Long-tail keywords are great for PPC advertising.

Long-tails are often cheaper than more generic keywords, tend to have less competition, and are often made by people further along in the buying cycle who have already carried out the large majority of their pre-purchase research are more likely to buy.

Conversion rates and return on investment from long-tail keywords can therefore be considerably higher for than for more generic keywords, and en masse, long-tail keywords can generate a huge number of cost-effective sales or leads that would be hard to achieve by chasing after a handful of more competitive generic phrases.

This is especially the case for retail and product keywords, where the range of different searches used to describe a product can be enormous.

But while the benefits of long-tail keywords are no mystery to PPC advertisers, simply researching thousands of keywords will do little to win over prospective buyers and deliver a solid return on investment from PPC marketing.

The more crucial step is to provide tailored ad messages and landing pages that cater for the wide range of specific needs and requirements identified by your keywords.

For Truly Effective Long-tail Keyword Targeting, We Need To Think Niche

Imagine you are a fashion retailer selling women's dresses. You retail hundreds of different styles, many different colours, and lots of different sizes and fabrics.

Now imagine all the possible 'mini niches' that might exist for your products. Possible niches might be:

• green cocktail dresses under $75
• size 10 floral maxi dresses
• blue bridesmaid dresses less than $100
• black evening dresses xl
• size 14 red cocktail dresses under $50

After some quick research using Google's Keyword Tool, you will realize that people are searching for a huge range of highly specific phrases in considerable volume, often including parameters such as size, fabric, style, purpose, and price in their search terms.

However, when typing these searches into Google, you will also realize that the large majority of PPC ads that appear are poorly targeted to the search words, and fail to take visitors to highly relevant and helpful landing pages.

Search Google for 'size 14 red cocktail dresses under $50', for example, and you will be lucky to find an ad which suitably responds to your request for 'size 14', 'cocktail dresses', which are 'red', and are 'under $50'.

Let's take a step back for a moment and think about this from a consumer's point of view. The prospective customer has opened up Google and has searched for 'size 14 red cocktail dresses under $50'. What do you think they are looking for? Size 10 green wedding dresses? Not likely. It is more likely the searcher is looking for 'size 14 red cocktail dresses under $50', as per their search phrase.

There are no doubt hundreds of fashion retailers that stock a wide range of 'size 14 red cocktail dresses under $50', so why are they not making themselves known on Google? Why are fashion retailers (or retailers in general) not taking advantage of the thousands of people who know exactly what they want to buy, but just can't seem to find it?

Search for anything remotely specific in Google, and you will realize that the large majority of PPC ads that currently appear are poorly targeted and poorly tailored to the specific needs and requirements outlined in the search phrase. A big missed opportunity if you ask me.

So if you are a fashion retailer, or any retailer for that matter, what can you do to improve your PPC marketing?

4 Steps To Long-tail Ecommerce PPC

ONE: recognize that people are searching for your products or services in a huge number of different ways. People are expecting more from Google, and are typing highly specific 'signals' into their searches, which identify their needs and requirements. Realizing that searching habits have changed is the first step.

TWO: figure out if and how your range of products can satisfy these searches. Research the types of words people use in their searches (such as size, fabric, price etc) to help them find the products they are looking for.

THREE: consider how your products are tagged, or categorized, throughout your website. Can you filter your products by parameters such as 'size 14' and 'green', to show only size 14 green dresses? If not, you might want to consider how this can be implemented. This is to enable you to take visitors to more relevant landing pages such as www.example.com?size=14&colour=green, which filters products depending on the visitor's search requirements.

FOUR: once you have a solid understanding of how your products can be categorized and filtered, and have a good idea of the types of phrases people are searching for, start to create your keywords and ads.

When someone searches for 'xl evening dresses under $100', for example, your ad should mention 'XL', 'evening dresses', and 'under $100', and take visitors to a page which shows only XL evening dresses under $100.

When someone searches for 'red floral maxi dresses', your ad should make mention of 'red', floral', and 'maxi dresses', and take visitors to a page which promotes your red floral maxi dresses.

And when someone searches Google for 'long blue bridesmaid dresses size 10', your ad should make mention of their requirements for long blue size 10 bridesmaid dresses, and take the visitor to a page showing only size 10 blue bridesmaid dresses.

If you can implement such a targeted and tailored PPC strategy, there is little more a potential customer could ask for. You have identified the searcher's needs through long-tail keyword targeting. You have shown you understand the searcher's needs through tailored ad messaging. And you have helped the searcher fulfill their needs by taking them to a helpful and highly relevant landing page.

