Sitelinks allows advertisers to place additional links underneath their existing text ads.  Instead of sending users to the default landing page, Google Ad Sitelinks will display up to 4 additional Destination URLs which allows potential customers to choose where on your site they would like to visit.  This gives users more control and allows them to get where they want much quicker than having to navigate from the home page to the specific section of your site they wish to visit.

In order to have access to this type of enhancement, your ads must meet a certain high quality threshold.  If your account qualifies, you will find this special feature under your Campaign Settings tab under the “Networks, devices, and extensions” header.  If enabled, you will have an option to click Edit next to the Ad Extensions section.  From there, you will be prompted to add up to 10 specific Destination URLs with custom link text.   Depending on the term searched by users, Google will decide which links are most appropriate to be shown and they will be displayed underneath your current ad copy.

Google Sitelinks are becoming increasingly popular with advertisers interested in both driving sales to their website and branding their company.  According to Google, companies need to have “extremely high” quality scores and top positioning to be considered for Google Sitelinks.  This is Google’s way of assuring that the true cream of the search query will rise to the top and attract the most attention to the Sitelinks feature.

In the days of fierce Internet competition, Google Sitelinks has become increasingly attractive to advertisers who need to protect themselves against retailers or competitor attempting to outbid them for the pay-per-click auction of their brand’s keywords.  The only drawback that I can see is that searchers will more often click on the sponsored link instead of the advertiser’s organic listing.  Good for Google, maybe not so good for the advertiser.

This is yet another reason to have a professional PPC Management Company in place to see whether using Google Sitelinks is profitable for your company.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday are Coming

Monday now. You have likely heard the terms Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but do you know how to use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to take full advantage of these events? 

Black Friday:  One thing is certain; mobs of people will wake up at the crack of dawn, trek down to the store of their choice, push through the crowds and fight for the deal of the century.  Are you prepared for that? Do you take part in that? Or do you simply stay home, watch the games and leave the chaos to others? However you choose to spend your day, you cannot ignore the fact that sales generated on Black Friday and Cyber Monday equal 25% of annual sales activity!

Is your business ready? Are your PPC advertising campaigns ready?

Cyber Monday, the kid brother of the Black Friday sales tradition, is only 4 years old and was brought to life by the National Retail Federation, in conjunction with www.shop.org.  E-commerce retailers noticed a spike in volume after the busy Thanksgiving holiday.  Is this simply a marketing tactic? Is it an illusion of massive online sales? Yes AND Yes – It is marketing and it is indeed somewhat of an illusion. Though these 2 days do typically account for 25% of annual sales, the busiest online shopping day is actually typically 2 weeks AFTER Cyber Monday.  So brace yourself and your business for increased sales not only on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but also for the weeks following as well. Also prepare for a new term to be invented for the day that does actually prove to generate the most annual online sales. While last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales results were a disappointment, economists have great hopes for a recovery this holiday season.

You need to be prepared to make some changes to keep yourself in front of your shoppers.  A professional PPC Management Company can help ensure that you maximize the results of your PPC Campaigns this holiday season. Below are a few details to follow to ensure that your PPC Campaigns are ready to capitalize on e-commerce opportunities for next week’s arrival of Black Friday & Cyber Monday.

1. Be sure your ad copy clearly states your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)    

     -Free Shipping
     -In Stock
     -50% off retail prices
     -Hard to find items
     -Gift Wrapped for you
     -The list goes on and on…

2. Reassure the searcher that you can get them the item in time for the holiday.
3. Clearly state your order deadline for promised delivery.
4. Increase your budgets to be sure you are not offline.
5. Check your ad delivery schedule.

Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Bing represent an amazing opportunity to reach your potential customers.  Make sure your PPC advertising campaigns are ready for BOTH Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

Conversion tracking is one of the most important aspects of any PPC advertising account and you need to be sure that you have this installed correctly. Conversion tracking allows your account to be managed to the most important criteria for your business – and that is – “What am I getting out of this?”.

What Google AdWords has changed is the name of “Conversions” to “Conversions (1-per-click)” and they have added a new metric called “Conversions (many-per-click)”. The Conversion (1-per-click) field can only be filled once per customer and the Conversions (many-per-click) is incremented whenever any conversion occurs within 30 days after a click.

This can mean a couple of things to you depending on what your conversion structure is.

