Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Did you know that over 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and that 88% of people who search for local information on their smartphones take action within the same day?  Local advertising on Google is HUGE, and if you are using Google AdWords to advertise your business locally, we have some very exciting news.  Google recently introduced three new features that will allow local advertisers to create ads more relevant to potential local customers.

The first local advertising enhancement is the ability to target customers by zip code.  Prior to this, advertisers were only able to target their accounts by cities and/or metro areas.  Google AdWords campaigns will now have the ability to target over 30,000 US zip codes with performance statistics available at the postal code level.  This means that you will be able to literally SEE exactly where your clicks are coming from and the quality of leads you receive from each specific postal code.  Advertisers will then be able to optimize their campaigns based on which area produces the highest ROI for their business.

The next update to Google AdWords local advertising is the ability to have “more clarity and control” through advanced location targeting.  Basically, Google is making the location targeting options easier to understand and implement by allowing them to easily ensure that people who should be seeing their ads do, and those who shouldn’t don’t.   This update should improve the click-through-rates (CTR) for locally targeted campaigns.

The final, and in my humble opinion, most exciting update to Google Adwords local advertising is the ability to create Location Insertion ads.  Similar to Keyword Insertion ads, location insertion allows ad text to by dynamically updated to include city, postal code or phone number that matches a searcher’s geographic location.  This update will allow advertisers to have extremely relevant and customized ad copy shown to potential local customers.  In order to start using location insertion, location extensions must be enabled in the campaign.  Next a parameter tag will need to be added to the ad text.  Google will then replace the parameter in the ad with information that most closely matches the location extension of the local searcher.  These location specific parameters can be inserted into the ad title, description lines and both the display and destination URL fields making for extremely relevant local ads.

Back in July Google, announced it would provide advertisers a new AdWords reporting segment.  This ad performance segmentation is called “Top vs. Side” and allows pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers to analyze how their ads perform in the top three positions (above the natural search results) compared to the ads that appear on the right side of the results.  This wealth of information will help with Google AdWords campaign optimization and bid management because we can now see the cost-per-conversion data for the different areas of ad space.

For example:  Imagine that I sell blue widgets online.  I have conversion tracking installed and it is working very well.  My average cost-per-conversion is $10.48 but I would like to try to get it under $8 in order to increase my ROI.  Using the Top vs.  Side segment, I can see that when my ads appear in the top three positions, my cost-per-conversion is $7.45 with an average CPC of $0.14 and a conversion rate of 1.93%.  However, when my ads appear on the side, my cost-per-conversion is $13.51 with an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.12 and a conversion rate of 0.85%.  In this example, the ads that show in the top positions are clearly performing better than the ones showing on the side.  This data shows me that I need to make sure that my ads are always seen at the top of the page, but how do I do that?

Enter Google’s Top of page bid estimate metric.  This new feature from Google AdWords gives an approximation of what your CPC bid needs to be in order for your ad to consistently appear in the top positions above the organic search results.  Google is quick to point out, however, that setting your bids higher than the top of page bid estimate does NOT guarantee top ad position and that Quality Score is still a factor.  To see your top of page bid estimates, log into your Google AdWords account and choose the Keywords tab.  Click on the Columns button, then on Customize Columns.  From there you can choose from Attributes (where the Est. top page bid button can be checked), Performance and Conversions criteria.  Click on save and see your extra column appear.  Now you know exactly how you need to be bidding to keep your ads in the coveted top positions.

Thank you Google for bringing us yet another update that allows us to better manage Google AdWords accounts for our clients.  We love when new innovations come along and allow us to be more proactive, productive and efficient for our clients – especially when it also helps us optimize.  Keep the new metric improvements coming; we love data!

Google is notorious for providing its users with free web-based products like Gmail, Google Music, Google Docs and the brand new Photovine.  While all these innovative Google products are robust, user friendly and easy to use, the Google tool that I use most frequently for pay-per-click (PPC) account creation and keyword research is the Google Keyword Tool.  This little gem of a tool allows me to plug in a specific list of words or phrases that I think people might be searching on.  Once the list is searched, I  can see keyword data on competition, global and local monthly searches, approximate CPC and lots more.  Google has recently made an update to the free Keyword Tool that was much needed and greatly appreciated.  Users are now allowed to search 2500 keywords and phrases at a time, a HUGE increase from the previous limit of only 100 keywords.

Why is this so great you ask?  Well, I begin my keyword research with root words and descriptive words.  For example, let’s say I am building a new campaign for a company that sells colored hanging file folders.  They have 20 different colors of folders and they can be called hanging file(s), hanging folder(s) or hanging file folder(s).  To begin the keyword research for this project, I would use an excel formula to create every possible variation of each color with each root word (yellow hanging file, yellow hanging files, yellow hanging folder, yellow hanging folders, hanging file yellow, hanging files yellow, hanging folder yellow, hanging folders yellow, etc.).  With 20 colors and 4 root words, this would give me a list of 160 possible search terms to research using Google’s Keyword Tool.  With the old tool I would need to paste the first 100 words in, star the ones with advertiser competition and/or search traffic, then paste the remaining 60 words and do the same thing.  With the new tool I can paste the entire list in one easy step – which is great!

Once I have several hundred keywords starred in the Keyword Tool, there is a “More like these” option which allows me to search for terms that are similar to the ones I have already chosen to star.  In the previous version of Google’s Keyword Tool I would only get search results for the first 100 keywords that I had starred, which was an inconvenience.  I would have to download the list, break it down into groups of 100 keywords and perform multiple searches again and again to get potentially great keyword suggestions for my new account.  With the new version, as long as my starred keywords do not exceed 2500, the Keyword Tool will provide me similar search terms for all of my starred keywords.  Hooray!

Another update to the tool that is worth noting is the “Group by” feature.  By default the Keyword Tool is set to “Group by None” but if you click on the dropdown, you can choose “Similarity to search terms” and the most pertinent words (keywords that include search terms) will show up grouped together below the search terms, but above the related keyword suggestions.  This is great for weeding through the hundreds of irrelevant keywords that the Keyword Tool often provides.

All in all, the Google Keyword Tool is getting better each and every time there is an update.  I am excited to see how it will progress through the rest of this year and beyond.  Keep up the good work Google!