As an experiment, eBay paused their paid ads for the keyword ‘ebay’, and found that the reduction in clicks from their Google paid ads was made up for by an increase in clicks from their Google organic listings. eBay therefore concluded that bidding on your brand name is a complete waste of money.

Wrong. If, like eBay, you simply provide an ad message for your brand name as a mere navigational link (i.e. so that your simply appear in the paid listings), you will probably notice that any increase in paid clicks from your brand keywords is met with an equal decrease in organic (natural) clicks from your brand keywords, with no added value being created.

However, paid ads for brand terms can create significant value for your business if the execution of your brand ad strategy is more involved than simply providing a mere navigational link, for example:

1. Messaging Control

   Run promotions and specials that the customer might not have known about.

2. Landing Page Control

   Take visitors to a landing page of your choosing for offers, promotions, testing of conversion rates etc.

3. Sitelink Ad Extensions

   Use Google’s sitelink ad extensions in your paid ads to promote parts of your website which are important but are not appearing well in your organic listings.

4. Immediacy

   Activate and pause your brand ad messages and landing pages quickly.

5. Scheduling

   Schedule different ad messages for your brand to run on different days of the week, or different hours of the day, using Google’s ad scheduling – great for time-sensitive offers, day of week promotions, product launches, new store openings etc.

6. Geo-Targeting

   Show different location specific messages based on the location of the searcher – great for businesses whose prices depend on the location, or advise people in a certain location of a new store opening near them.

7. Price Discrimination

   Provide special offers, discounts, or coupon codes only to the geographical areas of your choice – searchers in other locations would be none the wiser.

8. High Impact

   Use brand ads on Google to cut through the noise of your website and communicate a desired message of your choice in a place where all imagery and clutter is removed, and all customers have to process are 25-35 character messages in a standard Google font.

9. First Touch Point

   Use brand ads to push a desired message at the first touch point in the visitor’s engagement session with your business (their search for your brand on Google).

10. Website Savings

    Save on expensive design and content changes to your website by instead communicating a promotional message in your Google brand ads.

11. Message Testing

    Rotate different styles and wording of messaging in your brand ads, to see which messages result in the best click through rate and conversion rates – these insights can then be used across your website and business.

12. Message Consistency

    Use your Google brand ads to maintain consistency of messaging across all customer touch points with your business – very useful if your company is losing its voice.

13. Message Reassurance

    Use your brand ads to reinforce your offline messaging or promotions – great for businesses who also advertise on TV or radio.

 

None of these strategies are possible by relying on Google organic listings for your brand name. If, like eBay, you simply provide a generic navigational link as a paid ad for your brand name, and fail to realise the full potential of paid ads for crafting and influencing the behaviour of your new and existing customers who search for your business Google, then you will probably come to the same dire conclusions as eBay – that brand ads don’t work.

However, if you can be creative, intelligent, and strategic, your brand ads can create enough additional value to your business to more than make up for any additional rise in click costs:

• If you’re an airline, why not promote your daily fare specials when someone searches Google for your brand? If you’re struggling to sell seats on your Melbourne to Auckland flights, why not use your brand ads to promote Auckland specials to searchers in Melbourne. Why not show tailored promotional messages for people in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin…

• If you’re a restaurant, why not advise customers of your meal deals for that evening? Customers searching for your restaurant on Google might be interested to read, ‘Steak Night Tonight!’ And if they’re searching on Tuesday but booking for Wednesday, they still might be pleased to know of your Tuesday steak night spectacular when they’re hungry next week.

• If you’re an established ecommerce brand, and want to promote your new product lines, why not create a set of sitelink ad extensions to raise awareness of those product lines? Making major changes to your homepage to promote your these new product lines might be expensive and time consuming, so your brand can be a great quick fire strategy to drive extra traffic to your new pages.

 
Don’t blame the tool, blame the workman.

Brand ads on Google are just another tool PPC advertisers have at their disposal. Don’t just show a generic brand ad, so that you simply ‘appear’ in Google’s paid results when someone searches for your brand. Instead, realise that someone searching for your brand probably already knows about your business, and either wants to visit your website or find out more about you. This is your opportunity to influence your new and existing customers behaviour at their first touch point. Use paid brand ads on Google to connect and engage with your audience and stand out from your competition. Be unique and interesting with your brand ads, and show eBay how a profitable return on investment can be achieved.

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Alan Mitchell is a Google AdWords PPC consultant, based in Melbourne, Australia, with a proven track record at improving return on investment (ROI) from Google AdWords. Find out how Alan can help your business today.

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However, when analysing your search query report, it can all too often be overwhelming. It can be hard to know where to start. You find yourself falling victim to analysis paralysis, and give up without making any tangible improvements to your campaigns. So to help mine your search queries for new long tail keywords, below are 3 techniques I find incredibly useful:

1. Theme Analysis

Theme analysis involves extracting one, two, three, and four word themes from your search query data, then compiling a frequency report for each theme to compare their performance. For example, if you are a retailer of artificial grass, there might be a lot of very different searches which all mention the words ‘real looking’, but get hidden in the data when you look at each different search query individually.

Pulling out individual themes, therefore, lets you see how searches which contained the words ‘real looking’ words performed as a whole. It’ll let you see how searches which contained the words ‘drought resistant’, ‘low maintenance’, or ‘waterproof’ performed as a whole. It’ll let you see how searches which contained the word ‘cheap’ compared to searches which contained the word ‘discount’, and how searches which contained a location performed versus searches which did not. Amazingly powerful stuff.

By comparing the conversion rate / cost per enquiry / return on investment for each theme, you can determine which themes performed well, and which themes performed poorly. You can also see which themes were more popular than others, giving you a priority of importance for expanding your campaigns.

Armed with these insights, you can then expand your campaigns to include more long tail keyword permutations, and create more targeted ad messages to cater for these new long-tail keyword themes.

For example, if you identify ‘waterproof’ as a popular and promising keyword theme in terms of click volume, conversion rate, cost per conversion, or return on investment, you can then create new long-tail keywords and new targeted ad messages based around ‘waterproof’ variations.

Since you’re using actual search query performance data, you should be in a better position to make more informed decisions about new keywords to create compared to a less informed strategy without any search query performance data, which in theory should help to increase the performance of your campaigns.

2. Broad Match Generation

Broad match generation involves using your broad match keywords as a mechanism to generate new exact and phrase match keywords, in an endless cycle of generation and expansion.

Your broad match keywords are kept in a separate campaign to your exact and phrase match keywords. Search queries which have then been matched to one of your broad match keywords are either added as new exact and phrase match keywords (if they are relevant), or added as negative keywords (if they are not relevant).

Your new keywords are then also added as negative keywords to your broad match campaign, preventing those searches from being matched to your broad match keywords in the future.

The only searches which should match to your broad match keywords are those which have not yet been added as exact, phrase, or negative keywords. Impressions and clicks to your broad match keywords should therefore reduce over time, giving you more control over your campaigns, and allowing you to create even more targeted ads to cater for your increased number of long-tail themes.

Over time, you should end up with an ever-expanding list of exact and phrase match keywords, and an ever-expanding list of negative keywords. The more you continue to generate and expand, the more your campaigns grow.

Broad match generation is a great method for larger Google AdWords campaigns which could benefit from a bit of strategy and direction.

3. The 10% Clicks Rule

The 10% Clicks Rule is a method of highlighting your keywords which are receiving a disproportionately high amount of broad-matched impressions or clicks, and could therefore benefit from having its search queries analysed.

By running a keyword report, filtering to show only your broad match keywords, and sorting from highest to lowest in terms of clicks and impressions, you can see which keywords are receiving a high number of clicks or impressions.

Once you have identified a keyword which is receiving a large number of clicks or impressions, run a search query report, and filter to show only the search queries which were matched to that keyword.

You can then determine whether each search query theme is relevant or irrelevant, and expand into new long-tail keywords and ads (if the theme is relevant), or add as new negative keywords (if the theme is not relevant).

The 10% Click Rule is therefore a great way to quickly and efficiently develop a prioritised strategy of where to focus your time and effort to generate the most impact to your campaigns. It’s not as comprehensive or effective as theme analysis or broad match generation at improving the long-tail nature of campaigns en masse, but can be very useful as a short-term technique to help quickly identify the weak points of a campaign.

Conclusion

Most Google PPC advertisers have a wealth of search query data at their fingertips, the majority of which goes unused. Mining your search query data without a clear strategy can be daunting and time-consuming, but with a clear strategy and process, such as using techniques such as theme analysis, broad match generation, and the 10% clicks rule outlined above, it is possible to translate your search queries gold into improved campaign profitability.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords campaign manager with a proven track record at improving the ROI of Google AdWords campaigns. Find out more about his approach to PPC marketing, or get in touch for a free analysis and review of your current Google AdWords strategy.

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Three years on, despite Google PPC marketing becoming more widespread among businesses in Australia (and arguably more competitive and expensive as a result), there still appears to be very few Australian businesses who provide high-targeted and tailored ad messages which cater from the growing long-tail of search. A huge amount of valuable keyword and search query data now exists for every PPC advertiser, but it appears that most PPC campaigns in Australia still consist of only a few hundred keywords and only a few hundred ad messages.

Due to the increasing popularity of Google, people are now typing a wide range of specific searches into Google, and are expecting more relevant and helpful search results and ads. However, when searching for these specific long-tail phrases, it appears that the general standard of PPC ads in Australia is very poor. For the search ‘sydney hotels near the rocks’, for example, notice how few PPC ads make any mention of The Rocks (a location in Sydney). The searcher has typed a specific phrase where location seems to be an important consideration, yet few Google PPC ads fully cater for their needs and requirements.

Similarly, looking at Google’s suggested searches for other travel-related phrases, it appears that the long-tail of search is very widespread. People are not only searching for holidays in a particular country, for example, but also searching for holidays from their town or city.

Notice below how the searcher has specified they are looking for Singapore holidays from Perth, yet only one PPC advertiser makes any mention whatsoever of Perth. Even the one ad which does, however, is promoting Perth hotels, which again is irrelevant and untargeted to the searcher’s needs and requirements.

The long-tail opportunity doesn’t just apply to locations. People are also searching by date, and expecting search results which are tailored to those dates. For example, notice below how not a single PPC advertiser make any mention of ‘October’ or ’2012′ in their ad messages. I imagine most travel service providers provide different prices and deals depending on the travel date, such as October 2012, yet few seem to translate these date-specific prices and specials into their PPC ad messaging. Again, a missed opportunity.

The long-tail of search is massive. People are not just searching for hotels in Melbourne. They are searching for hotels in Melbourne with spas, parking, indoor pools, free wifi, smoking rooms, and breakfast included. I imagine a large number of Melbourne hotels meet these requirements, yet you would not think so when searching on Google.

Hotels in Sydney with balcony rooms really need to get their PPC campaigns in order. They are missing a great opportunity to connect with potential customers on Google.

The same is true for Tahiti holiday providers and resorts with a child-friendly offering, or those which offer packages departing from the capital cities of Australia.

As we can see with the above examples, people are increasingly using Google to specify their exact needs and requirements. This suggests there are considerable opportunities for businesses in Australia who take the time and effort to fully cater for Google’s growing long-tail of search. So instead of displaying only a handful of ads and only a handful of keywords, your PPC campaign strategy needs to contain thousands of tailored ad messages and tens of thousands of relevant and well-organised keywords.

Although such a tailored long-tail campaign structure will obviously take more time and effort to setup and maintain than a simple campaign consisting of only a few hundred keywords and ads, a long-tail PPC strategy can deliver fantastic results in terms of increased click through rates (CTR), lower CPCs, and higher conversion rates. Considering the poor standard of Google PPC competition in Australia, a highly-tailored and comprehensive PPC strategy can be one of the most successful and financially rewarding marketing investments any Australian business can make.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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Google AdWords and Google Analytics provide fantastic free of charge functionalities for tracking, measuring, and evaluating the performance of your PPC and non-PPC marketing campaigns, helping you to make more informed decisions about how to improve your return on investment (ROI) from your online marketing activities.

Here we will explore 4 tracking opportunities, which could help you better understand and improve the return on investment (ROI) of your online marketing activities. Depending on your website, all 4 tracking methods may not be relevant, but most websites should look to implement at least two of the below.

1. AdWords Conversion Tracking

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking allows you see which of you Google AdWords campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads, and search queries are resulting in a desired action. When setting up conversion tracking, you specify what you are trying to measure (e.g. ‘signup’, ‘purchase’, ‘enquiry’ etc.), and you are provided with a piece of tracking code that should be place on your ‘thank you’ or ‘order confirmation’ page. Every time a conversion happens on your website, this conversion tracking code loads and sends data back to Google AdWords, allowing you to see which of your PPC keywords and ads are working better than others.

Example insight from this tracking method

• Being able to spot that your long-tail keywords are working better than your generic broad-match keywords, allowing you to adjust your click spending accordingly.

What to track

Conversion tracking is great for measuring the primary goal of your website. If your primary goal is an online sale, conversion tracking would be ideal for measuring online sales. If the primary purpose of your website is to generate leads, it would make sense that conversion tracking should measure your online enquiries. For websites which are more brand-based, you might instead want to measure an indicator of engagement such as the view of your store locator or ‘find out more’ page.

Pros

• Conversion data appears in all AdWords reports and AdWords Editor, making reporting and optimisation very efficient
• Conversion data can integrate with other Google AdWords functions, such as cost per acquisition (CPA) bidding and conversion optimizer
• Easy to implement

Cons

• Applies only to Google AdWords campaigns
• Difficult to distinguish between multiple different conversions, so is best used to measure only a single action
• Small 30 day cookie length, so sales or conversions after 30 days won’t be recorded

How to implement

Installing conversion tracking simply involves placing a piece of conversion tracking code on your order confirmation or thank you page. Instructions can be found here.

2. Google Analytics Goals

Unlike Google AdWords conversion tracking, where conversion data only applies to your Google AdWords campaigns, Google Analytics goals allow you to add conversion data to all of your Google Analytics reports.

This means that Google Analytics goals allow you to also track conversions of non-PPC traffic sources, such as Google organic search, Bing search, Yahoo search, and Facebook and YouTube referrals.

Since the release of the new Google Analytics version in 2011, it is now also possible to set up ‘event’ goals in Google Analytics, allowing you to track user interactions where there is no ‘thank you’ or ‘confirmation’ page. By placing a piece of JavaScript code on your videos, external links, or call-to-action buttons, you can track these user interactions (events) in Google Analytics.

Example insight from this tracking method

• Being able to measure whether Google PPC visitors are more likely to view the contact page, subscribe to your newsletter and click through to your Twitter account than Facebook PPC visitors, allowing you to assess Facebook PPC and adjust budgets accordingly.

What to track

Similarly to Google AdWords conversion tracking, you should look to set up goals that measure a desired user interaction (e.g. signup, registration, enquiry, view of the contact page etc). However, unlike Conversion Tracking, goal data for different goals are kept separate in your Google Analytics reports, allowing you to track up to 20 different goals and monitor each goal separately.

Pros

• Goal data applies to ALL traffic sources, not just PPC
• Up to 20 different goals can be created
• Easy to keep different goals separate in Google Analytics reports
• Easy to create reports which only show some of your goals
• Powerful event tracking lets you measure user interactions that do not involve the view of a page (e.g. video plays, signups through widgets, clicks on links to external websites such as Facebook and Twitter etc)
• 6 month cookie allows you to measure the value of a visitor long after they first visited

Cons

• Last-click attribution of goal data, so if a visitor originally found your website from PPC, and later returned via Google organic to make a purchase, the sale will be attributed to Google organic

How to implement

Once you have set up a Google Analytics account, adding goals is easy. If you have a thank you or order confirmation page, you can simply specify that this page represents an enquiry or purchase. No additional coding to your website is needed. Implementing events involves adding a line of JavaScript code to your video / widget / external link, but is still very simple to install and extremely powerful once set up. More information on installing goals can be found here, and installing events can be found here and here.

3. Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking

For ecommerce websites that allow visitors to make an online purchase, Google Analytics ecommerce tracking allows you to add sales and revenue data to your Google Analytics reports. Some additional coding to your website is required to define parameters such as sales, revenue, shipping, SKU, product / service name, but once implemented, will enable you to attribute dollar amounts to each of your Google Analytics reports.

Example insights from this tracking method

• Being able to see that your Australia-targeted PPC campaigns are delivering a 200% higher ROI than your US-targeted campaigns
• Being able to see that visitors from Twitter have a low conversion rate, but when they do make a purchase, they tend to have a higher average basket value

What to track

Ecommerce tracking is great for measuring sales and revenue, so only really applies to websites that allow visitors to make an online purchase.

Pros

• Allows you to attribute revenue data to each traffic source (Google PPC, Google organic, Facebook PPC, Twitter etc)
• Allows you to measure a RPC (revenue per click) metric, making it possible to determine how much a visitor from each traffic source is worth
• Allows quick and easy comparison of product performance / average basket value / ROI by traffic source, campaign, and keyword
• 6 month cookie allows you to measure the value of a visitor long after they first visited

Cons

• Like Google Analytics goals, ecommerce tracking uses last-click attribution, so if a visitor names multiple visits before purchasing, revenue will be allocated to the most recent traffic source, not the source which originally delivered the visitor

How to implement

Ecommerce tracking involves adding some additional coding on your website to define values such as quantity, revenue, tax, shipping cost, SKU, and product description. Instructions for installing ecommerce tracking can be found here and here.

4. Google Analytics Custom Variables

Google AdWords conversion tracking has a maximum cookie length of 30 days, which means that if a sale or signup happens from a Google PPC keyword after 30 days, it will not be attributed to that Google PPC keyword.

Although Google Analytics has a longer default cookie length of 6 months, if a Google PPC visitor returns to the website via another recognized source (e.g. Google organic, referral etc), then the newest referring source will overwrite Google PPC as the referrer, and receive credit for the sale (last click attribution). This means that Google AdWords conversion tracking data and Google Analytics goal tracking data will never be exactly the same, while purchases after 30 days will not being attributed to the source which delivered the first-click.

To overcome these problems, it is possible to define custom variables in Google Analytics, so that any conversions or revenue that arises from a Google PPC ad gets assigned to Google PPC, regardless of whether the visitor later goes on to make a returning visit from another traffic source. This will allow more accurate measurement of conversions and revenue from Google PPC ads (or any other traffic source) up to 6 months after the visitor clicked on your ad.

If your website requires users to sign up, you can even track revenue if the visitor later returns to the website via a different computer. By creating a custom variable which collects the visitor’s email address (or username), and by tagging your Google AdWords destination URLs with this custom variable, you can then assume that any purchase or revenue from usernames or email addresses which have this custom variable must have come from a Google PPC ad.

Example insight from this tracking method

• Being able to measure exactly how much revenue came from you PPC campaigns long after your 30 day free trial has finished

What to track

Custom variable tracking is great for measuring the long-term value of visitors where your product or service may have a purchase lag time of more than 30 days. It’s also great for free trials, where sales are unlikely to occur until after the free trial has ended.

Pros

• Allows you to determine long-term value of PPC marketing
• If the first step of your conversion process is to get visitors to sign up, you can also measure revenue from PPC signups even if the visitor purchases via a different computer

Cons

• You’ll need to create some custom reports in Google Analytics to view the custom variable data, although once this is set up, the report is saved and easily accessible
• Involves some additional coding to be installed on your website
• Parameters need to be added to your PPC destination URLs

How to implement

To implement custom variables in Google Analytics, you’ll need to install some additional coding on your website, and tag your PPC URLs with these custom variables. Instructions for installing custom variables in Google Analytics can be found here.

Conclusion

Taking the time and effort to implement useful tracking is a worthwhile investment to set the foundations more accurate measurement of your website performance. The above 4 methods will provide more than enough tracking insight for all but the most complex of websites, and will allow more intelligent and informed decisions about how to improve your ROI from your PPC marketing.

So consider the primary and secondary objectives of your website, and look to install conversion tracking, goal tracking, ecommerce tracking, and custom variable tracking as soon as possible. Once you get used to having an abundance of useful and informative data at your fingertips, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.

And while most pay per click (PPC) advertisers are probably already doing a fair job at targeting a large number of relevant searchers through their existing keyword lists, there are massive opportunities for PPC advertisers who take the time to research thousands more keywords than their competitors.

Let’s find out why.

1. More Impressions

To illustrate the first reason, let’s consider Google’s phrase match for a moment. By bidding on the keyword ‘sony bravia tv’, and setting it to phrase match, you are essentially saying to Google:

“Show my ad whenever someone mentions the word ‘sony bravia tv’ in their search query”.

The job of phrase match is to show your ads for searches that mention your keyword phrase. You might therefore think this will enable your ads to appear whenever someone mentions the phrase ‘sony bravia tv’ in their search query.

Wrong.

Just because you have chosen to bid on the keyword ‘sony bravia tv’, does not mean your ad is guaranteed to show for any search containing the phrase ‘sony bravia tv’. You are competing with thousands of other advertisers for Google’s search results page real estate, and Google can only show a finite number of ads at any one time (10-12).

When deciding which ads to show, Google will display the ads that are most likely to generate a high click through rate (CTR), and those that have a relatively high Quality Score.

So when someone searches for ‘sony bravia 50 inch tv black’, PPC advertisers who have chosen to bid on a keyword close to ‘sony bravia 50 inch tv black’, and are able to display an ad which is relevant to Sony Bravia 50 inch TVs, is more likely to be awarded the chance to appear on Google’s search results page, than your generic keyword ‘sony bravia tv’, which triggers a more generic ad message.

