July 28th, 2010
 My conclusion is that conversions are driven by events, not advertising. The role of Adwords isn’t to make a sale. Adwords acts as a conduit for the transaction when the searcher has been driven to action by an event. Now, let’s look at some facts to see if you agree with how I got there.
Recently a client had their industry mentioned on Oprah and the traffic and leads exploded. We have another client that does snow removal and snow storms drive their business, not advertising. Advertising has a role in the process but it is the event that creates the demand. The event is followed by the interaction with the advertisement which can lead to the conversion. It is a chain of events and advertising is not the creator of the demand, but rather the conduit of the demand.
People shift into procurement mode because some event moved them to action and it is very rare that the event is advertising. Most businesses ask a new customer “How did you find us?” but they rarely ask the real question of “What caused you to start looking?” We look to measure performance of advertising based on responses, but in reality it is the events experienced by the person that puts them into procurement mode.
The Event Circle of Influence
Events come in many forms; some are widely shared while others are within a much smaller circle of influence. At one end of this spectrum would be an event like September 11th which was a shared event with most of the population of the world, while a smaller event might be a snow storm in rural Wisconsin. When we look at events in the market we have to consider the circle of influence and adapt our advertising strategy to accommodate this reality. A snow storm in Wisconsin does not create demand for Snow Removal in New York.
The Oprah Effect is an event created by Oprah mentioning a product or service on her show. Recently we had a client that experienced the Oprah Effect and the lead generation was incredible. There was no change in the keywords or ads but there was no mistaking the lead generation impact. The event did impact the bids because competitors are smart and they quickly realized that the demand was going to be responsive so they bid up the positioning in a big way and we had to react to that. It was a thrilling ride while it lasted, but events do not age well.
Another client sees this frequently but at a much smaller scale. They will have zero response from a specific part of the country followed by a flood of leads. Our guess is that there is a local event that causes people to think about issues related to their business. These events create demand that morphs into searches and ads that people click on to get to the landing page where the sales lead is created. The ad did not create the event but it was part of the pipeline that allowed the lead to flow to the business.
Another real world example is a client in the moving industry. We are always looking to create more leads with less money, but in reality Adwords is not causing people to need moving services. There are lots of reasons to need a mover but none of them are created by Adwords text ads with 95 letters and spaces. Change of job, spouse reassignment, foreclosure, and many other personal events are what drive this business and create the traffic. Some advertising can create an event but that ability varies by format and I think it fair to say that an Adwords Text Ad is about as weak as you can get in this area.
The next logical question is can you create events for your business and the answer is yes, but creating events is not like running an advertisement. In advertising, we pay for the placement so we have some degree of control over it but events are different. First, they require much more creativity and in most cases they require the involvement and engagement of other people. Developing events is way beyond the scope of this article, but the reality is you can create events. We talk with clients about this all the time because you need to have your advertising in sync with your event initiatives to get the entire marketing ecosystem working together.
People are the sum of their experiences and we are all driven by events in different ways. What motivates one person can and does leave others unimpressed. The key to your Adwords strategy is to recognize the events that drive your business and make sure you are in position to be found when the prospect is moved to action by the event.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in adwords expert | No Comments »
July 28th, 2010
 More is not better, better is better. This is true in Adwords as it is in most things. If you want awesome performance from your Adwords account, and your idea of awesome performance is a better conversion cost, then you need to embrace this concept. We often hear from businesses after they have violated this rule by throwing more and more keywords at Adwords and their performance is in the toilet. The cure is always a return to quality.
When people first start with Adwords, they often throw every keyword they can think of into the system, they wonder why the system crumbles at their feet. The problem is that more is not better. The first words they thought of are probably their best words, so it only goes downhill from there. Keywords are not as simple as Boolean good or bad. Words exist in a range of quality so they slowly degrade and you have to decide when to stop. It is never clear cut. Keywords typically have a structure to them that includes a base keyword, keyword qualifier, and Keyword Intent.
Base Keyword: Drywall
Keyword Qualifier: Contractor
Keyword Intent: Quote
The example for this would be if your business did drywall installation. A great keyword would be “Drywall Contractor Quote”. When you have a base, qualifier, and intent it is often a home run keyword. The challenge is that it is probably a low volume keyword because every word you add to the keyword reduces the number of searches it will match to.
When going after awesome performance, one thing you have to examine is the click through rate (CTR) and its cousin quality score. Look at your average CTR and then create a filter to look at your keywords that drag this down. Normally I start with half of the average so if the account has a CTR of 1% then I look at keywords that have some level impressions that are less than or equal to 0.5% CTR. Then, I start asking myself questions about why the CTR is low:
- Is there a relationship between the keyword and the ad?
- Is the position where it needs to be?
- What do the competitive ads look like?
- What is the quality score?
- Do you really want this word?
- Does the keyword have a good base, qualifier, and intent?
If you cannot get at least average performance out of the keyword, then you need to consider deleting it from the account because it will pull down the overall quality of the account. Many people think that just because you pay by the click that you should not be concerned with the impressions or the CTR but the system does care. A low CTR will lower your quality score. Since your bid is really bid times quality score, a low CTR will ultimately result in a higher bid to hold the same position. Quality Score and Money are the same thing to Google and you need to respect that fact.