First, if your conversion is strictly measuring sales, it can mean that you have customers that come back within the first 30 days after their first purchase to purchase again. This is especially common in stores that sell commodities or that cross-sell a customer with more accessories to compliment their first purchase. (By the way – that begs the question – what kind of follow-up do you have with a first time customer to be sure they have everything they need and are you measuring the success of that follow-up?)

Also, if you have setup several types of conversions to be tracked on your site – for example, mailing list sign-up, contact form and sale – the “many-per-click” field will give you information about customers that have performed several goals on your site. You may have customers that do all three and that will show up in the many-per-click field. There are additional fields regarding the type of conversion that will give you the information you need to micro-manage these conversion types as well.

And don’t forget, Google AdWords revenue tracking can be exceptionally powerful for tracking specific revenue achieved for each specific product sold. This is certainly not for everyone, but can be incredibly valuable when applicable and is usually very easy to implement. If you have questions or need help with this, contact a professional PPC Management Company for asssitance.

The bottom line is this – understand what these Google AdWords conversion tracking numbers mean to you and use this valuable information to enhance your sales-funnel on your website.

Google AdWords Content Campaign Strategy

Step 1: Filter out the top performing keywords in your current Google AdWords Search campaign, putting the greatest emphasis on the keywords that are most relevant to the products you sell or most relevant to the services you provide.

Step 2: Individually type each term into a Google Search, using the standard Google search box you find at Google.com. For this example, we will use “golf shoes” as our keyword.

Step 3: Copy the Google URL that is generated in the address bar from the search. In this example, it would be –
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS259US259&q=golf+shoes&btnG=Search

Step 4: Using the Google Keyword Tool, make sure you have Website Content checked, then enter the URL above into the text box. Be sure to check the box labeled “Include other pages on my site linked from this URL.”

By following this process, Google analyzes the organic results, paid ads, and the sites being linked. You will then get a list of keywords that are grouped together by theme. You can then take these lists and create a Google AdWords Content campaign with a similar thematic structure.

Again, not the only way to create an AdWords Content campaign, but it is an interesting process to try and could generate some productive results for you to use as you see fit.

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A phone number in the header on every web page is something we highly, highly recommend to every client. It’s not enough to have it buried in the bottom of the page or only on the Contact Us page. We’re talking every page, in the header where it’s immediately visible.

And it’s not because we want you to get more phone calls, but we’ve actually seen a definite correlation between conversion rate improvement and having that phone number on your website. Here’s what we think is the reason why:

1. Having that phone number gives your site a subconscious vote of confidence – it shows you are an actual business. That’s why a toll-free number is great, as it has more legitimacy. However, a local number may work well too for businesses seeking local customers.
2. It lets the visitor know that if they have a problem when ordering, that there’s someone that can help them. And if they have a problem after they order, they know they can reach you too. Even if they never need to use it, they know they can.
3. Some people are still leery of ecommerce and using their credit cards on the Internet. You can miss out on those potential sales if the only way they can order is through your website. Why lose the sale just because you don’t list your number or make it hard to find?

Those clients who we’ve encouraged to add their phone number to their websites have not necessarily seen an increase in phone calls, but they have seen an increase in conversions. The benefits clearly outweigh the possibility of getting a phone call or two. So display it loud, display it proud and put that phone number in your header on every page.

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Can your domain name (your website address or URL) impact your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising? You’ve probably heard that your domain is important when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and your natural or organic rankings, but it can affect your pay per click advertising too.

There’s a couple of reasons why:

• Your domain name tells people what you do and what you are about: Consider the following two (made-up) domains: www.BuyBlueWidgets.com or www.BuyBWOnline.com. If you were an ecommerce site that sold blue widgets, which would be the better domain? You probably guessed it, it’s the first one. If someone sees this domain name, they know that they can purchase blue widgets. Do you get that from the second? You know you can buy something, but not what that something is.
• It makes good use of the limited ad real estate that you get: You get a very limited amount of space to get your point across, and your Display URL, if it makes sense based on your keywords, can be an added line to use.
• It can be “bolded” in an ad: if you use your main keyword in your domain, and someone uses it in a search term (i.e. – your domain is www.BuyBlueWidgets.com, and someone searches on “Blue Widgets Sale”), than the words that they used in the search will be “bolded” in your Display URL. The display URL for our above example would look like www.BuyBlueWidgets.com, making it stand out more.

