Online advertising at it's best

Improve Adwords clickthrough rate – CTR

May03
2012 Written by admin

By improving your click-through rate (CTR) you can improve the cost-effectiveness of your Adwords campaign. or the percent of users that have actually clicked your ad with a certain purpose. Higher click-through rate leads to a higher Quality Score – a rank used by Google for grading your AdWords keywords and advertising groups. The higher your Quality Score is, the less you have to pay for better ad positions.

These are some 10 steps which you can use for improving the click-through rate of your online advertising campaign:

Include promotional offers, attractive adjectives and call-to-action to your ads.

People are more likely to click your ad if it mentions a special promotion, such as free shipping for instance. Words such as “save”, “easy”, “new”, and action-urging phrases such as “buy it now”, “book it today”, and “call now” often lead to a higher conversion rate (turning users into direct consumers of a product or service).

Include your keywords in the text and the heading of your AdWords ad.

The keywords that people use when doing a Google search appear in bold when they are found in some of the results, displayed by the search engine. People are more likely to click an advert in the advertising spot if it contains a keyword they have already looked for as part of their query.

Include price into the Pay-per-Click ad if you sell a product or service at a preferential cost.

This could not only inspire people to look for further information on the issue by clicking your ad, but could also result as an aftermath in a better conversion rate of the site.

Choose keywords that are as closely related to your product or service as possible.

If they are not, the chance of people clicking on your ad is smaller. For instance, if you sell vinegar produced of red wine, but your key words are just “buy”, “red” and “wine”, you cannot expect good conversion. People looking for “buy”, “red” and “wine” are more likely looking to buy the perfect bottle of wine than for your vinegar. You should send the right message so that your chance for conversion is bigger!

Use negative keywords to limit your non-targeted visits.

Let’s say that you sell only brand new cell phones. You wouldn’t like your ad to be displayed to people looking for second hand cell phones. In order to avoid this, you should include the phrase “second hand” as a negative keyword.

Simplify your ad.

If there are too many words in your ad, people won’t be able to read it. You should try to reduce the text in a way that won’t harm the integrity of the information and the message you want your product to communicate. You should totally avoid captions such as “click here” or “visit this link”.

Make the words in the displayed URL larger in order to make them legible.

If you are a distributor of Swiss chocolate and your site is wesellswisschocolate.com, you should input the URL in the following manner: WeSellSwissChocolate.com. People are more likely to click on your ad if it clearly indicates what it sells.

Test different types of ads.

Texts, banners, local business, different keywords, different layouts, will help you identify the features of different ads that generate the highest Clickthrough rate. Once you have this information, you will be able to focus on the right use of these features in a complete and integrated AdWords advertisement.

Get rid of abbreviations.

You should use abbreviations only if they are obvious for your target group. Marketing experts could abbreviate words to fit them into a certain ad. But by doing so, they decrease the chances for the mass user to understand what the ad is about, which, in turn, reduces the users’ desire to click on the ad.

Opt for the use of headings, related to the season, even if what you sell is marketable all the year round.

This could increase the feeling of “healthy anxiety”, as I call it, and make the users act now, while they still have the chance. If your company sells smiley-shaped cookies and it is close to St. Valentine’s day, your caption could be “Buy Smileys for St. Valentine”.

These suggestions, far from exhausting all possible ways for improving your WordAd campaign, are some of the best practices that should be considered in creating an online advertising campaign, using Google AdWords in particular.  Feel free to add any information that I may have missed in the comment section below.

Posted in Adwords Campaigns, Pay-Per-Click

Adwords campaign advice by experts

Apr28
2012 Written by admin

As most people know, Google AdWords is sponsored links that are listed with search results and are one of the most economically viable ways for online advertising. Google AdWords is an optimal advertising service which allows payment to take place only after a consumer clicks your ad and an actual visit of the advertized website has been realized.

AdWords ads are listed next to Google’s search results requested by a user when some of the advertiser’s keywords are entered. This allows for better targeting of users already interested in the respective business.Although the AdWords service is quite user friendly, it still requires certain know-how. Some inexperienced companies input too many keywords trying to achieve a maximum number of clicks. This, however, costs more and still doesn’t guarantee that users will get attracted to their business.