The general rule of thumb is that the higher the quality, the lower the quantity and this is what makes people crazy. They always want more but they have to realize that they are sacrificing quality for quantity. If you want quantity simply do away with the qualifier and the intent and you will get the maximum volume, but your quality score will fall and your bids will have to be increased to keep your ad showing. If your quality score or CTR gets too low no amount of money will make your ads show.
The next area in your keyword strategy is the conflicting uses of the keywords. The most common of these is the conflict between service, product, DIY, and research. If you are selling a product, then you have to be careful about how much service, DIY, and research traffic you attract with your keywords. This gets much more complex because words are not good or bad, they are better or worse. If we are selling Gold Widgets then we probably want to avoid traffic seeking to have their widget serviced or seeking information on how to build their own widget. Again these words are not clearly in one area or another but rather in a spectrum between the different concepts.
My favorite example of this challenge is Drywall because it plays into all these different areas. Consider the following searches: (Click on graph for better detail)
This data is from Google Insights and it gives us some idea of how these keywords play with each other in search. The top line is Drywall How To, which indicates to us that 75% of the total search of all these keywords is in the DIY category. If we are selling a drywall service or product, we really need to get rid of the how-to traffic. The Chinese Drywall shows how an event can impact your keywords. Prior to late 2008, the term Chinese Drywall was not even on the chart but then a media event broke on this term and the traffic went through the roof. If you were in the Drywall business and did not go in and remove Chinese from your traffic then the quality of your traffic would have fallen like a rock.
The other observation of this data is that the more qualified terms like price, cost, and contractor are only a small percentage of the overall traffic. Let’s look at just how insignificant some of these terms really are. (Click on graph for better detail)
In the chart above, the broad keyword of Drywall is the top line and you can see that terms like price and cost only get 1-2% of the searches. If you qualify your words to this level you are only seeing 1-2% of the searches however if you stay with the overly broad term then only 1-2% of your impressions actually mean anything to you.
Drywall is an interesting example because it can be a service, product, DIY, or research term. When qualified by cost, it is probably a product but quote is just as likely to be a quote for service as a quote for product even though both of these terms are price class qualifiers.
Keywords also change based on the point in the purchase cycle and the life experiences of the audience. The purchase cycle typically includes research, qualification, purchase, experience, and referral. The keywords change as the audience moves through each of these stages.
Life experiences change the way that the audience interacts with your keywords and it does make a difference if Vietnam was a life experience or a history class lesson. If you are to get awesome performance from your Adwords, you must become one with the audience and see the keywords and the ad copy through their eyes.
If you want maximum volume, you go after Drywall but you should not be surprised when you get Google Slapped on your quality score for being lazy.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in adwords | No Comments »
May 26th, 2010
 Over the years we have noticed that clients either swear by or swear at their SEO Expert and there is no middle of the road on this one. With over a decade working on the SEO side of web sites I understand and deeply appreciate the value of SEO and I am a strong advocate of competing on both sides of the search engine.
SEO and PPC advocates often do not play well with each other because they have very different fundamental beliefs. These conflicting inputs from the business manager’s advisers cause great confusion in the manager’s strategic decision process. This is because the conversation is framed as one being better than the other. SEO and PPC are not better or worse, they are simply different. The secret to success is to use the right tool for the right job at the right time. Sometimes that is SEO and sometimes it’s not.
Google’s top priority is the best possible SERP
SEO is what Google thinks, and to understand how Google thinks you have to consider Google’s personality and the source of their success. Google’s number one unquestioned top priority is to produce the best Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for the query posed by the searcher. Google knows that if they produce the best SERP the searcher will have a positive experience and they will return to use Google again and again. It is their dedication to the searcher’s experience and the Quality of the SERP that is the essence of their success. Here is a flash of the short term thinkers in the world – Google values the quality of the search above money!
Lie #1: We can get your site to the top of Google Guaranteed.
One thing that makes me crazy about the SEO industry is that there are a fair number of people representing themselves as SEOs that have little or no understanding of what is really going on. Like the amateur magician they have learned a few simple tricks and they go from client to client selling the fast, simple, and “guaranteed” way to the top of Google. This is not to say that there are no good SEOs, there certainly are, but for every good one that we run into there seems to be ten that are less than honorable. They falsely represent what SEO is and they propose that they have some magical skill which will instantly get you free traffic to your web site. The rule here is that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is, and anyone who guarantees anything specific in search is lying.
Lie #2: We will optimize your page to get to the top of Google
One sure clue that the SEO is lying is when they say that they will optimize your web site or page. This statement can be a partial truth but it is never fully truthful. The majority of the organic page score is not in the page source so you cannot optimize it by changing the page. Nobody outside of a small circle inside Google knows the exact formula and in reality no one person knows the whole thing. Our guess is that 80% of the organic score comes from items not on the page. A top position in Google is earned by being an expert resource on the search query. An expert is defined not by what they say about themselves, but by what others say about them and this is the fundamental concept of the Google Search Model. This does not mean doing the basics on your page isn’t important, a good foundation is vital to the search-ability of your site. However on page search factors won’t get it done by themselves.
