AdWords Adviser

Archive for March, 2010

Dear AdWords Adviser!

Every week we answer one of the many questions you send us. If you would like the answer to your question then send it to:)

www.dearadwordsadviser.com

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This week we would like to thank William for the question:)

We have an eating disorder website where we help people with anorexia.

We have a new book launched that we wanted to run a campaign on. We choose to setup 3 separate keyword groups- eating disorders, anorexia, and bulimia and under each group we have 4 keywords.

Now the anorexia and the bulimia keywords are fine with quality scores of 5 & 10. But the eating disorder group is getting poor quality scores of 2 & 3 and some of the keywords are not showing.

Nothing is different between the 3 groups. Basically it is the same information for all groups, just the keywords are different.

e,g. where it say help with an eating disorder, it reads help with bulimia on the bulimia page and help with anorexia on the anorexia page.

So why is the eating disorder getting a bad Quality Score while the other 2 get great Quality Scores?

Poor Quality Score is a common issue that many AdWords advertisers have problems with.

It’s a common miss-conception that when Google calculate Quality Score for any keyword, they only consider the
AdWords landing pages you point to within your ad in isolation of the rest of your account and website.

In actual fact, AdWords will look at all your landing pages collectively and often large chunks or even your entire web site to build up a detailed picture of you and your business.

Your problem is that you are using basically the same copy for all of your landing pages, changing only certain words within it to link the page to the keywords in the ad group.

AdWords expects to see original content on each unique landing page you use. Because your landing pages are basically the same, they consider them to be duplicate content and therefore give many of your keywords a lower Quality Score rating.

You need to start writing more original content for all your landing pages and also add some additional pages to your website that are on subject but not AdWords landing pages.

You’ll also want to take a look at the following page on the AdWords Adviser blog which will give you some excellent general advice on getting a good Quality Score:

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/what-is-adwords-quality-score-and-why-is-it-important

When trying to improve Quality Score, it’s important to remember that the changes you make to your landing pages will take time to fully show their effects in AdWords.

After you’ve updated your AdWords landing pages, you should therefore resist making any subsequent changes for three or four weeks to give AdWords a chance to digest your efforts.

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Adrian Key is a profesional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. After you read Your AdWords Review, you will feel the power that comes from knowing exactly what you need to do to make your AdWords advertising more profitable.

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Guest Author Tuesday!

In this series of articles we invite guest authors to introduce us to alternative marketing methods that you can use to attract visitors.

To contribute an article, please email:)

editor@adwords-adviser.co.uk

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Although there is no cost involved, you will have to commit some time to see results. It’s up to you how far you want to go.

Article marketing is a great way to get traffic. If you haven’t written articles before then I suggest you start.

It isn’t as hard as you may think and gets easier with each article written. You will be surprised how easy it is to do once you begin.

The articles you write should be interesting and informative with a catchy headline.

Submit your articles to some of the top article directories and include a “Call to Action” with a link back to your site in your author’s bio box.

Another way to receive traffic is by making real comments on blogs in your niche. Be sure to not leave cheesy comments such as, “Great post. Keep it up”. That is just spamming to get a link back to your site and the blog’s owner will see right through you.

Leave an interesting comment that will help someone out or inspire someone.

Submit your RSS feeds to RSS directories. That can boost your traffic and may provide some link juice.

Yahoo Answers is a great way to get traffic. Just answer questions related to your niche. Be sure to make your answer the best one. This way you receive the benefits while helping someone out.

Other ways to boost your traffic is by posting on forums. Just use common sense and be real. If you give good advice then you will gain respect and gratitude. Others will see you as an expert if you continue using these techniques.

Start a Squidoo lens on the topic of your website. Have interesting articles posted with links back to your sites. Add pictures to make it more appealing.

Press releases are another great way to attract traffic. If you haven’t written press releases before then just search for “How to write a press release”. There are several articles and templates online at your disposal.

Then write it and submit it to the PR sites. Be sure to make it newsworthy.

Don’t forget about social book marketing with sites such as Digg and Socialmarker. If you add in social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, then you can really build your traffic.

One last way to increase your traffic is by placing classified ads. Use sites like craigslist.org and usfreeads.com.

Remember that no matter which technique you use, always make quality posts without spamming. Earn their respect and you will receive your rewards.

Use an attention-getting headline with a posting that will help your potential customers, and bring you loyal clients for years to come.

Google will be happy as well to see all those links pointing to your site and will reward you.

This all adds to your success and bottom line.

So get busy!

