Google Adwords Mastery » Google Adwords

Google Vs Bing – Which is Best?

GeoffA — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:40:53 +0000

It has been a messy squabble between the two search engine giants, with both sides accusing the other of monopolisation, and Google now claiming Bing is copying their search results. But what does this mean for the rest of us, with our PPC campaigns ready to go? Where do we advertise? Microsoft are shifting assets and focus to try and get their search engine, Bing, a greater market share – and so far it’s working. They have managed to snatch an additional 2% of the market share since December 2010, almost directly from competitor Google. So is it time to jump ship to the growing competitor? Probably not. Bing may have gained 2% of the market share, but this gives them a total of only 12.8%. Compared to Google’s 67.95% market share, it becomes obvious as to where your advert will receive more exposure. That being said, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo Search have now formed a Search Alliance which will allow search advertising to appear on both search engines, and their affiliates, from just one campaign. That basically means you can advertise on two sites for the price of one, and Microsoft claim this will save advertisers 10-20% of their time. In addition, Bing has now partnered with Facebook to incorporate a social aspect to their searches and advertising. They hope that by importing ‘likes’ and other social media commentary from Facebook, they will be able to target searches by recommendation as well as keyword relevance. This sounds like a wonderful new dimension to search engine results, and shows the ever increasing importance social networking sites, such as Facebook, are claiming in the digital world. However, this new level of targeting will only impact on 7.6% of the UK market – and that’s the combined share of Bing and Yahoo search. If you want you advert to be seen by as many people as possible, Google is still the place to be. With a whopping 89.1% share in the UK market, it will be a hard task to shake Google from the top spot. It also seems very likely that Google will rise to the social network challenge itself, perhaps engineering their own ‘social search’ platform. So, for the moment at least, Google is the advertisers search engine of choice.

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7 Costly Mistakes Business Owners make when Managing a Google AdWords Campaign

GeoffA — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:19:02 +0000

Pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing is a great way to achieve results from onlinemarketing. The reason it works – simple, you only pay for what you get. The theory is straightforward enough, but there are some potential pitfalls. Follow these points to avoid making costly mistakes:

Expecting immediate results. Not everyone can be an overnight success story. Most companies need a solid strategy, with the ability to adapt to the needs of the market. Thanks to social media sites industry trends are changing quicker than ever, so be prepared to change your approach to suit these changes. A qualified Google AdWords strategist can help you plan a successful campaign.
Not defining a clear target market. According to the popular phrase, selling coal to Newcastle is a particularly difficult task. Especially when you aren’t in the coal-selling business. Make sure you know who your buyers are, and tailor your proposition to suit their needs. If you have no idea who buys your products, enlist a marketing professional to find out for you.
Losing prospective buyers on the click-through page. Once you have their attention, don’t lose it! Make sure all the relevant information is easily accessible as soon as the person searching reaches the desired page.
Using industry related words and not buyer search terms. Do the terms “White Hat SEO” or “Really Simple Syndication” mean anything to you? They make sense to to web marketers, but to appeal to the layman it would be better to say “Legitimate SEO Practices” and “RSS Feeds”. If you focus on the wrong terms you will get plenty of competitors and industry professionals visiting, but they are unlikely to buy anything.
Failing to Implement and Monitor Analytics. Without tracking the performance of your campaign, you will have no way of managing it, and therefore improving it. Always ensure you have some form of Website Analytics in place.
Attempting to go alone it alone. If your knowledge of PPC is very limited it would be better to use an industry professional to set up your campaign. Qualified Google Adwords professionals go through rigorous training with Google so they understand the system inside out, and novices will simply never achieve the same results.
Being unprepared for the increase in enquiries. Make sure you know the likely number of leads your campaign might generate. Deciding how much to spend on your campaign is critical here – too little and your results will falter; too much and you might be biting off more than you can chew.

If you are interested in reviewing your Google AdWords Management contact us here

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Landing page logic for your Google Adwords campaign

GeoffA — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:09:29 +0000

Landing pages for your Google Adwords campaigns can be difficult to get right first time. In fact that is the beauty of the whole Adwords technology you can constantly improve and tweak.

There are 2 simple landing page rules which are based on logic:

1. Make the landing page relevant to the ad.

Repeat the keywords in the ad on the page, so the viewer knows they have come to the right place. Keep a consistent tone of voice, too between the ad and the web page they arrive on looking for more information.

So an ad referring to one specific product will not be so effective if the landing page is a company home page and more of a general overview. Treat your landing page like a mini website even if it is sitting within a large website and keep it focussed.

2. Set up different landing pages for individual ads or clusters of ads.

It all depends how refined your research is, but give yourself the best opportunity to discover what works. You can then discard the poorer-performing ads and test the best against new ads.