I have selected several advice from experts in the field that could be helpful if you decide to use Google’s advertising service for bringing quality traffic to a website.

How to start

Before starting, you have to realize an important thing:

“The successful application of AdWords requires much effort, but could turn out to be a complete waste of time. Thus, you have to make sure that this service fits your priorities”

Chris Conn, founder of MightyNest.com says.

His company uses AdWords for attracting potential consumers to online stores.

“Since this kind of activity is replacing the priority of other activities, you have to make sure that the effort is worth.”

Here is what Timothy Thomas, a business consultant of small companies in creating successful AdWords campaigns, adds in this connection:

Instead of spending money from your budget to learn how the AdWords magic works, you better use the tools that go with the standard service pack.

In his view, companies have to stick to their standard Search Engine Optimization practices if they want to retain high ranking results, and only when this is established, to embark on an optimization using AdWords.

It is not advisable to purchase advertisements in areas where you have already ranked high in the engine results. You should instead come up with the unique things about your business, trying to incorporate them as much as you can in the keywords. Only then you could pay for higher positions in search engines.

AdWords and SEO go hand in hand

It turns out that the efficient linking of the traditional SEO to AdWords campaigns is extremely important to all small business companies. According to Jordan Schaffel, co-founder of Say It Visually – a company that creates animated video materials for training and demonstration purposes – the existing efforts in SEO are of paramount importance to the success of AdWords campaigns.

Recently we had to overhaul our website by incorporating AdWords. We entitled all our videos and tagged them according to the idea of our AdWords campaign. It this way we could rely on a significant number of clicks which could bring us profit in AdWords. Had we allowed ourselves to drop out one or two pieces of the SEO jigsaw, we would have defiantly registered significant losses.

Schaffel shares.

Schaffel’s strategy is based on the fact that if Google can find an equivalent of your advertisement in some of the users’ requests, you will profit without having to pay anything in return. Thus, if companies have to do something, it is to try to limit the range of Google’s ability to present their advertisement “naturally”.  This is why if the keywords used in AdWords are embedded into your site, you already “control” the situation and you don’t need to pay Google for advertising.

Optimization

Even if your AdWords campaign is quite successful, further improvement is always possible. Timothy Thomas, for instance, recounted the story of an engineering company specializing in LED lightning production. The clients of this company were professionals, but what they were looking for would often end up with undesirable results such as Christmas lightning, Xbox controllers and LED television sets that displaced their own advertisements. As an experienced consultant, Thomas began eliminating the keywords that obstructed the process. He began inputting keywords that could appear only in specific phrases and in this way the unwanted results of the “negative” to the campaign words such as “Christmas”, “vehicle”, “Playstation”, as well as all versions of the word “television” were gradually blocked.

According to Thomas, such strategies are of paramount importance to the masterful use of AdWords, because unless at least 15 minutes a day are allotted to the “adjustment” of AdWords, such an advertising campaign can literally “swallow” a company’s budget.

Posted in Adwords Campaigns, Pay-Per-Click

Pay per click advertising vs SEO

Apr27
2012 Written by admin

In spite of spending most of my time doing website search engine optimization (SEO), I do admit that the Pay per click advertising (PPC) service has its place in the online marketing. PPC has certain advantages when used side by side with SEO services, especially in the following cases:

New web sites

I have mentioned this before too – on many occasions you can get faster result from Pay per click ads, and this is the reason why you might want to use it upon launching brand new websites, because the extremely important Link Popularity, a key factor in Search Engine Optimization ,takes much longer to gain momentum.

Seasonal sales or special offers

If you have products that you need to get rid of fast such as last moment reservations for plane tickets or concert tickets, or if your warehouse is full of items, with approaching expiration date, pay per click advertising is a good way for offering a fast online bid instantaneously. And the good part is that you can remove the offering from the online space the moment it gets outdated.

Geographical location or profile targeting

Most online advertising networks are set to target users in special geographical zones. Facebook’s Pay per click network, however, allows you to target users based on certain criteria from their profiles. For instance, if a use’s Relationship status is “Engaged” he or she is an appropriate target for vendors of wedding dresses or accessories.

Testing

PPC advertising is a good way for testing people’s feedback on different page layouts, various selections of texts, pictures, etc.

