Series: 7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.

Mistake #1 – Too many keywords per ad group.

I see this mistake all the time and, as a new AdWords advertiser, it’s not exactly 100% your fault. I’ll explain why.

Google (and Yahoo and MSN) pretty much lead you down a path of adding way to many keywords per ad group right from the account set-up stage when they ask you to add your keywords. How many of you had a list of 100 or so and just added them into one ad group to get going? See what I’m getting at?

Well I’m here to tell you that it most definitely is a big mistake, but it is understandable given the way the account set-up process works.

While there is no single correct answer when it comes to the number of keywords per group, the aim of the game is simple – each ad group should only contain highly targeted, related keywords that focus on a specific product or service.

Take a look back at all your ad groups and ask yourself, “Are these groups individually targeting a single product, service, or action?” If not then you have some work to do.

Here is a really basic example.

A business called “Leigh’s Widgets” sells, you guessed it, widgets!

Here is the initial Keyword list (all in one ad group):

Ad Group 1:

• widgets
• widget
• widgets online
• widgets sale
• widget reviews
• compare widgets
• buy widgets
• widget model 123abc
• small widgets
• small widgets online
• buy small widgets
• cheap small widgets
• house widgets
• house widgets online
• buy house widgets
• cheap house widgets
• large widgets
• large widgets online
• buy large widgets
• cheap large widgets

There are simply too many different products or services being targeted with this list. Firstly we’ve got generic ‘widget’ terms, then we’ve got comparison and review terms, followed by specific models and/or product types.

Not only is this ad group not focused, but it’s also targeting keywords that may well be relevant to vary different parts of the buying cycle (Important – we’ll cover keyword research and the buying cycle in detail in another post).

So stepping back at and looking at this, here is one possible way I’d structure these keywords into numerous ad groups:

Ad Group 1: (Generic / Head terms)

• widgets
• widget
• widgets online

Ad Group 2: (sale)

• widgets sale

Ad Group 3: (review)

• widget reviews

Ad Group 4: (compare)

• compare widgets

Ad Group 5: (buy)

• buy widgets
• cheap widgets
• widgets sale

Ad Group 6: (model 123abc)

• widget model 123abc

Ad Group 7: (small – generic/head)

• small widgets
• small widgets online

Ad Group 8: (buy small)

• buy small widgets
• cheap small widgets
• small widgets sale

Ad Group 9: (house – generic/head)

• house widgets
• house widgets online

Ad Group 10: (buy house widget)

• buy house widgets
• cheap house widgets

Ad Group 11: (large – generic/head)

• large widgets
• large widgets online

Ad Group 12: (buy large widget)

• buy large widgets
• cheap large widgets

You’ll notice I’ve got a number of ad groups now with only 1 keyword – this is intentional. If there are no other keywords in your list that are relevant/related, then build an ad group with just the one keyword. You may also find keywords you have missed as you do this too.

Take a look at Ad Group 3 – ‘widget reviews’  is the only keyword in this list, yet, we really should include related keywords like ‘widget review’, ‘review of widget’ ‘online reviews of widget’, ‘online widget reviews’ etc.

In some instances, you may expand an ad group with additional relevant terms only to discover that you could then break that ad group up even further. This is OK! I recommend it!

Why are we going to all this trouble? Well the simple fact is that if your Ad text/copy for a given ad group is highly related to all the keywords in that ad group, then you’re going to have a better quality ad, higher click through rate, and ideally, a highly relevant landing page.

Combine all these factors and you’re potentially doing PPC better than 95% of the other advertisers who are bidding on that same term!

One of the biggest issues with having too many different product or service related keywords in a group is that it’s almost impossible to create a good ad that works for every one of them. There is such a thing called Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) (again a topic for another post entirely) which can add the keyword that triggered the ad into the ‘ad copy’. However DKI is something that needs to be done very carefully (and in some instance avoided).

But ultimately, if you are selling different types of ‘widgets’ to people at different stages in the buying cycle, would it not make sense to write ads that would appeal to directly to that type of mindset, rather than trying to write one ad to suit all possible searches?