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Unique & Free Ways to Send Visitors to Your Websites & Blogs — all Yours.http://www.ghostwriter4you.com/

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Everyone knows that shoppers will typically do a number of different searches and compare various websites before making a purchase. Google have now introduced search funnel reports, giving you a unique insight into the shopping cycle of your customers.

When a prospect clicks on one of your ads in Google, they start a search funnel. AdWords will then track your prospects paid search activity over the next 30 days or until they click on another of your ads and make a purchase.

The data for all completed search funnels can then be compiled into a series of different reports that will give you a very useful insight into the exact thought process that’s going on in your customers mind before they purchase from you.

 

New Reports: AdWords Search Funnels – Inside AdWords

In order to help you make more informed decisions about your AdWords keywords, ad groups, and campaigns, we’re excited to release a new set of reports for your AdWords account: AdWords Search Funnels (beta). …

Publish Date: 03/23/2010 20:23

http://adwords.blogspot.com/

Google AdWords Search Funnels: how they can help your paid search …

AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports which show all of the keywords and impressions in Google that assisted in leading up to a conversion (such as a purchase). Up until now, Google could only show the last keyword before a …

Publish Date: 03/25/2010 10:00

http://www.leapfrogg.co.uk/

Google Releases AdWords Search Funnels | Search Engine Journal

Google is currently testing a new Google AdWords feature called Search Funnels. These are set of reports that describe the ad click and impression behavior on.

Publish Date: 03/24/2010 1:47

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

Google Search Funnels Released | SEO Consult News

Google Search Funnels Released by SEO Consult – Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization) Advice from SEO Consult.

Publish Date: 03/25/2010 8:02

http://www.seoconsult.co.uk/SEO-News/

Google Introduces AdWords Search Funnels Reports | WebProNews

A post on the Inside AdWords blog explained, “AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion. In addition to a Top Conversions report, …

Publish Date: 03/24/2010 13:41

http://www.webpronews.com/taxonomy/term/252/0

Google Premieres AdWords Search Funnels

Google is launching a new beta feature for AdWords today: Search Funnels. The feature is a set of reports that …

Publish Date: 03/23/2010 21:00

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/

AdWords Search Funnels Overview

The AdWords Search Funnels reports describe the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior that led up to final clicks and conversions …

If you’re like most, you will be constantly searching for the next AdWord Keyword to add to your campaign and doubtless you will at some time be tempted to use a one-word key phrase because of the huge number of searches these phrases attract.

Keep in mind when selecting one-word key phrases that your ad will get seen in lots of different circumstances over which you have no direct control. Some of these impressions will be useful to your business, but many will not and could even do your account harm.

Just imagine for a moment that you were to use the key phrase golf to advertise your online store selling golf clubs.

Your ad would probably appear for phrases like golf clubs and golf drivers which would be good for your business. But it might also appear for a lot of irrelevant phrases like golf bag, golf buggies, golf course, golf clothing and a whole lot more.

These unwanted impressions will at best reduce your click-through rate, meaning you have to increase your bid to remain competitive, at worst get your ad clicked on by people who have absolutely no interest in what you have to offer.

Clearly, you could play safe and only use keywords in your AdWords campaign that have two or more words in them. But that would over look a  number of targeted one-word key phrases that potentially could be very profitable.

Take the case of our online retailer selling golf clubs again.

Anyone that is familiar with the game of golf will probably have heard of Ping. They are well known manufacturers of good quality golf clubs. Unfortunately, it is also a very common term used in Internet communications.

If our golf club retailer were to use this one-word key term to sell golf clubs, the first thing they would want to do is build a very comprehensive negative keyword list. Your ad needs to appear for phrases like ping putter and ping irons but not for phrases like ping packets and ping reply.

Once a detailed negative keyword list has been built, you can start using your one-word key phrase in your AdWords campaign. But make sure you monitor closely the keywords performance. A popular one-word keyword can suck your budget dry in hours if left unchecked.

Run a ‘Search Query Performance’ report every day and make a note of all the keywords for which your ad is being shown. If there are any that are not relevant to your business, add them to your negative keywords list.

From the keywords that remain, specifically target the most popular by adding them to their own ad groups and making the keywords exact match.

Don’t forget to also add those same keywords to the negative keywords list for your one-word keyword. You don’t want your general ad to accidentally show for these keywords anymore.

After a week or two, you’ll have a highly tuned one-word keyword phrase that will show your ad against a whole range of different search phrases and a number of spin-off ad groups containing your more targeted keyword phrases.

You can now afford to back off your optimization routine a bit.

You’ll still want to run regular Performance reports, but not as often as you did when you first started. Once a week should be fine.

