*Update: I have been contacted by a source inside Google and updated two points in the post accordingly*

I am constantly surprised at how little advertisers really understand Quality Scores. If you put in a little effort, you can reap some very tangible benefits and come out leaps and bounds ahead of your competition.

SECTION 1: QUALITY SCORE BASICS

While Quality Score is relatively simple to grasp as a concept, it’s a little more complicated in practice. Stasia, an AdWords Seminar leader, gives you a nice introduction to the basic concept of Quality Score in the video below:

Get the Flash Player to see this video about quality score.

The Opportunity.

Back in the good old days, AdWords was based on a pure auction-based model. If you bid more than another advertiser on a keyword, your ad would appear higher and ultimately get more clicks (and hopefully sales). Back in 2005 when Google introduced the Quality Score, it changed everything.
No longer could search results be flooded with irrelevant ads of those with massive budgets. Many advertisers were very upset, but a unique opportunity arose for those with smaller budgets and the inclination to put in a little hard work — perhaps people like you. With the refinement of the Quality Score algorithm and the great scam / affiliate flush of late 2009, there has never been a better opportunity for those advertisers with a quality product or service and a little time to try to understand Quality Score to really reap the rewards. Are you ready to learn more about Quality Score? Let’s get started.

Why Quality Score Is Important.

Quality Score is extremely important because it can make or break your campaign (and in some cases, your business). Quality Score determines how much you pay for your advertising on Google and how much exposure you get. You wouldn’t place a TV or magazine ad without knowing how much you have to pay or how much exposure you would get, would you? Brian Carter, a  humorous motivational speaker and the Director of Search  for Online Marketing Agency Fuel Interactive shares some interesting client information over on Search Engine Journal on the inverse relationship between Quality Score and cost per click (CPC). I have reformatted the data below:

As you can see, the higher your Quality Score, the lower the price you pay per click. Also, as you will see below, the higher your Quality Score the more exposure you will get as AdWords uses Quality Score to determine what Ads are placed in the coveted 1-3 search results above the organic and local search results.

SECTION 2: QUALITY SCORE FACTORS

Types of Quality Score And What They Impact.

According to Google, there are two “types” of Quality Scores. The AdWords help documentation goes into a little more detail, but the guys over on PPC Hero pretty much nailed it in their Quality Score Handbook (Essential reading by the way) when they said:

Search Network Quality Score is different from Content Network Quality Score. Also there are different Quality Scores for setting minimum bids and ranking ads for the Content Network, Quality Score and the maximum cost-per-click determine the ad rank on content pages. For search, Quality Score, along with maximum CPC, determines ad rank and determines promotion to top of page.

The Google & Search Network Variations/Exceptions.

There are slight variations to the Quality Score formula when it affects ad position and first page bids:

• For calculating a keyword-targeted ad’s position, your landing page quality is not a factor. Also, when calculating ad position on a Search Network placement, Quality Score considers the click through rate (CTR) on that particular placement in addition to the CTR on Google.
• For calculating first page bid, Quality Score doesn’t consider the matched ad or search query, since this estimate appears as a metric in your account and doesn’t vary per search query.
• CTR on Google network, CTR on Google Network impacts QS on the Google Network, not on Google.

The Content Network Variations/Exceptions.

The Quality Score for calculating an ad’s eligibility to appear on a particular content site, as well as the ad’s position on that site, consists of the following factors:

• The quality of your landing page
• The historical CTR of the ad on this and similar sites

The Quality Score for determining if a placement-targeted ad will appear on a particular site depends on your campaign’s bidding option.

If your campaign uses cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) bidding, Quality Score is based on:

• The quality of your landing page

If your campaign uses CPC bidding, Quality Score is based on:

• The historical CTR of the ad on this and similar sites
• The quality of your landing page

Brad Geddes of bgTheory has a handy Quality Score chart with all of this information (reformatted for this post) :

SECTION 3: IMPROVING YOUR QUALITY SCORE

Now that you know as much as Google is prepared to share about Quality Score, how it is calculated, and roughly how much weight is given to each factor, what factors can you as an advertiser realistically influence? As it happens, quite a lot! Let’s go into each of the major factors and look at what we can improve.

Improving Your Quality Score for the Search Network

The CTR and historical CTR of the keyword and the matched ad on Google

The CTR of your ad / keyword pair is by far the largest factor in determining Quality Score. The important thing to remember is that the CTR is normalized to your position so your CTR is judged good or bad for Quality Score reasons based on the performance of other ads currently and historically in this position.
Bidding more to move up to the number one position will more than likely improve your CTR, but it will rarely do you any good if your ad doesn’t get a better Quality Score than other ads have received in that position in the past. The goal here is to make your ad so relevant and enticing that the searcher just has on click on it. You can explore the topic of Improving CTR in more depth in some of my previous posts.

It is also important to aggressively research and add negative keywords. This will increase your CTR and reduce your exposure to those searching for something you do not provide. Consider running an AdWords Search Query Performance report daily or weekly, mining your server log files, or checking your Analytics account for negatives and add them to your campaign negative list.

A final historical CTR improvement tip: always bid (and bid high) on your company or brand name. You will get a massive boost in historical CTR because 70%+ of the time, your ad is what searchers are looking for. You will pay pennies per click and decrease the normalized Quality Score and historical account CTR of any competitors bidding on your brand or company name!

Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account

Account history is a tough one and is subject to a lot of speculation. Unfortunately, I believe a lot of it to be true. Advertisers with older accounts which have performed well in the past have a huge advantage over advertisers with new accounts. It can take anywhere from 1 week to 4 months to “shake off” a “bad history.”
This is also what some people refer to as the account level Quality Score. It is not so much a type of Quality Score as it is a factor. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done here with a new account apart from making sure that you have a solid understanding of the factors to get your account off to a flying start (ie: a high CTR off the bat).
If you have an old account with a poor historical Quality Score, you might feel tempted to create a new account to counteract this. This is against AdWords’ policy. If you want to be on the cutting edge and have an appetite for risk, you can beta test new AdWords search ad formats. New formats generally show huge CTR improvements before they settle into the consciousness of Google users. It’s also important to note that the AdWords system treats an edited ad like it’s brand new and has no performance history. According to the FAQ here:

Ad position is partly determined by an ad’s relevance to the search query as well as its historical performance on Google. Editing your ad, therefore, can affect its position.

The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group

A relatively new addition to the QS family, historical CTR of the display URL in the ad group is an easy one to get right. Make sure you initially split test the hell out of your ads/display URL and make sure you stick with the one that drives the highest CTR. Adding keywords to the subdomain and subdirectory of display URL can give massive improvements. Especially if the keywords are trademarks. Frank Pipolo has some good tips on using test domains for this.

The quality of your landing page

This is another subjective topic. However (and this is very important), Google has hired thousands of what are called “Ads Quality Raters.” These are actual humans outsourced by Google who sit at home and rate your ads and the quality of the pages those ads go to. To improve on this factor, it is important to pay very close attention to the Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines here. I wrote a quality score post years ago on this exact factor, and a lot of the tips are still relevant.
Google also has thousands of Search Quality Raters, not to be confused with Ads Quality Raters, who look at and rate pages for classification in the organic search results. While I don’t have the Ads Quality Rater operations manual, the Quality Rater document is out in the wild for all to see. I’ve heard there is an awful lot of crossover.

Remember, you should ensure your landing page is capable of passing a human check. Make sure it follows the rules and never forget that once it is reviewed, it will be reviewed again.

The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group

You’ve heard it many times before. Make sure your base keyword is in the ad title, ad text and display URL. Easy peasy, even for the tiny fraction of weight it carries.

The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query

This one is a little trickier. Again, attack your negative keyword research aggressively — consider it an essential daily task. This is a more advanced area where going through some detailed buying cycle analysis and segmenting search phrase intent can really pay off. The effort-to-reward ratio will vary here. Getelastic has an amazing post on something very similar here.

Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown

This factor is a relatively new addition to the Quality Score algorithm. I wrote a post about using geo-targeting to improve CTR previously, but the important takeaway is not that blanket geo-targeting is the right way to go, but that you should pay attention to the geographic areas that are performing poorly and consider creating a dedicated campaign or adgroup for this area or remove it completely. Run an AdWords Geographic Performance report to see where you could improve. Consider using local colloquialisms in your ad text for those specific areas to help improve performance.

Other relevance factors

While there is no way to know for sure what all potential factors are, some common sense can be applied here. The first thing to work on is your bounce rate, or more specifically “back-bounce-rate.” Yes, you read that right. Google has mentioned throughout the years that if a visitor clicks your ad and immediately hits the back button, this is an indication that the page was not relevant. In fact, Google explicitly prohibits the disabling of the back button functionality in their policies.

We also have anecdotal evidence that adding your root or base keyword to your landing page title tag and the other keywords in the adgroup around your copy improves Quality Score marginally. If you have the time, it would be ideal to create a landing page for each individual keyword. When this is not possible, a landing page dedicated to each adgroup usually does the trick.