If you are an ecommerce retailer frustrated at your current return on investment from PPC marketing, perhaps its time to try a different strategy.

Keep On Cashing In:

• How to Write PPC Ad Copy: Four Ad Templates that Cause Clicks and Conversions
• How To Calculate Your PPC Budget As An SMB
• PPC Landing Pages: You Got the Click, But Where Did You Send It?

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

How to Create Truly Effective Long-tail, Query Matching PPC Campaigns That Sell

Google has been remarkably successful at promoting Adwords to small businesses. According to the Google investor FAQ page, there are over one million advertisers utilizing the service. The complicated nature of the system has not deterred small businesses from becoming customers. However, Google encourages small business signups for Adwords by only providing rudimentary information about how Adwords works. In particular, little information is provided about the benefits of testing different bid prices.

Adwords Bid Price Model

A key aspect of Adwords that is not fully understood by many customers is the bid pricing model. An Adwords advertiser has to do a bit of digging in order to learn the bid system pricing model is based on a Generalized Second Pricing model. The following advice from Adwords Help only provides rudimentary information on the Adwords bidding system, "When ads appear on the Display Network, the maximum CPC is a key factor in determining whether your ad is placed on your targeted placements. Again, increasing your maximum CPC can improve the chances that your ad will appear".

The Generalized Second Pricing used by Adwords works by charging the advertiser with the highest ranking a penny over the bid of the advertiser with second highest ranking. The person with the second highest ranking pays a penny over the third highest ranking amount, etc. The rankings are based on multiplying bid amount times quality score

Examples:

The black box aspects of the Adwords bid pricing model make it challenging to determine the optimum amount to bid. While there are numerous software options for bid testing, these automated bidding services are usually out of the reach of a small business. Google offers conversion optimization, but it is only available for campaigns that generate 15 or more conversions per month, a level that not all campaigns can meet.

Overpaying For Adwords Clicks

Given the limited time available to many small business advertisers to test different bid levels, they often lock in on a bid that generates profits and seldom change it. However, never changing bids makes it easy for competitors to push an advertiser into overpaying for clicks. Using the above example in which competitors are bidding $1.60, $1.42, and $0.81, your bid of $1.45 results in paying $1.43 per click. In this simplistic example in which there are only four bidders, the $1.42 bidder in pushing the cost of your clicks up to close to your maximum bid amount. This example that would results in a position that is second from the top of the search engine results page. However, the competing advertiser that is bidding $1.42 is only paying one cent more than the next competing bid, so their cost is only $0.82 per click for the third position on the page. If you dropped your bid to $0.95 the cost per click would decrease to $0.82 and the position on the page would only drop from second to third.

Please be aware that the above example over simplifies the benefits of tweaking bids, as it assumes a limited number of bidders and that all the bids are static. Actual conditions on Google are dynamic due to: 1) advertisers using automated bid systems that constantly test the results of different bids; 2) advertisers using ad scheduling and geographic targeting options to vary bids; 3) advertisers temporarily dropping out of Adwords auctions due to hitting daily or monthly budget caps, and 4) bid tweaking by one advertiser may result in other advertisers revising their bids. Thus, the results of bid tweaking are unlikely to be as dramatic as in the above example.

Shown below is data from the keyword summary from a campaign being fielded by InstallationTools.com. For the term "electric carpet stapler" they are bidding $1.29 and paying an average of $0.86 per click. Considering that they are only paying an average of $0.51 for the more generic term "carpet stapler", this is an example of a term where a competitor may be pushing up the cost of their clicks. It seems appropriate for them to test the results of setting their maximum bid at $1.09 and $0.84. While lowering their bid for "electric carpet stapler" will likely result in their dropping from an average position of 1.3 on the page and a reduction in clicks, the lower cost per click could lead to improved profitability. If the test produces negative results, they can revert back to the original bid.

Conclusion

The profitability of an Adwords campaign can be enhanced by testing differing bid prices. Leaving bids unchanged permits competitors to push your cost of clicks upward by setting their bids just below yours. While manually testing bid prices on Adwords can be time consuming, the reduction in cost can be substantial. Further, it provides a sense of competitive gratification to inhibit the capability of competitors to push up your spending.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Why Google Adwords Advertisers Should Tweak Their Bids

Google AdWords marketing can be a great way to get your brand name out there and attract the right kind of visitors to your website, but it takes skill, patience, and research to run a successful campaign. According to a recent survey by research organization YouGov, less than 20% of small businesses say that they manage to recoup their AdWords investment.

