The Maine SEO Blog

Account Setup: Billing

We’ve come to the final steps of our AdWords account setup: showing Google the money, honey.

After choosing your country, you can either pick postpay/prepay billing. Understand that if you choose to prepay, your balance might run out before you want it to.

Although if you’re only willing to spend a set amount, then this option is perfect for you.

Read the terms of service, enter your credit card information, and…you’re all done!

Congratulations!

Nicki Hicks
9 Step Set-up

Create ad and keywords: Placements

Now that you’ve got your keywords in place; remember how when you chose to show your ads in the Content Network, I said you could choose which content networks later?

Later is now.

If you decided that Google couldn’t pick relevant content networks, or if you have website(s) or blog(s) in mind where you know you want your ad, this section is for you.

Or perhaps your know a content network where you don’t want your ad to populate. This section is also for you.

Simply list the website(s) and blog(s), as Google does. For those sites/blogs where you’d rather your ad not show up, put the (-) negative in front, similar to a negative keyword.

You might be saying to yourself: I don’t know which sites I want or don’t want to show my ad. No biggie. Leave this box blank. Once you gather data, you’ll know which content networks you’re getting impressions, traffic, and conversions from, you might want to exclude those sites not converting and basically decreasing your conversion rate as a result.

Congratulations!

You’ve successfully added placements for your ad in the Content Network! Next time, we’ll move on to the joys of billing.

Nicki Hicks
Yes there is a Step 9

Create ad and keywords: Keywords

Even though it seems a little out of order to me, you’ve created your ad – so now it’s time to choose the keywords you want to bid on for that ad.

Select Keywords

Based on your ad copy, Google will give you suggestions for keywords. Even with this list, as always, I would recommend getting a keyword analysis. You might be missing opportunities with paid search, just as with organic.

You can enter as many keywords as you like; just remember – you’re going to pay every time someone searches for one and clicks on your ad. Choose wisely.

As you input keywords, Google will estimate the search traffic. Notice that this estimate is for the entire list of keywords – not on an individual basis. What do these numbers mean, do you ask?

• CPC (Cost Per Click): How much you pay per click. In this instance, Google is estimating “pet gifts” will cost me anywhere between $.62 and $1.31
• Clicks/day: The estimated number of clicks (not impressions) Google estimates I’ll receive from this keyword per day.
• Cost/day: The estimated amount 60-76 clicks will cost.

While just estimates, the traffic summary will give you an idea how much the keyword costs – as well as how relevant it might be.

Match Types

Match types are, without a doubt, critical. In order to get traffic – the right traffic – and acquire accurate impressions data, make sure you root out any keywords that don’t apply to your product, service, and ad.

Broad match will match your phrase, including any other (relevant) variations. “Phrase match” will match the phrase, but still pick up searchers who add for long tail searches. [Exact match] will match only that phrase or term. - Negative match will ensure your ad does not show up for that query.

Negative match is one of the most powerful in the group – rooting out those queries that don’t apply. You may be thinking “when someone searches for my term, they’re looking for me”. Not so. Trying Googling your keyword(s). Look for results that both a) don’t exactly relate to your industry and b) don’t relate to this particular ad.

Congratulations!

You’ve just added your first set of keywords to the campaign! Next time, we’ll delve into ad placements.

Nicki Hicks
Keyword-holic

Create ad and keywords: Create an ad

Now that you’ve got your advanced settings all in order, it’s finally time to create your first ad!

First things first: you can create a variety of ads in AdWords: text, image, video, or mobile. Each has a variety of techniques, and I’m only going to go over the text ad, as it’s the most popular.

You’ll see five lines of text in the ad manager:

1. Headline: The blue hyperlink to your landing page; total of 25 characters.
2. Description Line 1: 1st line of black text; total of 35 characters.
3. Description Line 2: 2nd line of black text; total of 35 characters.
4. Display URL: The green text displaying your landing page; total of 35 characters.
5. Destination URL: The actual destination landing page (that must match the display URL domain); total of 1024 characters.

The wrong way to write an ad

Below is an example of how not to write an ad. It’s vague, not overly enticing, and most importantly: there’s no call to action!

The right way to write ad

Here are some of the pointers Google AdWords Help gives for optimizing your ads:

• Make your ad simple and enticing.
• Have a sale or promotion? Include it! Free shipping – add it! Price, as we all know, is a huge differentiator.
• Call-to-action. Have one. ‘Nuff said.
• Include the keywords you’re bidding on in the text.
• Choose the best destination URL – more often than not, it won’t be the homepage.
• Test multiple ads. You might be surprised about which one performs better.

With a purpose in mind, I set out to try again:

Remember: you’ll want to have tested the keywords you use in the ad beforehand (which I haven’t with this example), but you get the idea.

Congratulations!

You’ve created your first ad! Tomorrow, we start on keywords.

Nicki Hicks
Puppy Presents on the Brain

Create your first campaign: Bidding and Budget

You’ve just decided where your ads are going, now it’s time to put some money behind it.

