Search on Google.com today for ‘How to Claim Bankruptcy‘ and look who’s in second position….

Broad Match fail in AdWords. Oh the irony!

They have already lost millions, what’s a few more thousand a day on badly managed adwords?

Question:

Unfortunately the displayed URL is too long.
I skipped the www. , but it is still one letter too long. Asking for an exception was rejected without any further hint, how to make it work.
Any suggestion?

Answer:

Get a shorter domain.

If you don’t know already, AdWords allows 35 characters in the display URL field.

eg.

get-a-really-long-spammy-domain.com -> count = 35 Chars.

Honestly, there’s NEVER a good reason to have a domain name this long anyway. AdWords display URL limits are the least of your problems dude.

Additionally, if you are trying to stuff keywords into a hyphenated domain name so that you can try and rip off people with weight loss re-bill offers, Google won’t take long to bring down the ban hammer.

A word from the wise.

• Long domains suck.
• Keep your domain short regardless of where you’re advertising. You want people to remember it after all.
• Hyphens in domains suck.
• If you really need a hyphen – keep the domain short.

Happy AdWor’tising!

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

Mistake #3 – Sending all Clicks to Your Home Page.

Let’s start this post with a question. What is one of the single most powerful features of search engine marketing? The key to why PPC and SEO work so well?

Quite simply, the user is actively broadcasting their needs and desires to the world every time they search for something.

‘Useful’ is an understatement… The ability for us to promote products and services in the targeted manner that Pay-Per-click allows is incredibly powerful and profitable when done right.

The key (excuse the pun) to being successful is choosing the right keywords in the first place (to be covered in separate posts) which will not only target the users when they’re ready to buy, but also target users when they are at other stages of the buying cycle – research, comparison etc.).

Once you have developed your master keyword list, you then need to break this up in to campaigns & ad groups, write your ad copy and select your targeted landing pages…
This is where many advertisers let themselves down and ultimately pay the price in the long run.

Too many AdWords advertisers will develop a great list of keywords relevant to their business but then make the fatal mistake of then sending all their click traffic to the home page.

This is a bad move.

If you have invested the time into finding the terms that your potential customers will search on, then it is imperative that you invest more time in customising landing pages on your site that will best match the keyword themes you have defined. Eg. If someone searched for ‘blue widgets’, send them to a ‘blue widgets’ page. Don’t send them to a home page that says ‘Welcome, we sell 100’s of widgets and widget accessories in many styles and colors…’

They’ve already sent you a very strong signal that they are interested in ‘blue widgets’, so that’s what you should give them.

Let’s think about it another way. Let’s say you run a brick and mortar retail outlet selling shoes. Sending all traffic to the homepage of your site, regardless of what they searched for would be like answering every customer query about shoe type, size, brand, color in your store with ‘Yes we have shoes, check out our massive range!’ as you stand at the front door…. Helpful? Not really, and chances are many potential customers would walk straight out of your store and try your competition out.

Search marketing is exactly the same. If you don’t match the searchers intent with a relevant lading page, you run a much higher risk of loosing that user completely. They will ‘bounce’ back to the search engine results page and click on a competitor’s link.

Going ‘Back’ is easy for the site visitor to do. Getting ‘that visitor’ back again is expensive.

So the lesson in this is. Send your PPC traffic to relevant landing pages on your site that reinforce the message that you have what they are specifically looking for. If you don’t have a page that suits, but you do have the specific product or service category, build a page that does.

Technically speaking too, the relationship between the landing page you have chosen and the keywords you are bidding on will impact on the Quality Score of your ads. The higher the Quality Score, the less you pay for a given position.

Don’t chase your tail and loose visitors due to poor landing page choice. Give them what they’re after and you’ll be amazed at the results.

Previously:

Mistake #1 – Too many keywords per ad group.

Mistake #2 – Not using negative keywords.

Coming Soon:

Mistake #4 – Not targeting your geographic region.

Mistake #5 – Not monitoring bids at the keyword level.

Mistake #6 – Not using different keyword ‘Match Types’.

Mistake #7 – Not splitting out Campaigns to target Search and Content Network separately.

__________________________________________________________

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Sign-up Here!

Mistake #2 – Not using negative keywords.

Google AdWords (Yahoo and Bing) allow advertisers to select words or phrases that you do not want your PPC ads to appear against. They call this adding ‘negative keywords’.

The idea is pretty simple, but often overlooked.

Let’s just assume you have added in your list of keywords to AdWords using the default ‘broad match’ match type. What this means is that Google will show your ad for not only the keyword you’ve chosen, but also for any other potential phrase combination that includes your original keyword.

Let me use a real world example.

My father is an owner of an organic olive oil business called Donkey Hill Organic Products. They’ve decided to run a small PPC campaign on Google to hopefully attract some wholesale enquiries and potentially a retail client or two. The main focus however remains B2B.

Obviously the important types of phrases / keywords to include are things like:

• Organic olive oil
• Australian organic olive oil
• Organic olive oil supplier
• Organic olive oil suppliers
• Olive oil wholesale
• Wholesale olive oil

You see where I’m heading.

However if I were to just add these keywords in on ‘broad match’ (default) or even phrase match (more on match types in another post) I’d be potentially wasting money on impressions and clicks that have nothing to do with the core aim of this campaigns.

Let me explain.

So as I said above ‘broad match’ essentially takes the keyword you’ve entered and will then match it on as  many potential search queries as possible that include that particular keyword or phrase (in any word order).

So back to the term ‘organic olive oil’ – No doubt this is a key term for this account but on broad or phrase match do you know what other terms this would match as well?

Check these out!

• organic olive oil soap
• organic olive oil recipes
• organic olive oil lotion
• organic olive oil hair spray
• organic olive oil massage
• organic olive oil decanter
• organic olive oil cosmetics
• organic olive oil cake

wow! Granted these are probably all great products made from organic olive oil, but guess what? Donkey Hill doesn’t sell them!

So what can we do to not appear for these terms?

Well the first step would be to add in ‘campaign negative keywords’

In AdWords these can be accessed via:

Opportunities Tab >> LHS in Tools “More tools” link >> “Edit Campaign Negative Keywords” link.

In here I’d then select the campaign in question, and then add in:

• Soap
• Recipes
• Lotion
• Hair
• Spray
• Massage
• Decanter
• Cosmetics
• Cake

..and any other term I feel is not relevant…

I could also add these in for just specific ad groups if I didn’t wish to block completely.

In this case I would just add a ‘-‘ before each term that I wanted to make a ‘negative match’ in the specific ad group. Eg.

- olive oil soap
- olive oil spray

So, why is this important, and how can it help save marketing budget and improve performance?

In simple terms, what this will mean is that:
a) You’re not wasting impressions on irrelevant keywords.
b) You’re not incurring costs on clicks by users who are very unlikely to convert..
c) Your click through rate will go up.
d) You quality score will improve.
e) You’ll get better return on your spend!

Good luck!

Previously:  Mistake #1 – Too many keywords per ad group.
Coming Soon:

Mistake #3 – Sending all clicks to your home page.

Mistake #4 – Not targeting your geographic region.

Mistake #5 – Not monitoring bids at the keyword level.

Mistake #6 – Not using different keyword ‘Match Types’.

Mistake #7 – Not splitting out Campaigns to target Search and Content Network separately.

__________________________________________________________

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!

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.

__________________________________________________________

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!