Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

A big thank you to whoever at Google came up with the idea for the Broad Match Modifier. You made my day.

The broad match modifier is a new keyword targeting option. (The existing match types are broad, exact and phrase.) I’m a firm believer in using exact and phrase match terms in an account, but am very leery of using broad match. Broad match allows Google to show on searches that they think are related to your keywords. I use this example when I’m explaining broad match to clients: you are a fruit seller and all you sell is apples, so you advertise on the keyword apples. Google decides that an apple is a fruit, therefore they could show you on searches for oranges or bananas. Not a good use of your advertising dollars.

A couple other examples from my clients at JumpFly: how about finding out one of your clients ads is showing on the term “nudist camp?” (My client runs a kids summer camp.) Or how about a moving company spending thousands of dollars on what turned out to be the term “movie” because Google was mapping to the word “moving.”

So broad match has not been my favorite match type, unless a client has a large budget and wants huge amounts of traffic.

But with the new broad match modifier, I can try more broad match terms for my clients because it gives me more control. Basically, when I put a plus sign in front of a keyword, Google will know that that particular term has to be in the search or will match on close variants. (Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and rood words, like “floor” and “flooring”.) Here’s an example: if the term is +golf +shoes, your ad will show for “gulf shoes” or “golf sport shoes”.

Broad match modifier just came out of beta testing in the UK and Canada. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works for my clients, as I’m doing my own beta testing for a few clients. If it works, I’ll start adding it to more of my clients accounts. If you are interested in seeing how the broad match modifier might be able to work for your business, contact a professional PPC Management Company.

Google Docs isn’t a new feature, but it’s one that I’m using more and more.

Google Docs allows me to create and upload documents, spreadsheets, drawings and forms from my desktop, then share them with others, who can also update them. (Go to www.docs.google.com to get started.)
I’ve used it with clients to collaborate on ideas, or to send keywords or ad text. But lately I’ve been using it with my PPC clients to stay current with stock levels. They can update the file when something goes out of stock or comes back into stock and I can make the corresponding changes to their accounts.

Here’s some of the top reasons I like Google Docs so much:

* I can protect it so only the people I invite to access the document can see it. And I can also make it read only.
* It’s real-time.  I can actual see changes being made if I’m in the document at the same time someone is changing something.  No syncing necessary!  No emailing.  No updating the file to make sure you have the most current information.
* I can change my notification settings, so that if someone makes a change, I’ll get an email. Even nicer is that I can be notified for any change, or just changes to a specific sheet, and I can have them emailed immediately or in a daily digest. (This is my favorite)
* It automatically saves. I love the fact that I don’t lose my changes.
* It’s free!

Google Docs is making my job faster and easier, saves my clients money because they are not advertising on something that’s out of stock, gets them more business by making sure I’m advertising something they want to sell, and doesn’t cost me or JumpFly a cent.

If you are changing the URLs of your website, please, please, please read this blog! Tell your web people to read it too! Your Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing & Bing results will thank you.

URL Changes Impact PPC Advertising

Twice in the last month I’ve had clients change their website URLs without telling me (and one of the other PPC account managers here had it happen to them just yesterday). I either find it because PPC ads start getting declined at Google AdWords or Yahoo, or conversions drop off, or something happens that I go snooping around to check.

There’s very little that’s worse than clicking on a PPC ad and seeing “Server Error: 404 – File or directory not found.” And it’s so easy to prevent it.

If you are changing your URLs, please, at the very least, do a 404 error redirect to your home page or site map. Another better option is to create a Custom 404 page.  Or better yet, do a redirect to the correct new page, so a searcher lands on what they expect to see.

A 404 error redirect will send a person right on to your homepage instead of landing on the dreaded stock 404 page. A custom redirect can even communicate more information like a “personal” message and how they can solve it (By the way, having a custom 404 Error page is a good practice, regardless if you change your URLs or not. In fact, I previously wrote a blog called “404 Errors – Save Those Clicks” ). And the best way of all is redirecting each old URL to the new, correct URL, so that the searcher doesn’t even know there was anything wrong.

And of course, please let your PPC Management Company know – preferably BEFORE the change happens. If we have access to the new site mapping, we can have your change-over ads ready to go when the site change happens. Or at least know that it’s happening so we can fix everything fast instead of spending money on wasted PPC advertising clicks.