Setting Up Your AdWords Campaign for Success

Several weeks ago we talked about the impact of your quality score on your AdWords campaigns.  Today we’ll go into more detail about how to set up your AdWords campaigns for success with high quality scores.

First, keep in mind the principles of a good campaign:

1. Target only searchers who are interested in your offer by carefully selecting your keywords.
2. Make your offer clear, compelling, and persuasive in your ad copy.
3. Fulfill the promise of your ad with a positive experience on your webpage.

The best way to achieve this is to set up your campaigns in small ad groups so you can closely match your keywords with highly targeted ad copy and the best landing page.  Start with a small number of keywords in each ad group.  Focus on quality, not quantity.  Avoid ambiguous keywords and only select keywords that a searcher would use when looking for your product or service.  For best results these keywords should almost be synonyms.  Keywords with different meanings should go into a separate ad group.  In the previous post we learned that a big part of your quality score is the historical click-through-rate (CTR).  Having your campaigns set up in tight ad groups will increase your CTR as searchers see a highly relevant ad for their keyword.  This sets up your campaigns for a good historical CTR from the start.

You can expand your keywords later, but you must start small to set your campaigns up for success in the long-run.  After you have achieved a quality score of 7 or better for a few weeks you can start to add keywords, but do this slowly, adding a few more relevant keywords at a time.  If these new keywords don’t achieve high quality scores abandon them quickly so you don’t bring down the quality scores of your other keywords.

While it isn’t necessary to use the keyword in your ad copy, it may be helpful to use it.  When the keyword in your ad matches the search term the keyword in your ad will appear bold on the search engine results page.  This might be the push a searcher needs to notice and click on your ad, improving CTR.  You can also dynamically insert the keyword into your ad so the searcher will see their exact keyword in the ad copy.  Make sure the offer in your ads is clear and enticing and include a call to action so the searcher knows what to do once they get to your website.

When you select the landing page for your ad group make sure it is the most relevant page to go with that keyword and ad copy combination.  Get as specific as possible.  For example, use a product page as a landing page instead of your home page or a category page.  Also, avoid any quality score penalties by making your privacy policy available, making sure your site loads within a reasonable amount of time, and including original content.  If you are selling a product that Google considers to be unsafe or illegal your account can be suspended, but hopefully that isn’t something to worry about!

Overall, you will set your AdWords campaigns up for success when searchers see relevant ads and are taken to websites that meet their needs.  With highly targeted keywords, ads, and landing pages in your campaigns searchers will find exactly what they are looking for.  This makes them happy, so AdWords rewards you, the advertiser, with good quality scores and a lower cost-per-click.

Tags: AdWords, pay-per-click, ppc

Optimize Your Landing Page

What makes a good PPC landing page great?  It is one where visitors complete your goal, whether its making a purchase, sign up for a webinar, request more information, or something else.  The only way to continually optimize your landing page is to test new versions of it.  We’ll give you some tips to start creating a better landing page.

• Clean pages are better than cluttered pages. Don’t have too much copy on the page, but don’t tell new visitors too little either.  About 100-300 words in short paragraphs, bullet points, or lists is best.
• Focus on conversions. The best place for a call to action is on the right side of the page.  Make the conversion button bigger and brighter than you think you need and place it above the browser fold.  Keep things simple by only providing 1-2 options and remove all other links.  Only include fields in your contact form that are absolutely necessary.
• Include action verbs in the headline and submission button. Make sure your visitors know what to do.  Keep your message consistent throughout the text and use the same verb on the submission button instead of the word “submit.”

Once you have these basics down, test a few versions of the landing page.  Try changing the color of the submit button, the action verb, copy, or images to see how visitors react.  The Google Website Optimizer is a fantastic free tool that allows you to test these elements.  Google provides great tutorials and tips to help you get started.

Run an experiment on two landing pages to see which converts best, but don’t stop there.  Take the better performing one and test it against a new version.  Continue to run these experiments and your landing pages will get better and better over time!

Tags: landing page, landing pages, online marketing, ppc, search engine marketing, sem

Quality Score in Paid Search

It seems like everyone is dabbling in Paid Search these days. With free advertiser credits from Adwords, free DIY webinars, and countless Paid Search Blogs, there is a ton of information and resources to get started with online advertising. Plus unlike an SEO campaign, your Paid Search campaign can be up and running in as little as 30 minutes, and you can receive instant traffic to your website.

But after the easy campaign setup process, figuring out what to do next can be difficult.  What can you do to optimize your campaign, compete on your keywords and keep your costs down? Working on your quality score is a start.

