Search-Based Keyword Tool Is Cool

November 20th, 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.

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

7 Minutes in SEM Heaven

November 19th, 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.

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.

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

Sponsored Videos on YouTube

November 13th, 2008

The day has come!  Advertisers are now able to post sponsored videos on YouTube and it holds many of the same attributes as Google Ads.

• Operates on a CPC bidding model.
• Video is triggered by designated keywords.
• Promotion text has the same character limits as Google ads (25, 35, 35).

Here’s a great video demonstrating how to create ads and also how they are displayed.

Google search ads have a tendency to be used heavily (or solely) by direct marketers and are not really applicable for aspiring artists and the like.  However, YouTube ads provide the starving artist an outlet for greater visibility and comfort in knowing their video will be seen.  The trick is, they need to be able to afford it.  Will the garage band down the street use YouTube ads?  Will YouTube ads become viral or will the community view them as sellouts (no pun intended)?  My guess is the garage band sticks to their MySpace page, and YouTube ads stay that way, as ads.

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Video Ads by Erin M. | | 1 Comments

Google Quality Score Update - Will We Feel It?

November 7th, 2008

Probably not.

This week, Google announced a couple of changes to the algorithm of their magical quality score.

1. Position Normalizers - You know that saying, “The rich get richer?” Well, Google, right before withdrawing from their deal to form an advertising partnership with rival Yahoo! and from being subjected to the scrutiny of the anti-trust system, wanted to combat this aphorism by removing the ad position biases because of CTR. What does this mean? Ads in higher positions typically have high click-through rates because they have high positions and have high positions because they have high click-through rates. Google wants to remove the circular reasoning behind this and award truly high quality ads with distinguished positioning.
2. Top Ad Placements - This one is confusing. According to Google, ads get placed according to their ad rank. It’s possible that the highest ad rank has a low quality score, which disqualifies the ad from the top of the page (yellow slots), which in turn, causes there to be no ads at all in this slot. OK? Take it as it is. The bottom line is that Google now allows ads with a lower ad rank and higher quality score to jump to the top spot. Got it? Cool.

For the full spiel on what Google portends are the guidelines for running higher quality search and content campaigns with added efficiency, check out their answer page to: What is ‘quality score’ and how is it calculated?

Posted in Search Marketing by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

Google Content Network Best Practices

November 3rd, 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.

Posted in Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization by Dani Shalmone | | 4 Comments

Happy Halloween from NETexponent - What We Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of

October 31st, 2008

Search Marketing isn’t going away any time soon. Phew!

Marketing Sherpa produces a nifty search marketing report every year. In this year’s 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide, they show you through an abundance of colorful charts how the flow of marketing dollars has increased year over year and will continue to increase by the billions in the coming years.

As far as the current state of the economy is concerned, market downturn will definitely affect search but not really damage it. Businesses are better informed than ever about the usefulness and efficiency of search marketing, and because of this, most search budgets are not likely to decrease during a recession.

I’d include specific numbers and stats, but I’m afraid of the those spooky copyright lawyers.

Posted in Search Marketing by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

MSN adCenter Gets a Makeover

October 28th, 2008

Just barely…

In an effort to compete with the bigger slices of the search marketing pie, Microsoft released adCenter 5.0 on Monday. Do I expect this to have a serious impact on incoming traffic or conversions from Live Search? Not really.

The upgrade includes a faster editorial review process on their end, accessibility options for multiple users on one account, and…wait for it…wait for it…the ability to now pause/resume ads and keywords, which MSN calls “more flexibility in managing campaigns.” Let us now bow our heads in awe of such innovation. They also claim to have added better geographical targeting options. Is it just me, or is the most significant difference the change in layout colors to dark blue and gray and an enhancement in their logo of circles symbolizing, perhaps, the direction and motion of the head any time someone tries to use this service?

Posted in Search Marketing by Dani Shalmone | | 2 Comments

Google Analytics Gets Better and the Best Analytics Blog on the WWW

October 27th, 2008

A long time (maybe 10 years) ago, there must have been a day the higher-ups at Google decided that as part of the company’s business model, they would try to release something new almost every week of the year.

