to an ad group was a major ball ache. I always ended up on the completely useless “Account Snapshot” screen so I’d expect the new interface to begin to pull ahead here. …

Using The New Adwords Interface To Increase Efficiency

That being said, start using the new adwords interface. It takes some time to get used to but there are some benefits there that can help you! Related posts: Download and Re-Upload A CSV (Excel) Adwords Campaign For the longest time I …

New Adwords Interface

Google Adwords new interface has been made available to more advertisers recently. If you already can see the “New Interface (Beta)” link at the top right corner once you have logged on to your Adwords account, you are eligible to use …

56% of Google Advertisers Dislike New AdWords Interface

Google began aggressively testing the new AdWords interface the other week. I heard many complaints from advertisers on the new AdWords interface, so I figured I would poll our readers to see what their thoughts were.

The New Looking Google AdWords Interface- Now Faster …

Google recently redesigned their ad campaign management tool, Google AdWords, to make things faster. The new interface allows you to …

Starting up New Interface Thursdays

You may have heard that we’re testing a new interface for AdWords. Many of you are starting to use the new interface, and we want to take time to tell you more about it. So we’re starting a series, New Interface Thursdays. …

For me, the first thing I did was remove some of the columns displayed. It was driving me crazy scrolling the page left to right to see everything.

With that problem out of the way, I have to say that I was generally impressed with the new interface. However, I won’t be removing Adwords Editor from my PC just yet.

But what do you think? Let everyone know by posting a reply below.

If you really want to use Adwords to advertise your local business in the UK, then you have to understand how Google geo targeting works.

 Fail to understand this important Adwords feature and you risk the success of your entire local advertising campaign. Get this wrong and you’ll either pay for hundreds of visitors a day that you don’t want or end up advertising your ads to nobody.

 In this article, you’re going to learn why setting up an advertising campaign for your local business is so difficult and how to avoid falling into the geo targeting black hole.

What Is Geo Targeting?

First things first, let us ensure that we all know what geo targeting is:

 Now imagine you’re the owner of an independent pizza restaurant located in Stevenage (my home town) and you want to use Adwords to advertise your home delivery service.

 Obviously, you don’t want your ads placed in the search results for every single country in the world. A visitor to your web site from Canada for instance, is no use to you when your business is located in the UK.

In a similar manner, you don’t want visitors to your site from places like Glasgow, Leeds or Birmingham, because these cities are also much to far away from your business to provide you with regular custom.

 Rather than waste your money showing ads to people that are never going to be interested in what you have to offer, Google allow you to limit the area within which your ads show. You can now for example, have Google show your ads only to people in the UK, countries in the UK such as England or even in specific towns, like Stevenage.

 Think of our pizza restaurant that wants to use Adwords to advertise their home delivery service. They can use geo targeting to ensure their ads only show in Stevenage and the immediate surrounding area within which they deliver.

This is a very powerful tool!

 So why, when this pizza restaurant created such a campaign, were their ads never seen by anyone in Google?

The Problems With Geo Targeting In The UK

In a short while we’ll discover why the ads of this local pizza delivery business were not showing on Google. But before that, we need to understand how Google targets ads at users of its search engine.

There are four ways Google targets search engine users:

• By the domain extension of the search engine (e.g. searchers using ‘google.co.uk’ will typically see ads targeted at the UK).
• By a technique called ‘query parsing’. Matches words in your search query with ads that contain the same word.
• By the users IP address. A unique 4-part number, separated by a dot that identifies your computer whilst on the Internet.
• By language. Ads that match the searchers language as set in their Google preference settings or by the domain of the search engine they are using.

Now you understand how Google selects which ads to show in response to a particular query, lets see how that affects our local pizza delivery business.

Earlier, you targeted your Adwords campaign to Stevenage and the immediate surrounding area and nobody was seeing your ads. Because you’re specifying such a small target area, language and the search engine domain are not much use to Google in deciding if it should show your ad.

Query parsing might be useful, but the most likely way that your ad is going to be shown is by Google checking the searchers IP address. If their IP address is registered in Stevenage, then Google will show them your ad.

Everyone gets an IP address from their Internet Service Provider (ISP). One is automatically assigned to you every time you connect to the Internet. Whenever you connect, your call is physically routed to a central point, possibly some miles away from where you actually live.

This is the point at which you’ll actually connect to the Internet and is that town or city where your IP address will be registered.

Consider our pizza delivery business in Stevenage. When their customers log onto the Internet using British Telecom (BT) as an ISP, there connection will typically be physically routed to London (30 miles South of Stevenage).

Google will therefore identify these Internet users as being located in London, not Stevenage and won’t show these potential customers your ads even though they’re exactly the audience your looking for.

Worst still, if your potential customer base was to use the next largest ISP in Stevenage, Virgin Media, your connection would be routed to Luton (20 miles West of Stevenage). Google will identify these Internet users, as coming from Luton and once again won’t show your ad.