The percentage of impressions your keywords receive for all ‘available’ searches is counted in Google’s Impression Share metric. The higher your Impression Share, the higher the percentage of available searches in which your ads appear.

The crucial point is this – by researching thousands of relevant keywords, all other things equal, you are more likely to show for a greater number of relevant searches. By researching thousands of keywords, your impressions and click volume will increase considerably.

2. Increased Relevancy

The second benefit of having a comprehensive keyword list is increased relevancy.

If you allowed a huge number of very different search terms to match to a single keyword ‘sony bravia tv’, your ad messages will have to be somewhat generic to cater for the wide range of different search terms. Your ‘sony bravia tv’ ad may appear on Google for searches such as ‘sony bravia 40 inch’, ‘sony bravia 42 inch’, and ‘black sony bravia 52 inch’, so your ad needs to be generic enough to be cater for all these very different searches.

On the other hand, if you had separate keywords and ads for ‘sony bravia 40 inch’, sony bravia 42 inch’, and ‘black sony bravia 52 inch’, you can provide more relevant and tailored ad messages to each search requirement. For example, whenever someone searches for ‘sony bravia 40 inch’, your ad message could mention ’40 inch’ and take visitors directly through to the ‘sony bravia 40 inch’ products page on your website. Similarly, if the searcher is looking for ’42 inch’ or ’52 inch’ Sony Bravia TVs, you ads and landing pages can be more tailored to these phrases.

Under a more comprehensive keyword and ad message strategy, click through rates will increase, as your ads appear more relevant to the searcher’s specific requirements. Quality Score will also increase, resulting in lower cost per click (CPC) prices. And since the user journey is more relevant, efficient and targeted, conversion rates are also likely to increase.

The crucial point is this – by researching thousands of relevant keywords, you can display thousands of tailored ads, and realize the benefits of higher CTR, lower CPCs, and higher return on investment.

3. Better Measurement

The third and arguably most important benefit of having a comprehensive set of keywords is better measurement.

Even through your keyword ‘sony bravia tv’ may be phrase matched to searches such as ‘sony bravia tv deals’ and ‘cheap sony bravia tv’, having thousands of different keywords in your Google AdWords campaigns will allow better measurement and analysis of different search terms.

Even if we ignore for a moment the benefits of increased relevancy (point 2 above), let’s see how separating out your keywords can provide an increased amount of insight into how different types of keywords perform.

SCENARIO 1:

In scenario 1 (below), suppose your keyword ‘sony bravia tv’ receives 6,000 clicks and generates 60 sales, resulting an a conversion rate of 1.0%. It’s delivering a good return on investment, so you decide to keep the keyword running without making any changes.

SCENARIO 2:

Now consider scenario 2, where your 6,000 clicks are now spread out over a greater number of keywords. Like scenario 1, your keywords continue to deliver a total of 60 sales.

However, unlike scenario 1, since you have multiple keywords, you can now see exactly where your sales are coming from. You can see that the keyword ‘sony bravia tv deals’ is performing very well, achieving a conversion rate of 1.6%, while people looking for ‘cheap sony bravia tvs’ tend to convert very poorly (conversion rate of only 0.4%).

You can then take these findings, adjust bids and budgets accordingly, and carry out further analysis as to why searches containing the word ‘deals’ perform considerably better than searches containing the word ‘cheap’. Remember – without splitting out your keywords, this would not have been possible.

The crucial point is this – by researching thousands of relevant keywords, your campaign performance data will be spread over a greater number of keywords, allowing more insightful analysis and optimisation. You can filter out poor performers, push high performers, identify opportunities for keyword expansion, and ultimately deliver a higher return on investment for your PPC marketing budget.

Conclusion

When researching keywords for your Google AdWords campaigns, don’t think:

“I only need to add generic keywords such as ‘sony bravia tv’ and ‘sony bravia televisions’ – everything else such as ‘discount sony bravia tv’ and ‘40 inch sony bravia tv free shipping’ will automatically match to my generic keywords”.

Instead, think:

“I need to add as many long-tail keywords as possible, so I can better see how each type of keyword is performing and provide more relevant and tailored ad messages”.

The best campaigns are those that contain a huge number of relevant medium and long-tail keywords, targeting searches containing differing amounts of qualification. The best campaigns are those that are structured across thousands of granular ad groups, so that thousands of tailored ad messages can be presented. The best campaigns are those that aim to maximise relevancy, engagement, and chance of conversion at each stage of the buying cycle.

When you think you have finally created the ultimate Google AdWords campaign, think again.

It’s All Relative

Since CPC prices are often closely linked to the potential profitability of a sale from that keyword, the CPC price is often a mute point. A ‘bad credit history remortgage’ could be worth $15,000 profit to a remortgage broker, so having CPCs in excess of $50.00 can deliver a strong return on investment.

On the other hand, the keyword ‘New York weather’ has little commercial intention, so keywords such as this tend to benefit from low CPCs.

While this relativity of CPC prices makes CPC comparisons across sectors rather meaningless, most PPC advertisers would jump at the chance to pay lower CPCs. So below are 4 strategies I’ve found useful for achieving lower CPCs, while still maintaining a strong conversion rate.

Source: Wordstream

1. Use Long Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are those highly-specific, infrequently searched-for phrases such as ‘all inclusive holidays to Paris from Sydney’, which turn up in your search query report. Since they tend to have less advertiser competition, they can be considerably cheaper than more generic keywords such as ‘Paris holidays’.

What’s more, since people making long-tail searchers have arguably carried out the large majority of their pre-purchase research, and are often further along in the buying cycle, long-tail searches can have a considerably higher conversion rate.

Cheaper CPCs and higher conversion rates were exactly what I found when analysing search queries containing different numbers of words. Searches containing 4 or more words performed consistently better than searches containing fewer than 4 words.

Recommendations:

• Use Google’s Keyword Tool to research keywords which have approximately 100 searches/month. These tend to get overlooked by a large number of PPC advertisers.
• Take advantage of the ‘more like these’ feature in Google’s Keyword Tool to continue to build your list of long-tail keywords.
• Run a search query report to look at the search queries which get matched to your keywords. If they are relevant, and have a decent click volume, add them as new keywords and give them their own tailored ads. This way, instead of long-tail searches being matched to your more generic keywords, they will now be matched to longer keywords, giving you more control over ad messages and bid optimisation.

2. Research Uncompetitive Themes

Keywords which have less competition often have lower CPCs. Finding keyword with less competition often requires you to think outside the box, although with the right tools and approach you can be diversifying your keyword portfolio in no time.

Recommendations:

• Plug the URL of a competitor’s website into Google’s Keyword Tool and see what comes up. If their products and services are worded differently to yours, it can uncover some previously-overlooked terminology.
• Mine your search query report to uncover themes which you previously overlooked. Don’t worry if a search query has only a handful of clicks –you’re trying to research new themes from searches which have matched to your existing keywords, so click volumes would likely be much greater if they are added as new keywords.
• Look for numbers which frequently crop up in your search query report. If you’re selling holidays, consider how people type the dates into their search, such as ‘France holidays December 2011′, or ‘winter 2012 skiing deals Queenstown’. If you can provide tailored ads which cater for these date searches, you will likely receive high click through rates (CTR), high Quality Scores, and low CPCs.
• Use Google Insights for Search to find breakout searches. These are searches which have recently increased in popularity by at least 400%, and can be excellent opportunities for highly-profitable keyword targeting due to their relatively low competition and relatively low CPCs.
• Ask friends or family how they might search for your products and services.

3. Use Modified Broad Match

Modified Broad Match is a variation of broad match, but allows you greater control over the types of search queries which trigger your ads. By placing a plus (+) sign in front of certain words in your keyword, Google will only match your keyword to searches which contain all of the words with a preceding plus sign.

So if your keyword was ‘+cheap +deals to +Rome’, you can be sure than any searches matching to your keyword must contain the words ‘cheap’, ‘deals’, and ‘Rome’.

Modified broad match is a great way to improve the quality and profitability from your AdWords campaigns. In some recent research I carried out on modified broad match keywords, keywords with a greater amount of broad match modification tended to have considerably higher CTRs and significantly lower CPCs.

Recommendations:

• Take advantage of modified broad match. It allows you greater control over the types of searches which trigger your keywords.
• Be mindful that restricting the match types of your keywords may reduce your click volume, so compensate for this by researching additional keywords and themes.
• Broad match generation can also be a useful tool to allow your more generic non-modified broad match keywords to catch relevant search traffic which have not yet been added as modified broad match keyword.

4. Be Relevant

Despite PPC often being dubbed as saturated and highly-competitive, the truth is there are massive opportunities everywhere for PPC advertisers to achieve high profitability by providing highly-relevant and helpful ads, which engage with their target audience.

Searches on Google are now becoming increasingly diverse, complex, and unique, and users are expecting a higher degree of relevancy and helpfulness from search results. If you can be the advertiser which caters for the specific needs and requirements of searchers, visitors will reward you with their wallets. And since click through rate (CTR) is a large component of Quality Score, if you can achieve a high CTR, low CPCs will naturally follow.

Recommendations:

• Create hundreds of highly-granular ad groups, each containing only a handful of very similar keywords.
• Tailor your ad messages to your ad group’s keywords. If the ad group contains keywords related to ‘Winter 2012 Queenstown holidays’, ensure your ads also mention cater for Queenstown holidays in Winter 2012.
• Run an ad group report and find your ad groups which receive a large number of clicks. Changes are those ad groups are being matched to a large number of very different searches, so could benefit from being split out. The 10% Clicks Rule is a useful tool for quickly and efficiently identifying your ad groups which could benefit from being split out. Follow the 3 part guide for step-by-step instructions of how to do this.
• Examine your ad groups with high CPCs and low CTRs. Consider how closely your search queries match to that ad group’s ads. If a gap exists between the ad group’s searches and the ad group’s ads, consider how you can make changes to boost your relevancy.

Return on Investment is the Goal

Quality Score doesn’t sell anything. Click through rate doesn’t sell anything. CPCs don’t sell anything. Improving these metrics should not be the objective of your campaign. Improving ROI should be.

All other things equal, if you reduce your CPCs by 20%, great!

But are all other things equal? In trying to reduce your CPCs, have your sacrificed volume? Have you sacrificed quality? Are paying lower CPCs simply because visitors are now less relevant and less likely to convert? Are you now missing out on more relevant and potentially more profitable searches?

CPCs or Quality Score or CTR should not be the end goal of your PPC campaign. Return on investment should be. There’s no harm in paying 50% higher CPCs if your profit increases by 60%. So only use CPCs as a guide.

By all means use long-tail keywords, search query reports, and modified broad match as a means to lower your CPCs. But make sure your sales volume and ROI also rises as a result.

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Alan Mitchell is a Google AdWords Certified PPC specialist, with over 5 years setting up and managing successful PPC campaigns for businesses in Australia and overseas. Find out how his specialist PPC management techniques can help you improve the profitability of your business.

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But while ad scheduling in Google AdWords can be extremely powerful in boosting campaign performance, it is essential that ad scheduling decisions are reliable and informed. Since so many internal and external factors can bias your day of the week analysis, advanced ad scheduling strategies are best reserved for mature and relatively stable PPC campaigns with a large amount of conversion data.

Below are three tips for getting the most out of ad scheduling, and suggestions to help you make reliable and informed decisions to take advantage of this powerful feature of Google AdWords.

1. Beware of Diluted Data

You’re dividing your conversion data across 7 days, so each day will considerably less data than if you look at your campaign on the whole. Keep this in mind, and avoid jumping to conclusions based on insufficient data.

Recommendations: If you’re identified Friday as being a high-performing day, only make slight adjustments to your ad scheduling. Just because Friday has worked better than Saturday does not mean Friday should have bids 100% higher than Saturday. Exaggerated changes to ad scheduling can turn an otherwise high-performing campaign into a poor-performing one.

2. Look for Trends

Avoid getting caught up in the detail. You’re right – Wednesday did perform better than Thursday, but is it really significant? A handful fewer sales on Wednesday and a handful more on Thursday would result in both days performing exactly the same.

Recommendations: Take a step back and look for more general and reliable insights. It is clear that Mondays – Fridays performed much better than Saturdays and Sundays, so make that your only finding from your analysis. Trying to distinguish between individual days where performance is so similar is unnecessarily complicating and confusing your ad scheduling strategy.

3. The Past is Not the Future

Just because Saturdays and Sundays have performed poorly in the past, and Thursdays have performed well, does not mean they will continue to do so in the future. Perhaps a PR campaign caused a sudden increase in sales one Thursday which is biasing the results? Perhaps you tested some new high-volume keywords one weekend which were paused after the weekend due to few sales?

Recommendations: Where possible, repeat your analysis using different date ranges, to see if your findings are recreated. If certain days consistently and significantly outperform other days across different periods, then feel free to incorporate that into your ad scheduling. But avoid making changes to ad scheduling if too many external factors could have influenced day of week performance.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Ad scheduling can be extremely useful for mature PPC campaigns which have benefited from a steady period of ad visibility, with limited changes to keywords, bids, ads, and landing pages. If a PPC campaign is in its early growth phrase, where multiple testings and optimisations make reliable day of week analysis difficult, keep day of week analysis for another time.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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But after a while, you realise your PPC campaigns are not delivering the desired return on investment. You start making changes to bids, budgets, and keywords. Still no improvement, so you make more changes.

And so on.

It’s not long until you’ve lost track of what’s working and what’s not. Your keywords and ad groups become disorganised, your Quality Scores start to fall, and you start paying excessively high CPCs to chase after visitors and sales.

If any of this sounds familiar, perhaps you need to take a step back and review your campaign optimisation strategy. Are you making intelligent and informed decisions based on reliable, insightful, and unbiased data? Or are your bids being changed and keywords paused in a random and haphazard fashion in a drastic effort to improve results?

Below are 5 optimisation mistakes I’ve found myself guilty of from time to time, and some tips on how to avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Basing decisions on too little data

Data is a PPC advertiser’s best friend. Without knowing which keywords, ads, and landing pages perform better than other keywords, ads, and landing pages, it is almost impossible to create and maintain a profitable PPC campaign. But when assessing the performance of your campaigns, it’s all too easy to make uninformed changes to keyword bids and unnecessarily pause keywords and ads based on insignificant and unreliable data.

A keyword which has received 1 click and delivered 1 sale is not a high performing keyword. Similarly, a keyword which has received 50 clicks and delivered no sales is not a poor performing keyword.

Recommendations:

• 200 clicks is a good rule of thumb – it gives the keyword or ad a fair chance to show its true worth, and any freak anomalies are likely to be cancelled out over a decent-sized data set. So avoid writing off keywords and ads with less than 200 clicks
• Use larger data sets, but keep track of the time ranges used during your analyses (point 4)

2. Being too granular

Another common mistake is placing too much emphasis on the performance of individual keywords and individual ads, and failing to see the bigger picture. If you look at only keyword data, you will fail to spot how each of your ad groups and campaigns are performing.

Recommendations:

• If your individual keyword data is too small, look at your ad group data – you’re sure to uncover greater insights. And if you ad group data is too small, look at your campaign data.
• Same with ads. If you have the same ad messages across multiple ad groups, run a pivot table in Excel to benefit from a larger data set
• Try to only make optimisation changes when you have at least 200 clicks, so keep moving up a level until you have enough data set to make informed decisions – any changes you make will them be more likely to have a positive impact on your account performance.

3. Assuming that just because a keyword or search query has converted in the past, it will convert again in the future

Because it won’t. Well, not always anyway.

People make a wide range of unique searches, so just because you made a sale after someone searched for ‘cheap Bahamas deals summer 2012′, does not mean that bidding on the keyword ‘cheap Bahamas deals summer 2012′ will deliver another sale in the future.

Recommendations:

• Try to view your more obscure long-tail keywords as a whole, rather than individually
• Pick out themes from your search query reports to get more insightful understanding on what types of keywords and searches are working, rather than the individual searches and keywords

4. Optimising the same data twice

One of the easiest yet most dangerous mistakes to make when optimising campaigns regularly is to overlap your date ranges. You’ve selected data for the ‘last 30 days’, made your keyword bid changes, then carry out another bid optimisation 2 weeks later, again using the ‘last 30 days’ of data. Your bidding decisions will be based on overlapping data, so your changes will be made with poor judgement.

Similarly, if you’ve changed bids in the middle of the month, but then view data for the whole of the month, your CPC, CTR, and average position data will not be representative of the current state of the campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Record the date you make changes to your campaigns, and view data from that date onwards – it will then be more representative of the current state of the campaigns
• Download campaign statistics using AdWords Editor – when you come back to optimise your campaigns on a later date, you can see what date range was previously used and select a new date range from that date onwards
• Try to make routine changes such as bid adjustments at the same time each week or month, to get in the habit of selecting reliable date ranges (e.g. ‘last 7 days’)

5. Being afraid to walk away

There’s nothing more frustrating than investing huge amounts of time and effort into carrying out detailed analysis on your campaigns, only to find no findings whatsoever. After carefully compiling results to compare the profitability of prices versus non-prices in ads, or compare visitor engagement and returning visits of landing page A to landing page B, you secretly hope one proves to be a clear winner.

Really, you do.

But all too often, different ad messages and landing pages will perform exactly the same. When faced with such inconclusive and frustrating results, it’s often difficult to walk away and make absolutely no changes whatsoever to your campaigns. Despite the difficulty in doing so, walking away is essential to avoid making unnecessary and often detrimental changes to your campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Realise that making changes based on insignificant data can worsen your campaign performance
• Create two identical copies of each ad style within the same ad group, and let them rotate – only if both ads AA clearly beat both ads BB (or vice versa), can you be confident of a clear winner

Less is sometimes more

PPC campaign optimisation is an art. Especially when you want to include engagement metrics such as time on site and returning visits. Changes to keywords and ads should not be made haphazardly – they should only be made after careful thought and analysis, using reliable and significant data sets.

Not only does efficient and informed PPC optimisation require a good understanding of data analysis, but it also requires a good intuition and experience on when to make changes and when to walk away. Sometimes the best work you can do to a PPC campaign is to do no work at all.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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Unfortunately, there is no definitive rule on the types of keywords which are relevant (which you should show your ads), and which are  not relevant (which you should avoid). After all, what’s relevant to a large advertiser may be irrelevant to a small niche advertiser. This lack of a boundary can make it extremely difficult to decide where to draw the line when researching possible keywords.

But as long as you consider the principle of keyword qualification, everything will be fine! If you understand how different keywords in your AdWords account naturally have different levels of qualification, keyword research and ad group organisation become a whole lot more effective.

Let’s see how.

Suppose you want to sell your luxury apartment in Melbourne. What keywords should you target? Perhaps you might want to show ads for the phrase ‘luxury apartments in Melbourne’? But people making this search might be looking for luxury rental apartments in Melbourne, and you’re obviously only concerned with apartment sales.

So you might want to instead target the phrase ‘luxury apartments for sale in Melbourne’. This would no doubt be a highly-relevant keyword, and surely deliver ideal visitors to your site. And you’d be right – the keyword is qualified on four separate counts:

• It contains the word ‘luxury’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for high-end property
• It contains the word ‘apartments’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for apartments rather than houses or offices
• It contains the words ‘for sale’ – qualifying the visitor as looking to purchase, rather than rent
• It contains the word ‘Melbourne’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for apartments in Melbourne, rather than Sydney

But highly-relevant as this keyword may be, search volume may be very limited. If you only target keywords which are fully-qualified by description, type, purchase intention, and location, you might as well give up hope of ever selling your luxury Melbourne apartment. Only 38 people searched for ‘luxury apartments for sale Melbourne’ in March 2011, so even with a strong click through rate (CTR) of 10%, you would only receive a handful of visitors to your site each month. There just isn’t the search volume to focus only on the most highly-qualified keywords.

So let’s get more visitors!

The Art of Qualification

In order to open up your property to a greater visitor base, you need to be less strict with your keyword qualification. While it is of course great to have only highly-qualified visitors clicking through to your site, to increase the reach of your property, you will also need to target slightly less-qualified keywords.

But while targeting these less-qualified keywords may increase your risk of getting irrelevant visitors to your site, this can be minimised by intelligent separation of different types of keywords.

To see how your keyword can be separated, let’s once again consider the multiple ways in which a property keyword can be qualified:

1. Description – the searcher has specified they are looking for ‘luxury’, ‘world class’, ‘spacious’, or ‘waterfront’, rather than ‘cheap’, ‘first home’ or ‘small’
2. Type – the searcher has specified they are looking for ‘apartments’, rather than ‘houses’, ‘land’, or ‘offices’
3. Purchase Intention – the searcher has specified ‘buy’, or ‘for sale’ in their search, rather than ‘rental’, ‘hire’, or ‘for party’
4. Location – the searcher has specified they are looking for property in ‘Melbourne’ or ‘St Kilda’ (a suburb of Melbourne), rather than ‘Paris’ or New York’

Your most highly-qualified keywords would contain all four qualifiers, such as:

• world class Melbourne apartments for sale (1234)
• buy waterfront apartment in Melbourne (1234)
• exclusive Melbourne apartment sales (1234)

But to increase the reach of your website, you might also want to target keywords which do not include a description qualifier, such as:

• Melbourne apartments for sale (234)
• buy Melbourne apartment online (234)
• apartments for sale in Melbourne (234)

Or keywords which don’t mention the words ‘for sale’:

• Melbourne waterfront apartments (124)
• luxury apartments in Melbourne (124)
• spacious Melbourne apartment units (124)

Heck, why not even target keywords which don’t mention a location. You could always geo-target your ads:

• world class apartments for sale (123)
• apartments for sale over $1 million (123)

But why stop there. We could also target even less-qualified keywords:

• luxury apartments (12)
• apartments for sale (23)
• apartments in Melbourne (24)

And if we really wanted traffic, we could take it even further:

• apartments (2)

As you can see, as we select keywords which are slightly less qualified, they become vaguer, and it becomes more difficult to determine the searcher’s requirements.

