New Features Available in Google Analytics Account
Analytics has recently been upgraded. Here is an overview of the new features:
Analytics Intelligence with Custom Alerts
Using an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine, Analytics Intelligence monitors data patterns over daily, weekly and monthly periods. Significant changes in data trends and insights you may not have noticed are surfaced directly in your account. You can also create your own Custom Alerts that monitor your selection of dimensions and metrics that can be sent by email or displayed in the Intelligence reports.
Expanded Goals and New Engagement Goals
You can now track even more conversions by creating up to 20 goals per profile. Measure user engagement and branding success on your site with Time on Site and Pages per Visit goals. Set up your first Engagement goal in minutes.
Expanded Mobile Reporting
Google Analytics has expanded support for mobile websites and tracking for iPhone and Android mobile applications tracking. Adding server side code to your PHP, JSP, PERL, or ASPX mobile websites enables you to track non-Java-Script enabled phones. For mobile application developers, access the SDK and technical implementation details here. You’ll also be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section.
Unique Visitors Metric
Include the Unique Visitors metric in your Custom Report or Advanced Segments to see how many actual visitors (unique cookies) visit your website. You can select Unique Visitors as a metric against any dimensions in Google Analytics.
Advanced Analysis Features
Dive deeper into your data with Pivoting, Secondary Dimensions, and Advanced Table Filtering. These combined features enable you to perform in-depth, on the fly data analysis within your account.
Share Advanced Segments and Custom Report Templates
Share the URL link for an Advanced Segment or Custom Report with anyone who has an Analytics account. Sharing the link will automatically import the pre-formatted template into the person’s account. Also available now is the ability to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports by profile.
Multiple Custom Variables
Custom variables provide the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics to collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. Define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (member vs. non-member), session attributes (signed in or signed out), and by page-level attributes (viewed Sports section). Use custom variables to classify any number of interactions and behaviors on your site.
Keeping Your Company Blog Safe And Secure
These days, it seems like everyone has a blog. While the vast number of blogs on the Internet might seem to lessen the chances that your’s will be the victum of hacking or spamming, the greater quantity of blogs out there only encourages more of these annoying pests to attack.
In the Internet marketing world, spamming has unfortunately become a popular way to get free links, referals, etc. While legitimate Internet marketing firms such as Reciprocal Consulting look down on these sorts of black hat practices, the most annoying thing about these spammers is that some people actually click on these links, hence giving them a reason to continue to do it. If everyone knew how to spot spam and no one ever clicked a spam link, they would probably die out, but unfortunately this is not the case.
So, as long as there will be spammers and hackers, there will also be those who wish to put an end to it, and a lot of these programs are not only free, but coded specifically for your needs. The best example is a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Due to ever growing popularity, the Wordpress blog has become a prime target for spammers, both human and robot controlled, but by the same token, so has the number of anti-spam Wordpress plug-ins increased. There are also a few other ways to protect your self hosted Wordpress blog.
- Choose your password wisely- it may seem like elementary knowledge but believe it or not, many people don’t know what makes a password good. The first step is to choose something that is easy to remember, or something that you can write somewhere you will always be able to look it up if you forget what it is. Worst case scenario, you can always have the password sent to your email address, but that should only be the last resort. I personally have a password that includes numbers and letters, both lower and upper-case. The further your password is from a coherent English word or phrase, the better, which is why the combination of numbers and letter is best.
- Check your settings- The Wordpress self hosted blog has a lot of built in features to help protect your blog, many of which can be found in the settings. Many times, an effort to allow more user interaction via comments on a blog will result in more spam, so what I have found to be the best settings for comments is allowing anyone to post, but first requiring myself or another admin to approve the comment. Once a comment is approved for a user, then comments from that user no longer require approval. This way, anyone who’s posted before can feel more welcome posting, which could increase visitor loyalty. There are also a number of great plug-ins available on the Wordpress.com site which can help you deal with spam and security. These are conveniently organized by category, so performing a search for “anti-spam” or “security” should get you a plug-in that works the way you want it to.
