What PPC Bid Position Is Best?

Posted on September 18, 2011 by

This week, I want to answer a question that comes up with a lot of PPC beginners: what keyword bid position is best? There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this, so I wanted to offer my own opinion and what has worked for me in the past.

A lot of pay per click marketing newbies assume that getting the number one position is best. While this is guaranteed to get you a lot of traffic, it’s not always the best strategy. Remember, PPC keyword bids are based on an auction system. If you want to be at the top, then you need to bid the highest (and have a pretty decent quality score, but that’s another blog post entirely…). But think about what happens when you’re up against another deep-pocketed competitor who also wants to be at the top no matter what. You’ll end up getting into a bidding war with each other, and will drive up each others keyword bid prices as the auction goes ever higher. This will continue until one of you runs out of money or comes to your senses, whichever comes first.

Now the funny thing about being in the top position is that it almost assures high traffic volume, but doesn’t necessarily offer the most conversions. Most search engine users who are shopping around for products and services are on an information-gathering mission. They want to compare prices and product selection before they make a choice. This means that they are probably going to click on several results (PPC ads and organic results) before they actually complete a transaction. So being #1 isn’t going to do you much good unless you offer a better product than the other guys they click on.

But, you still need to be pretty visible so that you’re in that initial selection of options. That’s why I always try to shoot for a bid position of around 3 to 5. You’re still showing up at the top of the page (around the first result on the sidebar), but you avoid the inevitable bidding war that comes from going for that top position.

Ultimately, the best keyword bid position is the position that offers the best return on ad spend. That’s up for you to decide. How much ad spend can you afford before it eats too far into your profit margins? Or is it worth it to lose money on an initial customer acquisition in the hopes of gaining a customer that will provide a high lifetime value? These are all serious questions that you need to ask about your advertising efforts, and the answer will vary with each business. Fortunately, PPC gives you the metrics you need to make informed decisions to ensure profitable keyword positions. But it’s up to you to use them.

Posted in Google AdWords, Keyword Bids, Keywords, MSN AdCenter, PPC Basics | 1 Comment

Using Broad Match Keywords Effectively

Posted on September 11, 2011 by

When I first started doing PPC, I was under the impression that broad match was a terrible idea, and was to be avoided at all costs. It’s easy to think that. After all, broad match keywords do tend to drive a lot more traffic than their phrase and exact match counterparts, and cost per conversion tends to be higher if your broad keyword drives a lot of irrelevant traffic. But as I’ve become a more seasoned PPC manager, I’ve realized that broad match can be an incredibly valuable weapon in your PPC arsenal. You just need to know how to use it right.

Traffic is both broad match’s strength and weakness. When you build out a keyword list, you’re never going to be able to predict all of the possible search queries that your customers will use to find you. A seven-word-long query featuring a specific US city might be valuable to you, but it’s probably not worth building out ad groups related to every major US metropolitan area, stocked full of long-tail keywords. However, if you have a lot of broad match keywords that match most of the words in the query, you’ll probably get that conversion without going through the hours of effort required to build out all those long-tail groups.

Of course, with that relevant long-tail traffic comes a lot of irrelevant traffic as well. And even worse, a lot of that long-tail traffic is going to be one-shot keywords that will only ever get one click or impression. You may never know if that keyword would convert for you, since you’ll never get enough data for a complete analysis. The key here is to figure out how best to filter out this irrelevant long-tail traffic while keeping the relevant traffic.

Whenever I use broad-match keywords, I use them as a discovery tool. That means that I’m expecting to get a lot of junk traffic from them, but I think that the valuable search query information I get from them is going to make the wasted money worth it in the long run. Here’s what you do:

  1. Create a broad-match “discovery” ad group consisting of 10-20 related broad-match terms.
  2. Let it run for 30 days or so, or when you feel like you have enough traffic for a good data set.
  3. Review your search query report for broad-match ad group over the time it was active.
  4. Weed through the query list to find queries that converted, and queries that drove a lot of traffic but did not convert.

Now, you can add those converting queries to other ad groups, and add all or part of the high-traffic, no-conversion queries to your negative keyword lists. This is a great way to get real, relevant search query information that you know will work for your account. It’s much more effective than relying on third-party tools that can’t provide conversion data.

Phrase and exact match may still tend to provide a better ROI, but don’t feel like you can leave broad-match queries out of your PPC account strategy. You might even find that you get better results with a broad match after all.

Posted in PPC Basics, Search Engines | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Why Not To Use AdWords Express

Posted on September 4, 2011 by

Google recently rebranded their Google Boost product, re-christening it AdWords Express. They claim that it’s an easy solution for local business owners who want to start advertising on search engine results pages quickly and without complicated account setups. Sounds great! But, unfortunately, you’re going to sacrifice a lot of potential by going the convenient route with your paid search advertising. I don’t think that AdWords Express is as good a solution for first-time advertisers as Google claims.

First off, lets explore how AdWords Express limits you in comparison to the regular AdWords product. Going through the setup process, the first thing you need to do is link your business location (listed on Google Places, naturally) to your AdWords Express efforts. This automatically disqualifies a lot of advertisers that don’t have a physical storefront, and just want to sell their goods online. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that you’re a small business owner with a location so we can move on.

Once you have your location hooked in to your new AdWords Express account, you’ll be asked to choose some categories that describe your business. If you choose a broad category or worse, and irrelevant one, your ad is going to show up to a lot of disinterested parties. This may get you some ad views, but no new business. Google is going to show your ads based on the categories you define, but there’s not much fine tuning available. All the kick-ass targeting options in regular AdWords (keyword match types, negative keywords, geotargeting, ad scheduling, etc.) won’t be available to you. And as any experienced PPC manager will tell you, Google sucks at matching broad-match queries. By relying on Google to broad-match queries to your category, you’re inviting a lot of junk traffic that is going to cost you.