So where do you stop?

I would suggest somewhere before you start broad-matching to ‘apartments’, but it is entirely up to you. However far you decide to take your keyword research, what’s important is to keep different types of keywords separate.

The Art of Separation

Your keyword ‘waterfront Melbourne apartments for sale’ will no doubt perform extremely differently to your keyword ‘apartments for sale’ or ‘Melbourne apartments’. Of course it would! So why should you mix different types of keywords together?

You shouldn’t.

Keep your different types of keywords separate, and tag your ads group names based on their amount of qualification:

• 1234 | Waterfront | Apartments | for Sale | Melbourne
• 123 | Waterfront | Apartments | for Sale
• 124 | Waterfront | Apartments | Melbourne
• 12 | Waterfront | Apartments
• 234 | Apartments | for Sale | Melbourne
• 23 | Apartments | for Sale
• 24 | Apartments | Melbourne

By keeping your different qualified keywords separate, you can:

• Create different ads based on the qualification of the ad group’s keywords (if the keyword does not mention a location, then perhaps you should mention the location in your ads)
• Set different bids and budgets based on the level of keyword qualification (you might want to bid higher for highly-qualified 1234 keywords, and bid much lower for less-qualified 23 and 24 keywords)
• See at a glance how your different types of keywords are performing, and adjust your bids and budgets accordingly
• Have a logical pecking order depending on how your campaign is performing (your high-priority 1234 keywords might always be showing, with your low-priority 23 and 24 keywords turned on and off depending on desired visitor volume)
• Use negative keywords more intelligently depending on the ad group’s keyword qualification
• Have a clear keyword ad group organisation strategy to help with future keyword expansion

Since your highly-qualified keywords will no doubt perform very differently to your less-qualified keywords, it makes complete sense to keep them separate. Try researching and organising your keywords based on the amount of qualification they contain, and you see if your campaigns don’t improve.

How do you like to organise your keywords and ad groups? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords manager, helping businesses of all sizes connect with customers and improve their return on investment through best practice PPC techniques. To find out how strategic keyword qualification can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

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1. Identify irrelevant keywords which can be added as negatives
2. Identify new keyword opportunities for keyword expansion

The difficulty, however, is efficiently and reliably pulling out trends and insights from a raw search query report. According to Google, 25% of searches made each day are completely unique, and 70% of searches lie outside of Google’s Keyword Tool. While this suggests that the large majority of your search queries will have received only a handful of clicks (making trend-spotting extremely difficult), it also presents a great opportunity for identifying new keywords outside of the Keyword Tool.

This article will explore the techniques which can be used not only to identify negative keywords from a search query report, but also identify new opportunities for practical keyword expansion.

Not Enough Data

The main problem with a raw Google search query report is the sheer variety of searches. Each search query has minimal data, making it difficult to spot trends and insights. Suppose we had the following search queries amongst the mass of other search queries in your report:

• holiday paris for winter 2011
• holiday in winter 2011 to paris
• paris winter 2011 package holiday

It is hard spot the opportunity ‘winter 2011′ amongst the noise of the search query report. It is hard to see the wood through the trees.

Something more is needed.

Search Query Aggregation

If instead, search queries were pulled apart into their individual words, and click data was then aggregated based on these individual words, we would be able to make more sense of search query reports. For example, suppose we could now identify the following search query themes:

• holiday
• paris
• winter
• 2011
• package

We can now see that ‘winter’ and ’2011′ are popular themes within our search query report. And by aggregating click and conversion data for these search query themes, we can quickly and easily identify the types of themes which are converting well, and those which are converting poorly.

Similarly, if the word ‘free’ was hidden amongst multiple search queries, it would have been difficult to realise that the word ‘free’ was a drain on your AdWords budget. But being able to look at the aggregate click cost and conversion data for all searches containing the word ‘free’, you could quickly and easily determine whether ‘free’ should be added as a negative keyword.

If you’re willing to hand over your search query data, Query Miner has developed a tool which allows you to see the words which are converting poorly, and should be added as negative keywords.

But search query analysis shouldn’t stop at identifying negative keywords.

Oh no.

The real power of search query is in identifying new keyword opportunities – the 70% of searches outside of Google’s Keyword Tool. Although looking at one-word phrases can be useful for identifying negative keywords, doing so would ignore other words in the user’s search query which may be crucial to determine the searcher’s intent.

For example, suppose you identified the following themes within your search query report:

Aggregating your click, cost, and conversion data for each of these themes would suggest that the words ‘cheap’, ‘discount’ and ‘weather’ are prime candidates for negative keywords, due to their poor conversion rates.

Similarly, such analysis might show that keywords containing the words ‘kids’ or ‘children’ are converting extremely well, and suggest that keywords containing the words ‘kids’ or ‘children’ should be expanded or have their bids increased.

But while this insight may be interesting, it is of little use in helping you expand your list of keywords. Just because searches which contained ‘kids’ or ‘children’ performed well for your existing keywords, does not mean they would perform well if you added new keyword variations of ‘kids’ and ‘children’.

Something more is needed.

Multiple Word Search Query Aggregation

Suppose that instead of analysing performance for each 1-word theme, you analysed performance for search queries containing 2-word phrases:

Looking at longer phrases, you are now able can now better understand the searcher intent. You can now see that the performance of search queries containing ‘kids’ and ‘children’ is not universal among different searches, but instead depends on other words they are next to. When someone searches for ‘with kids’ or ‘with children’, conversion rate is extremely poor, but when someone searches for ‘without kids’ or ‘without children’, conversion rate is very high.

Similarly, with 1-word analysis, you may have jumped to the conclusion that the word ‘cheap’ is a poor-performer, and should therefore be added as a negative keyword. But by observing 2-word phrases which contain ‘cheap’, you can immediately see that not all ‘cheap’ search queries are poor-performers. Searches which contain the phrases ‘cheap vacation’ or ‘cheap holiday’ have in fact performed extremely well; it is only the search queries which contain the phrase ‘cheap flights’ which have converted poorly.

That’s all very interesting…

But while 2-word theme analysis might help you make more reliable observations about your search query themes, especially for negative keywords, it still is rather impractical for identifying tangible new keyword opportunities which can be added to your campaigns. Knowing that searches which contained the phrase ‘cheap vacation’ performed well, does not mean that adding the keyword ‘cheap vacation’ would deliver equally promising results. If you specialised in Paris holidays, you would get all sort of non-Paris visitors. You are once again ignoring the other crucial words in the search query which are essential for identifying the searcher’s intent.

Even carrying out a 3-word or 4-word search query theme analysis, you would no doubt uncover useless phrases such as ‘cheap holiday deals to’, ‘cost package for october’, and ‘in paris april 2012′, which would not be sensible to add as new keywords:

We need a way of highlighting new keyword opportunities which can quickly and efficiently be added to the account.

Something more is needed.

Filters

We need filters. Once we have identified our promising 2-word, 3-word, and 4-word phrases from our search query report, we need to filter them to ensure they contain essential qualifying words.

Exactly what words you will use as qualifiers will obviously depend on the specifics of your individual campaigns, but here I have filtered to only show phrases which contains the words ‘paris’ and ‘holiday’:

I now have a list of sensible 4-word themes which I can add to my campaign as new phrase match keywords. And since each of these new keyword suggestions contain the words ‘paris’ and ‘holiday’, I can be confident that these keywords would deliver highly-targeted traffic.

Conclusion

There is a huge amount of data available to PPC advertisers via the search query report. Although we are seeing tools which help advertisers mine their search query reports for negative keywords, the real gold is in identifying new opportunities for keyword expansion. Being able to do so efficiently and reliably is surely the Holy Grail of search query analysis, and can be the difference between a mediocre and successful PPC campaign.

What techniques do you use to mine search query reports for new keyword opportunities? How do you ensure new keywords are qualified and relevant? Share your comments and experiences below.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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We all know first impressions count. First impressions are crucial for forming beliefs and expectations about a business and its product and service offering. And since your pay per click (PPC) ads are one of your first touch points with online potential customers, and one you have massive control over, your PPC ads are your first opportunity to mould a positive image of your business to potential customers.

Just like it makes sense to invest in a shiny new lobby or reception area to create a positive first impression to new prospective clients, so it also makes sense to ensure your PPC ads portray professionalism, trust and credibility. Below are 9 suggestions of how to appear more credible on Google to better engage with potential customers and increase your conversion rate.

1. Spelling

Make sure spelling in your ads is correct – even when matching to mis-spelt keywords. Avoid dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) for mis-spelt and highly-generic keywords. Export your PPC campaigns to Excel and run a spell-check – you’ll be surprised how easily typos can crop up in ads.

2. Grammar

Make sure your messages are grammatically correct and read clearly as a sentence. Stay away from over-abbreviated ‘txt msg’ style wording which looks amateur and unprofessional. Avoid ‘keyword stuffing’, especially when it is at the expense of message flow. Instead, try including words such as ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘of’ and ‘to’, which can help your messages read more elegantly and portray a better image of your brand.

3. Capitalisation

Be consistent with capitalisation. Whether you’re using start case or only capitalising open-class words, make sure it’s consistent. Experiment with capitalisation to find the style which works best for your business.

4. Punctuation

Avoid over-use of hyphens, commas and other unnecessary punctuation. Special characters can draw the eye, and achieve a higher click through rate, but it can make you look rather amateur and can affect conversion rates. Google only allows one exclamation mark in PPC ads, but that doesn’t mean you have to use an exclamation mark in every ad. Sometimes subtle is better.

5. Closure

Unless your ad is written as a single sentence across both lines of ad text, make sure description line 1 and description line 2 end in a full stop (or exclamation mark). If your ad does not contain full-stops because you’ve reached your 35 character limit, choose a shorter message to close off the sentence with a full stop. Think about how your ads will read now that Google are implementing longer headlines, where both your headline and description line 1 are displayed as a single headline. Does it read well? Does your message make sense in this format?

6. Equality

Try to make both description lines of your ads equal in length. Neatly-formatted ads look clear, concise and well-considered, so avoid having one line of text significantly longer than the other. Try to use 30-35 characters where possible, but also experiment with shorter messages of 25-30 characters. Words such as ‘Now’, ‘Today’, and ‘Online’ are often useful buffer words for creating ad descriptions of equal lengths.

7. Clear Message

Don’t waffle. Have a clear message and give the impression you understand your product. Be specific, state your unique selling points (USPs), and use prices and numbers to quantify your claims. Ads with a clear and confident focus will look and perform considerably better than those with a highly generic message.

8. Display URLs

Avoid ‘keyword stuffing’ your display URLs. Including search terms in display URLs might make your ad more visible and may improve CTR and Quality Score, but since longer URLs are often considered less credible, conversion rates may suffer. Sometimes a shorter display URL looks better than one which tries too hard.

9. Relevancy

No-one likes irrelevant amateur-looking ads, and ads which look like they understand customer needs portray a sense of credibility and authority. Ensure your ads are personalised to users’ search queries and include keywords in headlines and descriptions where possible. Take time to invest in a granular ad group structure.

Conclusion

First impressions count. No more so than on Google, with a huge number of people using Google to carry out initial research about a product or service. Your Google AdWords campaigns are often your first contact with new potential customers, so it’s essential to portray your business in a positive light to maximise your chance of conversion.

Don’s be like eBay and find your PPC campaigns being talked about for all the wrong reasons. Ensure your PPC campaigns give off a message to be proud of.

But while the long tail has boasted widespread adoption throughout the search marketing community, there does not appear to be a universal agreement among PPC specialists about exactly how many words constitute a long tail keyword. Nor does there appear to be agreement about which other metrics – price, search volume, competitiveness or purchase intention – should be used in defining a long-tail keyword.

Definitions of long tail keyword length vary greatly, from the vague mention of several words and nothing more than a series of words strung together, to the less vague description of 2 or more words, 3 or more words, and usually more than 2 words in length, to the very specific combination of 3-6 words and at least three, and some times as many as five words.

One definition rejects the long tail’s use in describing keywords of 3-4 words, instead referring to them as keyword gems, while others define long tail keywords not by definition but by using examples such as ‘myspace’ vs. ‘is myspace free to use in china’.

I’m hardly any better at providing a clear definition. In a previous post I wrote on the benefits of long tail keywords, my confusion over what exactly constitutes a long tail keyword made me shirk away from providing a clear definition, and I opting for a cop-out by providing an example of a long-tail keyword (e.g. ‘cheap remortgage for bad credit history’) along with a more generic keyword (e.g. ‘remortgages’).

So in search for a more definitive definition of long tail keywords, let’s break the long tail keyword down into its alleged factors to uncover its fundamental, defining properties and determine a clear definition of the long tail. Based on the above definitions of the long-tail, the following 5 characteristics all seem to play an important role:

• Number of words in keyword

• Search volume of keyword

• Competitiveness of keyword

• Price of keyword

• Purchase intention of keyword

Let’s look at each of these 5 areas to see how useful they are in describing long tail keywords:

1. Number of words in keyword

It makes sense that a long-tail keyword contains a greater number of words than a short-tail or head keywords. But exactly how many words should a long tail keyword contain?

Although some definitions of long tail keywords specify a lower and upper limit for the number of words it must contain (e.g. 3-6 words), it makes little sense placing an upper limit on the maximum number of words a long-tail keyword can contain.

The more important question here is exactly how many words should a keyword contain until it is classed as long tail? In the definitions we looked at earlier, we’ve had mentions of anything over 2 words, anything over 3 words, and anything over 5 words.

Then there is the question of whether the number of words in a keyword really matters at all. For example, a short keyword such as ‘antique bingo clothing’ (3 words and very niche) might be considered long-tail, whereas a longer keyword such as ‘car insurance for women’ (4 words and very popular) might be seen as highly competitive and therefore not a long tail keyword.

So perhaps the number of words isn’t useful in defining long tail keywords. Perhaps search volume or competitiveness might be better.

2. Search volume of keyword

Again, it makes sense that keywords with low search volume should be classified as long tail keywords.

But exactly how low a search volume must a keyword have before it is labelled as a long tail keyword? 10 searches a day, 10 searches a month, or 10 searches a lifetime?

While long-tail keywords surely must have less search volume than highly generic keywords, clearly the definition of a long tail keyword should again not depend on a finite number. In searching for a definition, all we can say is that long tail keywords are generally searched for in less volume than more generic keywords.

3. Competitiveness of keyword

What about the competitiveness of a keyword? Are keywords with little competition long-tails?

If so, exactly how much advertiser competition is needed before a long-tail keyword becomes long tail no more? While Google’s keyword tool provides a scale of advertiser competition ranging from 0 to 1 to represent the competitiveness of a keyword, it does not have much practical use in reliably distinguishing between generic keywords and long tail keywords.

So once again, while competitiveness is definitely a defining factor in long-tail keywords, we can only say that long tail keywords tend to have less competition than those which are not long tail. We can’t say specify the exact amount of competition needed to distinguish between generic keywords and long tail keywords.

4. Price of keyword

What about the price of a keyword? Surely long tail keywords are those super cheap phrases you can bid on for $0.10?

Well, since the price of a keyword is linked to its competitiveness, it makes sense that long tail keywords would be cheaper than shorter keywords. And it also makes sense that the cost per click prices should be included in a definition of long tail keywords. But once again, it’s impossible to define exactly where the long tail cost per click cut-off lies. And since keyword prices are also closely linked to the purchase intention and the amount of potential profit which might arise from a sale, keyword prices naturally vary between industries and markets. Again, all that we that long tail keywords are generally cheaper than shorter keywords.

5. Purchase intention of keyword

Purchase intention is interesting. The theory behind purchase intention is that people who make longer, more specific search queries (e.g. ‘casio exilim ex-fh100 digital camera’) are more likely to have already carried out the majority of their pre-purchase research compared to people making shorter, generic searches (e.g. ‘digital cameras’). They are likely to be more informed about their buying needs, and therefore more likely to convert.

Longer keywords have long been known for their higher conversion rates, and many a PPC advertiser’s campaigns are built around a huge number of long tail keywords due to their strong conversion rates.

But does buying intention really form part of the definition of a long tail keyword? While it is true that some longer keywords (e.g. ‘casio exilim ex-fh100 digital camera’) exhibit high buying intention, other longer keywords (e.g. ‘how do clouds form in rainforests’) display little or no buying intention. Similarly, some shorter phrases (e.g. ‘buy apple ipad’) show significant purchase intent, while other shorter variations (e.g. ‘capital of peru’) display little or no intention to buy.

Purchase intention is therefore rather tenuous in its use in describing a long tail keyword.

RELATIVE

While it seems that word count, search volume, competitiveness, and price all play some kind of role in defining a long tail keyword, there are too many exceptions for word count, search volume, competitiveness, and price to becoming defining features of the long-tail:

A keyword which receives 10 clicks a day might be labelled as long-tail to a large advertiser, and labelled as generic to a small, niche advertiser. The keyword hasn’t changed, but the description of it has depending on the circumstance.

Similarly, the keyword ‘casio exilim digital cameras’ might be seen as an uncompetitive long tail keyword to an advertiser spending $500,000/month on clicks, while instead being seen as a highly-competitive generic keyword to a smaller advertiser spending only $50/month on clicks.

Perhaps long tail keywords should not be defined in terms of absolute measures, such as number of words or number of clicks, but instead only used as a relative measure when comparing keywords? Rather than saying:

“This keyword here, ladies and gentlemen, is a long-tail keyword”

Perhaps it is better to say:

“This keyword here, ladies and gentlemen, is more long-tail than this other one”

How would you describe a ‘long tail keyword’? In terms of searches, clicks, CPCs, and competition? Or more in terms of a relative measure to compare one keyword (or set of keywords) to another? Your comments welcome below.

PPC advertisers have abided by this relevant approach since the dawn of PPC, knowing that to maximize PPC profitability, ads should be shown for highly-relevant keywords, and not for irrelevant keywords. If you are a synthetic grass manufacturer, for example, you should only show ads for highly-relevant searches such as ‘artificial grass’ and ‘synthetic grass suppliers’, but not for less relevant searches such as ‘real grass’ or ‘buy grass seed online’. Showing ads for these less relevant keywords would achieve a low conversion rate and yield a poor profit.

Or so the theory goes.

But maybe there is a way to still achieve great results from these less relevant keywords? Maybe there is a way to reach a greater number of potential customers, while still achieving a strong profitability?

There is. But it involves a different way of thinking. It involves a different approach to simply bidding on a range of keywords, showing your best performing ads, and waiting for the sales to come flooding in.

Capturing less relevant search traffic and achieving a good return on investment involves 3 crucial steps – separation, qualification, and persuasion.

1) Separation

“Keywords of differing levels of qualification should be separated into their own campaigns”

Start with your most relevant and highly-qualified keywords. These are your cream of the crop keywords in terms of relevancy. If you are selling luxury apartments in New York, for example, keywords in this highly relevant campaign may include a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’), a property qualifier (e.g. ‘apartments’ or ‘real estate’), a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’), and a location qualifier (e.g. ‘New York’). People searching for ‘luxury apartment for sale in New York’ would be an extremely high quality of visitor, so these keywords must be kept separate in their own campaign.

In your next campaign, create keywords which are slightly less relevant. Keywords in this campaign might contain a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’), a property qualifier (e.g. ‘apartments’ or ‘real estate’), and a location qualifier (e.g. ‘New York’), but not a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’). Keywords such as ‘world class property NYC’ is still relevant, but since it does not contain the words ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’, they need to be kept separate so they can optimized separately.

Next, create a campaign for keywords which do not contain a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’) not a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’). Keywords such as ‘New York property for sale’ or ‘buy an apartment NY’ are still somewhat relevant, but since they don’t contain any descriptive or purchase qualifier, they need to be kept separate.

Then create yet another campaign for keywords with a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’) and a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or buy’), but without a location qualifier (e.g. ‘New York’). This campaign will include keywords such as ‘exclusive apartments to buy’ or ‘prestigious real estate for sale’), which although are somewhat relevant, do not contain any mention of location so need to be kept separate. To increase the relevancy of keywords in this campaign, you might want to geo-target the campaign to a particular geographic area (e.g. searchers located in New York).

Keep creating campaigns, each with keywords of slightly less relevancy, until you start getting very generic and ambiguous keywords such as ‘New York apartments’. By now you should have a few different campaigns, each identifiable by the amount of qualification their keywords contain. Your campaigns may look something like the following:

• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY | PURCHASE | LOCATION
• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY | PURCHASE
• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY | LOCATION
• PROPERTY | PURCHASE | LOCATION
• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY
• PROPERTY | PURCHASE
• PROPERTY | LOCATION

As you move from one campaign to the next, keywords in your campaigns become less qualified and more ambiguous.

Now comes the exciting part – qualifying your ads.

2) Qualification

“Ad messages should be qualified to cater for different types of searchers”

While showing your best performing ads might work for your highly relevant keywords, using the same ads for less relevant keywords will have very different results. Using the same ‘tried and tested’ ads for less relevant keywords is a major reason why many PPC advertisers complain about the poor profitability of less relevant keywords. It’s not the keywords which are to blame; it’s the poorly qualified ads.

To achieve a strong return on investment from less relevant and more ambiguous keywords, such as ‘apartments in New York’, you need to qualify your ads. The less relevant your keyword, the more qualification is needed in your ads. When a user searches for something generic and ambiguous like ‘apartments in New York’, you are not able to tell whether she is looking to buy or rent an apartment in New York, nor are you able to determine the type of apartment they are seeking (whether it’s luxury, spacious, cheap etc). You therefore need to qualify your ad messages, providing clarity on the crucial missing information your searcher failed to include.

For your keywords which do not include a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘buy’ or ‘for sale’), make it clear you are selling apartments (rather than renting apartments) by including words such as ‘buy’, ‘for sale’, ‘now selling’, or ‘from $3.5m’. When a searcher sees a price or a purchase qualifier in your ad, they will immediately know you are selling apartments (rather than renting apartments), which will reduce the number of rental seekers clicking on your ads.

Similarly, for your keywords which do not include a location qualifier, make your location extremely clear in your ad messages to minimize wasted clicks from people searching for properties in irrelevant locations. And for your keywords which do not contain a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘world class’), ensure the searcher understands you are selling high-end property by using words such as ‘luxury’, ‘world class’, and ‘from $3.5m’ in your ads. This will help to filter out first time buyers or property seekers looking for low cost properties.

Qualifying your ads need not be a difficult task. One of the main reasons why you separated your keywords into different campaigns in step 1 is to make ad qualification all the more easier. By keeping keywords of differing levels of qualification spate, you should be able to quickly and easily create ad messages with the appropriate amount of message qualification.

Next comes the interesting part that is crucial to achieve profitability from less relevant keywords – persuasion.

3) Persuasion

“Ad messages should make it clear you are not offering the product or service the user has searched for, but provide clear messages as to why they should consider you as a substitute”

If you are an artificial grass manufacturer, for example, and you wanted to show ads for ‘real grass’ or ‘buy grass seed online’, you need to persuade searchers why they should change their mind and consider purchasing artificial grass instead. Messages such as ‘Grass that never needs watering’ or ‘Find out why you should go artificial’ might do the trick.

Similarly, if you’re a 4* hotel in Manhattan, New York, and want to reach people searching for hotels in the close by Midtown, New York, don’t just bid on the keyword ’4 star hotels midtown’ and show a generic Manhattan ad. Don’t just include the word ‘Midtown’ in your ads either, as that would mislead potential customers, and result in wasted clicks and few conversions. Mention the word ‘Midtown’ in your ad, but instead point out how far your hotel is away from Midtown. An ad such as the following would do nicely.

You’ve made it clear your hotel is not in Midtown, but clearly suggested why they should consider you anyway. You will filter out those people who must stay in Midtown, but encourage people who are flexible to consider your hotel. And since you’ve pre-qualified your ad messages, you’ve set their expectations at the right level which will help to deliver a strong conversion rate.

Relevancy Is Still King

While separation, qualification and persuasion can help to deliver strong profitability from slightly less relevant keywords, relevancy is still essential for paid search success. There is little point bidding on the keywords ‘apartment decorating’ or ‘the apartment film review’ to sell New York apartments, so keywords must still be somewhat relevant to your offering.

That said, if it’s approached intelligently, the three-pronged attack of separation, qualification, and persuasion should enable you to target less relevant keywords and still achieve a good return on investment. Separation allows you to keep your different keywords separate, qualification helps you reduce wasteful clicks, and persuasion helps you increase your conversion rate. Use all three strategies together, and they can be extremely powerful at increasing conversion volume within your cost budgets.

Are you a fan of the mid-tail? Have you found it possible to achieve a good return from slightly less relevant keywords? Share your thoughts and comments below.

So it comes as a surprise to see widespread discussion criticising the quality of Google search results among search marketing professionals, talk of people getting up in arms because they can’t find the information they are looking for, mention of people having to resort to old-fashioned bookmarking to avoid losing track of that golden nugget of an article they found back in 2003.

Are search results really becoming less relevant? Or are our expectations of high quality search results increasing faster that improvements in search quality can keep up? While Google no doubt needs to continue to improve the relevancy and usefulness of it search results, it’s not just Google who need to improve. We can also learn how to better construct our search queries to find the right information more quickly and easily.

More Information

There are no two ways about it – the amount of information on the internet is growing at an exponential rate. And while the number of pages being indexed by search engines such as Google rises exponentially, the number of Google search results remains unchanged. More information, but still only 10 search results. Google, therefore, are faced with the dilemma of trying to organise the world’s increasingly varied information into 10 small search results, while at the same time trying to please an increasing number of varied searchers who use the same search words but have entirely different requirements.

But should we really blame Google? Perhaps Google’s search results have not got less relevant. Perhaps, instead, our demands for increased relevancy have grown, providing us with the false illusion that Google’s search result relevancy has deteriorated.

Be Commanding

While Google must work to improve the relevancy of its search results, and also better understand searcher intentions to provide the most appropriate, useful, and personalised search results, we also need to take some responsibility if want a seamless searching experience. Faced with the dilemma of mounting information yet more increasingly individualistic preferences, we need to become more informed about how to better find the information we seek. Let’s have a look at a few possibilities using Google’s search commands:

1. Use “quotation marks” if you know certain words appear in a certain order. This is especially useful for finding the name of song if you only know one line, or finding an academic article if you know the title.
2. Use +plus +signs to denote essential words in your search query. These are words which you know are important to your search, and must be included in your search query. Avoid using plus signs for words about which you are as less confident, as this will dilute the relative importance of your more essential words.
3. Use –hyphens to remove words which you know are irrelevant. If you’re looking for football (soccer) pitches in Australia, and see a whole bunch of results for AFL pitches, adding the word ‘–AFL’ would improve the relevancy of your results considerably.
4. Use OR operators if you are unsure of certain aspects of your query. If you’d like to eat at a Melbourne Italian restaurant in either Windsor or Prahran, searching for ‘Melbourne Italian restaurant Windsor OR Prahran’ would show results which satisfy either of your location criteria.

Be Creative

But it’s not just about learning the Google commands. For a completely stress-free searching experience, it’s also about learning how to think strategically, creatively intelligently when making searches:

1. Use the rarest and most unique words possible. If you’re looking for a certain hotel in New York your friend recommended recently, but can’t quite remember the name, don’t just search for ‘New York hotels’. Where possible, try to include rarer and more unique words such as ‘hotels Manhattan’ (if you know the hotel is in Manhattan), or include other unique aspects such as ‘cheapskate Tuesdays’ you know about the hotel. Similarly, if you’re looking for that article you read last year, try to remember something unique about it. Did the article provide an uncommon but memorable metaphor to illustrate a point? Did it mention anything which would separate it from other similar articles on the subject, and make it one of a kind? The more unique and specific you can make your search, the better.
2. Only include words in your search query which will narrow down the information you seek. Avoid adding words into your search query which do little to better specify your intentions, as this will reduce search result relevancy. Google can’t weight the relative importance of each of your words (other than using plus signs to denote essential words), and will see each of your words as equal importance. So if the 4^th word in your query is not as helpful as your first three words, get rid of it – this will add more weighting to your more important words.
3. Consider how combinations of Google commands can help you be more specific. If you’re looking for the name of a song, but can only remember two short lines of lyrics, enter those lyrics in the same query, but separate them with quotation marks. If all you can remember about the song is the words ‘walk by the trees’ and ‘coat to the rain’, entering those words into google without quotation marks will give you an unhelpful result. However, thinking strategically, and placing each of your lyric snippets in quotation marks, will provide a very helpful result. By using Google strategically, you can quickly and easy find the name of the song that’s stuck in your head.

And the creativity doesn’t just stop there. Ken Lyons from WordStream wrote an excellent article on using Google to find anyone’s email address, providing numerous examples of how to cleverly construct your search queries to retrieve only the most  useful results. Similarly, Ann Smarty provided some great insight into using Google to find guest post opportunities, identifying key phrases which are likely to appear on pages asking for guest post writers. Want a new job? Try searching for something like:

+location + “job title” “we’re looking for” OR “ideal candidate will” OR “the following skills” OR “your CV” OR “your resume” OR “cover letter” OR “covering letter”

Or get even more creative and add date parameters into your job search to increase the likelihood of finding recent job postings. It could be a great way to find poorly advertised job postings and give yourself a greater chance of securing a new role.

Be Intelligent

It is all too easy to jump on the bandwagon and become frustrated with Google’s search results. While Google obviously has a significant role to play in improving their search results, so searchers also have a role to play in learning how to better structure their search queries. Plus signs for required words, hyphens for irrelevant words, and inverted commas for phrases would improve the average searcher’s experience considerably, while thinking more creatively would also get better results. If we can learn to search more intelligently and strategically, I imagine few people will have trouble finding their desired information quickly and efficiently.

Do you think Google’s results are becoming less relevant? Or do you think it’s simply a case of making more intelligent search queries? Share your thoughts and comments below.

While this extra degree of control was largely welcomed by PPC advertisers, modified broad match no doubt adds an extra degree of complication to Google AdWords management. However, as we will see from four seperate modified broad match experiments, if modified broad match is used correctly, it can be extremely effective in significantly increasing click through rates (CTR) and lowering cost per click (CPC) prices of Google AdWords campaigns.

Infinite Matching Possibilities

Modified broad match isn’t just the fourth match type. Modified broad match is the infinite match type. Whereas previously it was only possible to match a keyword in three possible ways, with modified broad match it is now possible to potentially match a keyword an infinite number of ways. The only limit to the number of matching possibilities using modified broad match is the length of the keyword itself.

Say you wanted to bid on the keyword ‘cheap hotels melbourne’. Previously there were only three possible ways you could match this keyword – exact, phrase, and broad:

1. [cheap hotels melbourne] – exact match
2. “cheap hotels melbourne” – phrase match
3. cheap hotels melbourne – broad match

Now, with modified broad match, adding plus signs in front of certain words in your keyword forces those words to be included in the search query. As any word with a preceding plus sign must be included somewhere within the user’s search query, it is now possible to better control the relevancy of PPC traffic. However, this extra control means more possible customisation – there are now a 10 possible matching combinations for the keyword ‘cheap hotels melbourne’:

1. [cheap hotels melbourne] – exact match
2. “cheap hotels melbourne” – phrase match
3. cheap hotels melbourne – broad match
4. +cheap +hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
5. +cheap +hotels melbourne – modified broad match
6. +cheap hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
7. cheap +hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
8. +cheap hotels melbourne – modified broad match
9. cheap +hotels melbourne – modified broad match
10. cheap hotels +melbourne – modified broad match

That’s 10 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 3 words, 18 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 4 words, and 34 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 5 words. It doesn’t take long to realise that modified broad match creates a huge number of possible matching combinations – each which triggers its own unique range of search queries.

While these numerous matching possibilities no doubt add extra complication to Google AdWords management, if modified broad match is approached strategically it can be hugely effective in improving Google AdWords campaign performance. Over the course of 4 AdWords campaign experiments on modified broad match, we will see how modified broad match can lead to significant increases in click through rate, while at the same time significantly reducing cost per click prices.

Experiment 1 – Four Keywords

Firstly, let’s look at a small-scale test which was carried out on an AdWords account over the last 2 months. Below are results for a hotel name keyword (broad match), along with 3 modified broad match variations. Each of the 4 keyword combinations were given their own ad group, the same ads, and the same keyword bids. Over the 2 month test period, each keyword combination received over 200 clicks.

While quality score, average position and average cost per click prices were very similar for each of the combinations, click through rate and conversion rate were significantly higher for longer keywords and those with a greater degree of broad match modification. Click through rate rose from 1.36% to 2.99% to 3.81% to 4.65% as the keyword increased in broad match modification, while conversion rate similarly rose from 3.03% to 3.17% to 4.13% to 4.23%.

Although the experiment was on a small scale using only a handful of keywords, and there could potentially be multiple causes of uncontrolled bias which could have influenced the results, the findings strongly suggest that longer keywords with a higher degree of broad match modification achieve better results than shorter keywords with little or no broad match modification. Considering that longer, modified keywords are more specific in their nature, this is hardly surprising.

Experiment 2 – Multiple Keywords

To provide a more comprehensive analysis of the performance of modified broad match, modified broad match was rolled out across two separate test accounts. Again, the testing time period was just over 2 months, and each test account received over 2,000 clicks. While different keywords had different bids, largely due to their differing levels of competition, care was taken to ensure each match type variation of the same keyword had the same bid.

In test account 1, exact match performed significantly better than the other match types in terms of click through rate (CTR). Phrase, broad and modified broad match had similar click through rates, although average cost per click prices were much lower for phrase match keywords. Although there was little difference in CTR between broad and modified broad match, modified broad match had a 10% lower average cost per click, and a Quality Score comparable to exact match.

In test account 2, however, the story was much more conclusive. Exact match was this time the worst performing match type in terms of click through rate, while Quality Score of exact match was considerably lower than the other match types. Modified broad match had a higher click through rate than standard broad math, although average cost per click prices were slightly higher. However, once again, modified broad match boasted the highest Quality Score, suggesting that modified broad match keywords were perceived as highly relevant for the searches they triggered.

While both test accounts provided results which were largely promising for advocates of modified broad match, the differences in match type performance between the two accounts suggest a more investigative analysis is needed.

Experiment 3 – Amount of Modification in Keyword

In experiment 1 we found that although the sample size was small, keywords with more broad match modification tended to perform better than keywords with less broad match modification. To test the accuracy of this finding, keywords across the two test accounts were grouped according to the number of plus signs they contained. A keyword which contained 4 plus signs for example, meant that those 4 words must be included somewhere within the user’s search query.

Once again, account 1 provided little evidence that more broad match modification resulted in higher click through rates. Although click through rates increased for keywords with 4 or 5 modified words, click volume was significantly lower for these longer words, making it hard to provide a conclusive result. Cost per click (CPC) prices, however, were more conclusive, with CPC prices falling steadily as the amount of broad match modification increases.

In test account 2, not only did cost per click prices fall for keywords with more broad match modification, but click through rate showed a more convincing trend. Quality Scores remained relatively similar across all keyword groups.

Although the results reflect favourably on the use of modified broad match, with keywords having more plus signs generally performing better than those with less plus signs, the results do not take into account the number of words in the keywords which were not broad math modified.

Experiment 4 – Amount of Modification vs. Non-Modification in Keyword

To assess the performance of keywords with differing number of modified and non-modified words, keywords were grouped according to the number of words they contained vs. the number of which were modified. A keyword such as +cheap +hotels melbourne +4 +star, for example, contains 5 words, of which 4 words were broad match modified.

The results show that keywords with a high percentage of their words broad match modified had click through rates considerably higher than keywords where only a few (or none) of their words were broad match modified. While longer keywords also performed better than shorter keywords in terms of click through rate, as expected from long-tail theory, keywords with a higher number of broad match modified words tended to have a higher click through rate.

Similarly, keywords with a greater amount of broad match modification tended to have lower cost per click prices. Keywords with 0 or 1 plus sign were generally expensive while keywords with 3 or 4 plus signs were considerably cheaper.

Although Quality Score was higher for keywords containing a greater number of words, Quality Score remained relatively constant for keywords of varying broad match modification. Quality Score, however, was relatively high across all keywords, suggesting a strong degree of relevancy across the campaigns.

Conclusion

Although exact match was found to perform very well, modified broad match outperformed phrase match and standard broad match in both test accounts. Looking at keywords with different amounts of broad match modification, the results suggest that broad match modification can be incredibly useful in increasingly click through rates and reducing average cost per click prices for Google AdWords campaigns. While keywords containing a greater number of words will naturally tend to achieve higher click through rates and lower cost per click prices, as expected from long-tail theory, the findings suggest that incorporating modified broad match into your long-tail strategy can provide superior results on keywords of all word lengths.

While modified broad match presents a great opportunity for PPC advertisers to improve the performance of their campaigns, it also allows advertisers to increase their control over the types of search queries which match each of their keywords. If modified broad match is rolled out strategically and methodically, with highly-tailored ads closely matching the keywords in each ad group, there is no reason why modified broad match can’t be a stepping stone towards even greater results.

How have you found modified broad match? Did you see similar results in CTR and CPCs? Did modified broad match affect your conversion rates? Share your thoughts and experiences on modified broad match below.

All very clever. And a massive time-saver too – reducing search time around the world by a massive 11 hours every second (not per person, in total).

But while this is arguably a change for the better, giving users a greater level of interactivity as they search, the announcement has had some negative reactions from search marketers.

End of the Long Tail?

The main concern, as pointed out by John Ellis in his Search Engine Land article, Will Google Instant Kill the Long Tail?, is that by giving users the ability to preview search results as they type, people will be more likely to accept search results for shorter words, and will be less likely to continue searching for highly-specific, long-tail phrases. This will ultimately lead to higher cost per click prices on shorter, generic keywords (as they grow in popularity), and large reductions in the value of long-tail keywords (as they fall in popularity).

Bad news for search marketers.

Why?

Because long-tails are incredibly profitable.

Long-tail keywords are those highly-specific phrases such as ‘luxury apartments in Paris for sale’, as opposed to short-tail keywords which are phrases such as ‘apartments for sale’ or ‘Paris apartments’. Due to the highly-specific nature of long-tails, people searching for long-tail phrases are generally more informed about their requirements, have done the majority of their research, are further along in the buying cycle, and are more likely to buy. Search marketers can therefore use long-tail keywords to very accurately provide highly-targeted ads, and expect to deliver a good return as a result.

The stats back up the theory – research I did last year on long-tail keywords found long-tails can be up to 50% cheaper and convert up to 200% better than short-tail keywords. Long-tails are a search marketer’s friend.

So it is no surprise then to see search marketers up in arms when Google announce a change which threatens to reduce the number of people searching for long-tail keywords.

But will it really have such an impact? Although Google’s Autocomplete feature in March 2009 did somewhat change search behaviour away from the long-tail, it largely had an insignificant effect on long-tail paid search strategy, with the long-tail still very much as powerful as before.

Now, as users are presented with instant search results, will people really change the way they search?

I think it depends on two crucial psychological elements: laziness and laziness

1. Will people get lazy with their keyboard?

Suppose you were interested in buying a luxury apartment in Paris. You start typing your query into Google…

Search results start to appear for Paris weather, Paris transport and Paris tourism. Not very relevant, so you keep typing…

That’s better. As you get more specific with your query, organic and paid search results start to appear with mentions of ‘Paris Apartments’.

Do you stop now and click though a link? Or do you keep searching and hope to get something even better?

Let’s keep typing…

Even better! As you add the words ‘for sale’ into you search query, organic and paid search results now only show listings for Paris apartments for sale. None of those irrelevant rental or holiday apartment listings. Just ones which are for sale.

So do you stop now and click through a link. They all look pretty good! Or do you keep on typing…

As you add the word ‘luxury’ into your search query, the results get even better! Organic and paid search listings for cheap, low cost, budget, discount apartments are no-where to be seen – all that’s visible are listings for luxury apartments. The best yet!

So when did you stop searching? When did something look relevant, catch your eye and bring your typing to an end? Was it after typing ‘paris apartments’? Or after ‘paris apartments for sale’? Or was it after ‘paris apartments for sale luxury’?

Where you (and others) decide to stop typing will be critical for paid search advertising. If it was early (e.g. ‘paris apartments’), it could mean a reduction in the traffic to long tail-searches, which would increase the price of short-tails, making it difficult for small, niche advertisers to compete with the big brands.

If it was late (e.g. ‘paris apartments for sale luxury’), then there could still be hope for the long-tail, with click through rates and conversion rates possibly rising with the improved quality of searches.

Exactly how people change their behaviour when searching will be crucial in determining the effect on paid search advertising.

2. Will be people get lazy with their mouse?

Another critical behavioural factor is how people change the way they use their mouse. Prior to Google Instant, once I typed a query into Google and hit ‘search’, I tended to grab my mouse and browse through the results until I found something of relevance. If nothing satisfied my requirements, I would refine my search until I found what I was looking for.

Now, with Google Instant, there is no need to scroll through results with my mouse. I would simply keep typing, or change what I have typed, until I see relevant results on the search page. As soon as I see something which grabs my attention, I would let go of your keyboard, grab my mouse, and click through that listing. I don’t let go of my keyboard until I have already decided where I am going to click. With Google Instant, my mouse is no longer used for browsing through the results – it’s only used for clicking on what I have already decided to click on.

If my behaviour – of only using the mouse to click, rather than to browse – becomes the norm with Google Instant, this could have massive implications for paid search advertising.

If scrolling with the mouse through search results becomes a redundant activity, only above-the-fold ads in the top positions will have any chance of being clicked. Advertisers with ads in the lower positions (such as 7, 8, 9 and 10), will see their click through rate (CTR) fall considerably, and to retain a decent click volume, will likely increase their cost per click (CPC) keyword bids in an effort to appear above the fold.

Over time, this will raise the cost per click (CPC) prices of ads in the top positions. It is therefore likely to be smaller advertisers – who cannot afford to compete with the big brands – who are likely to suffer. Big brands will simply welcome the extra traffic.

