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There are a number of mistakes commonly made in PPC marketing campaigns; despite being easily avoidable, these mistakes continue to be made on a regular basis, according to Elise Gabbert, writing for Business 2 Community.
She states that these avoidable mistakes can have a damaging effect on campaigns – affecting CTR (click-through rates) Quality Score levels and more importantly ROI (return on investment).
Gabbert has highlighted some of these mistakes; here are just a couple of them in a summarised form:
Mistake 1 – Not writing unique ad text – You’ll often see many PPC adverts that don’t have any of the words featured in a search query; Gabbert states that this is a “big no-no!” It is important not to use the same advert across multiple groups; instead the ads should be tailored towards small more specific groups.
In the example provided, a PPC advert for “Whole Brisket Online” is displayed when the query “mail order ribs” is made. Gabbert states if the company behind the ad sell ribs, the word should be included either in headline or the main ad copy; if they don’t, “ribs” should be defined as a negative keyword.
Mistake 2 – Not using extensions – Adding an extension to a PPC advert is extremely easy; extensions work very well for products – providing people with an image of what they’re searching for.
Gabbert states that a picture goes a long way towards verifying that the particular ad is related to your search query – without having to spend time reading the text that accompanies it.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Not by any means a predictable move, former rapper and current reverend, MC Hammer has announced his plan to launch a new search engine, titled WireDoo, according to an article published by TechRadar.
MC Hammer, real name Stanley Burrell, used San Francisco’s Web 2.0 to make the announcement, stating that WireDoo would offer users a “deeper type of search.”
In an attempt to bring something new to the search engine market, WireDoo will use ‘relationship search’ – bringing up content that is similar to a search term as well as content relevant to it.
Putting forward an example to display how WireDoo would be different to the likes of Bing and Google, Burrell said that if a user searched for a car, WireDoo would, as well as producing an SERP (search engine results page) full of car related results, show mileage, prices and local car dealerships too.
Burrell, speaking about his latest venture, stated: “It’s not an attempt to reinvent search. You can always make things better. We were working on what we could do with data to make it better.”
With the likes of Bing and Google already having such a strong foothold within the search market and popularity as search engine marketing platforms, it remains to be seen how successful WireDoo will be.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
In a move that could alter the strategies undertaken by search engine marketing professionals, Bing has added a new Adaptive Search feature. This new addition will work to produce results based on a user’s past search history, according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
An announcement regarding this new feature was made on Wednesday (September 14), as Bing looks to produce results more relevant to its users.
Adaptive Search will work by keeping a record of a user’s search history – for up to 28 days if not signed into Bing and 18 months if you are.
Rather than limiting the results seen by users, Bing is said to want to personalise results.
Speaking to SEW, a spokesman for Microsoft said that Bing had a commitment ‘to only use the relevant search history to personalize content and provide searchers with the most relevant results.’
Understanding that a number of users might not be so taken on the idea of Adaptive Search, Bing has included an opt-out – which can be accessed through the Bing Search History Page.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
For the last few days, there have been rumours that Bing has been running tests of paid PPC ads within the search results. Not placed off to the right or clearly highlighted at the top or bottom, but ‘camouflaged’ within the organic search results.
Now, this may prove to be an advertisers’ dream, but is likely to meet a backlash from consumers and some search agencies who have previously reacted badly to this type of ‘hidden advertising’ within the index. For search marketing agencies who work hard on organic results through SEO and search marketing, this testing of placement of paid ads in the middle of the SERPs will undoubtedly cause the SEO blogosphere to respond.
This is already a time of shifting sands for search marketing agencies, especially those who have been slow to realise the importance of social for both search engines and searchers, and with a growing focus on personalisation, dominating the SERPs is becoming ever harder. Losing one or two positions within the index to paid advertisers is more likely to cause bad feeling from those who believe the search engines need to operate a level playing field rather than favour those with large advertising budgets.
Those organic results are proving important to get return on investment and results for clients, and are where a good agency with experienced SEO staff can still outshine a mediocre one every time a search is returned.
Will Microsoft continue testing? And how will Google respond if its major competitor puts paid ads in the middle of the search results? Bing has been making advances on Google’s market share over the last year but still has less than half of that of Google. There is a fine line to tread in the search engine market between satisfying advertisers and investors, and
upsetting consumers, and only time will tell whether this is a canny move by Bing or a very bad idea.
Major search engines are teaming up under the launch of schema.org. This shows the search engines uniting to make a HTML markup for structured data to be used on the search results display easy and more manageable for webmasters.
This markup language is typically used by search engines to show richer content in the results. Like for recipe results, ratings, reviews, etc.
Google, Bing and Yahoo announced this development together and Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land explained the reason behind the move;
“The search engines will be using this meta data solely to enhance the search results display for now, much like is already done with Google’s ‘rich snippets’ and was done with Yahoo’s SearchMonkey.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Matt Cutts recently gave an interview which, for many people in SEO, allows us to get a glimp (ie a partial rather than a full glimpse) inside Google’s mindset.
Matt Cutts’ answers have been brilliantly illustrated by randfish on SeoMoz, and whatever level of expertise you possess in SEO and internet marketing, this should be a MUST READ. Or at least look at the pictures! These get the key points across in moments, in case you are stretched for time….;o)
It would appear that once again the top search engines are being targeted by the black hats. SonicWall announced yesterday that top SEO terms are bringing up increasingly malicious sites.
