Archive for the ‘Search Engine Marketing’ category

Use Google AdWords Offline With Google Gears & Work Faster

February 10th, 2010

I just found a new option in my Google account. The ability to activate Google Gears for AdWords. This stores all you account data on your local computer for faster load times. Look for an offline icon on the top right of your AdWords account.

When you click on it you are prompted with the option to continue and activate:

This was reported by Search Engine Land last week:

Instead of loading the data off Google’s servers each time you click on a section in the AdWords console, Google will load the data off your local computer. Google said, “each time you access AdWords, your data loads directly from your computer, making your experience much faster.”

Do you have the offline option in your account?

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How To Use Day Parting To Trim Wasteful Spend In AdWords

December 30th, 2009

Simple logic would dictate that if someone searched for your keywords, show them an ad. Sometimes hard facts are completely different from what you would expect. In most AdWords accounts that I have dealt with, I have seen much lower conversion rates and revenue in between the hours of 2AM and 7AM. Here’s how to check if this is the case on your eCommerce site with Google Analytics.

How Do I Check?

In Google Analytics, go to Ecommerce –> Conversion Rate. Select a 3 month date range, last 90 days is the best. The click on the little clock icon where it says “Graph By”. This will segment your conversion rate for the last 90 days by hour of the day. You should see two charts like this sample below.

Conversion Rate By Hour, Click To Enlarge

Conversion Rate By Hour, Click To Enlarge

If your chart is anything like this one, you will see that specific hours of the day perform better than others. This means that your cost per acquisition will likely be higher during those times.

What Do I Do?

There are two possible solutions to help minimize wasteful spend during these hours.

Option A — Lower Bids

The first basic option, is to lower your bids in each campaign during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set hours and percentages of your regular bids. (Click on Mode: Bid adjustment.)

Option B –Pause Ads

The second basic option, is to pause your campaigns automatically during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set which hours you would like your ads to run. (Click on Mode: Basic.)

Bottom Line

Make sure that you are getting the most out of your advertising spend. Every little trick can help. Another thing you can do is to set your campaigns to use Accelerated Ad Delivery to display your ad every time someone searches for your keywords during the correct hours.

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How To Display Google Base Products In AdWords Ads

November 30th, 2009

backcountry[1]

Google has been testing product ads for some time now. As of last week they have turned on this featured called Ad Extenstions. By turning this feature on you will attract more eyeballs to your ads and in effect raise your click-through rate. Google stated on their blog post which announced this new feature that some advertisers have seen a 10% increase in their CTR.

Here is how to turn on AdWords Ad Extensions, it must be done for every campaign separately:

Go to Campaign –> Settings; under Networks, devices, and extensions; click on edit under Ad Extensions and check the box that says: Connect to my Google Merchant Center account. This should automatically bring up your Google Base (Product Search) account, once it finds it, just click Save.

AdWords-Ad-Extensions

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Cheatsheet: How To Create AdWords Campaigns Easily

November 4th, 2009

Here’s a quick tip that comes in handy when you are marketing a brand of products that has a similar name to other products or services on the web.

If you want to advertise Apple, Inc. products but are having a hard time coming up with a comprehensive list of keywords, this may work for you. Add the keyword Apple as a Broad Match term with an exact negative of [Apple]. At the same time add negative terms for anything that comes up on a Google search for the term Apple that you are not advertising. For example you may add these as Negative Keywords:

tablet
tv
new york city
bank
trailers
rumors
ipod
store locator
  • tablet
  • tv
  • new york city
  • bank
  • trailers
  • rumors
  • store

This accomplishes the same as building out a huge list of Phrase Match terms but with much less work. Google will look at the Broad Match terms you have listed and show ad for all of them after cross checking and excluding all your Negative keywords. Keep in mind that this may cost slightly more than running a long list of Phrase Match terms. Best thing to do is run your campaign this way for 2-4 weeks and then look at the keyword list that Google actually showed your ads for — now you can just check off the good ones and add to your campaign for a lower CPC.

Image Courtesy: zenera

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How To Restrict Your Ad Position In AdWords

October 14th, 2009

There is a cool feature in AdWords that allows you to restrict your ad to specific positions. This comes in handy if you know that a certain position, say position #3, has had the best performance historically. Here is how to set up Ad Positioning:

Step 1

In the Campaign Settings, under Position Preference you can turn on the ability to mange your position preference and have AdWords automatically manage maximum CPC bids to target a preferred position range.
Google-AdWords-Position-Preference

Step 2

When you edit keywords in the Keywords tab, you will now have the option to select positions you’d like to restrict your ad to. It will let you select one position (i.e. #3) or a range of positions (i.e. #1 – #4).

Google AdWords Position Preference Selection

Bottom Line

Keep in mind that if according to Google’s algorithm your ad should show up in position #4 and you set your ads to display in position #3, your ad will not display at all. Use it when you have the data to back it up, when you know that any clicks from other positions will not bring enough conversions.

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New Google AdWords My Client Center (MCC) Interface

October 14th, 2009

It seems that Google is trying to standardize the new interface across AdWords. Aside from cosmetic differences, it does not seem to have any new features except for a newBudget tab. See screen shots below:

I just noticed this link today in my MCC account:

Link-To-New-Google-MCC-Account-Interface

Link To New Google MCC Account Interface

New Google AdWords MMC Performance Tab

New Google AdWords MMC Performance Tab

New Google AdWords MMC Budget Tab

New Google AdWords MMC Budget Tab

Is the new AdWords My Client Center interface active in your account? Can you spot any other differences?

