Firms hoping to boost their profits this Christmas have been advised to properly examine their pay per click campaigns in the weeks and months beforehand.
Writing for Search Engine Land, Matt Lawson said PPC marketing conversion rates in November jump between 25 and 50 per cent in the lead-up to the holidays.
"Conversion rates will rise going into the holidays and as a result, so will the value that each click is worth to you," he explained.
According to Mr Lawson, businesses should look at last year's data for December and check it against a baseline figure for the preceding month.
Examining at these statistics should enable companies to draw up an effective schedule strategy to boost their bids at peak times, he added.
Google's AdWords blog recently stated the organisation is looking to add a new course to its online classroom in order to educate users on getting the most value per click from their advertising.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Google has announced the rollout of its Analyse Competition feature to all English language accounts on AdWords.
Jason Shafton of the Inside AdWords team said the service is designed to help users of pay per click marketing make "more informed decisions" about the optimisation of their campaigns.
The Analyse Competition feature compares a brand's AdWords performance against that of its rivals in similar keyword categories.
It also compiles the Google search terms that triggered ads in each sub-category of an account, which Mr Shafton said can provide "inspiration" for new keywords or modifying existing terms.
"We hope to bring even more features to Analyse Competition in the future," he added.
In related news, Google recently announced that it will launch an updated AdWords Keyword Tool that combines the best features of its old application and a search-based wizard from September 1st.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
YouTube has unveiled new features designed to help advertisers' improve the targeting of their promotional clips.
The Google-owned site's senior product manager Baljeet Singh said the new video and channel exclusion options will give brands a greater degree of control over where their ads appear.
Previously, advertisers could use the site's internet marketing services to pick specific clips they wanted to target.
Now, they can also choose individual videos or entire channels to exclude from their campaigns.
Mr Singh said this will allow brands to stop ads appearing on videos that would not be appropriate for their audience. For example, a vegan bakery would be able to exclude FootNetworkTV videos featuring meat dishes.
"Alternatively, if your ads are appearing on a video that … perhaps isn't performing in terms of clickthrough rate or conversions, you can optimise your campaign by using this new feature to exclude it," he added.
YouTube was founded in February 2005. Today, around two billion clips are watched daily and 24 hours' worth of videos are uploaded every minute.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
An industry observer has offered companies some tips on how to find the best natural search optimisation services – and how to avoid the worst ones.
Writing on Search Engine Watch, Adam Audette said the high demand for quality search engine optimisation services has prompted a number of agencies to try their arm at it without really being up to the job.
Finding the right company involves doing some homework and looking out for potential warning signs, he added.
Firstly, companies must define what they need from their search strategy. This could be attracting more traffic for cost per thousand ads, link building or boosting ecommerce conversions.
Mr Audette said firms should consider dipping a toe in the water with a pilot optimisation project.
When looking for a search engine optimisation company, brands should be wary of those offering "odd" pricing structures, such as by the page and packaged deals, as optimisation should take a holistic approach to highlighting a site's unique offerings while also testing innovative, creative methods for attracting the target audience.
In related news, Stephan Spencer of Search Engine Land recently said companies need keywords for optimisation that are not only relevant but also popular as there is "no point" chasing rankings for terms no one uses.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
For many companies, interactivity is still an issue. We seem to be locked in a 20th century management world where customers should spend and not be heard. However, this denies the clear indications that many consumers now spend their time online before deciding where to spend their money. The decisions they make are not related to carefully crafted marketing messages, but to opinions from friends, family and even strangers.
For many companies, a website-based feedback form, a Facebook fan page or group, perhaps a Twitter account (often on broadcast only mode), or the age old glory of the automatic switchboard (press 1 to listen to…etc) are the limits of permitting customer interaction.
However, the Internet gives us a multitude of tools that allow consumers to not only share their opinions with the business but also with other customers. When used properly, this can allow you to ‘employ’ your own evangelists, to build consumer loyalty and your brand, as well as engaging with new social media marketing channels that previously were not available.