Even if you do get a decent category selected, you still have to create a good ad. So what makes a good ad? You can make a decent guess, but you really won’t know what works best for you unless you do some A/B testing. But guess what – you can’t do that in AdWords Express! Sucks to be you! Instead, you’re going to have to rely on your gut instinct of what works for your ad headlines. Oh, and one more thing – you don’t even get to choose the ad text. Instead, Google will generate a brief description of your business based on your Google Places account. No call to action, no ability to advertise discounts or promos, nothing. So you’re stuck with a crappy ad and shoving it out to a broad category of internet users. That’s bad mojo for PPC.

So what should you do instead? Make an AdWords account. It looks a lot harder than it actually is, but if you devote a couple hours to learning the system you’ll find that it’s a wise investment for your business. To keep things simple, just pick a couple of phrase-match keywords that are relevant to your business (after doing your PPC keyword research, of course), group them into ad groups of 5-10 words that are highly relevant to each other, and create two text ads that incorporate the main keywords of each ad group and test two different value propositions. I’m grossly over-simplifying AdWords account setup, but if you do those simple steps I can almost guarantee you that you will see better results than AdWords Express. Better yet, find a good PPC freelancer who can help you out. There’s no need to spend a fortune on PPC, but if you take the cheapest and easiest route, you’re going to be disappointed in your results. Don’t let Google take control of your search engine marketing. It’s your business, and you know what’s best for it.

Posted in Google AdWords, PPC Basics, Search Engines | Tagged , | 2 Comments

How To Run A Duplicate Keyword Analysis In AdWords Editor

Posted on August 28, 2011 by

Every once in a while, I like to run a duplicate keyword analysis in my AdWords accounts to make sure I’m not doubling up on any keywords. If you regularly add new keywords to your account (and you should), you might overlook a few keywords that you already have covered. Bidding on the same keyword across ad groups or campaigns might have a negative impact on your quality scores, or it could drive up your CPC as you end up bidding against yourself.

Fortunately, running a duplicate keyword analysis is quick and easy if you have AdWords Editor. Here’s how to do it. First, go to the “Tools” menu and click on “Find Duplicate Keywords”:

Duplicate Keyword Analysis Example 1

On your next menu, you have the option to choose the word order of the duplicates, select if you want to find duplicates with the same match types, and decide if you want to find duplicates within the same ad group, within the same campaign, or within the same account:

Duplicate Keyword Analysis Example 2

When you run the report, I recommend hiding duplicates in paused, deleted, and ended campaigns and ad groups, since they won’t really interfere with your active elements. This will help reduce the amount of keywords that are listed in the final report, and will make your analysis a little easier.

Once you run the report, you’ll see the keyword spreadsheet you’re already familiar with, but duplicate keywords will be grouped together by dotted lines. Now, you can go through the list, find any keywords that are both duplicate and active, and pause any keywords that might be competing against each other. There’s usually a significant difference in conversion, CTR, or quality score metrics between duplicate keywords, so I normally pause whichever one is performing the worst on my key metrics.

Whenever you add in a lot of new keywords, it can be easy to lose track of what you already have. It’s a good idea to run the duplicate keyword report every couple of months to make sure that you haven’t added in anything that might conflict or compete with your previous active keyword selection. Remember, kids: a healthy, duplicate keyword-free AdWords account is a happy AdWords account.

Posted in Google AdWords, Keywords, PPC Basics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Tracking Phone PPC Conversions

Posted on August 21, 2011 by

Conversion tracking is an essential part of any pay per click advertising campaign. But if you’re in a business that involves a lot of phone calls, it can be kind of tricky to see the impact of your PPC campaign on your phone call volume. Someone can see an ad, call your phone number, and you might never know that your PPC text ad was the reason why they discovered you. Fortunately, there are a couple of Google features and tricks that you can use to keep track of those offline conversions that start online.

One of the best ways to track offline conversions is to set up a brand new number devoted exclusively to your PPC campaigns. For most small businesses, this can seem too expensive, since it costs more money to get a new number and a new phone line. Fortunately, you can snag a new number on the cheap at Google Voice. Just make sure that this number is only distributed via PPC ads. That way, you can calculate the cost and impact of your paid search campaigns on the number of phone calls you get.

An added bonus of using the Google Voice number is that it enables you to get call metrics right in your AdWords account. To enable this, click on the “Ad Extensions” tab in your AdWords account:

Ad Extensions Tab

Now, you can add a new call extension using the Google Voice number and get metrics to track your performance. There are several metrics available, but you may need to enable them by ticking off the boxes in your “columns” menu:

Call Metrics Options

You still won’t be able to track conversions, since you’ll only be able to tell that by speaking to someone on the phone. But since you already have a unique number, you can just calculate your cost and traffic metrics with the conversions that happened on that number to get conversion rate and CPA numbers. Sure, it’s a little cumbersome, but it’s the best we have at the moment.

Tracking phone call conversions is especially important now that Google is hyperlinking phone numbers to be click-to-call by default (at least, on smartphone traffic). Even if you don’t normally use phone numbers in your ads, now might be a good time to try them as an experiment. Some customers require a little hand-holding before they complete a conversion, so having someone available to answer the phone might make the difference between your business getting the conversion, or one of your competitors.

Posted in Google AdWords | Leave a comment