The great thing when you are dealing with a company that does solely focus on SEO or PPC (at least in the case of SEER), is that we are committed to pointing potential clients in the right direction (the one that gives them RESULTS), whether that is focusing on SEO or PPC (with SEER or without), or another means of advertising outside of SEER. It’s certainly a tough call, but when you’re in the trenches of search day in and day out you know what type of clients will and will not succeed and let’s be honest, who wants to take a project on that you have that “gut” feeling from the start may fail? (Check out one of Wil’s latest posts for more on Avoiding Client SEO Failures)

So, how do you convince a client who is dead set on an SEO Campaign that, at this moment, PPC is their best approach?

Communicate you are PROTECTING their downside!

Often times when a client is approaching you for an SEO campaign, the thought of engaging in PPC instead scares them.

From a financial standpoint, investing in an SEO may seem like a better solution for a potential new client; they look at SEO as a 12-month investment that they no longer pay for after the contract expires but continue to reap the benefits from.

And at initial glance, PPC appears to have a higher ONGOING price tag – there is the ad-spend, the agency management fee, potentially a setup fee, landing page development fees, etc.

However, what happens if you are dealing with a company who has ZERO online presence or better yet, one that is introducing a new product/service?

If you are anything like the SEER team, taking a (educated) guess that you are choosing the correct terms to optimize a site around based solely on volume, relevancy, etc.for a brand new business/product/service does NOT sound like a good idea .

Why? Because what happens when you get your client all page one rankings and the conversions DON’T COME IN?

Well, here’s the other million dollar question that now your client will be asking YOU: Where are the customers?

So, to avoid the “Where are the customers” question, turn the tables on the client in the discovery stage and push them down the PPC path (But again, do so by communicating you are PROTECTING their downside!).

Use PPC to TEST what terms ACTUALLY do drive the conversions!

And don’t just test the terms haphazardly – Structure your PPC account in the same way you would be driving organic traffic to the clients’ site.

1. Set up a unique Campaign for every page you will likely target in your SEO campaign.

2. Your ad groups will then house the terms you will target to each unique page.

3. Your “landing pages” should be the actual page on the site that you would optimize the targeted terms for.

4. Finally, ensure your campaign settings best match an “SEO” campaign. For instance, target the US (assuming that is your market); target Google Search only (vs. Google Search & Search Partners), etc.

Granted, there will be uncontrollable variances to how organic and paid traffic perform; however, wouldn’t it be great to gather statistically significant data for a client on terms that are PROVEN to (or not to) work! Not to mention, imagine how much more at ease the client will be throughout the SEO campaign knowing that there they already generated some new customers through the PPC tests and are confident they will achieve the ROI from SEO they desire!

Once you have your statistically significant data to base your decision off of, you can then push forward with an SEO campaign that you have CONFIDENCE in will drive the results your client desires. And as long as your PPC account is returning a positive ROI, you may have just helped a potential client grow their business exponentially just by doing some smart marketing research (and hey, picked up a PPC client for yourself!).

And if your statistically significant PPC data leads you to have the tough conversation with you potential client that “this is not going to drive the results you need,” don’t you think your potential client will thank you (and who knows, maybe even refer you to other potential clients) for not wasting their money OR time?

As my colleague Bonnie mentioned in a previous blog, Want to Avoid a Million Dollar mistake, use PPC for the benefits it brings – Do the research (fairly quickly) for your potential client before you waste their time (and yours) and money!

Let’s start at Step One: Why do we run Ad Copy tests?
The answer is easy – To find the optimal performing ads that drive the most conversions.

While all PPC marketers (I hope) realize that this is the end goal in Ad Copy testing, many PPC marketers get overwhelmed with the amount of ads in their accounts and get caught up with where to start and how to achieve the goal. It really does not need to be such a stressful task.

Though it would be great to be able to run ad copy tests across all campaigns/ad groups, the fact is there is just not enough time in the day to tackle it all.

Simply (Step Two) start by identifying your under-performing campaigns/ad groups (I recommend using a 60-90 day time frame, though depending on the volume of your account, a 30 or even 120 day time frame may be more appropriate) that if you optimized ad copy, could have a positive impact in performance. “Under-performing” can be various indicators, for example; over CPA/CPL /ROAS/ROI goals, low CTR, low conversions, etc.

Let’s look at an example of how to choose your under-performing campaigns for your Ad Copy testing. Below I’ve indicated the three campaigns that within this data set, I would chose to focus on when looking to run an ad copy test. One has the lowest CTR, one has the highest CPA and the last has the lowest conversions.

