AdWords Adviser

Archive for November, 2009

If you’re looking for a simple reason why your Quality Score is rock bottom you could start by reviewing what is on your AdWords landing page.

Any one of these 7 common mistakes that we see advertisers make every day are guaranteed to impact your Quality Score, get your ad disapproved or, in extreme circumstances, ensure your site is banned from AdWords altogether.

1) Pop ups & Pop unders

Have you noticed those annoying windows that pop up over the web page you’re just about to read advertising an ebook or prompting you to subscribe to a newsletter?

And the other trick is when the advert or subscription form pops under the open window. Normally hidden from view, they reveal themselves only when the open window is minimised or closed.

If you must use these techniques on your web site, then avoid using them on your AdWords landing pages.

2) Browser Functions Changed Or Disabled

Another common mistake are including those small pieces of code in your landing page that stop the browser buttons from working normally.

For example, the ‘back’ button should return your visitor to the page they just came from, even if that page is not on your web site. It should not send your visitor to a page you’ve decided as appropriate or be disabled.

3) Requests For Personal Information

Many web sites have a form on them designed for collecting subscriptions to a newsletter etc. When starting your AdWords campaign we’d recommend you remove any forms from your landing pages.

You can always test their impact on the performance of your keywords by adding them again later, once your campaign is established.

Whenever you do use a form, collect the absolute minimum amount of data that you need (typically name and email) to service your offering and always include a link near your form to a detailed privacy policy.

4) Advertising

If you’re like many AdWords users, you’ll add advertising to all your web pages to try and boost revenue. Google will accept landing pages with advertising on them, provided it is not to excessive.

I know what you’re thinkng, how much advertising is excessive? The fact of the matter is that there are no hard and fast rules.

The correct thing to do is therefore to remove all advertising from your landing pages until your campaign is established. You can then gradually add advertising back onto your landing page a bit at a time and monitor exactly what impact it has on performance.

5) Affiliates That Don’t Comply With Google’s Guidelines

An affiliate is someone that promotes other peoples products for a percentage of each sale.

You’ve got to wonder if AdWords hates affiliates. They certainly make it very difficult to promote affiliate product and make a profit. But affiliates are still welcome, provided they comply with Google’s very strict affiliate marketing rules.

6) Original Content

The content on your AdWords landing page must be original.

For instance, if you’re selling mobile phones, don’t fill your landing page with content copied directly from the manufacturers web site. Write your own content instead.

You might, for example, write a review of the phone highlighting its good points, but also a few of the bad ones too.

7) Your Advertising Something Similar Or Identical To Other Advertisers

If you’re thinking, for example, I’ll sell my favourite type of mobile phone by writing a review on my web site and using it as my AdWords landing page, then you could be disappointed.

AdWords will not display pages of ads that are advertising something similar or identical to what other advertisers are advertising.

If lots of other web sites are advertising that product on the same keyword as you and your content is not significantly different, you may find that your ad doesn’t get shown very often.

I’m often asked, “what is the perfect AdWords book for all those people who are frustrated trying to beat the Google system?”

In a moment, I’ll tell you the book that I recommend, but first I’d like to share with you a short story that explains why this book is so important.

If you’re like me, you’d have struggled when you started in business. You may still be struggling today!

I used to make the most fantastic claims to win a prospects business. Then, if I was successful, I’d work day and night buying any book, product or course I could find to teach me how to deliver on what I’d just promised.

As you can imagine, this approach frequently got me into big trouble. Fortunately, those days are behind me now.

My big break came when a friend introduced me to someone for whom they’d just built a web site. They wanted to run an AdWords campaign for their new online store.

I blagged the contract (as usual), knowing nothing at the time about AdWords, and won the business. I then started reading up on what I needed to do.

But this time was different!

There was one AdWords book that I read that was far better than all the others. It described in easy steps how to create a campaign from scratch and then how to manage that campaign so that it was profitable. 

That one book opened my eyes to the full potential of AdWords as an advertising tool. I immediately tried out what I’d learnt on my new customer. Within one month, I was managing a profitable AdWords advertising campaign. Naturally, my new customer was delighted.

That magical moment was back in 2006 and I haven’t looked back since. I still run that original AdWords account today and have a whole bunch of other clients too.

The book that taught me how to run a successful AdWords campaign and helped me start a successful business can now teach you how to make your AdWords advertising more profitable! 

It’s called The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords by Perry Marshall.  This ebook, now in it’s third edition, has been extensively updated for 2010 making it an absolute must purchase for any AdWords advertiser.

