AdWords Adviser

Archive for October, 2009

Google are now inviting AdWords advertisers to trial their new keyword selection tool. But, is the new tool any good?

Where To Find The New Keyword Selection Tool

For once, everybody can trial Google’s new keyword tool rather than just a select few. To take part in the trial, log into your AdWords account and click on the “Opportunities” tab.

Now, look down the left side of your screen for the “Tools” box and click on the “keyword tool” link to display the current keyword tool. At the top of the page will be a link inviting you to “take a look at the new keyword tool”. Click on this link to start your trial.

What’s New In The New Google AdWords Keyword Selection Tool?

The first and most noticeable addition is the “categories” tree.

This tree lists major niches like “finance”, “home & kitchenware” and “food”. Clicking on the “+” symbol to the left of a category shows sub-niches within the main niche.

Select the niche that describes your business and Google will reveal a long list of keywords to choose from and use in your AdWords campaign.

With your keyword suggestions, you get the familiar information we’re all used to like competition levels, estimated costs, local & global search volumes.

New features include a trend graph that shows a keywords popularity over time. You can now tell if your keywords popularity is long term, seasonal or just a flash in the pan.

If you feel the need for more information about your keywords, additional columns can be added to the standard layout to reveal even more statistics. These include estimates on a keywords click-through-rate, ad position, impressions and cost. These should all be very familiar stats to regular users of Google’s Traffic Estimator tool.

Advanced Options

Not quite as obvious, but definitely as useful as the “categories” feature is the “Advanced Options” link. Clicking on this link reveals constraints you can place on your keyword statistics to get an even more realistic view of the performance you can expect from them.

One excellent change is that you can now filter your results by geographical location and language. You can also investigate the effect that different ‘max cpc’ and ‘daily budget’ limits will have on your keywords performance.

Another very interesting new feature is the ability to filter your results based on criteria that you define. For example, you could have the tool show you only those keywords that provide more than 1000 impressions in a month or for which you could obtain a top 3 position for your particular budget constraints.

Is This Tool More Complicated Than It Needs To Be?

The new AdWords Keyword Selection Tool certainly provides AdWords advertisers with a very comprehensive view of how your keywords might perform. And I’m sure the seasoned AdWords expert will get hours of enjoyment looking at potential keywords for their campaign from every angle imaginable.

However, for those that are very new to AdWords, this tool is going to seem very complicated and the results it provides will be hard to fully understand. Many new advertisers are going to be tempted to select an even bigger list of keyword suggestions and add them to their campaign without really doing any proper research on their value.

This is of course great news for Google who’ll make lots of extra revenue from the extra keywords these types of advertisers will select for their AdWords campaigns. But, maybe not so good for the advertiser who may not see a corresponding rise in sales.

What do you think, is the new AdWords keyword tool a valuable addition to your account or does it over complicate your keyword research?

Most people know when planning an AdWords campaign, how important keyword research is.

Before you bid on any keyword, you need to know:)

• which keywords attract high traffic volumes.
• how much competition to expect.
• what each keyword is going to cost.

Without this basic information, you’re walking into your next AdWords campaign blind and that could be a very expensive mistake to make.

If you’re like everyone else, you’ll start your keyword search by typing your seed keyword into Google’s Keyword Tool. You’ll then scan a long list of keyword suggestions for one’s that fit your business and desperately try to interpret what that coloured bar is telling you about your competition.

Once you’ve found some keywords you think will work, you’ll take them to Google’s Traffic Estimater tool to see how much each keyword might cost you. And while you’re chopping and changing between these two tools, you’ll also be recording your results on a spreadsheet.

It’s no wonder many give up doing serious keyword research and run with almost any keywords lists in the blind hope that it will work out in the end.

Now, I want you to go deep into your own mind and visualize how much easier meaningful keyword research would be with a tool that could find all this important information quickly and easily for you.

A tool that could:)

• find hundreds of targeted keywords.
• identify your competition for each keyword.
• reveal what you can expect to pay when you’re ready to place your bid.

And then display all this detail on your computer screen in a meaningful and easy to understand way so you can finally make informed decisions about which keywords you target.

You’re probably wondering where you get such a tool?

Here are three suggestions, the problem is, which one are you going to purchase?

Keyword Elite

Critics said of the original Keyword Elite that it:

… completely revolutionized the way keyword research was done.

You can imagine the excitement across the Internet when Brad Callen released Keyword Elite v2.0.