The “quality score” was created by Google to analyze the relevance of keywords in your campaign.  It is benefit advertisers who create highly relevant campaigns, online Google searchers and of course Google’s own business.  It helps advertisers achieve an overall lower cost per click when they choose the right combination of keywords, ad copy, and landing pages.  The optimized campaigns then in turn help the search users by displaying highly relevant ads and landing pages for their given search query. And Google does well when ads are clicked (revenue) and users gain confidence in Google’s ability to provide relevant search results.

Running campaigns that are not highly relevant can hurt an advertiser over time.  Google doesn’t shut down campaigns that are not relevant, but rather charges a premium cost-per-click that will help “punish” bad advertising practices and push lower performing ads down in display order.

There are a number of components that go into calculating the quality score:

• Historical Click-Through-Rate (CTR) – This includes the CTR of the keyword and matched ad, CTR of the account, CTR of the display URL, and CTR of results in the searcher’s geography.
• Relevance – This is based on the searcher’s behavior.  Does your keyword and ad copy combination entice a searcher’s to click on your ad?  This includes how well your keyword and ad copy addresses the intent of the searcher.  For example, keywords can have multiple meanings or be used at different points in the buying cycle.
• Landing Page Quality – Until recently you only had to worry about the content on your landing page for your own business purposes – to generate leads, sales, or meet your business goals.  Now, Google is starting to take your website content into consideration when calculating your quality score, which makes sense.  It helps line up the searcher’s and the advertiser’s best interests, which in turn makes Google a better search engine.

Overall, quality scores help align everyone’s interests.  Higher quality scores lead to lower costs-per-click for the advertiser, a better user experience for the searcher, and a better search reputation for Google.

Tags: google adwords, paid search, ppc, sem

Lessen the Impact of Google Search Privacy Changes on your Analytics

Last week, Google announced on its blog that it was making some changes that will affect the availability of search engine data. Google claims that these changes are being made in an effort to make search more secure.

What is Changing?

Essentially, users who are signed into a Google service on their browser will be redirected to the secure version of Google search (https://www.google.com). Searches made from this secure version of Google are encrypted, so the keyword terms that users type in their search are “protected” – sort of.*

How Do I Know If I’m Signed In?

If you see something like this in the upper right hand of your browser, you are currently signed in to a Google service and your searches will be encrypted.

How Often Do People Really Sign In Before Doing A Search?

At first thought, it might seem like the number of people who sign in to Google immediately after opening a browser to do a search is probably low. And it probably is. However, a lot of people will decide to make a search after visiting Gmail. Unless they manually log out of Gmail, they will still be logged in when they perform their search.

The same thing applies with any of Google’s other dozens of free services. And we hear they are quite popular. Although, it’s worth mentioning that Google estimates that only 10% of all searches will now be encrypted.

So What’s the Big Deal?

By encrypting these searches, website owners will lose valuable information about the people who visit their sites. Particularly, they will lose information about what search terms people used to find them on the web. Knowing these search terms is a critical part of organic search engine optimization; it helps website owners learn how to target the right audiences with their website content.

This data is also invaluable for paid search marketers and managers of PPC programs (such as Adwords) because it provides insight into how their campaigns are working.

Starting on 10/18/2011, website owners and internet marketers will see this for every encrypted search:

I wonder what the keywords were for those two visits…

Why Can’t We Get This Info From Somewhere Else?

You see, the only way that website owners and search engine marketers can have access to this information in the first place is because Google provides it: whether you are using Google Analytics, Omniture or another search engine metrics provider. If Google decides not to share data about the people using its search engine, there is nowhere else to get it (unless you commissioned a really large and expensive focus group).

OK, So What Can We Do About It?

Understanding what this means is the first step in understanding what you should do about it. And to do that you need to know exactly how many visits to your site this change is affecting (we will demonstrate with Google Analytics, but you can find similar solutions with Omniture or your preferred analytics packages).

1. Find the # of encrypted visits and divide by the total number of Google visits

Run these numbers from 10/18/2011 to 10/25/2011 (the first week this new change has been in effect). In that week www.webbedmarketing.com missed out on search term data from 2 out of 875 visitors. So less than 1% had encrypted search terms. We found similar results for most of our clients – a far cry from the 10% of visits that Google estimated.

But what if your site is missing out on a significantly higher percentage of search data? Or if the results climb as the update has been out longer and perhaps more people begin performing searches while logged in? With the way Google has been promoting some of its newer service, like Google +, it would not be a surprise to see the number of encrypted searches increase over time.

