PPC Ads Hurting Small Businesses Bottom Line

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The cost of doing business with pay-per-click advertising has risen sharply over the past decade. So much so, many small business owners are wondering if the price they’re paying to get their message out is worth the return on their investment.

As Darren Dahl reports for the New York Times, larger companies joining the PPC craze has caused rates to skyrocket and nearly priced out smaller competitors.

AdGooroo, a research firm specializing in the PPC market, reports that more than nine out of ten companies spend less than $10-thousand a month on PPC advertising. At the other end of that spectrum, however, are giants like Amazon and University of Phoenix, who spent $54-million and $37.9-million respectively in the first half of 2012 alone.

The advice many experts offer is to scale back PPC ads and make keywords as specific as possible to your business. General keywords like ‘life insurance’ or ‘car sales’ put you in direct competition with a number of companies, many of whom have much deeper pockets.

PPC also shouldn’t be your only advertising platform. Branching out into social media and search is crucial to drive as much traffic to your site as possible.

It’s worth looking into SEO services to improve your organic search rankings. There’s even services online that pledge to manage your social media marketing accounts, as well. When you own a small business, time and money come at a premium and online advertising is becoming costly for both.

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10 New AdWords Features to Watch For

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As with any Google service, AdWords is constantly innovating and improving. Lisa Raehsler recently put out her list of the 10 best recent AdWords improvements at Search Engine Watch.

1. Media Ads

This one hasn’t been fully made available yet, but could be huge for certain businesses. The ad includes two links, one to a landing page and one to a relevant video, which is expandable from the ad.

2. Product Listings

These ads are linked to a Google Merchant account and show your product to users searching for a relevant keyword. Also currently in limited release.

3. Enhance Sitelinks

New sitelinks are larger and actually appear like regular ads, but they’re connected to one closely related ‘umbrella’ ad. CTR have reportedly significantly improved with the enhancement.

4. Remarketing

Currently in beta testing, advertisers will soon have the opportunity to use a consumers previous search for keywords to show them relevant ads on subsequent searches.

5. Offers extensions

Ads and offers combined. Your specfic promotion or coupon is included with your ad and can be saved to a Google offers account.

6. Reminder extensions

Users can send themselves an email from your ad reminding them about a sale, opening or special. Just started in beta.

7. Remarketing in Analytics

Build targeting lists in analytics using a variety of factors, including referral source or the site the user came from. These lists are easily integrated in AdWords.

8. Dynamic Display

Target specific users based on their activity or websites based on their audience. Display ads will link with a Merchant account to show your relevant products.

9. Comparison ads

It’s a cost-per-lead model that does just what it sounds like. Compare your prices to other companies. This one may be a long way from full release, but it’s being tested on financial companies.

10.  App promotion

Advertise your app to app users. AdWords does most of the work here providing the graphics, formatting and updating the rating ad reviews.

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What You Need To Know About Google’s Disavow Links Tool

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I recently wrote about the release of Google’s Disavow Links tool, but there are some more questions popping up that need answering. So, let’s cover a little bit more about the tool.

First off, the tool does not immediately take effect. This is one of many reasons Google suggests publishers try to remove questionable links first by working with site owners hosting links, or companies that they may have purchased links through.

Instead of disavowing the links immediately, “it can take weeks for that to go into effect,” said Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team at a keynote during the Pubcon conference. Google also has reserved the right to not use submissions if it feels they are questionable.

It is important to be accurate when making your file to submit to Google. Because of the delay in processing the file, it may take another few weeks to “reavow” links you didn’t mean to discount.

Once you have submitted a file to Google, you can download it, change it, and then resubmit.

The tool is mainly designed for site owners affected by the Penguin Update, which was focused on hitting sites that may have purchased links or gained them through spamming. Before, Google ignored bad links, but now they act as a negative mark against the site.

This change prompted fear in some of the SEO industry that site owners would create bad links pointing to their site, or “negative SEO.” This tool helps to ensure that negative SEO is not a worry by allowing you to disavow any of those types of links.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land has even more information about the tool, and Matt Cutts has a 10 minute long video answering questions.