Imagine what it would be like if you could:)

• Dominate any niche market by knowing exactly what keywords buyers of your product or service are searching on.
• Dominate Google AdWords effortlessly by seeking out profitable AdWords campaigns and borrowing their entire AdWords marketing strategy so you can adapt it to your own.
• Dominate the search engines by dissecting the top ranking web sites so you can apply the same techniques to your web site.

You can do all this and lots more with the new Keyword Elite. I’m sure that by now you can see that you won’t find these benefits anywhere else.

WordTracker

Advertisers starting out with AdWords need things to be kept simple. WordTracker combines a respectable search term database with the tools to make keyword research easy.

Imagine what it would be like to:)

• enter your seed keyword and display hundreds of new keywords at the click of a button.
• browse the keyword list and easily select those you want.
• pick a search engine and determine your competition at the click of another button.
• effortlessly extract your results to use in your AdWords campaign.

It really can be that easy when you use WordTracker. Just imagine the advantage you would have minutes from now by starting your trial today!

Keyword Discovery

Discover the largest and most advanced keyword research tool on the market.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could:)

• access specialised themed keyword databases targeted to your eBay, shopping, regional or industrial AdWords campaign.
• compile keyword lists that include phrases, plurals, related keywords and common misspellings of your seed keyword.
• review historical trends for all your keywords.
• break down keyword performance by country and region.

This and a lot more is possible with Keyword Discovery. Try out Keyword Discovery without risk, before you buy.

P.S. Before you start or extend any AdWords campaign, you must know everything about your keyword market. When you own one of these keyword selection tools, you’ll quickly begin to feel the real power that comes from dominating your AdWords competition.

When it’s time to start that new AdWords campaign or expand an existing one, it’s surprising how many people don’t know how to do keyword research properly.

I know, your impatient to get going, eager to watch the visitors roll in and anxious to experience that feeling of excitement as the sales start to rack up. But, the harsh reality is that you’re going to miss out on hundreds of keywords that could benefit your business if you don’t do your keyword research first.

To fully exploit your niche and beat the competition, you must “dig deep and go wide”.

I’ll explain what this statement means to you later in this post.

But first …

Create Your Seed Keyword List

In every instance keyword research starts with a single seed keyword and a good keyword selection tool.

A seed keyword is any short, popular keyword relevant to your market on which you can build your keyword list.  And a keyword selection tool will effortlessly expand your seed keyword into a list of related keywords that match what people enter into a search engine when they perform a query.

Everyone will be familiar with the Google Keyword Tool, that’s included with your AdWords account. However, years of experience with creating and running AdWords campaigns have shown me that you’ll get better results that are easier to understand from Wordtracker.

Wordtracker will return hundreds of keywords used recently in search queries, that contain your seed keyword within them.

Imagine , for example, you’re running a small business from home that makes chocolates. To market your business with AdWords you might use “chocolates” as your seed keyword.

After typing your seed keyword into Wordtracker, you get over 25,000 searches. Looking down the list you pick out some useful keywords for your seed list which include:

• chocolate chip cookies
• chocolate strawberries
• chocolate bars
• dark chocolate

These are all phrases that describe products you make and sell in your business.

Dig Deep And Find Your Keyword Tails

Just a few seconds ago, I told you that to fully exploit your niche and beat your AdWords competition, you’ll have to “dig deep and go wide”. You’re now going to use the seed keyword list you’ve just created to dig deep and find even more keywords for your campaign.

Enter each phrase from your seed list into Wordtracker to create more keyword lists for each keyword. These new lists are your keyword tails.

Returning to the previous example, selling home made chocolates, to dig deep into your seed keyword list you’d type each phrase into Wordtracker and pick out all the relevant keywords for your business to create your keyword tails.

Typing “chocolate chip cookies” into Wordtracker returned over 2000 searches. Some of the most relevant keywords found were:

• chewy chocolate chip cookies
• oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
• best chocolate chip cookies
• healthy chocolate chip cookies
• double chocolate chip cookies

All describe the different types of chip cookies your business sells.

Repeating the exercise using “chocolate strawberries” this time returns keywords like:

• chocolate covered strawberries
• chocolate dipped strawberries
• strawberries in chocolate
• strawberries with chocolate

These are all excellent keywords that could be used to describe your business. Notice now your seed list is starting to very quickly build into a very powerful list of quality keywords for your AdWords campaign.