Worst Case Scenario

Although it is difficult to predict exactly how people will adapt to Google Instant, the worst case scenario for pay per click advertising is scary. People accept shorter phrases, and only click on ads in the top few positions. Long-tail keywords fall in volume, and the price of short-tail, generic keywords rise considerably. Smaller advertisers struggle to compete.

Best Case Scenario

The best case scenario is somewhat more comforting. The comprehensive search suggestions of Autocomplete and the ability to preview search results mean people enter more specific, detailed search queries. Long-tail search volume remains unchanged, or even rises as a result. And since users now see search results as they search, impressions are of a higher quality, so click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates rise.

Likely Scenario

While it’s too early to determine exactly what affect Google Instant is likely to have on pay per click advertising, it will no doubt change the way we search. But as long as Google’s Autocomplete continues to provide a wide selection of long-tail search suggestions (e.g. ‘paris apartments for sale luxury’), I don’t think the long-tail is in any immediate danger.

I think what is more likely, however, is a reduction in searches for phrases which are not in the Autocomplete list of search suggestions. I think people will learn to accept the search suggestions presented to them, and reduce the number of creative ad hoc ‘outside the box’ searches. As soon as you’ve reached the end of the road in the list of search suggestions, you would accept the suggestion as your search. I think only a small minority of people will go on to refine their search further, typing something even more specific as ‘paris apartments for sale luxury 2 bedrooms’.

Whether the long-tail is dead, and whether competition is focused on the top few ad positions, in my opinion is down to the extent to which Google continue to expand their range of long-tail Autocomplete suggestions. As as long as people continue to demand ever more specialised search results, and do so with ever more specific search queries, I think the long-tail is still very much alive.

With SSL, you can search and browse in full confidence, knowing that your personal information and browsing habits will never find its way to unscrupulous third-parties. When you click on a Google link, and visit an external site, because your browsing is encrypted, the site you visit will not be able to see that you came from Google – nor will they be able to see what you searched for. Advertisers therefore can’t use your personal information to provide you with ads for things you don’t need or want.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And the more secure we can make the web, the better, right?

Not exactly.

It is only once we consider the implications for the web businesses that we realise the sheer importance of such analytical data. It is only when this data is threatened to be taken away, that we realise that SSL encryption might not be in the public’s best interests.

Let’s see why.

The Importance of Analytics

Analytics is not all bad. Okay – it does let businesses collect information about your browsing habits, your search words, your referring URLs, your city and your number of return visits, which you could argue is more information than you would like to hand over.

But we need to realise that such anonymous information is central to the efficient allocation of online resources. It is only because we freely hand over such information to website owners, that websites are as user-friendly – and online prices are as low – as they are today. None of this would have been possible if web businesses were blindfolded.

Analytics provides a market – an invisible hand which allows resources to flow to the areas which deliver the best return. It prevents wastage, and helps to efficiently connect buyers to sellers.

To illustrate how the data you hand over is the lifeblood of such a healthy online economy, let’s imagine a world where SSL is standard across the whole internet. Every page is encrypted, and none of your data is handed over.

Scenario 1 – No Keyword Data (SSL)

Suppose in this SSL world, a retailer of men’s and women’s gifts wants to know how his online marketing campaigns are working. He logs in to Google Analytics, and all he sees is a visit counter (2,500 visits), and perhaps some information on total sales (20) and total revenue ($10,000). He can’t see where these 20 sales came from; nor can he see which keywords generated those sales.

But he does know that 20 sales are coming from somewhere, so at least some of his online marketing efforts are working. And since he’s only spent $1,000 on his entire online marketing strategy, and is therefore making a healthy $9,000 gross profit, he keeps everything rolling along and heads out to lunch with his head held high.

Similarly, another gift retailer adopts a similar online marketing strategy. She generates exactly the same amount of visitors (2,500), sales (20) and revenue ($10,000), for exactly the same spend. Again, her gross profit is $9,000.

All good and well, you might think. But what could have been if keyword data was handed over to retailer 1 and retailer 2?

Scenario 2 – Keyword Data

While working his way through a delicious Penne al Forno, retailer 1 hears talk that it is now possible to see keywords in analytics. In his excitement, he cuts his lunch short and hurries back to his computer to log into analytics. Immediately, he can see that half of his visits came from “gifts for men”, and half came from “gifts for women”. No surprises there – after all, retailer 1 sells gifts for both men and women.

But look at the conversion rates for each keyword! For whatever reason, the keyword “gifts for men” is delivering the majority of his sales, revenue and profit. “Gifts for women” is somehow failing miserably.

It doesn’t take long before retailer 2 also hears word of the great news. In her similar excitement, she also logs into analytics to find that the keyword “gifts for women” is bringing in the majority of her sales.

Scenario 3 – After Optimisation

Retailer 1 then decides to take money out of his poor-performing “gifts for women” keyword, and invest it in the successful “gifts for men” keyword. Within a week, he has increased his his overall sales from 20 to 32, and his gross profit from $9,000 to $14,000, all for the same $1,000 spend.

Retailer 2 also decides to do some similar optimisation. She takes money out of the wasteful “gifts for men” keywords, and ploughs it into “gifts for women”. Her sales increase from 20 to 26, and her gross profit increases from $9,000 to $12,000. Again, all for the same $1,000 spend.

Efficient Allocation of Resources

Retailers 1 and 2 don’t know it, but what they’ve done is extremely clever. Their individual actions (and the individual actions of thousands of other retailers) have helped allocate marketing spend to the most efficient channels. Both have seen a significant reduction in wastage, and large increases in profit.

Assuming the gift industry is competitive (which is largely true due to the sheer number of ecommerce retailers), these increased profits will gradually filter through to customers in the form of lower prices.

This ‘invisible hand’, or free market of online marketing, is only made possible with analytical data. Without years of such analytical efficiency, helping to connect buyers and sellers as quickly and cheaply as possible, there is no way online prices would be as low as they are today. There is no way I would have been able to buy a pack of six iPhone screen protectors with free delivery from Hong Kong for only $0.99.

Is Privacy Overrated?

Of course, everyone has the right to protect their privacy. Measures such as SSL will prevent third-parties from seeing your search terms, analysing your browsing behaviour and perusing your social media habits without your consent. And Google’s new SSL page is undoubtedly a response to our increasing desire to keep our online activities private.

But so long as measures are taken to ensure the information you hand over is anonymous and not personally identifiable, should we really demand this increased privacy? If letting advertisers build a database of anonymous stats is all it takes to improve the online experiences and ultimately lead to lower prices for consumers, is handing over anonymous data really such a bad thing? Perhaps we have forgotten what analytics and measurement has done for us, and need to realise that data collection and optimisation is actually in the best interests for everyone.

While exact and phrase match keywords are generally more controllable than broad match keywords, broad match can open up your business to a significant number of additional customers – those who might otherwise have been missed if only exact and phrase match keywords were used.

As we consider the pros and cons of each match type, we find that a balance is therefore required between the extra visitors broad match can deliver, and the quality of those extra visitors. In trying to find that balance, we consider a technique called the Broad Match Generator, which uses broad match search queries to generate new exact, phrase, and negative keywords. We see how the methodical process of regularly analysing  search query data, to continually expand keyword lists and ad text relevancy (Broad Match Generation), can help take advantage of the opportunities of broad match while still delivering a strong ROI.

Exact & Phrase Match

Exact and phrase match keywords are typically the most favourable for search marketers, as they allow a high degree of control over the words a searcher has to make in order for their ads to be shown. If your campaign contained the exact match keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’, for example, you can be 100% sure your ad would only appear when someone searches for ‘flights to Melbourne’ exactly.

Phrase match also gives you a high degree of control, and ensures that the words ‘flights to Melbourne’ must be included somewhere in the user’s search phrase. You can therefore be 100% sure you will only receive traffic from searches which include the phrase ‘flights to Melbourne’, such as ‘cheap flights to Melbourne’, ‘flights to Melbourne from Hong Kong’ or ‘low cost flights to Melbourne from China’.

So with exact and phrase match, you have a high degree of control over the search words which will trigger your ads. You can ensure your ads will only be shown on Google for highly-relevant potential customers.

Broad Match

Broad match, however, is not so controllable. Bid for the broad match keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’, for example, and you ads could be shown when someone searches for ‘flights from London to Melbourne’, ‘Melbourne flying club’ or ‘Australian travel deals’. Basically any search term Google believes is somewhat relevant to the keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’.

Not very controllable, you might think, and you’d be right. Why would you risk receiving visitors from people looking for ‘Melbourne flying lessons’, when you can be 100% sure what you’re getting by using exact and phrase matching?

Traffic, stupid!

Broad match isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be incredibly useful. According to Udi Manber, Google’s VP of engineering, 20-25% of search queries each day have never been made before, making it almost impossible to target every potential customer using just exact and phrase match keywords.

No amount of keyword research can predict that someone might search for phrases such as ‘flight prices March 2011 Tokyo to Melbourne’, ‘airlines Melbourne business class from NZ’ or ‘flights around the world via Melbourne’. Broad match can help deliver thousands of additional highly-targeted potential customers, who would otherwise have been missed if only exact and phrase match keywords were used.

So broad match allows you to receive high-quality visitors from search terms you may have missed during your initial keyword research.

But the problem of broad match still remains. Broad match can still send you visitors from hundreds of irrelevant terms such as ‘Melbourne flying lessons’. What a waste of money.

A balance is therefore needed between the benefit of extra visitors from broad match keywords, and the relevancy of those extra visitors. Introducing the Broad Match Generator…

The Broad Match Generator

Since exact and phrase match keywords provide the highest level of control, and allow advertisers to display highly-targeted ads, exact and phrase match searches should account for the bulk of clicks in a paid search campaign. Broad match should only be used as a catch all, to pick up those specific, seasonal and somewhat abstract long-tail searches which were not added as exact or phrase match keywords during your initial keyword research, and as a tool to generate new exact, phrase and negative match keywords.

To see how this Broad Match Generator would work, let’s first look at an example of an excellent user journey.

Example 1 – Exact Match Keyword in Account

Suppose someone searched for ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’. Also suppose ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’ exists as an exact match keyword in your Google AdWords account. So when a search is made, your exact match keyword ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’ is triggered. Not only that, but since the keyword has its own ad group with its own tailored ads, your ad which appears will be highly-relevant and mention the words ‘flights’, ‘Melbourne’ and ‘Italy’, as well as current pricings for the trip. The visitor is then taken through to a landing page which shows details of flights to Italy from Melbourne.

Highly relevant, highly engaging, and likely to result in high click through rate (CTR), high Quality Score, low cost per click prices (CPCs), low bounce rate, high conversion rate and higher return on investment. Fantastic!

Example 2 – Exact Match Keyword not in Account (and search is relevant)

Now let’s see what would happen if a search is matched to one of your broad keywords.

Suppose the search is ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’, and ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’ is not is your Google AdWords account as an exact match keyword (ignore phrase match for the moment). The search is then matched to your broad keyword ‘Melbourne flights’, and the generic ad for ‘Melbourne flights’ is triggered. The visitor is then taken through to a generic landing page.

Somewhat relevant, you might think, but far from perfect. The searcher explicitly stated they were looking for flights at Christmas 2010, so why not show ads which better answers their question?

This is where the Generator comes in.

For any broad-matched search query, first decide if it is relevant. If it is relevant, then add the search as a new exact and phrase match keyword and give the keywords its own highly-targeted ads in its own ad group.

So the next time someone searches for ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’, your ad which will appear will mention the words ‘flights’, ‘Christmas’, ’2010′ and ‘Melbourne’, and take visitors directly through to a Christmas 2010 Melbourne flight page.

Higher click through rate (CTR), higher Quality Score, lower cost per click prices (CPCs), lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate and higher return on investment.

Example 3 – Exact Match Keyword not in Account (and search is not relevant)

But what if the search query is not relevant, such as ‘Melbourne flying lessons’?

Again, this is easy. When you find a search query which is not relevant to your business, add it (and similar irrelevant searches such as ‘instructor’, ‘jobs’ and ‘careers’) as a negative keyword, to prevent it (and similar irrelevant searches) from triggering your ads again in the future.

The result will be reduced wastage, lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate and higher return on investment.

Two Simple Steps to Ultimate Broad Match Generation

The Broad Match Generation process is very simple. On a regular basis, simply look at each of the search queries that have matched to your broad-match keywords, and make one of two improvements:

1. If the broad-match search query is relevant, add the search query as exact and phrase match keywords in their own ad group, with their own tailored ads.
2. If the broad-match search query is not relevant, add the search query as a negative keyword.

Remember, even as you add new exact, phrase and negative keywords, your broad match keywords will continue to match to more and more search terms, so Broad Match Generation is an ongoing process. However, as you increase your number of exact and phrase match keywords, you should see broad match accounting for fewer and fewer of your visitors. A higher proportion of visitors coming through exact and phrase match keywords means you’re more in control of the types of visitors coming to your site and the ads they are shown, and is a sign that your Broad Match Generation is working.

If the Broad Match Generator is carried out regularly, broad match can be extremely effective in helping to target your ads to an increasing number of highly-qualified searchers, while at the same time reducing wastage from irrelevant and wasteful searches.

Broad match should never be used as a long-term ‘set and forget’ keyword targeting strategy; instead, it should only be used to generate new exact, phrase and negative match keywords, and improve the relevancy of your ads. It should only be used as a means to an end – that end being more exact, phrase and negative keywords and better relevancy.

Broad match keywords, left alone, should never be a long-term solution.

Opportunities

As we have seen, ongoing Broad Match Generation is a great way to make use of the extra traffic available through broad match, while at the same time providing a simple and practical means to continually improve the quality of your Google AdWords campaigns. It can help you uncover new seasonal trends and long-tail opportunities (such as ‘Christmas flights to Melbourne’ and ‘flight and hotel packages Melbourne Cup 2011′), and provide you with a great opportunity to provide highly-relevant ads, tailored to these new search terms.

What’s more, since there will also be some difference between your phrase match keywords and the search queries being matched to them, phrase match also presents another great opportunity for similar ongoing refinement. Looking at the searches being matched to your phrase match keywords, and adding new exact, phrase and negative keywords, as well as new tailored ads, can help take your Google AdWords campaigns even further.

And although Google’s recently-announced broad match modifier will help to give you more control over the types of searches being matched to your broad match keywords, ongoing Broad Match Generation will still be an incredibly powerful strategy – not only to help expand your list of long-tail keywords, but also to identify seasonal keywords trends and improve the relevancy of your ads.

Broad Match Generation provides a practical means to continually provide ever more specific and relevant ads to help better cater for the growing demands of searchers and better connect with your target audience. Use it to your advantage and watch how your return on investment from Google AdWords improves.

Although we infer that profit sharing is sound from an economic sense, we find it does have problems of its own in terms of implementation and conversion attribution, and conclude that profit sharing should only be considered once a strong and tested relationship has already been established between client and agency.

So let’s get started.

With a profit share deal, instead of paying the client paying the agency a percentage of PPC spend fee, or a set fee for each sale, the PPC agency receives a share of all profits they help to deliver for the client through PPC activity.

If the PPC agency helps make the client $50,000 in profit from PPC, and the agreed profit share percentage is 10%, the client will pay the PPC agency $5,000 for their troubles.

Since the more profit the agency makes for the client, the higher their fees, it is therefore in the agency’s best interests to make the client as much profit as possible. Unlike the percentage of spend (markup) model, there is no monetary incentive for the agency to spend money haphazardly on clicks to increase their commission. With a profit share model, it’s the other way around. There is an incentive for the PPC agency to reduce wastage and increase spend in areas which generate a return.

The profit share model is the only PPC pricing model which is perfectly efficient from an economics point of view. Unlike the management fee model, the percentage of spend model and the cost-per-sale model, with a profit share model both client and agency have the same common goal: to maximise client profit. As pointed out by Andreas Reiffen in his analysis on paid search profit sharing, it allows a win-win situation in which both the client and PPC agency are better off.

So the profit share model is economically sound. The point of maximum agency profit is also the point of maximum client profit. There is no other click volume which will deliver a higher profit. It provides the necessary incentives to help both client and agency maximise their bottom line.

What’s more, since a common goal is being chased by both parties, the profit share model provides a solid foundation for a long-lasting, open relationship between client and agency. It creates a platform for innovation, makes testing worthwhile and encourages the sharing of ideas to reduce clicks costs and increase click revenue. It’s in the agency’s interest to make recommendations to improve website conversion rates; and it’s in the client’s interest to share knowledge of their business with the agency to improve keyword targeting and ad copy. It’s a mutually beneficial agreement that can’t go wrong.

Or can it?

Perhaps. A client’s profit figures are sensitive information. If leaked into the hands of competitors, it could be disastrous for the client. A significant level of trust between both parties is therefore required for a profit sharing model to work.

Conversion Attribution

There’s also the issue of conversion attribution. Since the PPC agency’s fees are bases on profit generated from PPC activity only, how much the agency receives is entirely based on tracking capabilities.

Tracking generally uses cookies to measure customers who buy online within a certain time period (say 30 days), and generally ignores revenue through offline methods such as phone calls and store walk-ins. If someone clicks on a PPC ad while at work, then makes an order when at home on a different computer, or perhaps picks up the phone, that revenue is not attributed to PPC. Nor is revenue from users who have high browser privacy settings or reject cookies.

As pointed out by Econsultancy, PPC marketers are currently missing out on credit for half of the revenue their campaigns are driving, which is a huge amount. With a profit share model, agency fees are based entirely on trackable revenue, so the agency will be under-rewarded for the value they deliver. This can significantly compromise the level of investment in the client’s PPC campaigns, and the level of testing and innovation.

This bias in conversion attribution can also lead to the PPC agency reducing bids on generic ‘research’ keywords from customers earlier in the buying cycle. These keywords might not convert profitably online (according to the under-reported tracking), but may be essential for the client’s walk-in orders, branding or long-term growth. Again – not very efficient.

So although the profit share model performs exceptionally well at aligning the motivations of client and agency, it is far from a perfect PPC pricing model. A high level of trust is essential for it to work – as is accurate (and fair) revenue tracking. Until conversion attribution improves considerably, any business with strong brand or numerous different marketing touch points should use the profit share model with caution.

Are you a fan of the profit share model? Have you made it work for both client and agency? Or is it one for the future when conversion attribution improves? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

From a client’s point of view, this is great. There is little risk – agency fees are only payable once sales come in. Guaranteed profit!

From an agency’s point of view, it’s also great. Each extra sale is extra revenue, so an agency which is confident of its abilities to deliver value from paid search is rewarded heavily (and fairly) for their efforts. Performance-related pay creates an incentive for agencies to invest their best resources and expertise into making PPC campaigns a success for their client.

Researching cheaper and high-converting long-tail keywords, restructuring ad groups to improve relevancy and regularly carrying out landing page testing to increase conversion rate become all the more worthwhile when there’s a monetary incentive. If an agency only gets paid when they deliver sales, it is worth their time and effort to deliver sales.

Sounds too good to be true. Client risk is minimal. Agencies which perform are rewarded. Agencies which don’t perform…well they are forced to perform if they are to stay in business.

So you’ve decided you want to give performance pricing a go. But how exactly would a performance deal work? And how should you go about creating one for your PPC agency?

Economics

To see how such performance deals would affect your bottom line, and the bottom line of the PPC agency you’ve hired, we’ll use a similar method to that used in Economics of PPC Pricing: Why the Markup Model is Flawed, and look at the cost and revenue structures for both client and agency.

Let’s suppose Shiny Shoes Corp launched a new range of shiny red golf shoes, which they sold online for $15 (OK, they’re very cheap golf shoes). Sales were stagnant, so in an effort to increase sales of shiny red golf shoes, Shiny Shoes Corp decided to pay a PPC agency $10 for every pair of shiny red golf shoes they sold through PPC. If the PPC agency only sold 10 pairs a month, the client would pay the agency $100 (10 x $10), regardless of whether the agency spent $50 or $5000 on clicks. If the PPC agency were to generate 1,000 sales, the client would pay the agency $10,000 (1,000 x $10) – again, regardless of whether the agency spent $50 or $5000 on clicks.

How many sales will the PPC agency deliver? How much profit will Shiny Shoes Corp make? How much profit will the agency make? Will the agency be incentivised to deliver extra sales? Is $10 per sale a fair amount, or should it be $12, or perhaps $8? All burning questions we can consider with some simple economics.

Look at the green line ‘MC (client)’ in the figure below. MC stands for manginal cost, and shows what happens to the costs of Shiny Shoe Company as sales volume increases by extra units. It’s a flat line, which makes sense – the client is paying the agency $10 per sale regardless of sales volume.

Since Shiny Shoes Corp pays the agency $10 per sale, we can also add in the agency’smarginal revenue (red line), which again is flat. At every sales volume, whether it’s 20 pairs or 2,000 pairs, the client’s cost per sale is $10 and the agency’s revenue per sale is also $10.

We also know that Shiny Shoes Corp sells the shiny red shoes online for $15, so we can add in the client’s marginal revenue. Again, it’s a flat line, since Shiny Shoes Corp receives $15 for each sale, regardless of how many pairs they sell.

Now that we have the cost and revenue structures for Shiny Shoes Corp, we can see what profit they’re making. Shiny Shoes Corp’s profit is the difference between their cost and revenue, which is represented by the green shaded area. The higher the sales volume, the higher their profit. Since Shiny Shoes Corp makes $5 profit for every sale ($15 they recieve from the customer online minus $10 they pay the PPC agency), they would want as many sales as possible!