Now that I know where I want to focus my time and energy to improve performance through testing Ad Copy, Step Three is pulling an Ad Report for those campaigns (use the same time frame as you did when selecting under-performing campaigns).

Sort & filter the report by Campaign/Ad group. From there, create a new column with the formula CTR * Conversion Rate. By using this formula, you are not just analyzing ads based on CTR, which is not an indicator of conversions, or Conversion Rate, which is not an indicator of traffic. You are able to find the optimal pairing of CTR (the traffic indicator) and Conversion Rate (the conversion indicator). The one important thing to keep in mind with this formula is that it won’t work for evaluating all of your ads, namely those that have low/no conversions. In that instance, you would simply base your decisions off of CTR.

Once you have the new formula calculated for all ads, Step Four is ensuring there is statistical significance between ads. Here at SEER, we have an amazing developer, who has built us a proprietary internal tool to automatically determine statistical significance between the formula, CTR * Conversion Rate (screen shot below).

If you aren’t as lucky as we are, there are various Stat Checker tools out there you can use for the same thing. A few of our favorites are: Split Tester, SEO Book Split Tester and Super Split Tester . While you may not be able to check the statistical significance of the formula by itself, you can still use it to check Clicks/CTR or Conversions/Conversion rate to ensure the outcome of the formula is based on statistical significance.

95% is the ideal confidence level you want to reach to make a decision on the “winning ad.” However, if you find the ads consistently run at an 85-90% confidence level, it may indicate that the ads are very similar and thus will continue to perform in that manner, which indicates a new ad test is still ideal.

Now that you have your statistically significant winner in each ad group, you can confidentially pause the under-performing ad, and replace it with a new ad to test against the winner (Step Five). However, in order to ensure you are running a well structured ad test, it is critical to remember to isolate the ad test to one variable. For instance, when writing your new ad, keep all copy consistent with the winning ad, with the exception of 1 variable, perhaps the headline, value proposition, call to action, or even display variable. Here is an example of two ads that would adhere to ideal ad testing practices:

Notice the only variable I changed was the value proposition in Line 2 -> Free Shipping vs. Price Point. Testing just one variable at a time allows you to easily determine and understand why the ads are performing differently.

One of the best things about optimizing your ads and testing them using this strategy is you are able to get into a rotation. When your first test (let’s say the one in Step Two) is implemented and aggregating data, you can start the process all over again with a new round of campaigns to optimize and test new ads. If your first test was to optimize and test ads for under-performing campaigns, perhaps in round two of testing you should tackle your top converting campaigns, as you can always improve performance by tweaking aspects of your campaigns!

So, any time you want to optimize and test your ads follow the five simple steps for a stress-free testing strategy!
Step One: Why do we run Ad Copy tests?
Step Two: Identify your under-performing campaigns/ad groups (or other set of factors to test a specific set of ads)
Step Three: Pull an Ad Report for those campaigns and add the CTR*Conversion Rate formula (where/when applicable)
Step Four: Ensure there is statistical significance between ads
Step Five: Pause the under-performing ad and replace it with a new ad to test against the winner (remembering to isolate just one variable for accurate testing)

The PPC Team at SEER is no different. The Yahoo-woos are often heard, and often heard multiple times a day around the office. In the past the SEER PPC team has mentioned Yahoo Search Query reports on our blog. Back then my colleague, Bonnie, was the only privileged PPC Manager at SEER to get her hands on those reports. However, recently SEER landed a Yahoo Agency rep, who has truly been fantastic. One of the things she’s been able to do for us is to FINALLY provide all of our clients with the Search Query reports, on a monthly basis. (It seems that there are also other agencies out there that are finally gaining access to these reports as well according to a recent post on the PPC Hero blog).

However, along with the pure excitement of getting our hands on these top secret reports, unfortunately the SEER team also came to realize that the great privilege to receiving these report also brings along a dark cloud.

Why you ask? Let me tell you….