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/2010-adwords-guide

Imagine learning:

• how to get your AdWords campaign up and running quickly and profitably, even if you’re a complete beginner.
• copy writing skills that will help you to write the perfect ads and landing pages – these tips will lower your bid prices and save you money.
• how to make Affiliate Marketing and AdWords work together in harmony – you won’t want to miss out on any of these six modules.
• the right way to use AdWords in marketing information products – you don’t want to miss this if you have an ebook to sell.
• the finer points on how to market with AdWords in the UK.
• how to include the content network into your marketing plans without it costing you a fortune – this module is just incredible.

When you purchase The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords, you will discover (like I did) why so many people get excited about it. Reading this AdWords book will give you a massive advantage over your competition and help you to make your marketing campaign much more profitable.

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/2010-adwords-guide

Post Of The Month

The New AdWords Keyword Selection Tool 

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

Best of the Archives

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Your AdWords click through rate (ctr) is an important statistic for any advertising campaign. A good ctr will reward you with a higher Quality Score. And the better your Quality Score, the less you’ll pay in bids, saving you money.

It may suprise you to know that improving ctr is easy. Yet incredilly, many advertisers don’t pay it much attention.

What Is Click Through Rate?

The fact of the matter is that there is no great mystery about ctr. It’s calculated by dividing the number of clicks on a keyword by the number of impressions. 

For example, imagine your ad has shown 100 times and was clicked on 4 times. Your click through rate would be 4/100 or 4%.

Keep in mind that any ctr above 1% is acceptable, 5% is good and a 10% ctr or more is excellent.

If you’re like everyone else, you’ll easily be able to name two instances where Google measures ctr. But, what most people don’t realise is that AdWords measures ctr in five different ways. And each has an impact on your Quality Score.

Keywords

Everybody knows that all your keywords have a ctr. To improve any keywords ctr, you need more people to click on the ad that your keyword triggers.

You can achieve higher keyword ctr by:

• Increasing your keyword bid so your ad appears higher on the results page.
• Writing an ad that is more appealing to your audience.

Ads

Every ad in your campaign also has its own ctr value.

To improve an ads ctr:

• Add more relevant keywords to the ad group so your ad gets seen more often.
• Write an ad that is more appealing to your audience.

Campaign / Account

Many AdWords advertisers don’t realise it, but Google also measures the ctr of all your campaigns and your entire account.

The easiest way to improve your campaign’s ctr is to remove keywords that are not performing. Try removing all keywords that have less than 200 impressions a month and don’t convert.

Why is this important? Consider this example:

Picture a campaign that regularly gets 1000 impressions a week and 50 click through’s. Your campaign’s ctr is 5% (50/1000).

Now, let’s suppose that 20 of your keywords get 150 impressions and 5 click through’s a week between them. None of these keywords are converting, so removing them from your campaign is going to do no damage to your sales.

You now get 45 clicks per week and 850 impressions. The ctr for your campaign is 5.3% (45/850).

This represents an increase of 0.3%. A small rise, but every increase in efficiency can be significant. And if the keywords are not contributing to your sales, then they are not useful anyway.

Domain

A lot of advertisers believe that poor Quality Score can be fixed by closing their account and opening a new one. They are surprised when it makes no difference.

The fact of the matter is that AdWords tracks your domain performance and will apply a low Quality Score to all the keywords in your new account if you haven’t fixed the underline problem.

The reality is that you should never try to trick AdWords into giving you a good Quality Score, it won’t work.

Historical Keyword Performance

The fifth characteristic of any AdWords campaign for which Google record ctr is the historical performance of your keywords.

Millions of people use AdWords, and trillions of keywords have been tried in advertising campaigns. There are few keywords that have not been tried previously by other advertisers.

The ctr that others have achieved with any keyword you select will have a big influence on your Quality Score.

I know what you’re now thinking, how do you know if the keyword you’re about to select has a poor historical ctr?

Start by typing the keyword into the “Traffic Estimator” tool. This will tell you how many clicks your keyword might expect per day. Multiply this value by 30 to determine how many clicks your keyword will get per month.

Now switch to the “Keyword Tool” and enter your keyword again. This tool will return the number of searches you’d expect per month.

Divide the number of clicks a month by searches and you’ll get Google’s ctr for that keyword.

If a keywords ctr is low then beware. Google is trying to tell you that your chances of success are small.

The important thing is that if your keyword has a low historical ctr, but you’re certain it’s right for your campaign, then you can still use the keyword. And if you start to achieve a good ctr, then your Quality Score will soon rise and your bid prices drop.

Last Thoughts On Ctr & Quality Score

All five measurements of ctr are important to the success of your AdWords campaign. And each can be improved by the changes you make.

The 2 most important things to remember when using ctr to improve Quality Score are:

• Ctr is only part of the Quality Score equation. To improve, you’ll need to work on every part of the equation.
• Google reviews performance over time. If your AdWords click through rate for any keyword or ad has been poor to date, then it may take a week or two for any changes you make to fully take effect.