Google Adwords

Right here! PPCBlog!

Well, we would say that…. 🙂

But we do offer a free introductory course, and there are some fantastic resources out there, some you may not have heard about. Here’s out top ten picks of external sites and resources. The tools come with a wealth of useful case studies you can use to enhance your own campaigns.

1. Google Adwords Certification

A comprehensive, free course for Adwords. Join the program and click on the “Study For This Exam” links. You’ll get access to the Learning Center, which provides a thorough background in Google Adworeds, to certification level. The exams cost $50 each, but you don’t need to take these to get access to the course.

2. Google Agency Toolkit

Keep all the essential Google tools together on one page. Also arranged in a way that lends itself to learning and discovery.

I can get lost for days on the plan stage alone!

3. Marketing

PPC is a form of marketing. If you understand the underlying fundamental principles of marketing, your campaigns are likely to be more successful.

Grab a few good books on marketing and give yourself a solid grounding. Seth Godin frequently riffs on marketing, and has written a number of excellent, easy-to-digest books on the topic. Our pick: All Marketers Are Liars.

4. Analytics

It’s hard to improve what you don’t measure. Top PPC managers tend to have excellent analytics skills. It’s not just about crunching numbers, either. It’s about spotting profitable patterns that other people don’t see.

Recommended Analytics blog: Occam’s Razor

5. Keyword Research

Keyword research is like digging for gold. Proving nepotism is alive an well, we’re going to recommend a post on SEOBook, and the SEOBook keyword tool.

There are a number of valuable tips and videos on that page, including Wordtrackers case study and white paper “Keyword Research Guide”.

6. Competitive Analysis – SEM Rush

SEM Rush is a hugely powerful tool that helps you monitor your competitors Adwords campaigns. There’s a modified version of SEMRush in the PPCBlog members area.

Here’s Aaron Wall’s review of SEM Rush.

7. Copyblogger

Copyblogger is a great blog about – as it says on the box – writing copy. PPC advertisers need good copy writing skills in order to produce effective landing pages, ads and headlines. Check out the following sections: Landing Pages, Headline Writing, and Copywriting 101.

8. Google Wonder Wheel

The wonder wheel is a great tool for making associations. Sometimes, the links between related concepts are difficult to spot in keyword lists, but easier when laid out in graphical form.

Resource: How To Make Money From The Google Wonder Wheel

9. Inside Adwords

Inside Adwords is Google’s official blog on Adwords. Contains news, tips and education resources.

10. Adwords Editor

The Adwords Editor is a desktop tool that makes campaign management easier. Make bulk changes, move through your account faster, and more.

Google recently announced the beta launch of a modified broad matching type in the UK and Canada, which is similar to old school broad match, back before broad became capacious.

And then, without announcement, they also launched inline search suggestions for related keywords on some search results. For example on the image to the right, you can see that a search for IP address has brought up ads for:

• ip address trace
• change ip address
• find ip address
• static ip address

Why wasn’t this (broadly visible) beta announced? A few ideas…

• Bing has a similar feature in their organic search results, so perhaps Google wanted to borrow the idea without officially announcing it?
• They have less certainty on its impact on yield?
• They wanted to test its impact without warning advertisers into changing anything?

Those longer tail keyword variations often have a different (and more precise) meaning than the core keyword, which makes them more potent. And so AdWords advertisers are willing to bid more for those clicks. But if those longtail keywords are being charged for ads showing up on the core keywords that might lower aggregate searcher intent, eating into the profit margins of advertisers who bid up more specific keywords.

Which match type is being charged? Google hasn’t said. But some cursory searching for some of the above keywords makes it look like some of those ads might be phrase matched.

How does this impact search as a whole? Does it make search quicker and more relevant? During the famous “brand” update of Google’s organic search results last year, Google looked at query chains / search funnels to find sites that were often clicked on after the second search, and promoted some of those sites into a better position in the initial core search result set. Perhaps this is a better way for Google to make search faster and more relevant.

But even if the change works out good for searchers, as an advertiser, the impact on your account might differ.

If you had ads that were not shown for some broader keywords due to quality score issues, or some keywords where bidding on the broader variations typically produced losses, be sure to check to see if your ads are showing up via these inline suggestions & adjust bids as necessary. In some areas where bids are higher some of the additional exposure might be expensive. Hate to be the “hotels” aggregator advertiser paying $4 or $5 a click for the curiosity clicks on searches for “Oakland.”

Its even worse when you consider Google’s recent big move into the travel market, and past nibbles into the hotel space.

One of the PPC ad text techniques I feel is currently under-utilized is the “quote statement” approach.

If you look at the paid results from your competition on a given keyword and you need a way to stand out, consider using a quote statement in your headline.

Statements in quotes can really pop on a page full of ‘blah’ ads.  You have nothing to lose by getting creative…

Here’s some quick examples to get your ad-writing juices flowing:

What are some of your favorite headline techniques?  Share them in the comments!

Do you manage too many keywords in your PPC campaigns? Feeling a bit overwhelmed?

There’s a lot to be said for running small, tightly optimized campaigns with short keyword lists instead.