How many sales will the agency will deliver depends on the agency’s profit, so let’s add in the agency’s marginal costs (red line). The agency’s MC is an upward sloping line, since click costs increase progressively as volume is increased.

Why is it upward-sloping?

Diminishing Marginal Returns

Well, the first few sales will come from cheap clicks from brand terms, such as ‘Shiny Shoes Corp’, as well as highly-relevant long-tail keywords, such as ‘red shiny golf shoes for sale’. Not only are long-tail keywords generally cheaper, but conversion rates for these highly-relevant keywords will also be high, meaning fewer clicks (and therefore fewer click costs) will be needed for each sale. The agency can probably bring in the first few sales for only $1-$2 each.

Once the PPC agency has saturated brand terms and highly-converting long-tail keywords, they are forced to show ads for more competitive, more generic and more expensive keywords, which might not convert as well. The higher cost per click prices and lower conversion rates for less-relevant keywords such as ‘golf shoes’, mean sales might cost the agency $8.

Each extra sale costs the agency progressively more, hence the upward-sloping marginal cost line. Diminishing marginal returns set in.

Now we have all our cost and revenue lines for the agency, we can see how many pairs of shoes will be delivered by the PPC agency, and how much profit the client and agency will make.

After a while, when all profitable keyword opportunities are exhausted, when all that is left are expensive and poorly-converting keywords such as ‘shoes’ and ‘birthday gift ideas’, the the agency will start to make a loss from any extra sales they deliver, where the agency’s Marginal Cost goes above the agency’s Marginal Revenue . At this point, the agency will reduce bids, pause keywords and cut back on sales volume until they stop making a marginal loss.

The agency’s maximum profit is where their Marginal Cost equals their Marginal Revenue, at 5,000 pairs of shiny red golf shoes. Any less than 5,000 pairs (say 4,000 pairs), and the revenue for the agency delivering extra pairs of shoes would be more than their cost of delivering those extra pairs (their Marginal Revenue would be greater than their Marginal Cost), so it would be profitable for the agency to increase volume. Any more than 5,00 pairs (say 6,000 pairs), and the agency would make a loss from these extra pairs (their Marginal Revenue would be less than their Marginal Cost), so they would be better off by reducing volume.

Maximum agency profit is therefore where the agency’s MC = MR, at 5,000 pairs of shoes.

At this point of maximum agency profit (5,000 pairs of shoes), we can see the profit for both client and agency. Looks healthy, right?

Wrong.

At 5,000 pair of shoes, there is a wastage, an inefficiency – what economists call a loss of utility. There is extra profit to be made (dark grey area), but since the agency doesn’t want to make a loss from helping the client achieve this extra profit, the extra profit goes unrealised. This makes model inefficient. There is extra profit to be made, but the model does not sufficiently extract this extra profit the market is offering.

The cost-per-sale model starts to breaks down.

What’s more, with a $10 cost-per-sale model, the fee the agency receives is a poor reflection of their efforts.

The Brand Problem

A good PPC pricing model should be an accurate reflection of the agency’s work and expertise, which is not the case with this $10 cost-per-sale model. The first few sales will be from showing ads for brand searches such as ‘Shiny Shoes Corp’, which require little agency effort and will cost the agency next to nothing. Agency profit will be high.

But as sales volume increases, and the agency is forced to invest considerable time and effort to research new keyword opportunities, agency profit will be relatively low. This and low effort/high reward and high effort/low reward problem might cause the agency to cut back on volume even further, thinking these these extra sales and tiny profit (which are highly valuable for the client) are just not worth the extra effort.

So, to recap, Shiny Shoes Corp’s decision to pay a PPC agency $10 for every sale is inefficient for two reasons:

1. The agency will stop delivering sales when the cost of an extra sale is more than $10, even though Shiny Shoes Corp would not mind paying $11, $12 or over $14.50 for these extra sales.
2. The agency’s fee is a poor reflection of the work and expertise required

Okay, so a set cost-per-sale model doesn’t work.

Separating Brand & Non-Brand

But what about a structured cost-per-sale model, such as below? Shiny Shoes Corp pays the agency only $7 for the ‘easy’ sales (brand terms), and $13 for the more difficult sales. With two different pricings, the fee the agency receives is a better reflection of the value they are adding (great!), the loss of utility is reduced (great!) and the agency now has a monetary incentive to increase sales volume to 6,000 (great!).

Awesome! It’s solved both of the problems above! Right?

Wrong.

There is still a loss of utility (the client can still make extra profit if it received these extra sales for $14 or $14.50). And although the agency is more fairly rewarded for their efforts, the agency’s red Marginal Revenue line still does not follow their Marginal Cost line closely. They are not being paid proportionately for their efforts.

How about a multi-step (or progressive) cost-per-sale model, such as below? Shiny Shoes Corp would pay $6 for the first 1,000 sales, $8 for the next 1,000, and so on.

With multiple pricings, loss of utility is tiny, and the agency is fairly rewarded at all spend levels (notice how the agency’s red MR lien closely follows the agency’s red MC line.) What’s more, sales have increased to 7,000! Great!

Such a well-structured model would be great, and as close to the Holy Grail of PPC pricing as one might hope to get. It’s fair, creates incentives, maximises sales volume and maximises total profit (client and agency).

But just as the Holy Grail is hard to find, so is such as pricing model.

Performance Models Are Difficult

A multi-step (or progressive) cost-per-sale model is great in theory, but in practice such a model might be prohibitively difficult to construct. For a progressive cost-per-sale model to work efficiently, it requires an in-depth understanding of revenues at multiple sales volumes, knowledge of brand strength, seasonality, offline marketing influences, not to mention tracking inefficiencies and bias which might exaggerate or under-report sales volume.

One scenario might be where brand strength and click costs are under-estimated by the client, such as below. Fees set too high, and the agency is over-compensated for their services. The client would make little profit, and would be better off with a percentage of spend or management fee pricing deal.

Another scenario might be where click costs and brand strength are over-estimated by the client, such as below. Fees are set too low, so the agency makes a loss from delivering any sales, and the client will struggle to find an agency wanting to manage their PPC for more than a few months. As they regularly jump from one optimistic agency to another, long-term stability goes out the window and are replaced by extra costs, effort and confusion.

A more realistic scenario might be the one below, where in an effort by Shiny Shoes Corp to closely match click costs to fees, offers a slightly under-priced cost-per-sale structure. At some volume levels, delivering extra sales would make the extra agency profit, but and at other volume levels any extra sales would be at a loss. If the agency was at point B, for example, they would be better off either increasing volume to point C, or reducing volume to point A.

Very inefficient. Sales are vastly under-delivered and nobody wins.

This difficulty in creating a cost-per-sale model and setting it at the correct level leaves the client (and agency) with a difficult decision.

A correctly set cost-per-sale deal would be great for the client, as it minimises their risk (they only pay when sales come in), as well as encouraging the agency to perform. It would also be great for the agency, who are fairly rewarded for investing their time, effort and resources into doing what they do best.

But an incorrectly set cost-per-sale model (such as the three above) could be disastrous. If the agency is making a loss, they will refuse to deliver any sales, which is a waste of time for both client and agency and a massive loss of potential sales. If the cost-per-sale fee is set too high, the client will make only a small profit a would be considerably better off with a set management fee or percentage of spend (markup) deal.

So, if you are a business looking to minimise your risk from PPC, as well as incentivise your PPC agency to perform, should you consider a cost-per-sale performance deal?

Cost-Per-Sale Tips

Firstly, be wary of offering a set fee for every sale. You will pay heavily for the agency to simply harvest the value of your brand, and will find that sales are restricted way below your most efficient point.

Secondly, be careful of offering a multi-step progressive model, unless you have accurate sales and revenue data allowing for seasonal fluctuations, offline marketing efforts and special offers, and are confident (and preferably experienced) regarding likely PPC click costs at a range of different spend levels. If guesswork makes up a large part of your research, a progressive cost-per-sale model might be more trouble than its worth.

A happy medium, especially if you a business new to PPC or cost-per-sale models, might be a two-step cost-per-sale model, which separates brand and non-brand sales. It’s not ideal, but limits the brand / non-brand problem and is relatively risk-free (you only pay for sales so are guaranteed to not make a loss from PPC). It does, however, require a decent knowledge of brand searches and likely PPC click costs, so perhaps only consider this two-step cost-per-sale model once you have collected at least a few month’s worth of brand and non-brand cost and sales data.

And remember, a performance deal does not have to be based on sales. Leads, enquiries, email sign-ups downloads or anything which is a desired outcome for your business can potentially be incorporated into a cost-per-action performance deal. Just make sure you have the performance data to back it up.

Are you a fan of the cost-per-action model? Have you made it work for client and agency? Or does it cause more problems than it’s worth? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Next: profit sharing. Does it work? What are its limitations? Coming soon.

One common model that many agencies use is the ‘markup’ model (also commonly known as the ‘percentage of spend’ model). If the agreed markup is 10%, and the client spends $30,000 on clicks, the client pays $33,000, of which the agency receives $3,000.

Nice and simple.

But does it create incentives for the agency to maximise profit for the client? Does it fairly reflect the work and expertise involved at all spend levels?

No.

Conflict of Interest

In short, the percentage of spend model is a highly inefficient pricing model for paid search management, and should be avoided. As pointed out by George Michie in his recent post on SEM Pricing Models, since the agency receives a commission on every dollar spent, there is an incentive for the agency to spend as much as possible, which can be far in excess of the point of diminishing marginal returns.

To find out exactly what George means by diminishing marginal returns, and how it creates a conflict of interest for client and agency and renders the markup model pretty much useless, let’s consider the cost and revenue structure of the client.

Look at the line CPC (marginal) in the diagram below (Cost Per Click). It shows what happens to the Cost of each subsequent Click as the volume of clicks increase. It is upward-sloping, so each extra click costs progressively more than each previous click. Makes sense – since the first few clicks are usually very cheap, and raising bids and showing for more expensive keywords is generally needed to increase click volume.

Now have a look at the line RPC (marginal). It stands for Revenue Per Click, and shows how much Revenue is generated from each subsequent Click. It is downward-sloping, which again makes sense, since each additional click is likely to be less relevant and have a lower conversion rate than each previous click (this is known as diminishing marginal returns). A rational advertiser would always go for the low hanging fruit first (the most relevant keywords), which will naturally convert better than the high hanging fruit (less relevant generic keywords).

(If this all sounds very confusing, you may like to check out Wikipedia’s articles on marginal cost and diminishing marginal returns first).

So we have an upward-sloping marginal CPC line and a download-sloping marginal RPC line.

Now, assume the client has no other costs other than paid search click costs. If the client spends $1,000 on clicks and generates $1,500 in revenue, the client makes $500 in profit (this is of course very unrealistic – but just bear with me for the sake of argument).

Look at where the two lines cross. This is the level (2,000 clicks) where the client will make the most profit.

Why?

Well suppose click volume increased to 2,100 clicks. The 2,100th click is now costing $0.85, but is only bringing in $0.55 of revenue! The client is losing money on these extra 100 clicks, so reducing click volume would increase the client’s total profit.

What about reducing click volume?

Well, at 1,900 clicks, the 1,900th click is costing only $0.65 but generating $0.85 of revenue. The client is making $0.20 profit from their 1,900th click, so why not increase click volume further, and make $0.19, $0.18 and $0.17 profit from additional clicks? It makes sense to increase click volume until no additional profit is being made – until the cost of an extra click equals the revenue of that click.

It is where the marginal CPC and marginal RPC lines meet that no additional profit would be made, and it is at this point which makes the client the most profit. It is this level of click volume that the client should aim to target with their PPC activity.

Now let’s complicate things a little. The graphs above were only concerned with marginal costs and marginal revenues – costs and revenue at the margin. They show what happens to the next click or the previous click, but they don’t show what happens on average – to the average cost per click or the average revenue per click. Average CPC and average RPC lines are therefore needed for this purpose.

Have a look at the red CPC (average) line and see if it makes sense. Like the green CPC (marginal) line, it’s upward-sloping, but flatter. Why?

Think about it for a second.

If you just spent $1,000 on 2,000 clicks, each click costed you $0.50 each on average, right? If you then decided to go crazy and purchase a few extra clicks on some expensive keywords for a hefty $4.00 each, what will happen to your average CPC price? It will increase, but not by very much, maybe to $0.41? Adding some expensive clicks will pull up the average, but only by a relatively small amount. Hence the flatness of the average Cost Per Click line.

The same is true with the average Revenue Per Click line. If a few extra keywords bring in only a small amount of revenue, it will pull down your average revenue, but only slightly, hence it’s flatness.

Still following?

Great. So we now have 4 lines which represent the cost and revenue structure of a client:

1. Marginal CPC – shows how much each extra click costs
2. Marginal RPC – shows how much each extra clicks generates in revenue
3. Average CPC – shows how much clicks cost on average
4. Average RPC – shows how much clicks generate in revenue on average

These 4 lines are all that’s needed to assess the client’s profitability.

Now remember how we decided that 2,000 clicks was the most profitable click volume for the client? Let’s see exactly how much profit the client is making from 2,000 clicks.

Well, at 2,000 clicks, the average cost per click (CPC average) is $0.30. The client is spending $600 on clicks ($0.30 x 2,000).

At 2,000 clicks, the average revenue per click (RPC average) is $1.50. The client is generating $3,000 in revenue ($1.50 x 2,000).

Minus one from the other ($3,000 – $600) and we have a healthy client profit of $2,400.

Fantastic.

Now this is where the inefficiency with the percentage of spend (markup) model comes in. Since the agency is paid a commission on every click, the agency will always want to increase click volume and spend as much as possible. As we’ll see from the following examples, this is often in excess of the point of maximum client profit.

Suppose the agency increased click volume to 3,000. The average Cost Per Click (CPC) increases from £0.30 to $0.45, and the average Revenue Per Click (RPC) falls from $1.50 to $1.20. The client is still making a healthy profit of $2,250 (revenue of $3,600 ($1.20 x 3,000) minus cost of $1,350 ($0.45 x 3,000)), although their profit of $2,250 is less the previous level of $2,400.

The agency, however, has increased their profit, since they now receive a cut of a bigger spend ($1,350 instead of $600). Assuming the markup is 10%, the agency’s profit has increased from $60 to $135, at the expense of the client’s profit.

But here’s the thing. The client is unlikely to complain – the agency is making them $2,250 of profit, after all! How is the client to know that they could be making $2,400 of profit, should the agency decide to reduce click volume? The client is none the wiser and would most likely praise the agency for their ‘efficient’ work in making them such as tidy profit of $2,250!

But why stop there?

The agency makes a cut of every click spent, so why not increase click volume further? Why not increase it to – wait for it – 4,000 clicks!

Here, at 4,000 clicks, click spend will be $3,000 ($0.75 x 4,000) so the agency’s profit will be $300 (10% of $3,000) – much better than the measly $60 or $135 from the previous click volumes of 2,000 and 3,000.

But look at what’s happened to the client’s profit at this new click volume of 4,000. Their costs are now $3,000 ($0.75 x 4,000) and so is their revenue! The client is making no profit at all! Any more spend, and the client’s average revenue will fall below their average cost, and they will make a loss. If the client is losing money, they will most likely leave the agency, or at least apply massive pressure on the agency to increase performance (reduce click volume), so any click volume in excess of 4,000 is not sustainable in the long-run.

So it’s in the agency’s interest to maximise their commission by getting the click volume as close to the point of 4,000 click where the red lines cross (where average costs equals average revenue) – but without going over, so as to keep the client happy (the client will still be making some profit).

What happens is a negotiation of pushing and pulling between the client and agency until a compromise is found – say 3,000 clicks. Exactly how close to the point of maximum client profit or the point of maximum agency profit is settled upon depends on the relative bargaining strengths of client and agency, access to cost and revenue information and countless external influences to name just a few factors at play.

What is clear though, is that whatever click volume is reached as a compromise, it will not be efficient. It is impossible to maximise the profit of both client and agency using a percentage of spend model. At every click volume, there will always be a way to increase agency or client profit by adjusting click volume.

With a percentage of spend model, there is no working together of client and agency, no common goal, no shared vision. It’s a constant pushing and pulling and conflict of interest. Time and effort is wastefully diverted into politics in an attempt to move click volume closer to one party’s optimum, not to mention the reluctance of each party to be open and transparent and share useful information with each other. Doesn’t sound like the foundations of a successful and lasting business relationship to me. Perhaps it’s why some agency churn rates are so high?

Of course, no PPC pricing model is perfect – every method will have its weaknesses. The key is to find one that works best for your goals and objectives as a business, and one which appropriately compensates the agency for their efforts in helping you develop your paid search marketing strategy. But in terms of aligning the agency’s monetary motivations with that of your business, and creating incentives encouraging them to maximise your profit from paid search, the percentage of spend model fails miserably.

My advice: use the percentage of spend model with caution.

Are you a fan of the percentage of spend model? Have you made it work for client and agency? Or does it create more problems than it’s worth? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Next: cost-per-sale performance models – rewarding agencies based on how they perform. Do they work? Are they efficient? Economics of PPC Pricing: Why Performance Deals Often Fail

When it comes to choosing landing pages for paid search ads, there is only one rule which must be followed: the page must be relevant to the user’s search query.

Other than ensuring a highly relevant user journey is delivered, there are no clear rules explicitly stating how a landing page should be designed, structured and styled, nor is there a landing page formula which works for everyone. Landing pages selection is about finding out what works best for your business, products, services, target audience, keywords and ads, through ongoing testing and optimisation.

Landing page performance will therefore vary depending on countless numbers of variables, making landing page best practice ambiguous. That said, it is important to be aware of the reasoning and implications behind any landing page strategy, to enable more informed landing page selection and more insightful testing and optimisation when comparing one landing page to another.

So to better understand the issues which arise when choosing landing pages, let’s consider one common dilemma which a large number of advertisers face: whether or not to deep-link.

Deep-Linking School of Thought

Deep-linking takes the searcher to pages deep into your site, hence the name. If you are an electrical retailer, for example, and someone searches for ‘Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500’, a deep-linking strategy would take the searcher directly to your Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500 product page, displaying information and price details for the Delonghi ESAM3500.

The benefits of deep-linking are as follows:

1. Relevancy

The user has specified they are looking for the Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500, so taking them through to your Delonghi ESAM3500 will deliver a highly relevant user journey, as per Relevancy: The Holy Grail of Search > better user engagement and a higher chance of conversion.

2. Price Awareness

Users can immediately see the price of the product, so you can ensure your price is being conveyed to every visitor > better conversion rate if price-competitive.

3. Focus

No distraction from other products and offerings keeps the user focused > reduced exit rate and reduced chance of downgrading to cheaper alternatives.

4. Efficient

Deep-linking can prevent lazy searchers from leaving the site if they can’t immediately find the product they searched for > reduced bounce rate.

Category-Linking School of Thought

Category-linking takes the searcher of ‘Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500’ to your coffee machines or Delonghi category page, which includes the Delonghi ESAM3500 along with other similar coffee machines by Delonghi and other brands.

The benefits of category-linking are as follows:

1. Satisfaction

Taking the user to a category page forces the user to find the product themselves. When they do so, they gain a sense of satisfaction and will become highly engaged with the site > high user engagement > high conversion rate.

2. Environment

Users don’t feel pressured they are being ‘forced’ into buying a particular product and like choice > more relaxed > more likely to buy.

3. Comparison

Users can see other similar products, so can compare alternatives they might not have previously noticed > higher chance of buying something. Even if the customer downgrades to a cheaper alternative, it is still a sale and you have the customer for life > higher sales volume and increased customer base.

4. Authenticity

Multiple products creates a sense of credibility > higher conversion rate.

5. Time on Site

Users spend longer on the site when more products are available. People are often only willing to spend a finite amount of time and effort comparing products or services before they buy. Excessive comparison can be mentally tiring, especially if numerous variables are on offer, so maximising the time on site maximises the chance the user will stop comparing and just buy > higher conversion rate.

Landing Page Testing

It’s a tough call. Both deep-linking and category-linking deliver some strong – albeit untested and speculative – psychological arguments in favour of their method.

But no-one said it was going to be clear cut. Paid search management, after all, is about the ongoing testing and optimisation of a campaign to find the methods which work best for your business. What might work best for Joe Bloggs Electrical might not work best for Adam Smith Wired; and what might work for your coffee maker keywords, might not work for your washing machines keywords. Paid search success favours the patient, so keep testing and optimising.

So to deep-link or not to deep-link? You decide.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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Sometimes, if conversion data is scarce, click-through-rate (CTR) is instead used to evaluate a keyword’s performance. If a keyword generates only 5 clicks from 1,000 impressions, it has a CTR of 0.5% so is deemed irrelevant. The keyword is then paused or relegated to the second page of search result obscurity.

This is not the right approach.

Beyond the Click

There is more to paid search management than optimising keywords based only on conversion rates and click-through-rates. A more intelligent approach also considers what happens once a user clicks on your ad:

• How many pages are they viewing?
• How long are they spending on your site?
• How many people are immediately bouncing?
• How many people are returning at a later date?

If a keyword has a poor conversion rate and a poor click through rate, but people are viewing a large number of pages, spending a long time on your site and returning regularly, the keyword may be doing a great job at creating awareness of your products or services. Even though conversion rate may be low, the keyword may not deserve to be paused or have its bid reduced – instead it may be beneficial to increase its bid to allow the keyword to flourish and user engagement to increase.

