Archive for the ‘Pay Per Click’ Category
Recently, Google has been rolling out update after update for advert copy on the AdWords advertising platform. These changes include Ad Sitelinks (additional deep site links) , moving the display URLs under the title, allowing the first line of the description to follow the title. This of course is in addition to the recent introduction of Google +1.
I’m sure that like the rest of you, we have been updating our ads and utilising all these new updates to their full potential, but it wasn’t until recently that I spotted what I think Google have been trying to achieve.
Read on
With SEO coming up to its 20th birthday, a lot has changed since the use of keywords in tiny white text on white backgrounds!
Now with Google’s latest “Orion” update, it looks like meta-descriptions may be following the same fate as meta keywords. Which begs the question of what would happen if Google decided meta titles were no longer a worthy ranking factor?
Well thankfully, your title tag is still one of the most important factors to optimise for. But if you’ve optimised your page content and you’re still not achieving the SEO results you were hoping for, what next?
Integrating your paid and organic search campaigns with your other marketing channels can dramatically increase website traffic and leads, whilst maximising ROI across the entire marketing mix. Especially when you embed integrated search deep within the marketing strategy.
What has THEME, KOALA & CAPER got to do with integrated search?
Since discovering the famous marketing acronyms AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and SOSTAC (Situational Analysis, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions, Control), I’ve been a big fan of handy ways to remember strategic marketing techniques.
So, since working at SiteVisibility I’ve been testing a number of models to help our clients increase website traffic and conversions, whilst reducing their PPC spend. I’ve developed these into 3 integrated search models made up 5 letter acronyms…
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In the English language, some words have more than one meaning, as you will see from the following pictures:
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If you are running a Pay-per-click campaign or are considering running one, we’ve put together a few tips to help you fine tune your campaigns.
You probably already know that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) involves:
<!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>Selecting sets of keywords
2. <!–[endif]–>Writing an ad that appears when someone searches for that keyword in one of the major search engines
3. <!–[endif]–>Selecting the amount you are willing to pay for someone to click on your ad and arrive at your website.
The benefits of PPC are that it can generate leads instantly (unlike SEO, which takes longer to have an impact), drive sales and create brand awareness, so we’ve put together 10 tips to help you improve your PPC campaigns. Read on
If you’re thinking about integrating SEO and PPC, what are the benefits of integration and how exactly do you go about it?
The benefits of integrated search
Reducing Adwords spend is usually the main driving force behind integrating pay per click and natural search engine marketing, but there are a great many other advantages to this particular mix:
• Attracting quality links to increase natural search engine positioning for your top keywords.
• Delivering search optimised content assets that promote your brand, either onsite or offsite.
• Driving higher volumes of relevant traffic from search engines, referrers and social media.
• Increasing goal conversions including subscriptions, brochure downloads and online sales.
photo credit: John Sexton
In short, integrated search marketing improves the effectiveness of your marketing spend, delivering a greater return on investment and enabling more creative, newsworthy content to be developed. It’s a kind of virtuous circle, the more effective your marketing mix, the more amplified your natural search positions, the better your ROI.
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You’d be hard-pressed to have missed Paramount’s new ‘Monsters versus Aliens’ movie advert. It contains a suggested search keyword instead of a website address, advising viewers to “search for mva” to find more information on the new film about a girl who is hit by a meteorite, turns into a big monster, gets captured by the government and acquainted with a gang of monsters, and inevitably ends up saving the world from aliens.
photo credit: Karl Palutke Monster Monster! Oh no, actually it’s an alien.
Anyway, as Adam on One Idea pointed out, upon searching Google for ‘mva’, the film’s website is completely absent from the top natural search results. There is a pay-per-click ad at the top of the search results, with a messy url and ‘mva’ in the link text. Read on
If you think about it, linking your business with current affairs is a fast way to generate traffic to your site; the only snag is the news has to be relevant to you.
photo credit: franckdethier
When a news story or (competitors) advertising campaign (read about Orange’s latest advertising campaign mistakes) relating to your business gets released you can add new keywords to your campaign. News sends people to Google and Search Engines to find out more. For example, if you are marketing a credit card company, you probably would like your ad to appear when someone types in “credit crunch” or related terms. This gives you the opportunity to deliver a tailored and timely message i.e. “Beat the Credit Crunch with a 0% Credit Card Rate that lasts!”
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In case you haven’t read it yet, Google is now unleashing some new improvements to its Quality Score. News from Google about changes to their algorithms or the way they rank and charge PPC ads usually creates a tidal wave of blog posts, comments and outbursts from the community that uses AdWords on a daily basis. I therefore thought I’d analyse this new development and share thoughts & case studies with our readers.
Google announced:
“Since 2005, we’ve improved Quality Score in many ways, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors. Along the way, we’ve also received much helpful feedback from both users and advertisers.
Today, we’d like to let you know of further improvements we’ll introduce in the coming weeks — based, in part, on this feedback. First we’ll outline the key points, and then dive into the details:
Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account”
The idea behind having the quality score calculated for every single search is that it will make Google’s PPC results more relevant and time sensitive. For example, if you competitor writes a compelling ad which most of the traffic for a given keyword, your CTR will reduce, and Google will see you as less relevant in the next keyword auction.
I wanted to check that my long tail keywords were still being displayed, and this is what I discovered:
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I don’t like getting the tube in London, being a born and bred Brightonian I find it confusing. The one upside however is tube advertising is in my opinion some of the most innovative in the world. This Orange ad caught my attention this week for its attempted use of offline/ search marketing integration.
photo credit: markhillary
Anyway, waiting at embankment I came across the latest Orange brand campaign 30 foot wide in front of me. I’d seen the TV ad and already though this was a pretty stupid campaign. The premise is Orange are somehow sponsoring a chap called Mark Beaumont who is apparently cycling around the world. (It actually turns out he’s lied- he’s cycling around different parts of the world in 7 stages and I presume getting planes between continents, also he’s taken over 6 months to do it so I presume he’s stopped for food and sleep which for me defeats the point entirely!!!)
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Optimising Pay Per Click accounts for KPIs can be a challenging task. Whether it be increasing traffic for the same budget, increasing the amount of leads generated by a campaign, or simply reducing the cost per lead of a given campaign, keyword and ad optimisation is a very important part of any SEM campaign that you should be undertaking on a (very) regular basis.
Now that’s a big mistake! (via flickr)
In order to “help advertisers present the most relevant ads to searchers”, Google has a wide range of reports and metrics that are the basis of any optimisation work. However, tired eyes and keyword blindness can lead you to include keywords in your PPC campaign that you never would have used had you had a double caramel latte from Toast by the Coast. Read on
