2. Pause Poor Quality Score Keyword

The example below was used for an account wide automated rule to monitor poor quality scores keywords.

Ideal for –

• Large AdWords accounts with 1,000+ keywords.
• Accounts with tight CPA / CPC constraints.

3. Pause Non-Converting Ad Group or Keywords

In order to get the most out of your AdWords spend, it is essential that an account optimizer is continuously monitoring the performance of individual Ad Groups and Keywords, such that CPC bids are made against keywords that are converting, not against those that do not convert.

This rule will help you identify Ad Groups that are converting at below the minimum threshold, after it has reaches a statistically significant data level. The number of clicks required will depend on the search volume of the Ad Group and the length of the period the data is gathered.

The Ad Group rule below was an example utilized by First Rate to identify poor performing Ad Groups that did not meet the minimum (1-per-click) conversion rate of 12.5%, after it has reached 400 (statistically significant) clicks per ad group.

Note: Using this method will avoid automatic pause on Ad Groups that have low volume of clicks per month.

Ideal for –

• Accounts with tightly themed Ad Groups.
• Accounts with high search volumes.
• ROI driven AdWords Accounts.

4. Pause Poor Performing Ads

Continuous Ad testing is by far one of the most effective ways to drive improvements to your AdWords account, and the speed of which you can change your marketing message on search engines is what gives this medium (one of) its competitive edge.

With the new AdWords Automated Rules, it gives an experienced Search Marketer an added tool to monitor ad test performance and make swift updates once the test has been completed.

The rule below is applied to an Ad Group, under-going a step-wise Ad tests with the goal of improving the Ad level CTR above 1.5% – the previous best performing Ad CTR. The rule will pause the ad that does did not achieve the minimum 1.5% CTR and notify me once the test has been completed (500 impressions per ad). Once a new ad has been added, you’ll need to update the CTR to the new best performing Ad CTR and continue testing.

Ideal for –

• Accounts with a large number of Ad Groups / Product Types.
• Keeping track of all Ad Testing experiment currently running and ensure Ads are being systematically updated.

5. Promote Converting Keywords

It has been generally accepted that increases in Ad Position will increase the number of visitors to your website and that conversion rate of the website is a constant from a given channel (i.e. Search Engines).

The rule below is set to find keywords that have been converting in the last 14 days, that is currently at a low Average Ad Position (below 3.5), and increase the bids gradually (by 5% increments) until it reaches an ad position between #3 & #4.

Ideal for –

• Accounts when an increasing competition is pushing down your ads.
• Optimised accounts with good ROAS to allow for increased CPCs.

If you have found another useful rule, please email us or make a comment below.

Related Posts:

• Google to Update Ad Quality Scoring
• Your SEM Competitive Advantage
• AdWords moves landing page quality goalposts
• How to Report on Actual Adwords Search Keywords in Google Analytics Reports
• Organic Search, E-Commerce and Page Load Times

In this post we’re going to briefly look at tools to improve the index-ability of your website as well has how to best use all the various data collected about your website in Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), and how this data can be used to improve your online business strategy.

We’ll also uncover ways to understand how people are searching and interacting with your website to help you gain more insight, control into your website’s performance in Google’s organic search results, and better connect with your customers.

Don’t Ignore Search

A study conducted by Enquisite.com concluded:

88% of online search dollars are spent on paid results, even though 85% of searches click the organic results.

As the landscape continues to change and we become more of a searching culture, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to not only have a presence on the web but to also have presence in search engine results.

Moving into the future it will be important to be aware of search, understanding the importance of organic search and discovering the online opportunities available to you and your business in addition to discovering barriers that are blocking your website’s potential.

Companies that ignore the online opportunity (or react too slowly), do so at their own peril as today’s news regarding the Whitcoulls group clearly suggests. In a First Rate research report dated November 25, 2005 we clearly highlighted the threat posed to Whitcoulls by online bookstores and the changing consumer search and purchasing behaviours. Six years later and reality has started to hit.

5 Ways to Improve Organic Search Metrics

1. XML Sitemaps:

   Google Webmaster Tools allows you to submit XML sitemaps instructing Google’s crawlers which content can be indexed and how it should be prioritised. Google Webmaster Tools now also allows submission of specialised site maps such as video, mobile, news, GEO, Code Search, and images. Specialised Sitemaps allow you to include specific information about other rich media content embedded into your site.

   For example submitting a ‘News’ Sitemap, will help Google’s News engine better discover news articles on your site by pointing Google’s crawlers directly to your websites news article URLs. With News Sitemaps, you can also specify information about a news article including article title and the date of publication. News articles can be tagged by genre and you can use meta data to annotate articles. Note: while Sitemaps help Google’s crawlers navigate through your site, there’s no guarantee all allowed website URLs will be crawled and indexed.

2. Geotargeting:

   Stuck with a Top Level Domain (TLD) i.e. a .com or a .org? But your target market is within a specific country? If one of the objectives of your website is to target a specific geographic area, for example, a New Zealand website primarily targeting New Zealanders or, an Australian website targeting people living in Australia, then it’s important that your website ranks best for its target geographic location. If this is the case and you have a .com or a .org, Google will assign your website’s geographic location based on it’s IP address.