Similarly, if a keyword is converting well but 80% of people are immediately bouncing, finding out why – perhaps by looking at search queries being matched to the keyword – could help the keyword convert even better.

How to Optimise a Campaign Intelligently

Analytics software, such as Google Analytics, are incredibly useful in helping to understand what people do after they click on your ad and land on your site. If your Google Analytics account is linked to your Google AdWords account, it is possible to see page views, time on site and bounce rate for each of your AdWords campaigns, ad groups and keywords (select Traffic Sources > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns).

Once you’ve logged into Google Analytics, look at each of your campaigns:

• Which campaigns are engaging users with a high time spent on site? Why?
• Which campaigns are bringing in untargeted users who immediately bounce back and go elsewhere? Why?
• Which campaigns are persuading users to come back later? Why?

Next, drill down to ad group level and keywords level (if you have enough data) and ask yourself the same questions. 100 visits is usually significant to make reliable, informed decisions – but be careful about drawing conclusions for keywords / ad groups with less than 30 visits.

Make a note of those campaigns, ad groups and keywords which stand out, both positively and negatively. Look for common words that regularly appear in unusually high or unusually low metrics, such as ‘cheap’, ‘discount’ and ‘free’. How have they performed? Probably very different to your more generic keywords, you would imagine, but in what way?

Look for locations, product names and other qualifiers – can you notice any trends? Are there certain keywords with a high bounce rate? Could any negatives be added to reduce bounce rate?

Record any trends and resulting changes in a log. This is your insight on user engagement, and will not only help you develop a improved paid search campaign which will better connect with users, but will also help you better understand your audience and make more informed, strategic business decisions.

How to Optimise a Campaign Even More Intelligently

If you’re feeling more ambitious, export the keyword data to Excel and VLOOKUP each keyword’s Analytics performance to its AdWords performance (select Traffic Sources  > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns > “dimension” = “keywords” > export > CSV for Excel).

That way, when you’re looking at each keyword’s costs, CTR, conversions and ROI, you can also consider page views, time on site, returning visits and bounce rate, and better understand each keyword’s impact on creating awareness and interest.

Look at keyword 8 in the example below. It has a low conversion rate and a high cost per conversion, so based on conversion performance it should perhaps be paused. But notice how page views, time on site and bounce rate are all exceptionally good. Should the keyword really really be paused? It seems to be engaging users well, so why not instead find out why its conversion is so low?

Similarly, keyword 9 is converting well, but if it’s bounce rate could be reduced, it could become even more profitable. Play around with new ideas and experiment optimising bids based on different metrics.

It’s All About Engagement

The next time you optimise your campaign, remember there’s more to paid search management than conversions. If, like the majority of Americans, you’ve ever researched your next holiday, browsed that DVD player or shortlisted those birthday presents on your lunch break at work, only to buy online when you get home (on a different IP address), you will appreciate that keyword conversion data can only get you so far.

Conversion optimisation is naturally biased towards converting keywords, so will tend to ignore keywords at earlier stages of the buying cycle, which may play an essential role in creating awareness, generating interest and engaging users with your products, services and brand.

Conversion data – and automated tools which optimise keywords based on conversion data – are not the be all and end all of paid search management. Understanding user engagement could well be, and the tools to get you started are right at your fingertips.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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According to Google AdWords Help, your keyword is not showing because not enough people are searching for your keyword.

“Low search volume” keywords are keywords associated with very little search traffic on Google properties. In which case, we suspend your keyword. This state is only temporary, and these keywords will be reactivated if we find that they could start delivering traffic.

So just how much search traffic is “very little search traffic”?

To find out, I decided to count every “low search volume” keyword in an AdWords account over a 3 month period. Of the 2,823 keywords that received at least one impression, 804 keywords (28.5%) were “low search volume”. That’s over a quarter of keywords.

Although most of these “low search volume” keywords were in fact that, low search volume, some had a relatively high number of searches: 108, 117, 126, 135, 156 and even 573 (see graph below). I’d hardly call 573 searches “low search volume”.

What’s more, although “low search volume” keywords accounted for only 3.60% of total impressions, they generated a disproportionately high 5.33% of total clicks. Their CTR was 1.72%, compared to only 1.17% for normal search volume keywords, despite a similar average position of 2.63 and 2.70 respectively. That’s a higher CTR for “low search volume keywords” by almost 50%.

5% doesn’t sound like much. So is there any point having “low search volume” keywords in your AdWords account? Or long-tails at all for that matter?

Definitely. My advice is to ignore Google’s “low search volume” advice and continue with your long-tail keyword strategy. Focusing on the long-tail will of course generate a large amount of keywords that will rarely be searched, if at all. But as I point out in 5 Benefits of Long-Tail Keywords, infrequently searched-for keywords generally have less competition, lower CPCs, higher CTRs and higher conversion rates than their short-tailed rivals. En masse, long-tail keywords can be extremely profitable.

Call me a cynic, but I think the whole point of the “low search volume” feature is a means to scare advertisers away from those cheaper, long-tail keywords, and towards more expensive, short-tails in a effort to maximise Google’s revenue (a view shared by Eloi Casali in the comments section of PPCProz’s low search volume post in June). I can’t really see any practical use for the advertiser.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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It makes sense, and I completely agree that a highly relevant approach such as that outlined by Derek is essential to achieve great results in paid search.

However, although Derek emphasises that his one keyword per ad group strategy should only be applied to one keyword which is core to your business, there will rarely be a case where a business will only want to advertise on a single keyword. There will likely be hundreds of possible phrases that will be highly relevant to a business, and having a portfolio of hundreds, even thousands, of long-tail keywords (instead of just bidding on one or two highly generic short-tail keywords) will often achieve better results.

So is Derek’s strategy of one keyword per ad group practical if applied on a larger scale?

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Advantages

1. Highly Relevant

Having one keyword per ad group makes it possible to write ads which very closely match the keyword. If the ad group contained only the keyword “brown leather shoes”, the ad could include the words “brown”, “leather” and “shoes”, possibly with prices of brown leather shoes, and take users through to the brown leather shoes landing page. However, if the ad group contained the keywords “brown leather shoes”, “blue suede shoes” and “red wellington boots”, at best, a generic “shoes” ad could be shown. Having very different keywords in the same ad group makes it impossible to create a highly relevant PPC campaign.

2. High Quality Score

As previously pointed out, having one keyword per ad group would likely achieve high Quality Scores, high CTR and strong ad rankings. Conversion rates are also likely to benefit, as highly relevant ad text will make users more pre-qualified before clicking.

3. Easy to Optimise Ads for Quality Score

If you notice Quality Score for one of your keywords is low, having one keyword per ad group makes it is relatively easy to identify which keyword / ad combination is performing poorly and make appropriate changes to improve its Quality Score.

Disadvantages

1. Unnecessary

Having every one of your keywords in its own ad group is unnecessary. If you have two keywords, “blue suede shoes” and “suede shoes blue”, what benefit is there of having each of those keywords in a separate ad group? The keywords are so similar, so you could not possibly write a more relevant ad for one if it were in its own ad group.

2. Unmanageable

Imagine a Google AdWords ad group with 2,000 keywords. If each had its own ad group, that would mean 2,000 ad groups. Imagine how difficult it would be to manage 2,000 ad groups, most of which would fail to see a single click. Since many of the keywords would be so similar, the same ads would likely be used across multiple ad groups. There would be a lot of duplication of ads and it would take forever to download reports or update changes. Quite simply, your AdWords account would become incredibly time-consuming and frustrating to manage.

3. Diluted Ad Text Performance Data

If each keyword had its own ad group, impression and click data for ads would be diluted over a greater number of ad groups, making analysis and optimisation of ads difficult and less meaningful. If , however, 10 of your very similar keywords were grouped together in one ad group, impression and click data for those 10 keywords would be aggregated for the ad group’s ads, making it easier to spot which ads are performing well and which need changing.

Balance

Although having one keyword per ad group would be nice in a perfect world, considering that there are potentially thousands of keywords that could be relevant to your business, having one keyword per ad group is taking paid search to an unmanageable level. While having one keyword per ad group is one extreme of paid search management, putting all of your keywords in one ad group is the other. The best results in paid search are achieved from a balanced approach, somewhere in between the two extremes.

So don’t just separate out keywords into their own ad groups for the sake of it. Your account will soon become unmanageable and you’ll dilute your ad text data. Instead, group very similar keywords together, even if they are broad matched. As long as your keywords are very similar, 5-20 keywords per ad group is fine. I regularly achieve Quality Scores of 9 and 10 using this approach. The key is to make sure the keywords in each of your ad groups are very similar, and that your ads are highly relevant to the ad group’s keywords.

Start with maybe 10 closely related keywords in each ad group. Once you have some data collected, use the 10% Clicks Rule to decide which of your ad groups and keywords could benefit from being split out and given their own tailored ads. It will keep your time and effort focused only on the parts of your campaign which deserve your time and effort.

As with most things in life, it’s about finding a balance. As you continually strive to improve the relevancy of your keywords and ads, make sure the strategy you are adopting is achievable and sustainable. If you put all your keywords in the one ad group, you’ll receive a poor Quality Score as users fail to engage with your ads. If you over complicate your keyword / ad group structure, you’ll end up creating a bloated paid search account and start to lose focus of your long-term goals. Find a balance that works for you.

Rule of Thumb

So unfortunatley there isn’t really a rule for the number of keywords an ad group should contain. There isn’t a ‘best’ number of keywords you should aim to have in each ad group. It’s about finding what works best for your business, for your products or services, for your set of keywords. But if you ever find yourself unsure whether a keyword should be split out into its own ad group, ask yourself this:

A keyword should only be give its own ad group if you think you could write a more relevant ad (or show a more relevant landing page) for that keyword if it were in its own ad group.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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Long-tail keywords are those low-volume, obscure, infrequently searched-for keywords that turn up in your search query reports. ‘Cheap remortgage for bad credit history’ is one example of a long-tail keyword. ‘Remortgages’ is not.

The theory goes like this:

• Long-tail keywords, en masse, can provide significant search volume (high impressions)
• Long-tail keywords have less competition than generic keywords (lower cost per click (CPC), higher click-through rate (CTR))
• Long-tail keywords are more specific than generic keywords, so ads can be better tailored to match the searcher’s needs (higher CTR, higher Quality Score, less wastage from irrelevant searches)
• People making long-tail searches are often further along in the buying cycle and more willing to buy than people making generic searches (higher conversion rate)
• These lower CPCs, higher CTRs and higher conversion rates mean long-tail keywords can be extremely profitable (lower cost per acquisition (CPA))

So are long-tail keywords all they are cracked up to be? Are they worth all the time, effort and commitment they require?

In short: yes.

Over the course of this article you’ll see exactly how search volume, CTR, CPCs, average position, conversion rate and CPA differs for searches containing different numbers of words, and how long-tail keywords can benefit your business immensely. Using three months of real Google AdWords campaign data, you’ll see that long-tail searches outperform generic short-tail searches on almost every measure, and provide a great opportunity to connect with customers which is generally not being taken by the majority of advertisers.

1. Search Volume (Impressions)

Let’s start with search volume. Do people make long-tail searches in any meaningful volume?

Look at the example below. Although 1 and 2-word searches may be under-represented in the example (the account has a natural bias towards keywords of at least 3 words), it is clear that as the number of words in a search query increases beyond 3, the number of searches made using that that number of words falls.

This isn’t surprising. You would of course expect search volume to drop as searches start becoming obscure and lengthy. It is little surprise that more people are making shorter searches such as as ‘cheap televisions Brisbane’ (3 words) instead of longer searches such as ‘low cost Sony Bravia television shops in Brisbane’ (8 words).

What is worth noting, however, is the power of these long-tail keywords en masse. Added together, searches of 5 words or more accounted for 21% of all impressions. While long-tail keywords may be individually insignificant, a PPC campaign with thousands of long-tails can be a serious source of additional traffic.

Fact: Long-tail searches have significant search volume

2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Another common belief among search marketers is that click-through rate (CTR) is higher for long-tail keywords. Their reasoning being:

1. Long-tail keywords have less competition, so there is a higher chance someone will click your ad
2. Long-tail keywords are more specific in their requirements, so you can write a more targeted and relevant ad to encourage the searcher to click

While the first point is perhaps rather tenuous (Google’s broad-matching mechanism often sends long-tail searches to advertisers’ short-tail keywords), the second point is definitely true. If someone searches for ‘cheap Sony Bravia 46 inch televisions’, and your ad mentions the words ‘Sony Bravia’, ’46 inch’ and ‘televisions’, perhaps with latest prices for that model, it makes sense that your ad will be more appealing than a generic ‘Sony televisions’ ad.

Let’s have a look at CTR for searches of different word counts. While searches of 1, 2 and 3 words have a relatively low CTR, CTR appears to increase significantly for searches of at least 4 words. CTR, it seems, is considerably stronger for long-tail keywords.

Fact: Long-tail keywords can achieve a higher CTR, as long as ads are tailored to the search query

3. Cost Per Click (CPC) & Average Position

Many search marketers also believe long-tail keywords are cheaper. They have less competition, fewer people bidding on them to drive up their prices, so CPCs will be kept relatively low.

So are long-tail keywords cheaper than generic keywords?

To answer this question, it is important to bring average position into consideration. Since CPCs and ad rankings are closely connected (a higher CPC typically means higher ad ranking), both average position and CPCs need to be considered together.

First, let’s look at CPCs. For searches of 13 words or more, CPCs do tend to be cheaper. For searches under 13 words, however, CPCs tend to be very similar. A 9-word search query costs pretty much the same price as a 4-word search query. CPCs do fall very slightly as word length increases from 3 to 12 words, but I would hardly call that significant.

Now let’s look at average position (a higher bar represents a higher ad ranking). For 1, 2 and 3-word searches, ad ranking is relatively low, and ads are appearing near the bottom of the first page. As word length increases, however, ads are shown significantly higher. They are appearing in the top positions.

So although CPCs were relatively similar for searches of all word counts, long-tails were often shown in a higher position.

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. When you set a maximum CPC bid for each keyword, Google will show you as high as possible without going over your maximum bid. If long tail keywords are cheaper, Google won’t necessarily charge you less. It is in their interest to charge you as much as possible, so they will instead keep your CPCs close to your maximum bid but show you in a higher position.

Fact: Long-tail keywords are cheaper for the same ad ranking, or the same price for a higher ad ranking

4. Conversion Rate

So we’ve seen that long-tail keywords have a significant search volume. They exhibit a strong CTR and are often cheaper than their short-tailed rivals. But clicks are no good if people don’t engage with your site or part with their cash. It’s often conversion that really matters.

So are long-tail searches more likely to convert?

Many search marketers seem to think so – their reasoning being that people who make longer, more specific searches have already done their research and know exactly what they want. They are further along in the buying cycle so are more likely to open their wallet.

Let’s have a look at conversion rate for searches of different word counts.

It’s a pretty convincing trend. As the number of words increases, so does conversion rate.

Fact: Long-tail keywords have a higher conversion rate

5. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Finally, what does this mean for CPA, profitability, return on investment (ROI)? Is it cheaper to acquire a customer through the long-tail?

Let’s have a look at the CPA column.

Again, there appears to be a clear trend between word count and CPA. Conversions from long-tail searches seem to be cheaper than conversions from generic, short-tail searches.

And it’s not just one or two conversions which are coming through long-tail searches, either. Remember how long-tails of 5 words or more accounted for 21% of all searches? Well, those 21% of long-tails generated a massive 40.5% of all conversions.

Fact: Long-tail keywords have a lower cost per acquisition and can be extremely profitable

Long-Tails Are Your Friend

As we have seen, the benefits of long-tail keywords are many:

1. Significant search volume
2. Higher CTR
3. Cheaper CPCs (or higher ad ranking)
4. Higher conversion rate
5. Lower CPA

Quite simply, they outperform generic, short-tail keywords on every measure.

Don’t get me wrong, long-tails shouldn’t replace your short-tail keywords. Short-tails, if used wisely, are great for building interest and awareness at the early stages of the buying cycle. Your long-tail keyword strategy should complement your short-tail strategy.

So by all means continue showing on your high-volume keywords – after all, they may be your bread and butter that keep your business afloat. But the next time you work on you AdWords account, spend some time researching relevant long-tail keywords. Try to think what people are actually searching for and use keyword tools to help. Structure your keywords into closely-themed ad groups and tailor your ads and landing pages to cater for these specialised long-tail searches.

Your Moment to Shine

Of course, researching thousands of keywords and structuring them into hundreds of closely-themed ad groups, each with tailored ads and landing pages, is by no means easy. It will take considerable time, effort and dedication, not to mention the many hours of keyword and search query analysis, ad group expansion and ad copy testing once your keywords are live.

But think about your target audience for a minute. They are calling out for someone to meet their needs in a personalised and relevant way. It’s the age of social interaction, and people are sick of seeing generic ad after generic ad. And despite many advertisers claiming they are “doing this already”, consumers are not currently getting a personalised and relevant service (see The Australian PPC Opportunity).

If you can be the advertiser who understands your audience using search query analysis, if you can cater for their individual needs with relevant ads and landing pages, if you can be the one who makes a mark in your industry, customers will reward you with their wallet. It’s your opportunity to stand out from the competition. So take it.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords specialist, with a proven track record in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI) from PPC marketing. To find out how logical PPC marketing can help your business, please get in touch today for a free consultation.

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But despite the reassuring nature of campaign budgets and the ease at which they can control your spending, they should not be used to control your spending. Instead, cost per click (CPC) bids should be your tool of choice for spend management.

More clicks, no extra spend

To understand why, suppose the daily budget for one of your campaigns is set to $100/day. Each click costs you $1.00 and your ads are showing in position 3.0. Your daily budget of $100 is being hit, so you receive 100 clicks/day.

Since your campaign is reaching its daily budget, your ads are not showing for all eligible searches. Depending on your campaign ad delivery settings, either your ads are not showing later in the day (accelerated delivery), or they are only showing intermittently (standard delivery). In either case, you are missing out on potential customers.

Now suppose you were to reduce your bids by 25%. Your average cost per click drops to $0.75 and your ads are now showing lower down in position 5.0. But since your ads are now appearing throughout the whole day for all eligible searches, you receive more clicks. Instead of 100 clicks, you now receive 120 clicks. Daily spend is now $90 (under your budget of $100).Ceteris paribus, reducing CPCs for campaigns which hit their daily budgets is likely to give you more clicks for no extra (or possibly less) spend. That’s more visitors, for no extra spend. Assuming that all clicks are of equal value to your business, and average position does not affect your conversion rate, these extra clicks are likely to mean more sales and a higher ROI.

More clicks, same CPCs

Alternatively, leaving CPCs constant and instead increasing your daily budget, will likely result in more clicks for the same average CPC. That’s more visitors, more potential customers, without paying a higher per-customer premium (CPC) for the privilege.The bottom line is this: campaigns which hit their daily budgets are inefficient.

For this reason, it is important to check on a regular basis that each of your campaigns are well within their daily budgets. If you notice any of your budgets are being reached, or ore close to being reached, alarm bells should start ringing.

Check your budgets

One simple way to keep on top of daily spending is to log in to Google AdWords, select ‘yesterday’ as the time period and compare the ‘cost’ and ‘daily budget’ columns for each of your campaigns. If any of your campaigns are hitting – or are close to or hitting – your daily budgets, either increase your budget (if extra spend is financially viable), or reduce your CPCs.

A more comprehensive approach, which looks at campaign costs a longer time period, gives you a better understanding of daily trends. By looking at a month’s worth of data (instead of just ‘yesterday’), you will be more informed and better equipped to make changes to your CPCs and budgets.

Download a campaign report

Log in to Google AdWords and create a new report. Select ‘campaign performance’ as the report type (since daily budgets are set at campaign level), select ‘daily’ as the unit of time and enter a date range such as ‘last 30 days’. In ‘add or remove columns’, ensure ‘daily budget’ is ticked. Leave all other options as default. Run the report, and export it to Excel.

Identify overspend

Once you have the report in front of you in Excel, create a new column to identify the percentage of budget spent by each of your campaigns each day, such as in the example below. Once you have done this, you will then be able to see how close each of your campaigns came to its daily budget.

Suppose you are a retailer of European holidays. You have two campaigns – one for Venice and one for Amsterdam. Both campaigns have a daily budget of $100.Looking at the % spent column, it is clear that the Venice campaign is regularly reaching its budget. Reducing CPCs for Venice keywords would likely result in more clicks for no extra (or possibly less) spend.

By all means continue to set daily budgets to protect against freak spikes in traffic which you cannot afford, but make sure CPCs – rather than budgets – are your primary tool for spend management.

Summary

When you notice any of your campaigns regularly hitting daily budgets, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Are you achieving less than satisfactory results from your current AdWords spending? If so, reduce your CPCs – you will likely see more clicks for no extra spend.
2. Are you achieving satisfactory or good results? Do you have extra funds available for AdWords? If so, increase your daily budgets – you will likely see more clicks for the same CPCs.

Either way, it’s a win-win. You will either get more clicks for the same budget, or more clicks for the same average CPC. Effective spend management is essential for a performing PPC campaign, so make regular budget checks a priority.

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient PPC budget management can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

You may remember the 10% Clicks Rule is a technique to help identify the areas of your Google AdWords account which could benefit most from your time and effort (if not, you may want track back to Part 1: Overview and Part 2: Process).