2. Set up and monitor an internal site search

Almost every website has some sort of internal search engine allowing visitors to try to find what they are looking for once they have arrived on the homepage. But what most people don’t know is that you can track the terms that visitors are searching for in Google Analytics. So if Google is going to hide some search data from you, why not expand your data source by including searches happening on your own site?

Instructions from Google how to set up and monitor a site search.

Unfortunately, this won’t help provide information on the missing data for monitoring paid search campaigns. Hopefully the relatively low percentage of affected data will keep this from being a real issue. But a site search will provide insight for organic SEO.

A good search engine marketer will tell you that an internal site search has always been a great place to mine data for organic SEO. For example, if you review the searches taking place on your website and find an unusually high number of visitors searching for a particular product or service – and you don’t currently offer it – maybe you should consider adding it (and building a keyword rich landing page to go with it, of course).

So there you have it – two simple steps and you’ll be likely never to notice the changes that everyone is making such a big fuss about!

*Wait, What Did You Mean Encrypted Search Terms Would Only Be “Sort Of” Protected?

Oh that…

Well, here’s the thing: Google claims that they are taking these steps in the earnest effort to protect the privacy of its users. But a lot of people just aren’t buying it.

You see, Google is encrypting the search term data from its logged in users. But they are not keeping it hidden from everyone. As a matter of fact, there is one online community who will still have access to this encrypted data: Google Adwords users.

That’s right, those who pay for Google’s Adwords package will NOT be shut out from the encrypted search data. Competing PPC ad platforms, however, will. So while everyone else is seeing (not provided), Google Adwords users will know that these visitors were actually searching for “jelly donuts” or whatever the case may be.

Tags: google, google analytics, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, SEO

Fathom Online Marketing Announces Acquisition of Webbed Marketing

Cleveland-based Fathom Online Marketing, one of the 25 largest search engine optimization and online marketing firms in the country, today announced the acquisition of Webbed Marketing.

Webbed Marketing, based in Columbus, Ohio, has experienced double-digit annual growth since its founding in 2006, and today serves more than 60 clients regionally, nationally and internationally.

“Webbed Marketing is a highly visible company in the online marketing space, and has done a great job earning a reputation as experts in search and social media,” Scot Lowry, CEO of Fathom Online Marketing said. He explained that the acquisition allows Fathom to expand its social media offerings and cited Webbed Marketing’s expertise in healthcare, government and information technology as key reasons for the acquisition.

“In addition, this acquisition allows us to offer online social media research, planning and analysis to large organizations through Webbed Marketing’s VisiOne service” Lowry said.

Lowry said that Webbed Marketing’s office will remain in Columbus. “The Columbus region has been very supportive of Webbed Marketing and our plans are to not only continue to operate the Columbus office, but to continue to grow the Columbus presence.”

“Today’s announcement comes as a result of all the support we’ve received from our employees, clients, partners, and the Columbus community during the last five years,” Bill Balderaz, Webbed Marketing’s founder, said.

“We’re grateful to everyone who has played a role in our success,” Amy Marshall, COO of Webbed Marketing, said. “This move allows us to serve all those around us even better than before.” Marshall, who leads the company’s VisiOne group, added that she is looking forward to introducing in-depth audience research through social media analysis to Fathom’s clients.

“This is another great success story for Central Ohio,” Tim Haynes, Vice President of Member Services and Marketing for TechColumbus said. “It reflects the growth and the strength of our region’s interactive marketing, web development and digital community.”

Susan Merryman, Vice President of Marketing and Communication for the Columbus Chamber of Commerce agreed, “We have a long standing relationship with Webbed Marketing and welcome Fathom to Columbus. This is another great indicator of the economic growth of Columbus.”

Lowry agreed, “This is a case where everyone truly wins. Fathom’s clients now have access to Webbed Marketing’s research, analysis, social media and healthcare experience. While Webbed Marketing’s clients have access to Fathom’s performance based email marketing services and additional SEO and online advertising resources. Employees of both firms have even broader career paths. And the economies of Columbus, Cleveland and all of Ohio benefit by having one of the powerhouses of online marketing based locally.”

About Fathom Online Marketing
Fathom Online Marketing is an online marketing firm located in Valley View, Ohio, specializing in organic search-engine optimization, opt-in email marketing, online public relations, Internet video products, and pay-per-click advertising. Fathom can be found on Twitter: @fathomseo.

About Webbed Marketing
Webbed Marketing’s goal is to help organizations grow by using the power of online marketing, advertising and public relations. The firm specializes in search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media, mobile marketing and research and planning. Visit http://www.webbedmarketing.com for more information.