Most small businesses either know for a fact that their campaigns arent working, or they arent tracking their campaigns properly, so theyre not sure how well (or badly) their campaigns are performing.

When you consider how difficult the economy is at this time, those are scary statistics. Its more important than ever to make sure that every penny you spend is working as hard as possible. If you want to make sure that your marketing is as effective as possible, try the following tips:

Research Everything

The default settings for an AdWords campaign dont suit all businesses. Make sure you understand what each option does, and tweak them properly. Pay attention to the keyword matching options to make sure that your ads are being put in front of the right people. It may feel good to see that your campaign has doubled your traffic, but if those visitors arent buying, then youre handing over money to Google for nothing. Paying for traffic that doesnt convert is just throwing money down the drain.

Track Everything

If you hired a Google AdWords consultant, you wouldnt just take his word for it that the campaign he set up was performing well, you would expect some clear charts and evidence of the results he was claiming. So, why is it that when people set up their own campaigns, they tend to just set it and forget it?

Google offers some useful tools for webmasters. Learn how to use Google Analytics, and the AdWords conversion tracking tools, so that you can monitor the performance of your campaigns, and tweak them to get the best results.

Change One Thing at a Time

If a campaign isnt working well, think about what it could be thats causing problems, and change just that one thing. Dont be tempted to make sweeping changes to your campaigns. If you change too many things at one time then youll never know which change it was that had the biggest impact. A slow, scientific approach with regular testing will yield the best results.

Call in the Experts

If you arent confident in managing your own campaign, why not hire a Google AdWords consultant? Companies such as Boom Online Marketing specialise in managing AdWords campaigns and search engine marketing for small and medium sized companies. They know all the potential pitfalls, and they know how to make your money work hard for you.

Outsourcing your PPC marketing campaign may sound like just another expense on the surface, but letting an expert manage your ad budget will help you to profit from your marketing campaign. When you consider that less than one fifth of small businesses manage to do this, anything that can even the odds is worthwhile.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

The SME Guide to PPC

Since the process isn't complicated, I though I'd share how you can estimate a budget yourself.

For this exercise we'll assume you're going to start with Google AdWords. To get a good estimate, you'll need to answer 4 main questions:

1. What is monthly search volume?

You'll find the best data available for search volume through the Google Keyword Tool. Here is what you'll see when you get there:

There are two main ways to use this tool. First, in the "Word or phrase" box you can enter keywords that you think your customers will be searching. For this exercise we'll use my dad's grass fed beef as the example. He's a rancher in Idaho and sells his beef directly to consumers in Eastern Idaho and Utah, so we'll type in "idaho grass fed beef" and "utah grass fed beef". The second option would be to put a website directly into the tool and let Google tell you keywords it thinks would be relevant to the site. You can put your own site in or you could put in a competitor or popular blog to see what keywords Google feels are relevant to their site. Here is what you'd get:

The data you're looking for is in the far right column labeled "Local Monthly Searches". For our example this shows Google's estimate on the number of searches in the United States in a given month. But don't leave this page, we'll need it in our next step.

2. What is the estimated CPC of your keywords?

Finding the cost-per-click (CPC) for your desired keywords simply requires that you be logged into Google when using the tool above. If you haven't already, click the Sign In link at the top right of the screen and login. You may have to type your keywords in again, but what you need to do next is click the "Columns" button just above your results on the right side and you'll see the following options:

Make sure to check "Approximate CPC" and then click "Apply". You'll now have a column on your search results that shows the approximate CPC in addition to competition and monthly searches, like so:

3. What is your current conversion rate?

This data is going to have to come from your site analytics package (Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends, Statcounter, etc.) or from your sales team. However you get the information, you need to know how many of your leads/free trials/RFPs turn into a buying customer. This might happen right away for ecommerce sites and it might take months if you have a longer sales cycle. The accuracy of this number is crucial so do your best, even if it's just your intuition.

4. What is the average value of a new customer?

This is closely related to your conversion rate and there are two values you need to consider. The first is the value of the first purchase. Many customers will make a small initial purchase to effectively trial the product. Factoring this into your calculations help you reach break even more quickly. The second consideration is the lifetime value of the customer. Going back to my dad's beef, his customers typically reorder every 2-4 months, so while the first sale is around $90, the lifetime value of a customer is over $500.

Now Do The Math

Now is the easy part. Use the following equation to determine the monthly cost for each of your keywords:

Monthly Search Volume X Average CPC X 3% Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

The 3% CTR is just an estimate. As you improve your ad copy you should try to exceed 5%, but it will vary depending on your industry and offer. I also recommend using Excel to make this a little easier to manage. After you've calculated the cost for your keywords, add them up and you have an estimated budget for AdWords.