When Chris Anderson, a columnist at Wired magazine, wrote about the Long Tail back in 2004, the concept was seized upon by the search marketing community. The Long Tail outlines a niche sales strategy whereby a vendor can sell a wide range of niche items, in small volumes, which collectively add up to more revenue than their big sellers. Think Amazon. By covering many niches, you make more money.

Search marketers seized upon the Long Tail concept because it dove-tails nicely with search strategy. You can use an infinite numbers of keywords, some of which may only receive one click a year, but added together, they provide a lot of traffic at low cost.

This theory works best in SEO, where there is nothing to manage after you’ve published a page, but in PPC, covering a lot of keyword terms can create management overhead, and affect Quality Score, which drives up your costs.

Which Terms Drive Performance?

Your top 5-10% performing keywords are likely generating almost all your sales. The PPC Long Tail, all those groups of low-traffic keywords, are probably generating nothing but mental overhead. Such campaigns can be tricky to manage well.

Your Quality Score may also suffer if you run long keyword lists. If you’re using an exhaustive list of terms covering areas where there is little buyer activity – the do-it-yourself brigade, for starters – your click through rate could suffer, which can affect your Quality Score. Your minimum bids could rise, so running with the Long Tail could in fact cost you.

Go through your lists and make a note of the low traffic keyword terms. Can any of these keyword terms be covered by broad or phrase matches? What about a combination of broad & phrase match with the addition of some negative keywords? Would you lose anything by doing so? Is the existence of these keywords helping or hindering you ability to meet your sales objectives? Look at the terms that generate your conversions. How many really perform? 20? 50? Would you be better off focusing all your mental energy on these keywords? Are you wasting time testing long tail keywords and ad copy that will take a long time to prove their worth? Is it time for a PPC spring clean?

Running Long Tail Strategy

Of course, some people swear by long keyword lists and running a huge number of groups. This strategy can and does work. Keep in mind that campaigns that receive huge volumes – millions – of clicks at the top end can include a lot of low-performance keywords further down the tail without it affecting the Quality Score too much, but smaller operators may not have this luxury. Few click-thrus, across a wide campaign, can hurt the keyword terms that perform well.

Long Tail keyword terms can also be useful for testing purposes. There might be gold down there somewhere! Again, it’s all about how much time you want to spend on testing and management of terms that deliver limited testing data over long periods of time.

ROI

Whatever method you choose, the important factor to look at the return on investment.

When calculating ROI, don’t forget to build in your keyword management time, and the opportunity cost of that time – would you have been better off managing some other aspect of the campaign, such as landing pages? Use of the Google Desktop Ad Manager or the Google API can improve efficiency, but frequently it is best to focus on improving lifetime visitor value and conversion rates before digging too deep into longtail keywords.

Most importantly, is your Quality Score affected by having too many low paying keyword terms?

What strategies do you use? Do you go for the short, focused campaign in terms of keyword lists and groups, or do you like to cast a very wide net?

One of the easiest ways to optimize your Pay Per Clicks campaigns is to use negative keywords.

Negative keywords are search keywords you wish to exclude.

For example, if you target the term “cars”, and you sell new cars, you may not wish to appear under queries such as “used cars”, “classic cars” or “Best Friend’s Girl by The Cars”.

You can create a negative keyword list, like so:

• used
• vintage
• old
• second hand
• classic
• friends girl

By using negative keywords, you can cut down on unwanted impressions. These unwanted impressions can lower your click-thru rates and quality scores, thus increasing your cost per click. Trimming out that fat can save a lot of money as you are effectively gaining a discount on the rest of your impressions.

You can achieve something similar using a keyword list generator tool and exact match, however this match type means you may miss out on keywords you hadn’t considered, but may well be valuable. For example, you might exact match “cars”, or “new cars” but then you’d miss out on phrases such as “latest model vehicles”.

Look at your search query performance reports to find this data. Keep in mind that most keyword searches are unique, further underscoring the disadvantages of an over-reliance on exact match. There will be many keyword combinations you will never have considered. Part of your early phrase or broad match ad budget can be seen as an expense of buying market data & finding related keyword ideas to inform your future AdWords strategy.

A well constructed keyword list, including negative terms, can result in significant cost savings, as you can bid less than competitors who may not be focusing heavily on unnwanted queries.

Common Search Phrases To Exclude

The problem you’ll likely face is that your keyword reports might contain thousands of terms. There might be many irrelevant terms you need to exclude.

Here are a few short-cuts.

Think about the type of query people are making. Does the query indicate an encyclopedic-style search? Examples include “diagram”, “”map”, meaning of”, “what is”, etc.

Whilst you may be able to sell goods or services using such keywords, it’s most likely such terms indicate the searcher is looking for reference information.

“Free” is another obvious one, unless giving away free stuff is part of your marketing strategy. Closely related terms include “cheap”, “bargains”, “low price” and “sales”. These buyers are buying on price considerations, or wanting something for nothing. Again, unless you’re targeting this end of the market, exclude such terms with a negative match. Also consider excluding those people who want to “do it for themselves”, or seeking methodologies, unless, once again, these are your target markets.