Bidding Options

By default, Google suggests focusing on clicks – with a choice to create a manual bid for clicks, or automatic. Manual bidding simply means that you want to manually tell Google how much you’re willing to pay for any given keyword. By using automatic bidding, Google will choose how much your bid will be – but don’t worry you get to put a ceiling on that amount with the bid limit.

You also have an option to base bids on conversions. This might be a good option for an Ecommerce site – as conversions are black and white: to buy or not to buy. You can count whatever you’d like as a conversion: signing up for your email newsletter, filling out your contact form, subscribing to your feed, downloading your white paper…you get the idea. (Notice you have to set up conversion tracking – by inserting a code not unlike that for Google Analytics.)

Budget

This one is pretty straight forward: how much are you willing to spend for AdWords (per day)? Like every other option we’re setting up here, you can change this at anytime. And, don’t worry, if Google thinks you should be spending more based on “missed opportunities”, they won’t hesitate to tell you.

Position Preference

That’s right, you can choose where your ad shows up! (You’ll just have to pay for it.)

Unless you have a specific need to show up in the #1 spot, or maybe you want to be down around #3 to save costs (and you know you’ll convert just as well there), then I would suggest leaving this option “off”.

Delivery Method

Have a product in short supply and want to sell it fast? Or do you have a bottomless budget? Go ahead and show your ad(s) quickly over time. Otherwise, show them evenly throughout the day.

Congratulations!

You’ve successfully set up your bids and budget. Now that the money piece is (partially) out of the way, tomorrow we’ll go over some advanced settings.

Nicki Hicks
Budgeting isn’t just for accountants

Create your first campaign: Networks, Devices, and Extensions

You’ve set up your location, language, and demographics settings; now it’s time to decide where your ad is going to show up.

Networks

Google has two networks: search and content.

The Google search network includes a huge number of Google search and website partners (including Google Search Results, Google Maps, Google Product Search, Google Groups, Amazon.com, etc.) that will display your ads. This is the traditional portion of AdWords we’re all used to.

The Google content network includes a large number of websites, blogs, and content affiliated with Google. Some of the most popular sites in the content network include: The New York Times, HGTV, About.com, FoodNetwork.com, and Gmail. Google only shows your ad on content placements where it applies. (For example, my Maine pet store ad wouldn’t show up on a blog about home improvement, but it would probably show up on a blog by a Dalmatian lover in Maine.)

By default, AdWords will suggest you push your ads out to all available sites (the entire Google Network). By “letting me choose”, you can decide where you’d like to show your ad.

Within the content network, you’ll see you have another choice to show your ad on relevant placements you manage. Ads with placements are simply those websites and blogs within the content network you choose your ad to show up on. For example, I might choose to place an ad specifically in Maine Pets on Maine Today. (If you’re interested in ads with placements, you’ll be able to choose the content network(s) later in the setup process.)

Devices

Unless there’s a strong reason for not wanting your ads to show up on both computers and smart phones/mobile devices, I would suggest leaving the device setting on “all available devices”.

Congratulations!

As they say on the all the reality shows, “you’re one step closer to…” completing your first AdWords campaign! Tomorrow we’ll dive into bidding and budget.

Nicki Hicks
Wannabe reality show host

Create your first campaign: Location, Language, and Demographics

You’ve already set up your AdWords account, now it’s time to create your first campaign. There are four easy steps:

Click the “create your first campaign” button.

For the purpose of this series, I’m going to pretend that I’m creating a campaign for a pet store, with one location in Portland, Maine.

Choose a name

Think of something a little more specific than “Campaign #1″. If you start creating multiple campaigns, you’ll quickly forget which is which.

My first campaign will be some general ad stores. (I want to get an idea of how it does before I create more specific ads around pets: dogs, cats, fish, etc.). So I’ve called it “pet store”.

Choose your location

I chose Maine; but notice that you can choose your state, United States, United States and Canada, etc. By clicking “select one or more  other locations,” you’ll be able to choose locations visually on a Google Map.

Local Business? You can also show relevant addresses with your ads. This is also known as local or ad extensions, and it wasn’t long ago that Google began populating your AdWords ads in Google Maps. All you have to do is connect your AdWords ad with your Local Business Center account (or simply input your address):

Choose your language

‘Nuff said.

Choose your demographic

Selling high-end women’s clothing? You might want to separate your demographic to women within a certain age range:

As a pet store owner, I’m simply going to exclude the 0-17 year old demographic; assuming everyone outside of that range could theoretically own (and care for) a pet.

Congratulations!

You’ve successfully completed part of the campaign setup process! Tomorrow we’ll cover Networks, Devices, and Extensions.

Nicki Hicks
Maybe you should sweat the small stuff

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

Ever come home from a conference, start sorting through your notes and think I know I learned something, but what the heck was it? Closely following will often be: Now I remember what I learned, what can I use to help my business?

There’s a lot of information in the SMX live blog recaps, a lot of which involves quick note taking and scattered thoughts. So in an effort to consolidate (in an admittedly very long post) and walk away with something helpful, here are my takeaways:

(more…)

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