Page Load Time/Other Factors
You may have noticed “page load time” or “site speed” left out of the factors above. To be honest, I’ve never seen a poor Quality Score due to slow page load time. From my experience, as long as your page loads in a reasonable length of time, you don’t even have to worry about this for now. If increasing your page load by a half second has any impact on Quality Score, it is minimal. There are also many other marginal factors I won’t go into, but Bradd Libby does.

Improving Quality Score For Content Network

There is a lot of crossover in the areas where you can improve your Quality Score on the search and content networks. Let’s look at the factors we can influence to improve Quality Score on the content network. In most cases these are a little harder to influence and take a lot more time and resources, but they are worth the effort if you want to succeed on the content network.

The ad’s past performance on this and similar sites

You can do a little or a lot with this one — from site and site section targeting all the way up to joining the community (if it is a forum for example) to get to know the users of the site and what makes them tick. As a member of the site, what ads or ad text would you find most relevant? I have seen some people even targeting the site users themselves (ie: an ad headline that says something like “Attention Redfly Blog Readers! Want to know more about increasing your keyword Quality Score? Click here!”

Another tip is to try image ads and compare their performance against your text ads for each site (if the site accepts image ads). Many advertisers still don’t use image ads, so there is a huge opportunity to jump straight to the top of the pile.

The relevance of the ads and keywords in the adgroup to the site

Consider using Google AdPlanner to get the demographics of the site, and target your ad copy to those demographics. Also have a look at what other AdSense ads are showing on the site and make note of ads that are consistently displayed over time. In general, those ads are what Google finds most relevant to that site (at the time). If you can’t beat them, join them.

The historical CTR of the ad on this and similar sites

Again, use Google AdPlanner to see the “Other sites Visited” section of the site you are targeting. Run a site targeted campaign on some of the lower trafficked related sites. This will improve your “related performance” on similar sites. It might be a lot of effort but not only will you improve overall content network performance, but you will gain significant long tail content network leads or sales.

SECTION 4: Troubleshooting Quality Score

There are numerous things that can cause a sudden drop in Quality Score or a slower, more gradual decrease. Here are some of the most common Quality Score problems and what you can (or cannot) do about them.

Sudden 1/10 Quality Score on all (or most) Keywords & Huge First Page Bid Estimates

This is an extremely common problem and is characterized by an advertiser noticing a very sudden drop in traffic from AdWords. In a lot of cases, your search network traffic stops first and is followed shortly by your content network traffic. This unfortunately is known as a “Google Slap” and occurs when a review has taken place on your account and you are no longer deemed to be complying with the outlandishly opaque landing page and site quality guidelines.

Cause: You are linking or deemed to be linking to a bridge page, a get rich quick scheme, an affiliate page that’s only purpose is to redirect traffic to another domain, an affiliate site that provides no added value, a data collection site (a site that collects users’ email addresses or other info in exchange for a free product / whitepaper, etc.), a “poor quality” comparison shopping site, an arbitrage site, or a scam site.

Solution: Despite what you think about your own site, Google, the Ads Quality Raters, and the QS Algorithm/Bot feel differently. They more than likely feel your site falls into one of these categories. In this case, there is very little that you can do. If your site falls into the “scam site” category, expect to be banned permanently or investigated by authorities.

If you feel that your site absolutely does not fall into any of the categories, request a quick look over of your site on the AdWords Help Forum and then request a manual review by contacting Google here.Note that it should be a 100% false positive if you are to get this reversed so be completely sure that your site doesn’t even fall remotely into one of those categories. Remember, AdWords does not run on auto pilot. Real people will look at and inspect your account.

One High Volume Keyword has a Quality Score Of 2-4

This problem happens when a specific high volume keyword, usually a single word or two-word phrase, slowly drops its Quality Score and starts costing more. Because these keywords are usually high volume, they can generate a lot of traffic, and a low Quality Score on these keywords can cause a significant drop-off in exposure and sales.

Cause: High volume and low CTR.

Solution: Add negative keywords to the campaign, use exact match, remove the keyword (be careful as this can impact an adgroup “theme” on the content network) or place the keyword in it’s own ad group and optimize the ad copy and display URL aggressively.

Very High (Even 10/10) Quality Score but a Huge First Page Bid Estimate

Unfortunately, this is not a problem with your Quality Score. When it comes to certain keywords, there are quite literally hundreds of advertisers. Assume all advertisers also have a 10/10 Quality Score. What determines which ads show? That’s right, good old fashioned bid price.

Cause: High volume of advertisers.

Solution: Bid higher and use the backend to improve ROI and increase lifetime customer value (LTV) so you can afford to bid higher.

In Conclusion

AdWords Quality Score is still a closely guarded secret, as is Google’s organic search algorithm. While it may not be possible to figure out every factor, just like the organic search ranking factors, it is possible to extract enough meaning to understand them and make them work for you. The great scam / affiliate purge of 2009 may have made things easier for existing advertisers, but at the current growth rate of PPC and online ad spending, it’s only a matter of time before the paid search results become as competitive as they used to be. Those of you who understand Quality Score will be in a far better position to get more from your AdWords advertising spend than those who do not.

I hope you got some value from this post. If you did, please share it with others who might get something from it too.

Google has recently announced that you can now tag  your adwords ads with your company address. These are called location extensions. However, many advertisers do NOT want their company address under their ad.  We’ll cover that in another blog post. They are also not available in many countries.

Instead, we’re going to use regional targeting to add the County, City or State of the SEARCHER to the bottom of your ad. When the person that’s performing the search sees their OWN City, State or County below their ad they not only see a word they can relate to but an ad that’s a little different to most (if not all) of the other ads on the page. This has an immediate and sometimes astonishing impact on click through rates.

To achieve this we simply need to get a little more granular with our regional targeting in AdWords. It’s really quite simple. Instead of targeting a whole country like the US or Ireland, select “target specific locations within a single country or territories” and select EVERY STATE . You could even select every metropolitan area or even every city to have THOSE show up below the ad.

Likewise, Instead of targeting the whole country of The Republic Of Ireland, select “target specific locations within a single country or territories” and select all 26 Counties in The Republic instead. If you are based in Dublin for example, using this method, a searcher from Cork would see the word “Cork” below your ad.

That’s it! Simply update/upload your campaign, wait a few minute and when someone performs a search from any location that you are now targeting, their city, metro area, State or County will show up below the ad. We have found that in 100% of cases for both us and our clients, combined with gradual CTR increases this has improved our CTR significantly. CTR being the single biggest factor that you as an advertiser can influence towards your quality score, improving CTR is a no-brainer.

While it’s not possible to auto rotate these ads in the same campaign, we had to try and replicate that for this test. We spread it out over a month (yea, low volume) alternating the days that each campaign was enabled. So each ad got the same share of days of the week, times of the day etc. The big drawback here is actual demand for the “product” on any specific day may have skewed the results slightly but I think we got a pretty accurate result that is in line with what we have seen with all our other campaigns.You will notice that the CTR is almost 100% greater and the cost is 100% less.

An increase in relevant CTR (No bounce/back rate) is an effective increase in that keywords quality score.

On the subject, to remove the location from below your ad (I have no idea why you would want to), you can target a specific geographic area using customized targeting.  Many thanks to Richard at Apogee for teaching me something new and keeping me on my toes over on the official AdWords help forum.

So there you have it. A simple, yet effective way to improve your quality score without much effort. What other ways have you found to increase the quality score of your keywords?

Google AdWords & Affiliate Marketing.

To be able to keep on top of the ever changing search marketing space, we absolutely have to operate our own sites. How can we help a client with their e-commerce site if we don’t have one ourselves or at least worked on one before? It would be like paying an accountant to do your accounts with no experience only after reading “accounting for dummies”.

To operate our own sites, we’ve had to create and build sites from scratch and use those sites to better understand what makes each search engine tick. We could hardly test sometimes risky techniques on clients sites now could we?  The lowest point of entry to do this is affiliate marketing. I have never spoken about affiliate marketing on this blog before, but I am going to today.

Let’s get this straight, Google most certainly DOES hate affiliates , to be more specific, affiliates that use AdWords and I completely understand why. Leaving aside the fact that a large majority promote some less than savory products or services (and sometimes outright illegal products and services) from Google’s point of view, it is NOT an affiliates job to help a searcher (their customer) to find a product or service, it’s theirs.

One of the most important articles I have read on Google’s view of affiliate marketing that sums things up has been AdWords Quality Score: Can Your Business Model be banned written by Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media. This article was WAY ahead of it’s time and if you are an affiliate marketer, I suggest that you read it if you use AdWords. The basic idea here for affiliates is to adapt and either change your business model or get the hell out. Rae Hoffman of Outspoken Media has the definitive guide on where to go from here with affiliate marketing. If you have not read this, you’re way behind. The days of affiliates providing no value making a quick and easy buck are long gone. If you’re not adding value, and a lot of it, you’re in trouble. I would also like to point out that the lines between Google’s paid and organic search policies is increasingly becoming thinner. What you could once “get away with” because you paid Google is no longer possible. PPC SEO is now real.

