Here are TWO things you can do immediately to get rid of unwanted clicks. Both these tips will immediately make an impact in your campaign, I guarantee it.

#1 – Begin by removing all phrases that are broad. If you’re not too familiar with Adwords yet, Google allows you to choose how you want to target a specific keyword: Broad, Phrase, or Match. Bid on both phrase and match keywords but get rid of ‘Broad’ as it may bring a lot of unwanted traffic.

#2 – Make sure you add negative keywords to your campaign/ad group settings. Words such as ‘free’ or keywords of that nature may bring a lot of unwanted traffic and clicks to your ads.

Constantly run keyword search queries reports on your Adwords account to see exactly what keywords brought in the clicks. This report will help you get a great grasp on how your Adwords campaign is performing with the way you have structured your ad groups and making sure you’re not bringing in unwanted clicks.

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You are looking currently at marketing to 30% of the search market under this umbrella, but also notably, Google is losing its market share. Overall, Microsoft now accounts for 12.7 percent of U.S. searches, and Yahoo for 18.9 percent. Is Bings’ efforts in its marketing such as buying ad spots (very expensive I may add) such as the super bowl and last I saw, “the decision,” the one hour special on ESPN when Lebron James announced where he will play, Bing has made some serious efforts to get the word out about it’s new decision engine…LOS LINKS!!!!!!!!

Check out a great explanation on this video put out by Yahoo and what this Microsoft-Yahoo alliance means and how it will facilitate things for search marketers. I know I’m looking forward to it.

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Talking to some advertisers and clients, many don’t take advantage of the ideas Google has to offer in order to optimize your campaign from adding certain keywords to raising bids on existing keywords for better traffic.

I’ve read in some post about advertisers believing Googles answers to everything when it comes to PPC raise bids and improve CTR which of course means MORE MONEY for Google. While this may be true, it is also true that by doing both those things you actually are optimizing your Google Adwords campaign. It is also true that by analyzing data which Google always stresses, you can reduce bids or remove keywords which aren’t proving a good ROI for your campaign.

There is a tool I’m not sure many search marketers know about (I actually think they do) BUT, many who can’t spend too much time searching for tools or keeping up with new Adwords tools, here is a great report/tool for you to analyze in your Google Adwords campaign.

Login to your Google Adwords account. Once you’re logged in, look on the tabs above where you will see “Opportunities.” Go ahead and click on that tab and on the right hand side you should see 3 links on the top: Ideas, Analyze Competition, Pending Changes. Lick on Ideas and you will be prompted with ideas that Google has in two difference sections: KEYWORD BID IDEAS & KEYWORD IDEAS.

Give this tool a try and you’ll see how fast you can come up with some new and fresh changes to your Google Adwords campaign.

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Sure, you can reduce the cost-per-click on each individual keyword but that may not be the best solution as I found sometimes that lead to a negative impact in my campaign. What has been working is pausing not my campaign but certain ad groups in my campaign at certain times of the day (what time, I won’t say as that needs to be your own research.)

Look at the ad groups in your campaign that are doing the most heavy spending. Forget about what the analytics say and look at your website and your sales. There is a time where you can notice where if you pause a certain ad group, it may actually impact the campaign in a positive way by pausing it for a few hours and re-activating it at a later time to get that much more spending in a certain amount of hours from those keywords.

So, without getting more confused as this post is strictly being written from the top of my head, if you’re spending too much money on your PPC campaigns, instead of lowering your CPCs, try finding a trend where pausing certain keywords or ad groups at certain times of the day will lead a real positive ROI on your campaign and help you reduce cost and increase your bottom line.

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“The overwhelming majority of US Internet users research online to find local products and services, according to the “User View Wave VII” from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat.

The most common online tool used for local research was search. Nearly one-half of respondents used Internet yellow pages and 42% checked comparison-shopping sites before heading to local businesses.”

This also makes the case that you shouldn’t only settle for search engine marketing as there are plenty of hubs out there as well as search engines that can drive solid business. Are you doing any comparison engine marketing? Yellow pages? These hubs are also a great place to put some marketing dollars although I would suggest first making sure your search engine marketing strategy is in place and as optimized as possible before moving toward other hubs online. Nevertheless, it’s important to try other sources of traffic to see what kind of results you can get.

