The economics and the business model are a challenge. Resellers have to pay sales teams who have to sign up as many advertisers as possible and account managers (if the business has any) have 100′s or 1000′s of accounts to look after.  The reseller than has to slap on a massively high mark-up on the Cost per click to drive any revenue at all.

I’ve seen 100% mark-ups ‘out in the wild’.

It’s a low quality, high volume business. and yes, the churn rate is massive because advertisers are not happy with results or service.

Honestly, It’s not a business model I’d touch with a 10 foot pole!

What I have begun to do is share my knowledge on this blog (via the ‘Mind your own PPC’ posts) in the hope that small business readers can start to wrestle control of their marketing back from dodgy resellers and actually get some value for money. Eg don’t pay a 100% mark-up on Click costs if you don’t have to.

However the reality of the situation is that many small business owners simply do not have the time (even a few minutes a day) to devote to managing their own local search campaign, nor the time to devote to learning what they need to learn to get things going properly.  Yet they also know that that they are potentially missing out on valuable traffic by not having a presence in the search results or map pages.  So they’re forced to find a supplier who can get them there, even if it means paying more than they should for mediocre campaigns…

Enter Google AdWords Express

BEFORE WE GO ANY FURTHER… Google are about making money, just like every other busines so they’re not a knight in shining armour here to rescue small businesses in distress, they see a massive opportunity to get 1000′s of small buinsesses online and buying their ads. They’re obviously not happy with the reseller model either so they seem to have reached a compromise,

It’s also worth noting that I’ve not yet had any first hand experience with Express, so these are just observations based on what information I’ve been able to find so far.

What is AdWords Express?

It’s designed to get small local advertisers up and running on Adwords as quickly as possible with a minimum of understanding required (sounds dangerous right?!). As Google explain:

AdWords Express is the easiest way to advertise on Google. Creating your ad takes just a few minutes, and that’s it. Everything else is managed automatically, ensuring your ad is only shown to people looking for what you have to offer. Now you’re advertising to an audience that’s already interested in you.

Search Engine Land also summed it up well saying:

The idea behind AdWords Express is that local businesses, who, at one time, only needed to place a yellow pages ad once a year, have been frightened away from AdWords by the perceived complexity of keywords, bidding, etc. With Express, they input a bit of information about their company, set a budget, write a couple of lines of ad copy, and Google handles the keywords and bidding.

How does AdWords Express work?

You tell google about your business and location, google give you some ads. Sounds easy right?

When people search online for local products or services that you provide, an ad for your business will appear above or beside their search results. Your business will also be marked with a distinctive blue pin on Google Maps, helping it stand out to potential customers.

Who should use AdWords Express?

AdWords Express is for local businesses looking for local customers. It’s for business owners who want the benefits of a targeted online ad campaign, without having to spend time managing it.

Won’t Google just charge Advertisers more for clicks – like the resellers do?

Google can’t mark-up the CPC because it’s an auction, but they can bid high and broad. I envisage an AdWords Express  “convenience tax”. eg. Google will bid very competitively on terms (eg high) and possibly use broad matches to get as many clicks are possible. The focus will be on Clicks and not conversions so Advertisers will pay more than they potentially needed to, but it will beat paying 100% mark-up to resellers who also focus on the clicks.

Who will could AdWords Express ‘hurt’?

a) The resellers
b) Service based directories with large adwords campaigns covering multiple service categories and locations. Sorry guys, if Express takes off in your market, expect CPC’s to rise!

If you’re after a sophisticated, conversion orientated PPC campaign, then Express is  not for you. But if you’re a small local business who would like a hassle free way to start advertising on Google, then this could be a safe bet.

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Do you have your web site ready for PAID traffic?

It’s very easy to get carried away at the thought of instant traffic to your site in the form of AdWords clicks. But if that site of yours is not ready for traffic, then you’re just wasting your time and money.

I’m not talking about conversion optimisation here – all these things follow later. I’m talking about giving your business the best possible chance of generating ROI from your ad spend, and forming some kind of relationship with the user that just clicked through. Conversions that matter are not always transactional in the form of money in the bank and a product sold. They can often be as simple as an email sign-up or a ‘White Paper’ download.  Building a relationship with the researchers and the information hunters is just as important as converting those ready to buy.

The idea here, in simple terms,  is that even if this user (who’s click you just paid for on AdWords) does not purchase from you on their first visit, if you get your ‘hooks’ into them somehow, then you may be able to get them back to your site for free the next time when they are ready to buy.