- Watch Those Links- Wordpress blogs have a handy feature on the dashboard that tells you who is linking to you. This is a great way to network, but also a good way to see when people are linking to you, even if you don’t want them to. Should you encounter a website that is saying bad things aboout you, or one with a large readership that might send unwanted traffic your way, you can easily see this and send a kind email over to ask the administrator at the other site to remove the link.
There are plenty of more advanced tactics to protecting your blog, but these are the most basic, and believe it or not, the ones most often overlooked.
The Twitter Debate Continues
Awhile back, I posted my thoughts on the hot topic in the Internet marketing world for that week, namely Twitter. Although I jumped the gun with assumptions about the course this fad would take, I maintain my general position on the matter. I came across a post containing a bunch of reasons to use Twitter, and this sparked my motivation to post yet again about the topic. I must state that the following is only my opinion, based on my experience in the Social Media Optimization world.
While I don’t intend to mention all of the reasons along with my opinion of each, there are a few I’ve chosen which, I believe, the writer is directing toward businesses, rather than individuals. As I failed to make clear in my previous post about Twitter, my opinion was concerning the use of Twitter for business Internet marketing efforts, not those of one person or a small group of people.
Competitive – to track what competitors are doing and thinking (watch their tweets, who they’re conversing with, and so forth). Gain insights!
This is a good idea, but why use Twitter? While the idea behind competitive intelligence is to learn secrets, many companies may overlook that which is out in the open. A lot of companies utilize Twitter to market special deals, new products, and more. This is valuable information that may not be available through more conventional CI practices – information that may help other companies figure out how to market their products.
Employee Tracking – See where your employees are, and even what they’re doing. eg. If you’re a service company with contractors on the road, some have used Twitter to reveal where all their contractors are around a city, which indicates how close they are to their next service call.
Most companies that require this kind of information to operate will likely have a method of tracking already. Whether it’s a “push-to-talk” cellular service or a computer system networked into handheld devices which employees carry on them at all times, there are plenty of ways that businesses track their employees, and other things, which can carry far more responsibility than Twitter can. However, some businesses may find it beneficial to utilize Twitter for simple tasks, such as those mentioned above. It all depends on the company and how they run their business.
Branding – To build awareness, trust, and possibly loyalty. If a company Twitters good information routinely, and isn’t overly self-promotional, the profile will gather followers. The profile is then associated with quality industry news and integrity. Frequency and quality of posts then breed familiarity, and eventually trust.
While the effort put into regular Twitter posts would may be more effectively spent on blogging, there is an advantage to the micro-blogging that Twitter offers. In many cases, posting to Twitter to a loyal following makes it easier, not just for the business to get the information out there, but for all of those potential customers to find it. Utilizing Twitter broadcasts and feeds on company websites, blogs, and other SM profiles make it easy to put that information in sight of thousands, instantly. However, any company planning to use the Twitter service to reach users should be careful of how often they post, and what they post about. The key here is regular, consistant information. Like anything in the social media realm, offers go a long way, and good information is priceless when compared to the mundane onslaught of Twitterers posting about what they ate for breakfast.
Reputation Management – to learn about issues and problems people are having with your company, so that they can be corrected. I’m a firm advocate that every problem is an opportunity, when viewed from the right perspective.
Again, the effort put into reputation management would likely be better spent on other means, but a company large enough to have a lot of Twitter users bashing it’s good name might do well to solve the problem before it leaves Twitter. However, the last thing a company needs for its reputation is one who supposedly represents the company arguing with a group of Twitterers about whether or not they were correct in their opinion about said company. Opinions are out there, and always will be – while a company cannot correct every false one, they can make efforts to put the right one in as many places on the Internet as possible - and Twitter is one large group of people to which it makes sense to get the word out.