Lie #3: We will get you to the top of Google easily, simply, and quickly
Another clue that your SEO is lying is the statement that they will get you to the top of Google easily, simply, and quickly. There are a thousand ways to get to the top of Google and all of them are hard work conducted over a long period of time by very smart people. One trick is to create a page and show the client that it is in fact first on Google. Unfortunately this is not difficult to do but the page will not stay there. The trick works because Google values fresh content so when it finds fresh content it moves it up in the ranking to test it. However this freshness factor wears out quickly and if people do not click on your listing and get engaged by your content you will very quickly find yourself in position 5,000. The challenge here is that the highly optimized page is often horrible copy that nobody would read.
Lie #4: You just need more back links no matter where they are from.
We recently had a client that engaged an SEO to work on their site. The SEO set out to generate lots of inbound links, which normally would be a good thing except they were not concerned with the quality just the quantity. The final termination to the relationship happened when they told the client that the quality of what was on the page was not important. The client intuitively knew that poor content pointed at his site would end up hurting his professional reputation and he was absolutely correct. Like most things in life more is not better, better is better. Poor quality content will never get picked up by highly reputable sites and one link from a highly authoritative site is worth much more to your reputation online than links from poor quality sites. The risk here is that this approach might actually backfire on you. Google has a whole department headed by Matt Cutts dedicated to finding these tricks and fixing them. Often the way that Google “Fixes” these tricks is by removing the pages from the index. The advice we give to clients all the time is that you should only try to trick Google if believe that your SEO is smarter than Google. Google hires the best engineers on the planet who fanatically dedicated to the mission of creating the best possible SERP. So you have to ask yourself, do you really want to take that on?
Lie #5: People search for this keyword
Often times we find SEOs that have optimized for keywords that nobody searches for. They target what they call long tail traffic and they get great position because nobody cares. One of the great tricks is to optimize for these words so the client sees the results and the SEO walks away the hero. This is until someone comes along and adds analytics to your site and shows you how many visitors you have for that keyword and how engaged they become with your web site. Analytics is the way to measure your investment in SEO and make sure that the words you optimize for are also ones that you would be willing to purchase.
The Truth
We have many clients that are wildly successful with their organic keywords and they share a common trait. They are all people who are passionate about their business and they share that passion and expertise freely with the world. They write articles, white papers, books, speak to groups, answer questions in social media sites, and many other things. They are Evangelists for their business and the second they open their mouth or touch a keyboard you know it. These people are the resources that Google is looking for because they will provide the searcher with the most positive web experience and that is how you get to the top of Google in the long term.
The secret to a great organic position in Google is:
To consistently create meaningful content that is valuable to your visitor and contributes to building the best SERP. Help Google create a great SERP and they will be your best friend.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in Uncategorized | No Comments »
May 10th, 2010
 This is obviously an ad for premium denim. Photo Source: www.diesel.com Have you ever watched a commercial on TV or seen an ad in a magazine only to wonder what it was actually for? Well in some advertising mediums that’s, sort of, okay. For example, if you’re Gucci, a glossy magazine ad featuring a boat full of Italian dudes in speedos is obviously an ad for very expensive shoes. A commercial involving a supermodel brushing her teeth riding a camel walking on the moon, probably denim related. Why not right? In Adwords this approach isn’t going to get you so far. When advertising in Search, if you can’t get to the point in a hurry you’re toast!
You have to remember that Search Marketing is a completely different beast from traditional marketing channels. There’s no need to be endearing or interesting with your search ads because the person viewing it is actually looking for what you do! I know it’s a weird feeling as a marketer to only be talking to people that are specifically looking for your products or services, but embrace that advantage and give the people what they want! With your 25 character Adwords headline you can attempt to be cute or clever, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If any part of your ad is actually read, scanned or glossed over by a searcher it’s going to be your headline so don’t mess it up! Get to the point and do it fast!
A lot of traditional marketers hate to hear this, but generally speaking in Adwords the more boring and straightforward your ad is the better it’s going to do. If you sell swim fins and someone searches for “swim fins,” your ad better be about swim fins! If you decide to be creative and talk about the beach or duck feet or something else not quite on point be advised your CTR will suffer! There’s a big difference between noticing your ad and clicking on it, don’t leave yourself on the wrong side of this equation.
Another major headline offender is leading off with your company name… in most situations this is NOT the right answer. While you may be a big deal to other people in your industry, there’s a good chance a prospect has never heard of you. Serving them an ad that’s focused on your company and not what they searched for is a lose lose situation. The searcher doesn’t get what they searched for, and you don’t get a visitor to your web site. As an added bonus, the searcher still doesn’t even know what you do because you decided to lead with your name as opposed to your value to them.
The “secret” of getting your ads to work in Adwords is to get to the point. Use the keyword as a clue to their interests and address that interest. When the keywords are tightly clustered and the headline is on-target the results can be amazing, even if the headline is boring. A surprisingly simple concept but most great ideas in marketing are simple after they have been discovered.
Posted by Rob Dumouchel in ad copy, adwords | 2 Comments »
May 10th, 2010
While your home page, and internal pages, may expound upon your site’s topic(s), the purpose of a landing page is quite different.
For what?
Exceptional landing pages are created when your first priority is meeting the needs of your visitors.
- Who is your target audience?