Advertisers Caught In The Crossfire

One of the benefits (and sometimes a hindrance) of being an AdWords qualified company is that we have direct contact with the AdWords agency team. We have a love-hate relationship with our Google reps and sometimes I have been outright rude to them (Sorry Guys!) because of their notoriously cryptic and secretive policies. But when you learn to read between the lines of what they are saying, their policies make sense and you can learn a lot.

Now, many “innocent” advertisers have been caught up in Google’s crackdown on affiliates using AdWords by getting “slapped” with €10 minimum bids (affectionately called a Google Slap), effectively making their accounts unsustainable. While I don’t agree with how they go about it, I understand why they do it. It makes sense to keep your “product” (AdWords) clean but doing it in Google’s stereotypical automatic way can cause a lot of false positives. If you are a legitimate advertiser caught up in a Google slap, there is something that you can do:

• Make sure that you have done everything you can to improve your quality score.
• Make sure you have no prominent affiliate links.
• Make sure any affiliate links are marked as “sponsored”.
• Make sure it is clear that your business model is NOT commission based. (In the traditional affiliate sense)
  
• Make sure that you have a physical address on your site.
• Make sure your site follows all quality guidelines. (As usual, this is only a TINY subset)
  
• Make sure your site is not a bridge page or a bridge site.
• Make sure you offer your own product or service.
  
• Submit your site for a manual review.

*If you are an affiliate, don’t bother submitting your site for a manual review, you’ll only make yourself look stupid. Google doesn’t want affiliates as advertisers any more. If you can’t read between the lines here, you probably shouldn’t be a PPC affiliate. The age of white labeling has begun ;)

Once a Google support rep has reviewed your site and is confident that you are not an affiliate, after a day or two, you should see your minimum bids go back to normal and your traffic flow again. For a more detailed breakdown of what I believe is involved in this “review” I would highly recommend joining the SEObook Community. There is some juicy… updated documents behind the scenes over there that can help a LOT in understanding what a “rater” is looking for.

Perry Marshall makes an excellent point in his Google’s secret criteria post for judging (and slapping) websites:

Might I suggest…. add “Would a Google rep send her grandmother to this site” to your bag of tricks and let’s all do our best to make the Internet a more trustworthy place.

Above all, don’t make Google look stupid and remember an adwords advertiser is not a Google customer, the average Joe Soap searcher is.

UPDATE: Looks like this is getting worse. The writing has been on the wall since I wrote this and now a lot more genuine advertisers are being outright “banned by the algo”. Barry has some coverage here and banned multi million dollar advertisers are having their say over on WebmasterWorld.

UPDATE 2: Google has just updated it’s “Website Types to Avoid” page here. Some notable additions pretty much in line with what I have been saying are:

Affiliate sites that the primary purpose of which is to drive traffic to another site with a different domain

Poor comparison shopping or travel sites whose primary purpose is to send users to other shopping/travel comparison sites, rather than to provide useful content or additional search functionality

I think the writing is on the wall. It’s only a matter of time before this sort of thing starts being inforced in the organic SERPS.

Two years ago (I think) when Google dragged it’s advertisers kicking and screaming into the new Quality based bidding system, the game completely changed. Google AdWords no longer operates on a “highest bid wins” system but on a rather confusing and sometimes illusive set of quality criteria.

Some people find it very difficult to get their heads around how this “quality” effects their bid prices and ultimately their ROI. Today, Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian has posted a fantastic video that simplifies the whole system and makes it easy for anyone to understand.

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

Easy to understand or what?

Now that you understand quality score a little better, realize how important it is to improve your quality score by increasing your click through rate and re-evaluating your landing page relevancy, what are you waiting for? Even if you increase your CTR by 0.01% a day over a month, that can be enough to bump your keywords quality score up and reduce your overall costs significantly.

Below you will find some screenshots of the new interface. Please note that I have removed any data that has identified the campaigns. These details are simply deleted and are indeed included in the interface. Please click images for full sized shots.

The new interface is a streamlined, ajaxified beast with a lot of new features. You’ll notice straight off the bat that the interface has been adjusted to look like Google analytics. In fact, the transition between AdWords and analytics is now seamless, complete with all the ajax progress animations. There is also an option to collapse the left sidebar (not shown) which includes a list of campaigns for easy access, similar to AdWords editor.

The one feature of note however is the new “networks” tab in each campaign. This tab lists the networks that your campaign is running on. Either search, search partners, content network and defined placements. The best part however is the content network automatic placements!

Previously, the only way to access this data was to through a tedious process of creating a placement performance report for the date range you wanted. Then you had to wade through the data with the awful pagination Google provides in it’s reports (what can we really do with 100 rows Google?). You also had to manually select your campaigns. Not any more.

Now you can see day by day metrics on each URL that your ads appear on the content network without running a placement performance report!

And that’s not the best part. With the new view, you can sort the columns in order of the metric of your choice, check the URLs that are performing to that metric and automatically add them to your placement campaigns! (Now called “Managed Placements” as seen).

To those of you who that were willing to put in the hard slog and suffer the sometimes agonizing wrath of the content network and placement campaigns you will realize how much of a fantastic new time saving feature this will be. This cuts out what can be hours of research time looking for decent performing placements.

The interface is still in very early beta. It errors out at least 2 times a session for me every time I have tried it. This has been a common complaint so I doubt it will be released any time soon.

Now, if Google could provide some cross segmentation options and integrate the bizarrely missing display ad builder tool, this will be an absolute hit. Great stuff Google!

Is anyone else as excited about this as I am?

Below, I outline five examples of ways you can increase your CTR without doing anything technical or magical. The ads are fabricated but the data is not. The ads are as close to the original as possible. Besides, you’re going to test the theory yourself anyway right?

1) Trademark Symbol/Registered Symbol.

While I have been using this method myself for years, Brad and Amber make some great points on this very topic. Not only can special symbols be used to increase your PPC CTR, but they can also be used to increase your organic SERP CTR. I could not agree with Ian Lurie more on his blog post predicting that organic CTR will matter a LOT in 2009.

2) Price In Headline

Adding the price in the headline is a great way to increase CTR. Be careful with this one though, if you’re not the cheapest, you’re CTR will suffer.

3) Seasonal Headlines.

Doesn’t matter if your product is not seasonal. If you sell blue widgets all year around, a headline like “Easter Widget Sale” will work great. There are so many different holidays, festivals and events that this can be used with. If you’re targeting locally, even better.

4) Trademark in Display URL Subdomain

While you can’t use most trademark terms in your ad copy, you can use them in your display URL.  Amber has a great post on why AdWords allows trademarks in the display URL here. Using the trademark in the display URL some argue confuses potential clickers into thinking that it is the “official” site of the trademark holder. Be careful with this one too… Google knows when a visitor clicks the back button on their browser!

5) The exact Keyword in the Headline.

An oldie, but a goodie. We all know that search engines BOLD your keywords when they match the search query. Having tightly knit adgroups will allow you to take advantage of this without having to use dynamic keyword insertion.

Remember, CTR for quality score reasons is only calculated on the exact match of the keyword and is only counted on the Google search network. This means that any increase in CTR from Dynamic Keyword Insertion does not improve your google quality score. CTR on Google search partners does not contribute to your quality score calculations.

As part of the Visa Business promotion, Visa are offering $100 USD in advertising credit to facebook users/advertisers. To get the free credit all you need to do is…

Log into facebook and add the Visa Business Network App. Once added, Facebook will send you a coupon code with instructions on how to add the credit to your account.

Perfect if you want to test the waters on facebook and perfect if you’re already spending a fortune with them. There’s more to PPC than just the big three :)

Seems like Alexia was WAY ahead of me finding this. Also, Master Mulley is running a competition for the best stats on a facebook campaign. Have a look!

UPDATE *** You can now receive this free facebook advertising code credit by following the instructions here.

Anyway, for those of you who use the Google Website Optimizer and for those of you considering using it for this competition, there are some unpublished problems with the tool that you should be aware of. From a very trusted source who wishes to remain anonymous:

As you have seen from my CC’d emails to youI have been having a battle with Google regarding the web page optimizer and data discrepancies. Until recently they just denied the problem was on their end.

I can now share two things with you that are very important moving forward when implementing WEB OPTIMIZER:

• 1. When entering the URLs of the test pages be very careful not to paste a blank space in at the end of the URL. It is almost impossible to check once the URL is entered and totally screws up optimizer reports.
• 2. Be aware that there is an issue that Google has tried to hide.The Web Optimizer (WO) code can conflict with the Google Analytics (ga) code. The work around is discussed below.

The following was the eventual reply/workaround from Google:

We suspect that you are seeing conversion discrepancies because your conversion page contains instances of ga.js and urchin.js for Analytics and Website Optimizer, respectively. Having both codes on one page can cause reporting issues. To smooth out the discrepancy, please modify the ga.js code for use with WO, rather than adding a call to urchin.js as well.