This week, Google announced that there will be new features available in their popular (and free) web analytics platform, Google Analytics. What they now offer is a world beyond visits, bounce rates, etc. There are now custom reports, advanced segmentation, API for exporting GA data, new visually-pleasing motion reports, integrated reporting for AdSense, and a slight facelift in the UI. Most of these features are in public beta, except for the API and AdSense reporting (private beta). You can get the full scoop on The Official Google Analytics Blog.

If you really want to learn more about the new beta release, you should visit Avinash Kaushik’s blog, Occam’s Razor. I’ve yet to read a blog as enthusiastic (and funny!) about web analytics as his. Whether it’s basic stuff or advanced data analysis, he actually gets you excited about things that most people would deem objectively boring and tries to get people to become “analytics ninjas.” His practical approach to sifting through data segments in order to give actionable advice is enlightening and simplifying, hence, Occam’s razor. One of my favorite posts is about choosing awesome key performace indicators (KPI). He also likes to use terms like “HiPPO” (highest paid person’s opinion), which I love.

Posted in Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

Yahoo! Search Now Has Better Geo-Targeting in North America Only

October 24th, 2008

Normally, when I login to Yahoo! Search Marketing, I leave the dashboard (no totals!) and go to the campaign summary right away. It was a pleasant surprise when I logged in today and saw the announcement, “New, More Specific Levels of Geo-Targeting Available.”

In the past, the only choices for geo-targeting in Yahoo! Search were to either choose the entire market or to block continents you didn’t want your ads to appear in. This wasn’t very efficient or usable, and even Yahoo! warned users, “Note: The accuracy of the blocked continents feature is not guaranteed and may vary depending on a number of factors.” After seeing the announcement about more specific targeting options, I tried setting an existing campaign to run ads in the United Kingdom, and guess what? I still couldn’t. Confused, (and my excitement waning) I tried setting up a brand new campaign, but the only geographical options were for the United States and Canada. It finally dawned on me that new improvements were only for North America. The functionality now works similarly to Google geo-targeting insofar that it lets you target by country (USA and Canada only), city, or zip code all at the campaign level. There’s even a nifty little map that highlights the places you target, also like Google. If you want to learn more about this new functionality, you can read about it on the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. It’s unfortunate, however, that there isn’t better targeting for outside North America. Be that as it may, there is the option to setup entirely separate international accounts through international versions of the Yahoo! Search Marketing interface, but again, not that efficient if all you want to do is have your same English language ads show up in different places.

Yahoo! has been trying to catch up with Google for a while. Google, after all, has had geo-targeting options for what seems like forever now and seems to be at least a few steps ahead of Yahoo! at all times. For example, to increase quality (and cost), Yahoo! introduced the “minimum bid,” something Google already had for a while. Recently, Google did away with the “minimum bid” and changed it to “first page bid.” Now, the implications of this change is totally another story, but you get the point. Who knows, maybe next week Google will come out with a way to target people by GPS on their mobile devices and show an ad for something in close proximity to an individual?

Posted in Search Marketing by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

Google Browser Launches

September 2nd, 2008

Google’s official blog announced the release of “Google Chrome.” The browser will be open source and probably set-up much like Firefox. Google claims it is not doing this to compete but to help foster innovation. That seems to be true (to a certain degree) as Google has invested a lot of money in Firefox.

However, while they may not want to compete with good partners such as Apple and Mozilla…it is clear they are going directly for the jugular with Microsoft. Allow me to explain. The web browser will become the ultimate operating system of the future as most companies move towards web based systems rather than software based systems. Think Salesforce vs ACT. The web based systems are slowly making software based platforms obsolete. As this happens and more data is moved from the desktop to “the web cloud” the browser becomes a tremendously more important part of the computing environment. Microsoft may have won the first big browser war when they beat out AOL and Netscape but they are in big trouble if they lose this war.

UPDATE:

CNN has a great review of the browser here

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments