Top 5 Yahoo/Bing PPC Mistakes

02/05/2012 By

By the end of this month, the long awaited merger of Yahoo and Bing’s search technology should finally be complete. Microsoft Adcenter powered ads are already appearing in Yahoo search results and by the end of May all ads appearing on Yahoo will be driven by Adcenter.

Here we give 5 of the most common Yahoo/Bing PPC mistakes to avoid:

  1. Not bidding on your brand name
    Even if your brand name is in position 1 of the organic listings, bidding on your brand name is still worth doing. It will increase your visibility on the search engine result pages, combat any competitors which are bidding on your brand name and the cost per click should be relatively low as your quality score will be high.
  2. Not adding negative keywords
    If you are using broad match type keywords, the chances are you’re getting some irrelevant traffic. For example, if you bid on the keyword “locker” with the broad match type and someone searches “foot locker” your ads may be showing and getting clicked. Simply adding “foot” as a negative keyword will avoid your ads being shown on searches containing “foot”.
  3. Not using keywords in your ad texts
    It seems an obvious one, but plenty don’t do it. Using your keywords in your ad texts will help your ad stand out to the user, not least because the terms will be bolded by the search engine.
  4. Not tracking conversions
    It’s important that you have some sort of way of measuring performance beyond click through rate. Whether it be an order confirmation, customer enquiry or PDF download there are plenty of ways to track conversions and this will give you the best insight into what keywords and ads are working for you.
  5. Aiming for the top position
    While position 1 is always desireable, it’s not always the most cost effective and may not even be attainable. Average position is down to a lot more than the keyword bid alone and the jump in cost to enable you to rise from position 3 or position 2 to position 1 may well lead to negative ROI.

Find out more about how we can help you maximise your return from PPC Marketing.

Filed Under: PPC Marketing, Search Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance FINALLY here

16/04/2012 By

It’s been a long time coming, but the merger of Yahoo and Bing’s search technology is finally happening. By the end of May 2012 the whole process should be complete.

On Wednesday the first ads powered by Microsoft Adcenter will appear in Yahoo search results.

What does the Yahoo! Microsoft Alliance mean? 

That search results (paid and natural) appearing on Yahoo will now be powered by Microsoft technology.

The most interesting part of that right now is Paid Search -  by the end of May you will only need to use Microsoft Adcenter to place ads on the Yahoo and Microsoft search engines (Bing). This means you don’t have to manage 2 accounts to tap into this traffic, making it much easier to do. Plus, the Microsoft Adcentre is much more advanced than Yahoo’s tool, so there are now many more ways to optimise your advertising.

So, this should make branching out from just using Google Adwords much more attractive for many businesses. What impact that has on competition and click costs only the next few months will show.

Yahoo and Microsoft are also promising that the merger will bring better ROI, a better search experience for the end user and allow them to innovate more quickly. All of which sounds great.

So should I now start advertising via Microsoft Adcenter?

Yes. If Google Adwords works for you then Microsoft Adcenter should too.

Adcenter traffic is more likely to convert than Google traffic:

  • Yahoo! and Bing search audiences are 53.7% more likely to buy online than Google searchers worldwide (comScore, Dec 2011)
  • 36.6% more likely to convert than the average UK searcher (NNP, Dec 2011)

You should get more sales for your ad spend, but the traffic is lower. 18million of the UK population use either Yahoo or Bing, and 3.8 million of them don’t ever use Google – so that’s people you can’t reach using Google alone.

What do I need to do?

On Wednesday 18th April 2012 Microsoft powered ads will start to appear on Yahoo, within 2 weeks all ads on Yahoo search will be powered by Microsoft.

If you already have an account with Yahoo:

  • Work through the migration process asap!
    This will mean your ads continue to show, and that any outstanding funds in your account get transferred back to you.

If you already have a Microsoft Adcenter account:

  • Be ready for more traffic – up your budgets and keep a close eye on performance.

If you don’t have an account with either of them:

  • Now would be a great time to test how well they could work for you. Find our more about how we can run your PPC marketing for you.

This is the most exciting thing to happen to the UK search market in quite some time – it’s going to be fascinating to see how the results improve over the next few months.

Find out more about the changes:

Read more:

Our previous blog posts:

Filed Under: PPC Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

SEO 2012 – the death of linkbuilding?

11/01/2012 By

In late 2011 (and continuing in 2012) Google made so many changes that affect the SERPs (search engine results page) that I believe 2012 will see the end of pure linkbuilding, in favour of social, PR and brand awareness tactics.

So, where did linkbuilding fit into SEO in 2011?

In 2011 and before, Linkbuilding (the process of getting other websites to link to your website) was central to any plan to climb the SERPs. Broadly speaking the site with the most and/or best links going to it would come top.

The end game of any SEO activity is to get more (and better quality) traffic to the website. If everyone who searches for your keyword sees the same results, then it follows that having the most links and being as position no. 1 is where you’ll get the most traffic.

So it was key to any SEO strategy to work on increasing that number of links, employing a wide range of methods to do so.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Google+ a Quick Guide

25/11/2011 By

There are lots and lots of posts out there about how you can use Google+ to do x or y or z. There are even a number of ebooks available already! But I haven’t yet found a good simple guide that explains just what Google+ is, so here’s my attempt to that for you – feedback in the comments section please!

So, quickly, what is Google+

It’s a “social network” run by Google.

Essentially a way for Google to get all of us to be logged in, so they give us a better experience because they know who we are…

So increasingly existing Google stuff is migrating into it (just as some existing Google stuff is currently being culled).

Plus there’s the CORE of Google+ – your personal Google+ page, your circles of friends, and any Pages you set up.
And then there’s the +1 button – how you can signal all over the place what you like.

How does it work?

At the moment it’s a bit like Facebook, with some differentiating bits (that Facebook’s fast copying). The 2 biggest differences to Facebook:

  1. Circles – you can easily segment your connections using ‘circles’ – and then define which segments can see what about you
  2. Hangouts – a way to have an open webinar / video conference call with your friends

What about Google+ Pages?

Google+ Pages are rather like Facebook Pages – in that they’re how businesses have a presence on Google+.

At the moment they don’t have the functionality of a Facebook Page – but I’m sure that will come.

Should I create a Google+ Page for my business?

Yes.

2 reasons:

  1. You’ll be reserving your space on Google+, so no one can squat in it
  2. Google (biggest search engine in the world) are allowing you (for free) to create a Page on Google about your business – with LINKS. So it’s an SEO no brainer

The Plus 1 Button….?

OK, as well as being able to add plus 1 buttons to your website – they’re now appearing in Google search results.

plus one button on ppc adSo when you’re logged in and you click a plus 1 button you are recommending that page.

Google is using that information to inform what you see in your tailored search results, and your friends will see it in Google+.

So put it everywhere. It is going to have an impact on seo as well as social media.

So, be honest, how much time should you invest in Google+ right now?

The numbers of people active on it aren’t anywhere near the other social networks and Google haven’t shown their hand fully yet – there is much still to be revealed.

So it’s not yet worth (for the average business) getting heavily into it. BUT it will be influencing your search performance, and customers will start to use it – with or without you. So you need to make sure you’ve got it set up.

So you should:

  • Create a profile
  • Create a Page for you Business
  • Add the Plus 1 Button to your website – and if you’re ecommerce add it to every product
    (and at the same time add a Facebook Like button and a twitter sharing button)

Once all that’s done – just keep an eye on it all. And keep an eye open for further updates.

Filed Under: Editorials, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: ,

Google’s Encrypting SEO Keyword Results ‘Secure Search’

24/11/2011 By

not provided

This is increasingly what we’re all going to get used to seeing in our Analytics Keyword Reports.

A set of data attributed to “(not provided)”.

Why are keyword sources going to be ‘(not provided)’?

On 18th October 2011 Google announced that they are rolling encrypted search out to all signed-in users.

This is part of Google’s activity to protect users privacy as they increasingly drive users to be signed in to their service. If you travel around Google signed in then you’ll be starting to see customised search results, including (if you’re on Google+) pictures of your ‘friends’.

Essentially they’re putting the search engine interface behind an SSL certificate – in layman’s terms ‘https’ not ‘http’.

From a personal privacy point of view it makes sense and is a good thing, but it’s going to make the lives of us marketers more difficult.

What does this mean?

It means that you won’t be able to see full data on what keywords people are using to search and find your website.

On our site, so far, we’re seeing 8.6% of keyword visits being (not provided). But there are sites seeing up to 33% of keyword traffic (not provided). (Great article at econsultancy, and another at Search Engine Watch). And there are several analyses of the impact that show that the %age of (not provided) is rising – not surprising as Google is rolling this out worldwide and it will take some time to get to everyone (my signed-in searching is as yet unencrypted).

So the big impact is going to be on your SEO decision-making, especially around keywords.

  • You won’t be able to be as sure what your top keywords are, or how they’re performing
  • The results may be skewed as the profile of people who do live signed-in to Google may be different from those that aren’t
  • And, keep it mind when comparing performance over time

What about PPC Keyword performance data?

Won’t be affected – Google is not changing anything about PPC reporting in this area.

How can I get around it?

First of all, you’re still going to get some data on keywords – so you can assume it’s representative of all your keyword driven visits.

Secondly, Google is still showing “true” results for your top keywords in Webmaster Tools (although you won’t get all the details about their performance that you would in Analytics). So you can cross-check what you see in Analytics with your Webmaster Tools data.

You’ll also still get your full PPC keyword data, data from other search engines too.

Finally, if your website is totally SSL encrypted then you should get full keyword referral data. (so that would be the WHOLE of your site SSL’d)…

 

If you’d like to understand more about Google Analytics or SEO why not come along to one of our Workshops?

Filed Under: News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Google’s “Fresh” Update

21/11/2011 By

Yep, they’ve been at it again.

At the start of the month Google announced another big(?) change to their natural search results algorythm. This one’s been nick-named “Fresh” because it’s all about making sure the freshest content is at the top of the search results.

So if you search for “olympics” you get information about 2012 not 1900 (to borrow Google’s own example).

A sensible update I think we’d all agree, but if you’re not already regularly producing fresh content (including engaging in social media) then you’re at risk of getting left behind.

How can I take advantage of Fresh AKA How can I avoid being penalised by Fresh?

The simple and short answer is  – produce fresh content, but here’s some hints and tips for you:

  • update your blog (if you haven’t got one, get one) with posts of relevant news.
    If one of your products was mentioned on This Morning this morning – blog about it.
    If the snow’s here, and you sell anti-snow products – blog about them.
  • add your press releases to your website, and distribute them
  • use social media (not just re: fresh, but Google is increasingly interested in what’s happening on social media)
  • crowdsource it (or get your customers involved) – get them to comment on your blogs, or review your products
  • get included on great blogs / newspapers

The good news is, all of those ideas will a positive impact in areas other than pure seo.

Filed Under: News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: ,

Fewer PPC Ads Above the Fold on Google

17/11/2011 By

What’s Happened?

For some search results Google has now moved the Ads that were on the right hand side to the bottom of the page:

Bottom of the page PPC Search Ads

As per the example above this is mainly happening for “local” search terms at the moment, terms such as “takeaway”, “barber” etc.

That’s because Google’s moved the results to be able to use the Right Hand column for a map.

What does this mean?

Well, if you rely on these local search results pages then you need to:

  • make sure the rest of your search activity is working hard – reviews, Place pages, SEO etc
  • consider bidding to get into the top 3 on the page (but keep an eye on how well this works for you)
  • don’t get scared when your PPC click through rate falls – with ads “hiding” at the bottom of the page the rate of impressions will go up but people might not see the ads

If you don’t rely on these local search results pages then at the moment you don’t really need to do a lot – this still a new development (Google only announced it 2 weeks ago). But keep eye on what’s happening with your PPC results – because this may (and probably will) be rolled out further.

Filed Under: News, PPC Marketing, Search Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Why is DMOZ important for SEO?

10/11/2011 By

What is DMOZ?

DMOZ (aka the Open Directory Project) is probably the single most important directory on the internet. Put simply, it’s the largest human-edited directory of websites (and therefore links) that’s ever existed. It’s size and human-input mean it’s highly regarded by search engines.

Plus it’s quite well-linked with Google. They use the data within dmoz to help power their search engine, and release their Spiders out into the internet from DMOZ.

Why is DMOZ important for SEO?

  • DMOZ is a well thought of website, and you want links from good websites.
  • Google uses DMOZ within its indexing processes (the way it finds out what exists online) so if you want to be indexed well (and if you’re in the index you won’t be in the search results) then being on DMOZ is a good idea.

There are of course many other websites out there which can you the above – and it’s a link from DMOZ is not going to be the be-all, end-all of your SEO strategy. But it’s free, it doesn’t take much time, and it’s a good idea – I’d count that as a no-brainer.

Getting a Link on DMOZ

Registering for a link from DMOZ is simple, just go the directory, find the category you want to be in a click “Submit a site”. But as DMOZ is a human-edited directory that everyone wants to be on, it can take quite some time for your site to be reviewed and added. The time-lag varies between categories, but a delay of 6-12 months is not unusual.

If you want your link reviewed faster – why not help out with the backlog by becoming an editor for DMOZ?

But I’ve read articles that say it’s not worth doing anymore

There has been talk recently of whether a link from DMOZ is still important, hopefully the above has convinced you it is – but if not why not click the link and see what Google themselves have to say about it… Matt Cutts (Mr Google Search) on DMOZ. (if you don’t want to click the link he basically said that a link from DMOZ is pretty much the same as getting a link from any other high authority site and Google still uses DMOZ a lot).

Filed Under: Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

5 Ways to Avoid Wasting Money on PPC this Christmas

19/10/2011 By

Depending on your industry, Christmas is very often a time when your PPC spend can go through the roof and, if you’re not careful, your ROI can plummet. Ensuring your PPC accounts are fully optimised can make sure the extra spend = extra sales.

Here are our 5 tips to make sure you get the most out of your spend this Christmas season:

1. Learn From Experience

One of the first places you should be looking when establishing how to make this Christmas season as profitable as possible is last year.

Look at the performance of each campaign, adgroup and, if necessary, keyword, to highlight the best and worst performers. Then:

  1. Make sure you’re focusing your spend on the campaign, adgroups and keywords that perform well
  2. Review each of the worst performers to see if you can do anything differently this year, if not, it may be time to focus your money elsewhere

2. “Housekeeping”

This is something you should be doing all year round but it’s particularly important in the run up to the Christmas season.

Nearly all search engines have tools to allow you to “housekeep” your PPC accounts but as it’s the biggest (and likely where most of your spend goes) we’ll look at Google in particular. Here is an example of the reports you can run to make sure you haven’t got small holes in your Adwords account where your spend is simply dripping through with no return:

  • Time of day analysis will show you whether you can fine tune when you spend your money. For example, should you actually be turning your account off on a Monday between 2pm – 5pm and on a Thursday between 10pm – 5am because clicks during that period are unprofitable?
  • Demographic analysis will show you whether you can fine tune where you spend your money. For example, should you be turning your account off to those in Northern Ireland or those in Manchester and Birmingham?
  • Destination URL analysis will allow you to see which landing pages are costing lots of money with no return. Take a look at each and see how they can be improved.

There is so much analysis that can be done to help you find and fill these holes within your account – as well as highlight opportunities. Take a browse around each of you PPC accounts to choose the tools and analysis most relevant to you.

3. Time to be negative

So you only sell girls mountain bikes. You’re broad match bidding on “pink mountain bike”, someone searches on “pink dolls mountain bike”, they come to your site, realise you sell full size bikes and they go off to find Barbie – you’ve paid for that privilige.

Negatives are a very important part of any PPC account. They help fine tune the quality of traffic coming to your site and you really shouldn’t create an adgroup without making sure you’ve covered any negative terms too – in the above example “toy”, “car rack”, “boys” should all be negatives.

How to make sure you’re not throwing money at unqualified traffic:

  1. Take a look around your products
  2. Carry out some searches on Google
  3. Carry out some search analysis in your PPC accounts to find out what unrelated keywords are getting visitors to your website
  4. Brainstorm a list of negatives for each of your adgroups

4. Don’t disappoint…

Christmas is a very busy time of year and if people are buying gifts they want to buy them now and get them delivered tomorrow (if not sooner!).

Keep a close eye on your inventory as not only do you want to avoid disappointing customers, you want to avoid throwing money at PPC that will never convert to sales. So:

  1. Stock
    If a product is out of stock – even if just for a couple of days – pause it in PPC
  2. Delivery
    If you have a product that has 2 week delivery and it’s 10 days before Christmas – pause it in PPC
  3. Offers
    If you’ve got offer specific text within your adtext, as soon as the offer is no longer available, change the adtext

Take a look over all your adtexts, make sure they’re enticing but also ensure they’re 100% accurate and that the product is 100% available.

5. A second pair of eyes

Everybody knows that if you look at something often, it’s very easy to miss the glaring error right in front of you. PPC is no different. Chances are you look at your PPC accounts very often, maybe even several times a day, you are therefore possibly overlooking something a new pair of eyes would spot in an instant.

If you have someone who can take a look over your PPC account with a fresh pair of eyes, do it. There might be an adtext that they think is not doing your products justice, an adgroup where adding one negative could save money or a campaign where reducing your maximum CPC could get the same results for less cost.

In summary:

It’s always important to have a close eye on your PPC accounts and at Christmas time it becomes even more important. Plan well in advance but also be prepared to be reactive throughout the season to ensure you bring in maximum ROI this Christmas season.

Filed Under: PPC Marketing, Search Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Google Analytics Updates: Webmaster Integration & Real Time

12/10/2011 By

There have been two interesting new updates over at Google’s Analytics, the introduction of integrated Webmaster Tools reports and real time analytics.

Webmaster Tools Reports

About 4 months ago Google started playing around with a pilot scheme integrating Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics. As of this week the Analytics team announced that their testing has finished and everyone will now be able to link their accounts together. To link your accounts pop into Google Webmaster tools and simply follow the instructions that appear there.

What this means is that there are 3 new reports available within Analytics based on Webmaster Tools data. These are:

  1. Query reports – data on search terms that were used to display your website in search results.
  2. Landing page reports – displays your top-viewed content that were entry points to your site as a direct result of a Google search query.
  3.  Geographical summary – displays the origin countries of your visitors that originated from a Google SERP.

Whilst this information is great to have within Analytics, the data isn’t as complete as the data that is held within your Webmaster account, so you must still use both accounts to access more detailed information. These new reports are however, good at providing a snapshot of the information Webmaster Tools has to offer.

Real Time Reporting

Google has refreshed Analytics with the ability to provide real-time insight into web site activity. This new functionality hasn’t been rolled out to all accounts yet, but you should soon see an alert asking you to switch to the new version.

Not having this function up until now, meant people chose to go with other premium analytics software offerings. Here’s a screenshot of what Real Time will look like.

The ability to analyse real time data is going to provide a much more valuable insight into your website visitors, especially when it comes to social media. With social media posts being such a quick, responsive and immediate traffic driver, seeing the data straight away instead of analysing the data 24 hours after the event happened will prove invaluable.

There’s been some great improvements made to Google Analytics recently, let’s hope there’s more in the pipeline…

 

If you’d like to understand more about your Google Analytics account, then why not come on one of our hands-on Google Analytics workshops?

Filed Under: Search Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
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