Google AdWords Creates Automated Rules for PPC

You might have noticed a notification box appearing in your Google PPC Campaign dashboard labeled: “NEW! Automate changes across client accounts.”

I recommend checking these new automated features and consider using them for those who manage multiple PPC accounts.

The automated rules will help save you time managing accounts based on conditions you select. The rules can manage your bids, budgets, or ad statuses.

And you can manage how frequent your rules are applied to the ads.

Here are some examples of different automated rules that Google AdWords offers:

  • Scheduling ads for special promotions or events
  • Changing keyword bids to control average position
  • Pausing low-performing ads or keywords
  • Adjusting budgets or scheduling budgets for certain days each week
  • Raising keyword bids to ensure ads show on first page

For instructions on how to create automated rules, please visit Google AdWords.

If you’re interested in Google pay-per-click, contact us at World Synergy for more information.

Online Marketing: Digital Magazines or Google AdWords?

Advertising Age, a global resource for marketing and advertising news,  recently published an interesting piece discussing the new focus on ROI by major magazine companies like Time Inc. and Meredith Corp. in “Magazines to Marketers: We’ll Prove How Much We Lift Sales”. It’s no surprise that as online marketing becomes more effective, and an increasing number of tools enter the market to measure ROI (return on investment), magazine advertising has experienced a major decline.

Most of us know Google AdWords is Google’s primary revenue source, with total advertising revenues of $28 billion in 2010, but have you been keeping up with the most updated figures from The Interactive Advertising Bureau revealing major upward trends in all online advertising?

  • Revenues from Internet ads rose 23.2% in the first half of 2011
  • Display advertising (including banner ads and sponsorships) increased 27.1% over the same period in 2010
  • Display-related advertising totaled more than $5.5 billion in the first six months of 2011

This move by magazines to increase their focus on providing advertisers with more metrics in order to measure advertisers’ return on investment couldn’t be too soon.  While magazine subscriptions decline and online marketing increases, it shouldn’t be surprising major magazines would try getting a piece of the pie.  Will they be able to create a tool, similar to the analytics provided by Google AdWords, to prove advertising dollars are well spent on digital magazine ads?  Will digital magazine advertising campaigns become a viable strategy for online marketing?

Contact World Synergy for more online marketing solutions and website marketing services.

Read full article here

Online Marketing Solutions — Google AdWords New Feature

Recently, Google AdWords added a new feature that lets you optimize your ads for conversions, Conversion-aware  Creative Rotation (CaCR).

With CaCR, you are able to choose what ads show that are expected to provide more conversions more often. It works for both Search and Display campaigns.

There are different rotation settings available that will rotate ads within an ad group.

Rotate: Ads rotate evenly in the ad auction, even if an ad has a lower CTR than another.

Optimize for clicks: Ads expected to have more clicks will appear more often in the ad auction than other ads. This setting will allow your ad groups to gain more impressions and clicks.

Optimize for conversions: Ads expected to have more conversions will appear more often in the ad auction. This setting will allow your ad group to receive fewer clicks, but is expect to receive more conversions and an improved ROI.

Contact World Synergy for your online marketing solutions.

Website Marketing Strategy — Goodbye to AdWords Position Preference Bidding

Recently, Google announced it will be retiring the position preference bidding in AdWords.

Starting in early May, Google will be disabling the position preference for any campaigns still using it. To ensure a smooth transition for your bids, Google recommends changing any campaigns using the position preference.

Google’s reasoning behind this change is to discourage advertisers’ focus on the position of their ads on a page.

Chief Economist at Google Hal Varian found in a position metric analysis that the position of ads has no impact on conversion rates.

Those still concerned with the position of certain ads can use the automated rules for the same results. The automated rule will change your bid if your average position differs from your target position.

Contact World Synergy to help with your online marketing and website marketing strategy efforts.

Online Marketing Company: Google AdWords Certified Partner

World Synergy is a Google AdWord Certified Partner and can help companies get the most out of their pay-per-click advertising on Google.

We are also certified in reporting and analysis of Google Adwords and Google Analytics to maximize value and ROI for clients’ online marketing efforts.

This designation lets others know that World Synergy staff is trained and proficient as pay per click consultants under the new Google AdWords Certification program.

Google explains Google AdWords Certified Partner certification as:

Google AdWords Certified Partners are not Google employees, but rather are online marketing professionals, agencies, and other individuals such as search engine marketers (SEMs), search engine optimizers (SEOs), and marketing consultants. They have been certified by Google to manage AdWords accounts. To become qualified, professionals must demonstrate an in-depth understanding of AdWords by passing exams, and they must meet all our qualification guidelines.

Different professionals have different areas of expertise, so you should talk to them or look at their profile page to get a better understanding of their service levels and specializations.

Online Marketing Services — Increase of Online Ad Spending

According to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, online advertising in the U.S. has increased by 11.3 percent since the first half of 2009.

Approximately $12.1 billion has been spent by businesses and individuals on online advertising in the first six months of 2010.

Ad Spending Breakdown:

  • More than $5.7 billion was spent in Search advertising
  • More than $4.4 billion was spent in Display advertising

Most of the money spent so far for online advertising has been on video advertising, which has had a significant growth of 31 percent since the first of last year.

Read full report.