Twitter is a valuable tool for friends, families and aquaintences to utilize in order to keep in touch and up to date, as well as it can be for businesses. We should never forget that there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere that have been proven to be effective, but where appropriate, Twitter can be used effectively. Just don’t push those boundries too far, or Twitter may eventually suffer the same fate as SM sites before it’s time. The target audience for your business marketing efforts on Twitter is made up of users, not other companies, so if companies abuse the Twitter service like many have been abused before, users are likely to switch to the next big micro-blogging site, and leave the companies to re-tweet themselves.
As the writer of the aforementioned article states: “…the key is in showing restraint in the initial months so that one does not ‘burn out’ on the experience.”
Is Twitter the Future of Internet Marketing?
There have been an awful lot of people talking about Twitter during the last week and, frankly, I’m not sure I like it. Since the world of Internet marketing, and more specifically the country of Search Engine and Social Media Optimization, is all about “hot topics”, I get the feeling that this particular topic is snowballing out of control, and I’m saying my piece now and getting out of the way before it causes an avalanche.
Basically, a lot of people are insisting that Twitter is a great tool for social media marketing, can be used to launch a viral campaign, and may even replace Google for searches one day. Well, I agree with the first statement - Twitter is very useful for networking with friends and family, and keeping in touch, but how far does it go to reach a target market of potential customers and clients?
Here are a few points on which I’d like to offer my opinion:
- Twitter is a great tool for marketing because there are so many people using it now. The idea behind this one makes about as much sense to me as saying “Times Square in NYC is a great place to witness to non-Christians”. Sure, the volume of possible targets has increased and, statistically speaking, this should mean that more will convert, but other factors are at work. In the Times Square scenario, more people means more eyes watching each other, more voices voicing their own opinions, and as unlikely as someone is to read religious material handed to them by a stranger, or listen to someone talking about the end of time, the thought of others seeing them reading the material can only be a discouragement, and the more people around them, the more likely they are to toss it in the garbage, or not hear. For the Twitter analogy, the more people there are to tweet to, the more people there will be tweeting, and your efforts to launch a viral message for users to retweet may be lost in the shuffle.
- Searching Twitter is more likely to yield conversions for a business using it, because the results are recommendations from friends and family members, and people are more likely to listen to their family members. I’m not sure to begin with this one, but it would seem to me that anyone who’s opinion I would value higher than a generic review (of a product, for example) is someone I know well enough that I don’t have to use Twitter to get that opinion. I’ll call them, email them, IM them, etc. There are so many ways to communicate with others online, Twitter is actually the last way I plan to connect with people. Given, many people post to Twitter more times a day than should be considered healthy, but this only goes against the effort of putting ideas out there. How many people really log onto Twitter in a given day just to see what others are saying, without the need to say something for their own benefit? It seems to me that for every person reading what’s been tweeted, there are just as many, if not more, tweeting themselves, which is just more information among which yours can be lost.
- Twitter allows users to follow other users, so it will be easier to target users. I disagree. I have 56 people following me on Twitter, many of whom I don’t even know. In a given day I might check Twitter once, and during that time, I generally check my direct messages, replies to my own tweets, and I might look at what one of the 27 people I follow are saying. I rarely reply, unless it is a reply to me or directed at me, and I almost never click links unless I know what it is already. On the other side, I rarely see responses, and out of the hundred or so tweets I’ve made (specifically to promote my own projects) I’ve received a total of 9 responses, and only one retweet. Maybe I’m one of the few who’s user habits on Twitter are comparable to an anti-socialite at the greatest party of the century, but what do most users really use Twitter for? I have an inkling that users either have far more followers than people they follow, and therefore they are likely on Twitter to post and not so much to read, or they follow so many people that they miss over half of the messages posted daily. So what would this mean for retweets? It means even the catchiest, most important message you could post may be missed or disregarded. How “a message thrown around on Twitter” is better for Internet marketing than “a search result that specifically targets the exact phrase for which a user searches” is beyond me.