Highly competitive phrases

As we all know, the number of positions available at the top of the search engine results is limited. And if you are targeting highly competitive key words and phrases, and your competition has optimized their website really good, you might have to use Pay per Click for making your site visible. This is often the case with small local businesses that are trying to compete with bigger-scale national businesses.

Content Management Systems and online stores

Most of the Content Management Systems and online stores produced lately are SEO-friendly enough, still you can bump upon helpless cases. And regardless of what product names you insert, or how you embed them in the pages, they simply won’t be ranked well by search engines. I advise such sites to be made with SEO-friendly software, however, it is quite possible that you lack either the time or the money to do this. In such cases the PPC service comes handy again, at least until you manage to reprogram your site with a suitable software.

Where did the organic results disappeared?

The increasingly blurring boundaries of the “universal search”, which displays results such as Google Places, YouTube videos, Images, etc, pushes organic results to the bottom of the page. Pay per click advertising can display your site upper on the page, where more clicks are generated.

Control-obsessed customers

Sometimes it is hard to convince your clients that they should use certain key words in the texts of their pages because this is required for good Search Engine Optimization. Instead they they might simply want to put a large image on the page without any text whatsoever. In such cases, PPC is the only way you can drive decent traffic to the website.

Bing and other similar platforms

Although you might find it hard to believe, there is life outside Google. And even if you are doing really well in Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page – the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query), you might still be lagging behind in Bing. This is why the use of Pay-per-Click advertising through Bing adCenter is a good way to make your website visible in the Microsoft network. Especially given that Microsoft has lately been testing integrating its advertising network into Yahoo!.

All things considered, Pay-per-Click advertising and SEO optimization are not rivals, they are simply two strongly efficient strategies that could be used simultaneously for achieving a really successful and convincing online marketing campaign.

 

Posted in Pay-Per-Click

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Mar26
2012 Written by admin

Basic Introduction

To help Google and other search engines better understand what is your website for and to have it rank well in the search engine results page you would need to learn to do Search Engine Optimization. This is definitely not the easiest thing to do and each and every day these optimization methods become a bit more dynamic and interesting based on how social media and online marketing evolve.

There are various ways to optimize a site and every SEO “expert” will tell you their own method of doing it.  I know everyone has different views on search engine optimization – it’s become a bit complicated with so many ideas on what is ethical and what is not ethical in the search engine game.  The basic rule for an ethical SEO technique, and I believe all experts would agree on this, is to always keep the user in mind. If you optimize keeping people in mind across the board then your employing what is called a white hat search engine optimization strategy and the search engines will probably rank you well.

If your hoping to trick and cheat the search engines by spamming, and building web pages for the sake of links while damaging the users online experience then your probably employing black hat SEO techniques.

When you think of SEO you have to look at what you have (Your Site) and figure out:

  • Where you want it to be in the search engines?
  • What keywords do you want to target?
  • What is your competition?

Among a few other criteria you need to follow. Once you’ve determined the answers to these questions then you have to follow a plan to get yourself there.

I’ve launched a few sites and for each one of them I’ve always employed some sort of search engine optimizing technique. My main goal for every site I launch is to land my links within the first three pages of the SERP’s(Search Engine Result Pages) and that should be your goal as well.

SEO is an extensive and continuously growing strategy but here are a few things you should focus on from an SEO perspective while building, launching and running your site.

Domain Names

It’s very important that you choose a good domain name; the best way to choose the appropriate domain name is choose something that is fairly easy to remember, it’s keyword relevant(make sure your main keyword is somewhere in the domain name), and finally make sure it’s easy to remember.

Keywords

Keywords are the meat and potatoes that surround search engine optimizing. They determine your ranking in the results therefore its important to keep in mind that choosing appropriate keywords is a crucial step in any SEO process.

Content Optimization

Just like choosing the right keywords is important, dropping them on your pages at a decent frequency is one of the most important elements of SEO – this is what helps the search engines determine that your site is relevant and relates to the keywords your attempting to rank well on.

Link Building

Think of the days when you were in high school, the popular kids got the most attention out of all the students in the school. Search Engines kind of work in the same way; Search Engines will judge and rank your site based on all of the SEO elements above but the amount of quality inbound and outbound links to and from your site will help them to determine that you should be high on the search engine ranks.