Although the recession hit hard in 2009, ad spending has taken off for the first six months of 2010. Companies are adapting and adjusting to the flow of trends and budgeting more for online advertising. The Internet has really changed how companies are marketing to their customers.

World Synergy offers an array of online marketing services from email marketing to pay per click management. Contact us today for more information.

Pay Per Click Consultants — Google Changing Certification Program

Pay per click consultants take note – your Google Advertising Professional Program certification will expire Oct. 31.

That’s because Google is replacing the “Google Advertising Professional Program” with the “Google AdWords Certification.” What’s the difference between the two?

The new certification requires no spend limit for an individual to qualify, and the spend limits are lowered for companies to qualify. Whereas the old program required a passing score on one exam to be certified, the new exam requires a passing score on the Fundamental Exam and one other exam.

For pay per click consultants who are already certified through the Google Advertising Professional Program and want to maintain their certification under the Google AdWords Certification, they must pass updated exams.

Google sent notices to all pay per click consultants who are certified individuals on Oct. 5 letting them know about the change. The email stated that, “the new, globally-recognized program showcases specialized, practical knowledge through advanced exams covering search, display, and reporting & analysis.”

There is a six month grace period for current Google Advertising Professionals to meet the new criteria and terms and conditions in order to retain their certified status. According to Google, “during this grace period, you’ll keep their Google Public Profile page, and continue to show up in Google Partner Search results.”

If you’ve already passed the Fundamental Exam, you’ll need to pass one of the three advanced exams to maintain your certification.

For more information, visit Google AdWords Learning Center.

SEO Keyword Tool — Find Common Keyword Misspellings

If you’re running keyword based ads on any search engine online, such as Google AdWords, you should consider adding keyword misspellings to your program.

Misspellings are cheaper to target. You could pay as little as $.01 per click on a misspelled keyword, compared to over a dollar per click on the correctly spelled keyword. The search count is much lower, so you won’t get as many clicks, but if you have enough misspellings you could end up collecting a lot of clicks for a lot less.

One helpful tool to generate misspellings is: http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi

We recommend creating separate ad groups with your misspellings to make it easier to manage. If you’re adding hundreds or thousands of misspellings, you’ll want to keep that separate from your main keywords.

Be sure to review your keywords and make sure you are bidding high enough to be on the first page. You’ll have to adjust some of the keywords manually and increase the bid higher for more common misspellings. It will still be lower than the correct spelling of the word, but higher than the group default.

Like any newly created ad group, be sure to monitor your misspellings campaign. You’ll want to let it run for a while to gauge its effectiveness since the search count will be much lower than correctly spelled keywords.

How do you choose which keywords to target as possible misspelling potentials? Look at your regular ads to see which keywords have the largest impressions and beck click thru rate. Then put them into the seo keyword tool. Each keyword can generate hundreds of misspellings.

Learn more about negative seo keyword tool.

SEO Marketing Tools — Google Fixes Keyword Tool Accuracy

Marketers may need to double check search counts for exact phrases after Google updated and fixed the accuracy of search counts on the Google Keyword Tool. This tool is used to estimate the number of monthly global and local searches for keyword phrases.

Search Engine Watch reported that Google, in some cases, was overestimating the search traffic for exact match phrases. For example, Search Engine Watch shows that the local monthly searches for [golf clubs] dropped from 165,000 before the Google update to 33,100 after the update.

Marketers should recheck any exact phrases they are using in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) programs.  It’s a good idea to double check any broad or phrase match keywords as well to make sure you are targeting the best keywords for your campaign.

This could also explain why a phrase that was ranking high on Google wasn’t bringing in the expected traffic. In the golf clubs example, that’s a drop of 80 percent less searches, and thus less potential traffic.

Marketers may need to rethink their SEO strategies if they were aggressively going after a phrase that has far fewer searches than originally believed. It’s a good idea to continually revisit your keywords to find the best phrases that will deliver traffic and customers effectively to your site. Also, use the SEO marketing tools that are available online to help with your keyword research.

Pay Per Click Consultants — Using Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are words you can add to your PPC program that you DO NOT want to trigger your ad. Having a strong negative keyword list will improve your click through rate and help improve your quality score, helping to lower your average cost per click and improve your conversion rate.

For example, if you are advertising women’s shoes, you should add negative keywords like “men’s,” “children’s,” “kid’s,” etc to prevent your ad from displaying when a user is searching for products you don’t carry. This is a pretty obvious example. But how can you find out additional negative words you should use in your campaign?

Start by picking obvious phrases or words you’d like to exclude, like “men’s” or “children’s,” in the example above. You can add those right away as negative keywords. Then, let your ad run for a few weeks.

Next, in Google AdWords, you’ll want to pull Search Term Report. To do this, click on the keywords tab. (NOTE: You can run this report for a specific campaign, ad group or ad.) Click on “see search terms” and select “all.” Google will display for you every search term a user typed into Google that triggered your ad. You can export this list by clicking the download button.

Now that you can see all the search terms that have triggered your ad, you can go through the list and decide which terms aren’t relevant to your ad.

To add negative keywords manually, click on your ad group and select “add keywords.” Be sure to place a negative sign (-) before the word you want to add as a negative keyword, ie: -bike.

World Synergy can help with your PPC marketing efforts. Contact our pay per click consultants today!