Always a good idea to a) check the link you are clicking on and b) keep a close eye on your listings and report any malicious sites above you.
Whilst Google has spent the last decade taking potshots at all and sundry – from Amazon to Microsoft, from authors and publishers to video content producers, from telecoms to the oil industry – it is perhaps time to wonder whether your business might be next?
The Big Money has an interesting slant on Google in the Noughties. Today, only hours before Google is ‘allegedly’ announcing a smartphone, Nexus1, in the run up to the Consumer Electronics Show, to have a pop at the iPhone as well as mobile operators, it has to be worth pondering just what else may be up Google’s long-reaching sleeves, and how it may affect you in the coming decade.
Whilst Google undoubtedly makes the majority of its revenue from advertisers, is the potential there to accidentally destroy a number of those advertisers in the seeming unstoppable global takeover that some commentators are concerned about? After all, wiping out, or upsetting, a number of big publishers (of whatever type of content) doesn’t necessarily bode well for future advertising revenue…. This trend could extend further if Google takes on yet more business sectors.
On the other side of the coin, there are now only 3 major search engines, and many SEO companies focus almost wholly on Google, particularly for PPC, and therefore a percentage of your profits heads straight into Google’s pocket. Should it be? Could you be achieving similar results but without handing over that cash to Google? Have we all become blinkered into believing that Google is the only player and that the cost to be listed is an inevitable ‘evil’?
Google’s attitude with some of the major players has been to unravel their business models by developing and then offering similar products and services for free (see The Big Money article for numerous examples). Could this work two ways? Could smaller players e.g. you adopt similar tactics with Google to your own benefit? Are there places where you don’t actually need Google, any more than after today, potentially, Google won’t need smartphone manufacturers to deliver Android to the end user?
It would be interesting to see what others think…..
As 2009 rolls to a close, everyone is considering the changes in the world of search during the year. So, we have gathered together the views from some of our experts in the Clickthrough Marketing office of what we may see in 2010 as a result of those changes.
Adam Symes, Head of Paid Advertising:
2009 has been a year of great change in social media. MySpace and Bebo have seen huge decline and yet back in 2006 they were the top two searched for terms on Google. Conversely, the Global Language Monitor has named ‘Twitter’ the word of the year. The last 12 months have seen a huge increase in the use of Twitter and although this may plateau in 2010 it will still remain a huge force as Google continues to integrate tweets into real-time search results.
Another trend that has experienced significant shifts is the use of retargeting, a form of intelligent behavioural targeting where an ad / banner is displayed on a site (sometimes unrelated) a user visits after the user visits the advertisers site.
Adrian Epstein, Paid Search Account Manager:
Google continued to develop AdWords opportunities this year. It is now allowing Google advertisers to place additional site links into ad creative when bidding on performing campaigns. These additional site links take users directly to the other categories within your site from within the ad; this is great for additional shelf space. Advertisers can now opt in to ad extensions taking products from the Google Merchant centre, this then provides selected products that are relevant to your ad, increasing conversion opportunities.
Finally, rumour has it Google is taking into consideration the page load times as a factor for ranking. That pushes the focus back on hosting companies and more importantly developers who can decrease these page load times. Whether or not Google make page load times a factor in rankings, it is one that should be a focus.
Bryn Firkins, Director of Paid Advertising:
The iPhone has now shifted around 33 million units worldwide, by default bought by affluent consumers. For many, mobile marketing has been about banners and search. Now, iPhone apps have given marketers a powerful way to get their brand message in the hands of people who have proven they are happy to spend. The iPhone App store has gone from holding around 10,000 apps at the start of 2009 to just over 100,000 now.
Advertiser spend in developing these apps can sometimes sit outside usual online media budgets as they can be a powerful source of direct revenue in their own right. With Google Android now gaining some traction, and the relative portability of iPhone apps to Android, expect apps to continue to grow in importance in 2010.
Rob Stoubos, SEO Account Manager:
Brand building and online awareness through online PR and Social Media is becoming increasingly important. Online PR and Social Media are being factored into Google’s natural search algorithm increasingly, and Google wants to use ‘public opinion’ when it comes to deciding which sites to promote in natural search. Companies who don’t establish themselves in these areas and as a result increase their traffic referrals from these areas may begin to fall in rankings when Google’s new Caffeine algorithm comes into play in 2010.
What do you feel may figure highly in the world of search in 2010? Do you agree with our experts? Where will you be committing your online marketing budget next year, and where do you expect the big wins/losses to occur?
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Now you can make the most of teamwork by allowing every member of your company who has access to Google Analytics to annotate the graphs about your traffic and highlight, for instance, why specific peaks and troughs have occurred in your website traffic.
Whilst it is possible to do this with static graphs taken from analytics already, eg in a Powerpoint presentation to a client or management, now Google have added the chance to annotate graphs to show why certain highs and lows occurred in your traffic.
Having this information available, rather than lost on a team member’s hard drive from research they were conducting, can only be ‘a good thing’.
Check out Google analytics annotations now and have a play!
We predict: 2010 will be the year of analytics analysis. It will be the year when people finally begin to nail down what works for their company and website, and what doesn’t, through hard-nosed maths, facts and evidence instead of guesswork or following the sheep.
