Search Engine Marketing

AdWords Editor Version 9.7.1

2011-11-16T23:05:00.001-08:00

Google has implemented more features in new version of AdWords Editor. It contains all features what we have in AdWords console. The previous version of AdWords Editor didn't have "Interest Categories & Remarketing" features in it but the new version has it and also having more advanced options which can reduce time spent of the Advertiser.

Improved targeting options
•User interest categories: On the audiences tab, target user interest categories in addition to user lists. You can also copy audiences with user interest categories across accounts.

•Advanced location options: On the campaigns tab, edit settings for targeting method and exclusion method.

•Wi-Fi traffic: The option to target Wi-Fi traffic is available in your campaign device targeting.

•Target all languages. It's now possible to target a campaign to all languages by leaving the language list blank.

•Campaign experiments: Experiment serving status, name, start and end dates, %, and other fields now appear in the campaigns tab. All fields are read-only.

•Top of page bid estimates: Top of page bid estimates appear on the keywords tab, in the "Select duplicates" menu, and in advanced bid changes.

Updated campaign editing:
•Capitalization tool. Quickly change the capitalization of selected text. Go to the Edit menu > Change text capitalization.

•Bidding strategy enforcement. For example, AdWords Editor automatically prevents editing CPC bids in ad groups and keywords in an automatic bidding campaign.

•Automatic destination URL corrections. AdWords Editor replaces %, <, and > symbols in destination URLs with %25, %3C, and %3E, respectively. Exception: If % is followed by two hexadecimal digits (numbers 0 through 9 or letters A through F), such as %AB or %23, it remains unchanged.

•Consolidated options for copying campaign settings. "Copy campaign shell" (in the Edit menu > Copy special) replaces options for copying campaign targeting and ad schedules.

Performance improvements:
•Faster copy, cut, and paste (including drag-and-drop).
•Faster downloading for large accounts

How to use audiences tab in AdWords Editor:
Download, view, and assign audiences from remarketing lists, custom combination lists, or user interest categories in AdWords Editor.

To create and manage audiences in your account, sign in to the AdWords web interface. On the Campaigns tab, click the Control Panel and library link in the side navigation bar, then select Audiences.

Assign an audience in AdWords Editor
1.In the tree view, select the ad group to which you want to assign an audience.
2.While on the Audiences tab, click Assign audience.
3.Select an audience for your campaign from the list. Hold the Shift button to assign more than one audience to the campaign. You can also use the search box to filter your options.
4.Click OK when you've finished making your selections.

New Ad Placements on Search

2011-11-04T01:20:00.000-07:00

Google has Launched new Ad Placements on Search

Until now Google has been displaying Sponsored ads on Top and on Right hand side.

Starting today, ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them. Google Dynamically optimize each search page and its ads to provide the best experience to users.

Google has done the testing on the same and found that most of the users are tending to click on the bottom ads, which internally increases the click through rate of the campaigns also helps the advertisers to get more number of conversions at lower CPL.

If you're interested in comparing the performance of your ads in the top positions versus all other positions, you may use the "Top vs. Side" segment. With this launch, all side, bottom and experiment impressions will now be classified as "Other" so you can more easily see how your top ad placements perform against placements on the rest of the page. In the coming weeks, "Top vs. Side" will be renamed to "Top vs. Other."

How can I tell where my ad appeared on Google’s search results page?

What's the “Top vs. Side” segment?
You can find out where your ad appeared on Google’s search results pages and search partners' pages by applying the “Top vs. Side” segment to your reports. Segmenting your data by “Top vs. Side” can help you optimize your search campaigns to serve your ads on the parts of the page that perform best for you.

How to segment data with “Top vs. Side”
To see how your ads perform on different sections of the Google search results page and search partners’ pages, you’ll need to apply the segment to your data table. Here’s how:
Sign in to your AdWords account at http://adwords.google.com
Click the Campaign, Ad groups, Ads or Keywords tab of your AdWords account.
Click the Segment button in the toolbar above your data table.
Select Top vs. Side from the drop-down. Results will appear in rows beneath each of your ads.

How to interpret the data
Google search: Top -- Your ad ran above the organic Google search results.
Google search: Other -- Any AdWords text ads that don’t appear directly above Google search results are categorized as "Google search: Other."
Search partners: Top -- Your ad ran above the partner's organic search results on a search partners' page.
Search partners: Other -- Ads that don’t appear directly above partner search results are categorized as "Other."
Google Display Network -- Your ad ran on the Google Display Network.