1. No matter how much you wish upon a star you cannot exclude “NOISE” words, Not EVER, No WAY!

What are “noise” words you ask? Well unless you specifically reach out to Yahoo regarding one of these terms, this is also kept top secret by our beloved Yahoo. “Noise” Terms are terms that are more commonly thought of as “articles.” This list includes the following terms:
A
About
All
An
And
Are
At
Be
Do
For
How
http
is
me
my
of
on
or
out
the
to
was
what
with
you
your

How does this hurt your campaign performance you ask? Well, just to name a few:

a. If you are offering a service, let’s say, “hair styling”, you obviously don’t want queries triggering your ad of users in a “learning stage,” such as “how to style hair,” “about hair styling,” etc. However, based on the list of terms above, both “how” and “what” are actually “noise” words, and you can’t stop your ads from showing? Absurd, I know!

b. How about if your company name is something like “Wisdom Tree Landscaping.” After receiving the almighty Search Query report, you realize you are showing up for “Tree of Wisdom.” Obviously not relevant, AT ALL. However, since “of” is a “noise” word, guess what, you cannot exclude this query!

Blood boiling yet? Let me give you one more piece of info…

2. Now, Yahoo’s “Standard” Match is to be similar to Google’s “Exact” Match type. Yahoo defines their Standard Match Type as:
The Standard match type displays your ads when a user searches for something online and you have already bid on the same keyword phrase. The Standard match type accounts for singular/plural variations and common misspellings.

Sounds great right, Yahoo will catch all the one-offs you can’t think of off the top of your head.

Actually, it’s not so great.

Yahoo’s matching technology is certainly not up to par with Google’s. After receiving the Search Query report, it’s heart breaking to see how many queries trigger your Standard Terms.

Here’s a great example; for a client of mine I bid on a 2 term phrase, on Standard Match and it’s one of our highest converting terms. However, I found through Search Query reports, that I am actually being matched to a 12 term query, that does NOT relate to my term. The kicker?

Because this term is on Standard Match, I CANNOT add the 12 term query as a negative. Yup, you heard right. On Yahoo Negative terms are not applied to campaigns/ad groups set to Standard Match.

So, now not only are your forced to show up for terms that include “Noise” terms, but also for any term Yahoo deems is a misspelling or singular/plural variation of your term.

The only “quick” fix you can implement if you see your Standard Match terms being matched to a TON of irrelevant queries is to change it to Advanced Match and then add the irrelevant queries. This then does open a whole other issue, as now your terms will be matched to all terms you were being matched to via Standard Match but now also queries that include pieces of your terms, your terms in different order, etc. (Here is more detail on Yahoo Advanced Match.

No wonder Yahoo keeps the Search Query reports a secret! Even if you see the terms that you are being matched to that are not driving relevant traffic, in some instances, there is nothing that you can do about it! Can you imagine what would happen if EVERY single Yahoo Advertiser was privy to these reports? Yahoo would receive a flood of angry emails!!!

Seems simple enough, right? WRONG. DEAD WRONG.

Instead I found a terrible case of Keyword Insertion Gone Bad, and just had to rant a little! From this first example, on the query “Psychic Scams,” you’ll clearly see my case in point:

3 of the 5 ads are using Keyword Insertion – Promoting “Psychic Scams” for their company. I have a funny feeling this is probably the OPPOSITE of what they were aiming to accomplish. At this point my mind began running – this has to be a mistake, maybe just a coincidence. So, I began thinking of other industries where scams run rampant, hoping NOT to see this again (It makes us PPC marketers look, well, just BAD!). Unfortunately, I found the same sickness occur again and again:

Example 2 – Query: Gold Scams

Example 3 – Query: Car Scams

Example 4 – Query: Dating Site Scams (Are you starting to see my point here?!?)

Example 5 – Query: Psychic Fraud

Example 6 – Query: eBay Scams (Take notice to the similarities in the ad above in example 5)

I think by now you clearly see my point. I see some serious marketing dollars being wasted here!

While I am not frowning upon the use of Keyword Insertion in general, there is an absolute time and place to use it. In fact, smaller, niche ad groups tend to fair well using Keyword Insertion. When used correctly, you can certainly see a lift in your CTR and potentially in your quality score and conversion rate. However, it does require strict management and close monitoring. An article written by RedFlyMarketing (which highlights eBays horrendous use of Keyword Insertion) hits the nail on the head with the ins and outs of using “Keyword Insertion” to your advantage. Additionally, if you are going to use Keyword Insertion, cover your bases and take another step – Be sure that your negative keyword list is built out to avoid any mishaps such as the ones above (Please don’t contribute to making us PPC marketers look bad! )

Trying to narrow the list to just 10 was a bit difficult, but I was able to manage (Again, I’m biased – I could probably create a never ending list).