Yes it would! And breaking up your ad groups into smaller tight groups will help you get it right.

ShareThis

I also decided that there’s no better way to show this than with pictures – so here we go! minimalistic but pretty self explanatory.

(Tip: click on any of the images to view the full size image).

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

The Anatomy of a Google Search Results Page

Below is the Google result page for the search phrase ‘florist melbourne’ – Fairly generic but with a local search / small business intent.  Lets see what we got….

(click image to enlarge)

Confused?

What ‘result’ would you click on first?  Keep the answer to that question in your head while I break out the various elements below:

Firstly, the Sponsored Links - Ladies and Gentlemen, these are PPC ads!

This is what you can buy via AdWords on a Pay-per-click basis. Quite prominent.

(click image to enlarge)

Secondly, what we call the Google 10 Pack (or 7 in this instance) these are Local, organic listings that Google has deemed most relevant to the ‘local search’ that I performed.

Now I could probably write a whole book on Local search, and I definitely could write many posts on just the Google 10 Pack alone. But as this falls into the SEO for Local Search basket I’ll leave it for now.

(click image to enlarge)

Finally we have the Google Organic results. These are the results that Google has algorithmically determined to be the best match for the given search phrase ‘florist melbourne’.

Heard of SEO people? Search Engine Optimisation? – Well this is what it’s all about. Optimisting your site and you site’s influence onlne to rank highly in the Organic Search Engine Results.

(click image to enlarge)

OK, now that I’ve explained what each element of the results page is, tell me, Which part would you have clicked on? the PPC ads? The Local 10 Pack? or The Organic results?

Interesting Stuff.

Don’t miss an update, sign-up to the ‘Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click’ Newsletter and learn how to manage your own PPC!

Sign-up Here!

ShareThis

I believe it is always good to take a step back and look at the big picture, so I wanted to define PPC and briefly explain where and how it relates to the many other online marketing channels you may have heard of.

Also as you may have noticed, another issue that we in the online marketing world are guilty of is acronyms, so if you are just starting out you’re probably completely and utterly confused by the sheer volume of 3 letter abbreviations we have in this space. From me, and hopefully I speak for other seasoned internet marketers, I’m sorry about these little things (acronyms) that make it harder to understand than it should be. We’re guilty as charged, but believe me, pretty soon you’ll be emailing your close ones using terms like “PPC”, “SEM”, “CPC”, “CPA”, “SEO”, etc. and do you know why? Well quite simply, because, like me, you will get tired of always typing out the full word! As simple as that!

PPC advertising (what we are all here to learn about) or Pay-Per-Click Advertising is first and foremost  a method of advertising online when the advertiser (you) will pay only for the ‘clicks’ received on a given ad, and nothing more. In PPC advertising you do not pay for exposure or ‘Ad Impressions’ (the number of times an ad was displayed) but only for actions that occurred. In this case – a click.

While Google AdWords is probably the most widely known and used PPC engine, it’s important to understand that PPC as an advertising model can occur across many different sites and applications online, not just search engines. Essentially any advertising model; banners, text links, sponsorships, etc, where PPC pricing is an option could fall under the PPC heading. However for the purpose of this course we’ll be focusing in on PPC as it relates to Google Adwords, and to a lesser extent, Yahoo! Search, Microsoft AdCentre, and Facebook Advertising – all that and more to come!

One common question asked about PPC is “How much does a click cost?” and to be honest, there really is no one answer as it depends on many factors (which we will cover later) but let us just say for now that a click could cost any where from a few cents, to many dollars. Don’t be put off by this however, this IS advertising, and advertising required an investment or some sort (time, money etc.) just rest assured that the aim of this PPC game is to make you money, and help make your business successful. In some markets, you will indeed be potentially paying upwards of $10 rather than a few cents, but again you’ll only be paying this if the end result for you is success!

This leads onto one of the key benefits of PPC. YOU are in complete control!