Really interested in Local Search Marketing? Check out these articles that can help you:

- Google Adwords Adds Click to Call on Mobile Ads

- Local SEO is One of The Top Places To Be in 2010

- Google Adwords Tip for Local Search Marketing

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Looking at our analytics, our branded keyword is the keyword that drives us the most traffic and actually, the keyword that also converts the best. I think that will probably hold true for most e-commerce sites or service related sites that drive a good amount of traffic to their website and their brand becomes what is being searched from word of mouth or simply a user wanting to get back to the site and typing the address in Google or just the site name.

Jennifer makes some really good points in her post that started to make me think, wait…maybe we should be bidding on our brand term. Our mentality, as she states is that of many, is hey, we rank #1…well we own the whole page for it but theres no use I guess to bid on it while we drive the traffic free to our site. But what happens? Not all users click on organic results as there are those who do click on paid results and for almost every keyword, even that of your own site, you have sites such as BizRate, eBay, Amazon, and others bidding on those terms.

“…In addition, keep in mind that only 70% of users click on the organic search results. Considering that, the inverse translates into considerable missed opportunity. In other words, if your brand is not present in the paid search listings, you could be missing out on 30% of your potential traffic and revenue. Bidding on your branded terms eliminates that risk and allows you to dominate the search results page and capture all of your potential traffic.”

So, what if a user is trying to get to your site, but its one of those 30% that will click on paid ads and lands on a BizRate comparison site? Did we just lose that user to save .10 cents or whatever the cost of your branded keyword is?

Also, in the physcological sense of things, some users do tend to give more importance and credibility to websites that have both organic and paid search listings.

Another great reason for bidding on your branded term is you literally have control to change the message of your business within seconds.

“Finally, bidding on your branded terms will allow you to leverage your brand to cross-sell or test new brand messaging. For example, let’s say that your company wants to change its unique value proposition. Obviously, such a significant change would impact all of your online and offline marketing. Given that, you would want to test any proposed messaging changes before moving forward. Bidding on your branded terms allows you to do exactly that. You can quickly and easily leverage your branded PPC efforts to rotate ads using your current value proposition versus the newly proposed one to test which one resonates best with your customers before pushing to a broader market.”

Something we didn’t touch here but on a quick note, if your brand keyword is trademarked, as ours is, you can contact Google and let them know you dont want advertisers bidding on that term.

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Doing some research on this Friday night regarding ad copy and ad CTR, I came across a good piece at EngineReady.com titled, “Observations on How Ad Position Impacts CTR, Conversion Rate and CPA.”

“In hopes of finding some clues to the power of ad position, we compiled pay-per-click statistics from our portfolio of data for over a one-year period. The observations were based on a sample size of over 192 million impressions and over 2 million clicks in Google. Since we wanted the big-picture look, our data is “industry-agnostic” gathered across multiple industries, including B2B, B2C, lead generation and e-commerce.

Please note that this chart is a compilation from our portfolio of data and may not be representative of your products or your industry.”

Ad Position CTR Conversion Rate CPA Conversions per 10,000 Impressions
1.0 – 1.9 3.0% 1.9% $60 5.5
2.0 – 2.9 0.9% 2.4% $38 2.1
3.0 – 3.9 1.0% 1.6% $60 1.6
4.0 – 4.9 2.3% 5.2% $60 12.0
5.0 – 5.9 1.0% 2.8% $84 2.8
6.0 – 6.9 1.5% 3.6% $57 5.2
7.0 – 7.9 1.0% 7.8% $50 7.6
8.0 – 8.9 1.1% 2.9% $78 3.3
9.0 – 9.9 0.6% 3.4% $74 2.2
10+ 0.7% 2.4% $85 1.7

(Sorry if the chart may be off on the post but you can put it together fairly quick with its respective category, the numbers that is)

So, what does this finding tell us for the most part? #1 isn’t always the best position. Ranking #2 in this study actually had the lowest cost-per-action but also had the worse conversion rate. The best conversion rate was the 7.0-7.9 position but with a $50 on average cost-per-action, yet much better than previous positions.