What I want to do now is evaluate the rule using a real AdWords campaign data to assess its viability. Does it work? Does it help PPC management? Does it actually help improve results? Is 10% the right figure?

Example

Let’s start with the example I worked through in Part 2: Process.

As you may remember, we identified the ad groups which were receiving a large percentage of total broad and phrase-match clicks. In the example I used, 4 ad groups received at least 10% of broad and phrase clicks.I then suggested looking at the search queries for these ad groups.This gave me some great insight. Although search queries 54, 183, 55, 56 and 150 were relevant to my products and services, they were being broad matched to ad groups which were not relevant. Looking down the list, I found many similar examples of relevant searches being matched irrelevantly.

So I decided to create 16 new ad groups with 288 new keywords. Doing so gave me ideas of other new types of keywords, so I added them too, some in new ad groups. With these new keywords having their their own tailored ads, I could now be more sure than whenever someone searched for these search queries again, relevant ads would show.

Effects on click distribution

Let’s have a look at the before and after in terms of click distribution:

• The percentage of broad and phrase clicks going to ad group 17 fell from 22.8% to 12.4%
• The percentage of broad and phrase clicks going to ad group 27 fell from 15.8% to 11.3%
• Ad groups 30 and 26 dropped out of the top 5
• Ad group 36 (one of the new ad groups I added with new keyword ideas) moved into the top spot
• The number of ad groups receiving at least 10% of broad and phrase clicks fell from 4 last month to 3 this month
• The amount of broad and phrase clicks going to top 5 ads groups fell from 69% last month to 59% this month

(A more comprehensive comparison of ad group click percentages for both months can be found here).

So although most of last month’s ad groups are receiving a smaller share of broad and phrase clicks, one ad group (36) is now receiving more.

Not ideal, but it’s a step in the right direction. Next month, the search queries for ad group 36 can be analysed and split out into separate ad groups. If we repeat the process a few more times, what we’ll hopefully see is the broad and phrase click distribution spread over a greater number of ad groups.

Effects on actual results

Now let’s look at how overall AdWords results have changed:

• CTR increased by 22.5%
• Click volume increased by 43.2%
• CPCs stayed relatively constant (variation of $0.01)
• Average position of ads rose by 0.6
• Quality Score (weighted average) increased from 7.62 to 7.98
• Conversion rate increased by 33.8%

It seems like the improved ad group granularity, better tailoring of ads and 288 new keywords had a positive effect on CTR, Quality Score and conversion rate. Click volume also rose significantly for the same average CPC.

So great results all round.

More examples

We’ve only looked at one example so far. Let’s repeat the process for few more campaigns to see how the 10% Clicks Rule works on other campaigns.

Highlighted in red are the ad groups which are over 10% and could benefit from some insight.In examples 2 and 3, just looking at the search queries for these highlighted ad groups I found over 300 new keywords that could be added. Most were relevant to my products and services but were being matched irrelevantly.

Although examples 4 and 5 had fewer ad groups over 10%, just looking at the top ad groups helped me uncover some unnecessary broad-matching, suggesting maybe a ‘top 5 rule’ would be better to keep it relative.

Although no before and after results are yet available for these campaigns, it would be interesting to see how CTR, Quality Score and conversion rate improve over time with these ad group improvements.

Conclusions

So what can we conclude from all of this?

• The 10% Clicks Rule made it easy to identify ad groups where time and effort should be focused
• There is evidence to suggest he 10% Clicks Rule successfully helped spread the share of broad and phrase clicks across a greater number of ad groups
• There is evidence to suggest the 10% Clicks Rule helped significantly increase CTR, click volume, average position, Quality Score and conversion rate while keeping CPCs constant

So…if you are worried that too much of your traffic is being broad or phrase-matched, or worried that you are losing control over where your ads are being show, or just want to improve CTR, click volume and conversion rate, this technique could be for you.

I’m convinced of it’s use in helping to improve AdWords campaigns. I use it regularly and it really does help to quickly and easily get to the heart of broad and phrase matching. It saves sifting through mountains of data and becoming overwhelmed with analysis paralysis. That’s just me though – if you’ve tried it out for yourself and have any suggestions, good or bad, I’d love to hear your comments.

Happy optimising!

You may be familiar with a technique I shared in recent post called the 10% Clicks Rule (if not, you may want to come back once you’ve skimmed through Part 1: Overview). In essence, the 10% Clicks Rule is a technique that aims to improve the relevancy of ads for search queries which have broad or phrase-matched to one of you keywords. Since it is impractical to give every possible keyword or search query its own ad group with personalised ads, the 10% Clicks Rule helps to identify those ad groups which are most likely to benefit from your time and effort.

Part 1 was all theory. What I want to do now is provide a step-by-step guide explaining how to identify those ad groups in your own AdWords account which could greatly benefit from your insight. All we’re trying to do here is run a Google AdWords search query report at ad group level, filter out exact match keywords (to leave broad and phrase match only) and highlight those ad groups with more than 10% of broad and phrase clicks. These are the ad groups we want to look at. So if you’re a seasoned AdWords and Excel pro, feel free to skim through the bullets or jump ahead to Part 3: Does it Work?. For everyone else who might need a little more guidance, continue reading for a detailed step-by-step guide.

Download a search query report

• Log in to Google AdWords, go to the Report Centre and click ‘create a new report’
• Click ‘Search Query Performance’
• Select ‘ad group’ as the level of detail, ‘summary’ as the unit of time
• Select an appropriate date range
• Click ‘create report’, open it once it completes and export it to Excel

Pivot the data

Once we have the search query report in front of us, we want to summarise clicks by ad group.

• Delete anything above the campaigns/ad group/search query row so ‘campaigns’ is in cell A1
• Scroll to the bottom and delete the ‘totals and overall averages’ row
• Select all data and headings
• Go to Insert, click ‘PivotTable’, the ‘OK’
• This should create a new sheet

Calculate clicks by ad group

Next we want to filter out exact match clicks and calculate each ad group’s broad and phrase match click volume.

• Make sure you can see the ‘PivotTable Field List’ toolbar on the right-hand side (if you can’t, try clicking on the blank PivotTable or go to Options > Field List) – your sheet should now look like this
• Drag ‘ad group’ into the ‘row labels’ box – this should list all your ad groups in column 1
• Drag ‘clicks’ into the ‘values’ box and ensure it says ‘sum of clicks’ – this should show click totals in column 2
• Drag ‘Search Query Match Type’ into the ‘report filter’ box which should add a drop-down filter in cells A1 and A2 – your field list should now look like this
• Click the drop-down filter, click ‘select multiple items’ and ensure only broad, broad (session based) and phrase  are ticked – like this

Calculate percentages by ad group

You should now have a list of ad groups with totals of their broad and phrase clicks. Let’s now calculate each ad group’s percentage of total broad and phrase clicks.

• Scroll to the bottom and make a note of the ‘grand total’ number of broad and phrase clicks
• Click anywhere on the PivotTable to ensure it’s selected and click Options > Formulas > Calculated Field on the toolbar
• Type “Percentage” as the name
• Type “= Clicks / total_clicks” into the Formula box, where ‘total_clicks’ is your grand total of broad and phrase clicks you made a note of earlier
• Click OK – this should add a new column with each ad group’s percentage
• Ensure the ‘grand total’ of this new column equals 1
• Change the formatting so that each number reads as a percentage

Highlight high-volume ad groups

Now that we have percentages calculated for each ad group, make a note of those ad groups…

• Right-click anywhere in column 3, go to ‘Sort’ and select ‘Sort Largest to Smallest’
• Make a note of ad groups with more than 10% of clicks

These are the ad groups with a lot of broad-matching and phrase-matching going on. These are the ad groups that could benefit with your time and effort.

The fun part

You’ve now got everything you need to start make powerful changes to you AdWords account. You can stop here and use your own intuition to make improvements to these ad groups, or continue reading for some ideas and suggestions on what to do next.

Search query analysis

• Go back to your original search query report sheet so you can see all your search queries
• In the ‘ad group’ column, filter so that only the ad groups you made a note of earlier are ticked
• In the ‘Search Query Match Type’ column, filter so that only broad, broad (session) and phrase are ticked
• Sort the clicks largest to smallest

Your search query report should look something like this.

Take a moment to familiarise yourself with your search queries. People are typing these searches to find your products or services. You need to decide what action to take. For each of your search queries, you could either:

1. Add it as a negative keyword (if it’s not relevant)
2. Add it as a new keyword in its own ad group (if ads in that ad group are relevant)
3. Add it as a new keywords in a new ad group (if ads in that ad group are not relevant and new ads are needed)

First decide if any of the search queries are irrelevant to your business (option 1). Make a note of any irrelevant searches in a separate Excel sheet – you can add them as negative keywords later.

Great. Let’s now assume that all remaining searches are relevant to your business. You now need to decide between options 2 and 3 – whether to add the search query as a new keyword in that ad group, or in a new ad group.

To decide whether option 2 or 3 would work best, have a look at the ‘ad group’ column for the search query. It is this ad group the search query is being matched to. Open up AdWords Editor and now find that ad group. Look at the ads. These ads are being shown whenever someone searches for the search query. Are they relevant? Do they mention the search query in the heading or descriptions? Could they be improved in any way to increase relevancy, Quality Score, CTR and conversion rate?

If you think the ads are relevant to the search query, add the search as a new keyword to that ad group (option 2). If you think you could write better, more relevant ads for the search query, add the search query as a new keyword in a new ad group and write better ads for it (option 3).

Great rule, but does it work?

Hopefully if you’ve made it this far you’ve managed to have a go yourself and found some juicy ways to improve your AdWords campaign. While I hope you found it simple and straightforward to follow, feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

In the final part of the Clicks Rule trilogy, I look at real AdWords examples and explore how it can actually help improve results of AdWords campaigns. Part 3: Does It Work?

Here’s the theory

No more than 10% of total broad and phrase clicks in your Google AdWords account should come from a single ad group. If more than 10% of your total broad and phrase clicks comes from a single ad group, the keywords in that ad group are being over broad-matched or over phrase-matched. Too many searches are going to that ad group’s broad and phrase-match keywords, so the ad group could benefit from keyword expansion and search query analysis.

Example

Suppose you found an ad group which accounted for 18% of your total broad and phrase clicks. This ad group is a prime candidate for improvement for two reasons:

1. Ad group expansion

High-volume ad groups are perfect for ad group expansion.

Spitting out the ad group’s keywords into separate ad groups allows you to write more tailored ads for each keyword. Tailored ads are likely to have a beneficial effect on click-through rate (CTR), Quality Score, costs per click (CPC), ad ranking and conversion rate.

Since it is impractical for every keyword to have it’s own ad group (imagine how tedious and time-consuming 10,000 keywords and 10,000 ad groups would be!), the 10% rule highlights the ad groups and keywords that are likely to benefit most from being split out and having their own tailored ads.

2. Search query analysis

High-volume ad groups are also perfect for search query analysis.

Search queries are what people actually type into Google before they click on one of your ads. Running a search query report for the whole AdWords account allows to to assess whether each of your search queries are relevant to your business, and adding them as negative keywords if not.

Running a search query report at an ad group level, is even better. Not only can you decide if each search query is relevant to your business, but you can also decide if each search query sufficiently matches the ads in that ad group. If the ads in the ad group are very different to the search query, the search query could benefit from having its own ad group with its own personalised ads.

So for each broad and phrase search query you found that matches to the 18% ad group:

• If the search query is irrelevant to your business – add the search query as a negative keyword
• If the search query is very close to the ad group’s keywords and ads – add the search query as a keyword in the same ad group
• If the search query is different to the ad group’s keywords and ads and you think it could benefit by having it’s own personalised ads – add the search query as a keyword in a new ad group

Since it is impractical to look at the every ad group’s search queries, the 10% rule highlights only those ad groups which are likely to have the biggest effect for the amount of time you spend making changes.

Broad and phrase only

You may ask why look at only broad and phrase clicks? What about exact match?

Exact-match keywords give you complete control over the user’s search query. Since you can be 100% sure what the user will need to type into Google for your exact-match keyword to be triggered, you are able to write highly-targeted and personalised ads without having to worry about hundreds of different search queries triggering your exact-match keyword. It is relatively simple to look at an exact-match keyword and decide whether its ad could be made more relevant.

However, with broad and phrase match, things aren’t so simple. You could spend all day trying to write perfect ads which closely match your broad and phrase keywords, but ultimately it is up to Google what kinds of searches get matched to these ads.

For example, you could write a highly compelling ‘Cheap Sony TVs’ ad for your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ keyword. However, if the user searches for ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’ and they gets broad-matched to your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ keyword, your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ ad will appear. It will look irrelevant to the user.

A better ad would mention ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’, although this is only possible by creating a dedicated ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’ ad group. You know you can’t create a dedicated ad group for every search query, so where do you start? Where do you draw the line?

This lack of control and uncertainty with broad and phrase match can be a real problem for PPC advertisers trying to create highly relevant campaigns. The whole point of the 10% Clicks Rule is to help regain some control, by providing a technique to help you quickly and easily get to the heart of your broad and phrase matching and make changes that are likely to have a powerful effect. It’s not meant to be a strict ‘rule’ as such, more a ‘guideline’ or ‘rule of thumb’ which I have found to work in my experience.

That’s all for part 1. Comments and suggestions welcome.

In Part 2: Process, I’ll take you through a step-by-step guide to running rule for yourself – finding those ad groups in your own Google AdWords account that could benefit from a little TLC. If you’re more interested in exactly how the 10% Clicks Rule actually works or how it can help to improve your AdWords results, skip to Part 3: Does it Work?

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Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

Why? Because paid search relevancy can pay massive dividends. Not only is a highly relevant pay per click (PPC) campaign more likely to receive a higher click-through rate (CTR), higher Quality Score, higher ad rankings, lower costs per click (CPC) and benefit from less wasted spend, but users will more qualified so bounce rates are likely to fall (the number of people who immediately ‘bounce’ back), conversion rates increase and return on investment (ROI) will ultimately improve. So a highly relevant paid search campaign is definitely a good thing.

To achieve PPC relevancy, keywords, ads and landing pages need to work together in tandem. Messages in ads need to match users’ search queries, landing pages need to match messages in ads and landing pages need to relate to users’ original searches. (For a more detailed explanation of how each component interlinks, you might like to consult Acquisio’s great article on AdWords relevancy and Quality Score).

Closely matching ads and landing pages to keywords to encourage only targeted and qualified users to visit your site is a simple theory, and one that’s been around since the dawn of Google AdWords.

So nothing new then – does that mean relevancy is no longer relevant?

Well, not exactly, for two reasons…

Impossible to achieve

Firstly, relevancy can never be achieved in its perfect form. There will always be ways a PPC advertiser can improve his keyword selection, negative keyword list, match type strategy, ad copy matching and landing page selection to give the user a more engaging and personalised experience. Just like there will never be a 10.0 film on IMDB, there will never be a perfectly relevant PPC campaign. One can only strive towards perfection – towards the Holy Grail of relevancy.

Higher expectations

Secondly, the bar of relevancy is constantly being raised. As search engine continually improve their algorithms to provide users with more relevant organic search results, so paid search ads will have to improve to keep up with the growing expectations of searchers. Ads which might have been considered ‘quite relevant’ last year may be considered ‘not so relevant’ now. Ads which sufficiently answer the questions of searchers today may not do so next year when people start to demand a more personalized and tailored service.

So not only is the Holy Grail of relevancy (a perfectly relevant campaign) impossible to achieve, but it is getting more and more impossible to achieve as we speak.

But all is not lost. No-one expects perfection, after all. Just being better than the competition can reap massive benefits for advertisers. And as I’m about to point out, getting better than the competition doesn’t need to be difficult. There are opportunities everywhere.

Opportunities

Say you’re interested in visiting Sydney and want somewhere to stay. Load up Google, search for ‘Sydney hotels’ and look at the paid search results.

Of the 10 PPC ads, 9 mention the words ‘Sydney’ and ‘hotels’. Most of the ads are calling out to the user, “I have hotels in Sydney! Come to Me!” Most of the ads are relevant to your search.

But let’s say you know a little bit more about your Sydney hotel requirements. After all, you can’t be bothered clicking through each of the hundreds of paid search results (or the 22,900,000 organic results for that matter). Come to think of it, you are interested in going to Sydney next weekend, you your refine your search query.

Search for ‘weekend breaks in Sydney’ and look at the paid search results. Although most ads mention ‘Sydney’, not a single advertiser includes the words ‘weekend’ or ‘break’ in their ads. No-one is shouting out to the user, “Yes! I have weekend breaks in Sydney! Come to me!” Every ad appear to be a generic ‘Sydney Hotel’ ad that may or may not be relevant to your weekend requirements.

Suppose, instead, when searching for ‘weekend breaks in Sydney’, you saw one of the following ads:

Suppose they took you through to a special ‘weekend break’ page, specifically designed for people looking to stay at the hotel over the weekend. Along with suggestions of local Sydney sights, activities and restaurants that could easily be fitted in over a weekend were reviews from people staying at the hotel on Friday and Saturday nights.

Would you be more likely to consider this hotel in your plans? I know I might.

More opportunities

Okay, only 36 people searched for ‘weekend breaks in Sydney’ in June. But these were 36 people who knew what they were looking for and were delivered poor, generic, one-message-fits-all ads.

‘Weekend breaks in Sydney’ is just one example. Imagine all the hundreds of similar qualified searches people could make to find your products or services. 880 people searched for ‘Sydney CBD hotels’ in June, but most advertisers fail to mention ‘CBD’ or even their location in their ads. ‘Sydney hotels the rocks’ had 390 searches, but only one advertiser mentions the phrase ‘The Rocks’ in their ads. 73 people searched for ‘3 star hotels in Sydney’ but only a handful of advertisers mention ’3 star’ or ‘3*’ in their ads. These are people who know what they want are willing to part with their cash if they can find it.

It doesn’t take long to find hundreds of other examples of keywords that have significant search volume and are being poorly served. There are opportunities everywhere.

What’s more, as demand for better search results grows, people will start making more of these 3, 4, 5 and 6-word searches and expect better, relevant, more personalised results. The winners will be the advertisers who cater for them. The losers will be the ones who don’t.

So how do I go about improving the relevancy of my AdWords campaign?

Patience

I’m not going to pretend there is a quick overnight fix (because there isn’t). A highly relevant AdWords campaign takes patience, commitment and dedication.

Nor are there techniques that work for everyone. The whole purpose of this blog is to share with you the PPC techniques I have found to work in my experience, although I recognise they will be far from the be-all-and-end-all of paid search management so I welcome your ideas and comments. Paid search is an ongoing battle to become better and better, and it isn’t going to stop any time soon.

But to keep things nice and simple, here’s a quick 5 minute run-down of the essentials of creating a highly relevant PPC campaign:

Keyword Research

Research keywords that people are searching for. There are free tools out there, such as Google’s keyword tool, so use them. Build up a comprehensive keyword list. Not just with generic, high-volume keywords, such as ‘cheap Sydney hotels’, but also with long-tail keywords such as ‘cheap hotels in Sydney CBD’ and ‘cheap hotels Sydney Darling Harbour’. Long-tails can collectively be of significant volume and provide a great opportunity for tailored ads.

Then research negative keywords, lots of them. Why waste money on clicks you know are completely irrelevant? Use the keyword tool to identify keywords that might broad match to ‘cheap Sydney hotels’. Go through each result, making a note of anything you think is irrelevant. Is your Sydney hotel miles away from Sydney Airport? If so, add ‘airport’ as a negative keyword. Keep brainstorming negatives until you have at least a hundred.

Ad Group Structure

Once you have done your initial research, group your keywords into small, closely themed ad groups of generally no more than 20-30 keywords each. Write ad descriptions that are relevant to the ad group’s keywords and include the ad group’s keywords in your ads where possible. If you think you could write a more relevant ad for a keyword if the keyword was in its own ad group, split out that keyword into its own ad group and write a more relevant and tailored ad for it.

Think of the keyword as the question and the ad as the answer. Keep asking yourself, “If I searched for this keyword and saw this ad, is it answering my question?” If not, change it so it does.

Include offers and prices that are relevant to the keyword. In your ‘Sydney Hotels Christmas 2009′ ad group, how about mentioning Christmas 2009 prices or early booking discounts?

You’re trying to make your ads as relevant as possible to the user’s searches so think about how you could angle your products or services to appeal to users searching each of your keywords.

Next, deep-link your keywords to the most relevant page on your site. Don’t have a relevant landing page for a set of keywords? Write one.

Rinse and repeat until you have hundreds of ad groups, each with tailored ads and landing pages that match the keywords they contain.

Optimization

Then get optimising. Test new keywords. New ads. New landing pages. Two keywords in the same ad group getting a lot of volume? Split the two keywords out into separate ad groups and write new ads that better match those keywords.

Run search query reports to highlight searches your keywords have broad-matched and phrase-matched to. Are they relevant? If so, ad them as new keywords in new ad groups and write tailored ads for them. If not, add them as negative keywords to prevent your ads showing for them again.

It may seem like a lot of work but it’s worth it. With patience, your CTR will start to increase. So will your Quality Score. People will start to spend longer on your site and view more pages. Returning visitors will rise as people decide to come back. Conversion rates will grow and sales volume will increase.

The Holy Grail of relevancy is not something you can achieve overnight, or achieve at all for that matter. It is only something you can strive towards. PPC success favours the dedicated. So keep testing and optimising.

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