PPC (Google AdWords) works by allowing YOU as an advertiser to bid on keywords on the Google search engine that are relevant to your business. Or another way to look at it is to buy clicks only for keywords that you think are relevant to you.

So from the outset, the risk is only as large as your lack of understanding of the system…

Now that may sound a bit scary, but honestly, in this game, the more you understand about your business, your customers, the way they interact with the search engines, the things they search for (keywords), and the buying cycle, the more successful you will ultimately be.

Let’s face it, you are already and expert on your business, and you know your customers, so I’m here to help fill in the other gaps in the equation, how they interact with the search engines, what are they searching for, and how you can get your message in front of them!

While this has been quite a brief overview, next post I’ll be dissecting a search engine results page and go through exactly what it all means and how to get things rolling.

Till next time…

Don’t miss an update, sign-up to the ‘Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click’ Newsletter and learn how to manage your own PPC!

Sign-up Here!

ShareThis

Note that we’ve not even looked at AdWords, Yahoo, Campaign Structure, Set-up etc.  this will come, but as I mentioned it’s important to get the foundations right and have a clear picture of what you want to achieve.

I’m also assuming that you already have a web site and a product or service to take to market. If not, no problem – we can cover that stuff later. Additionally some of you may already have an Adwords account running and are keen to get onto the ‘good stuff’.  Great!…

Drop me a note in the comments section at the bottom of this post – Say Hi! – And if you like, let me know what the biggest challenges are that you are facing with your online marketing or PPC Campaign at the moment.

I can try and work some ideas into future updates that may help you!

Moving on to ‘Conversions’ and ‘Success Events’…

Defining Conversion / Success events

In the previous post we talked about high level business goals in order to put a bit of perspective against why we might be running a PPC campaign. The next step is to take these high level goals and then translate them to specific ‘desired outcomes’ that we would like to see on our web site.

This is actually a very simple, yet often under utilised, step.

Now I’ve no doubt that some of you are saying “yeah, yeah, we know all this stuff, we run a business…” Well good for you, but be quite and let me finish… this is important!

Be sure that the Objectives & Goals for the business are articulated in tangible ‘events’ that can be measured eg.:

• Sales
• Leads
• Sign-Ups
• Page Impressions
• Downloads

Setting Targets
Again, this may sound straight forward, but sure to set realistic and measurable targets for your PPC campaigns.

What these targets are will depend on a number of factors, the obvious ones being, Industry and competition, budget, and the sites ability to covert, etc, but set a target for each stage of the campaign, and look to define stretch targets as well to ensure that you get the most out of the channel.

Example:
New Business – Retail Site:

Goal: Increase Sales:
Success Event: ‘Purchase Complete’ page
Target:  ROI Neutral from PPC in 3 months
Stretch Target: ROI positive in 3 months.

Realistic and measurable is the key here. Do not set yourself up for failure. This is especially important in a new market or new product offering where there may be a number of unknowns, no matter how much market research has been conducted.

After month 3 however, the target may change based on initial results:

Example: You hit the ’Stretch Target’ and the campaign was ROI positive in 3 months, achieving 10% ROI (for every $1.00 in you got back $1.10) New Target: Lift ROI to 50% in 3 Months.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) & Stakeholder Management

OK now some of you may be thinking, “Come on, I’m a small business who am I supposed to communicate this stuff too? I’m the only stakeholder here.”

Valid point, but I always think that it’s a good rule of thumb to verbalise the goals and targets you’ve set for you marketing campaign to someone (no, not the family dog).

Naturally, if you’ve a business partner, share the goals with him or her, but if you’re a Sole Trader, chat to your Husband, Wife, Partner or Friend. Explain what you’re doing and what you’re setting out to achieve. If nothing else this can help motivate you as you press forward with your marketing campaigns.

If you do work for a slightly larger business, it is imperative that the business owners, or your manager, are aligned around the goals and targets you have set for the PPC campaigns. If the business understands what success looks like, it will make your job easier. Along that same train of thought, if the business understands success, and you don’t meet your targets, you’ll have a solid foundation upon which to explain what it was that went wrong, and more importantly be able to better communicate what the next plan of action might be.

