Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer

Writing by Nicky on Wednesday , 26 of September , 2007 at 12:06 pm

Google have introduced a new Conversion Optimizer tool for adwords campaigns.

The conversion tool enables you to apply a maximum cost per click for keywords you wish to target in you adwords campaigns and then looks back at your historical data to automatically generate a cost per click on each of your ad campaigns.

In order to accurately predict your conversion rate and optimize your bids, the Conversion Optimizer requires that your campaign currently uses AdWords Conversion Tracking and has at least 300 conversions in the last 30 days. The Conversion Optimizer tries to keep the cost of each conversion below your CPA bid. However, if the actual conversion rate is lower than we predict, your CPA may exceed your CPA bid.

To get started with the Conversion Optimizer, check out Googles how-to instructions in the AdWords Help Center.

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Google Video

Writing by Nicky on Thursday , 20 of September , 2007 at 11:20 am

Last year, Google introduced ‘ Google Video Search ‘ and earlier this year we saw these video’s appearing in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages ).

If you perform a search for ‘Michael Jordon’ in Google, you will be presented with results similar to the following screen capture

People can include video on their websites for all kinds of reasons; information, selling a product, tutorials, advertisements etc.

Videos on your website can act as link bait, viral and social media marketing. If users find your video useful, they may link to it. If you use keywords in the title of your video, you could find yourself with targetted links pointing back to your website. This in turn will help with your overall search engine rankings for the keyphrases you wish to show up for in the SERPs.

When adding video’s on your website remember to also submit them to ‘Google Video’ as well as YouTube.

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PPC - Quality Before Cost

Writing by Nicky on Friday , 3 of August , 2007 at 1:26 pm

search Yahoo has finally joined Google and MSN in the way they list their paid results in their search engines.

When Pay Per Click (PPC) ad’s were first introduced in the search engines, the guys who were at the top of the listings were the ones who paid most for a click. This restricted people in being able to set up PPC Campaigns as those with the most money would always be on top, making it difficult for companies with smaller budgets.

This caused some companies to expliot the system and also introduced Click Fraud. Companies would employ individual’s to go around and click on their competitors ad’s to use up their daily budget giving others a chance to rank in a prominent position in the sponsored listings.

Since then, Google and MSN have both changed how they rank sponsored listings, it is no longer about who bids the most to get to the top of the sponsored listings. Major search engines want to keep their results relevant to the end user, if the highest bidders send users to useless sites, then it is unlikely a user will continue to click on those ads, therefore, it was clear something needed to change.

There are a variety of factors that search engines look for to produce a “Quality Score” which determines where PPC Ads rank in the sponsored listings. Not all factors taken into account are known, however they do include:

Click through rate (Popularity of the Ad)
Relevance of the Ad copy
Landing page relevance/quality (The page the vistor lands on from clicking on the sponsored Ad)
Bid Amount

Neil McCarthy, client development director of search agency Tamar, says he’s seen little change since Google introduced landing-page quality:

Money and click-through rates are far and away the most important factors, how much you’re bidding and your popularity still come top in search. Landing page is factored in, but its really those two that count.

It is interesting to see that by changing the way websites rank in the sponsored listings are coming closer to search engine optimisation which is to do with how you optimise a page for the organic listings. Although PPC campaigns do not affect your organic listings, they way search engines are now ranking PPC Ad’s are becoming similar to how an SEO will optmise a webpage. This is mainly due to PPC Ad copy and Landing page quality which both make up a part of the overall Quality Score.

If you are running Pay Per Click Campaigns for “Brown Bears” then you would have that phrase in the title of your Ad as well as in the copy. The page that people are directed to once the Ad has been clicked on, would also need to be optimised for that phrase. If this is the case, then the Landing page quality will be good, and this should have a positive affect your position in the sponsored listings.

So it is no longer those with the larger budgets that dominate the PPC listings, but more those who learn how to apply those factors to their Campaign ads as well as taking into account the relevance of there pages.

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