Think carefully about what stage of the buy-cycle you are targeting. For example, you may be targeting people who are seeking information about your products or services. You want a lead, but may wish to close on the phone, or after a meeting. You may not want someone who wants to close a deal online. In these circumstances, terms relating to ordering online, price comparison, etc may be good candidates for negative match.

The Google Keywords tool can be useful for finding these terms. Search on your keywords and see what comes up. The associations can be revealing, especially when evaluating them in terms of of what you don’t want.

You can learn a lot about your demographic, especially if you can pick recurring patterns. For example, people searching on “software” might be looking to “burn” software, or “download free software”, more often than not. Are you seeing a lot of reference queries? A lot of “do it yourself” queries? Look specifically for patterns that indicate buying behavior, or lack thereof.

A high frequency of keywords that don’t indicate an intention to buy might make you rethink your keyword strategy around that term.

Numerous attempts have been made to create comprehensive negative keyword lists, but sometimes you have to go against conventional wisdom and test what works. However the numbers don’t lie. If you have chronic under-performers and/or irrelevant exposure then block them. And if you operate in parallel markets then many of the general themes from one campaign can help give you a stronger starting point for the next ad campaign.

An aspect that often confuses those new to PPC – and many of those not so new -is Google’s quality score.

The quality score is a test of your keywords worthiness. The quality score is used on all your keywords, and is used by Google as a test of your campaigns relevance. The more relevant your campaign is – some would say “relevant to Google’s bank balance” – the more likely you’ll appear in prime position on Adwords.

It’s reasonable to think Google would want the highest bidder to appear at the top, but Google actually makes less money this way. What Google wants is to display the ad that both has a sufficiently high bid and gets clicked most often by searchers. Google is asking users “is this ad relevant to you?” In this respect, the quality score can be your friend, as you can get higher ad placement using lower bids than your competition, by being more relevant.

So it really pays to have a high quality score.

What makes up the Quality Score?

The key metric is relevance, combined with your bid price. Are you bidding enough, is your ad exactly what the searcher is looking for, and can you prove that fact over and over again?

Google lists the following factors:

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google; note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network — not on Google
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, explains quality score in this introduction video

In practice, focus on your click-thru rate over time, on elements such as your keywords, groups, and campaigns. Click-thru rate, or CTR, is still the heavy hitter (it is the big piece of the above pie in Hal’s hand).

You also need to be bidding close to your competitors. A high quality score won’t necessarily get you a high position if you’re only bidding 5% of what your competitors do. Bidding too low just means you are wasting time not collecting feedback from the marketplace. Get in the game 😉

There are other less obvious factors, such as Google’s perception of relevance, which is a little harder to measure, and truth be told – only known to Google. Google looks to see if the AdWords ad copy wording matches the intent of the query. You can use keywords in your ads and Google may do semantic analysis which approves, but the bar might be higher. Google also employs quality raters which do manual reviews to look at perceived value add and other such fuzzy factors which change with market conditions.

When thinking about your keywords and ad copy, examine the wording of successful competitive ads, defined as ads that have been occupying top positions for a length of time. Do they hint at a clear buyer intent? Are they more commercial than non-commercial in nature? What angle do they take? Interview customers and find there pain points. Are there other market pain points that are not well represented in the ad copy of competitors?

How Do you Find Your Quality Score?

Up until recently, Google has been rather secretive about their quality score, offering only vague descriptions such as “Poor/OK/Great” . However, now you can see it for yourself.

• Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
• Select the appropriate campaign and ad group.
• Click the Keywords tab.
• Click Customize columns, under “Filter And Views”
• Select Show Quality Score from the drop-down menu.
• Click Done when you’re finished. Each quality score will be shown as a number of 1-10.

How Can I Improve My Quality Score?

Once you know your quality score, you can then optimize it, just as you optimize your ad groups and other variables. Focus on the terms that have the weakest quality scores.

Make sure your text ad closely matches the keywords you’re bidding on. Are your keywords with a low quality score only vaguely related to your copy? Either change the copy, put the keyword in new group with specific ad copy.

Your ad groups should all be tightly focused. You don’t need to use exact match on all keywords, but if broad or phrase match isn’t working maybe you should look to tighten it up. Also pay close attention to negative matches. Negative matches help relevance and should help your CTR, thus improving your quality score.

Next, review all poorly performing text ads by CTR (click thru-rate). Can you rewrite the ads to tighten the focus? Rewrite and test. If this doesn’t improve your quality score, keep rewriting, or dump the ad. Be very careful making changes to ads that perform well, however, as this will also effect your score.

After conducting this optimization, remove any poorly performing keywords in terms of quality score. Low quality keywords can drag down your entire campaign, as Google looks at historical averages across your campaign and account, not just specific keywords. However, the higher your overall quality score, the more you can get away with some underperforming keywords.

Review your landing pages. Don’t sweat this too much, as landing pages don’t really have much affect on you quality score, unless they are god-awful. They can certainly do you harm if you stray too far outside Google’s Adwords Landing Page Guidelines. Be relevant, clear, don’t trap users or try to fool them, and focus on usability.

The content network won’t affect your quality score, so don’t be afraid to use it. You might also like to read our Google Content Network Guide.