The idea behind this concept is that if you have a good amount of good quality links to your website then your blog/site/content must be important within that niche. The end result and winning prize – a great rank in the results.

For those that have no idea about SEO, and for those that have learned some basic principles behind it, it’s time to SEO the crap out of your site so that you may rank fairly well in the search engine results. If you still find it a bit complicated you can always use the service of a professional Search Engine Optimizer

Posted in SEO

Guaranteed SEO ranking results

Mar23
2012 Written by admin

Cany You guarantee SEO rankings? This is a question pondered by the Search Engine Optimization elite and new SEO start-up companies. It is entirely possible to get reasonably good rankings for SEO clients, or else Search Engine Optimizers would be out of business in a hurry.

The “Remains of the Day,” part however is the ‘results guarantee’. How many SEOers are willing to put their money where their mouth is? There is a well-known “gremlin” component in the search engine world that sometimes shoots your ranking results in the foot. How can you guarantee the client the product they paid for in the face of this “uncertainty principal”… and maintain your integrity as a Professional SEO Company?

The answer is easy when you start thinking about it. The components of high ranking from an SEO Company are these:

  1. How experienced is this SEO Team?
  2. How much past success have they enjoyed?
  3. How is this SEO Company motivated for getting and maintaining high rankings for their clients?

Motivating SEO Results

Flagging results for your client’s campaign may stem from the fact that, with most SEO models, your SEO Team just isn’t that motivated to ethically push for great client results. For most SEO Companies, client campaigns are prioritized as they come in the door. Many are forgotten after their initial optimization motions are in place. How can an SEO company with this type of modus operandi guarantee results? The answer is THEY CAN NOT. There is no incentive for guaranteed results.

Like any other sales business, how do you motivate great results? The answer is money.

Guaranteed SEO Results are Possible

With the model of SEO from some companies there is motivation. It’s called Pay-for-Performance. Those companies provides organic SEO service in two steps:

  1. An affordable set-up fee.
  2. After the initial setup fee, the Monthly Pay-for-Performance model kicks in

The guarantee is this: If a company doesn’t provide 10 top-ten rankings for the client’s approved keywords that month, the client gets that month free. The monthly fee is actually based on the performance. That’s motivation! The client pays for high rankings.  This just may be the closest thing to a win-win situation in the SEO Industry.

Posted in SEO

Importance of meta keywords and description tags

Mar23
2012 Written by admin

In the heyday of search engine optimization, about 10 years ago, the Meta keyword and Meta description tags were the indisputable ring leaders in a mixed bag of search engine optimization techniques. In those days Yahoo was the dominant player in search followed by AltaVista. In both cases, a Web page’s ranking was determined largely by on-page factors such as body text, Title tags and certain HTML tags including Meta and ALT tags.

When Google entered the search landscape back in September 1998 (in beta) the concept of backlinks was new to most SEOs. In fact, we were still submitting websites to search engines by hand in those days via submission forms and it wasn’t always free (and still isn’t, if you’re Yahoo).

Eight years later, it’s hard to believe that was ever the case. Link placement has completely superseded the need to hand submit to the search engines. It has also overshadowed Meta keyword and description tags as the most important component of SEO after the Title tag.

Since search engines, Google in particular, place a lot of relevancy on solid inbound links and overall keyword relevancy of a website (e.g., thematic relevancy) rather than focusing just on a particular web page, the value of Meta tags has come under fire. So, are Meta keyword and description tags necessary when practicing good SEO?

The short answer is, yes.

Meta description

Google uses the Meta description tag as the default description for your site’s search listing in their search results page if you are not listed in The Open Directory. Thus, this is a rare opportunity for you to “control” how your website is represented in Google and also promote your company or product using the language you want.

Also, if you do not have a Meta description tag or an Open Directory listing, Google will take the first text it finds on your website. If your site is mainly image-based or has a lot of code on the page, this text may be the first string of words in your navigation bar or privacy information, etc. If you have no text at all on your home page, Google will not display any description for your site in its search results, and you should avoid this.

