End of Year Offer: Free Month of PPC or SEO Mgmt

Posted onDecember 6th, 2011 byadmin

Keyword Search Pros is offering 10 spots (this week only) to take advantage of a FIRST MONTH FREE Pay Per Click or SEO Management Service. No Company has offered this before and we’re doing it because we want to see you come on board before January 1, 2012 when we increase ALL of our service prices! Not only will you will NOT PAY your first month management but we are ALSO GOING TO WAIVE YOUR SETUP FEES!!!

This offer ends Friday, December 9th 2011 and may never be offered again. This offer requires a 6 month termed agreement.

ONLY 10 SPACES AVAILABLE!

FILL OUT THE EVALUATION FORM TO THE RIGHT AND A
KEYWORD SEARCH PRO WILL CONTACT YOU TO GET STARTED!

3 Ways to Lower Adwords Conversion Costs with Negative Keywords

Posted onMay 9th, 2011 byadmin

Most advertisers use negative keywords in the most limited fashion. Limitations occur both in the way advertisers retrieve their potential negative keywords, as well as where and how their negative keywords are executed. It’s very common to see advertisers try their luck guessing as to which negatives to use and it’s obvious those advertisers aren’t paying attention to which specific queries people ACTUALLY type into the Google search.

When you, as an advertiser, can discover not only which queries people actually make but also what keywords and ads they trigger, you can take back control over your account and learn how easily people convert under the proper settings.

Negative keywords have other purposes than to simply weed out irrelevant inquiries. Here are 3 simple ways you can increase conversions by using negative keywords. (more…)

Google Snakes An Additional $5.5 Billion from Adwords Customers in 2010. What about 2011?

Posted onApril 20th, 2011 byadmin

Last month I read a news brief on Google’s projected numbers for 2011. It was no surprise the damn thing had a green arrow pointing north. With Larry Page at the helm of Planet GOOG (ticker), he has a major undertaking to GOOG shareholders. The idea of making money hasn’t changed. However, one could only question if the plan for making money has changed. Frankly, it’s been the same plan all along.

Google published its projected increase for CPC (cost per click) in 2011 as 5%, the same as last year. When I heard this, I choked on my Americano. There is no way Google’s CPC only increased 5% last year. They must have done one of those weighted means we forgot about in Stats class. Even after digging up a subjective number, we found an 8% increase in CPC that was published by Jefferies & Co.’s analyst, Youssef Squal.

Youssef may not be so quick to overstate but I will. It’s more than that. It’s hard for us to tell because we manage our clients CPC down. When you think about all the advertiser accounts that go unmanaged or that are managed by a majority standard, 8% is the difference between a CPC of $1.00 and $1.08. Come on!

(more…)

How Many Keywords Should I Have?

Posted onJanuary 31st, 2011 byadmin

How many keywords should I have? This is the question advertisers should consider more. Instead many ask: Where can I find more keywords?

More is better, right? Hell, it’s the American Way.

“If I have more keywords, I can cover more bases when customers do a search for my products. The more I have, the wider that net is and that means I’ll be seen more. Where can I find more keywords?” Tell me if this sounds familiar?

This is a very logical point of view. In fact, it’s not a bad strategy at all when you set limits and don’t spread the keyword mix too thin. That plan will work fine until you’ve gone too far. That’s when things get out of hand.

Here’s the rub. When you have X amount of budget to spend monthly/daily on keyword clicks, X gets distributed throughout all the keywords you bid on. Keywords that don’t have many clicks and impressions don’t have a high population of statistical data. When the distribution is over a vast amount of keywords, a higher percentage of the budget becomes lost to all the many keywords that don’t produce enough volume of clicks. There won’t be sufficient data to make any assessment to whether the keywords are in fact performing greatly, poorly, or even average. That’s when you’re stuck!

(more…)

Google Search Partners: How to Identify and Target Your Ads

Posted onJune 9th, 2010 byadmin

Historically, Google has never provided the insight or tools necessary within AdWords to manage their search partner placements. Compare this to the Google Content Network, where only recently have they given us the ability to control and exclude placements on the network that simply don’t perform. However, the Google Search Partner network has remained relatively unchanged over the years despite our continual requests for better reporting and tools.

Unfortunately, this has put us in a position as advertisers and agencies where we are left with only 2 real options. Based on the performance of the Google Search Partners, you are either in or you’re out. There is no middle ground….until now.

At Keyword Search Pros, we identified 3 steps to identify, target, and monitor/adjust specific placements in the search partners. Below are the slides that will give you the low down and exactly how we did and you can do this.

We hope you find great use of this Amazing Tactic. To give an example of how we used it here at KSP, take of one of our clients who sells high-end swing sets. This particular client’s ads were appearing on a Walmart web page with other swing sets that were at lower price points. So these people were going to Walmart, presumably for a swing set under $500. Our clients sets range between $1.5k to $5K.

At first we noticed the low performance from Walmart specifically but were hesitant to opt out since there were a significant amount of conversions still coming from this partner. What we decided to do was create a more targeted ad; something to the sound of,

Swing Set Not On Walmart?
Try Better Swing Sets than Walmart
Prices from $1,500. Free Shipping
www.MyClientsDomain.com

This allowed us to create a better targeted ad that prepared advertisers for our price points and qualified people better who were not prepared to spend in this range. This is only one area  of use. The aim of our presentation and tutorial here is to give control back to the advertisers.

In addition to our findings, we wanted to point you over to an Analytics resource created by a UK company, Periscopix. Here, in their blog piece they tell us how to set filters to segment Analytics data from in Search Partner network. One of the best things it does is gives advertisers a full perspective of who their entire partner network might consist of.

http://www.periscopix.co.uk/blog/index.php/underused-google-analytics-features-part-eight/

We did this filter test in Analytics for one of our smallest clients capturing data over 30 days. Or client got 2,800 clicks over 88 different partners; each partner being of a differnt nature and performance level. This it is why  it is important that we take control of the Partner Network starting with targeting or excluding  its members.

