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Only better.
So I logged in the other day to one of our clients’ AdWords accounts, and saw the following somewhat familiar sight:
This is one of our most productive accounts as far as volume of conversions goes, and our cost per conversion is staggeringly low. Out of curiosity, I took a look at what Google’s recommended budget for us was:
If you squint, you can see that our current budget is $250/day, and the recommended budget is $889.28/day - an increase of 355%! You may also notice that clicks increase by 100%, from 5,480 to 11,944.
Wait a second! So I can increase my budget by 3.5 times and get 2 times as many clicks? Awesome! Not. I’m glad I thought that one through rather than just taking the recommendation no questions asked.
I’d like to try this tactic with some of our clients: “Hi, I was just analyzing your account and I recommend that you pay us 3 times as much as you are now. . .” 
All Google-mocking aside: Could there be times when increasing your budget by x amount in order to get 1/2x amount more conversions would be a smart thing to do? The answer is yes, but it depends on your profit margins. If you make $10 per lead, then paying an extra $1 per lead in order to get 100 more leads could turn out to be a great move for you. However, if you make $3 per lead, paying that extra dollar might really hurt your bottom line. They key is to find the optimal solution to the following equation:
Total Profit = Net Profit * Volume
If Volume * Net Profit is greater at a higher volume and lower net profit, then you’re good! If Volume * Net Profit is lower at a higher volume and lower net profit, then you’re not.
All I’ve got to say is Google is smart. . . I just hope I’m not as dumb as they think I am!
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Download another semvironment wordpress creation today and start improving your organic traffic!
Rand just published a “Headsmacking Tip” this morning about the importance of researching and optimizing your blog post titles and content before hitting ‘publish’…and roughly 24 hours before he published the post, I wrote to our lead wordpress programmer about developing a plugin that let’s us do exactly that!
We planned on using the KeywordDiscovery API - and still will - but we wanted to capitalize on Rand’s suggestion and simply make the free keyword research tools easily accessible from Wordpress while you are writing a post!!!
Download the Keyword Research Wordpress Plugin here!
How to install:
1. Upload the file `post_keyword_research.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Simply write a post and note the research links below your submenu and to the right below the ’save’/'publish’ button.
Here are a few screen shots of where the research links show up (2 locations) - these links open in new windows so you can simply click on them while you are writing and begin your research! Hooray!
Under your submenu:
Under the “Save”/”Publish”/”Related” section:
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Introducing the Link Builder for Wordpress
The Link Builder simply tracks the websites and pages you link to and sends an email message to that website owner/administrator notifying them of your link.
Download the Link Builder for Wordpress here
Then watch this video (update: haha - if you turn up your volume, you can hear a ‘darth vader’ breathing effect from my mic…sorry!) to learn how to configure and use the plugin:
You can read the readme.txt file for installation instructions here.
UPDATE: Reminder - you MUST remember to edit your config file! And this is not a 100% automated tool - it is designed to be personal while simplifying your link building efforts.
Other Plugins that are built for SEO/Link Building from Wordpress
Internal Link Building by SEOROI - This looks like it’s an awesome tool although it didn’t work with our admin/theme/template for some reason…haven’t had a chance to look at it but it’s received rave reviews so we recommend giving it a shot yourself!
All In One SEO Pack - One of our favorites. You control title tags, descriptions and keywords for every post and page or you can let the pack update them automatically!
Two Excellent Guides To Optimizing Blogs
Wordpress SEO - The Definitive Guide To High Rankings for Your Blog
The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization - Aaron and Giovanna Wall of SEOBook.com fame wrote this awesome guide…a must read!
About the Programmer: The programmer that was our lead dev on this plugin is Simon. We own the copyrights, programming and design - but Simon is a fantastic resource and he is freakishly fast with Wordpress dev stuff if you need him.
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Last week we wrote about the new PPC platform that Myspace came out with, called “Find Your Fans.” This program allows music artists to place banner ads (either their own or from Myspace-provided templates) on the profiles and pages where their defined target audience are likely to be browsing. Advertising musicians pay $0.25 per click.
“Find Your Fans” requires a review and approval from Myspace, so we had one of our team apply for the program with his band’s profile. After Myspace finally approved the band, we went in and took some screen shots:
Log in at http://advertise.myspace.com/landing.html and click “get started.” You’ll be brought to this page.
You are prompted to either upload a banner ad or build an ad using one of Myspace’s templates. Banner ads must be 728 x 90 pixels in size.
When you click on either option, a legal agreement box pops up:
Next, you get to choose from a variety of fairly hideous banner templates:
And then you input your band name, picture, etc. (or upload your own banner). At this point you’re taken to the target audience definition page. You can specify the gender, age range, country/state/region, interest categories, and genres that define your target:
Next you put in your budget. As mentioned, all clicks cost $0.25 regardless of anything.