- What question or problem are they trying to solve?
- In typing their question or problem into a search engine query, what words or phrases will they be using?
When a visitor clicks on the ad or search result and is sent to a landing page, they expect the landing page to answer their question or solve their problem.
Think of it this way, if a customer came into your brick and mortar store and asked to see all of your “classic rotary phones” you wouldn’t show them your complete inventory of “Blue Tooth Headsets.” You would take them over to your display of classic rotary phones.
Your landing page is a direct extension of your advertising message. If your ad talks about “classic rotary phones designed for the digital age” then your landing page must deliver on that promise and talk only about “classic rotary phones designed for the digital age”.
Determining your audience helps you identify the keywords and phrases your landing page needs to focus on. You should try to use these keywords and phrases throughout the landing page, and particularly in the first sentence of the first paragraph.
So What?
Now that you have visitors on your landing page, why should they continue reading? What’s in it for them?
People are interested in benefits, which is not the same as list of all the product’s features. Benefits are how your customers will experience your product.
In the case of our classic rotary phone:
- Complete the look of your vintage home with a perfectly replicated classic rotary phone, (show pictures of how the phone looks in a variety of vintage settings)
- Every convenience of a modern digital telephone hidden inside the classic rotary phone exterior
- That vintage sound and feel every time you use the phone (video of someone using the phone – complete with the click, click, click synonymous with rotary phone dialing)
Try to determine any objections, questions, and concerns the visitor may have, and answer those as well.
In the “classic rotary phone” example above, some of the obvious questions to answer are, “Is the sound and line quality as good as a modern, digital phone?” and “Will this work with my computer’s internet connection?”
Now What?
Your landing page has done its job and your visitor is ready to buy your product, sign-up for your newsletter or contact you, now what?
Once your visitor has decided to go ahead, don’t frustrate them….make it easy and obvious for them to complete the transaction. Whether it’s “Buy Now” or “Contact Us” or “Sign-Up Today” your Call to Action tells your visitors how to take that next step.
There should be only one specific desired action for a landing page. You want to keep the visitor focused on the job at hand (buying your product, or signing up for your service) and not confuse or paralyze them with several competing offers.
If your page is long and visitors will have to scroll, give them one Call to Action before they start scrolling and several others during the scrolling process. Your calls to action can be worded slightly differently, but the ultimate purpose should be the same, no matter where they are on the page.
These three questions should be foremost in your mind when writing and designing your landing page. Start by writing your landing page with your target audience in mind. Use the words and phrases they will be using to search for your service or product.
Once they’re on your page, you will need to explain the benefits of your product or service. Answer any obvious questions they may have, as well as any hidden objections you can think of.
Finally, by creating and placing several very clear calls to action throughout your page, you make it easy for the visitor to take the next step.
Written by: Carl Diamond who specializes in landing page conversion design.
Tags: conversions, landing page
Posted by Carl Diamond in landing-page-design | No Comments »
April 12th, 2010
 One way to incrementally improve your web design is by listening to your data, and nothing in that voice is louder than bounced traffic. My comments assume that your web site is not designed to bounce. Some sites use a page where the entire web experience is designed to be one page long and that by design is 100% bounce. While I am not a fan of these squeeze pages, they do exist and they wreck the data that we are discussing. The majority of sites are designed so that the visitor will interact with the page if they become engaged by the message; hence a bounce is a bad thing.
A bounce is when a visitor lands on your page and then leaves without interacting with the page. When a visitor advances within your design, we refer to that as an engagement because they were exposed to the landing page and they were interested enough to interact with your site. This is the first step in a long journey called a conversion.
So why do visitors bounce? There are many answers to this one but the most common is that their immediate response to the landing page is that they are not interested. Much of this comes from a mismatch within the chain of conversation. If you think about the journey of the visitor, they started with a search on a specific word followed by a response to a listing. They then land on a page that is connected to that link, and if the page is of interest then engagement is possible. The sad truth is that most web pages fail to engage the visitor because they fail to consider the start of this conversation. If your page jumps directly to talking about what is of interest to you without considering what is of interest to your visitor that is just rude. The typical visitor reaction to rudeness is that they leave with a negative impression of your business.
One error we find all the time is a client breaking a conversation chain. A conversion chain is simply a series of items that make up the conversation you are having with this visitor. The example I use of a bad conversation is a person who searches for “Men’s Italian Shoes”, clicks on an ad for “Men’s Italian Shoes” and lands on a beautiful home page with a hot special on Women’s sweaters 9 clicks from the “Men’s Italian Shoes”. This traffic will often bounce because you are not paying attention to the conversation and you changed the subject. The solution to this is really simple since the product does exist you simply change the landing page of the ad to the “Men’s Italian Shoes” page.
To find where you might have this problem, go to your Google Analytics and look at your average bounce rate. You need this as a reference point because as crazy as it makes all of us, some degree of bounce is simply unavoidable. Now that you know your average:
Drill into Account:
- Click on Traffic Sources
- Click on Search Engines
- Set your dates for at least 90 days
- Set first data dimension to “Keyword”
- Set second data dimension to “Landing Page”
- Look for the ones that are higher than average
The bottom of your screen should look like this:
Next, look for any shared words within the keyword data and filter your results using the containing or excluding tool at the bottom of the screen to get as large of a data sample as you can. Many times you will have many versions of the same logical search and bringing them together like this will show you patterns that you cannot see when the data sample is too small. The simple way to do this is just take a keyword that is performing poorly and filter on each word in the keyword and watch the totals. You will be amazed how this simple process will show you things you need to know.
Filters can use a pipe | as shown here to include or exclude more than one word and the pipe | represents an “Or” condition while a space is an “And” condition.
Filter Example:
- Google|Content = Keyword contains either Google or Content
- Google Content = Keyword contains the phrase “Google Content”
The example above reads exclude keywords with the word “Google” or “Content” with the word. This is important since when you are working with keywords you typically want to exclude content network traffic. There are many ways to do this but this is simple quick and handy. If you really want to have some fun with your data play with the advanced filter option and you will find all sorts of things to think about.
Next, expand your dimension to include the landing page to see what page that keyword connected to. Then shift the second dimension to Ad Content so you can see the headline they reacted to. At this point you have a good idea of the conversation chain and you have to ask yourself – How did you do? Since you are dealing with a high bounce rate the answer is poorly and the question is rhetorical.
Now comes some tough questions:
- Is the traffic volume high enough to justify making changes?
- How can you improve the experience based on this new data?
- Will the cure be worse than the illness?
This last question is where organic and paid traffic has to separate because in Adwords, you control where the traffic goes but in organic it goes where Google says it goes. If you are going to try and fix organic traffic, please make sure that you look at all the keywords going to that landing page before you start throwing changes onto that page. Life is full of compromises and nowhere is that more true than in organic traffic.
The purpose of this article was not to make you an expert in this process but to get you started thinking about how this impacts your business. As you explore your data, you will open a whole world of opportunities but there are also risks to consider.
Remember there are a thousand ways to drive traffic to your site – all of them are hard. If this was easy, everyone would do it and there would be no competitive advantage.
Tags: landing-page-design
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in adwords, landing-page-design | No Comments »
March 18th, 2010
 “I stopped my account and when I restarted it my traffic did not return and my conversion cost shot up like a rocket. What gives?”
I do not want to tell you how many times I have had this conversation, so after it happened three times this week I thought this topic would make a good article. In the US Army they call this a SIW which is a “Self Inflicted Wound” and the cure requires time and faith.
Adwords does not typically restart in line with your expectations. This comes as a surprise to some, but it is very predictable. When you take a well performing account and shut it down it seems to stop almost instantly but when you restart it takes a fair amount of time to get back up to speed. The reason for this is the pipeline effect in your traffic caused by what we call “Be-Back Traffic.” Be-back traffic is a visitor that visits your site from your ad and they will be-back to respond later. The better the web experience you provide the higher your be-back traffic can be.
Web site traffic is not a singular event. Traffic is made up of multiple layers and this is what causes the pipeline effect. Each day your Adwords run you get some immediate reaction but you also get some from prior days and these layers build up over a period of time. Traffic follows a predictable bell curve and the pipeline effect is caused by overlaying tails from the bell curve. The length and volume of the tail varies by business and the web experience. The chart below shows what one day might look like. It has a very high first day response and it falls quickly but it does have a residual tail.
When you layer the data for multiple cycles, the traffic builds then flattens out and this plateau is where most Adwords Accounts are when the daily spend is consistent over a period of time.
When you remove a block of days from the data, here is what the data look like but let’s talk about what this feels like from a business perspective. The day it stops everyone is expecting it to drop instantly so the little bit that continues is just a little good news in the mix with lots of bad news. When the account comes back online it does not instantly jump back because it has to rebuild the base. This rebuild takes time and during this time conversion costs spike because the expense starts immediately but the revenue lags.
 Some web sites are designed as a one visit experience and they either get the order immediately or they do not. In those cases the pipeline effect is very small and might not even be noticed, but the vast majority of businesses are not like that. The sites that are like this, generally speaking, will have very high levels of paid traffic and will respond in both directions much faster. For those sites where return traffic is very high the rebuild time can be very long.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in Restarting Adwords, Stopping Adwords | No Comments »
February 16th, 2010
In any discussion about Internet Marketing the term “Keyword” is sure to emerge early and often. There is a good reason for this because keywords are the heart and soul of the expression of the business strategy, and while they look simple they are not. The meaning and value of a keyword is driven by the context and the user’s perspective. When you put these variables together with over a million words in the typical English dictionary you can see that this gets real complex real quick.
The term Keyword is technically incorrect most of the time. What we are talking about are Keyword Phrases because the vast majority of keywords will have 2 or more words in the phrase. It is actually rare to find a single word keyword that performs well, the common exception being single word brand names.
No discussion about keywords would be complete without discussing the 9 types of keywords and how they interrelate. The types are broad, phrase, and exact and there is a positive and negative form of each of these. Then there are extended, session matched, and implied. Within Adwords you have limited direct control over second set but you need to know what they are and how they work.
Extended Matched Keywords get a much more liberal match than your typical broad keyword. This happens when the keyword has what Google thinks is a good performance record, but nobody outside of Google knows exactly when this happens. This status is actually a broad range not a simple status and as the word matures the broad keyword jumps to more variations of the root words. This is how broad keywords jump from singular to plural to other forms or tenses of the word. This is often the reason that the quality of the traffic from a set of keywords will change over time. We have seen documented cases of extended match jumping languages and believe it or not it tends to do a good job of this. Extended keywords can jump to entirely new words not in your account and this is probably the source of the broad match’s bad reputation.
Session Matched Keywords have been around for a long time but it is only recently that Google started to report this on the Search Query Report (SQR). In the past we suspected that session matched keywords were part of the dreaded “Other Unique Queries” that made all of us uncomfortable. Session match is when Google connects searches in a session together to create the match. The user performs a search for a city name followed by a search for real estate and they get results for real estate in that city. That is a simple example of a session match.
Implied keywords are most visible in geographically targeted campaigns but they live in other places as well. If the searcher is in New York but they do a search for Hotel LA this will match to a keyword of Hotel in a campaign that is geo-targeted to Los Angeles. Google knows that LA is a geographic region and it adds this to the base keyword of Hotel and treats it like Hotel LA. Now not every city acronym is going to make this jump but major metros like NYC and LA certainly happen. Google will make the jump the other way as well matching a search for Hotel for a searcher in LA and match that to keyword of “Hotel LA.”
Broad keywords are matched to the search using a more liberal match than phrase or exact. In this type of keyword the system will match words in different orders and as time goes along the broad keyword may morph into an Extended Keyword. In the earlier stages it will jump from singular to plurals or the other way around and it will become less sensitive to additional works involved in the match. Using my “Hotel LA” keyword example, in a broad match it will match a query for “Hotel in LA” simply by ignoring the “in” in the search query.
Phrase Keywords are a more restricted type of match and they require that the words be an exact match within the search query. This type of keyword can be very useful when you are trying to really focus in on a specific element of the search query.
Exact Keywords are exactly what they sound like. To get a match from an exact keyword the keyword must exactly match the entire search query with no leading or trailing words.
Negative Keywords are not exactly the opposite of positive keywords although there are broad, phrase, and exact keywords in negatives. What is different is that since negative keywords reduce Google’s revenue the rules are more strictly applied. For example a broad negative keyword will not make the jump from singular to plural or other forms of the words. Negative broad keywords will handle the order of the words and extra words but all of those words have to be in the search.
This really gets to be fun when you start to think through all the various combinations that you can use to tune your keywords. To understand this you need to realize that Google matches to the most specific keyword first so if you have a keyword in broad, phase, and exact. The exact will get the traffic first assuming it matches, then the phrase, and finally the broad. Now if you think about this for a second you will realize that the broad traffic does not match the keyword because the phrase or exact would match first. So by doing this what you end up with in the broad are words out of order, spelling errors, extended forms of the words, and other such items. You will find that you can and will get different results from these different forms of the same keyword.
Now for a disclaimer - Google does not aways follow all of the rules and we have seen situations that seem to indicate that extended, session, and implied rules can and do creep into the phrase and exact match. The occurrence of this is small but it happens and we have seen this in several controlled tests over the years.
This is where the really fun stuff starts because to do a keyword model you need to bring all of these keyword rules together to target your audience. Now you have to start looking at the really complex part of this challenge by examining keyword overlap, keyword intent value, and the competitive landscape.
Keyword overlap is one of the most basic considerations in building a keyword model. Simply stated this is where audiences not related to your business use what you think are your keywords. A simple example of this would be an Automotive Service Center who advertises for “Car Battery.” Automotive Service Center keywords are going to have overlap with DIY (Do It Yourself), Auto Parts, and others. The traffic for “Car Battery” is going to be huge but as a service center this client would not be interested in DIY or Auto Parts traffic. If you go after just the broad word your account will suffer in many ways and most importantly it will probably melt the numbers off your credit card. To solve this problem you need to remove as much of the DIY and Auto Parts traffic as possible without losing any of the traffic looking to have their car battery replaced or serviced.
Keyword Intent Value is the next thing to look for in your keywords. Intent value is what it sounds like you are trying to qualify the traffic that has an expressed intent to do what you want. Staying with my auto example, a search query for “Car Battery Installation Cost” has a much higher intent value then “Car Battery Installation” because installation by itself might be DIY traffic looking for a how-to article, while the “Cost” qualifier implies that the person is looking for someone to do this for them. On the Auto Parts side of this “Car Battery Cost” is more likely a person looking to buy the part but “Installation Cost” is probably the most focused of the keywords.
Keyword types can be confusing because there are two types of types. There is broad, phase, exact as matching types and “Root” and “Qualifier” as structure types. In the example “Car Battery Installation Service” the root keyword is “Car Battery” and the qualifier is “Installation Service”. When building keywords the qualifiers are repeated for each root keyword and it is the combination of the root and qualifier that builds the keyword used in the system. There are exceptions to this keyword structure approach but in most cases this will create 90% or more of your keywords. This approach will make your keyword list much shorter and easier to work with. This also will generate some dumb keywords from time to time so you do need to pass this though a common-sense filter before putting this into the system. That filter is, of course, a smart person.
Order of Words is important in broad and critical in phrase and exact. While battery car and car battery seem like the same search they do produce different results. In an account with a good reputation in Adwords the word order on a broad keyword would match both of these but this is not always the case. If the account is less trusted with lower quality scores the broad keyword might not make the jump to a different word-order.
Research versus Procurement is the second part of intent value and you have to understand how the reading zones of people change as the searches morph between these uses. In the research phase the searcher is looking for information and they are more likely to be looking at the organic results. This is not to say that Adwords is not important, but clearly in the research phase the person is most often clicking on organic not paid results. However when the person shifts into buying mode they know that the ads are related to their search and that these are directed to sites that provide the products they have been researching. Let’s face it when you are researching the car you want to buy you probably visit sites like Consumer Reports and the manufacturer, but when you want to get a quote for that really cool new ride your eyes go to the ads. People are not dumb, they know exactly how the two sides work and most know how to use each of these based on what stage they are in. Search terms also change as they go through this transformation.
Quality and Quantity is the next major issue in keywords. As a general rule the higher the quality the lower the quantity, and the balance of these two is what drives the most complex decision making processes in keywords. Car Battery is going to have a great deal of traffic and it is going to be expensive because of the volume, but the quality is going to be poor because it is polluted with lots of DIY and Parts traffic. One useful tool in getting to understand the purity of your keywords is Google Insights for Search
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
Here is what our example produced in this tool:
This shows us that the more qualified term of “Car Battery Installation” is so small you almost cannot measure it. There is some traffic, but to put this in perspective it is less than 1% of the volume of the broader “Car Battery” keyword. So if you go after “Car Battery” right out of the gate 99% of the searches are not related to your business and it gets worse. If you go to “Car Battery Installation Cost” the volume is less than 1% of that 1%. If you do this same inquiry matching “Car Battery Installation” to “Car Battery Service” you find that the volumes are about the same. Now does it surprise anyone that the typical click through rate on a keyword is around 1%?
Competitive Landscape is the next issue in this conversation and it is also very complex. So far we are down to .01% of the total traffic and now we have to fight with our competitors to get our unfair share of this pie. One thing I try to get my clients to understand is that they do not need to beat their competitor in Adwords, but they do have to not lose to them. What I mean by that is that your prospects are going to shop your offering, and the key to success is being high enough on the list to make it to the short list. If your typical shopper visits 10 sites to select the 3 they are actually going to consider then your need to be on the first short list of 10. Getting to the second short list of 3 is the job of your web site and it is largely based on the web experience you engineer for that visitor. At that stage in the process your Adwords are simply no longer important.
Networks count too and they add one more dimension to this discussion. Networks are where your ads are going to serve. In a broad sense the networks are either “Search” or “Content” in structure. The search is what most people think of and this is where the person proactively put a search query into Google looking for relative results. Content on the other hand works by matching to the content of the page and the person there is reading content so the theory is that they have a passive interest in your keyword. Just to stay with our car battery example in search we want very specific keywords with a high intent to act value. However in content we want to have a placement that is somehow related to the profile of our audience. In other words we are trying to model keywords that are likely to exist where our audience profile hangs around. Not to be sexist, but for our Automotive Service Center we might want to test fashion and home decorating keywords since these have a very high percentage of women and women are less likely to be in the DIY Auto audience. Conversely if we are working with an Auto Parts client we might want to target automotive how-to keywords since reading a how-to manual is a strong indicator of interest in purchasing parts and tools. .
As you can see from these very simple examples the challenge is not in finding your keywords, but figuring out how to not infringe on others. The secret is, as always, in the details and it not the positive keyword but the negatives and other restrictions that get you the traffic you really want. While “Car Battery” applies to the Auto Service Center, DIY, and Auto Parts industries the negatives and extended qualifiers are quite different.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in Keywords, adwords | No Comments »
January 28th, 2010
 Google Adwords with her seemingly targeted traffic, easygoing daily budgets, and conservative broad matching makes you think you have found the perfect solution to your marketing needs.
Then as you get to know each other and start to build what you think is a trust-based relationship, she slowly goes completely crazy. Like bad movie psycho girlfriend crazy. Make a wrong move and she’ll set your wallet on fire with bad content network traffic, ridiculously liberal extended broad matching, and possibly throw all your clothes out the window onto the lawn because she caught you messing around with Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing. If you catch her talking about how she wants to optimize or automate your relationship grab your wallet and run for your life!
Okay so the opening is a bit dramatic, but this is a boring topic and starting with a little humor and wit makes it easier to learn. There is no proof that Google actually has a gender but it certainly has a personality and most of its bad behavior is linked to how you trained it. There is no doubt that Adwords gets more complicated as your relationship with it grows and so today let’s talk about how it learns and grows with you.
The normal course of evolution of an Adwords Account starts something like this. Someone throws a bunch of keywords into an ad group, writes a quick generic ad, adds a few dollars to the budget, and pulls the trigger. This is followed quickly by a couple of searches to confirm your genius and mastery of the Adwords System because just like magic your ads appeared as you knew they would. So you walk away thinking to yourself “That was easy” but that was only the first pitch of the game. This is a huge mistake because from the second the account starts Adwords is learning about you and if you disrespect Adwords it will get offended and it can get real rude with your wallet.