You’ve Dug Deep, Now Go Wide

To “go wide” with your keyword research, create a new seed keyword list with phrases that describe different categories within your niche.

Categories that you’d search on for your chocolate business would include:

• easter chocolate
• valentine’s day chocolate
• christmas chocolate
• halloween chocolate

These are all examples of special occasions when people might buy chocolate. Targeting keywords in AdWords for these occasions a few weeks previous to the day would therefore be a good strategy for your business.

You can now create a new keyword tail for each of these categories by once again entering each phrase in your new keyword seed list into Wordtracker and picking out the keywords that are right for your business.

WordTracker, Your Keyword Tool Of Choice

Now finally, you are starting to understand how to do keyword research for AdWords right and using WordTracker, create huge lists of keywords to use in your campaign that are all highly targeted to your business.

But, I can almost hear your mind saying how recording and keeping track of all these lists in spreadsheets is going to be a very long and time consuming task.

There is only one solution to this and that is to use the advanced features of Wordtracker to create and store your keyword lists for you until you’re ready to use them in your AdWords campaign. This simple feature alone will save you many hours of work and make keyword research a lot easier.

P.S. When you start using Wordtracker to do your keyword research, you’ll soon be able to quickly and easily build huge keyword lists for your AdWords campaigns.

There has been a small crises in the AdWords world recently with users complaining about “Low Share of Voice” error messages in their campaigns.

In this article, we’re going to separate truth from fiction and:

• define what “Low Share of Voice” really means.
• discuss the real impact that this error is having on your AdWords campaigns.
• tell you how to get your account running smoothly again.

What Does “Low Share of Voice” Actually Mean?

Google defines “Share of Voice” as:

… represents the percentage of times your ads were actually shown in relation to the total number of chances your ads could have been shown …

Source:  Inside AdWords Blog

But what does this really mean to you and me?

Imagine you’re using AdWords to sell chocolates. You might have an AdGroup targeting the keyword “Specialist chocolates”. Everything is running fine until Google decides to flag your keyword as “Low Share of Voice”.

Sounds familiar – what is Google actually trying to tell you?

Simply, that you could get your ad to show more often for this keyword. That’s it – done!

What Impact Is This Status Having On Your AdWords Campaign?

Many AdWords users claim this error message has had a decremental effect on their campaigns performance. But the truth of the matter is that on closer examination of the evidence, we’ve found this is not the case.

In all instances that we’ve researched for this post, the vital life signs of a successful campaign such as impressions, click-through-rate, quality score, ad position and conversions have largely remained unchanged when measured over a realistic period of time.

So, why the confusion?

Comparing today’s stats with yesterday’s and stating there is a problem because your daily impressions dropped by 200 just isn’t realistic. Your campaign will always experience changes in performance from day-to-day.

For most, to get an accurate comparison you’ll need to compare at least a weeks data before and after the error message first showed.

What Do  You Need To Do Now?

The right thing to do now if you’re experiencing this error message is to identify what triggered the problem. Google could be more helpful here, but true-to-form, they’ve kept their descriptions of the problem general and therefore unhelpful. 

Here are some of our suggestions on what to look for:

• could your quality score be improved?
• is  your average ad position very low on the results page?
• are there more, very similar keywords that you could add to the ad group?

Once you’ve identified the problem, what you do about it is up to you and your biding strategy.

For instance, if we return to our chocolates example, you could be loosing out on potential impressions by having your ad appear very low on the results page. But, this could be a deliberate strategy!

The keyword “specialist chocolates” maybe very competitive. By placing your ad at the bottom of the results page, you would get less impressions (because your ad sometimes falls off the first page), but those that do click, might convert better as they are more serious about making a purchase.

You’d therefore not want to make any changes to your campaign.

But, looking at the example from another point-of-view, you might decide that the addition of a few more keywords to this ad group would be helpful. Therefore this time, you’d wind up the keyword tool or look at the suggestions under the “Opportunities” tab to improve this ad groups performance.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, Google have made a big mistake with this message. They’ve flagged it as an error when in fact they are providing information. This has confused advertisers. 

Google need to get this one right quickly. Why not flag the error with a FYI (for your information) abbreviation and give us a check box so we can acknowledge your kind suggestion and quickly move on?

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know your experiences of “Low Share of Voice”status errors. Have they had any effect on your campaigns? What changes have you made as a result of seeing this error message? Let us know now!

 P.S. Best advice of all with regards to “Low Share of Voice” error messages is this – “Don’t Panic”!