Advanced AdWords Strategies

Google just announced that the Quality Score changes are going live in the next few days.

To sum it all up:

1. Quality Score is going to get tougher - your score is measured on the exact search of the query.
2. First Page minimum replaces minimum bid - the minimum to appear on the first page is being listed on the keyword page. Now, you’ll see information that is more relevant for advertisers, how much does it cost to get to the first page!
3. All Keywords are Active - (but maybe not). Some keywords may not get any impressions, but they are no longer classified as Inactive. They will be evaluated on a search by search basis to assess their Quality Score and if they represent relevancy to the search.

Why are these changes are being implemented?

These improvements are part of a continuing effort to deliver relevant ads to our users, and also to provide you with more control over your bidding and more insight into the quality of your ads and keywords. (Inside AdSense Blog)

Sounds a lot like Google, no?

A short, but important diversion:

It was back in May of 2006, and I was out of a job. No money, kids at home, and I was desperate. I was starting a business online, and was under tremendous pressure to get the money rolling in.

I needed to advertise my site, but I also needed to make sure that Google wouldn’t cause me heart failure next time I opened my credit card statement.

That’s when I discovered Perry Marshall. His book, The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords, explains what you need to know about advertising with Google. No pitch, no hype, just clear and easy to follow information. The content made sense, so it was easy to follow along.

After some initial success, I wanted to move up to the next level. Since I was already doing AdWords Consulting, and have become a Google Qualified Professional, I needed to learn how to work on camapigns of different clients, including the difficult to master Content network.

The Bobsled run is an intensive course taught twice a year by Perry Marshall, and it was the thing that brought success in my marketing campaigns. I’ve attended Google AdWords Seminars and conferences, but Perry teaches you what is not taught anywhere else.

You learn not only how to use AdWords, but how to sell with AdWords. How to enter the customers’ minds and figure out what it really is that they are looking for, and then how to exploit that need. You learn about the all important 80/20 rule, that 80% of your money is made from only 20% of your customers, and that only 20% of your keywords produce 80% of your traffic.

If you are looking to become a serious AdWords Professional, and master how to sell with pay per click, take a look at this:

Bob Sled Run for Google AdWords Pros

More and more, Google is offering more control over where your ads display over the web. If you sell men’s hair loss products, it wouldn’t make sense to advertise on a woman’s beauty tip site, and if you sell weight loss products, it surely doesn’t belong on a cancer patient site. By controlling where your ad displays, that ensures the clicks you receive are more likely to turn into a sale.

Step 3: Use Google’s tools to advertise only on the sites you select.

After determining which sites are your target demographic through the use of the demographic performance report and the Google Ad Planner, filter the list to show only the sites that meet your target criteria. Then, in the AdWords Editor, create a placement campaign and paste that list of sites into the Add/Update Multiple Placements.

Now that your ads are featured only on the sites that meet your target market, ensure that they are performing for you. Constantly monitor the conversions and CPCs of the sites using the Placement Performance Report, and filter out the sites that aren’t working. Always run new Ad Planner and Demographic Performance reports to see if you left any good sites out of the list.

Next, we’ll go into the way to write a Content Network so it should stand out.

Advertising on the content network has its own set of issues that make it distinctly different than Google Search. Since the Content Network represents 75% of the web, it is important to incorporate it into your marketing plan. However, you do want to do your research to ensure that your dollars are being spent where they represent the highest opportunity for conversions.

To that end, you must try to show your ads only on sites that have the demographics your business is catering to. If you are selling Viagra on a site catering to females… well, you get the picture.

Step 2: Filter out the sites that do not represent your target audience by running an AdWords Demographic Performance Report.

Run a Content Network campaign for a few days, and let it collect a sizeable number of impressions. Now you are ready to run a demographic report on that data.

Now you can see which sites are your within your target demographics, and which aren’t.

So how do you use this data?

In the next post – we will discuss how to compile a list of sites that represent your target audience, and how to direct your Content Network ads exclusively to those sites.

A commonly overlooked area by most AdWords advertisers is the content network, otherwise known as AdSense. Often, ads on the content network are a lot more cost effective and provide a greater return on investment (ROI) than the search network, especially in highly competitive markets. How do you effectively set up a Content Network campaign?

Step 1: Investigate which sites run ads using AdSense, and does it make financial “sense” to advertise on them.

Where do you find out this information?

Actually, Google makes it easy for you. There are a variety of tools that should be used. In this post we will cover just one:

Google Ad Planner: A research tool that connect advertisers and publishers. Here you can find information about demographics of relevant sites, such as gender, age, socio-economic status, and geographic locations of users. Especially useful is their insight into users’ online behavior, such as length of time online, likeliness to purchase online, etc.

Ad Planner is currently in beta (as most products of Google are ) so you need to sign up and be approved, although everyone who does is approved within a few days.