What it comes down to for me is this: Twitter can be used for effective marketing, but not any better than Myspace, Facebook, Flickr!, Digg, Sphinn, or any other social media site with a lot of users. A lot of Twitter users post from their cell phones, or while at work, or on the run, so they don’t have time to read others’ posts - only to post themselves. The majority of replies on Twitter are between friends, and retweets are usually a courtesy to those you know beyond Twitter. A successful viral marketing campaign on Twitter is possible, just like it’s possible for me to become a movie star, so is it really worth the time and effort to utilize Twitter for SMO in your Internet marketing firm? If you’re lucky, I guess.
The aforementioned in no way represents the opinions of everyone at Reciprocal Consulting, it is simply my own. These are just my personal thoughts on the “hot topic” of the week in the Internet marketing world.
Social Media Optimization Restraint
There are plenty of excellent Internet marketing firms out there, but when it comes to newer forms of marketing, such as Social Media Optimization, few of them know the best way to carry out a successful campaign. The reason for this is largely based on the fact that SMO is rather young, but also because a lot of the sites that are kind enough to host users for free, are constantly guarding against their sites being utilized for such purposes. A good example of this is Flickr!, which I mentioned a few weeks ago. Cracking down on photostreams was their solution to the problem, but other sites like Digg and Stumbleupon may become trouble with friend adding. However, this is not due to the administration.
The key to any natural-search-oriented form of marketing is natural linking. If the links appear natural to the search engines, they will be more effective, and since we aren’t all so fortunate to have the support of the Internet from the beginning, we often must take it upon ourselves to spread the word, through relevant (and therefore natural in appearance) linking.
So, the key to utilizing Social Media sites for online marketing is also natural, however, natural to other users. Since the quality of internal links on a site like Digg depend on the users accepting requests to become friends or contacts, your adding of friends or contacts must first appear natural to the users. Having an incomplete profile, offensive content, or a low amount of activity is the best way to send out un-reciprocated requests. Focus first on building your presence, then your contacts, and lastly, quality, external links to your profile, as well as internal links to your site.
Designing a Pay-Per-Click Campaign for a Smaller Business
When it comes to small business advertising on the Internet, organic search engine optimization may be out of your budget. I recently talked with a friend and small business owner from Philadelphia who had a very limited budget and was faced with the decision hire a firm he knew nothing about and either get a good deal, or become victim to one of the most common SEO scams on the web, which is a firm that requires a full payment up front before doing any work. My advice to him was to either find a pay per performance internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting, and invest a little more, or try out a Pay-Per-Click campaign.
The general advantage of PPC over SEO is the level of control you have over keywords and the bids on them, but for a small business, the real beauty of that control is the ability to target local Internet users only. In my friend’s situation, he runs a small business in the greater Philadelphia area, so initializing an SEO campaign which would be seen by users all over the country would make less sense than a geo-targeted PPC campaign.
Setting up geo-targeting in Adwords is as easy is checking a few boxes in the Campaign Settings. For those running a content campaign, which is a good idea if you have a little extra ad money to spend, geo-targeting is available on the content network as well.
When in doubt, just ask an Internet Marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting to explain PPC to you.
Creating Placement Adgroups for an Adwords Content Targeted Campaign
If you’re not familiar with the Google Content Network option within a Pay Per Click campaign, it may be worth looking in to. Depending on your niche, there may be countless websites partnered with Google who participate in Adwords. Essentially, these sites have “digital billboards” which are swapped out much like ranking positions on paid Google searches.
Within an Adwords campaign, you can set a given campaign to bid on these spots, just the same as bidding on search rank position. The idea is, visitors to these sites are already looking for information or a service relavant to your business, which makes these ads highly visible to those that may not be doing searches for your niche, but are still looking for it. It’s a good idea to set up a test campaign so that, at the very least, you can see if this is a good option for your company. After gathering a certain amount of data from various reports provided in Adwords, it is best to set up a Placement campaign, which will either allow or disallow specific websites from showing your ad.