Please have a look at the following article:
http://www.google.com/support/websiteoptimizer/bin/answer.py?answer=77075

Option 2 will soon be phased out soon, so please only focus on Option 1, which details how to update your Analytics ga.js code to run for WO as well. Hopefully this is straightforward and corrects the issue. Keep in mind that we’ll have to focus on data from the date of the code correction going forward…

To those of you using Google Website Optimizer and are noticing anything strange, double check everything above. I know this is a little off the general topic of this blog but the issue has been a constant source of headaches and inaccurate reporting for months now.

* Source and Google rep names have been removed.

Before we start, here are three tips to save you time and get you the most out of your PPC campaign using this guide:

1. Download the free AdWords Editor tool from Google.
2. If possible, create a new account for your content network campaigns.
3. Download the free KeyWordPad tool from GoodKeywords.

We will first start off creating our campaigns in AdWords because the tools available make for easy creation here first and AdWords makes it even easier to export your completed campaign for use on other PPC networks. I would strongly advise against using AdWords starter edition if you can help it as it encourages “lazy” and hence poor performing account structure.

Step 1) – Account Structure Determination

The first step is to understand how your account will be structured. It is usually best to consider the product or service that you are offering at it’s most granular level and create your account like a tree. So if you have a site selling a software product or products, you should create a new campaign for each feature. For example, if you are selling some sort of image editing software, you should have a different campaign for “image editing” and a different campaign for “photo editing” and so and so forth. Inside each of your campaigns you should have generic ad groups (like a “cheap image editing software” group and a “buy image editing software” group) as well as an ad group for all the features relating to the root keyword (image editing). This may seem blindingly obvious but you’d be surprised how many advertisers just lump everything into a “software” adgroup with the default “campaign #1″ name. The tree should branch out immediately, more like a bush. So keeping image editing as an example, a single campaign will look like the attached image. Note, there are actually a few in this example.

Caveat. Each account is different. Splitting your account up into as many campaigns and as possible will give greater visibility but less general manageability. Find the right balance for you.

Step 2) – Keyword Research

The second step is keyword research. There have been a million posts on a million blogs about this topic, so I won’t go into it. Let’s just assume that you have generated a nice keyword list for each of your ad groups using your favourite keyword research tool. Wordtracker, SEO book’s KW tool, Keyword Discovery and HitWise are all great tools. Each has individual pros and cons but for now, compile your list an move on. We will expand on this later on in the campaign setup but for now, we should have as big a keyword list as possible with all the keywords and phrases not related to your business taken out and put in a separate “negative” list/file. We will also use this at a later stage in the setup.

Tip. There are literally hundreds of different ways to go about getting your first keyword list. Lisa Barone has a great article on KW research here. If you are new to PPC advertising, I suggest you read that before continuing.

Step 3) – Set Up Campaign

The third step in setting up your PPC account is creating a new search network only campaign. I wont go through the steps to create a new keyword targeted campaign but please look out for the options that are not set by default. The first setting you need to change is the network settings by removing the check from the “Content Network” checkbox. The content network can be very valuable so I do not recommend ignoring the content network completely. We will set up a new content network only campaign later or in another account. You also need to make sure that your ad serving option is set to “rotate” so you can split test your ads and your delivery method is set to “accelerated”. The last option may not apply to you if you are working with a very small budget, but in general, you want to max out your budget initially if you can afford it to get some numbers to work with.

Caveat. The search network is the only network we will be working with in this post. The content network is very valuable and should not be ignored but it should be treated separately. For now, we want to focus on the search network.

Step 4) – Build A Negative Keyword List

The fourth step is creating a new keyword list. A list of terms you do not want your ads triggered for. Google has recently removed/hidden it’s negative keyword builder so have a read of our negative keyword tips. You should have at least a few terms already from building your keyword list in step 2. You also know your business so sit down with your colleagues for 5 minutes and brainstorm some negative words too. Another tip is to run a search query report in AdWords if you are already running a PPC campaign and mine the negatives out of that. You can also go into your analytics package and look at what keywords people are finding your site for and take negatives out of that. For those queries in the search query report that Google does not want you to see, have a read of apollo SEM’s guide to extract all the data. Once you think you have all the negative keywords you can think of, add them to your campaign immediately. In my opinion no campaign should ever start without negative keywords.

Tip: Do a search for your main keywords on Google. Look at the first 50 results and try to identify possible negative keywords from the sites that are listed that are not related to your business.

Step 5) – Create Your Root AdGroup & Ads.

What we need to do now is create a default, generic adgroup and ad. The ad should be action oriented and describe your product. Create your ad with strong words and use our guide to link them words with a strong call to action. This ad is only going to be our default ad for setup. We will not be using this ad in production. It should accurately reflect your product or service so you do not start off with a poor quality score. So assuming we are setting up the “Image Resize Software” campaign, we create an ad with “Image Resize Software” in the title and at least once in the ad copy. No need to tweak just yet, this is only for setup. We like to call this initial adgroup “Campaign Name Root”. What we need to do now is dump all the keywords from our keyword list into this adgroup. There could be thousands, that does not matter. We will separate them all further on. The important thing is to setup this root campaign and have all the keywords possible thrown in. Once setup is complete, confirm all your actions and your campaign will go live. Pause this campaign immediately. We will be doing a lot more work on the campaign so we do not want it live.

Caveat: You may notice that a lot of your keywords have a poor quality score in this situation. This is normal. While you may not see this if your account has a lot of history, if your account is new or previously performing badly, this is common. We will fix this at a later stage.

Step 6) – Download Your New Campaign & Split It Up

Now we really get to have some fun. If you have not done so already, download AdWords Editor and download your account containing your new campaign with the root adgroup. What we need to do now is use the “keyword grouper” tool within AdWords editor to group our keywords by theme (Check the screenshot to see how to access this tool). When given the option to “copy text ads from a template” select yes as we will use our default root text ad for now. Finish the process and you will have lots of ad groups divided into common “themes”. Upload the new campaign with the newly separated adgroups to Google and log out of AdWords editor for now.

Caveat: When using the keyword grouper too make sure that you do not exlude “stop” words, especially the word “in” as this will prevent AdWords Editor from creating the “in” adgroup which usually refers to local searches. Local or location specific searches can be some of the most valuable.

Step 7) – Manually Create New Ads For Each AdGroup

The next step we need to take is to go back into AdWords and create new and custom ads for each adgroup. If you are stuck for time, create a minimum of two ads per group. If you want to start off strong, create at least four ads for testing. It is absolutely essential that we use the “theme” keyword in in our ads titles. AdWords editor makes this easy by naming the adgroup the same name as the “theme” word. The “theme” word should also be used in the ad copy if possible and absolutely in the display URL as either a “fake” sub directory or a “fake” subdomain. The reason for this is so that AdWords will assign a decent initial quality score to your keywords and so that anyone searching for your keyword will see the exact keywords they searched for bolded in your ad. You should set the destination URL to either the category/product page or if you have the time, an individual landing page for that product and keyword combined. Make sure that your ads are compelling, are grammatically correct and have a clear call to action. You may also want to take this opportunity to create some Dymanic Keyword Insertion powered ads.

Tip: If you do not want to or do not have the time to create an individual landing page for each keyword, use PHP (or any other server side scripting language) to dynamically insert the keyword into the general landing page for this adgroup.

Step 8) – Expand Your Keywords

At this point we like to go into each adgroup and use the AdWords keyword too to expand our keyword list. Copy all the keywords from your adgroup and paste them into the keyword tool making sure the “use synonyms” box is checked. The AdWords keyword tool will give you a list of possible other terms you might want to add to the adgroup that you may not have thought about (as well as give some additional keywords for your negative list). In some cases, you may also want to use the in built keyword pad tool to duplicate all your keywords using different match types. A lot of times different match types cost different prices and convert differently. Once you have a packed up your adgroups with relevant keywords, you are almost good to go.

Caveat: It’s always wise to build one campaign at a time and build your keywords and adgroups slowly. If there is a problem or a problem setting you will not have to spend hours manually going through all your hard worked on campaigns fixing a problem you could have found early on with patience.

Step 9) – Duplicate,Track, Monitor, Succeed.

Once you have all your search campaigns ready to go, your final step is to make sure that your analytics package is installed correctly and that your ads are showing up in the countries you are targeting. Insure that your conversion tracking is working correctly and place a test order if necessary. Once you are sure you are setup correctly, you can now duplicate your campaigns for content network use (Simply copy and paste in AdWords Editor) and for use on other PPC networks. Please note that your campaigns will almost always perform differently on the content network and on your other PPC accounts. You should modify your bids and check your status on these accounts individually.

That’s pretty much the typical setup for each of our campaigns. This may seem incredibly basic to some of our readers but time and time again we come across accounts that are so badly put together that it shocks us the owner continues to use it in the hope that their results will change.

People continuously ask, “Does Adwords/PPC Really Work?” and the answer is an overwhelming yes! As long as you are doing it right! Do you have any PPC setup tips that have helped you get the most from your PPC campaign?

Caveat: Many advertisers think that they do not need to use negative keywords if they are only advertising using exact match keywords. While this may be true to an extent, it is important to still use negative keywords on the content networks. Exact match should also be used in conjunction with phrase and broad match to expand your keywords list.