   “But my domain is registered overseas and my target market is here in New Zealand”. By using GWT you can specify a geographic target i.e. New Zealand, to let Google know the primary audience your website aims to target is in this area. You can find more info on this here and here.

3. Search Queries:

   The search queries feature in GWT is one which has only recently been enhanced. With the search queries data, you can discover which Google search queries are returning pages from your website to display in the search results and investigate the information available for each search query. Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries provides information on each and the number of queries returning pages from your website, including impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position in addition to the change given to those metrics within a specified time period.

   Segments of Search Query information can be filtered by “containing or excluding” queries, “starred queries”, type of web content (i.e. images, mobile, video etc) and geographic location. With search queries data, you can use keywords to target content and view which URLs are ranking for keywords. The search queries “top pages” report also provides information on which pages your sites are performing well for. By identifying which of your webpages perform best, you can then look into how to improve and optimise these pages to perform even better.

4. Duplicate Content:

   The problem with duplicate content (multiple pages largely with identical content) is when search engines like Google  find pages which appear to have duplicate content, one of the pages will be chosen to be indexed whereby it may not be the correct one therefore, assigning the ‘weight’ of internal links to the wrong page. In addition there’s also the possibility of diluting link juice.

   To find out if your website has instances of duplicate content, in GWT run a diagnostic report and review the HTML suggestions. If you find Google is returning instances of duplicate content on your website start with the target pages and review the suggestions.

5. Reduce duplicate content check list:

   • Select canonical URL from duplicates.
   • Be consistent throughout the site with canonicals.
   • Use 301 permanent redirects where possible.
   • Implement rel=”canonical”.

6. Page Load Speed:

   In their endeavour to improve search, Google also believes good quality websites should also be improving their user experience. As part of this, in April 2010 Google officially announced ‘Using site speed in web search ranking‘  is to be included as a new signal in its search ranking algorithm. First Rate covered this in an earlier post, here.

   Google Webmaster Tools site performance provides a site performance overview chart showing how long, on average, it takes for pages on your website to load.

   To evaluate the page speed of your site from both a web server and front-end code perspective, a recommended tool to use is the page speed extension for FireFox/Firebug. The tool conducts tests on your website based on web performance best practices and assigns scores to each page along with suggestions for improvement.

   If you find pages on your website take longer than 2 seconds to load, enable gzip compression if your haven’t already, and review the page speed suggestions.

Looking to take search seriously? Contact Us.

Related Posts:

• Reduce Duplicate Content to Improve Search Engine Rankings

A Google AdWords account that is improperly set up and managed usually means that you’re paying more for clicks than you should (cost per click or CPC for short), appearing in a lower ad position compared to your competitors and – perhaps most importantly – wasting resources that could be better devoted to other areas of marketing your business.

Why is Google AdWords Quality Score Important?

To an extent AdWords ads are run similar to an auction format – keywords or phrases are bid on and ranked according to a maximum CPC (or one of several similar available pricing formats) that an advertiser is willing to pay for each click. However, quality score is the differentiating factor in this equation and keeps the system fair for advertiser and Google user alike. The scale is between one and ten, with ten being the highest achievable score. Traditional forerunners to Google’s quality score system involved search engines ranking based on a ‘biggest bid wins the top spot’ methodology.

The quality score model means the Google user is satisfied by finding relevant results to their search query; the advertiser can achieve cost effective ad spend based on relevance (ideally without getting into a price war with their competitors) and Google can maximise ad revenue (!) and continue providing new features.

What Determines Quality Score?

Quality score involves several factors and is closely related to ad performance i.e. how relevant your ad is to a user and how many clicks it receives as a result.

The more straightforward aspects involved in calculating quality score include:

• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query (and thus CTR)

By working with search marketing professionals, you can increase the relevance of your landing page or we can help you to choose search terms better suited to your business needs. First Rate Internet Marketing Consultants are all Individually Qualified in AdWords and First Rate is a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

The remaining factors are somewhat more complex and include:

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
• Your account history including the CTR of all ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group and your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown.

Expert advice is invaluable in these areas to ensure you are achieving effective click through rates from the very beginning of each campaign. This can be done in several ways including the use of negative keywords and geographical targeting tailored to the needs of your business. Ad groups also need to be tightly targeted by theme.

What if the Quality Score is 10 for all Keywords?

Of course, there are situations in competitive industries where multiple advertisers have achieved the maximum quality score of 10 for a given keyword and a bidding war can’t be avoided.

In these situations Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) experiments play an important role to maintain cost efficiency. CRO implementation is one of our key areas of expertise at First Rate and we will red flag PPC situations for you as they arise to ensure additional performance is squeezed out of the landing page.

Related Posts:

• Ten Excellent Tips To Get The Most From Your Website
• Google Tweaking AdWords Quality Score Calculation Algorithm
• Recent Google AdWords Ad Changes and Improvements
• Advertising on YouTube with Google Adwords
• What Website Investment Can Generate 100% ROI Within 12 Months?