If you want to play Adwords professionally you have to understand Google, and Google wants to create the best possible SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This is incredibly important to Google and unlike a regular business the quality of the SERP is more important to Google than your money. Adwords is 50% of the most important web page on the planet so it is no surprise that if you do not help them help you, they will hurt you. Adwords is only slightly less complicated than space travel, programming all the features of your phone, or nuclear cold fusion and there are thousands of rules, guidelines, policies, and advisory comments. Since even partial coverage of this topic would fill a book I just picked a few common ones to make the point.
Rule 1: First Impressions Count
You never get a chance to make a second first impression and Google never forgets its history. If you start your relationship by just throwing keywords around without any thought then you are disrespecting the system and you teach it to treat you that way. The right way is start your relationship with Adwords is slowly and carefully building your traffic one layer at a time. Go after only the best quality words and buy only the ones that really apply to your business. You can get more liberal and go after broader traffic as the relationship develops but initially try being on your best behavior and help Google create a better SERP with an ad group that is absolutely on-target.
Rule #2: Impressions are NOT FREE!
The term PPC (Pay per click) makes some people think that impressions are free and they could not be more wrong. Just because you pay by the click does not mean that impressions are free and this can be hard for some folks to understand. As they say the truth is in the math and here is how the math works. Your CTR (Click through rate) is clicks divided by the impressions so you can change the CTR by changing the clicks or the impressions. Since CTR is a major factor in your quality score extra impressions drive down the CTR and with it your quality score. Seeing as your bid consists of your money times your quality score impressions do cost you real money. The general rule is that you want all the impressions you need but no more than that.
Rule #3: Words are special
One of the most complex issues with Adwords has to do with the multiple definitions of a word and more times than not it is the context of the word. Somehow English readers can tell the difference between how to read a document and how they read the document. Same word but different context and this happens much more than you think.
My all time favorite word for this is pearl because depending on context the word can be so many things. There pearls of wisdom, pearl jam, pearl harbor, pearl jewelry, pearl paint, pearl flip, aunt pearl, and many more. So this word can be a concept, rock band, tropical island harbor, jewelry, color, cell phone, or a person. The use of an apostrophes and plurals makes this even more fun!
A great tool for understanding how this impacts your keywords is Google Insights for Search
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
What I like to do with this tool is look at how the use of the word breaks down for the use I have in mind. I did this recently for a client and we came to realize that while we wanted a specific word only 2% of the traffic actually applied to their business. This helped to explain why we were having such a problem with the CTR and quality score. If you start with 98% of the searches not related to your use of the word, you’re going to have a problem!
Rule #4: Adwords is simple, except for the details
Adwords lives where people, language, and technology collide and it is not always pretty. Conceptually Adwords is easy but when you get down to the details there are thousands of tradeoffs that you have to make. Fundamentally they boil down to a balance between quality and quantity. Generally speaking as quality goes up quantity goes down and the trick is to find the right balance because there is no right or wrong answer. I frequently have this discussion with clients about the balance between the multiple choices they have in keyword selection, ad copy, and landing pages.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in adwords | 1 Comment »
November 12th, 2009
The one constant with Google is change, and recently it seems that it was Quality Score’s turn. We actively manage over 60 accounts; each month we analyze each account and report our observations to our clients. This allows us to see patterns that are not visible to the vast majority of people and this month what is very apparent is that quality scores are on the move. Quality scores are always on the move but not like this. Across dozens of accounts we saw point shifts of 2-3 and all in one direction.
In the bidding process Google treats quality score just like money and it is a good indicator of SEO problems with the site so it is high on our list of things to watch. Because of the way the math works a dip in quality score is the same as reducing your bids, which can put your ad in weaker positions. What we observed is that almost across the board there were 2-3 point reductions in quality score. In the past a 7 was an average keyword quality score, but it appears that 5 is the new 7. From what we can tell this does not seem to have impacted ad delivery because everyone took a similar hit to their scores.
While change can be upsetting, I have to admit that the Quality Score is getting better with this change. Although there are exceptions, generally speaking the relevancy fit of the new quality scores is better than it was before this change. This was not a simple change where they removed x number of points to readjust the center point of the bell curve. Words that were a 7 before ended up from 4-6 and the ones that got the 4’s generally were weaker than the ones that earned 6’s. Quality score in a very broad sense is reasonably accurate and fair and while you might want a higher score the real question is do you deserve it? We get calls every day from people wanting us to improve their quality scores but they almost never want to the hard work required to impact this number.
Our guess of what is happening is that they are moving the center of the curve toward 5 to give more room in the process. With the average sitting at 7 and reporting only whole numbers it gave very little room to show the finer details. In the long run this is better for the system for the center point to be at, well, the center point. Theoretically there may be a risk of losing positions if the change rolls into your account before your competitor. So far we have not seen any indication of that happening, but we are watching very carefully.
Adwords Quality Score and Organic Page Scores share lots of attributes so it is important for both sides of your web strategy team to watch these numbers and to learn from them.
Posted by Bob Dumouchel in Adwords Changes, Quality Score | No Comments »
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My conclusion is that conversions are driven by events, not advertising. The role of Adwords isn’t to make a sale. Adwords acts as a conduit for the transaction when the searcher has been driven to action by an event. Now, let’s look at some facts to see if you agree with how I got there.
