Google Is On The Move Again. Are You Coming?

Google Caffeine and Google Merchant Center is Stirring Up the Pot for Advertisers.

When it comes to Google Search, it becomes increasingly obvious that it’s evolving faster than ever. Advertisers who make a living from either natural search or paid search (or both) are now being forced into evolving with it. If you haven’t done anything NEW with you search marketing in the last year or so, you’re probably in for a rude awakening. Google Caffeine 2010 and the new Adwords updates are basically what’s taking off and leaving lazy, conventional advertisers in the dust.

Caffeine is the name of Google’s new method of ranking websites that has been in beta since last summer and has been tested on at least one of their known datacenters on IP: 209.85.225.103 since then. With it, come some new changes in how Google prioritizes websites. This week, Google is said to be officially rolling out the new changes on a permanent level. At this time, we will be conducting thousands of keyword tests to update ourselves on what strategies we will take to leverage these changes.

Some research thus far has shown us where they might be focusing Caffeine ranking changes. Caffeine is said to give emphasis to longer tail keywords and those more specific on websites. Also, it will add more weight to news and social media results like Twitter and Facebook. Domain age will play a slightly higher roll in ranking and domain name pertaining matching keywords will take a different roll as well.

Hopefully advertisers will take these changes seriously and play ball instead of waiting behind the curve. Overall, it’s nothing to be scared of, just an opportunity to outshine competitors who will wait or are just ill-informed.

Google Adwords has not gone unbridled either. Adwords is Google’s money maker and they pay close attention on where search is going so they can stay on top of it. It is no surprise that much of their search development for sponsored ads is surround that of the mobile search, image search using mobile application such as Google Goggles, and Merchant Center which allows advertisers to use their product feeds to display product images in the sponsored links. Until recently, only some advertisers were invited to participate in this program, but we are seeing more and more links to product images every day.

Recently, we posted and blog piece talking about how Google Adwords had forced hyper competition on the first page of Google by showing inside Adwords accounts that advertisers who aren’t bidding enough aren’t serving ads. They have also made it increasingly hard for some to gain higher quality scores, despite their published criteria being above par.

Quality Score has traditionally been based on criteria advertisers could control easily. Now, it takes longer and to get around some of the unpublished criteria Google uses. Through our own betas and confirmed through reliable sources, Google is now relying on industry averages in conjunction with more traditional determinates. There will be more to come later on Quality Score.

For now, we have found ways to tackle these obstacles but it still doesn’t change Google from widening the barrier to entry for new advertisers. It will hurt more especially if you are being shut out of an industry you’ve been successful in for 5 years already.

Whether you are actually being kicked off that boat or if the boat is simply just leaving you behind, it’s time to jump on it. These types of updates present not just awareness, but an opportunity to join top advertisers before everyone else does; before everyone is on top again. Underdogs are welcome to play too.

Get Rid Of Unwanted Clicks With Keyword Management

Every search marketer shares one important goal: get more of the traffic you want and less of the traffic you don’t. One of the best ways to get manage your traffic quality is by focusing on keyword selection. By selecting the right keywords you can reduce the number of untargeted clicks you get, reducing your [...]

....

Two Golden Keys To Paid Search Success: Scale And Efficiency

There are two key factors crucial to assuring the success of any large SEM optimization process: First, tuning the campaign so that it is efficient and second, scaling the account while maintaining the efficiency you've gained. Your key goal should be to identify incremental opportunity without losing profitability.

....

How important Is Click Through Rate In Google’s Quality Score Formula?

A question often posed by marketers is, “What is the relative importance of different factors Google uses to determine quality score (QS)?”. Some of the factors mentioned on the AdWords blog are: Click through rate of the keyword and the matched ad Account history Landing page quality Keyword/Ad Group relevance The question for an advertiser then [...]

....

