Modified Broad Match now Available in All AdWords Accounts
Google officially announced the global launch of their much awaited modified broad match modifier via their AdWords blog. They had been undergoing a test rollout both in the UK and Canada since May but July 14th marked it’s global rollout. According to Google:
The broad match modifier is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.
How Modified Broad Match Works
If you had two keywords under normal broad match, say:
mobile phones
You would typically attract clicks from searches related to ‘mobiles phones’ that may also include variations such as synonyms and misspellings. So ‘mobile phones’ under broad match may attract keywords:
- cell phones,
- cellular phone deals
- vodafone mobile contracts
- mobile phone plans
- iphone hacks
- free mobile phones
- mobile phone contracts
- 3g mobile phones
- pink mobile phones
The trouble with broad match is that it typically can get out of control by attracting irrelevant search traffic. The only way to taper irrelevancy is to constantly build and improve an extensive list of negative keywords.
Under broad modified, you can actually ‘fix’ a single keyword as constant in a key phrase you bid for. This constant *must* be present in all searches your broad modified keyword attracts. Let me illustrate. Say you bid for the broad modified key phrase (To implement the modifier, just include a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words** in a broad match keyword.):
mobile +phones
This would attract searches with the keyphrase ‘phones’ present or close variations such as misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “drive” and “driving”) BUT not synonyms as normal broad match would return. So the above key phrase would attract searches for:
- mobile phone (singular/plural)
- mobile pohne (misspelling)
- cell phone
- cell phones
- cell phnoes (misspelling)
notice ‘phone’ is the constant.
This modified key phrase:
+mobile +phones
Would attract searches for:
- moblie phones (misspelling)
- mobiles phone (singular/plural)
- mob phones (abbreviations)
- mobile phones
- mobile phone
Again the constants here are keywords ‘mobile’ & ‘phones’ – so its offers a much wider reach than phrase match and more control than normal broad match.
It is a very interesting add-on to AdWords and is bound to improve conversion rates if implemented properly.
We have already implemented it on all our clients’ AdWords accounts and are seeing positive results already.
Watch this space….
Measuring Conversions and Setting Up Funnels on Google Analytics
It is so vital to set goals on your website, to track the effectiveness of all your online marketing efforts & campaigns. This 60 second video sheds more light on Google Analytic’s funnel visualisation report – which shows each step you have defined as part of your conversion process. It is particularly very useful for tracking shopping cart abandonment rates on eCommerce sites.
SEO Hierarchy of Needs
I can’t remember where I stumbled on this diagram but I just found it in one of my archives. It pretty much sums up the SEO process for a new website or redesigned site from start to finish. Starting from Keyword research for content development, then matching your keyword research to the actual site architecture and other on page elements like title, header, and meta description tags. You can’t escape from good usability and web design when it comes to SEO – pages need to load fast, breadcrumb navigation is a given and good website design also improves the average time visitors stay on your site (Google apparently takes note of this). Finally link building is the crown jewel of SEO. We need to continuously build quality inbound links to improve our search rankings and authority….so here you go voila
Track Exact Match AdWords Keywords in Google Analytics and More…
Over the next couple of weeks, Google will be rolling out a new AdWord reporting section in its analytics package – Google Analytics. It’s intention is to give advertisers more insight into user actions after their AdWords ads have been clicked. In order to fully access the new AdWords reports, your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts must be linked with destination URL auto-tagging enabled in AdWords.
The new reporting feature I’m most looking forward to using is direct access to exact match keywords in Google analytics. Google currently does not share exact match keyword date on Google Analytics (requires a hack to access exact match keywords).
There are also single click common reporting queries in the overview section that automatically generates reports (see image below):
These reports are meant to answer questions marketing experts and site owners ask about:
- Site Usage
- Goal Tracking and Conversions
- AdWords Clicks
- eCommerce activity and
- Revenue metric ROI i.e. revenue per click
All this data would be available in a drill down mode familiar to AdWords users:
Campaign > AdGroups > Keywords
The new analytics reports would also be able to show data by AdWords dimensions at the campaign, adgroup or keyword level like: Match Type, Ad Content (your text ad title), Ad Distribution Network, matched search query, Placement domain, Placement URL, Ad Format, Targeting Type, Display URL, Destination URL and more (see image below):
These new insights on AdWords campaigns in Google Analytics reinforces the need for AdWords experts to have a deep understanding of Google Analytics to manage their campaigns effectively.