One thing that you do need to keep in mind, when choosing a domain name, is to beware of trademark infringement. If someone owned the trademark to Blue Widgets, and you own the URL www.BlueWidgets.com, it’s very likely that the trademark owner will be able to legally acquire that domain from you. I’m not a trademark attorney, but I’ve seen several instances of clients who have had to give up domains that they’ve owned for years and years to the trademark owner.

Domains are important in how they affect your identity, so think carefully about them. When in doubt, buy several variations and test them out. Domains can be bought for under $10 now, so it’s not a hardship on the pocketbook. When creating your online identity, there are many critical things to consider, but don’t overlook the importance of choosing a domain name that is going to best represent and benefit your business.

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Sometimes you do need to just cut your losses and run. Hope is a powerful thing, yes, but hoping a keyword will still convert after it’s received a hundred clicks with no sales attributed to it will only continue padding the coffers of the search engines, not yours. You need every extra penny you can get out of your marketing efforts these days.

Now is the time to perhaps be a little bit more ruthless in your treatment of your ill-performing keywords. You don’t have to be so vicious as to slit their throats (i.e. delete them), but you can certainly give them a healthy dose of chloroform (i.e. pause them). You can always revive those knocked out keywords later if you notice a big drop in your sales, but I’ll bet quite often the only thing you’ll notice is that you’ll actually start saving money.

Don’t give them a bail out, knock them out.

If you’re not sure what to do, you might want to consider a free consultation from a qualified PPC Management Company.

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Let’s say you sell golf shoes. There are quite a few branded producers of golf shoes. You’ve got Nike, Adidas, FootJoy, Callaway, Ecco to name a few. So let’s say you are bidding on golf shoes in a broad or even phrase match variation. Your ads will be showing up for all those brands if people search for “adidas golf shoes” or “ecco golf shoes”, etc. But what if you don’t sell the Adidas brand? You are going to be paying to bring in a lot of annoyed searchers to your website expecting to find Adidas golf shoes because your ad is showing up under that search term. However, if you add “adidas” as a negative keyword, then your ad won’t even show up on Google for those searches. You can often filter out the searchers that are not a good fit for your business or service with a few simple negative keyword additions.

So where do you find these negative keywords? You can use the Google Keyword Tool to research potential negative keywords and quickly add them straight into your account. You can also run the Search Query Performance Report in your Google account and take a look at the results. You will see many of the keywords you already have in your account, but you will also see other keywords that are triggering your ads to show on Google. More often than not, you will see keywords that are not related to your product or service, or keywords that contain a brand you do not stock at all. You can then take these keywords that are not a good for your business and add them as negative keywords into your Ad Groups or at the Campaign level.

Sometimes you need to think negative to increase the positive.

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Case in point: one of my retail pay-per-click (PPC) advertising clients that I manage here at JumpFly offered free shipping on any size order for the last 10 days. Business was brisk, to the point that they were running out of the small free gift they were offering on certain size orders. Their free shipping on any order offer ended at Midnight on December 1st, and they went back to their regular shipping offer (free shipping on orders greater than $75). How did sales do on December 2nd? Dropped by 50%.

According to Ken Cassar, an Analyst at Nielsen Online, “Free-shipping deals is a minimum cost of entry.” What does that mean? Unless you are the only retailer in your niche, if your prices aren’t the lowest of all your competitors, and you’re not offering free shipping, you have absolutely no enticement for someone to order from you. The Internet is all about comparison shopping. It takes one click to leave your site, and without a reason to come back, you’ve probably lost the sale.

Another case in point, I did an A/B test in Google AdWords for another PPC advertising client where we compared a free shipping offer versus a percentage discount. The dollar savings of the percentage discount was more than the free shipping offer; an end customer would have saved more money with the percentage discount. Surprisingly, at the end of the test, the free shipping offer outconverted the discount by a pretty hefty margin.

So what can you do if you can’t offer free shipping on any order? Offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount. If you already do that, like my client above who normally offers free shipping on orders over $75, than reduce that minimum dollar amount. One option is to figure out your average order size, than make the free shipping offer just a few dollars higher than that. (Think about Amazon.com and their Free Super Saver Shipping. I know that I’ve added another item to an order, just to qualify for that $25 minimum. How about you?)