1. Your Own Data.
Your own analytics can be an amazing source of negative keywords. Look at not only your PPC data but your organic data too. Print out a monthly keyword report and highlight those negative terms. If you are unsure of any, do a simple search for the keyword and see what results pop up. You might be surprised. Don’t forget to run a search query performance report on your PPC account to make sure your ads are not being triggered by terms you don’t want them to. The guys over at ApolloSEM have a fantastic article on extracting your search query data that Google doesn’t want to give you.

2. Google’s Keyword Tool.
Use the free Google keyword tool. Paste in your keywords and make sure you select the “Use synonyms” checkbox. You may be surprised what keywords show up that Google thinks are related to your product or service. Also, paste your URL into the “Website Content” box to see what the tool thinks what your site/page may be about. Check the “Include other pages on my site…” checkbox to get a more rounded view. Make a list of words you are unsure of.

3. Organic Search Results.
This may seem blindingly obvious, but try setting your search results to display 100 results. Search for your main keywords and notice the results that have absolutely nothing to do with your product or service. Visit those sites and take down negative keywords. Run those sites through the Google keyword tool too. Leave nothing to chance. Think about words people would be using to complain about your product or service or show it in a poor light.

4. Adsense And Other Ads.
Do a search for your keywords. Look at other advertisers PPC ads. Many may be completely unrelated or triggered by one of your stem keywords. There are so many advertisers that allow their ads to be displayed for completely unrelated or downright silly terms. Don’t be one of them. Also, try dropping an adsense unit into your page or site as a test. See what advertisers are displayed. Make sure your keywords are not displayed for keywords relating to their product (unless you have the same product!). Be as anal as you can and don’t forget to run the sites you find through the keyword tool again.

5. Use A Thesaurus.
Try running your main keywords through a thesaurus. There is no way you could possibly know every single synonym of your main keywords. A Thesaurus is not only great at expanding your negative keyword list but also your main keyword list. Find variations of your variations. Ask friends and family that have nothing to do with your product or service what words they would use to search for your product and run them through the thesaurus too. If you are advertising in a competitive space, missing a single negative and having your ad displayed for a search that will never convert can be extremely expensive. You might not even find out for weeks if your PPC management company are not monitoring your log files. Don’t find your negatives the hard way.

6. Obvious And Industry Related.
Try using your own knowledge of your industry and product. What terms are you certain people will be searching for that are either not related to your product or service or that are related and that you don’t provide? Sit down with your co-workers and brainstorm for ten minutes. Again, be thorough and leave nothing to chance. If you do not know your industry (you do know your industry right?) or product well enough, visit the manufacturers website or give them a call. Ask your customers if you need to. What words are similar or spelled similar to your product or service name? Also be aware that new products are being released every day. Set up a Google alert for your keywords.

7. Anti Tire-kicker, Penny-pincher & Freeloader Terms.
There are many terms that you will want to add to all of your campaigns to prevent your ads being shown for searchers at the beginning of the buying cycle, who are looking for the cheapest option or for searchers who are outright trying to steal your product or service. While your business may be competing on price, I think it would be safe to say that you do not want your ad being shown for searchers looking to rip you off or complain! Solomon Rothman has a great list of keywords that can start you off. Remember to use common sense when generating your negatives. If you offer a free trial or a free product, do not blindly use the negative keyword “free”. Use what applies to your business. Some of the negatives Solomon offers are:

Problem Negative Keywords

problem, problems, warranty, returns, parts, complaints, complaint, sucks, suck, hate, protest, indictment, illegal

And of course some freeloader related ones negatives to get you started too:

Technical Negative Keywords
warez, crack, serial, serials, cracks, rss, xml, hack, hacks

So there you have it. Seven simple ways to build a super negative keyword list to increase your CTR, improve your quality score, increase your conversion rate and give you a higher return on your ad spend. This is by no means an exhaustive list on how to create a negative keyword list but it’s a good start. Feel free to share your own negative keyword generation tips in the comments below.

When I first logged in this morning to do the morning account checks, I noticed the following message in the AdWords campaign dashboard:

1) Campaign Selection.
Content Exclusion Beta? Sounds interesting! I am a huge fan of the AdWords content network. The ROI from content network campaigns can be many times that of the search network if done right and is a fantastic way to source private advertising deals. I asked one particularly generous client if we could test the new tool and she graciously agreed. This client has allowed us to test every single new tool that Google has released for advertisers with complete free reign, so I was very grateful. The initial screen allows us to select which campaign we would like to work with. Fortunately, we separate all our content network and search network campaigns.

2) Site Exclusion Tab.
After about ten seconds analyzing the campaign, the content exclusion tool came back and offered us three tabs. The first tab, the site exclusion tab offered us a list of sites to pick from and exclude. What is interesting here is that only 24 sites were offered for exclusion and no data was provided as to why these particular sites were presented. As I am the account manager for this particular account, I can tell you now that the sites listed here are all poor performers. What is even more interesting is that all but three of these sites were already excluded using the site exclusion tool. Some feedback was promptly sent to Google regarding this. For those who do not regularly run placement performance reports, this would appear to be a wonderful time saver.

3) Topics Exclusion Tab.
Next up was the topics exclusion tab. Now it’s starting to get really interesting. When running a large campaign, it is almost impossible to go through every page and domain listed in large placement performance reports and visit each site to check the content. In fact, the only time we actually visit the site is when there is a large enough sample size with at lease some medium-poor conversion data. I have no idea how Google groups adsense advertisers accurately into topics considering you can use adsense on multiple sites once your initial site has been approved.

3) Page Types Tab.
The final tab is the page types tab. This is probably the most interesting and from reading the AdWords feature request forum threads on webmasterworld, one of the most requesed features. This tab lets you exclude a variety of “types” of pages your content network ads will appear on. The most notable here are domain ads and error page ads. Many advertisers have been crying out to exclude these types of pages from their content network campaigns and their prayers are finally being answered. The other types of exclusion are of the social networking and media sharing sites. From managing this particular campaign, I can tell you that social networks such as MySpace and video sharing sites such as YouTube, are without a doubt, the worst performers. Domain Ads and Error Page Ads are by far the best performers (See below).

Be Careful!
Loren Baker makes a very important point over at search engine journal about using this tool and I would like to add further to it. Just because the “general consensus” is that certain pages, topics and sites perform poorly doesn’t make it true in every industry. For example, many advertisers claim that Domain Ads and Error page ads perform worst for them. A quick placement performance report on this campaign for the past two weeks shows a different story:

Conclusion.
My initial impressions of the new Content Exclusion Beta tool are pretty good. It is great to see Google taking feedback (Thanks AdWordsAdvisor!) from real AdWords users and implementing the requested features. While this tool is a very handy “overview” tool it is absolutely no substitute for running regular placement performance reports, using statistically valid sample sizes and making good decisions based on that data weather or not to exclude a site from your content network campaigns. I think this new visibility will allow more advertisers make better content network choices and force publishers to create better content to entice advertisers. It is still a little early to tell, but I think this tool will produce some decent results. I’ll keep you posted with the results we get over the coming weeks.

The only thing missing from this new tool in my opinion is search network partners data. While I am aware this is a content network specific tool, it would still be nice to have. Diorex has a wonderful post on this new AdWords transparency where he states:

“Bottom line – the more segmentation and options you give sophisticated buyers, the more they will spend with you. I will spend it in different ways and in different places within the network based upon my conversions, but in the long run it will help Google earn more from me.”

I couldn’t agree more. All in all, I applaud Google for the new tool and their steps to improving advertisers control and experience. Way to go Google!

I have been using AdWords for a long time and I seem to have hit a brick wall. I set up my tightly knit and focused campaigns, have a perfect landing page (That I know converts from SEO) and all my keywords have a “Great” quality score. I bid 10-50 cent more than the required minimum bid and set the campaign live. It has been live for weeks now, the Ad Diagnostic tool says my ads are being displayed but AdWords is reporting little to no impressions? Has Google changed something? What am I doing wrong?

The Answer my friend is simple. Competition.

Let’s assume that ALL advertisers in your market have a tightly knit campaign with focused keywords and compelling ad text, have a campaign bursting with “Great” quality keywords and have the same minimum bid requirements as you. Now lets assume that there are 40 advertisers bidding on the same keywords as you. Assuming all things being even, what determines which ads get placed on the front page?

Old School Maximum Cost Per Click.

According to Google your minimum bid is defined as follows :

A keyword’s minimum bid is the lowest amount that you can pay in order for that keyword to trigger your ads.

Note “trigger” being the operative word there. Trigger means it will indeed show but not necessarily on the first page or even second.With the introduction of quality score (at all levels), country targeting, matching options and bringing Click Through Rate into the equation people still tend to forget that the maximum price you are willing to pay for the click still comes into play. Seeing that quality score column all green does not mean you are golden and entitled to a top spot on the first page. I see this all the time when ringtone affiliates, insurance and mortgage affiliates and dating offer affiliates ask me to take a look at their campaigns. The simple reason you are not getting impressions is because you are not bidding enough and you are up against a LOT of other advertisers.