Bonus: Will Your PPC Be Profitable?

Now that you have an idea of what this is going to cost, you can run this additional calculation:

Monthly Search Volume X 3% CTR X Conversion Rate X Avg Customer Value

If this number is higher than your calculated spend you'll be printing money.

See also:

• How To Create A Link Building Budget
• 5 Steps to Improve your AdWords Account in 5 Minutes
• 3 Practical AdWords Strategies for Mature PPC Campaigns

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

How To Calculate Your PPC Budget As An SMB

One of the great features of AdWords Editor, which is often overlooked, is the comment field, which allows PPC advertisers to enter a custom comment to any keyword, ad message, ad group, or campaign.

Possible uses of the comment field include:

• Tagging highly-relevant keywords, so that they are given more importance during bid optimization
• Tagging more generic keywords, so that they can be monitored more closely
• Labeling different styles of ad text style 1 and style 2, enabling more efficient analysis of ad messages using search filters
• Labeling ad messages for split AB landing page testing, such as landing page 1 and landing page 2
• Keeping test or promo campaigns and ad groups and campaigns separate from more permanent campaigns and ad groups

Lets explore some of these in more detail.

1. Tagging keywords

When carrying out keyword research, it is essential to realize that different keywords naturally exhibit different amounts of qualification. When someone searches for 2 bedroom apartment for sale in Melbourne, they are arguably more likely to want to purchase a Melbourne apartment than someone searching for Melbourne apartment.

By tagging different types of keywords with comments such as relevancy 1/5 or relevancy 4/5, you can quickly and easily see how different types of keywords are performing. You can set up a filter in AdWords Editor to show only keywords where comment equals relevancy 4/5, or download a keyword report and run a PivotTable in Excel to compare different types of keywords:

By tagging up your keywords intelligently, you can quickly and easily see whats working and whats not, and adjust bids and budgets accordingly. In the example above, even though the most relevant keywords (5/5) have a high conversion rate, slightly less relevant keywords (3/5 and 4/5) are more profitable keywords due to less competition and lower CPCs.

2. Tagging ads

Comments in AdWords Editor also become especially powerful for labeling ad messages. Most advertisers choose to test between 2-4 different styles of ad message, so labeling each ad based on their style can make analysis and optimization incredibly efficient:

You can quickly and easily carry out powerful analysis, to determine how each style of ad message is performing. You can then pause poor performers, and draw insights from high performing ad messages for further ad message testing.

In the example above, it is easy to see that although ad style 3 has the lowest CTR, it also exhibits the highest conversion rate, prompting further analysis to find out why.

Similarly, if youre undecided as to whether to take PPC visitors to the homepage or the product page, why not duplicate your ad messages, and label one set of ads as landing page 1, and another set of ads as landing page 2:

You can then quickly and efficiently compare the performance of each landing page style (homepage vs. product page), and make the appropriate adjustments to your campaigns. In the example above, landing page style 2 (taking visitors to the products page) converts better than landing page style 1 (taking visitors to the homepage).

3. Tagging multiple variables

Testing is crucial to Google AdWords success. PPC advertisers should look to test multiple variables at the same time, to enable more informative and insightful analysis and optimization.

Since it is now possible to specify exactly what fields are imported into an AdWords Editor bulk upload, by assigning custom headings to each column, why not create comments in bulk using formulae in Excel? For example, your comments field might look something like:

ad style 1 / landing page style 1
ad style 3 / landing page style 2

You can then download an ad report, create a PivotTable, and determine which combination of ad message style and landing page style yields the best results.

By using comments intelligently, you can quickly and easily see that ad style 1 combined with landing page style 2 performs considerably better than all other combinations.

Conclusion

Be creative with your comments in AdWords Editor. Use them to make notes, tag keywords and ads, and aid with your optimization and analysis. Record whether a keyword or ad message is paused temporality or permanently, and for what reason. Label campaigns and ad groups with information regarding their strategy and objectives. And record important findings about optimum bid levels and desired position preferences in keyword comments.

With so much potential for making use of comments in AdWords Editor, the worst a PPC advertiser can choose to do is have nothing to comment about at all.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

No Comment – Don't Keep Quiet in AdWords Editor

Have a Negative Holiday Season?
The holiday season is now upon us, and many marketers have their holiday campaigns up and running. So, I decided to write a post that can help you today. That’s right, you can make changes right after reading this post. Below, I’ve included four tips for using negatives in Google AdWords that you might not be aware of. Each tip can be useful for ensuring your ads display for the most targeted audience.

