The Maine SEO Blog

Alright, so you’ve decided you need to utilize paid search in conjunction with your organic efforts. But…how do you do it?

You’re a newbie who just doesn’t have time to read the entire Google AdWords Beginner’s Guide.

Or maybe you’ve read the guide, but can’t make heads or tails of it.

There’s a lot of confusing language during AdWords setup: many settings which can have a huge impact on your campaign.

Rest assured, dear reader; with the next series of posts, we’ll take setup nice and slow – and you’ll quickly become a Google AdWords setup pro!

Nicki Hicks
Stay Tuned

Let’s not beat around the bush…if you use AdWords, you Google to see if, how, and where your ad comes up. Don’t worry, everyone does it.

While you know better than to click, did you know that simply by searching you’re still skewing your results? That’s right, your impressions! So even though you don’t click, you’re actually decreasing your CTR (click thru rate) by increasing impressions.

How can you stop skewing your results? Google was kind enough to create a tool for that: Ad Preview.

It looks similar to the Google search results, but doesn’t count as a conventional search.

Notice that you can also set your location to test how results change based on geographic location.

Nicki Hicks
Stop Skewing

Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search, The Americas

We were in a media delivery world, but now a media discovery world.

Consideration funnel

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Preference
• Action
• Loyalty

Three forms of media today

• Paid
• Owned (website, PDFs, white papers, videos)
• Earned

Graham Mudd, Vice President Search & Media, comScore, Inc.

• Heavy searchers tend to be heavy social media users as well
• Social media users tend to be:
  - younger
  - more educated
  - enthusiastic
  - use internet more than non-social media user
• “exposed consumers” two times more likely to search
• influenced social + paid = significant CTR increase down the funnel
• searchfuel.com - white paper of research

John Antognoli, Senior Director, Account Management, M80

I just watched the MarketingProfs’ webinar with George Seybold, head of Seybold Scientific, put on a great presentation on PPC basics. Here are some of my notes from the presentation:

Advertising Basics

• Traditional Advertising – TV, radio, print; impression based
• Banner Advertising – online equivalent of traditional advertising; impression based
• Pay-per-click – performance based

…and they all work together…

• Traditional – awareness, informative, branding, sales lead
• Banner Ads – awareness, informative, branding, sales lead
• Pay-per-click (PPC) – awareness, informative, branding, sales lead, closest point of sale
• The way they flow:
  Awareness & Branding –> Research –> Promotion & Point of Sale

Example: Car Buying

1. Awareness: TV, radio, search
2. Consideration: website, brochures
3. Point of Sale: PPC, website

Great quote from George: You have to be present to be selected.

Rules of Thumb

• PPC is not necessarily good for…
  - building awareness
  - branding
• PPC is good for…
  - incentive
• Banners are great for…
  - branding

Why do we search?

• Answer questions
• Find information
• Validation
• Entertainment
• Find products/services

How PPC providers differ

• Cost – Google is approximately 50% more expensive than other search engines
• Relevance – Google gets 63% of total traffic
• Demographics – Ask heavily targets women
• Shopping – New market entrant Bing is focused on Ecommerce
• Psychographic – Yahoo targets the financial/news-focused

Yahoo

• Lower cost per click (CPC)
• Financial/news target
• Attempt to drive searchers to the search engine
• Yahoo Mail solution is very popular
• 2nd largest search provider

Google

• Greatest search
• De-facto search standard
• Most advanced/relevant results
• More advertiser competition, more searchers to balance
• Largest content network (Adsense)

Ask

• Female demographic
• NO right hand column advertising
• Sponsored links are (almost) indistinguishable from organic results
• Lower CPC
• Less overall search result

Bing

• New! (as of about a week ago)
• Targeted for Ecommerce
• Freshly positioned as the “new type” of search engine
• Hybrid of Google, Yahoo, and Ask
• Decision-based search results

Ad Creation Basics

• Keyword selection
  - Use descriptive words (cd player vs. cd)
  - Think like your customer (cd album vs. compact disk)
  - Balance of search volume to competition (mp3 cds vs. best cd)
  - Longer tail search term is closer to the sale (red nike tennis shoes vs. tennis shoes) 
  - Recognize terms used across other industries (CD – compact disk vs. CD – Certificate of Deposit) 
• Can I pay for the first position in Google? No…quality score. 
• Quality Score – Google’s algorithm for PPC, based on: 
   1. relevance of keyword
  2. performance of ad click through rate (CTR) 
• Ad Copy
  - Needs an incentive, call-to-action
  -  Use geo-targeting (region, zip code, country, language, etc.)
• Measurement/Goals: Google Analytics
  Focus on:
  - New visitors (should be upwards of 75%)
  - # Pages/visit
  - Bounce rate (should be less than 50%) 

Some PPC Jargon

• Keywords – what your consumers are searching for
• Impressions – number of times ad is presented
• Cost-per-click (CPC) – money you pay for a click
• Click-thru-rate (CTR) – ration of impressions/clicks
• Conversion – reaching a desired goal

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEM 

AdWords is Google’s paid search program – complete with an easy-to-use interface and, when campaigns are done correctly, can actually add to your conversions.

1. Do a keyword analysis. No ifs, ands, or buts about this one…unless you enjoy throwing away money.  Theoretically, that’s exactly what you’re doing if you choose keywords blindly.  Find out what your customers are searching for and target those keywords.  There are a ton of keyword research tools out there – both free and paid.
2. Set up your account.
3. Choose which is right for you: starter or standard edition.
4. Target the right customers. You have the option to target by language (if applicable) and geographic location.

   
   

5. Create your ad.

   
   Tips for creating ads:
   a.  Use keywords in your headline whenever possible.
   b.  Write a long paragraph about your business, then narrow it down to the main points.
   c.  Include negative or “filtering” language when applicable.
   d. Test, tweak, and track your campaign(s).

6. Choose your keywords. (Using a tool like Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool will give you an idea of competition for keywords and phrases.)
7. How much are you willing to spend? Per day?  Every time someone clicks on your ad?  You get to choose!

   
   

8. Define your campaigns based on:
   a.  Time restraints (for example, turn your ads off at night)
   b.  Demographics (age, gender, etc.)
   c.  Geographic Location
   d.  And more!
9. Track your conversions with Google Analytics and Placement Performance Reports from AdWords.

Paid Search in conjunction with Organic Search can really do wonders.  The key is simple: keep an eye on your stats and what your customers are searching for!

Nicki Hicks
People really DO click on the right side!