So you cannot afford to pay 5 Euro a click? Tough. Other advertisers pay spend that and still make a profit from the click. They tweak their campaigns and squeeze every last drop of revenue from their landing pages (unless they are bidding cluelessly on the top spot in which case their budget will not last long!).

To sum up, a lot of factors come into play when advertising using Pay Per Click but remember, PPC is still a bidding platform and there are sometimes more than eleven other advertisers competing for a first page spot.

Note: I am aware that the above scenario is a little over simplified and I did not take into account historical data or ad rank but I think the point is still valid.

Your call to action is probably the most important of your ad text. The calls to action in the above chart are based on recent research done by Microsoft. Another important reason to use a strong call to action in AdWords is because Google tells us we should. We have also done some research that will be published shortly that not having a call to action in your ad text can cause your initial quality score to suffer.

Let’s take a closer look at the “Strong” words and see what sort of emotion they evoke and how you can generate a strong feeling to encourage a user to click your ad through to your site and how that feeling generated can ultimately effect your conversion rate.

1. New
Your potential customer either has your product or service already or doesn’t. If you have a new version, it’s bound to be better right? “A ‘99 Audi A4″? , “Our Service”? or “The New Audi A4″? “Our New Service”? Which sounds stronger to you? Say it out loud. Hear the difference?

2. Guaranteed
In todays modern e-commerce world, everyone wants to make the right decision and minimize risk. Your potential customers want to be sure that what you offer will minimize their risk. Make sure that’s in the back of their mind BEFORE they come to your site.

3. Discover
The word “discover” evokes a feeling of being first to find something. With paid search, your potential customers want to feel like they are among the first to find your product or service.

4. Save
Most people want to save something. Save a life, save all the trouble, save MONEY. Your potential customers are no different. Let them know they are saving before they come to your site.

5. Proven
You wouldn’t want to be a guinea pig for a new pharmaceutical product would you? Your customers don’t want to be for your product either. Again, this word removes another element of risk.

6. Safe
Everyone needs to feel safe. Especially when purchasing online, giving out personal information or using a product or service (especially on their children). Your potential customers will want to feel safe with your product or service. Make sure they feel it before they get to your site.

7. Easy
Who doesn’t want their life made a little easier? Your potential customers want to know that buying from you will make their lives easier than if they buy from your competitor. Easy can be applied to many areas of your fulfillment. (Easy shipping, easy ordering, easy clean product, easy peasy!)

8. Free
Probably the most powerful of them all. Who doesn’t want a free lunch, a free wad of cash, free shipping, free anything. Everyone wants something for free. It’s in our blood. If you offer something for free, make sure people know about it. Use it as your unique selling proposition.

Now, using these “strong” words and the chart above, we can simply pick an appropriate word for our product on the left and pair it up with an appropriate strong call to action on the right to help us create a powerful ad. Let’s use an example of a product called the “IPOD Touch”.

If we use the strong word “Guaranteed” along with our chosen call to action “Order Now” we can see from the actual example below how dramatically our CTR can increase:

Try it yourself. Add your own strong emotional words and industry specific calls to action to your own chart and when creating your ads, simply match one column up with the other. The world of PPC marketing is no longer the plaything of the elite online marketing pioneers. You need to make your ad stand out and be clicked. Of course, you could always visit the Apple site direct.

Are You Still Credible?

While Michael Gray gave a great explanation on working with the AdWords quality robot there were still some unanswered questions. We all know that some of the factors required to get a great quality score are creating credibility indicators like a privacy policy or a terms of service document. We also know that these documents have little value in the main search index and many people like to exclude these documents rather than wasting link authority and to be honest, we are among those people. However, our biggest concern was that if we excluded these documents from the main index to preserve our link equity, would the quality score bot remove whatever quality points it gave for these documents because it could not see them? Getting no answers from anyone, we decided to simply risk it for ourselves. We created a brand new P3P privacy policy for this very site and excluded it using our robots.txt file. Then we waited.

The Results ?

After over a month, our main index rankings have all increased (Although this is more than likely due to other factors). The point is that there was no noticeable decrease in any areas that we focus on in the organic results. It might still be a little early to tell (and I may eat these words) but it appears that this has more of a positive effect than negative.

What About AdWords?

This is where we expected to see the biggest change. We expected the Quality Score for the campaigns that we run for this site to suffer. We might as well use ourselves as guinea pigs to know for sure. After over a month our quality score has not changed at all. Our quality score for all campaigns is “great” across the board. It is important to note at this point that the privacy page was denied access by all robots. However, we noticed that despite this exclusion the AdWords bot (AdsBot-Google) was still visiting. After contacting our Google rep about this, we got the following reply:

In order to avoid increasing CPCs for advertisers who do not intend
to restrict AdWords visits to their pages, the system will ignore blanket
exclusions (User-agent: *) in ‘robots.txt’ files.

So basically, the AdWords bot does not obey the rules set out in your robots.txt unless you explicitly state that you didn’t want that particular bot snooping around. Fair enough, I actually think this is a good thing and I am sure it has already saved a lot of advertisers a lot of heartache. So in our small example, we have saved ourselves some link equity and still had the benefit of having the AdWords bot be (im)polite and reviewing our privacy page.
So The Quality Score Robot Still See You?

So far, this is the perfect setup and plays nice with the organic side of things. But that got us thinking. Is there really a need for a privacy policy? While the use of Google Analytics actually requires you to display a privacy policy, we thought we would tempt fate. We decided to see how powerful a credibility indicator the privacy policy actually was. Last week we added to following lines to our robots.txt file:

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /privacy-policy/
Disallow: /w3c/policy.html

Two days later, most of our campaigns keywords went to either “OK” or “POOR”. Immediately after discovering this we removed the lines from the robots.txt. The next day things returned to normal. While it is possible that there were other factors at play here (the test was far from lab tested) I think it is fair to assume that a privacy policy carries a significant weight when it comes to quality score calculation. We also performed this “test” by excluding ALL PPC landing pages with similar or worse results. Our Google rep explained:

We feel that a non-participating advertiser does detract from the user’s
search experience and from the overall quality of the AdWords programme.
While you can exclude your pages from review, this tells us little about
the quality and relevance of your page. Therefore, if you restrict AdWords
from visiting your pages, you will experience a drop in Quality Scores for
your related keywords. (This will cause higher minimum bid requirements
for any landing page for which you have restricted access.)

In Conclusion.

We got exactly what we wanted from this little test. We wanted to know if excluding pages from the main index would effect our quality scores. The answer is no. Everything is now back to normal, our quality scores are “Great” across the board and our organic rankings have far from suffered. I hope that has answered that question for all that have called and mailed in to ask.

This guide will show you how to correctly implement the Dynamic Keyword Insertion feature into your ads on the three major PPC advertising networks (Google, Yahoo and MSN). As always, test and understand before fully committing to any permanent changes.

So What Exactly Is Dynamic Keyword Insertion?
As you may or may not know, all the major PPC search engines reward the relevancy of your PPC advertisement by showing keywords in bold in your ad. For example, below you can see an AdWords ad for RedFly Marketing. The keyword we are targeting is “PPC Management”.

As you can see the keywords we targeted and that triggered our ad were in BOLD in the ad. You can see that not only is the keyphrase “PPC Management” in the title of the ad bold, but the keyword in the ad copy and the display URL is also bold. This has been proven time and time again to increase your ads CTR. It makes your ad stand out more and “pull” a searchers eyes to it. We also know from my previous article on Adwords Quality Score that an increase in CTR will increase your quality score, bid rank and lower your minimum bid.

When your ads contain your keywords bolded, you are also showing an ad that a searcher explicitly wants to see. It appears super relevant and exactly what they are looking for.

So where does Dynamic Keyword Insertion come into play? What happens if you have a LOT of keywords? You COULD write individual ads for each one. Spending hours, days even weeks writing a different ad for each keyword. Or you could have Google/Yahoo/MSN insert the keywords that you want bolded dynamically.

Let me show you an example. Let’s take the following keyword list in a single ad group: (we’ll keep it small for the purpose of this demonstration)

Chocolate Bars

Stinger Bars

Lollypops

Brown Bread

As you can see, the above list of keywords are all somewhat related. Rather than splitting up all the keywords into smaller adgroups, you can write a SINGLE AD for them all and have the search engine place your keywords into your ad! Here is how the ad should be created:

Once you set this ad live, the search engine will automatically replace {KeyWord:Online Newsagents} in the ad with whatever keyword from your list that was searched for. Using the above list of search terms, The ads will look like this:

What happens when someone searches for a variation of my keyword that does not match exactly?
If you broad matched your keywords and someone searched for “Stinger Bars and Lollypops”, your ad would still show, however it would show the DEFAULT ad as shown below.

The default text is the text after the “{KeyWord:” part. In this example, it was “Online Newsagents”. Your default text should still fit the maximum characters limit.