Don’t miss an update, sign-up to the ‘Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click’ Newsletter and learn how to manage your own PPC!

Sign-up Here!

ShareThis

Defining your business goals and understanding how search marketing may help achieve these.

As a business owner or marketing manager this post may be nothing new to you however I wanted to start this series with the fundamentals and work up from there as a strong foundation is the key to future success.

With a strong foundation come clear and precise goals and targets. So let’s get going!

Your Business Objectives

As I hinted at above, understanding your business objectives is a must if you hope to successfully implement and optimize a PPC marketing campaign. Without a clear focus, you will run into many hurdles along the way that would have otherwise not been an issue.

Defining Your Goals & Objectives

So, what is your business model? What pays the bills?

There are many headings that could be included here and certainly many more sub-headings that could be added but for simplicities sake, I’ve summarized to the below list. Which one best fits with your business?

• Brokerage,
• Advertising,
• Information/Services,
• Merchant,
• Manufacturer,
• Affiliate,
• Community,
• Subscription,
• Utility.

Your business model will naturally lead to specific goals and target unique to your business.

What are the primary objectives for your business?

The next step in the process is defining the primary business objectives so that your online marketing strategy can be aligned with business priorities – a crucial, but often over looked step in the process.

All too often business’ launch headlong into the online space with one key goal in mind ‘hits’ (hits – scary I know – so 1998),  and forget the fundamental next step, asking themselves ‘What do we want these visitors to do? (Goals)’, and ‘What type of visitor would do this? (What’s your target market  / demographic)’.

As detailed below, for some businesses ‘Traffic’ or ‘Visitors’ does seem to be the best possible outcome for that business model- eg ‘Advertising sales’, but for many more, the right questions are never asked and as a result their online marketing efforts are never as successful as they could be.

Don’t let this happen to you! Be clear from the start what you are trying to achieve.

So, using the example above lets look at two businesses that derive their revenue from online advertising / banner ads.

Business One is an emerging online content generation / information publishing business with the primary objectives of ‘Growing Audience Numbers and Page Views’.

In this case, using PPC to increase the volume of web site visitors and page impressions will be a key and acceptable goal. As long as they’re also asking themselves how they will grow the number of page views per user over time?

Business Two however which it a more mature online content publisher have slightly more refined objectives and are focused more on ‘maintaining market share’ and ‘increasing audience quality’ than just raw visitation numbers alone.

So while both businesses are in the Information Publishing space each have specific goals in mind for their marketing dollars, and this will impact on how they potentially use PPC as a channel to drive these strategies forward.

Business One, while conscious of traffic quality, and building relationships with their users, are still primarily interested in volume and raw traffic numbers, so they may choose to target a much broader demographic in the hope of achieving a large number of visitors to their site.

Business Two however is a little more discerning when it comes to the quality of their traffic, and the likelihood of new visitors they receive actually converting is key.

What I’ve illustrated here is that the goals and objective we set, even for the same type of business, can be vastly different and are dependent on many factors unique to that business. Eg. the market conditions, competitive pressures, the phase of the business, the maturity of the business itself, and the list goes on.

So if you do think you have what it takes to run your own pay-per-click marketing campaigns, first sit back and think through all these factors.
Once your have a good handle on what you are trying to achieve then the next step, setting realistic and meaningful goals for your campaign, is easy.

Don’t miss an update, sign-up to the ‘Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click’ Newsletter and learn how to manage your own PPC!

Sign-up Here!

Coming up:
MYOPPC Basics – Defining Marketing Goals and Setting Realistic Targets.
MYOPPC Web Analytics – Only a Fool Forgets to Measure Their Site Traffic.

ShareThis

I like it – not sure why ‘Parisian Love’ was chosen as the theme, but hey maybe they’re trying to appeal to a global audience.

Thoughts?