Lower CPCs by Creating High Keyword Quality Scores

Quality Scores determine the lowest actual CPC (cost per click) that you can pay at any given time for a keyword. It also helps determine how high your ads get ranked on Google. Don’t you think it’s important to understand this concept if your goals are focused on lowering CPC?A Quality Score by Google’s definition is “Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query.”In a nutshell, your keywords Quality score helps determine how high your ad gets ranked and also the lowest dollar amount you pay for a click-thru onto your site. These two things are a few of the most important factors surrounding advertiser success on the search engines. It’s probably responsible for the most downfalls because this concept encompasses so many other areas of the campaign.According to Google Adwords help file, here’s how Quality scores are derived:For calculating a keyword’s minimum bid:

• The keyword’s historical click through rate (CTR) on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered.
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group.
• The quality of your landing page.
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
• Other relevance factors

For calculating a keyword-targeted ad’s position on a search result page:

• The historical CTR of the ad and of the matched keyword on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered.
• The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query.
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
• Other relevance factors

Notice in calculating the QS for minimum bid, the keyword relevancy to landing pages are the third factor. This factor along with keyword relevancy to ad text and account CTR (click through ratio) are the only factors that are shown that we really have any control over. The historical CTR of the keyword on Google can only be controlled by its participation in the campaign all together. So now you are left with:

1. The keyword’s relevancy to the ad text.
2. The keyword’s relevancy to the landing page on your website.
3. The overall CTR of keywords and ads in your whole account.

These are the only three things that we can really do something about today that will help you lower costs tomorrow. Here is what we recommend to start:

1. Group or segment similar keywords in to AdGroups. By sticking them into separate AdGroups with similar ad text, it increases the relevancy between the search query and the ads. Make sure not to stick in an over-abundance of keywords into each unless the majority of them generate substantial CTRs. Having too many underperforming keywords plaque the AdGroup and to some extent, the whole account. I haven’t personally found too much documentation on this phenomenon. However from my own eyes; I’ve seen campaigns suffer because they tossed in a whole lot of non-performing keywords. This inevitably tossed the CTR on the whole account and plagued ad ranking from that day forward. Once the algorithm flagged it, the damage was irreparable and the account had to be recreated from scratch. Stick to only relevant and performing keywords. Keep this criterion close and you can’t go wrong.
2. Play “king of the hill” with ad variations. Advertisers often overlook the quality of their ad text copy because they don’t properly weigh its potential to attract or not attract customers. When you write ad copy, you want to make sure that we are attracting buyers, qualifying buyers, and relating the search query. Segmenting keywords into specialized AdGroups helps to relate the ads to keywords. So you always want to try and include some of the common words from the keyphrases in the actual ad text copy. Secondly, you have to get those CTRs up. By writing compelling ads that attract buyers and qualify them for your products or services, you can get more relevant traffic clicking through to your site and increase your CTR at the same time. Have 2 ad variations running at the same time. If you set the ads to be equally visible, in the ad settings, you can quickly gage after you’ve had some traffic; which one is the better performing ad. This tells you that it’s attracting your customers more often and the underperforming ad should be deleted and a new one should be created. Play “king of the hill” with your ads for as long as it takes you to decide you don’t know how to write more effective ads. And even then try doing it from time to time. Maintaining high CTRs equals maintaining higher quality scores. And that equals better positioning for lower costs.
3. Lastly, point your ads to the most relevant landing page on your website. This will both increase your quality score and make your customers more likely to buy from you. You will know your landing page is the most relevant to your AdGroup when it contains the most readable content about the keywords in that group. Save your site viewers time in having to search for information. Make it readily available to them and they will reward you for it. 

This is the first “real” blog posting to the RSP website. We really wanted to come in with a bang. We know giving you this much information can be very overwhelming, especially if you’re not sure what to do with it. The purpose of this blog is to create awareness and promote search engine adverting in general. The advice is free but we must disclaim, we only offer it as a professional opinion and not fact. The references taken from Google in this posting are directly from the Google Adwords Help file available online. You get see them here: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215 RealSearch Pros certainly looks forward to your feedback and welcome any questions you might have about Google Adwords, Analytics, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or MSN Adcenter.