Over time, continue to optimize and fine tune your one-word key phrase and to build an ever more comprehensive list of popular keywords to specifically target.

It’s true that using one-word phrases as an AdWord keyword can be a very risky strategy. And you must be prepared to initially loose some money while you optimize your campaign.

But once you’ve done all the hard work, your ad will get shown for a whole bunch of searches that are just not worth targeting individually. Additionally, you’ll also get loads of other popular keywords to target that you know people are using in their searches.

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Everyone who reads the AdWords Adviser agrees with me that there is no easier way to keep up-to-date with AdWords than with our ebook.

Download your free copy now!

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Dear AdWords Adviser!

Every week we answer one of the many questions you send us. If you would like the answer to your question then send it to:)

www.dearadwordsadviser.com

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This week we would like to thank Christian for the question:)

What are your 3 most effective strategies for improving Quality Score?

What an excellent question you’ve asked. Quality Score is one of the biggest problems AdWords advertisers face and without doubt, the only way of improving it is through relevance - let me explain:)

1) Relevant Keywords

You should choose only those keywords that are related to your niche and divide them into small ad groups, containing no more than five to ten closely related keywords.

For example, if you are selling widgets, then phrases like ‘blue widget’, ‘buy blue widget’ and ‘blue widget sale’ belong  together. But phrases like ‘green widget’ and ‘best yellow widget’ belong in their own ad groups of closely related keyword phrases.

2) Relevant Ads

Your ads need to relate closely to your keywords. The easiest way of achieving this is to ensure that your main keyword is included in the ad title and once in the description.

If you can also include the keyword phrase in the display url and the destination url then that’s even better. But space and website restrictions can often make that difficult.

Should you have two or three keywords in the same ad group that could easily be your main keyword, then consider splitting them up, putting each keyword into its own ad group.

Remember you want your ads to reflect your best keywords and you can’t do that if you’ve got multiple very popular keywords in the same ad group.

3) Relevant Landing Page

Making your landing page relevant to the keywords in your ad group doesn’t mean you have to include every keyword phrase in your text and it doesn’t mean you need to flood your landing page with all your most popular keywords either.

For best results, design an individual landing page for each of your ads. This can involve a lot of work, but it also allows you to create a strong focus in the landing page for your main keyword.

Write an eye catching title for each of your landing pages that includes your main keyword phrase. Also ensure your main keyword phrase is included in the first and last paragraphs of text as well as about half way down the page.

Most important is that you don’t force your text. Keep it all flowing naturally. If, in order to achieve a natural flow you need to include your keyword phrase more often, then don’t be afraid to do so. There are no hard and fast rules.

Ideally, your landing page will include links to other pages within your website that are on the same subject. You’ll also want your images to be labelled to include your main keyword phrase in order to further reinforce its relevance.

Remember, when reviewing your landing page, AdWords will also take a look at other pages on your site. It’s therefore worth creating a website that is very specialised and has lots of content about your niche rather than one that is more general.

But, most important of all, when designing your landing page keep in mind not to compromise conversions just to please Google. You still need a web page that will sell to your prospects.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot more that I could write about Quality Score. It’s such a big subject, trying to cover it all in an answer to one question is near impossible.

Probably the most valuable piece of advice I can give you is to be patient. Don’t make the common mistake of making lots of major changes one after the other because you haven’t seen any instant improvement in your Quality Score rating.

When you make changes to your AdWords campaigns, particularly to your landing pages, it can often take weeks or even months for the full effects of your changes to appear in higher Quality Score ratings.

For more hints and tips about improving your Quality Score, you’ll obviously want to keep reading the AdWords Adviser. But, if you want more information now, try a visit to this resource:)

http://www.squidoo.com/adwords-low-quality-score

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Adrian Key is a profesional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. Subscribe to this blog, get your free ebook, and be informed by email everytime we answer a readers question.

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Guest Author Tuesday!

In this series of articles we invite guest authors to introduce us to alternative marketing methods that you can use to attract visitors.

To contribute an article, please email:)

editor@adwords-adviser.co.uk

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Would you believe me if I told you that many times the solution to skyrocket sales on a slow selling product, is to raise the price? When I first started to market online, I didn’t truly understand this concept. I used to ask myself why customers would actually want to pay more for a product. It just seemed like it was a myth straight out of bizarro world.

Of course this was before I learned about “perceived value”. A higher priced product is usually perceived to have a more significant value in the customer’s mind. Now that I have been marketing online for well over ten years, I have seen this phenomenon in action countless times.