1. YOU have the Control – There are very few mediums of marketing where you have COMPLETE control over your users. PPC gives you the ability to choose your target audience, choose regions, choose the ads they see, choose what you are willing to pay to show your audience those ads, choose your budget limit, choose when you’d like your ads to show and the list goes on and on….

2.You can take IMMEDIATE action – Say you turn on an ad and it fails horribly. You are not bond by any out-clauses, contracts, etc. to keep that ad running and wasting your money. Simply TURN IT OFF. Not to mention, you can respond to offline events more quickly with PPC than with any other medium. This blog written by my colleague is a perfect example of how you can capitalize on offline events.

3.You can test, EASILY and QUICKLY – There are unlimited possibilities when it comes to testing. Maybe you have new promotions you want to test, new ad copy, or new landing pages. Tools such as Google’s Website Optimizer allow you to quickly and efficiently run landing page tests (for FREE). In addition to the above testing options, you can quickly test terms you may be considering to target with an SEO campaign. If those terms aren’t driving conversions from PPC, you probably don’t want to spend the time or resources to launch an SEO campaign for those terms.

4. Try NEW markets – If you are launching your products in new markets, be it new countries, new age groups, etc. you can quickly test the success rate in those markets with PPC at a fraction of the cost, before launching a full blown marketing campaign.

5. Run Promotions – Have a last minute promotion? You can develop an ad and tweak your landing page within minutes to run new promotions. Not to mention you can use geo-targeting to tailor your promotions to specific regions if necessary.

6. It’s COST EFFICIENT – When you compare PPC to other advertising mediums, such as online banners, it is typical to see a much higher return on investment. Also for companies that may have a limited, you can run a very tightly targeted campaign. Whereas with online banners, geo-targeting actually drives your cost UP.

7. It’s RESULTS DRIVEN (not to mention you see results in (almost) real time) – You can easily track down to the exact conversion with PPC. If a certain campaign is not performing well, you have various choices to cut the inefficient spend. For example; reallocate your budget, try new landing pages, try new ad copy, etc. Real time reporting also allows you to see if campaigns are performing quickly. Those that are performing under metric can be identified within a few hours and turned off immediately.

8. Content networks – Coming from a media background, I know that top-quality media buys (banner advertising) can run a high tab. The Content networks offer you a relatively similar advertising experience for a much lower cost.

9. You can easily EXPAND your business – Companies now have the world at their fingertips and are able to reach markets with PPC that before may never have been possible due to the high cost to penetrate those markets.

10. The market is CONTINUING TO GROW despite economic conditions – When looking at at stats of Search Engine growth over the past few years, I am blown away with the continual upward growth we have seen and are continuing to see. The most surprising data is the prediction of continued advertising growth despite the economic downturn we are currently experiencing (granted certain industries may be hit harder than others). I found some interesting research from The Wall Street Journal regarding this issue.

While this list can certainly be expanded, the above reasons can serve as a brief reminder for PPC marketers on why we should continue to stand behind, and promote our industry.

First, take a step back and ask yourself a few questions:

1. Do you use redirects on your landing pages that slow down the user’s experience? 2. Are you operating off of a slow server?

If you answered yes to either of the above, the new addition to the Google Quality Score may have a negative impact on your account. Google has announced that within the next 2 weeks landing page load time will become a factor in determining the Quality Score. Google suggests that one of their motives behind this change comes from (1) data showing that users have the best experience when there is not a long time in between clicking an ad and getting to the landing page. Google plans to add this to the Keyword Analysis page shortly, giving advertisers with a bad review a month to improve page load time before slapping them with a lower quality score.

I, for one, am actually in favor of this change, especially from a consumer point of view. If I have to wait for a page to load, there’s a large chance I will abandon my search and try someone else (and probably one of your competitors). If you can’t serve me your landing page with the information I am seeking in a timely fashion, I cannot imagine what other obstacles I may face using your product/service. This is exactly Google’s second (2) motive for adding the page load time to the QS. While I am sure Google will make an extra dollar off of this change by lowering QS and raising minimum bids for advertisers, advertisers on the other hand will get a bit of a wake up call and a slight insight as to why their conversion rates may be lower than expected. Should advertisers take Google’s expertise to heart and work to improve page load times, it may be a god-send in decreasing bounce rates, in turn improving conversion rates.

Now ask yourself the following:
1. Are you bidding on terms that are not relevant to your business?
2. Do you have well-structured ad groups around tightly themed keyword groups?
3. Are you bidding on a keyword level to take advantage of lower bids for certain keywords (to offset higher bids on other keywords)?
4. Are you utilizing keyword match type (broad, phase, exact and negative)?