And if you do offer free shipping, whatever the deal, make sure you highlight it everywhere on your site and in your ads at Google AdWords, Yahoo and Microsoft. Remember that it does no good to have it only on the home page if you’re sending your ads to an internal landing page. Make sure the offer is displayed everywhere, on every page, and on your shopping cart. You still have roughly eight more days of online shopping, depending on when your cut-off is for guaranteed Christmas delivery. Use that time wisely.

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1. Researching Starts Early: 31% of consumers planned to start shopping before Halloween, and 57% are researching right now, before Thanksgiving.

2. Research is Increased Due to Economy: 43% of consumers say they plan to spend more time this year shopping and researching gifts because of the state of the economy.

3. Online Research is King:54% of people go online to research than go to the store to buy, 49% research online and purchase online and another 28% research online, go to the store to check out the products and then go back online to actually buy the products.

4. The Internet is Key Influencer of Holiday Purchases: 86% of users will use the Internet to plan their holiday shopping and 63% of users plan on paying attention to advertising while planning or doing holiday shopping.

5. Post Holiday Sales Are Important: 63% of consumers say they plan on taking advantage of holiday sales.

A few other key nuggets of information, online shopping will gear up right on Cyber Monday, which is the first Monday after Thanksgiving, or December 1st for 2008. It continues to climb until right before Christmas.

And what are consumers looking for when they are online? 86% of users are looking for and plan on taking advantage of price discounts and sales, while another 75% of consumers are looking to taking advantage of free shipping. What does that mean for you? Unless you are the only player in your market, you better be offering some kind of special like a discount or free shipping or you are going to miss out on customers, plain and simple. Now is a great time to adjust your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising ad copy to reflect any available incentives.

The holidays are coming, so be ready. Plan now because waiting even a bit longer will be too late.

About Nikki

In this article, I am addressing the Quality Score used during a Google Search. 

Google’s AdWords Quality Score is used to determine how relevant your ad is to a visitor searching on a given term.  Google has developed, over time, algorithms to help them present the most relevant results to visitors based on many historical performance factors and on existing relevance factors.

In their quest to present the most relevant results to their visitors, Google rewards high quality ad / keyword combinations with higher positions and lower costs.

When a search query is performed there are two steps. 

1. The first page bid + your keyword (including match type) are used to determine if you are eligible to be shown on a particular search phrase.  In other words – “Are you In the Game?” 
   • The “first page bid” is an estimated metric that exists in your account with each keyword and is only displayed if your particular bid does not equal or exceed the bid estimate.  When Quality Score is used to calculate the first page bid, it does not consider your ad copy or the search query itself. 
2. Once you are eligible, your Quality Score + your Max CPC are used to determine where your ad will be positioned on the page – “Ad Rank” and how much you will be charged for the click – “Actual Cost Per Click (CPC)”.

Quality score is calculated at the Keyword level and is affected by:

• The relevance of the keyword and the ad copy to the search phrase
• The Historical Click Through Rate (CTR)
  • CTR in your current account
  • CTR of the keyword throughout all accounts
  • CTR of any account using your URL in the ads
  • CTR in your account in the geographic region you are targeting
• The Quality of your Landing Page

The algorithm takes into consideration the effect ad position has on CTR and adjusts the importance accordingly.

It is important to note that quality score is used differently within placements on the content network and we will discuss that next week.

If you’d like more information on the Quality Score, check out Google’s Improvements to Ads Quality Post or contact a professional PPC Management Company.

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What is Impression Share?

Impression Share is the amount your ads are showing as a percentage of the total available impressions. 

Why Should You Care?

It reflects your exposure in your marketplace.

In other words, are your ads showing up as often as they can be?

Understanding your impression share will give you some insight into steps you can take to increase your exposure in your market.

The first key figure is Lost IS (Budget).  This tells you how much traffic you are losing (as a percentage of total impressions) because your budget is too low.  Google automatically stops showing your ad if it will exceed your budget.  You can select whether Google should periodically shows your ad over the day or if they show it constantly until you run out of budget.

If you are losing a lot of traffic due to your budget, you need to make changes and it should depend on your business goals. You could:

• Reduce your bid and position your ad lower
• Decrease the targeted region
• Increase your budget – Only if the conversion rate justifies it!

The other figure to consider is Lost IS (Rank).  This reflects how much impression share you are losing due to poor ranking on the page.  In other words, your Ad Rank, which is the CPC bid x Quality Score, is reducing your impression share.

So, what can you do to solve poor Ad Rank?