If you’re not familiar with negatives, they are keywords you can add to your campaigns and/or ad groups that block your ads from triggering (if those keywords are present in the search query). Using negatives correctly can have a big impact on the success of your campaigns. For example, if you sold Bicycles, but not Mountain Bikes, you could add the negative "mountain" to block your ads from triggering. Note, you can also add "mountain bike" as a phrase match negative, and I’ll cover more about match types shortly. Let’s jump in.

1. Campaign And Ad Group Negatives

You can apply negatives at the campaign level and the ad group level in Google AdWords. I find this confuses some marketers, so I included it in this holiday tip list. Campaign negatives would apply to every ad group in your campaign, so you should make sure these negatives can be applied to a broad set of categories and keywords. For example, "free", "used", "cheap", etc. are negatives often used at the campaign level.

On the other hand, ad group-level negatives only apply to the ad group at hand. This is where you can get more granular and specific with negatives, since your other ad groups will not be affected. Using our example from earlier for bicycles, "mountain" could be a negative keyword if you don’t sell mountain bikes. But how about if you sell "mountain gear" on your website? If you applied "mountain" as a campaign negative, then your ads wouldn’t show for people searching for "mountain gear". That wouldn’t be good, and that’s only one example of how the wrong implementation of negatives could get you in trouble.

2. Singular, Plural, And Misspellings

When using negatives, you should also use variations of your negative keywords to ensure you weed out untargeted queries. This includes adding singular and plural variations of your negative keywords and misspellings. By the way, anyone neck deep in keywords each day can tell you that misspellings run rampant in search queries. Using misspellings and plural versions of keywords can ensure you have a thorough negatives list per campaign and ad group.

In order to hone your targeting as much as possible, make sure you understand how people search for your keywords and include any misspellings along the way. You should also be mining your raw search queries to find negatives, which can also reveal common misspellings. You can also use various tools to determine common misspellings, and then export those lists to use in AdWords.

As a quick example, you might include the following negatives based on our mountain bike example from earlier:
mountain
mountains
mmountain
mountaine
montain
montains

3. Phrase And Exact Match Negatives

When including negatives, you might quickly determine several broad match keywords you would want to add (such as "mountain" from earlier). But, you should be pleased to know that both phrase match and exact match negatives can be included in AdWords.

Phrase match keywords can be included in quotes and will stop your ads from triggering when the phrase is included in a search query (in the exact order). For example, "oakland raiders", "for children", or "laptop computer". This enables you to increase your level of targeting for negatives by addressing very specific phrases. You can add phrase match negatives by surrounding the words with quotes. For example, if you sell costumes, but don’t offer Power Rangers costumes, then you could use "Power Rangers" as negative phrase match.

Exact match works a little differently. When you use exact match negative keywords, AdWords will not show your ads when someone exactly searches for the keyword at hand (only the exact words you include as a negative). Exact match negatives can be included by using brackets around your keyword, like [power rangers]. Using our example from above, if you added [Power Rangers] as an exact match negative, then your ads would not show when someone searched for "Power Rangers" by itself, but your ad could show for "Power Ranges Costumes" or "Buy Power Rangers". It’s only the exact keyword you include as an exact match negative that would stop your ads from showing. You won’t use exact match negatives as often as phrase and broad, but it can be extremely useful in certain situations.

4. Domain Names (Or Any Query With A Period)

When mining raw search queries (actual queries that have led to your website), you might find several domain names listed. Using our example from above, you might be targeting the keyword "power rangers", but find powerrangers.com in your matched search query list. If that’s a domain name that you don’t want to trigger your ads, you can add it as a negative keyword. But, punctuation does matter when entering negatives.

Periods are ignored by AdWords, so powerrangers.com will actually be interpreted as powerrangers com. Notice the space where the period used to be located. That’s important to know, since you want to make sure your negative keyword works. It’s also worth noting that your matched search query report would show the keyword using spaces versus periods. Again, AdWords ignores periods. So, you might see domainname com, or domainname org.

Based on how AdWords treats periods, you should use the phrase match keyword "powerrangers com" when adding your negative. In addition, I spoke with Google AdWords support about this and they said you should also include a second keyword using the period. For example, they recommend including both "powerrangers com" and powerrangers.com as negatives.

In my experience, using the phrase match negative has worked out fine, so I’m not sure the negative with a period is necessary. That said, you should test this out on your own campaigns and then roll out the approach that works best for you. By the way, this tip applies to any keyword with a period, and not just domain names. It’s also worth noting that this situation also applies to dashes, in case you want to include negatives that have dashes in them.

