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.

Alan Mitchell is a Google AdWords certified PPC specialist based in Melbourne, Australia, with over 4 years running successful PPC campaigns for businesses in Australia and overseas. Find out how the specialist PPC management such as the 4 PPC strategies above can help you improve your return on investment from PPC marketing, or get in touch for more information.

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.

What strategies do you find useful for optimising PPC campaigns? How do you ensure your optimisations are reliable and efficient? Share your comments and suggestions below.

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.

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 specialist PPC marketing can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

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.

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 a strategic approach to PPC can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

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.

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 a strategic approach to PPC can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

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.

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 a strategic approach to modified broad match can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

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.

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 a strategic approach to PPC can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

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.

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 a strategic approach to PPC can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.