Actionable Tip: Sign up for Google Ad Planner, await your approval notice, enter your target demographics, and export the list of available sites to review.

Next we will cover the tools within AdWords you can use to research available sites for the Content Network.

This report was long overdue, and it is finally here.

Yesterday, Google Announced that it has added a new report to the Adwords report center which is called the Geographic Performance Report. This will give you data on where your clicks are coming from, allowing you to make changes based on the data.

In the past, one had to use Google Analytics to retrieve this data, by filtering the visitors’ based on location and traffic sources.

An example of how useful this data is as follows. Say for example, you run a jewelery store in New York City, so you bid on the keyword Big Apple Jewelry. Since you put in the words “big apple”, you figure that it can even go into a national campaign.

But lo and behold, after using the Geographic Performance campaign you realize that clicks are coming in from Plano, TX! Those clicks are not bringing you any business, so go ahead and change the campaign settings to regional only. You save 25% on click costs, and sales aren’t affected.

Actionable tip: Run a Geographic Performance report on your clicks. If you have conversion tracking installed, and you should, be sure to include conversion data in the columns of the report. If some areas are performing better than others, it may be a wise idea to do regional campaigns and adjust your bids accordingly. It is not uncommon to find that a majority of one’s business comes from only a small portion of the country, and you can focus your budget on those higher performing areas to increase your ROI on your ad spend.

A cool report that is buried deep in Google AdWords Reports Tab is called the “Impression Share” Report, sometimes called the IS report (which looks like the word “is” to the rest of us ).

This report gives you valuable stats on the “reach” of your ads, meaning how much of the available places your ad can show does it appear.

To access this report:

1. Go to the Google AdWords Report Center, and click on Create New Report.
2. Click on “Campaign Report”



3. Go to Section 3 - Advanced Settings (Optional)
4. Add or Remove Columns - Check off the following boxes:
   • Impression Share (IS)
   • Lost IS (Rank)
   • Lost IS (Budget)
   • Exact Match IS
5. Create the New Report

When AdWords reports are huge, it is best to use an Excel spreadsheet to easily read the report and ensure that you focus on the most critical numbers.

Here is a step-by-step guide that can be used with all of the AdWords Reports provided in the Reports Tab of your AdWords Account:

1. Click on the report name. The most common ones are Keyword Performance, Ad Performance, or Campaign Performance.
2. In Section 2, called Settings, Select View>Weekly from the Drop Down Box, Week Definition is Mon-Sun.
3. Date Range: Last Month
4. Campaigns and Ad Groups: Either All, or manually select all Active Campagins from Box.
5. Add or Remove Columns: Go in and check off everything, unless certain that data is not needed.
6. Name Report and Save as Template
7. VERY IMPORTANT: Email the report to yourself as a .csv for Excel file. It will take a fraction of the time to download if you do it this way.
8. Click: Create Report
9. Check your email for the report, unzip it, and open it. Microsoft Excel should open and your report will be ready to view.

Likely, the spreadsheet will be huge, with rows and rows of data, most of it unintelligible. Don’t despair, there is a simple way to read the data and access the hidden nuggets of information buried inside.

How To Read AdWords Excel Reports

Optimize Your AdWords Campaigns In 5 Days or Less

Everyone knows that to see the status of the site in the search engine, all you need to check is the site’s PageRank. But it can take months to update the pagerank of a site, and even when it is updated, you are only seeing an approximation of the true pagerank, which is based on an logarithmic scale.

A better way to see how Google ranks your site in relation to the keywords that you wish to optimize for, is to open a Google AdWords Account page, and follow these instructions:

1. In the campaign managment tab, click on “Tools”.
2. In the left column, click on “Keyword Tool”.
3. Choose the second option, Website Content:
4. Check the box “scan links to my site from this page”
5. Click “Get Keyword Ideas”.
6. See what words come up. If they are relevant to your site and you expect searches to be done using these words, you are doing fine. If not, you need to update the text on your site to better optimize for those desired keywords.

It has long been the desire of all website owners to rank well in the Free, or organic side, without having to pay Google and all the other search engines big money.

However, a new site usually has very few links to it, and therefore does not rank well in the organic listings. What can be done about this?

The answer is somewhat surprising: Create a well-optimized Pay Per Click campaign.

Although Google maintains a strict editorial divide between the paid and free rankings, a paid campaign can help your free search engine rankings and provide your site with a good SEO boost for the following reasons:

1. A site that is opitmized well for the paid side means that it’s Quality Score is at “Great”. That usually means that the internal structure of the site is optimized as well for the search engine robots.
2. Other webmasters will see your site, visit it, and when they like what they see will likely place a link to your site.
3. By searching the keywords relevant for paid search, you can see what keywords to add to your site, making it a keyword rich and search engine friendly page.

Remember, when you are paying for something, you are more conscientious. By focusing on your site for the paid side, you will be able to maximize your site for the search engines on the free organic side as well.