The first step is to utilize the Placement Tool to search for sites relevant to your site. By entering a number of keywords for each adgroup you set up, a list returned, and you can add placements to each adgroup from a list of sites returned. Each adgroup will then specifically target the placement sites within to have your ad shown. This is not a guarantee that your ad will show, but a bid much like standard PPC campaigns. Of course, your ads should be relavant to each placement adgroup you setup.
The next step is to set up a number of general content adgroups with your keywords, relavant ads to display, and no placements. Let this campaign and the placement campaign run for the course of a few months to see which sites are showing your ads, how many clicks they are getting, what the click-through rate is, and how many conversions result. Once you’ve let the campaign run for awhile, you can run a placement report for each, which can be set to return the domains with pages on which your ad was shown. Organize your report by conversions and those sites with good conversions (be sure to check for lower costs per conversion as well) can be kept within the placement campaign, or added to it if they show in the general content campaign and were not already in the placement campaign.
Next, organize each report by cost. This way, you can find the sites with no conversions and a lot of spend, or those with high conversion rates. With this list of domains, you can add them to the negative keyword/placement list, so they will no longer show the ad. Do this within the general content campaign, but before you add these sites to the placement campaign, move these sites into a new adgroup that basically mirrors the one from which it came, and add a list of keywords to the group. This way, only pages relavant to those keywords will show the ad, and you will be more likely to get conversions. If the site placements within a placement campaign adgroup including keywords are not converting, then ad them to the negative kayword/placement list.
If PPC confuses you, don’t hesitate to ask an Internet Marketinf Firm like Reciprocal Consulting any questions you may have.
Weekly Account Maintenance in Adwords
Believe it or not, a good number of people don’t know that a Pay Per Click campaign as an ongoing process can be just as intense as the initial setup. Sure, for the first few months of PPC, keywords are created, bids are set, adgroups are organized and ads are written, but after the keywords are chosen, they need to be analyzed on a weekly basis, and bids need to be adjusted, which can be pretty time consuming if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
The general idea is to adjust bids for each keyword based on a number of different factors, so you may very well be adjusting the bid on the same keyword multiple times. It is best to use Adwords Editor for this process, and depending on your niche, you should download the data for all active campaigns (choose the Selected Campaigns option from the menu) over a good chunk of time (a month or two is the standard), and view all of the keywords at once.
- Start by checking the cost per conversion on keywords that are converting – organize the column by descending order, with the greater values at the top, and the lower values at the bottom. This is important, because the cost per conversion tells you exactly what you are paying, verses what you are making from the use of that keyword. If you come accross keywords with a high conversion rate and a good position (1-3) you may be able to trim the bid a little, but not any lower than your average Cost Per Click (CPC), as this would likely lower your position, which can have a large factor in clicks. Generally, if a keyword that converts at a good rate is in a high position, you may be able to spend less per conversion.
- Next, look at the Position of keywords. For keywords that are in position 1-3, you may not need to adjust them at this point, as those positions are likely leading to the most clicks. For the rest of the keywords, if they have a good conversion rate, try raising the bid just enough to get them to show up in the top 3 positions. If they convert well with a few views, they will probably convert well with more views, and the conversion rate should be similar, but also lead to more conversions.
- You should now have a good number of keywords with adjusted bids. The next step is to check the overall Cost of each keyword. See how much each one is costing overall, and then compmare them to the conversion rate and CPC. Some keywords may be converting great, and at an excellent rate, but costing you the majority of your budget for that campaign or adgroup. If this is the case, you have two options – adjust the bid to allow for other keywords to perform, or lower the bid on other keywords to improve the number of conversions on that keyword. Basically, you would only want to limit the well performing keyword if your budget is tight, and/or your other keywords have not been in high enough positions to have the chance to show their conversion potential.