Depending on your answers above, the next big announcement from Yahoo! (who is not only hanging on through the talks of being bought by Microsoft, but is taking even more steps to tailor their engine to mirror Google) may cause your minimum bids to increase OR decrease. Yahoo! has announced the change of their minimum bid function, which previously had been set at $0.10. Now, they are moving more towards the “Google auction method”, taking into account factors such as quality of the keyword and value and are creating a bit of chaos in the PPC world as well.

As an advertiser, it’s important to closely monitor your minimum bids over the next few weeks as this update rolls out. While some keywords may drop below the $0.10 bid, others may jump well above the $0.10, causing you to bid more for terms that previously you were able to get away with low bids on.

To best prepare yourself for the update, I suggest putting yourself into the user’s mindset – Are you offering the best user experience you can? Chances are, if you see flaws in the experience, they will too.

As BizReport suggested, this feature may contribute in battling the click-fraud that advertisers face but usually do not have much control over. Click-fraud can be identified when an ad is receiving an excessive amount of clicks from the same IP address on a continual basis.

2 Ways to effectively use the IP Exclusion Feature:

Blocking Competitor IP addresses
Blocking IP addresses from competitors could potentially aid in less click-fraud, which in turn may enhance the validity of reporting from Adwords by registering more of the quality clicks versus reports containing the fraud clicks and the quality clicks.

Fortune 1000 companies … Exclude yourselves
Blocking internal IP addresses could also aid in preventing the accidental clicks caused by employees and agencies constantly checking the status of their PPC ads. We saw this happening firsthand with a client of ours. They found that 75% of their clicks on their branded keywords were from their own employees! Another feature Adwords provides for checking Pay Per Click (PPC) ads for employees and agencies to carefully avoid the accidental clicking can be found here.

The downside of IP exclusion is that if you block an IP address that uses a proxy, you may have succeeded in blocking the 1 or 2 people suspected of click fraud, but you may also be blocking hundreds and thousands of legitimate, quality clicks at the same time.

The IP Exclusion Features allows an advertiser to block up to 20 IP addresses per campaign. The IP Exclusion Feature can definitely serve as a benefit to Adwords campaign, but before you decide to enable the feature, be sure you have done your homework on the IP addresses you are about to block and the feature doesn’t backfire on you!

The content network allows sites to show ads on other sites that are not owned by Google, but using the Google platform. For instance Marthastewart.com, NewYorkTimes.com, CBSsportsline.com, etc. allow you to advertise on their sites to their audience by setting up ads in Google’s Content Network. The content network reaches users that by only advertising on the Google search network, you may otherwise not reach. Until now, advertisers were not able to obtain site specific data, including conversion information, leaving advertisers in the dark as to which sites are performing for them, and therefore being completely unable to make appropriate decisions to increase the ROI on the content network. Advertisers never could truly pinpoint what was or was not working for them; it was more or less a take all or leave all approach.

Why is this change important and a huge benefit for Adwords advertisers? Now, as Adwords rolls out the new Placement Platform, advertisers will be able to identify exactly which sites are under performing and exclude their ads from running on those sites, as well as be able to determine which sites are driving conversions for them, and allocate more money to those specific sites only. This will allow advertisers to have control of their ROI results on the content network. That is not to say that the Placement Platform has alleviated the hard work behind running a successful Adwords campaign. Similar to Google’s process of determining the minimum bid on the search network, taking into consideration keywords, landing pages, etc., the content network also evaluates the relevancy between your ad groups and the sites you are targeting to determine the minimum bids. And of course, without a tightly structured campaign, your CTR and conversions will ultimately suffer. Aaron at SEO book offers some great ideas on how to use Google’s Content network beyond just the traditional sense of simply driving traffic to your site. He suggests a few ways to maximize your profits and to use the content network and newly developed placement platform reports for competitive intelligence.

I don’t know an advertiser out there who isn’t willing to dump more money into campaigns that are driving sales. The new changes on gathering data from ads running on the content network may entice advertisers who generally avoid running their ads on the content network, for reason of fear due to lack of data, to give it another try. The platform is yet to be unveiled to its full extent, however once it is available to advertisers and the proof in the data starts to show, I will be more than willing to reevaluate using the content network across all campaigns. The new changes may make it worthwhile to give it another go, if it could increase my ROI, why not?

Any thoughts on this?