“* CTR – Not too surprisingly, the highest CTR of 3.0% was found at position 1, while the lowest CTR of 0.6% was at position 9. Note that CTR for position 2 dropped significantly, with a slight gain in position 3 and an even higher CTR in position 4, the second highest CTR. We believe that position 4 did so well because many times the search engines show 3 paid listings on the left side of the screen, leaving the 4th position ad to show at the top of the right hand column.
* Conversion Rate – The highest Conversion Rate of 7.8% was found at position 7, while the lowest Conversion Rate of 1.6% was at position 3. The best conversion rates were generally at position 4 and lower.
A possible reason for why the lower positions bring in generally higher conversion rates is that visitors who take the time to read 4 or more ads may be further along in the buying cycle. As they’re at that stage where they are ready to purchase, they’re looking for more of an exact match to their needs.
Many prospects who are in the research mode will probably click on multiple listings higher up on the page to gather more general information on the product or service as well as information regarding differences in brands.
* CPA – The Cost Per Acquisition metric, perhaps the most important statistic, had its best value at position 2, while the worst CPA was found at position 10+.
Note that due partially to its strong conversion rate, position 7 registered the 2nd best CPA in our compilation.
* Conversion Effectiveness Factor: Conversions per 10,000 impressions – Here’s a statistic that shows the likelihood that our ads at various positions ultimately led to a conversion. It depicts the number of conversions we recorded for every 10,000 impressions at that ad position.
Our data showed that the highest rate of conversions per 10,000 impressions of 12.0 was found at position 4. This result was significantly higher than any other positions and likely shows the power of the 4th position in our data. The lowest rate of conversions per 10,000 impressions of 1.6 was experienced at position 3.”

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As described by Google:

Let’s say I wanted to create an ad linking to this blog: http://adwords.blogspot.com. In the past, blogspot.com would have been an acceptable display URL. Because there are so many independent blogs hosted on http://blogspot.com however, we now require the display URL to reflect the specific blog reached upon clicking the ad– in this case: adwords.blogspot.com.

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com

Going forward, ads that don’t include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

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Over the past 2-4 years, Google has done a great job, and continues to do so in regards to making the content network effective for advertisers. Advertisers have been using the content network not only for advertising purposes but also serves as a branding vehicle as many websites use the content network to monetize.

Googles Adwords blog, Inside Adwords, has posted a list of videos that can really help you optimize your content campaigns. If you haven’t created a content campaign or have one on pause, it’s worth a shot to get them going again. Like your Adwords campaigns, content can deliver great results with testing.

Campaign setup best practices

Ad Group Set Up

Keyword Setup

Ad Text Set Up

Setting Up Bids

Conversion Tracking

To read more on this topic, here is an older post that touches on this subject: Help! My PPC Campaign Has Gone Stagnant

>>WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC? COMMENT AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST<<

ads from Shopzilla,Inc

]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2010/01/06/are-you-afraid-of-making-changes-to-your-ppc-campaigns/feed/ 1 http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/12/09/geo-targeting-adwords-for-better-ctr-and-quality-score/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/12/09/geo-targeting-adwords-for-better-ctr-and-quality-score/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:18:19 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=1481 >SUBSCRIBE TO THE PALATNIKFACTOR.COM TODAY]]> Quality score and CTR are KEY elements in your Adwords campaign. They both determine position and bid price amongst other things but these are HUGE factors. Dave Davis describes the way to both improve CTR and Quality Score by Geo-Targeting your Adwords campaign.



>>WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC? COMMENT AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST<<

"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."

Read The Whole Story @ RedFlyMarketing.com —–> Geo Target Your Way To A Higher CTR & Quality Score

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

>>SUBSCRIBE TO THE PALATNIKFACTOR.COM TODAY<<

]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/12/09/geo-targeting-adwords-for-better-ctr-and-quality-score/feed/ 1 http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/24/how-to-acquire-google-sitelinks-for-your-google-ads/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/24/how-to-acquire-google-sitelinks-for-your-google-ads/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:29:20 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=1383 If you don’t what what Google Sitelinks are yet, below will be an illustration of what it is and you can obviously see how it will help. Google basically believes these links can help the searcher narrow down the search a lot quicker if they show relevant links before entering the page. I contacted Google regarding this because I wanted some ads to show these site links for some of our e-commerce ads.