Tags: business, internet marketing, marketing, SEO, social media, webbed marketing

Web Conversions – New Google Analytics Tracking

Event Tracking as a Goal in the New Version of Google Analytics

Previously, there were three options for goals in Google Analytics: a pageview, the time a visitor spent on the site, and the number of pages a visitor viewed.  With the new version of Google Analytics, you can now track events as web conversions or “Goals”.  This opens up your goal tracking to many more possibilities.  Here are a few:

• Watch a video
• Listen to a recording
• Share content via social media
• Download a PDF
• Comment on a blog post
• Rate a product
• Track links to another website
• Fill out a form
• Interact with an application

What is the benefit of this?

For PPC campaigns in Adwords, these new event goals can be imported as conversions in AdWords.  Now you can see which campaigns and keywords are engaging your audience and refine it down to the ad group level for your search engine marketing campaigns.  Previously, to track a form submission as a goal, the form would need a unique “thank you” page. Now, we can track the click of the submit button as an event goal even if there is not a unique thank you page URL.

For search engine optimization clients, this goal tracking provides even more insight into how users are interacting with your site and increasing the view into engagement for the site variables (downloads, video views, etc). For example, you can track when a visitor views a video, and you can specify the amount of time that a person needs to watch the video in order for it to count as a goal completion.

On the social media side, you will be able to determine how users are interacting with your via social media networks. Learn how often they are sharing your content and which pages are most relevant to social media users.

Setting up the Goal

There are four event components that can be set up as a goal condition: a category, action, label, and value.  At least one of these components must be defined but you have the option of defining all four.  Think about all of the event goals you would like to set up before starting.  It’ll make it easier to organize your goals into categories, actions, and/or labels that make sense and are consistent across your site.  Then, choose a goal value, either the value you assigned to the event when you set it up or set a constant value.

Keep in mind that setting up events as goals requires you to add code to the website element you want to track.  So, either you or an IT person will need access to edit the website code in order to benefit from the new event goal tracking.



Tags: conversion tracking, google, google analytics, internet marketing, metrics, online marketing, ppc, search engine optimization, SEO, social media

Google Adwords to launch new privacy rules

Sony hacked.
The Yankees accidentally email out personally identifiable information of their season ticket holders.
A Texas security breach exposes 3.5M records by accidentally placing information on a public server.

These are some of the most recent examples of data security breaches in the news. With remote workers, cloud computing, your iPhone tracking your every move, how a company and a person keep their information safe is gaining attention. Think about the websites you visit and the information floating out there in cyberspace about you. When is the last time you entered your name, address, email address, phone number, or credit card number on a website? Now, what did that company do to keep your information safe? Don’t know? Honestly, neither do I.

Now that you’re thinking about data security, know you aren’t the only one. Google thinks about it, too. Yesterday, Google announced a change to their policy for AdWords advertisers’ websites that collect personally identifiable information to go into effect May 17, 2011. Their 3 new requirements:

1. Clear, accessible disclosure before visitors submit personal information
2. Option to discontinue direct communications
3. SSL when collecting payment and certain financial and personal information

What do these changes mean for pay per click advertisers?

1. The first requirement for clear, accessible disclosure means that websites who collect what Google defines as personal information must now have a statement or a link to a privacy policy defining how that information will be used.
   Solution: To fulfill this requirement, post a privacy policy on your site that is easily accessible (i.e. footer nav, included in about us section).
2. The second requirement is an opt-out policy from any direct communications, which covers emails, phone calls, text messages, direct mail or any other means of communication directly based on the information collected.
   Solution: Posting a clear link in your privacy policy or an opt out option in your data collection form should satisfy this requirement.
3. Requirement three requires those collecting financial and certain personal information to use SSL when collecting that information.
   Solution: A secure environment (SSL) is pretty standard for eCommerce sites, but a must have to comply with these new rules.

To avoid a campaign suspension and ensure that your PPC campaigns continue running smoothly, make sure that you provide a privacy policy on your site.  Users will have the peace of mind that your site is safe and you’ll satisfy Google’s requirement at the same time.

How To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

So you design a beautiful site, and you’re getting a lot of traffic, but you still aren’t generating the sales or leads that it takes to justify the cost of the site. If you’re wondering why your conversion rate isn’t what it needs to be it’s probably for one of two reasons: 1) Your website doesn’t have clear calls to action that make it easy for your visitors to convert or 2) You’re driving the wrong type of visitor to your website. There’s a simple test to determine which issue is probably holding your conversion rate down:

1. If you’re talking to your website design shop, it is probably that your SEO/online marketing firm is sending you lousy traffic.
2. If you’re talking to your SEO/online marketing agency, it’s because of your crappy website design.