Meta keywords

Meta keywords are important because they help reinforce the content on a specific page. Meta keywords should be unique to each page of your website, never contain duplicate terms (keyword stuffing) and they should absolutely mimic the general content of the page. The Meta keywords tag should be no more than 160 characters long (syntax and specific recommendations for each tag will be addressed in the next post). Meta tags are also a useful way for boosting keyword relevancy when a page has very little text (e.g., with an image-heavy page or one that is in Flash).

It is important to remember that Meta tags are just one component of a good Search Engine Optimization  strategy. When used in conjunction with things like frequent content updates, backlink building and search-engine friendly web site structure, Meta tags can help you achieve good search engine ranking.

Posted in SEO

Microsoft adCenter advertising network

Mar23
2012 Written by admin

Formerly known as MSN adCenter, the Microsoft adCenter is an online advertising network that uses Bing and Yahoo Search! to distribute ads . With state of the art tools and customized audience research capabilities, it is a direct competitor to Google AdWords. This is because not only do you have the classic pay per click advertising model made famous by Google, but Microsoft has also developed its own analytical tools that help an advertiser target potential customers, track ad performance, and much more.

So far, according to a study done earlier this year, adCenter ads converts clicks to customers at a rate that is 57% higher than Google and 48% higher than Yahoo! Search Marketing. Further, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, Microsoft supports 94 million visitors a month, which is a highly qualified audience, with 81% making online purchases in the past six months.

One of the major complaints advertisers have with pay-per-click programs is the inability to choose to whom they are advertising, resulting in unqualified traffic. This will make all the difference in being able to make the sale or not. With tools available like demographic predictions, Microsoft hopes to be able to bring more targeted ads overall than either of the other competing engines can. Can they succeed?

Microsoft’s adCenter information page states, “For instance, if you sell running shoes, you want an audience who is interested in running shoes to see your ad and take action, which may result in the audience clicking on your search ad, visiting your web site, and buying a pair of running shoes. Conversely, you would not want someone who is interested in buying horseshoes to see your ad and take a similar course of action because that likely not result in a sale, but the click on your ad by this person would still cost you.”

There have been multiple complaints however; some have said that the Microsoft’s adCenter bids on keywords can reach much higher levels than Google’s, without seeing much improvement upon ranking in the sponsored listings. Further, Microsoft utilizes about 5 results per search engine results page (SERP) on the right hand side, with one or two results at the top, compared to Google’s 8 ads on the side, and up to 3 ads at the top. Customers are complaining that it is too difficult to reach a top position for their ad, which doesn’t do them much good if they cannot save money over Google’s program.

Others have abandoned the program due to lack of relevant contextual advertising that Microsoft’s press releases claimed was far superior to AdWords. There have been many updates and upgrades since the beta program went live after Microsoft’s contractual obligations with Overture/Yahoo! Search Marketing ended in June, and results have improved much more overall. But there may still be many more bugs.

When doing a search in Microsoft for “discount apple desktop pcs” there is an ad for Alienware and one for plasma TVs, which hold little relevance for me in regards to my search. Another search with keywords “natural herbal supplements” show two almost identical ads, one for dealtime.com and one for shopping.com, that are titled “Save Time and Money”. The sad part is that so far, I had only done searches on four keyword phrases, and two out of the four searches provided multiple irrelevant results in advertising. That doesn’t look so great for Microsoft so far.

What about click fraud? According to several reports, click fraud was absolutely no better for adCenter than for Google, even with the rumored addition of DeepMetrix, which is a web analytics firm that competes with WebTrends and other firms.

It only takes five minutes to activate an account, then it is very similar to what Google’s AdWords program has to offer. Fortunately, the analytics part of the Microsoft program is extremely simple to use, and in some people’s opinion, far easier to track with conversion tools than Google’s.

Posted in Pay-Per-Click

Google improves Adwords system

Mar17
2012 Written by admin

Once again, Adwords proves to be the most trustworthy online advertising network. An announcement has been posted on Google’s official blog that 130 million advertising campaigns have been blocked and 800 thousand advertisers have been banned for not complying to Adwords Policies and abusing the network. This will help legitimate businesses to reach consumers.

Google warns that the measures against misleading ads will be stricter.  This will lead to lowering the amount of scammed, misled and angry online users.