Here’s a list of things I’d consider:

• Email sign-up form (even if you don’t send out emails yet)
• Facebook Fan/Business Page and a ‘Like’ box on your site. (yes, simple as that. They’re free, 500 million ++ people might see it… so go get one).
• A Contact Us form that works… (You know who you are, the site with the broken contact form that emails no one, or the incorrect email address listed.)
• Follow Us on Twitter link. (If you are on Twitter make sure you let people follow you easily).
• Local business?  Phone number and even your address on every page!

OK that’s just a few ideas for now.

The other question to continue to ask yourself even while you are paying for traffic is:

Are you also doing everything you can to build a consistent and reliable source of ‘free’* traffic?

* nothing’s ever free… in the case of free web traffic I refer to that which you have not had to purchase it via amedia buy. Eg.  SEO  versus PPC (SEO you pay for on-site dev, and off-site factors, not the actual click from the search engine).

A sponsored link for webmaster tools.

Is this new? I’ve not seen it before,  and I don’t recall ever seeing the disclaimer ‘Google promotion‘  instead of ‘Sponsored links’..

Interesting!

Perhaps Google have finally given in to pressure… But I am still seeing them buy ‘sponsored links’ for other terms.

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!

SERP

Awesome: ‘Google Grants is now available to AU non Profits…’

I click on the ad…

404!

Fail!

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.

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Disclaimer:  I received this one-sheeter from Google last week. While I don’t yet have any hard data to support these strategy recommendations, they’re definitely worth considering.

Google Content Network Strategy

Invest Time Upfront

-    Set up your campaign correctly from the start

• Choose the right targeting option to meet your campaign goals. Use contextual targeting with keywords grouped by theme to achieve direct response goals and use placement targeting to reach domains and pages for branding goals.
• Divide and conquer – Manage search and content campaigns separately to customize content keywords, placements, bids, and budgets. This will give you the flexibility to test different content strategies without affecting the performance of your search campaigns and will tighten control over your content network spending.
• Measure and track conversions – Set up Google conversion tracking before running a content campaign. With conversion tracking, you will be able to see your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) for each ad group and placement to better inform your optimization decisions.

Guide Your Consumer

-    Make it easy for people to respond to your offer

• Drive action with compelling ads. Attract potential customers to your ad by highlighting unique selling points and promotions with engaging, descriptive messaging. Include call-to-action phrases in your ad to reference a desired action post-click.
• Match destination URLs to what’s being advertised in your ad. Create a seamless experience and keep potential customers engaged by linking your ad to customized landing pages that load in less than one second, or even faster.
• Remove distractions and pave the way for conversions. Provide an easy path for users to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad. Make it visible on the landing page by placing your call-to-action button on the top half of the page, above the fold.

Track, Tune and Prune

-    Manage your campaign closely as it ramps up, then put it on auto-pilot

• Evaluate performance at the placement level. See where your ads are showing in the Networks tab in your account or with a Placement Performance Report (PPR) and spend more time evaluating sites that make up 80% of your spend.
• Extend your reach by replicating success. Get more of what’s working by noting where your ads are performing well and creating similar ad groups and related placements to reach additional high potential areas of the content network.
• Refine ad groups to improve ROI. Fix what’s not working by decreasing bids on poor performing placements, excluding undesired placements, and adding negative keywords to refine targeting.
• Auto-optimize with Conversion Optimizer. Another benefit to implementing Google’s conversion tracking is Conversion Optimizer. . Turn on Google’s Conversion Optimizer and select a maximum CPA and Conversion Optimizer will automatically manage all of your bids to drive the most conversions at an average cost below that CPA.

I’m a big fan of the Content Network from an advertiser perspective for many reasons. While a big factor for me is ease of use, every day I am blown away by the sheer power and potential of a network that has such a massive online reach.  It’s just mind blowing.

I’ve posted before about Optimizing for the Google Content Network, and the truth be told, up until now everyone, including Google,  seem to have very different suggestions on content network optimization strategies in general.

However,  I read Josh Dreller’s article over at Search Engine Land last week and was impressed with the level of information he’s provided. Check it out if you have not already – ‘Why You Can’t Ignore The Google Content Network – AdSense Q&A’. It’s an  interview Jasper Seldin, Content Optimization Specialist at Google.

I’m not going to re-hash the whole article here as that would be pointless, but I did want to highlight one paragraph that I think holds the key (although somewhat cryptic in parts) to success on the Content Network…

The question put to Jasper was “We all know by now that Content Targeting extrapolates the idea of your ad group via the keywords and then matches it with a theme and runs on those sites. Can you go into more detail about this process?”

Jasper: Google performs page analysis on every page in the content network. First, we scan the page and pick out words we think are most relevant to the content on the page. We can tell headlines from footers and can pick up on words that repeat often or are emphasized with bolding or italics. Together, these words create concepts. Concepts tell us the unique meaning of each page. There aren’t a finite number of concepts, unless you count the number of words that convey unique meaning.

And of course, we look at related concepts and see how they roll up into entire categories. It’s these concepts and categories that you are ultimately targeting with your keyword list. When you select keywords, we analyze the theme of the keyword list and place you on pages where the themes and categories match. An ad group can target multiple themes, but we recommend only targeting one theme with each ad group to ensure that you are putting the right message in front of the right user.

Really very interesting…

• On the content Network you are targeting ‘concepts’ and ‘categories’ not keywords, pages, or sites (unless you’re doing placement targeting…).
• Google scan all pages on the network and pick out the words they believe are most relevant on a page and tie them together as concepts.
• They then look at how concepts are related, and tie them up into categories.
• The Keywords you select in your AdWords campaign are then themed by Google and your ads are placed on pages where your theme matches the category or concept.

And the most important piece of information of all…

• If your Ad Group targets more than one theme, chances are Google are not able to effectively match it to the right category on the network. So while your ad group could target more than one theme.  Don’t!

One of the best content targeted Ad Groups I’ve ever run had, wait for it…, one keyword, and one ad.

Theme? Tick!
Concept and category matched by Google? Yes!

Now I’m not saying that only one keyword per ad group will work every time,  but If you only need one keyword to establish your theme, then job done!

Now there was quite a bit of shameless ‘That information is in my book’ self promotion during question time (Good luck to you Tim!) but the content was really solid.

I liked the fact that Tim takes people though how to actually fix these common mistakes, and I can guarantee that we’ve all been guilty, maybe not directly, of committing one of these deadly sins.

I touched on the importance of landing pages in an article on dennis-yu.com and I reiterate again, that the landing page represents one of your best opportunities to turn those PPC visitors into customers.

Get it right and you engage with your visitors, get it wrong and 99% will click the back button without a second thought.

I hope you enjoy the video and learn a thing or two as well.

The answer to that is, “It depends!”

AArrgghhh! Which One Do I care About?!

Let me tell you a little story and break it down a bit…

It’s June,  a guy (let’s call him Bill) heads off to the pub on a Friday with two of his friends.

While there, they buy two rounds of drinks each, so 6 drinks per person (are you with me?).
So over the course of an hour they’ve consumed a total of 18 drinks between them and they head off home (in a taxi – they’re responsible).

Enter Google Conversion Tracking…  Here’s how this would all break down:

Conversions (1-per-click)  =  3
Conversions (many-per-click) = 6

Confused?

Ok well you see, Bill and his mates each brought two rounds in that session, so there are 3 converting “users/clicks” (i.e. ’1-per-click’),  however in that session each converting user made 2 purchases (of 3 drinks) so there were actually 2 sales conversions per user (many-per-click).  Equaling 6 ‘many-per-click’  conversions.

Pheww!

OK Easy right? Well the thing is, over the next 30 days (cookie expiration period) after that initial visit to the pub, Bill and his friends came back 3 more times and drank the exact same amount.

On the 3 visit they also filled in a form with their email address to go in the draw to win an extra large stuffed donkey!

So, what do the Google AdWords conversions look like now???

Conversions (1-per-click)         =     3
Conversions (many-per-click)    =    24

See where we’re going? 3 ‘users’ bought 24 drink rounds over the 30 day period!

- 3 Converting users  (‘1-per-click conversions’).

- 24 Sales  (‘many-per-click’ conversions).

But… What about the competition ‘sign-up’?

Sign-up Conv. (many-per-click)    =    3

As there were 3 ‘sign-up’ events on the final visit, but still only 3 ‘1-per-click’ conversions over the 30 day period.

What Google’s new conversion tracking does not tell you is the number of actual products sold. i.e the fact that Bill and his friends drank 72 drinks over 4 sessions is not reported, only that the three of them were there, and made 24 purchases… But naturally there are other tools for that type of  measurement (Web Analytics anyone?)

Essentially, the new Google conversion reporting helps us, as advertisers, define value.  More importantly it helps us better understand the true value of a ‘click’ that we get from our AdWords campaigns.

To Sum up:

There is no black and white answer to the “Which conversion metric do I use?” question.

Ultimately it depends on the goals of the campaign and the conversion / success events you’re measuring.

If you’re doing direct response, lead generation, email list building, etc, with little follow-up or anything additional to sell, then chances are that the metric you care about most is the top line conversion, 1-per-click. i.e. did that click result in a converting user?

However, if you’re selling products or services, or doing lead generation in the classifieds space (jobs, real estate etc.), or 101 other possible events,  then these new metrics allow you to understand not just ‘did that ‘click’ convert’, but did they actually convert multiple times over the following 30 day period.  How valuable was that initial click in the broader sense?

Essentially it is a very useful measure in understanding, and calculating, true value per click and other ROI based metrics.