A famous Internet marketer I once knew put this theory to the ultimate test by first giving away an ebook for several months, then he turned around and sold it for $47 a pop. Amazingly, he sold thousands of copies and without a doubt proved his point; perceived value is an extremely critical psychological tool.

The kicker is, while he got a few positive comments about his ebook while he was giving it away, he was absolutely flooded with positive reviews when he began selling it. This is because of the perception that since the ebook was free, the content didn’t hold any real value. However, when people had to pay for it, the content became much more valuable to them.

It was comical, but true. This is why you should never be afraid to raise the price of your products, especially if one of them isn’t selling well. This not only can boost sales, but also increases your profit margins substantially. I have done this many times and it works like a charm, even though it isn’t always successful. If you find sales are dropping off significantly after the price increase, then nothing is stopping you from lowering the price again. If sales remain the same, you will have increased your profit margins. Do you see how powerful this concept can be?

If you are afraid to test your pricing points, you will never reap the substantial rewards that can come with it. This doesn’t mean you have to change the price on all of your products, obviously. Simply pick out a few slow selling products and test new pricing points. You may be surprised at the results.

Remember, never be afraid to take action.

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Discover the little known money making ideas used by the experts in my hot new ebook “Secret Lives of Internet Marketers”. You will discover the successful blueprint seven famous marketers used to become financially independent and how you can easily apply it to your own online business! To download my FREE REPORT instantly, follow the link below: http://easyebookrights.com/mmi.html

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You probably know that in 2006 Google purchased YouTube for $1.65bn. Ever since then, they have been trying different advertising models in an attempt to make the platform profitable.

On YouTube, overlay ads have been a common feature in videos for sometime. But until recently, they have only been available to big advertisers with the right tools to create them.

Recently, Google have added a new feature to their Display Ad Builder tool that will help small advertisers create their own overlay ads.

Everyone who uses AdWords image ads will probably already be familiar with the Display Ad Builder tool. It is designed to help advertisers easily create effective image ads for their Content Network campaigns.

Expanding the tools functionality to allow small businesses to create overlay ads is certainly a big step forwards for advertisers.

However, you might wonder if the possibility of YouTube being flooded with hundreds of overlay ads could ultimately be self destructive to Google’s long term aims of making the platform profitable. Will too many ads embedded in the videos you watch turn people off YouTube making it less popular?

Learn more about this new feature here:)

Opening Up YouTube To New Display Advertisers

Now, any advertiser can use Display Ad Builder to turn their image ads into overlays and run a campaign on YouTube in minutes.

http://adwords.blogspot.com

Google Automates The Creation Of YouTube Overlay Ads

Through the self-serve Display Ad Builder in Google AdWords, mom-and-pop businesses can now create Flash overlay ads as easily as they can create display banner ads and place them in YouTube videos.

http://techcrunch.com/

YouTube Tries To Spur Wider Use Of InVideo Ads

So Google has tweaked one of its AdWords tools, the Display Ad Builder, which offers font and template options for advertisers to now provide a space to add some animation for overlays.

http://paidcontent.org/

YouTube overlay ads going mainstream

Google, in an ongoing effort to transform the number one video site on the Web into a profit powerhouse, introduced Tuesday afternoon a new way for small advertisers to take advantage of the effectiveness of the Invideo overlay ad.

http://vator.tv/

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Everyone who reads the AdWords Adviser agrees with me that there is no easier way to keep up-to-date with AdWords than with our ebook.

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It’s a fact that your ads will be shown to a much wider audience when your keywords are set to broad match. But, without a large AdWords negative keywords list, you’ll probably be very disappointed with your results.

Given this fact, you’ll want to know how to create a meaningful negative keyword list for all your broad match keywords.

If you’re like most, you’ll use a keyword tool like Google’s to find targeted keyword phrases for your AdWords campaigns. Most people will look at the list their particular tool produces, pull out the relevant keywords for their campaign and then discard the rest.

The right thing to do with those discarded keywords is to use them to create your negative keywords list.

Although at first this might seem strange, the fact is that your keyword tool has discovered these non targeted keywords  when researching your niche. Google obviously thinks they maybe relevant and it’s up to you to tell AdWords that they are not.

Even More Negative Keywords

Having completed your initial AdWords negative keywords list, you’ll now want to expand your list based on your keywords performance.

During the first few weeks of using your new keywords, you’ll want to run a ‘Search Query Performance’ report at least once a week.

When you see keywords in your report that are not relevant or aren’t converting, you need to add them to your negative keywords list.

In the same way, you will also want to make a note of all those keywords you delete from your campaign because they are not profitable. Just because you’ve stopped targeting them as exact or phrase match, doesn’t mean that they won’t be picked up again by one of your broad match keywords.