Improvements

Here are the main improvements that Google made to allow for counterfeit ads to be removed even before being published live:

  • Improvements have been made to the algorithm that monitors for counterfeit ads, to monitor for a wider range of sensitive keywords, and to better recognize the ones that are suspected in violating Adwords’ policies;
  • Based on this special algorithm, suspected ads will be marked for review by a real person before their actual release. This process has now been sped up by optimizing internal procedures.
  • Google’s Adwords team aims at taking actions within 24 hours of receiving a complaint about a misleading ad.
  • Policies have been updated and now require specific businesses, mostly in the loan area, to provide official paperwork as a proof of rates and loan rates claimed in their ads.

The results are showing that this campaign is successful and the number of bad ads is declining. In 2011 the percentage of scam ads has been decreased by more than 50% compared to 2010. Of these numbers 150 thousand accounts have been disabled with the help of Google’s improved detection system.

How to help

Google encourages advertisers to strictly review Adwords program policies. The program policies are to protect the internet users and keep the ad network safe. On their Online Safety site Google provides tips and advices, for online users, to avoid internet scams. If you have been scammed or encounter a counterfeit ad you can report it here.

Posted in Adwords Campaigns

Cost per Click and Cost per Mile

Mar15
2012 Written by admin

Google AdWords works on the bidding principle as a huge advertising auction. Every advertiser submits their bid for displaying their ad. An automatic system monitors, distributes and displays the ads of different advertisers through an operation based on many factors.

One of these factors is Cost. Based on it you can choose two types of bidding:

Cost Per Click (CPC) bidding

Within CPC bidding payment takes place only after a click on an ad unit has been realized. Many advertisers prefer this way of bidding because it gives control over the objectives, set by a certain advertising campaign. On the downside, many people fear ‘false’ clicks done by competitor or a software. But they shouldn’t. As a serious and distinguished company Google has been taking all measures to prevent false clicks with the assistance of special software and even by employing real people to monitor the process. There have been many occasions in which Google has refunded money for registered and charged clicks.

There are two modes for Cost Per Click bidding in a single AdWords advertising campaign:

  • Automatic CPC mode -  Automatic system that bids aiming a maximum number of clicks until the daily budget is realized. This mode provides a possibility for input of a price limit, which prevents exceeding of the set maximum Cost Per Clik.
  • Manual CPC mode – the maximum cost is input manually for every key word and/or advertisement group. This mode is rather intensive and time-consuming; however it allows of AdWords advertising campaign fine tuning.

Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM)

Withing CPM your bid and payment is based on every 1000 impressions your ad. This type of bid is often used for advertising campaigns, targeted at branding and increasing the popularity of brands or companies and is possible when the Google AdWords advertising campaign is directed to the so called Google Display Network.

Posted in Adwords Campaigns

Google Adwords campaign management

Mar15
2012 Written by admin

Many companies offer professional management of Adwords campaigns. With their assistance, your advertising will be both effective and inexpensive.

Here is a list of the services most online marketing companies offer related to advertising through AdWords:

Professional planning

  • Defining the objectives of the campaign;
  • Analysis of you website and its Google positioning;
  • Research of the competition in the relevant market niche;
  • Analysis, research, and choice of the most appropriate keywords and phrases for your campaign;
  • Structuring of the advertising campaign based on the types of products and services, and the relevant keywords;
  • Analysis of the targeting – geographic, linguistic, demographic, etc.

Adwords account setup

  • Campaign creation;
  • Budget input;
  • Campaign targeting;
  • Account structuring based on campaigns, ad groups, keywords.

Management and optimization of advertising campaigns

  • Monitoring of the implementation of the set objectives of the advertising campaign;
  • Management of price fluctuations;
  • Optimization and actualization of keywords, advertising messages, prices and daily budget;
  • Management of the ad display timing;
  • Changes in targeting and settings of the campaign.

Reports

  • Full report on the advertising budget spent;
  • Analysis and interpretation of the accumulated results;
  • Consultations, related to the report data and to changes of the advertising campaign;
  • Website optimization advice.

Detailed statistics

  • Full access to statistics;
  • Results measurement;
  • Weekly report provisioning;
  • Comparison of results to those of previous periods;
  • Analysis of results, aimed at adopting measures for achieving the advertising objectives;
  • Additional automatic reports, on request.
Posted in Adwords Campaigns
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