One of these is ipadio.com. Ipadio allows your customers to make a cheap (or even free) phone call, leave a message and then these messages can be left on your website as both audio files and text transcriptions. Better still, you can use it to run a live online radio show, permitting your customers or critics to phone in and be heard worldwide.
It is hard to stop thinking of new uses for this service and I hope ipadio enjoys a long and healthy lifespan as more companies realise the value of real-life, voiced testimonials, (and critiques) rather than fake, overpaid actors doing their dirty work on the TV. (Consumers really are not _that_ dim!)
Instead of undermining brand value with consumers watching ads asking constantly not just “Were they paid to say that?” but “HOW MUCH were they paid to say that?”, companies could be making the most of real consumers, offering real opinions, in their own voices, as per Points of View.
The TopSEOs awards for August 2010 are out, and ClickThrough has been given two of them!
We’re delighted to see that we have been ranked fifth in the global Conversion Enhancement category, the only UK headquartered internet marketing company to make the list. TopSEOs state that they judge companies on their ability to conduct client site analysis, develop conversion strategies, as well as implementation and ongoing testing. It’s a testament to the work we have done to put conversion optimisation at the centre of our Digital Strategy Wheel, which defines the approach we take to client’s businesses.
ClickThrough also got a nod in the list of UK Online Reputation Management companies, coming in seventh place in the August 2010 rankings. Our ability to combine social media marketing, online PR and SEO techniques to provide a robust reputation management service to clients is gaining momentum.
A big pat on the back to all our search conversion experts as they continue to deliver a great service to our clients.
However you are placed regarding our current government, it is difficult to ignore the opinions and effects being expressed or felt within every community across the land as the proposed cuts are touted, and begin to bite.
As a business, it is unlikely that you have no local involvement. You probably employ people from your neighbourhood, you may have long-standing relationships with your community, your customer base may live all around your premises.
Whilst none of us may relish the austerity measures proposed, this is an ideal time for a socially aware and conscious business to rebuild links within your local community, and hence enhance your sales and marketing activities. Not that any of this should be done purely to increase the sales on your books, but it will rarely hurt!
Corporate and social responsibility is a term which often gets thrown at the ‘big boys’ and yet the best proponents of such activities are often constantly contributing into the local economy and adding to social dynamics, without hitting the red tops, because their contribution is not seen or heard of beyond that particular locale.
Now may be your chance for 5 minutes of fame. Companies who can contribute in an innovative and novel way stand to capture the attention of the local and national media if they enhance the society and community in which they live. Bearing in mind all the cuts which are likely to take place during this term, it cannot be too difficult for every company to see an opening for community /corporate action that will attract great PR.
This is a meagre attempt at suggesting you take a look at some of the things you could do, and wherever you are, it has to be worth looking at the Big Society in the North website and associated sites, blogs and feeds for further ideas. And if you can’t actually find a way to contribute directly into your community, perhaps you could support some of the ideas elsewhere so they become commercial concerns? Which could, looking at a few of the ideas, become hardcore businesses…….
This nation is full of great ideas; many are idling on back burners as those who wish to share them struggle to be heard. If your business is locally based and is struggling to survive, how about opening your doors for a day to all those who live around your premises and ASK THEM what they would do to improve employment prospects, extend your product range, make best use of your assets and resources, and so on…..?
A simple blog, a YouTube channel, a few schoolkids with video cameras and a Twitter hashtag….you could be on Breakfast TV within a week scoring high profile publicity for a simple social media marketing campaign and a few buns and cups of tea. Just an idea!
In his second post this month, Dave explains what the next change to the Google AdWords trademark policy will mean for brand owners, and why some etailers could benefit.
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In the first of these two posts on brand searches, we discussed how important navigation brand searches are to some businesses, and how important it is to evaluate brand and non-brand search traffic separately in your Analytics package as it makes it easier to track traffic from your major non-brand keywords.
