Intelligent Performance Marketing

Search-Based Keyword Tool Is Cool

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Right away, I’ll tell you that you should add the new Google Search-Based Keyword Tool to your go-to armory of keyword research solutions.

In a sort of Copernican way, the new Google keyword tool looks at what already exists on your site and pulls out relevant searchable keywords, which sets it apart from your average run-of-the-mill keyword list building tools.

What’s really cool about the search-based keyword tool is that it lets you sign into your AdWords account. Once you do this and enter a website into the word-box, it queries your current keyword mix and populates an extensive list of keywords that are not currently existent in your account. This is a great thing for marketers who have spent countless hours thinking, “Okay, I’m buying thousands of keywords, but what else am I missing?”

There’s also a small competitive advantage to the search based keyword tool, since it lets you enter any website. Even though it only returns 100 results if you are not signed into AdWords, that’s still 100 more competitive insights than you had before using it.

Filed in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization | Tagged , , , , , |

7 Minutes in SEM Heaven

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

For those of you who are not search marketing experts yet, I’d like to share with you a few tips and some quick fixes that will improve your account and can be figured out in 7 minutes or less. Please note that these are more beginner tips. In addition, this applies directly to Google, but can also be used to help with other search engines like Yahoo and MSN. When you are done, you will feel like you’ve accomplished a lot and are in a nice happy place.

Heaven

Let’s focus on three key areas:

  1. Campaign settings
  2. Keyword match types
  3. Keyword bid optimization

1. Campaign Settings

Check your campaign settings and ask yourself the following questions:

  • Are my geo-targeting settings correct? If you are selling a product that only ships within the United States, don’t target “All Countries and Locations.” I know it sounds simple, but I can’t tell you how many accounts I’ve seen that have wasted dollars on such a careless mistake.
  • Are my networks and bidding settings correct? Keep search and content separate…always. If one is checked, then other should not be. It’s a major money waster to not separate search and content campaigns. Refer to a more in-depth explanation in this blog post about Google Content Network Best Practices.
  • Is my daily budget big enough? Review the daily budgets of all your campaigns. It’s possible you might need to shift things around a bit. Your campaigns with the best conversion-driving keywords should get the most budget dollars allocated to them. You don’t want these campaigns turning off prematurely, because it could mean a huge loss in revenue.

2. Keyword Match Types

Ask yourself:

  • Which match types am I currently using? Which should I be using?

Think about your search terms. If you are only buying broad match keywords, you need to change this strategy right away. Ideally, you should do some keyword research and buy long-tail terms in both exact and phrase match. As a quick fix, however, you can copy and paste your entire keyword inventory into other match types in AdWords Editor. Buying multiple match types is a way of making your keyword mix more efficient, but be careful setting up the different bid amounts. If your broad match keyword bid is higher than your exact and phrase keywords, then it will be triggered and most likely have a higher average CPC. Also, if you are not using negative match keywords to block off irrelevant traffic, you are making a pretty big booboo as well. Learn more about match types.

3. Keyword Bid Optimization

Run a keyword report covering the last few months. Download the report into Excel, and look for 2 big things that might stand out:

  • High cost keywords – Sort keywords by cost and pick out any keywords that have not had conversions in the last few months but have spent a lot of money. For example, a keyword with $2,568 in spend and zero sales is a pretty good clue that it should be paused. If they have had a conversion or two but the cost per conversion is still pretty high, you might considering lowering the bid.
  • Low cost conversions – Look at the keywords with the most conversions and lowest cost. Are they in a high enough position? Can they be even higher? If the cost per conversion is really low, you might want to raise bids on these keywords for higher positions and see if it increases volume.

Filed in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization | Tagged , , , , , , , |

Google Content Network Best Practices

Monday, November 3, 2008

From time to time, clients ask me if I think they should try advertising on the Google Content Network (GCN) as part of their search marketing program, saying they’re unsure if it’s worth spending money on low quality traffic. It’s true that people who see these ads are not actively searching for the product. On the other hand, how is this much different than reading an ad on a billboard?