- Lastly, organize your keywords by clicks. Reference all other information in the campaign while checking how many times people actually click the ads for that keyword. However, instead of changing bids, check the ads in that adgroup. If the clicks are low, the ad might not accurately represent the keyword. If there are only a few like this, you can pretty much let those keywords continue to run, as they will not cost much, and may change. If there are a lot of keywords like this, you may want to consider creating a new adgroup which shows ads more relavant to those keywords – or put them into an adgroup with an ad using a dynamic header.
For more information on Pay Per Click, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like ReciprocalConsulting.
What Kind of Reputation Do You Have?
Reputation is important in the business world, there is no question about it. For each individual, this may be a different story, but chances are, if you’re selling a product or service, you want people to be saying good things about you -Â especially the important ones.
This holds truer yet on the Internet, the reason being, because searches are based on (a series of algorithms which determine) the priority of one website over another for various keywords. Naturally, a successful SEO campaign will improve your website’s position in natural search rankings for your keywords and key phrases.
However, have you ever typed the name of your company into a search engine to see what results were returned? I should hope that your website is the number one result, but the following results may amount to thousands that do not take the user to your site, and some of those results may be negative comments about, or poor reviews of, your business. Should you come accross a popular blog or major review site to which that one unreasonable or unsatisfied customer belongs, you may be wishing you had invested in some Reputation Management.
Believe it or not, Reputation Management is not so much about Public Relations as it is about securing good information about your business, and ensuring that is what potential customers will see in the first page or two of natural search results. Sure, with enough money, man hours, and “tactful encouragement”, anything can just disappear from sight, but an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting prefers ethical business practices, and we respect clients’ budgets. We like to refer to our approach as Proactive Reputation Management.
The idea behind the proactive approach is not to rid the World Wide Web of negative opinions – after all, the Internet is about freedom of information, which is why you are advertising your business online in the first place – but to populate the search results for your company with positive opinions, and kind words; that is our goal. The key to a successful Reputation Management campaign is very similar to that of a successful SEO campaign, only instead of optimizing your one website for your keywords, we optimize others for your name. These others may depend on your particular needs, but generally, an informational blog will be among those content rich candidates with the sole purpose of saying nice things about your business.
If you’d like to protect your reputation, or even if you think it’s too late, please don’t hesitate to read about how Reciprocal Consulting can help protect your reputation. After all, you only have one.
Internet Marketing and Real World Marketing Comparison
Many people have a hard time grasping certain concepts, as they pertain to the Internet. It’s possible that someone who has been in print advertising for years will know absolutely nothing about Internet Marketing, but a lot of people have an easier time understanding something if it is compared to something with which they are familiar. I’ve always liked analogies, because they are a simple way to associate something you get, with something you otherwise wouldn’t get.
Let’s say the Internet is a network of people, which is it. That network is comprised of bodies, all with their own purposes, intentions, desires, needs, etc. Just as a social network of aquaintences relates to eachother in the real world, by means of communication (be those means telephones, letters, newsletters, newspapers, or face to face), the online social network communicates very similarly, only through chat, emails, blogs, articles, and video.
When talking about Search Engine Optimization, the status of your site is like your own personal status, among your group of aquaintences. What it all comes down to is who you know, who knows you, how important you are to the community, and whether or not you are a reliable, trustworthy friend. These things can all contribute to your personal social status. Likewise, the status of your website is based on numerous factors having to do with the ultimate importance of your site.
Pay Per Click Management is comparable to your shopping habits, as well as your interests and hobbies. Those things which you choose to spend money on are representative of your character, of who you are. Likewise, with the keywords you bid on for your business, their relavance to your site and its purposes will better reflect you as being trustworthy, reliable, and significant in the community.
Consider your reputation. They say that out of every ten people, nine will be more likely to share a negative opinion about you or your business than a good one. This can apply to Reputation Management, which works to populate search results with more of those honest, good opinions. Likewise, in the real world, many people and businesses will go out of their way to satisfy customers or their friend, not just for their own sake, but to re-instate their good purpose.