When you delete a keyword from your campaign you should add it to your list of negative keywords.

Always Monitor Your Results

Without a doubt, building a large AdWords negative keywords list for all your campaigns will make your broad match keywords much more targeted and profitable. However, while creating your list, you also need to keep a close eye on how your additions are affecting your conversions.

To avoid loosing money, it is essential that you monitor your conversions using Google Analytics or the much simpler conversions tracking software included within AdWords.

Dear AdWords Adviser!

Every week we answer one of the many questions you send us. If you would like the answer to your question then send it to:)

www.dearadwordsadviser.com

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This week we would like to thank Kathy for her question:)

What do you do with really good keywords with neither impressions or clicks?

You have no idea how many times I get asked about supposedly good keywords that get no impressions or no clicks.

The harsh reality is that keywords with no impressions are not really good keywords. And this fact is actually verified by your own account statistics.

If, after a few weeks of bidding on your prize keywords you have no impressions accumulated,  then obviously nobody is using those keywords to search for the products or services that you have to offer.

I know what you’re thinking, you checked your keywords against Google’s keyword tool and it showed you that there was a few hundred searches performed on this keyword recently.

While this is true, you must remember that most low volume keywords go in and out of fashion very quickly. You might think of them as very relevant, but obviously your public doesn’t. Otherwise, they would use those terms regularly in their searches.

My recommendation is to delete keywords with no impressions and no clicks as they’re just cluttering up your campaign and making it harder for you to manage.

But, before you do delete them, try entering the keywords into a keyword selection tool. The suggestions that it returns may give you a much better idea as to how your public are really thinking when they look for your product or service online.

There is one exception to this rule, which is when your keywords are seasonal.

For example, if you have keywords that target Christmas, then keep these in a campaign of their own and turn the campaign on a few weeks before the holiday. After Christmas is over, pause the campaign and forget about them until next year.

There really is no short cuts to building a good keyword list for your AdWords campaigns, you have to do the proper research.

This post might help:)

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/the-quickest-way-to-build-any-adwords-keyword-list

Final Thoughts!

Don’t spend too much time focusing on impressions and clicks. The success of any Google AdWords campaign rests on being able to measure conversions. If you don’t know which keywords are converting, then your probably wasting most of your budget.

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Adrian Key is a profesional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. After you read Your AdWords Review, you will feel the power that comes from knowing exactly what you need to do to make your AdWords advertising more profitable.

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Guest Author Tuesday!

In this series of articles we invite guest authors to introduce us to alternative marketing methods that you can use to attract visitors.

To contribute an article, please email:)

editor@adwords-adviser.co.uk

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The financial benefits of niche marketing can be quite significant. It’s always worth it to narrow down the focus of your marketing efforts in order to get more targeted traffic that’s ready to buy.

However, too many affiliate marketers when they first start out, neglect niche marketing in favor of going for large, broad markets. This is a mistake, because larger markets are harder to break into, due to a lot of competition and potential customers who aren’t ready to buy yet.

Beginners to affiliate marketing often think that narrowing down their focus to a small selection of people who might be interested in a specific product will diminish the amount of money they can make.

However, this is not the case.

Niche marketing is actually proven to increase profits by focusing on people who know exactly what they want and are ready to buy it.

These people have usually gone through all of the preliminary research they need to make a purchasing decision. With the right marketing techniques, you can reach them right at the moment they’ve decided to buy.

One such technique which will greatly benefit your niche business is article writing.

GoArticles and EzineArticles are two of the most popular repositories online, and you should definitely use them. Google especially loves EzineArticles, so your writings have a good chance of showing up on the first page of results for your keywords, if you’ve chosen them correctly.

When writing an article, you must first choose what keywords you’ll be using. These are the words that people are the most likely to search for when looking for information on your product or service online.

Use the keywords once in the article’s title, once in the first paragraph, once in the last paragraph, and three to four times throughout the body of the article. Keep the article from 300 to 400 words and break it up into short paragraphs and bulleted lists.

You must also keep your articles informative rather than promotional. No article repository will accept blatantly promotional material, since that makes the repository show up as spam in the search engines.

At the end of the article, you can include a brief couple of sentences about you and your product, and include a link to your website where readers can find out more. Once you’ve got a few articles out there working for you, you’ll almost certainly start to see the real financial benefits of article marketing.

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Alison Wood will help you build your business through her own direct experience. For the latest products, tools and news for proactive internet marketers, head over to:)http://www.bigskymarketing.net

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