Dynamic Search Ads by Google (Beta)

2011-10-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

For many online businesses, each day you might have hundreds of new listings, items that temporarily change availability, or items that are permanently removed from stock. And at the same time, user search behavior can be a moving target -- each day, 16% of searches that occur, Google has never seen before. So even well-managed AdWords campaigns containing thousands of keywords can miss relevant searches, experience delays getting ads written for new products, or get out of sync with what's actually available on your web site. That's not great for advertisers. It's also not great for end users, who appreciate relevant ads linked to landing pages with in-stock items that perfectly match what they're searching for.

To help with these challenges, we're launching Dynamic Search Ads, a new way to target relevant searches with dynamic ads generated right from your website. Dynamic Search Ads complement your existing keyword-targeted ads to help you sell more with less effort.

Dynamic Targeting, Ads and Landing Pages
With Dynamic Search Ads, we maintain a fresh index of your inventory using Google's organic web crawling technology.

When a relevant search occurs, we dynamically generate an ad with a headline based on the query, and the text based on your most relevant landing page

The ad enters the auction and competes normally -- but we'll hold it back for any search where you also have an eligible keyword-targeted ad. So you get additive results from broader exposure for more of your in-stock inventory, without disrupting your existing keyword campaigns.

User Experience & Performance
Ads are answers. And when users see ads and landing pages that deliver exactly what they're searching for, they're more likely to click and convert. So it's not surprising that we've seen solid performance in limited testing so far. While results vary, the majority of advertisers in our pilot have seen 5-10% increase in clicks and conversions with satisfactory ROI.

Some advertisers have the potential for better results. ApartmentHomeLiving.com, a leading U.S. apartment shopping website, is one example. Lawrence Cotter, General Manager, manages their huge online inventory of apartment listings that's constantly changing and growing. Over the past 5 years, his AdWords campaigns have topped 15 million keywords. Several weeks after implementing Dynamic Search Ads, he reported:
"Using Dynamic Search Ads increased conversions by almost 50% with an average cost-per-conversion that's 73% less than our traditional search ads. Dynamic Search Ads are doing a really good job finding the right searches to tap into, creating good ads, and getting visitors to the most relevant page on our site."

You're In Control
You can choose to target your whole site, specific categories of products on your site, pages containing certain words, or pages containing certain strings in your URL. And all controls can be used as negatives, along with traditional keyword negatives, to refine your targeting and prevent the promotion of out-of-stock items.

Reporting and optimization work in familiar fashion. You get full reporting on searches that generated clicks, destination pages that matched ads, ad headlines that were generated, as well as average CPC, clicks, and conversions. Many popular third party tracking systems are also supported. To optimize, use familiar techniques like adjusting your max CPC bid and negatives.

Availability & More Details
At this time, Dynamic Search Ads are available in all countries and languages as a limited beta.

Making local online advertising easy with Google AdWords Express

2011-10-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

Google is officially introducing AdWords Express in the UK and Germany. AdWords Express is a faster and simpler way to start advertising online in under five minutes and is designed to help local businesses that aren't already AdWords advertisers create effective campaigns.

AdWords Express helps potential customers find your website or Place page and gives you a quick and straightforward way to connect with them and grow your business. You simply provide some basic business information, choose some wording for your text ad, select a monthly budget and your campaign is ready to go.

After you sign up, the campaign will be automatically managed for you. AdWords Express will figure out which searches should trigger your ad to appear and displays it when these searches happen. Your ad will be shown in the Ads section of search results pages—on the top or right hand side—and in Google Maps with a distinctive blue pin. Customers can see your ad whether they’re searching on laptops or mobile phones.

As with all our ad products, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad. To make things even easier, AdWords Express optimizes your ads to get the most out of your advertising campaign and budget.

Many businesses are already finding success through AdWords, but we know many of you are looking for an easier way to begin advertising online. Visit www.google.co.uk/adwords/express

Bid Per Call in Google AdWords

2011-10-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks in the US and UK, we'll be rolling out the ability for advertisers to bid for phone calls -- in addition to bidding for clicks -- when they show Google search ads on computers and tablets.

Potential for more calls
Let's say your business sees phone calls as a valuable lead source. You're willing to pay up to $5 for a phone call and up to $1 for a click from a prospective customer who searched for "caribbean cruise" on Google search.

Today, a combination of your ad's Quality Score and max cost-per-click (CPC) bid determine your Ad Rank, which influences your ad's position. But with bid-per-call, your bid for phone calls and phone call Quality Score can directly factor into your Ad Rank, too. Higher ranked ads are more likely to be seen and can therefore generate more phone calls (and clicks, too).