• Improve Ad Quality
• Adjust Match Type
• Increase Your Bid (again . . . only if the conversion rate justifies it)

One last figure is the Impression Share Exact Match.  This reflects how a keyword would perform if it were set to Exact match.  This can help you determine if you should consider changing the match type to improve impression share.  If you see that the exact match percentage is significantly higher than the actual impression share, you can safely assume that you should test different match types to improve impression share.

You can read more from Google about the Impression Share Report at Inside AdWords.

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So what’s an online advertiser to do? I say, get ready.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to slash your prices right now, but instead take this time to get ready and plan your online marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies. The competition will be fierce this year and people, now more than ever, will be looking for the best deals. Do your homework and decide your plan of attack – unless you have a niche product, people online will expect sale prices, free shipping, free gifts with purchase or other incentives. The greatest thing for shoppers (and the bane of ecommerce) is the fact that it’s so easy to price shop – you can check out five or six websites and see who has the best price or offers the best deal before you buy.

Use this time wisely to decide your offer and what’s economically feasible for you, when and how you’ll showcase it on your website, when to start advertising it in your PPC ads, and what your cut-off date is. Make sure you have a clear, mapped out strategy, but be ready to deviate as necessary. Something else you’ll need to consider is your PPC budget – are you able to increase what you’re willing to spend in order to make sure you capture all impressions? What about your position? Are you willing to spend more to be in the top three if you know you are competitive?

I also just did a quick totally unscientific poll of some staff members here at JumpFly: of the 10 people I asked, a few are going to be spending less this year, one will be spending more, and most will be spending the same, but the key thing is that more of them will be using the Internet to find the best deals when they know what it is they want. And several of them have already started shopping so they don’t end up spending lots of money all at once.

So this is the time to get ready, because it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and when it arrives, you don’t want to be left alone in the cold.

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From the Google AdWords Blog – Retailer tips and tools for maximizing holiday sales

PPC Management -  Understanding Seasonality

First, take a look at your seasonality.  Not all markets have the same seasonality.  Some don’t have much seasonality at all. The timing and the length of your high season could be related to what you sell (i.e., bathing suits or snowboards) and where you sell it (air conditioning repair in Michigan).

Over the summer I received a call from a client who was upset because overall conversions were down.  They have a hotel in Mexico.  Is it really a surprise that they don’t book as many rooms in July as they do in January??  I live in Chicago and I can tell you that I’m thinking about a balmy vacation more in the dead of winter than I am during the 3 short months of warm weather we have here. 

You have to understand the seasonality of your marketplace.  When are your customers most likely to order your product or require your service?

Does this mean you just give up and go with the flow? No! Of course not, but you need to be much more creative in your ads and your offers when it is your down season.

You may also find, depending on what you sell, that you just need to adjust your focus.  This is why heating contractors also repair air conditioners – more year round business.  And why landscapers also offer snow plowing.  Instead of lying down and giving up or fighting what you can’t control, roll with it and figure out how to keep going.  When your typical customer is NOT looking for your product or service – what would they be looking for instead?  Be creative and expand your market to even out your revenue.

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Here at JumpFly, we frequently hear from advertisers who share examples of successfully running Google AdWords ads that were modified for one reason or another, and could then never recapture the results previously achieved. I am sure this can be incredibly frustrating, but fortunately it can be easily avoided!

Secret #1: Never initially delete successful ads in Google AdWords accounts!
If ad changes are needed, initially pausing successful ads and creating new ones, rather than deleting ads, is a really good idea so you can just turn them back on later if desired. Unused ads can always be permanently deleted later.

Secret #2: Change destination URLs at the keyword level to prevent disrupting ad performance
This is a critical concept to be familiar with and understand. Ads can be redirected to a different destination URL at the keyword level without changing the destination URL in the ad itself. This feature enables advertisers to change destination URLs without losing the ad’s performance history. This is a valuable tool, but depending on the size of the AdWords account, might seem like an overwhelming task. Fortunatley, AdWords Editor is here to the rescue.

Secret #3: Use AdWords Editor to update destination URLs
Once again, Google AdWords Editor enables advertisers to manage accounts much more efficiently. In AdWords Editor, users can easily upload a new destination URL to all the terms in an account in an instant. Amazing. Time saving. Powerful. Using AdWords Editor for managing Google AdWords accounts is a must.

Now go download AdWords Editor today! You won’t regret it.

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