TIP: The ad title can expand past the 25 character limit and AdWords will accept it as long as the default text remains at 25 characters or less

You will notice that keywords can be dynamically inserted into ANY section of your ad, including your destination URL. This shows your keyword more times in your ad and is eye catching in so far as the keywords are bolded multiple times and appears more relevant to the user/searcher increasing your CTR and ultimately (hopefully) your conversions.

What About Quality Score?
We have already gone over how having keywords in your ad title and ad text can improve AdWords quality score, unfortunately, Dynamic Keyword Insertion does not improve your quality score directly, however it can indirectly help your quality score by increasing your keywords CTR.

Variations And Capitalization.
The standard format for dynamically inserting your keyword is this: {keyword:yourdefaulttext}

There are also variations you can use to capitalize your dynamically inserted keyword as follows:

• keyword – No capitalization, all word(s) are in lower case
• Keyword – The first word is capitalized
• KeyWord – Every word is capitalized
• KEYword – Every letter in first word is capitalized
• KEYWord -Every letter in the first word AND the first letter of the second
• KEYWORD – Every letter is capitalized

Yahoo And AdCenter.
Yahoo and MSN both allow Dynamic Keyword Insertion however unlike with AdWords, with them it is a “known feature”. There are options to dynamically insert keywords at the ad creation level. Yahoo even go so far as to say the Dynamic Keyword Insertion will increase the ads quality index (YSM quality score).

Be Careful!
Dynamic Keyword Insertion is only valuable when closely managed and monitored. Ebay are notorious for running MASSIVE PPC campaigns with AdWords using Dynamic Keyword Insertion and making themselves look incredibly stupid. The bid on literally millions of dictionary words and combinations and end up with ridiculously structured irrelevant ads. Below you will find a small example.

In Conclusion.
So there you have it. Although AdWords has very little documentation on this feature and some in the industry regard it as a close kept secret, you are now armed with a very powerful tool. We have seen CTR increases from 1% to 20% using this method alone. Be careful, use it wisely and where possible, insert the words manually into your ads. This is a time saver, not a substitute for human common sense.

1) Click Fraud.

We see click fraud every single day. Normally, Google, Yahoo and MSN do a decent enough job at detecting click fraud. Do you know if you are being hit? How do you report it? Do you know what to look for? How do you go about getting a refund? Fraudulent clicks effect almost every PPC campaign. An online marketing agency can work with you using proprietary and third party solutions to detect, report and get refunded for click fraud.

2) They Know Their Engines.

Most established PPC management agencies know all the major PPC networks. They work with them every day. It’s their business. They know the intracies of each system (Yes, there are some differences!), they know works and can write good copy, get high click through rates and improve your overall essential metrics.

3) Keyword Research.

Bidding on the same keywords as your competition is like running the same ad in a magazine as your competition. You have to rely on your ad copy to attract visitors and differentiate you from the rest. A good online marketing company will have their own resources and keyword research tools that you may have never heard of to expand your keyword portfolio and bring in more qualified leads/sales using keywords that your competition do not know about.

4) Experience.

Pay Per Click networks such as Google, Yahoo and MSN are bridging the gap between PPC and SEO by integrating Quality Scores into the mix. Landing page quality score optimization is very much like SEO. A solid understanding and implementation of the concepts of SEO, landing page relevancy and quality score is no longer an easy task for the average marketer. An online marketing agency does this every day and can quickly identify problem areas.

5) Contacts.

Let’s face it. Even the most seasoned experts run into problems sometimes. An established Pay Per Click Management company should have quality contacts, be it representatives with the search engines themselves, bloggers or business contacts. An outsourced PPC marketing agency will have the resources to find answers to problems FAST rather than waiting for boilerplate support replies.

6) Cross Pollination.

PPC Management firms can “cross-pollinate.” Strategies and tactics that work for one client can often work for many. Ideas that work in one industry can be adapted and applied to in others.

7) Bleeding Edge.

They can also determine which of the new tools and programs that Google and Yahoo introduce are appropriate for you. The announcement of preferred CPC made a big splash in terms of news but has been very quiet since (because it’s not that great — we’ve tested!).

8) Changing PPC Landscape.

They aren’t going to “set it and forget it.” The landscape is always changing and your account needs to change with it. New advertisers are entering the space, existing advertisers are becoming better businesses (and getting harder to compete against), and Google and Yahoo are constantly refining their PPC programs to generate the most relevant results. Most accounts that we’ve taken over from clients have an amazing amount of “low hanging fruit” because they’ve hardly been touched since the accounts were set up.

9) Time.

They can save you time on two different fronts. You not only won’t have to manage the accounts yourself but you don’t have to keep up-to-date on the various trends. And, with that free time, you can focus on other high-ROI activities that will help your businesses grow.

10) Peace Of Mind.

They can offer relief and peace of mind. It’s a huge benefit knowing that your PPC campaign is being run professionally — that it’s working as it should *and* that you don’t have to worry about it!

Hat tip to Barry Schwartz of Rusty Brick/SEroundtable for some ideas and thanks to Patrick East of PPC Hero for numbers 5-10.

So what have I missed? What are the other benefits that you have found in letting a PPC management agency run your campaigns? What reasons would you have for choosing a PPC managment agency?

We have kindly been given permission from one of our clients to present the following data. Our client is the Carnegie Court Dublin Hotel. The Carnegie Court came to us a while back with a pretty standard request. They wanted to promote the hotel online in the most cost effective manner maintaining a positive ROI. The Carnegie Court had and still has affiliates, however they wanted to generate more bookings through their own website without having to pay any affiliate commissions. RedFly Marketing got to work.

As part of their overall online marketing strategy, we created a Google adwords Pay Per Click campaign to gather conversion data and raw keyword data. With this data we were able to optimize their site for literally hundreds of long tail keywords that converted relatively easy.

For example, we knew from our Google Adwords PPC data that the search term “accommodation swords dublin hotel” although having low volume, converted at 80% over a six month period. Using some simple SEO methods we were able to quickly and easily optimize the site for a number one position in the organic results for that term. That’s great, but as I mentioned, that search term as you can imagine has a very low volume. Do that one hundred times for search terms that you KNOW convert from testing with PPC and you have something pretty amazing. This is the idea behind long tail search engine optimisation.

Next Up -Volume.

Now that a lot of the hard work for the long tail search terms has been done (It’s actually a never ending process throughout the length of a campaign), we can move on to optimizing for higher volume search terms. After a few months of Organic Search Engine Optimisation we were able to get the site to a number one position for the MUCH higher volume search term “Dublin Hotel”. Organic search results are clicked on up to nine times more than paid results. Because of the volume and conversions the organic results we achieved, the hotel is constantly booked out and they have no need to use paid search any longer. Why pay for leads if you are at your capacity anyway? If however there is a lull, we can simply turn the PPC campaign back on and reach a wider audience through the Google network of sites.

So What Is the Point In This?

Today I decided to do some testing seeing it has been quite a while since we paused the Hotel campaign. I set up a new campaign with the hotel account managed by us to test out the price the competition were paying for the sponsored listings.

With our previous Pay Per Click management on their campaign, we were able to optimize their quality score and get it to the best possible. In this case, the illusive one cent minimum bid. Next, I set the max bid to €30 a click to insure we were placed at the top position of the paid listings. I created an ad and set it live.

Unfortunately, the €30 bid was not even enough to obtain a paid search spot above the organic/free results. Because the keyword had the best possible score and we had a high max CPC bid, we can safely assume that the ads ranking higher (Above the organic free results) were paying upward of €30 a click. That’s assuming that they too had an excellent quality score. For the purpose of this example, let’s assume it was a nice round €30 a click they too were paying.

Now, looking at the average stats of the Hotel, I can tell you that the hotel receives:

1. An average of 290 visitors a week or 1160 visitors a month from the search term “Dublin Hotel” alone.
2. Assuming that the the organic result is clicked nine times more than the paid result, we can assume that the paid ad is CLICKED about 128 times a month.
3. Again, assuming the paid listing is costing the advertiser €30 a click, those advertisers are spending €3840 a month for that search term alone!

All that while our hotel sits back and enjoys more visits, bookings and ROI from their initial investment in search engine optimisation. Again, this is only ONE search term.

Now I am not saying that paid search is a waste of money. Done correctly it is not. What I am saying is that PPC and SEO should be used to help each other as part of an overall search engine marketing campaign. You want to use your advertising spend wisely so that you can explore other online advertising avenues further down the line.

I hope this has shown the importance of using PPC data for organic SEO and also that paid search is only one part of the overall long term internet marketing strategy. If you place your entire online marketing budget into paid search, I sincerly urge you to think again. Think long term.

To all of you running an ecommerce site and/or a lead generation site that you can accurately track your conversions, sign up to Google Website Optimizer Now!

Bryan has some really, REALLY great Website optimizer resorces, including a Wordpress plugin. It’s pretty complicated but well worth a look.

To all of you that sell online or use your website for lead generation, if you are not using this tool, your competition are. Take a look at the website optimizer overview video. I will be blogging a LOT about this tool over the coming month.