While these strategies for Internet Marketing success can be compared to how we live our lives apart from the Internet, it is near impossible to imagine a world without the World Wide Web, and therefore it is becoming ever more crucial to the success of a business to utilize the Internet for their marketing efforts.
Using the Keyword Grouper in Google Adwords Editor
While Google Adwords is an easy way to create an effective, keyword-rich PPC campaign, in order to use the program to its full potential, consider which features to use and when to use them. This is a continuation of sorts to my previous post about setting up an Adwords PPC campaign, discussing the keyword grouper featureavailable in the Adwords Editor.
Remember, the first step is to create a basic keyword list. Then, once you’ve explored all variations for your keywords, you’re ready to use the keyword grouper.
Ideally, different ads should show up for different keywords, but it takes awhile when done manually. That’s why Adwords includes the Keyword Grouper. This tool will show you commonalities between keywords and attempt to group them based on these similarities between keywords. However, this tool may not always group keywords as effectively as hand-picking keywords for your various adgroups. More so, editing such a campaign later on will prove more difficult.
Suppose you run a PPC campaign for a travel agency. Your best option would likely be to create a master adgroup for the general area of travel you service, then to duplicate this adgroup and change the area name to specific locations in the keywords, as well as within each ad. This way, you can cycle 4 or 5 relavant ads for the particular area denoted by the adgroup, for each main area of travel.
Using the keyword grouper in this case may be overkill. Not only will the travel areas be grouped, but so will methods of travel, places of interest, as well as different synonyms for travel, such as trip, vacation, tour, etc. For smaller overall campaigns, this may be optimal, but your ads need not always repeat exactly what the user searched for, as would be the purpose for creating as many adgroups as would be generated through this method of keyword grouping.
Still, one can use the tool in this case and simply copy and paste the unnecessary adgroups into more appropriate, existing adgroups. Either way, the tool can be handy, or it could create more work for you.
Getting a Pay Per Click Campaign Started
Pay Per Click is a formidable task for anyone without a lot of experience. It is highly recommended that anyone interested in setting up a PPC campaign should consult professionals, or at the very least, take the full tour of Google Adwords before embarking on the journey to an efficient PPC campaign.
Some businesses choose to set up their Pay Per Click campaign themselves. Often times, they will create a base upon which an Internet Marketing FIrm like Reciprocal Consulting will build, and mantain beyond its inception. In other cases, however, the initial campaign runs poorly, and the business enlists the help of PPC professionals to correct the issues, or create a new campaign all together. In order to avoid wasted time and bids, consider the following tips:
- Google provides a series of in depth video tutorials to help learn the ins and outs of Adwords. As stated above, it is preferable to run through these tutorials prior to using Adwords for PPC.
- Make a keyword list, using broad matching. Basically, anything that you would want a user to search for in order to find your site, these will be your keywords.
- Divide these keywords into relavant Adgroups, each of which will show different Ads. Some of these keywords may overlap, but remember, the search term should return an advertisement relavant to the search term which returns the ad.
- Include all possible variations for appropriate key words. This includes plurals (vacation & vacations), sensible re-ordering of keyphrases (europe vacation & vacation in europe), as well as different forms of the same word (europe & european), where applicable.
- Once you have your complete set of keywords for an Adgroup, including all relavant variations, duplicate the entire set to create an identical group using phrase matching and another using exact matching.
- Try to avoid one-word key phrases. Your Cost Per Click (CPC) depends on your quality score, which means if you’re bidding on highly competitive keywords (ball versus rubber ball), you may overpay for a top spot that will bring no conversion, or have no position on the search at all. Keep your keywords relavant and not only will your CPC likely be lower, but your conversion rate will be higher.
These are just a few tips for PPC. Obviously, there is much more to a successful campaign than just these six steps. For more in depth information on using Adwords, consult Google’s tutorials.