 

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The Value of Trend Line Analysis for Your PPC Campaigns

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In order to improve your existing online ad campaigns and discover new opportunities that you’re currently missing, you have to study the analytics. Trend line analysis is likely included whether you use AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter or any other platform and it saves you from poring over column after column of numbers. Instead, you are presented with an easy to read and, more importantly, an easy to digest report.

Matt Van Wagner has an in-depth report on different types of trend line reports and how to use trend line analysis at Search Engine Land.

Let’s look at some potential errors to avoid and how to make these reports work for you.

First and foremost, you have to understand the context of any report and be sure to enter proper parameters. If your reporting time is too short, you may see a graph suggesting a problem that isn’t really there. You may also notice a simple fluxuation of variables beyond your control and perceive it as a problem with your campaign.

Before making any changes, do some investigating. Take the guesswork out of online advertising and diagnose the problem. Then, you will know what needs to be changed, or what can be left as is.

Always keep your specific campaign goals in mind. For some, conversion rates improving but total conversions going down could be a problem. However, if it’s in line with that campaigns goals, then you’ll probably want to leave the campaign untouched.

Sometimes it’s what you decide not to change that will make the biggest difference.

With time, you’ll start to be able to recognize at a glance a graph showing the early signs of trouble. Be sure you understand not only what each individual trackable metric means, but also how they relate to each other.

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Google Announces Disavow Links Tool

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If you’ve ever received a notification from Google about a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your webpage, Google has a new tool for you.

Links are one of the most known about factors Google uses to order search results, and they examine the links between sites to decide which pages are reputable. As you probably know, this is the foundation of PageRank, another of the most well-known “signals” Google uses to order search results. Google is concerned about spammers trying to take advantage of PageRank, and often they have to take manual action.

The notification you may have received in Webmaster Tools about those unnatural links suggests you got caught up in linkspam. Linkspam is the use of paid links, link exchanges, and other tactics like those. The best response to the message would be to remove as many low quality links as possible from your site. This keeps Google off of your back, and will improve the reputation of your site as a whole.

If you can’t seem to get rid of all of the links for some reason, Google’s new tool can help you out. The Disavow Links page allows you to input URLs which you would like disavowed from your site, and the “domain :” keyword will help you disavow links across all pages on a specific site.

Everyone is allowed one disavow file per website, and the file is shared among site owners through Webmaster Tools.

If you need assistance finding bad links in your site, the “Links to Your Site” feature in Webmaster Tools can also assist you in starting your search.

Google’s Webmaster Central Blog included a few quick answers in their announcement for the tool for questions you may have, noting that most sites will not need to use the feature in any way unless they’ve received a notification.

 

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5 Tips to Stretch Your Modest AdWords Budget

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Chances are that your company doesn’t have piles of money to throw at advertising in order to get results. Most likely, you’re wondering how to get a big ROI from a modest to meager ad budget. Jeremy Decker has five tips for you, which you can read more about at Search Engine Journal.

1. Utilize lower ad positions

When you search for a specific topic or product, do you always click the first result that appears? I’m assuming you answered ‘no’ because I don’t know anyone who does.

With that in mind, you can take advantage of ad placements below the top three on Google and still see results, often at a lower cost-per-click.

2. Specific targets

Using general, one-word keyword will allow your ads to pop up more often. However, your audience in that scenario will rarely be searching for exactly what you offer.

Instead, use keywords that pinpoint what your business is. These ideally would be phrases of three or more words, which will probably include your location. Fewer users will enter those search terms, but the ones who do will be hoping to find a business just like yours.

3. High-converting keywords need their own campaign

Be sure to check out how each of your keywords are performing. When some separate themselves as ‘high-converting’, consider creating a campaign that includes only those keywords. This way, the most effective keywords will have a budget to themselves. Otherwise, less effective keywords could show up more and you’ll reach your cap without the heavy hitter getting a chance.

4. Display network doesn’t get conversions

Using the display network option in addition to, or instead of, search results will potentially spread awareness about your company to a gigantic audience, it usually doesn’t yield conversions at a high rate. If your ad budget is limited, it’s best to put all of your investment into search traffic rather than limiting yourself in order to invest partially in such a risky venture.

5. Location, location, location

It’s not just a key for real estate. AdWords allows you to track what cities your traffic and conversions are coming from. With this information, you can get the most of your budget by omitting your ads in locations where conversions are low. You can also create new campaigns specifically for your top performing areas.

