Quick Tip: Lose the Long Tail Weight
I'm a big fan of Brad Geddes, because of insights like those seen in his second New Year's resolution: "Lose the long tail weight." I have long been a fan of refining your account structure and using long-tail keywords to your advantage, but Geddes points out the downside of this approach. It's easy to create a bunch of small keywords that will slip under the radar at a nickel or dime per day. Those keywords can start to add up big time while contributing nothing.
When I saw this post, I ran a quick filter to view all the keywords that had not contributed a single conversion over all of last year. We ended up spending $10,000 on keywords that did not have a single conversion.
Lose the long tail weight: filter all keywords that did not convert over the entire year.
Using your discretion, once you run this filter, you can pause most or all of the keywords that remain. We started 2010 a lot lighter after I ran this filter.
PPC Blog’s AdWords Tax Calculator
PPC Blog, run by Aaron Wall's (of SEOBook and 2009 search marketer of the year) wife, has come up with a an AdWords Tax Calculator. I ran my main account through it with the follow results:
Of your $35000 ad spend, you are wasting ~ 20% of your ad budget, which costs you ~ $7000 each month!
Having too many keywords per ad group:$5250 15%
Always bidding to #1:$17505%
Total:$7000 20%
Of course this is an estimate, and I would hardly consider it an accurate one. The survey does not even include an "N/A" option for any of the questions.
But I recommend checking it out as a powerful reminder of how important it is to exercise complete control over your accounts, and how quickly you can spend your money on completely irrelevant traffic.
Google vs. Murdoch on NPR’s On Point
Yesterday's On Point about Google vs. Murdoch
Make sure to listen to yesterday's On Point about the ongoing feud between Rupert Murdoch and Google News. Not so relevant to AdWords, but things get feisty between the guests.
This interesting topic is also the subject of a Bloggingheads.tv diavlog between Conor Friedersdorf & Julian Sanchez. But that's not quite as fun.
“Segment By” View in AdWords
A new post from the Inside AdWords blog explores the new "segment by" feature, which is found in the same Filters and Views menu that was the subject of yesterday's post. Segmenting data by different time frames is excellent for identifying trends of strong performance. For example, the company I work for has a certain consumer item that performs very well in AdWords during the holiday season, but performs poorly the rest of the year. These trends will be easier to spot now, and can influence your decisions for ad scheduling.
While AdWords continues to improve features such as this. Other reporting options are conspicuously absent. For example, it is difficult to get an hourly breakdown of your ad position. I will be continuing this conversation in an upcoming series on dayparting.
Getting Started with AdWords Filters
Filters are one of the most powerful features of the new AdWords interface. They provide a range of options that were not possible in the old interface and allow easier analysis at all levels of the account. Due to their simplicity, it can be easy to overlook the filters entirely.
The filters replace some key functions of the old interface. For example, during the rollout of the new interface, many advertisers asked how to search for keywords because the search box had been removed from the top right-hand corner. The answer was to select the keywords tab at the account level (thereby displaying all keywords) and to filter by keyword text.
Search for keywords in Google AdWords
There are a wide range of filters to choose from, and they can be combined in limitless ways. Here are a couple of examples of the types of filters that you can use to identify non-performing keywords (or ad groups or campaigns):
- Over 30 clicks, low conversions
- High CTR, low conversion %
The time frame for these filters will depend on the specifics of your account. Likewise the actual figures used in these examples may need to be adjusted to fit your data.
The first example, over 30 clicks, low conversions, is great for picking out the new, experimental keywords that have reached a certain threshold of clicks in order to provide a large enough sample size, but have not satisfied certain performance metrics.
When you are trying out new keywords, you want to make sure to let them run long enough so you can collect data by receiving a sufficient number of clicks. For my accounts, once a keyword has received 30 or so clicks, I am normally ready to make a decision about whether to keep the keyword or shut it off. For your accounts, the number of clicks may be 50, 100, or more (or it may vary between ad groups), but the key functionality of the filter remains the same. This filter is a great way to ensure that none of your experimental keywords slip through the cracks.
The high CTR low conversion % filter is a great way to identify keywords that are costing you a lot of money without returning the favor of your investment. Evan LaPointe, in an article at search engine land, described keywords with a high CTR and low conversion % as "money fires." It will remain up to you as to what you consider high CTR vs low conversion %, but a great place to start is to take the average for your entire account (or for specific campaigns), and use that as a baseline:
A filter to identify "money fires" among your AdWords keywords.
Once you run this filter, you will immediately identify all keywords in your campaign that have a higher-than-average CTR but a lower-than-average conversion rate. Of course, what you do with the keywords from there will remain up to you, and you will need to take into account other factors, such as cost per conversion, quality score, etc.
Hopefully these filters will help you look at your keywords in new and productive ways. In the coming posts, I will continue on the topic of filters and look at the new filter-based alerts feature.
Roundup: AdWords Product Listing Ads
AdWords Product Listing Ads
Last week, Google rolled out another stage of allowing a select group of advertisers the ability to link their Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) accounts to their AdWords accounts and display images like these on the right. This program has been in development for some time, but the expansion last week brought the new style of ads to widespread attention for the first time.
Here's a roundup of the best posts about this potential game changer:
Search Engine Round Table - Complete history plus links to posts about how to link your AdWords and Merchant Center accounts.
Search Engine Land - Another short post by Barry Schwartz (from Search Engine Roundtable) with key features
Inside AdWords - The official announcement
SEOBook - Analysis of the visual layout of a SERP
Get more reactions by following the discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Ad(d) Stucture
Welcome to paidsearchtactics.com, a blog devoted to helping advertisers with the nuts and bolts of paid-search campaign management. The guiding philosophy of this blog is to utilize the tools offered by search engines to structure your accounts and make informed decisions in order to maximize your ROI.
As this is an introductory post, I will tell you a little bit about myself. I work as an in-house search-engine marketing manager for an e-commerce company in Saint Louis, Missouri. I am in charge of both the organic optimization and paid-search marketing programs. I started working in internet marketing in the Fall of 2008. So this blog will not only instruct on the techniques that have led to my successes but will also document my continuing education into the ever-increasing business of paid search marketing.
-Patrick Dillon