Image Source: Darrinward.com

Here is the email I got back last night: “Our technical specialist confirmed that if your ads do not qualify for this product, then you will not see the option to enable them.
In order for your ads to qualify for site links, you must have very high Quality Scores and your ad should have the first position on the left side of the page above the search results.”

As explained by Google, the requirements for these site links are:

* Your ad should have the first position above the search results
* Your ad should have a very high quality score
* Your Ad Sitelinks URLs must direct users to pages that are part of your main website, and allow users to navigate freely

To touch on the second point, when they say high quality score, I BELIEVE you need a quality score of 8 or higher.

How do you acquire these site links if you want them?

1. Log into your AdWords account
2. Click on the Campaign Settings tab and go to the “Show additional links to my site” section under “Ad extensions”
3. List the names and URLs of up to 10 internal links (prioritizing the most important links first)
4. Click “Save” when you’ve finished adding your links
5. If a user search triggers your ad to run with Ad Sitelinks, our system may include up to four of your additional links on your ad, along with the main landing page link

]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/24/how-to-acquire-google-sitelinks-for-your-google-ads/feed/ 1 http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/19/first-ad-placement-isnt-always-the-best-position-for-conversions/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/19/first-ad-placement-isnt-always-the-best-position-for-conversions/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:17:28 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=1369 When talking to clients who want to start Pay-Per-Click or want to start managing it themselves, they may believe being in top position will get them the results they need, thus we all know the higher you are position, the higher the price per click, but that itself may not always be true either as Google does calculate CTR when calculating placement for positions in bid pricing.

I came across a very interesting thread in the WebMasterWorld forums regarding ad placement for PPC. Granted, this is a very old thread, 2/3 years now, 2007. But nevertheless, It still holds true as I am seeing it myself and thought it’d be a good post.

“So… we raised our bids in a couple of campaigns we run, in order to get to position 1 or 2 in Adwords (without changing anything else).

After 4 days of testing we found out that:

- More impressions
- More clicks (~30%)
- Much higher CPC (~100%)! So much higher overall costs.
- Much lower conversions! low quality visitors!

So why is that? Our theory is:

- The ads on the top 2 positions, especially if above organic results on the left, are clicked on much easier, and they attract many more ‘casual’ visitors.
- If a customer is really looking for the product you sell he/she will go pass the first 2 ads. If he/she checks out position 3 to 7, for example, he/she is really seriously looking into buy something.
- I have the theory that *potential buyers* NEVER click ONLY on the top ad. They will check at least 3-4, and they more they check the more time they are investing in the search, so potentially these are the best customers.

Honestly I did not expect these results… we will continue testing for another week or so to be sure…

But if the above is true, the whole to be on top positions is very much incorrect. The positions that convert better are positions 3 / 4 to 6 / 7! ”

The argument of some is that it depends on your niche, product, and other factors but the fact of the matter is that, in my opinion, there are a few variables that will determine the success of your campaign more so than at what ad position your landing page will convert best. It does hold true however that if your margins are very high, you’d have much more success bidding lower and being in lower ad position and that traffic convert at a certain conversion rate.

“I’ve done really well for some clients bidding for the #3 to #5 position. I’m of the opinion that anyone who’s really looking for something (and that’s pretty much who we want) will eyeball the entire list of ads by now. In the three niches where I’ve tried it heavily, we got about the same or slightly more conversions, but our CPCs went WAY down, which meant we were spending the same but getting a lot more clicks and conversions. Everybody won. ”

]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/19/first-ad-placement-isnt-always-the-best-position-for-conversions/feed/ 0 http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/02/ppc-tools-using-semrush-to-optimize-your-ppc-campaigns/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/02/ppc-tools-using-semrush-to-optimize-your-ppc-campaigns/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:54:53 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=1362 Using web tools whether you’re working on SEO or PPC is just as important as a mechanic using the right tools to fix your car, or a dentist having the right tools to fix your mouth. At the beginning, I always used to work “blindly” and never relied much on tools but maybe some free keyword tools to get some ideas to build ppc campaigns on. As you get deeper into a project (campaign) or have a project you’ve been working on for a while, you’ll see how far tools can take you.

I was given a month free to use of SEMRush, a keyword tool that “…was designed by the developers of SeoDigger and SeoQuake to satisfy your needs in advanced SEM and keywords research. We analyze 40 million keywords for 20 million domains. 21 000 users registered.”