Next, you review your banner and campaign details. Here’s the banner we made (shrunk down a little):
Then Myspace asks you for your credit card number, which we will not give you a screen shot of…
Here is what the dashboard looks like:
There is an alerts section, a report graphing account performance, and then campaign summary details at the bottom.
The campaign page is pretty simple, and you basically edit your settings in the same way as you edit your myspace profile details. Click the “edit” button next to what you want to edit, some input boxes come up, etc. You have to actually pause your campaign in order to edit anything in it.
So that’s an inside look at Myspace’s new PPC program, “Find Your Fans!”
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If you log into your Google AdWords account you should be getting the following message as of a few minutes ago:
If you log into your AdWords account, click on a campaign, and then click on an adgroup, you’ll see the following new feature:
Until recently, this “Placements” tab did not exist. Placement targeting, formerly known as site targeting, now allows CPC bidding. Google’s Inside Adwords blog explains this new feature:
“We’ve combined keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns into a single online campaign type. Starting today, you can target keywords and placements together in the same ad group. By doing so, you combine the benefits of contextual targeting with placement targeting: use keywords to show your ads only on contextually relevant pages, then use placements to set specific bids for, or restrict your targeting to, sites you value differently from the rest of the content network.”
So now advertisers no longer have to separate placement and keyword targeted ad groups.
Just click on the “Placements” tab on your ad group screen, and you can learn specifically how placements work and if you’re running them currently in your account:
To activate the content network in your campaign (this enables placement targeting), click on “campaign settings” under “campaign summary” and then scroll down to this part (which is also new):
Check “The content network” and you’re ready to go! While placement targeted campaigns can now be switched between CPC and CPM, be aware that keyword targeted campaigns are still CPC only.
We do have one question (and our Google Rep is currently looking into this for us): Is the new placement targeting compatible with the conversion optimizer? This is not yet confirmed, so if you are using the conversion optimizer, we recommend waiting to make the switch until it is.
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As Search Engine Roundtable reported earlier today, Google AdWords only uses exact match data in order to compute your quality score. So your quality score for broad matches is based on your quality score for the exact match that is searched.
Quoting Search Engine Roundtable:
“So, if you are bidding on [blue shoes] and you get a click from a search on [red shoes], due to broad match - then Google won’t use that click for quality score purposes. Google will only use the exact match of a click, i.e. [blue shoes] search to [blue shoes] keyword ad. It doesn’t mean Google won’t rank your broad or phrase match ads based on your overall quality score. It does mean that your overall quality score is made up of only exact matches.”
While this is true (there is a quality score associated with the exact match of the keyword that broadly matches yours), using the example in the article, ‘blue shoes’ has its quality score, and ‘red shoes’ has its own quality score as far as minimum bids go. If you’re only advertising on the broad match ‘blue shoes’ and the ad displays for ‘red shoes’, you are probably going to pay more for the ‘red shoe’ click because the relevancy is technically lower. Because quality score calculations are dynamic, you will end up paying more for that word because you aren’t advertising on the broad or exact match of that word.
This is why we recommend filtering for those words and redistributing them in their own ad group with their own advertisements if you find that they are converting or transactional keywords.
If ‘red shoes’ isn’t a transactional term for you, add ‘red’ and ‘red shoes’ as negatively matched terms and your quality score problem associated with it will fade away!
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This is our first mini screen recording production.
We hope you enjoy it!
AdWords describes their quality score formula in a couple different places…my favorite sentences in these documents are:
“your account’s historical performance, and other relevance factors.”
There are a ton of ‘other’ factors…lol.
“Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords.”
Dynamic means it changes for every query…which is ok - and it’s usually why you want to make sure you target phrase and exact match terms as well as super long tail 1 or 2 per year queries.
“The formula behind Quality Score varies depending on whether it’s calculating minimum bids or assigning ad position.”
So there are two different formulas that are connected based on ‘other’ factors…sounds complicated.
Google gives us some indication of what each of the formulas are here. Check it out - it really is quite useful despite the ‘black box’ parts of the document.
Dave Davis at redfly marketing wrote an excellent piece listing 10 ways you can increase your quality score.
Another excellent post called AdWords Quality Score FAQ can be found at PPC Discussions.
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Well, actually Google itself didn’t, but if AdWords statistics are an indication, John McCain is the most-liked of Internet searchers.
Or maybe the most disliked…
Or just the most expensive as far as Cost Per Click!
We went into the AdWords Traffic Estimator Tool and pitted Senators Obama and McCain against each other in a paid search battle. We got the following results:
Now, McCain’s clicks cost more, and there are more potential clicks on an ad targeting his name than Obama’s. As we’ve stressed in posts before, it is fundamentally important to dive into data when researching keywords and other trends in PPC Management. At face value, one could assume that Senator McCain is searched more and has more ad competition than Senator Obama because he is more popular - and therefore will win the election. There are several variables, however, that could cause this to be quite untrue:
- Maybe so many people search for John McCain on Google because they hate him. This could account for the differences in click volume.