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New Sponsored Search Section Google Product OneBox

October 8th, 2009

I’m not sure if this is new or not (seems new to me) — Google is now displaying a Google Product Search OneBox on the top right of the Sponsored Search section. This is great for merchants as Google is really pushing Google Product Search in prime real estate.

This is not to be confused the AdWords PlusBox where Google displays products next to a merchant’s ad from their Google Base data feed.

Sponsored Search Google Product OneBox

Search Sponsored Google Product OneBox

We’ve all seen the standard OneBox in the regular search results:

Standard Google Product Search One Box

Standard Google Product Search One Box

Update: Matthew from the Rimm Kaufman Group points us to a post on Google Blogoscoped with more information regarding “Google Product Ads“. There are no screenshots there, but it seems to be referring to the image I have posted above.

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Posted in Comparison Shopping, Search Engine Marketing

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Ultimate Guide: E-Commerce By The Numbers

September 1st, 2009

Google AdWord Fuzzy Math

Here is a guide to ecommerce by the numbers that can make it or break it.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The first metric to look at us your average cost per click. You will want to optimize your different advertising channels to try and get as low of a CPC as possible. If you can lower your average CPC, you can purchase more clicks for the same budget. You can accomplish this by lowering bids on very generic search terms and adding many long tail keywords to your campaigns and Ad Groups. In addition you should try to use ad few Broad Match terms as you can get away with.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Once you’ve lowered you average CPC, you should concentrate on getting the highest Click Through Rate possible. In order to boost your CTR, you can test different Ad Copies and see which ones perform better. You can also try Dynamic Keyword Insertion to help make your ad copy more compelling. Keep in mind that a higher CTR will help lower your average CPC because it will contribute to your overall Quality Score. If you have Broad Match terms, you will want to utilize the Search Query Performance report to fine tune keywords that will display your ad.

Conversion Rate (CR)

Note: If you don’t have Conversion Tracking set up, you won’t have a way to track this.

Once you have tracking set up properly you will be able to see how many visitors turn into customers. A good number to aim for is 2%, although it can vary a lot from industry to industry. Most analytics software does not track phone sales out of the box, so your conversion rate might be higher than what you see on your reports.

You can boost your conversion rate by optimizing your landing pages and checkout flow. The goal is to ensure a smooth passage from the landing page to the checkout confirmation. You can do this by highlighting your call to action (i.e. Add To Cart, Buy Now) and eliminating the possibility for the consumer to get lost by clicking on irrelevant links.

Average Order Value (AOV)

If you can raise your average order value by upselling each order with additional items an accessories, it can have a positive impact on your total sales volume. It’s simple, try to get more out of your existing customers before trying to get new ones.

Bottom Line:

Lower Cost-Per-Click + Higher Click-Through-Rate + Higher Conversion-Rate + Higher Average-Order-Value = Much More Revenue.

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Display Search Term In Ad Creative With Dynamic Keyword Insertion

September 1st, 2009

Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion

When building your ad creatives, aside for using multiple ad copies, it is a good idea to include the search term that the consumer is using in your ad copy. This can be done quite easily with Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion

With Dynamic Keyword Insertion you can use a placeholder text instead of an actual title or description which Google will then strip out and replace with the consumer’s search term. You can use it in a few different ways as well, here’s how:

{KeyWord:Default}

This keyword placeholder which Google calls Dynamic Keyword Insertion, is broken into two parts. The first option, ‘KeyWord’, defines how you display the search query casing, capital first letter of each word, capital first letter of sentence or lower case.

{KeyWord:Default} – First Letter Upper Case Of Each Word

{Keyword:Default} – Only first letter of sentence upper case

{keyword:Default} – full text will be lower case

The second half, after the colon, is the default text that will be used when the consumers search query does not fit in the space requirements.

The Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool can be used in all fields of an ad copy: Title, Description 1 & 2, Display URL and Destination URL. Samples as follows:

Query microsoft zune 8gb ipod nano green leather skin
Ad Copy Buy {KeyWord:Zune}
8GB Micrsoft Zune. Buy Now.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com		 Buy {keyword:ipod accessories}
8GB iPod Nano Accessories.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com
Output Buy Microsoft Zune
8GB Micrsoft Zune. Buy Now.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com		 Buy ipod accessories
8GB iPod Nano Accessories.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com
Notes Capitalized First Letter Of Each Word Space Restriction: Default Search Term

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How To Test Google AdWords Keyword Positions In Analytics

August 26th, 2009

Monopoly E-Commerce

Will your ad perform better on the top spot on the left or on the right? Sixth one up from the bottom?

When you link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, it will track performance of your ads with a lot of detail. One of the things it tracks, is performance by ad position.

Go to Traffic Sources » AdWords » Keyword Positions

In this report you can see all the familiar information such as impressions, clicks, CTR etc… The great thing about this report is the ability to segment by keyword and ad position. If you have Conversion Goals and E-Commerce Tracking set up you can see sales and revenue by ad position as well.

How Do I Know?

You will need to test your ad in a few positions for a couple of weeks each. Make sure you have enough representative data and then run the Ad Position report and see what has performed better.

Image Credit: danielbroche

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