If you are serious about Internet marketing, you SHOULD be using this tool.

PPC should compliment SEO and Vice Versa. Here I have outlined eight reasons that SEO and PPC should be friends.

1) Keyword Tools Are Not Accurate.
Even Wordtracker says its database is skewed. How many times have you looked up Overture, Wordtracker, keyword discovery etc. optimized your site, gotten the number one position for that keyword only to find that you are getting more traffic from the 4th or 5th most popular search term in the keyword database? With PPC you can get the raw data. Assuming there is minimum skew from invalid clicks. If you run a broad match campaign over over a set period, you can mine the REAL most popular keywords from your server logs.

2) Not All Keywords Convert.
Having ten thousand unique visitors a day come to your site using a search term is all well and good. But if they don’t convert, that’s essentially a waste of bandwidth. (Assuming you are not running a branding exercise). SEO takes time. How does spending six months optimizing your site for a search term, getting the number one spot and finding out none of the traffic converts sound? With a PPC campaign you can find out what keywords convert BEFORE pouring your time into an organic SEO campaign. Although Brad Geddes mentions how various traffic sources convert differently , a general conversion idea can be gained from PPC and applied to your SEO efforts.

3) Meta Descriptions Are ESSENTIAL.
Meta descriptions are the little snippets shown from your site in the search results. These snippets are essential to getting users to click through to your site in organic listings. What do you think works better, a meta description with the text of your navigation links or a meta description with a tested call to action and successful click through rate? With PPC, you can optimize your call to action and description to maximize your CTR on organic listings. It may even be possible to get a higher click through rate in the second or third organic position if you have the perfect meta description. With PPC you can split test many different descriptions and see which performs best. Then add the best performing PPC creative to you meta description tags.

4) Relevance Is Rewarded.
Google (And MSN/Yahoo!) wants to provide relevant results in the organic search results. Knowing and improving your quality score for certain keywords can reveal how relevant Google thinks your site is for any given keyword. Although this quality score is fairly subjective, it offers a good indication. In Google, keywords used in the query are bolded in the title, meta description and URL of the search results. With PPC you can find what keywords work and what keywords don’t and optimize your organic listings according to that data.

5) Long Tail Gold And Mining Only The Valuable Terms
Running a broad match PPC campaign and mining long tail keywords THAT CONVERTED can give you an absolute goldmine of information. You can obtain a number one organic position for many, MANY long tail keywords by simply getting a SINGLE back link with that anchor text or writing an article on that exact topic. You can also find from this information what users really wanted to know and create a new page on your site to answer this exact question. Even if it is an FAQ answer. You can utilize your existing content to answer this question in just a few minutes.

6) Landing Pages Can Be Optimized Quickly.
When you reach that number one organic position for your all done right? Wrong. Getting the visitor to your site is just one phase in the online marketing mix. Once that visitor reaches your page, you need to convert that visitor. With PPC you can split test different landing pages and use multi variant testing to make the ultimate landing page. So when you reach that coveted number one position, you are ready to convert that visitor. While landing pages can of course be optimized using organic traffic, why wait?

7) The Power Of Branding.
This subject has been beaten to death but it is well know and documented that the more real estate your brand occupies on any given SERP the more trust and recognition you will receive. If you have a well optimized PPC campaign and landing page you should be able to convert the visitor who clicks on your paid listing anyway. Every visitor to your site has a value. If you pay less for the visitor than the visitor is worth, this is a profit.

8) Official Search Engine Marketing Reps Are Partners.
Any decent search marketing company should have a rep with the major search engines. The RedFly Google Adwords rep has given us invaluable information on optimizing clients campaigns and given us access to many additional related and semi related keywords allowing us to expand our market reach AND our clients market reach. Applying this additional information to the above seven steps, traffic and conversions can be increased ten fold.

In conclusion, most search marketing agencies offer at least an organic SEO campaign or a paid search (PPC) campaign. But to maximize your ROI it is our opinion that SEO and PPC SHOULD go hand in hand to compliment each other on exposing your company or brand to not only as many people as possible, but as many of the RIGHT kind of people.

So what is quality score? According to Google:

“Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.”

Quality score effects your keywords minimum cost per click and position in the search results and also if your ad will even show at all!

This is fundamentally the same for the other first tier Pay Per Click networks (Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter). There are many other factors involved, however this is the most transparency we’re going to get from them at this time. For now, we will deal with the Google Adwords quality score.

Around the same time of the release of Yahoo! Panama, Google began showing keyword quality information at the keyword level in Adwords accounts. Google shows weather your score is Great, OK or Poor. It may not be much information, but it has been a great help for those trying to diagnose why their PPC bids are so high.

Last month, we had a new client who came to us for advice on lowering their minimum cost per click and ultimately increase their ROI. Our client was already experiencing a positive ROI using Adwords because of their products profit margin, however since Google started showing QS, they realized they were not doing as well as they thought. Their campaign was relatively small and they were paying an average minimum CPC of $0.40 across their three ad groups. Each Ad Group had 100 keywords in each. They also had a few disabled keywords. When we examined their account, we could see that almost 90% of their keywords had a “Poor” quality score.

Lets say our client sold “Blue Widgets”. Here’s what we did.

Campaign Account Factors
************************

1) Split Keywords into Smaller more targeted Ad Groups
We used the in built keyword grouper tool in Adwords editor to group keywords into 15 groups of 20 related keywords. eg:

buy blue widgets
exchange blue widgets
what is a blue widget
buy blue widgets online

2) Create relevant ad copy for each group
We then created an ad creative for each keyword group using the common grouping denominator “Blue Widgets”

Note the upper case on each word and use of the keyword in the title, ad copy and display URL. ALL 4 ads contained blue widgets in the same form as you see above. It should also be noted that the display URL does not need to match the ACTUAL URL exactly.

3) Optimize Creatives
We created 4 different ads for each group using different verbs and calls to action. We also turned ad serving optimization OFF so we could accurately split test all 4 ads. After a week, we chose the best performing creative and deleted the others. We then tried to increase the CTR by working on variations of that creative. After two weeks, it was plain to see which was the better performing ad. Within two weeks the overall campaign click through rate was up. Note that optimizing creatives is a never ending process. You can ALWAYS squeeze an extra 0.01% CTR by being…creative.

(This was not the creative used for the campaign)

4) Experiment With Matching Options
Our client was only using broad match for their keywords in their campaign. We added exact match and phrase match keywords to each ad group and chose which of the three had a better QS and lower minimum CPC and deleted the other two matching options. In the majority of cases, exact match won.

On Page Factors
****************

While we were working on the PPC account side of things, many of the on page factors were being worked on at the same time.

5) Link Building And SEO
We ran a manual deep link building campaign using the highest performing keywords (Volume AND Conversion Rate). Not only does this help Quality Score but also helps with the organic SEO campaign in the coming months. We submitted a Google sitemap, made the site semantically coded and corrected some navigational issues.

6) Implement Keywords
For each page we implemented most of the keywords into the copy.

7) Split Test Landing Page
We set up a multi variant test to split test the landing pages and test conversion rates. Google Analytics has an excellent write up on the major elements that can effect conversions. We cannot stress the importance of multi variant testing enough. Testing and optimizing conversion rates on landing pages is too big a subject to go into in this post. It should be noted that we also used heat maps to test the landing pages.

8) Meta Tags
We added the best performing keywords to the meta tags on each page. We also used the EXACT ad text from the best performing creative in the meta description. We also used the BEST PERFORMING and MOST DESCRIPTIVE keyword as the title tag.

9) Essential Site Pages
Although the site had a privacy policy, it was not linked in the navigation (Header OR Footer). We added the privacy policy as well as creating and adding an informative “about us” page, a “terms and conditions” page, a newsletter page and a new contact us page.

10) Make Sure Google Thinks You’re Relevant
We used the Site-Related Keywords tool to make sure that Google thought the landing page was related to the keywords we are targeting. After a little “fleshing out”, Google saw each landing page as VERY related to the keywords we were using.

Clearly for privacy reasons we have left out many details regarding our clients campaign. We increased the campaign daily budget to twice what it was and left the campaign running for the month to get more accurate figures.

The Results:

Within four days the Quality Score for 60% of the keywords went from ” Poor”to “Great” with average minimum CPC prices down from 40 cents to 4 cents.
All keywords that still had a poor quality score after the month (8 of them) were deleted.
Overall campaign click through rate was up 12%
We increased conversion rates from 3% to a whopping 24%
Our client was 100% happier.

Our client was able to slash their monthly spending budget and MASSIVELY increase their sales.

Conclusion.
Increasing you quality score and optimizing your Adwords PPC campaign is an absolute MUST if you want to reduce your spend and at the same time increase your sales. There are MANY other factors, known and unknown that go into improving quality scores, however the most fundamental have been covered. Most other PPC networks also use a similar QS ranking method and the areas I have covered can be applied to them too.

I hope this has helped anyone starting their first PPC campaign or anyone looking to improve their ROI by increasing their Quality Score. If you would like more information or would like to avail of our Google Adwords Management service, please get in touch.