Analyze, Include, And Hone Your Targeting With Negatives

There you have it. Four tips for using negative keywords in AdWords that can help improve your targeting this holiday season. I highly recommend reviewing your campaigns and ad groups this week and make any necessary changes to your negatives. As I mentioned earlier, using negative keywords properly is an outstanding way to improve your targeting, increase your click-through rate, lower your CPC’s, and increase conversion. And that’s the name of the game in SEM.

• Do you know  the 5 Smartest Ways To Boost Your Holiday PPC Traffic

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Negative Keywords in Google AdWords – 4 Tips For Improving Your Targeting This Holiday Season

Your landing page is where you deliver on the promise of your ad and where you've got to earn the conversion.

You've done exhaustive keyword research. You've carefully constructed your account. You've written compelling, benefit-focused ad copy. You're testing at least 2 ads in each ad group. Your bids are competitive. You may have even used the Display URL to add a relevant keyword. You turn on the campaign and you're set. Right?

Where Did You Send The Click?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) practitioners recognize that while you have to do the work pre-click, the real heavy lifting occurs post-click. Here are a few things to consider:

• Continuity – Each click you receive started with a search query; a question that needed answering or a problem that needed solving. Your ad copy made an offer and enticed that user to click. The first thing your landing page needs to do is keep the promise your ad made. For example, let's say I searched "running shoes for 5K" and saw this ad:

  

  As you can see, Zappos is promising me free shipping, free returns and a huge selection of Asics running shoes. How does the landing page deliver on that promise? We have this messaging in the header:

  

  And a truly huge selection:

  

  Your landing pages need continuity from search query to ad messaging to landing page copy, establishing a chain of relevancy.

• Simplicity – When you paid for the click you want to maximize the value you'll get from that click. Ideally you want that click to sign up for your newsletter, download your whitepaper and make a purchase. However, you're probably not going to get all of that right away. But that doesn't stop some companies from trying:
  The original search term was "SSL certificate" and I clicked their ad because it mentioned a very attractive $12.99 price point. While the landing page does a good job of featuring the offer by highlighting it in yellow (continuity) you'll notice several other offers. However, I would recommend you ask yourself "Is the potential benefit of multiple offers greater than the potential loss of conversion on my primary goal?"
• Clarity – Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments.com is famous for saying "Clarity trumps persuasion." The ultimate judgement of clarity is the user's thought process. Do they immediately know what you're offering and how your offering is superior to all other offers in the space? If not, then even continuity and simplicity aren't going to save you.

Before we finish, I want to address one particular question that I feel comes up over and over again: sending PPC clicks to the homepage.

Can I Send Clicks To My Homepage?

The short answer: Yes, you can. But the better question is "Do you have somewhere better to send them?" For better or worse the homepage has to be everything to everybody. It handles SEO traffic from a variety of search terms. It acts as the launch pad for returning customers. It's the URL on your business cards, mailers and other printed materials. This might tempt you into thinking that it would make the perfect landing page because it has something for everyone.

Don't fall into this trap.

You pay for PPC clicks because you have a pretty good idea about their intent. You know they're looking for something and you have a potential answer/solution. Based on that knowledge put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you ran a search, clicked your ad and landed on your homepage. With that intent, what page would you go to next? Okay, now why not send the click straight to that page?

Conclusion

Getting the click requires time & effort, but to reach your ultimate goal you'll need to go the extra mile and send those clicks to landing pages that demonstrate continuity, simplicity and clarity.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

PPC Landing Pages: You Got the Click, But Where Did You Send It?

When starting with AdWords, it is incredible how many people do not take the time to do the proper keyword research. I know what it is like, you just want to get stuck in and start to make some money from your web site.

However, if you don’t do your homework, many of the keywords you choose will be useless or wrong. Worst still, you will leave hundreds of keywords uncovered that could make a big difference to the success of your campaign.

The easiest way to remember how to do good keyword research for AdWords is too create a seed, then dig deep and go wide. I'll explain what this all means with examples in the rest of this post …

Plant Your Seed

Keyword research always starts with a seed keyword and a good keyword selection tool.

A seed keyword is any short, popular keyword that is related to your market. It is usually a single word or sometimes two that describes the service or product you are selling.

For example, imagine you are running a small business that makes chocolates. To market your business with AdWords, you might choose chocolates as your seed keyword.

Once you have your seed keyword, you need to expand it into a high-level list of related keywords. You can do this with a keyword selection tool like the Google Keyword Tool.

