Archive for the ‘Google AdWords’ Category
AdWords: Share a Dynamic Budget Across Multiple Campaigns
Google AdWords have just introduced a campaign budgeting feature called: Shared Budgets. Its main aim is to assist in setting daily budgets across multiple AdWords campaigns within a single account. Due to the recently introduced flexibility that allows 10,000 campaigns per account, marketers have been getting creative with campaign creation.
AdWords: Enhanced Sitelinks Would Further Increase Click-through Rates
I am pretty excited about yesterday’s announcement on Google’s official AdWords blog about the global rollout of Enhanced sitelinks (see image above). Sitelinks generate up to 30% higher click-through rate than normal 2-3 line text ads – so adding even more descriptive text with the enhanced version is certain to further improve CTR!
AdWords Increases Campaign Limit Per Account to 10,000
When I started managing AdWords campaigns in 2005, the campaign and ad group limit back then was a maximum of 25 campaigns and 2000 ad groups per campaign.
Last year, Google quietly increased this limit to 500 campaigns, 20,000 ad groups per campaign and 5,000 keywords per AdWord account.
Just yesterday in response to feedback from current AdWords advertisers, Google AdWords announced yet another increase to an astounding 10,000 campaigns (includes active and paused campaigns) per account!
5 Ways to Stop the Waste in Your AdWords Campaigns
Paid search is increasingly becoming the preferred option for businesses that aim to generate sales and leads online. Amazon is currently AdWords’ #1 advertiser with a spend of $51 million in a single quarter! So my guess it that, although you probably don’t have as much as Amazon to spend on your AdWords campaign, you still have a relatively substantial paid search budget you expect a return on your investment from. You also probably want a more stable source of traffic from Google because organic & local search appear to be highly volatile and dependent on Google’s ever changing algorithm and its result pages.
With this in mind, effectively spending and putting every single penny to good use in your AdWords campaign is ever so important! Several businesses choose to manage their Paid Search Campaigns in-house; although this is not usually the best option for medium to large sized organisations. Proactive monitoring of campaigns are absolutely critical elements to successful campaigns. If you insist on managing your business’s AdWords account on your own and do not want to thrown money away, then follow these five tips to help you get the best out of your campaign spend and time (these tips are not only limited to AdWords but also Microsoft AdCenter – which now covers Yahoo and Bing and accounts for 20-30% of search engine traffic). Read More »
AdWords Update: Get 60 Characters in Your Text Ad Headline!
Google AdWords have just introduced a major change to the way ads are display in the top positions on Google search (this applies to only top ranking ads, above the organic results and not on the side).
Description line 1 is now displayed along side the headline text in the headline for top ranking ads. This means a total of 60 characters would now be displayed for the top 3 sponsored results i.e. the allowed 25 characters in ad headlines + 35 characters allowed in description line one.
For your ad headlines to display 60 characters, two criteria must be met: Read More »
10 MUST HAVE Google Adwords Features from 2010 You Should be Using in 2011
For PPC management, 2010 brought forth a whole host of new Google Adword features. These new tools and reports allowed savvy paid search advertisers deliver stellar performance in their campaigns. With the overall goal to improve ad conversions and increase sales, while generating detailed data for evaluating performance.
The new features are also packed with other great benefits. With this latest innovative creation, an ad’s overall return on investment (ROI) can be maximized, while keeping the cost per click (CPC) as low as possible. With that being said, here are the top 10 must-have Google Adword features from 2010 every PPC advertiser must use in 2011: Read More »
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.
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.