Here’s the Ad:

ShareThis

But the rumor from Mashable & Search Engine Land seems to point to a Google TV AD for this year’s Superbowl.

SEL: “A Google Super Bowl Ad? Eric Schmidt Hints At It”

Mashable: “Google Buys Super Bowl Ad? [RUMOR]”

The rumor all started after Schmidt posted a cryptic Tweet saying:

Can’t wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said “Hell has indeed frozen over.”)

All I can say is OMG – I never actually thought Google would run a TV ad. And to be honest, I still don’t think they will… not for ’search’ anyway…

If there is an ad, I’m with Mashable – surely it’s the Nexus One they’re promoting. Or alternatively Local Search? Or maybe they’ve a Google Tablet to launch as they thought they’d start with a bang!.

Maybe they just want to do a massive brand campaign – Google Kicks ass, connect everywhere and anywhere, search lots, get targeted ads you will love….

Who knows, but it’s got to be consumer focused, and not ’search engine’ consumer focused, if that makes sense…

Update: Eating My Shorts if the Youtube AD Blitz terms and conditions are anything to go by…

ShareThis

If you are  a ‘Do it yourself’ kind of person then this new series is definitely for you. Each week I will be posting new articles on how to manage your PPC campaigns yourself.  It doesn’t matter if you are a small local business, large corporate, or online e-tailer, there is sure to be something here for everyone.

Why am I doing this? Well honestly, I’m pretty tired of all the small to medium business’ out there (quite possibly you!) who are getting ripped off by sub-standard service providers in the online marketing space who charge too much and deliver too little to their clients.

And by too little I mean in some instances only ~ 50% of the money the client spends goes in to actually buying ads on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

This is certainly not the case across the board, and there are many PPC providers in the small business and Local search space who do a great job, and can justify the ~50% margins that they charge… After all, they too need to pay the bills.

But I’m here to tell you that with a little bit of time, maybe 30 minutes a day, you can actually manage your own Pay-Per-Click for your business and ensure that 100% of you money goes into buying search ads, not just 50%!

So, if you would like to learn PPC and keep up with all the latest and greatest techniques on running PPC campaigns for yourself then please sign up to my newsletter here!

See you on the other side!

Regards

Leigh Hanney

ShareThis

Droolr.com – the latest site from Stateless Systems – has launched!

I may be slightly biased*, but the inner Geek in me just loves this!

The idea is simple. Users find something cool online and then share it with the Droolr community.

Once listed, the users of Droolr then vote for Gadgets that they like via a  Want? voting button.

Other nifty features:

• Sign in via twitter of facebook accounts.
• Create wishlists of gadgets you love.
• Follow other Droolr’s so you can be notified about the stuff they WANT.
• Earn ‘Karma Points’ when other users ‘Want’ items that you’ve added – be the ‘Top Karma’ dude! …so far I have low karma…

You can add comments as well as recommend other sites to find particular gadgets shared by other peeps.

There are a few screen shots below. But do be sure to go check it out!

*Full disclosure: I work at Stateless Systems

ShareThis

Ok – so I made that up… completely fabricated… but it’s made me think.

On the 21st of January, Google AdWords blog announced that they’ve now release new targeting options for mobile ads. It’s a good read so go take a look.

I’m going to cover mobile PPC advertising in later posts, but the thing that caught my eye is this image that they posted…

In the ‘Devices’ section above you’ll note how Google now allow advertisers to target specific devices: – Android, iPhone/iPod Touch and Palm WebOS. This is actually huge for certain markets as it will allow precision targeting for platform specific applications.

Anyway, with the launch of the iPad today I thought, hmmm will the iPad just be another addition to the ‘apple’ targeting? eg. iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, or will it be a device category in it’s own right?

My gut feel, and if what Steve Jobs has said is true, iPad may well open up a whole new level of possibilities for many different market segments. Surely then if this is the case, the iPad will indeed be an individually targeted device within AdWords because ultimately there are going to be products, services and applications that users will be more likely to interact with on a tablet type device than they would on an iPhone. Time will tell.

ShareThis