Use Match Settings and Increase Return

Posted onMay 23rd, 2010 byadmin

In order to use match settings and increase return simultaneously, you’ll have to understand a few things about match settings and search queries. One is that the level of impressions significantly decreases for phrase and exact match versions of keywords. And secondly, applying match settings to keywords should be done only with the intention of lowering “high” conversion costs or slowing the amount of clicks to conform to a limited daily budget.

When attempting to lower high conversion cost, it is important that you take all the preceding steps to lower conversion cost before applying match settings. Match setting will likely result in lower traffic and consequently lower sales volume. If you race ahead and apply match settings prematurely, you might forgo the opportunity to lower conversion cost without lowering traffic and sales.

(more…)

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

Posted onApril 25th, 2010 byadmin

High bounce rated could be attributed to a variety of different scenarios. The danger with bounce rate is that it really only tells you one thing: the percentage of people who came to and left the website from the same page they landed. That’s all. I often get asked, “What’s a Good Bounce Rate?” And like all  the times I get asked, “Whats’s a good__(CPC, CTR, Conv. Rate)_?” My response is the same. It depends.

Bounce rate doesn’t tell you why they did. Remember that each visitor is different and has a  different experience when they visit your site. Its reasonable to assume they leave for different reasons.

This is just a quick read to give advertisers some reasonable and possible conclusions regarding bounce rate. I’ll also give you some steps you can take to improve bounce rate or otherwise disregard it.

Suppose you get into your analytics and you notice the following bounce rates:

Adgroup 1                     67%                                    Homepage

Adgroup 2                     58%                                    Product Category Page

Adgroup 3                     89%                                    Product Description Page

How to Decipher: What is a Good Bounce Rate?

(more…)

4 Easy Steps to Reviewing Google Analytics

Posted onApril 25th, 2010 byadmin

Before we jump straight into Google Analytics I want to set the approach strategy with everyone. Sometimes advertisers are forced into making decisions about search marketing from the pressure lacking campaign performance. They’re not getting enough sales, leads, inquires, and often they are paying good money for these limited results which causes them to look for answers inside Google Analytics.

My only disclaimer is that advertisers who are specifically going to Analytics for answers of what to change in their Adwords account might be quick to jump the gun before learning all the answers. I want to remind you guys that Analytics should be used, not as a change agent, but as a tool that allows us to get the entire story about your campaigns before making any decision at all. In other words, we use Analytics to paint the entire picture so that we can process all the information and eventually come to a justifiable conclusion about what is actually happening when people visit our website.

So for the purpose of this segment, I only want to give you tools that might help paint that picture clearer for you. In reality, everyone who follows these steps will achieve different results that will eventually demand different actions. What you learn today might be change the way you see your campaigns and even your business. Once the picture is clearer, what you do about it should become clearer too.

Note: Because Google Analytics contains information about your website from all referring sources, it is important that you observe the correct source segment (Adwords or Google) and compare to others.

1. Explore Bounce Rates in Comparison to Other Referring Sources

2. Explore Exit Pages (Top Exits and Percentages) in Comparison to Other Referring Sources

3. Explore Average Time on Site

4. Examine Content Page Views and Sort by Source

(video in edit room)

Great job. By now you should have a stronger approach to Analytics and because you have more of the story, your decisions will be more informed and you won’t put yourself in a bad position because you took action prematurely.

Lower Conversion Costs While Increasing Sales Return

Posted onApril 25th, 2010 byadmin

Lowering Conversion Cost without lowering sales return has always been the advertiser’s dilemma. Increasing return has always been an amazing feat. Advertisers have pushed for the lowest conversion cost. But at the end of the sales day, they paid closer attention to sales volume and return than conversion data. As professional Adwords managers, its expected that we’ll be asked to lower conversion cost for our clients. Now at what cost can we do this? The fastest way to lower conversion cost is to lower CPC and the fastest way to do that is to lower the keywords bids and consequently lower ranking, exposure, traffic, and sales return.

So in our business, the client has passed the dilemma onto us. How are we to manage client expectations with lower conversion costs while increasing the sales revenue?

(more…)

Unmasking the Abomination of Quality Score

Posted onApril 24th, 2010 byadmin

Dear Quality Score Victim,

I have to admit: I’ve been dying to write an updated piece about Quality Score (QS) since 2 years ago when we put out THIS BLOG piece. The game has changed forever and I’ve spent more time gritting my teeth and cursing at my monitor (logged into Adwords) than ever before. The reason is because we were told quality score was to help ‘reward’ advertisers for constructing highly relevant campaigns and adgroups. But its all different now. Where’s the reward?

When QS was first introduced to advertisers in 2005, it was just a static score used to determine the minimum CPC based on the ad relevancy to its keywords. Over the next five years, Google would add in: CTR, landing page relevancy, account history (a combine average of all CTR’s in an account, and (the best part) “other relevant factors.” I’ve always gotten a big laugh out of “other relevant factors” because as I would dissect QS, I could see there was much more unexplained reasoning for low quality scores.

An Illustration of Traditional Quality Score (Pre-2009-2010)

In August of 2008, Google restructured QS and made it a “real-time” score that would take effect as soon as someone searched on Google. Some of the other differences Google made were: replacment of minimum CPC  to “first page minimum bid”, landing page quality, and landing page load time. In expectation of a rough change to quality scores, we were surprised that existing advertisers who had been advertising a while, didn’t really see much change…until 2010. Now we go into the accounts and look around at QS but we’re not in Kansas no mo.

(more…)