Setup and reporting
To take advantage of bid-per-call, select the option to use a Google forwarding number when you set up Call Extensions so that our systems can measure when a call to your business occurs. With bid-per-call, you'll also get the benefit of detailed call reporting right in AdWords, which includes:
* Summaries of completed calls, phone-through rate (PTR), and phone call cost on the Ad Group and Campaign tabs.
* Details for each call, including call time, duration, caller area code, and the ad group that drove the call on the Dimensions tab.

Eligibility requirements
At this time, bid-per-call is available only in the US and UK. Max CPP bids are set at the ad group level. And each ad group must meet certain minimum click and call thresholds. If you're already using Call Metrics, you must enter a Max CPP bid in order to activate bid-per-call.

Link:

Basics of Setting up Online Search Account and reviewing its performance

2010-08-25T02:09:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Marketing:

SEM is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages and its contextual pages through Paid Search. Best suited examples for the same would be Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Bing.

Learning from search marketing helps to improve all areas of our business, including offline revenue, product development and Brand Awareness through marketing campaign.

How to Start the Basic Search Engine Account:

Start with Keyword Research:

A stagnant keyword list is dangerous as it neglects trends and information on new products or developments. Choosing the right keywords is the first step to better search engine positioning. Analyze your business carefully and think of all the words that relate to your company or product.

As you think about keywords, consider the following:

• Who needs your service?
Think about who will use your services, then target them with keywords. For example, targeting people whose dogs are about to have puppies will need puppy food, so you can add phrases like "dog pregnancy" and "puppy health" to your list.

• Include variations of your keywords
People will search for your site using all sorts of keywords. Making your site easy to find which means including misspelled, capitalized and plural keywords. Always include the longer forms of keywords too. For example, use "domestication" as well as "domestic."

• Avoid wrong keywords
Do not use "stop words" -- particles like "and" and "the" and common words like "Internet." Remember, the more specific your keywords are better chance that people who find your site through search engines will actually benefit from its content.

• What are the best places for keywords?

You can check the web pages of site or landing page eg. sections like HTML Title, Text of the page, Meta description, Meta keywords, ALT tags, Comment tags, URL name.

Set up Paid Search Marketing Campaign:

• Group keywords in relevant Campaign and Groups and write appropriate ad text to help improve your Quality Score, which will lower your bid and improve ad position.

• Try running 2 to 4 ads per ad group. Google will automatically monitor the click through rate (CTR) of each ad and show better performing ads more often than ads with lower CTRs.

• Pick the right landing page make sure the destination or landing page for your ad is a page where users can find the product or service promised in your Ad.

• Refer to specific keywords, offers, and calls to action on your landing pages.

• Make your landing page navigation as simple as possible, and should help people get what they want in three clicks or fewer.

Analyze the Performance:

Data Analysis is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming and modeling data with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision making.

Using graphical representation will be easy way of analyzing the performance. In most cases we use weekly evolution details to check and compare the performance of our accounts/campaigns.

The chart below contains performance evolution of one account. Here you find Conversions with bar chart and Cost per Conversion with line chart. From the graph we can easily understand how our account performance is? We easily estimate our spent and revenue generation.

By using the line graph we easily understand the trend of business. In the above chart we have increasing and decreasing levels of Cost per Conversion. If cost per conversion decreased means there is an increase in sales may also mean increase of customers. If cost per conversion increased means the budget spent for a sale is high.

We can also review the performance by plotting the graphs in between

• Clicks Vs CTR

• Spent Vs CPC

• Impression Vs Clicks

• Clicks Vs Conversions

• Spent Vs Revenue

• Spent Vs Avg Position

Improving campaign performance or optimization is a process of analyzing data about your ads and keywords and then modifying your ads and keywords in response.

It is important to run performance reports regularly they can help you to determine how each Campaign/keyword is performing.

Repeat Ad Nauseum:

Negative keywords are great because they prevent unnecessary clicks and spend, ensuring your advertisement displays only for applicable searches. However, not using negative keywords can mean that your ads show to users who aren't interested in your business or service. This untargeted traffic can lower your keywords' Quality Scores and hurt your return on investment. Consider all your potential keywords carefully, including negative keywords, before you add them to your account. Negative keywords help in improving the performance of your campaign by increasing your quality score and having a positive follow-on effect on you CPC and Conversions.

Conclusion: Search Engine Marketing helps us reach, potential customers in easy manner by reducing Cost and increasing Revenue. We can easily estimate our business reach and ROI in Search Marketing Campaign.