When you type chocolates into the Google Keyword Tool, you might get a list of keywords to select from that starts like this:

The keyword tool provides many ideas that you can add to create your seed list. Keywords like …

• luxury chocolates
• handmade chocolates
• chocolates by post
• chocolate hampers
• personalized chocolates

… are all very relevant to your business.

Dig Deep To Find Your Long Tail Keywords

Excellent as the keywords on your seed list maybe, they are still very general. For your AdWords campaign to be a success, you need keywords that are much more specific and targeted to what you have to sell.

You are now going to use the seed list you have just created to "dig deep" and find even more keywords for your campaign.

Enter each phrase from your seed list into the Google Keyword Tool and pick out from the results, all the relevant phrases that have three or more words in them. These are your long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are generally not as popular as the more general keywords you have been looking at so far. However, they are usually much more targeted.

Remember, AdWords is not about being the most popular web site online. It is about selling your products at a profit. Keywords with low search volumes can be a good thing as they typically have less competition and attract a better-qualified visitor.

Returning to the chocolates manufacturer example, typing each phrase from your seed keyword list into the Google Keyword Tool provides you with these very useful long tail keywords …

• personalized chocolate gifts
• handmade chocolate truffles
• chocolate hampers delivered
• hand made chocolates
• chocolate gifts by post

… and the list goes on.

You've Dug Deep, Now Go Wide

Your keyword list should by now be getting quite large. However, you can make your list even better by thinking “wide.” To "go wide,” you need to think about the categories that people might search on in order to find your business.

For instance, consider the chocolate manufacturer example again. You might want to target occasions like Easter, Valentines Day, Christmas, or Halloween when people usually eat a lot of chocolate. You now have another seed keyword list that you can use that includes keywords like …

• Easter chocolate
• Valentine's day chocolate
• Christmas chocolate
• Halloween chocolate

This new seed list can now be used to find hundreds more long tail keywords that you can use in your AdWords campaign.

It can take time and a lot of work to build a meaningful keyword list. However, good keyword research is the first and most basic step that every advertiser has to take before they can begin to run a successful AdWords campaign.

Get this first step wrong and your campaigns are almost certain to fail. At the very least, you are likely to be missing a considerable number of easy sales.

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Maximizing Your Keyword Research For AdWords

Facebook’s share of online advertising revenue has grown considerably over the last 3 years, largely due to some significant and innovative improvements to their advertising functionality. PPC advertisers can now target users on Facebook with incredible detail, allowing for highly-relevant campaigns reaching thousands of potential niches.

Facebook Is Not Google

But while Facebook advertising presents an excellent opportunity for PPC advertisers, all too often Facebook is unfairly compared to Google AdWords. Many PPC advertisers take their Google AdWords campaigns, apply them to Facebook, and compare them like for like, writing off Facebook for its high CPCs and low return on investment. This should not be the case. While both platforms are essentially pay per click in their simplest sense, they are fundamentally very different:

· Google PPC targets people based on what they are searching for; Facebook PPC targets people based on who they are.

· Google PPC targets people who are looking for your products and services at that moment in time; Facebook PPC reaches people who may be interested in your products and services, but need distracting from browsing photos or updating their status

· Facebook is more CTR orientated than Google. Even though you can bid a CPC price with Facebook, it is always scaled up to an eCPM metric (effective cost per thousands impressions), to determine how often your ads are shown

This has some important implications:

· Click through rate is crucial for Facebook PPC advertising. A typical CTR on Facebook is approximately 0.04%, so anything above 0.04% would likely result in lower CPCs. If your ads can achieve a CTR of 0.5% or 1.0%, you can benefit from CPCs as low as $0.06 or $0.04. Even with a Google CTR of 25% or higher on the most long-tail of keywords, it can be impossible to achieve such low CPCs on Google.

· Return on investment with Facebook PPC advertising can be fantastic. While conversion rates may be considerably lower on Facebook than on Google (largely due to Facebook visitors generally not having as strong a buying mindset as Google visitors in that moment in time), if considerably lower CPCs can be achieved, even a tiny conversion rate of 0.2% with Facebook PPC advertising can be incredibly profitable.

· Facebook has volume. Huge volume. With a highly-targeted Facebook campaign, it is possible to deliver a huge amount of visitors to your website. Facebook PPC advertising is not like Yahoo! or Bing campaigns, which PPC advertisers often look to set up to deliver an extra 20% of visitors in addition to Google AdWords. A well-executed Facebook PPC advertising campaign can deliver considerably more visitors than Google.