How to Use the Thesaurus to Kick Start Your Keyword Research
Thesaurus’ came in very handy when I was essay writing in Uni and are still very relevant to me as a search marketing professional today. The thesaurus is my number 1 keyword research tool and the perfect resource for finding synonyms or related keywords. The beauty of using a thesaurus is that a bulk of keyword research has been done for you by thesaurus publishers. My favourite online thesaurus site is Thesaurus.com. Visual Thesaurus is also a handy tool if you are after a visual representation of keyword relationships (but it requires an annual subscription of about $20). I’d rather keep things simple by sticking with Thesaurus.com. Better still, thesaurus.com used in combination with the AdWords Keyword Tool is a clincher for your keyword research efforts.
How to Use Thesaurus.com and AdWords Keyword Tool
Type in your keyword in Thesaurus.com (in this example I typed in “architect”) – it should generate a list of results
Copy the URL- I copied ”http://thesaurus.com/browse/architect” for this example
Go the AdWords Keyword Tool – then copy and paste the thesaursus URL in the website text field.
AdWords Keyword tool crawls the specific page on thesaurus.com and returns even more keyword results
This not only helps you leverage two very powerful keyword tools at the same time but also ensures that no stones are left unturned over the course of your keyword research.
Real Time Search Looks Impressive
Google finally unveiled its real-time search results today and I have to say that it is so darn impressive I’m blogging about it. So what is real-time search? Well, according to Google:
Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
Google real-time search does exactly what it says on the can by returning some really impressive real time results from a variety of news sites, blogs and social media sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace and Identi.ca (although Facebook and MySpace updates are yet to implemented).
Apart from its highly accurate real time relevancy, the real appeal of Google’s real time search results to me is the natural flowing integration it has with Google’s other static search results.
Bert & Ernie on Google – Priceless
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this but my fav Sesame Street characters – Bert and Ernie are on today’s Google home page. I know it might be a bit of a mundane topic to blog about but I absolutely love them and appreciate the impact Sesame Street had on my education earlier on in my life that later gave me an edge in life. Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street.
How to Calculate Your PageRank
Although I am not a proponent of PageRank as one of the more important ranking factors in SEO, high page rank values are still a common factor across authoritative sites.
Achieving a ‘decent’ PageRank is still part of most SEO campaigns for newly launched websites. ‘Decent’ in my opinion could be termed as a PageRank of 3 and above. I have to say I’ve seen websites with PRs of 1-3 rank No.1 for highly competitive key phrases.
So if you are a PageRank junkie or just an SEO whose client requires a decent PR as a key performance indicator (KPI) for their project, here is a nice PageRank Calculator table that guides you on approximately how many links you would need to acquire to get your desired PageRank
| PR | Links for PR3 | Links for PR4 | Links for PR5 | Links for PR6 | Links for PR7 | Links for PR 8 |
| PR 1 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 | 92,414 | 508,277 | 2,795,522 |
| PR 2 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 | 92,414 | 508,277 |
| PR 3 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 | 92,414 |
| PR 4 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 |
| PR 5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 |
| PR 6 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 |
| PR 7 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 |
| PR 8 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 |
| PR 9 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 |
| PR 10 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 |
So to get a PR5 for a newly setup website, you would need only 1 PR7 link or 101 PR4 links. And to get a site up to PR6, you would need 19 PR6 links or 4 PR7 links or a massive 555 PR4 links.
Page Rank Update – October 30th 2009
Another PageRank toolbar update is in progress at the moment. I think it would take a few more days to fully update across the web. Although web page / website PageRank updates are not as important as actually ranking for your key phrases of choice, it is still a well accepted parameter of a good website in the webmaster community.
Some site’s of mine & my clients have had their PR increased, some other websites’ PR have remained static and others have actually dropped. I have however doublechecked their organic search referral traffic and their Google rankings; they all appear to be normal. It’s yet more proof that PR does not have a huge impact on traffic and rankings.
Lets just sit tight and wait for the update to propagate.
Photo credits: DannySullivan via Flickr
New Music Search Features on Google
Google have just released their Google Music Search service. Its all part of their Universal search efforts in a bid to make search more relevant. The idea behind Google Music Search is brilliant – according to Google when you search for a song, artist, album or even lyrics you should expect to find more relevant results like audio previews provided by Lala or MySpace (who have acquired iLike).
I unfortunately could not personally test it as it is gradually being rolled across the U.S. first before it hits this side of the pond. But here is a video that shows what it can do.
I am keen to know if Google would be selling or collaborating with music stores like iTunes to actually sell music.