- Maybe there are a lot of anti-McCain websites bidding on the senator’s name. This could account for the differences in CPC.
- Maybe Republicans use Google more than Democrats, or maybe Republicans tend to click on ads more than Democrats.
And there are other factors that could cause a Presidential-Win-For-McCain assumption to be unsupported by this data. When managing your own client accounts, you should use the same kind of critical thinking or skepticism:
- Why are people searching for the terms you are bidding on? Are they transactional terms? Are people looking to buy your product when they search for these terms? Are they looking for information? Are they looking for something else?
- What kinds of competitors are bidding on your key terms? Are they in the same industry as you? A low representation of advertisers in your same market on key terms could mean opportunity… or it could mean that everyone quit advertising because no one searching for those terms is buying.
- What kinds of people are doing the searching? Demographics and psychographics affect click behavior. Figuring out the behavior of your target market can be crucial to your success. Basic marketing skills - not just knowledge of how AdWords or AdCenter work - will give you an advantage over your competitors.
The same goes when analyzing ad performance stats like CTRs, Conversion Rates, and Costs/Conversion. Take time and think through the process your visitors are going through to reach your site and convert (or what prevents them from doing either). Make hypotheses about why users are behaving the way they are and then TEST!
Other websites have talked about political search trends at the following urls:
How we’re using the web in the 2008 elections
Bush & Kerry Battle It Out In Search
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In response to the recent semvironment post on web marketing in Brazil, Tim Gill, a multilingual seo specialist writes:
I work over at Netconcepts and speak portuguese. I have been invited to go to SMX Brasil to speak on SEO. This is great information that I was not aware of. Brazil is a huge open source IT powerhouse. They have a government that understands the internet and forbade gov agencies from buying windows. LOL. I am making it my personal mission to focus on the Latin American Markets because of all of the opportunities. Spanish is the second-biggest “European” language on the Internet, after English. According to Internet World Stats, over a fifty million Spanish-speaking people use the Internet, just a touch above the number of German-speaking people. What is most astounding is that there is less than a 15% penetration rate of the Spanish population, compared to over 50% for the German population. What does this mean? Simply that Spanish is poised to grow a lot faster on the Internet than German and many other languages. Spanish is the language of the fastest growth on the Internet, so make sure that Spanish search marketing strategy. As the online U.S. Hispanic community continues to grow, the most cost effective way to reach this significant market audience is through an effective Multilingual Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. The higher a site scores with Indexibility, Relevance and Authority against the search engine’s requirements, the higher ranking the website will receive in the organic results.
The benefits of optimizing Spanish web pages include:
- Serving the U.S. Hispanic Community which continues to lead Internet users in growth.
- Increased brand awareness within the Hispanic community. Educate and inform a targeted market audience.
- Competitive advantage as many other brands are slow to serve the Hispanic market.
- High ROI as top rankings result in increased qualified traffic
- Search users prefer organic results and view them as credible, not advertisers.
It’s good to see someone else is seeing this too! Keep up the great posts!
Thanks, Tim!
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API stands for “Application Programming Interface,” which in normal-people-terms means “A way for you to tap into a program from your own program.” Using APIs, programmers are able to create a variety of desktop applications, website tools, and widgets that interact with various services, such as Google Adwords.
So why should you get the Adwords API? A variety of great applications will continue to emerge, taking advantage of the API in order to deliver time-saving tools. It’s a good idea to already have access to the API for when something useful comes along. It takes several weeks for Google to review your application and grant you access, so you might as well sign up now before you get left behind.
Additionally, semvironment is currently developing a REALLY COOL TOOL that uses the Adwords API, and you won’t want to be four to six weeks behind (waiting for your Google approval) when it comes out! This tool will be free to those who have their own API access, and it will cost a monthly fee to those who wish to use our API.
In order to use the Adwords API, you need to get your own developer token and application token. Also, you need to be aware that the Adwords API charges a minute fee of $0.25 per 1,000 actions. To sign up for the Adwords API, follow the steps below:
Start by visiting: https://adwords.google.com/select/ApiWelcome
You’ll need a Client Center or regular Adwords login. Once you log in, you’ll get this screen, which prompts you for your budget information. As mentioned, the API costs $0.25 per 1,000 actions, although there are ways to reduce this cost so that it’s free.
After you hit continue, if you don’t have a Client Center account, you will be prompted to create one:
Finally, you’ll be logged into your My Client Center. Click on the tab labeled “My Account” and then “Adwords API Center.” You’ll need to update your billing preferences, as shown (if they’re not up-to-date), and then you’ll just need to wait for your developer information to be reviewed. After that, voila! You have API access!
For more information on the Adwords API, visit the official AdWords API Blog.
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