Relevancy in advertising may have spoiled us a little but not enough to do away with the power of persuasion. So what I usually tell clients is, yes, it’s absolutely worth trying. Not only is it worth trying, but if one tries hard enough, there is a great deal of high quality traffic to be attained.

Main Reasons Advertisers Lose Money on the Google Content Network:

  1. Ads appear on irrelevant pages, which lead to bad clicks, which lead to low conversion rates.
  2. The language in the ad does not divert the user’s attention from site content.
  3. Initial setup is wrong. A content campaign should be its own campaign (or account), separate from search campaigns.

To expound on this last point, you want it to be separate for bidding and budget efficiency and so you get a more accurate click-through rate (CTR) for your campaigns. Because the overall reach of the Google Content Network is so large, you’ll usually have a low CTR, and you don’t want this number skewing the direction of your regular search campaigns. Some say there’s an additional advantage to having Google Content Network as a separate account, because one important factor for quality score is the overall click-through rate (CTR) of the entire account, and CTR from the content network will obviously bring that down. On their help page with content network optimization tips, Google claims this isn’t true and says: “The performance of your ads on content pages does not affect their performance on Google or on the search network.”

Things You Should Know About Keywords:

  • Keywords in content ad groups need to describe the kinds of landing pages you want your ads to appear on.
  • The keyword list should be words that appear most frequently on the kinds of pages you want to target.
  • Use small tightly-themed ad groups with no more than 30-50 keywords. Even 10 keywords is fine.
  • Only broad match is taken into account; there’s no need for exact and phrase matches.
  • Keyword bids are irrelevant; bids go according to the ad group’s default (content) bid.
  • Negative keywords are important and can be used to block unwanted traffic.

Things You Should Know About Ads:

  • Ads need to distract users away from site content.
  • Try using more competitive language and use words like “Free” in your ads whenever you can.
  • Quality score for the Google Content Network is not as strict as regular search campaigns, so you can be more creative. Ads do not have to match keywords, though landing pages should still be relevant.
  • Magic ad positions in Google Content Network are 1-4 while in search, it’s more like 1-2 and sometimes 1-3.
  • Create separate ad groups for each media type in Google Content Network campaigns i.e. separate group for image ads.

Things You Should Know About Reporting:

  • Run Placement Performance reports – these give stats on what specific sites perform well or under-perform in your content campaign.
  • Use site exclusion to block sites on the Google Content Network that are costly and not performing well toward your goals.
  • Try using Site Exclusion Tool to block categories of sites i.e. parked domains – although it’s still possible to convert on these types of sites.
  • Run these reports every so often and try taking out the best sites and testing a site/placement targeting campaign.

A Great Tip When Running Site/Placement Targeting Campaigns:

  • The Google site-finder is a flawed tool that does not give you all the sites you could be using.
  • Right next to the link “Add Placements,” you’ll see another link, “Edit Placements and Bids.”
  • Click this link, and paste domains (you find on your own) into the box that didn’t appear when using the site-finding tool.

Try Using Demographic Targeting:

  • Most useful for sites that report demographic data, such as Youtube and Myspace.
  • Example of usage: You can set it so your bids will be 120% for ages 18-25 who are of the male gender.
  • Important: Using demographic targeting will not exclude other sites from displaying your ads; it just allows you to bid more/less for sites that have demographic features.

New Enhanced Site/Placement & Keyword Targeting Features:

  • Google now allows you to couple groups of keywords with site-targets.
  • In other words, you can choose sites you think will work well with your product, but can set it so ads will only show up if the keywords (or keyword mix) you chose are present on the page. This allows for additional targeting.

Whoever is reading this, I hope you find these tips helpful. Your comments, criticisms, along with any additional “tricks of the trade,” are all welcome.

Filed in Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization | Tagged , , , , , |