There is one thing that you’ll learn real quick as you get into building pay-per-click campaigns and that is observe and study the competition. While you’re there trying to figure out what words work best, how to write a compelling ad, what words to build on, your competition has been doing that for longer than you have! Remember, they have gone through the same process you are going through now and trying to figure out, what keywords to use for the best return on investment, what ads will get the best click-through-rate, which ads may have the best conversions, etc.

SEMRush is a tool that lets you do just that, study the competition and get an edge. My strategy is and was never to COPY the competition but build around keywords they use, get ideas, etc.

Some key features that will really help you optimize your campaign using SEMRush are:

* Identify Competitors – By searching for your keyword phrase on SEM Rush, you can pinpoint competing websites that are already ranking highly in Google for your intended keywords, and as a side benefit, you can identify other potentially profitable keywords of each of your potential competitors.

* Ad / Traffic Buyer Suggestions – When you research a website, SEM Rush will display related websites that are advertising via Google Adwords, which, this can give you an inroad to potential advertisers, who are proven buyers, for your website.

* Adwords Ad Overview – If a particular website that you are researching, namely, a competitor, is advertising via Google Adwords, SEM Rush will show you your competitors’ ads, and their landing pages within their simple-to-use interface.

* Side-By-Side Competitor Comparison – You can analyze your domain vs. your competitors’ domain name, alongside your common keywords, your rank in Google, their rank in Google, estimated monthly search volume for the keyword, number of competing pages for the keyword, and the estimated cost per click in Google Adwords.

* Data Exports – Like most keyword tools, SEM Rush offers a few choices when it comes to exporting your research data. However, because this service is so unique in the type of information it provides, we wanted to mention this as it is a major asset for you, regardless of whether you’re a paid or free user.

The way I used it best was always to look at my top competitors in the PPC space. From this, I can go one by one and look at keywords they are bidding, keywords they are ranking for organically, and looking at their ads. A GREAT strategy that I don’t have much search marketers talk about but is great for me is really digging into the websites organic rankings and building of that.

Google ranks many website for specific products and these are great, long-tail keywords, that may have a real chip bidding price and although may deliver very low volume traffic, can deliver a high conversion rate!

You can start a free SEMRush account by clicking on the following URL: http://www.semrush.com/users/register.html

**This review was written for an exchange of a trial period and for the education of a good search marketing product for all PalatnikFactor.com readers.

]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/11/02/ppc-tools-using-semrush-to-optimize-your-ppc-campaigns/feed/ 2 http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/10/17/target-your-demographic-on-microsoft-adcenterbing/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/10/17/target-your-demographic-on-microsoft-adcenterbing/#comments Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:25:44 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=1325 One great thing about Microsofts pay-per-click platform, Microsoft Adcenter, which serves up ads on Microsofts engines BING, LIVE.com (now re-directed to Bing), MSN.com, and soon to be syndicated to Yahoo, is the demographic abilities to target your audience.

On the Adcenter Community blog, there is a great post about easy steps to targeting your demographic when creating a pay-per-click campaign. So, how can you determine the target demographic for your keywords? One tool that many people don’t know exist and can be very useful to build your campaign is the Microsoft Forecast Tool which gives you demographic data based on your keyword.

Now, for setting this criteria in the search engine while building your campaign (steps and instructions taken from blog post)

Applying demographic targeting is a simple process that can be done right in Microsoft adCenter. Demographic targets can be set at the Campaign or the Ad Group level.

1) Select the Campaigns tab

2) If you would like to set demographic targets to the Campaign level, select Edit

3) If you would like to set demographic targets to the Ad Group level, select the Ad group on which you would like to implement this functionality

4) To the right of the Campaign or Ad Group name, select Change settings

5) Under Campaign targeting and to the right of Target your customers by location, select Edit





6) Under Targeting setting, select Demographic on the left





7) Ensure the Apply campaign settings check box is unchecked if applying age or gender to specific ad groups

– If this box is cleared, no campaign-level age or gender targeting will be applied

– If this box is missing, there is no campaign-level age or gender targeting

To specify an incremental by for an age or gender group, select a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists

9) Select Apply and then Save

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