As you can see, what started as an easy targeting issue has now become quite complicated.

To ensure that all your intended audience see your ad, you need to understand how and where each ISP in your local area connects to the Internet. You then need to include these areas into the target area for your ads.

Obviously, identifying every major ISP in your area and including the town or city where they connect to the Internet is going to be a big problem. And even if you could find and include every one, these access points are shared by thousands of Internet users. Only a small number are going to be your ideal customer.

You’re therefore opening your ads up to being seen my many more people than you actually want and risking a high number of wasted clicks from people who will never buy from you.

How to avoid the geo-targeting black hole!

This is the right way for our small pizza delivery service and for you to use Google geo targeting to advertise your business only to your local area.

• Decide on your list of keywords to target.
• Create a campaign and set your geo targeting area to cover the city or town you want to target and a very large surrounding area (50 miles or more).
• Add your keywords to your campaign in multiple Adgroups of closely related keywords.
• Write your ads for these Adgroups to include your target town.
• Create a second campaign targeting the UK.
• Re-enter all your keywords in their Adgroups, this time with your target town or city in front of each keyword.
• Enter all your keywords in their Adgroups again, this time with your target town or city after each keyword.
• Write your ads for this campaign with very general text.

If someone searches Google for “pizza delivery” they will see your ad from your first campaign, but because it specifically mentions Stevenage, they’ll click on it only if they live near enough to take advantage of your service.

Anybody searching Google for “pizza delivery in Stevenage” is going to see an ad from your second campaign regardless of where they live. This is also good, because although they might be many miles away, they are interested in what you’re selling. You know this because they typed your target town into the search query.

Setting up an advertising campaign in Adwords for a local business in this way is not perfect, and you will still get a number of people clicking on your ad even though they are much too far away to make use of your service.

A certain amount of waste is unavoidable. If the volume of unwanted clicks on your ads gets too high, you could experiment with the range of your target area for the second campaign. Tightening the area will reduce waste, but watch your conversions.

It surprises me how many advertisers create a pay-per-click campaign and then just leave it to run by itself. They never look at how their keywords are performing or try to improve their AdWords ad copy. With such an approach, your leaving sales on the table that could be yours and worst still, wasting money bidding on keywords that will never convert.

Recently we received a question at The AdWords Adviser from such an advertiser. We’ve changed the name, but their problem is very real …

Dear AdWords Adviser,

I don’t understand why Google has disapproved my ads!

We’ve been running our ads unchanged for months. Each has the price of the product we’re advertising in the ad copy. We are very competitive on price, so it’s a strategy that has proved very profitable for us.

Yesterday, I logged into our account for the first time in six months to update the price in all our ads. None of the other ad copy was changed. Now Google has disapproved every ad!

Why are Google being so difficult?

Adrian, please help …

We’re loosing a fortune in sales because our ads aren’t running and we don’t understand why.

Sincerely,
Confused of Watford

The fact of the matter is that Google has rules as to what is appropriate copy for an ad and what is not. Overtime, Google will review these rules and make minor additions, updates, and changes to them.

However, whenever a change in the rules is made, they are rarely applied to existing ad copy. They will usually only take effect when you create a new or edit and existing ad.

Many people complain when their ad goes into review, especially if the change they made was very small and seemingly insignificant. However, Google realise that even the smallest changes can have a very big effect on what your ad actually says and means.

This explains why when you make even a very small change to an existing ad it can be disapproved by Google.

What Can I Do To Get My Disapproved Ad Approved?

Undoubtedly, the volume of ads that are created within AdWords every day means that the testing process that Google applies to your ad copy has to be automated.

If you’ve broken Google’s advertising rules, then you must edit your ad to make it comply. But, sometimes your ad can be disapproved by mistake.

If you have had your ad unfairly disapproved, then you can appeal by sending a message to Google Customer Support. An AdWords Specialist will review your ad copy and rule on if it is acceptable.

Obviously, appealing takes time and it can take a few days for someone to review your ad and make a decision.  All the time that you’re waiting, your ad is not showing on Google and your missing potential sales.

How To Avoid Loosing Customers From A Disapproved Ad

Many people don’t realise that you can write more than one ad for every Adgroup in your campaign. Every time your ad is triggered by a keyword in that Adgroup, Google will show one of your ads, rotating between them.

You can use this feature to ensure that small changes to your AdWords ad copy don’t have a huge impact on your profits.

When you next update your AdWords ad copy, don’t edit your existing ad. Follow these steps instead:

• Write a new ad with the same copy as your existing ad.
• Make any changes to your copy in the new ad, leaving the old ad unchanged.
• Let both of your ads run for at least three days. Google will automatically rotate them.
• If there should be any problems with your new ad, then your old ad will keep running regardless.
• When you’re sure that there are no problems with your new ad, delete the old ad.