Okay, still now satisfied? Take a look at Google Analytics and let’s dig in.

1. First, stop thinking about site wide conversions. It’s not that your site converts at 1%. It’s that search converts at 4% and direct traffic at .4% and referring sites at 1.2%. Then dig in deeper. Maybe search converts at 4% but some keywords convert at a whopping 20% and some have not driven a single conversion. And, you’ll be surprised which ones convert best. Now imagine if you put all your efforts into the 20% converting keywords and keywords closely related to those terms. Then look at that referring site traffic. Does Twitter convert at 9%? Do Tweets sent on Tuesdays convert even better, say 11%? Now what about Tweets sent on Tuesdays that are about diabetes treatment? Do those convert at 14%? Start thinking about conversion at the micro level. And if your PPC traffic as a whole is only converting at .02%, don’t give up. Just trim the fat on non- converting keywords and shift budget and attention to those that do convert. You may end up with 200 keywords in your campaigns. or 2000, or 20.
2. Next start using Google Analytics to track conversion paths.  You can set up goal funnels  and examine what pages are most likely to lead someone to convert. You may find that visitors who view your “About” page are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Or that visitors who view your testimonial page never convert. You may find that certain page combinations raise conversions. You may find that you can convert visitors with one slick page and very little copy, or that you may need five pages with a lot of copy to convert a visitor.
3. Now look at the relationships between one and two above. Maybe people who visit your site from a keyword search on your brand name just need that flashy, simple page to convert. Maybe your Facebook fans convert without ever looking at your “About” page. But visitors from PPC may need to look at five pages and educate themselves before converting.

All this should guide your marketing activity. You may decide to target Twitter visitors at 11 am on Tuesdays and drive them to the ‘Patient Information” page. Your PPC visitors may require a very different message, at a different time and a very different landing page. Stop thinking about a single conversion rate for your site and start thinking about improving a hundred very targeted conversion paths.

Using Google Analytics Goal Tracking

So you want to get more traffic your website? You’ve come to the right place! Whether you’re looking for SEO , PPC , Social Media or a combination of these services we will bring more traffic to your website. Before we get started the most important thing to think about is, “What do I want these visitors to do once they come to my website?” For some organizations it is obvious. If you have an e-commerce website you’ll want visitors to purchase your products. If your website is for a medical office you probably want customers to learn more about your practice then schedule an appointment. But, what if your goal is less obvious? Maybe you work for an organization that wants to increase awareness of an issue. You still have plenty of options to measure your success! Here are a few sample goals:
• Request more information
• Sign up to receive a newsletter
• Join an e-mail list
• Read an article
• Watch a video
• Pledge to make a difference

Don’t Ask What You Want, Ask What You Want to Accomplish

You don’t want a PageRank of 8, or a 10% click through rate or 1,000 Twitter followers.

Just like consumers in 1908 didn’t really want a better horse, they wanted a faster way to travel that didn’t poop— thus the whole “automobile” thing caught on. Professionals in 1976 might have thought they wanted a more useful typewriter, but they wanted a box that they could type on, and do math on, and access information from - but they weren’t saying they wanted a ”personal computer”. Last April, I didn’t want a library/music store/movie theatre/magazine standd that fit into my briefcase, I wanted one magic little device that could serve up any media, and here I sit listening to Whitesnake my iPad.

In other words, we often get caught up in wanting a better version of what we know, versus thinking about what we want to accomplish. Ultimately, your online marketing program is probably about generating more sales, leads, voters, donors or members through your website. Things like where you rank on this keyword, or how much your traffic grows, or how many likes you get on Facebook don’t keep your shareholders happy.

Every day we get calls from potential clients asking if we can get them to page 1 on Google for this term, or if we can generate 1,000 new inbound links, or if we can increase their page views per visit. The answer to all of this is “yes we can, but we’d rather help you generate revenue.” If after six months of a marketing program, your time on site is down, and your traffic is down and you haven’t generated a single new link but sales have tripled and you’re showing a great ROI, count the campaign as a success.

Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe in measuring everything. I believe you can build models that show if your website traffic increases by x% your sales increase by y%. I believe you can analyze how YouTube video views correlate with leads. I believe that you can associate longer time on site with more members. But ultimately, I believe the thumbs up or thumbs down on any campaign should be decided by answering a simple question: “What did I accomplish for my organization?”