Website technology is so simple these days, there is little or no barrier to having multi-variants of web pages.

Use the free Google tools to ensure you provide a satisfying experience when your prospects search for your keywords. This is all logical, but sometimes we can get lost in the detail and forget to keep things simple.

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Google Adwords – black art or science?

GeoffA — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:50:08 +0000

Google Adwords is often quoted by as being a black art only known to a few. It is possible to lose money with Google Adwords which tends to reinforce the idea that success is due to magical powers! But a scientific approach – with a little artistry thrown in – is what yields hugely profitable results.

Adwords can be a “waste” of money if you do not have mastery over your campaign.

Whether or not you have a bottomless marketing budget (and who has?!) Google Adwords is the perfect way to experiment with keywords. All the Google tools available for free means that you can test every detail of the ads, and landing pages. I am often asked about the attitude required to be successful with Adwords and it certainly includes being willing to keep on learning and have a scientific approach based on results about campaigns to keep and to abandon.

I really enjoy the fact that Google rewards intelligence and persistence. It levels the playing field between big companies and entrepreneurs, and creates opportunity.

The cost paid per click is influenced by your campaign performance. Typically in television advertising you have to pay more for advertising round a popular show, so although you get more leads you have to pay a higher price. The wonderful thing about Google is that if your campaign is successful and delivering relevant results you end up paying less per click, you get a better position on the page, and effectively can beat competitiors who are paying more.

All this needs to be set up with a scientific approach to detail, but the quality of your copy and the emotional appeal of the product all play a large part. Finding the tone of voice and the emotional needs of your prospects is not a black art but it is art.

Add that to a sophisticated scientific approach to your campaign and your Google Adwords campaign will seem less like a black art, and more a martial art.

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Google Adwords – mastery of the search network or the content network?

GeoffA — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:33:44 +0000

Google Adwords is usually understood to mean the search results that are obtained when a search phrase is typed into the search box.

Most people who are connected with marketing on the internet know that the searches on the right of the screen have been placed there as advertisements I have found that not so many realise that the top few entries on the left hand side (often in a shaded background) are also ads.So far so good. Searching to find relevant information on the web is what has given Google mastery over the internet and contributed to their 20 billion revenue in us dollars. Google has gained their position by delivering better more relevant results faster.

Back in the old days before the internet, advertising focussed on interruption. You would be reading a newspaper or magazine, and see an advertisement, and be encouraged to get in contact- effectively interrupting what you were doing before. Or you would be watching television, and as you dash out to put the kettle on when the ads appeared you could be interrupted from the tea-making. You watched the sports car racing through beautiful countryside, wanted to have the same experience yourself, and find yourself wanting to buy that very car. (That’s the theory, and it was very effective).

Google offers both types of advertising. The search type through the search network, and the interruption type through the content network. However, there is in fact minimal interruption as the content network only offers ads relevant to the web page you are on. An ad for a sports car would only appear on webpages relevant to motoring, and not, for example, for skiing holidays or knitting patterns. However, the ad in the content network cannot be as finely tuned to the them of the webpage, as you have less control over where the ad will appear.

Google Adwords is about learning every aspect of the approach you have chosen, until you have achieved mastery. I would encourage you to keep your campaigns completely separate, as your headlines and ads will be crafted differently, and the viewer will be in a different frame of mind. Newcomers to Google Adwords often think that the more techniques they employ the better the results will be. In my experience that is not the case, and it is better to perfect one before moving on to the other.

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Updated Versions of the Keyword and Placement Tools

Geoff Alexander — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:09:02 +0000

Feeding off the momentum of improvements we’ve made over the past year in AdWords, we recently released beta versions of the updated Keyword and Placement Tools.

We’ve maintained the core functionality of these tools, but have added some new features that we hope will make them more useful for you. If you use English as your AdWords interface language you may have noticed that you already have access to these tools, and availability to all English advertisers as well as other languages will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

The updated Keyword Tool (beta)

This new version of the Keyword Tool combines the functionality of the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool. This means you’ll get keyword ideas based on keywords you enter, your website content, and user searches – all in one place. Also new is the ability to search by any combination of a keyword, website/URL, or category – instead of having to perform each of these searches separately. Additionally, you’ll be able to see all match types for a keyword at the same time to help you compare statistics for each match type. When you’ve got your final keyword list together, you can download a selected keyword, all keyword results in the table, or all keywords (for certain queries).

The updated Placement Tool (beta)

As with the updated Keyword Tool, you can now search for placements by any combination of keyword, website/URL, or category. For example, you can search for placements that are only on youtube.com that are also video placements and that are also in the automotive category. Under Advanced Options, you can also further filter placements by Country or Language, Impressions Per Day, Included Ad Sizes

[Original article on Google Adwords Blog]

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