In this second post, I want to move the focus onto the September 2010 Google Adwords ad text trademark policy change for the UK and Europe. The main change is that Google will now permit the use of competitor brand terms within the creative itself – this was previously prevented for trademarked terms Google was aware of.
It’s important to review the implications of this to your paid search account performance and to be aware of how different competitors within your market react. We believe it increases the need for use of quality brand reputation management services. If you have a range of resellers of your product or service it’s particularly important to review your strategy as the number and type of paid search competitors may increase. We saw that previous changes permitting bidding on brand terms had a very different impact in different markets previously. Although there were fears of an increased bid competition and PPC costs a relatively small bid spike occurred and most believe a similar situation will occur this time around.
Although the 2010 announcement has caused a fair stir, our view is that it’s really just an evolution in policy, you could say a “storm in a teacup”. There was arguably a more significant change in 2008 when Google permitted bidding on brand terms in these markets for the first time (reported on by Hitwise), i.e. specifying competitor brand terms as keywords to trigger ads. This was rolled out to a further 190 countries last year. The trademark bid change in 2008 saw up to 20% increase in click costs, and although this change may give a similar effect through competition, this approach has been in the US for sometime and has not generally caused bidding wars.
Talking to our paid search account management team on the practical implications, they point out a benefit in the way Google evaluates ads through quality score; the inclusion of brand terms in creative will help improve quality scores and increase ad clickthrough rates which will bring costs down for some advertisers who couldn’t previously use brand terms within the creative.
Whatever the consequences of the recent Google Trademark policy change, it’s a timely reminder to brands of the importance of paying close attention to managing the returns from crucial navigational searches.
In the first of two posts, Dr Dave Chaffey explains how many consumers still rely on navigational brand search queries to find sites, and why marketers should start to look at brand and non-brand searches in isolation.
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With the importance of navigational searches incorporating a brand name as a shortcut to company or it’s services, it’s crucial that companies pay close attention to how they’re managed. This means making sure your agency or internal paid search specialists report separately on search performance for brand search terms. It also means that you need to review the implications of any changes in policy to use of brand terms within paid search advertising and in particular Google Adwords which as you’ll know accounts for more than 90% of UK searches.
In navigational search or brand searching behaviour, searchers aim to go direct to a known company site by typing in the site or brand name. Alternatively they will type the site or brand name and append a qualifier such as a product name to the query. This shortcuts the site navigation and may make up for shortcomings in the sites own search engine or navigation.
Research by Atlas and Hitwise shows that navigational searches may account for over half of all searches and the figure is higher for well-known brands or companies who are not effective in tapping into the non-navigational searches… Certainly it’s one of the KPIs we review when auditing search marketing for a company paying particular attention to the proportion of brand search clicks for paid and natural search. I’ve seen cases where branded search can account for 80 to 90% of all clicks when insufficient attention has been paid to generic and long-tail search terms.
Of course attracting converting visitors at a lower cost is more straightforward for brand search terms, so it’s essential to separate out reporting into brand and non-brand to review performance for the more challenging non-brand terms. I’m surprised how few companies do this in top-level reports, yet it’s straightforward to setup within an analytics package, for example, a Google Analytics custom advanced segments.
In my next post I’ll be discussing how the latest change to the Google AdWords trademark policy could mean brand owners paying even more than they currently do for their navigational traffic.
Google has positioned itself to take on Skype by rolling out a new feature for its Gmail service that allows users to call any telephone direct from their email account.
Software engineer Rob Schriebman said all American users should see the Call Phone button appear in their video and voice chat box over the next few days.
They will be able to dial up any number and calls within the US and Canada will be free of charge for "at least the rest of the year".
Mr Schriebman added that Google is also offering rates starting from $0.02 per minute for phoning countries like the UK, Germany, Japan and France.
People who already have a Google Voice phone number can also choose to receive calls within the Gmail service.
The expert said internal testing of the new calling feature had shown it to be useful "in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you're in an area with bad reception".
Elsewhere, Google announced in May that it had starting rolling out click-to-call phone numbers for online marketing services targeting mobile users via the Google Content Network.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