A Different Strategy For Facebook

So while Facebook is also a pay per click medium, these fundamental differences to Google AdWords calls for a different approach and strategy. Since people are not searching for your products and services on Facebook, you need to be more creative with your ad messages, to distract them from their Facebook browsing, and engage them with your product and service offering. Testing and optimization also become all the more important to achieve a high CTR and conversion rate on Facebook.

1. Be Creative With Your Targeting

You can target Facebook users based on age, gender, location, interests, likes, education, workplace, proximity to a birthday, and more. Each combination of segments can become a potentially profitable niche. If you are selling fitness equipment, females aged 20-24 who live in New Zealand and like ‘Health & Beauty’ are a different target segment to Males aged 25-29 who live in California and like ‘going to the gym’. Both segments can be profitable; they just need to be targeted differently.

2. Be Targeted With Your Ads

Providing one generic ad to thousands of different searches on Google never works. The best Google AdWords campaigns have thousands of different ad messages, all tailored to the specific needs and requirements of thousands of searchers. The same methodology is true with Facebook. Your Facebook ads need to be relevant and engaging to the specific niche you have targeted.

For example, if you are an Australian travel agent looking to promote holidays to Whistler, Canada, you could target students in Australia aged 20-30 who like ‘snowboarding’ are a fan of Whistler Blackcomb (ski resort in Whistler, Canada). Your ads could include messages such as ‘Snowboarding Deals to Whistler! – Great Student Rates!’, and have a picture of a snowboarder. You could also target people who like skiing; perhaps instead including an image of a skier in your ad.

Similarly, you could target married couples aged 40-50, who live in Melbourne, Australia, and like ‘eating out’ or ‘luxury dining’. Your ad could have a message such as ‘Experience Whistler’s World Class Restaurants – Great Package Rates from Melbourne’, and include a picture of a gourmet meal. Even better if you could show your ads around 5pm when people are starting to get hungry…

3. Be Detailed With Your Testing

So many possible segments; so many possible niches. You need to get testing! Test different images; test different messages. Different ages, genders, interests, and locations will no doubt perform very differently to each other, so test them.

How do single males aged 30-39 who live in Sydney, Australia and like hiking respond to your ad promoting Whistler’s summer walking trails? Does an image of a happy hiker work better than an image of a sunny mountain landscape? How do females aged 20-24 who like skiing respond to your ad boasting about Whistler’s amazing snow conditions? Does a picture of a happy young female skier work better than skis on a freshly groomed ski run?

Luckily, it’s possible to create up to 1,000 different campaigns and 5,000 different ads within a single Facebook PPC account (without any increase in limits), so this presents a great opportunity to carry out multivariate testing.

Tag your URLs with every variable you are looking to test (e.g. age, gender, location, interest, image style, message style). Multivariate analysis using PivotTables in Microsoft Excel have never been so powerful.

Seize The Facebook Opportunity

Don’t write off Facebook due to apparently expensive CPCs or low conversion rates. Perhaps this is a sign that your Facebook campaigns need a more strategic and tailored approach. Be creative with your targeting and be targeted with your ads. But most of all – test everything. The Facebook PPC opportunity is there for those who choose to seize it.

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The Facebook PPC Opportunity

Leaving aside all the great things you can do with AdWords, such as improving your ad text and keywords etc., if you have an ad group that does not change, then you will eventually find a CPA which gives you the most profit even if it doesn't give you the best ROI.

This sweet spot has been made a lot easier to find with the invention of AdWords Experiments.

Here is a sample screen shot :-

To keep it simple, lets look at the results above just in relation to 'Google Search'.

What I find really interesting about the results (and I have seen this more than a few times now) is that even though the average position for the experiment is higher (as in lower down the page), the CTR is actually higher!  This will most likely be to do with broad match getting more 'broad' with the higher CPA.

You can also see that the higher CPA ad group has a lower conversion rate and definitely a lower profit without even having to ask what the margin is on this product..

Notes

• The campaigns above were all using CPA bidding, and all keyword match types.
• For the purposes of this post I have totally ignored the fact that there will be some extra sales generated indirectly form your AdWords campaign that will never be attributed to AdWords by AdWords conversion tracking (you may want to take this into account).
• AdWords experiments are not usually this clear cut.
• For some reason, when experimenting with different CPAs for ad groups using conversion optimizer, Google don't give you those nifty little 'statistically significant' indicators that you get when experimenting with keyword bids etc. But if this was my business, I would be definitely be willing to lower my CPA to less than £84 for sure!

See here for more information on AdWords experiments.

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AdWords Experiments – Some Real World Examples