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AdWords’ Policy Update Means Business

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In the past 18 months, Google has waged war against spammers. It began with their attempts to purify organic search rankings by introducing the Panda and Penguin updates. Now, with an AdWords policy update this week, Google has targeted those evil doers of the PPC game.

Ali Harris has an in-depth look at the changes at ClickThrough Marketing, but here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know.

Google’s goal is to improve the ad experience across the board, meaning only those with ill intent will object and most users and campaign managers will applaud.

By weeding out the spam, your Quality Score will likely rise and your cost-per-click will likely drop. But, you have to know the rules and follow them.

  • Your ads and keywords must be easily relatable to the landing page they point to.
  • If you mention a specific promotion or product in an ad, the landing page must feature it too.
  • No more throw-away lines like “Click Here Now!”
  • Just like in English class, poor grammar will be punished.
  • Keyword campaigns must be relevant and clear.
  • If your landing page has ads, they must be clearly discernable from original content.
  • No phone numbers
  • No email inbox look-alike ads

Essentially, you are expected to use common sense and be sincere in your advertising. If your goal is to trick users into clicking your ads, you will be punished.

Those punishments start modest but can become severe.

Campaigns that are flagged as not in compliance won’t run the disapproved ads until they are changed. If advertisers feel they were judged unfairly, they are able to submit their ad for review again.

Suspensions could be doled out to domains to temporarily stop their use of AdWords.

For repeat or serious offenders, accounts could be banned along with any related or future accounts.

Most likely, you’re already keeping tabs on AdWords metrics, particularly Quality Score. But now would be a good time to go through your campaigns with a fine-toothed comb in order to be sure you’re in compliance.

 

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Be Forewarned About Changes to AdWords

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The ‘Rotate Indefinitely’ option in Google AdWords is back after a short hiatus. But, it’s a little unclear why the option was resurrected.

Straight from the AdWords blog:

If you select “Rotate indefinitely” option for your campaign, we will show lower-performing ads about as often as higher-performing ads. For most advertisers, this may result in fewer, more expensive clicks and your ad appearing in a lower position. So we generally don’t recommend“Rotate indefinitely”

Also, as Pamela Parker reports for Search Engine Land, less than 1-percent of AdWords users asked for ‘Rotate indefinitely’ to be brought back.

Be warned though. In the coming weeks, campaigns that are set to ‘Rotate evenly’ will automatically change to ‘Rotate indefinitely’.

AdWords is also adding options to their impression share metrics to better track and manage ads. It comes at a price, however, as Google will be phasing out impression share data in AdWords existing columns. In order to preserve historical impression share data from these columns, you’ll need to download the reports before November 1st, when they will be wiped out.

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Tips and Info To Improve Your Google Quality Score [INFOGRAPHIC]

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[INFOGRAPHIC] Quality Score

The quality score of your site is extremely important. If you’ve got a high score, Google makes it easy for your page to prosper. You’ll appear higher in search results, your ads can appear in the top, shaded region of results and it will cost you less per click of your ads.

As Neil Spencer reports for Business2Community, in order to ensure you get these advantages, you need to know how Google judges your site and how you can improve it.

Your ads should be specific and highly targeted. Google is looking for the relevance of the keywords you’ve chosen to your landing page and your ads. Also, make sure your landing page contains relevant, original content that’s updated often and is easy to navigate.

The included infographic is courtesy of DigitalNetAgency

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Google Attempts To Simplify Tag Management

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Implementing tags to measure traffic and visitor behavior on your site is a great way to learn about your audience and improve your site. But, managing those tags can be cumbersome and time-consuming. As Joab Jackson reports for ComputerWorld, that’s why Google recently launched ‘Tag Manager’ to streamline and simplify the process.

Much like AdWords and Analytics, Google Tag Manager is easy to use and it’s completely free. After embedding a small section of code to your site, Google will take care of providing appropriate tags for each page.

Tags that overlap can slow down your site’s load time and potentially lose you visitors. Google employs a way to eliminate that possibility and, of course, offers many ways for you to customize your experience.

Though Google is not the first to offer a tag management system, the number of websites that use one is expected to skyrocket in the coming months.

 

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