When & how do Seller Rating Extensions appear? The Seller Rating Extension will automatically append a store’s rating from Google Product Search if you meet the minimum requirements of a 4-star rating and 30+ reviews. There is no need to sync your account with Google Product Search, as the ratings are pulled based on the display URL.

If your ad has an extremely high quality score and shows in the top panel (above natural results), the extension will also display the number of qualified reviews next to the rating. Note: New reviews can take up to 10 days to appear in product search.

Currently, the ratings will only show to English speakers in the US. It is our understanding that the ads will NOT show with other extensions (i.e. product extensions or SiteLinks).

Where do the ratings & reviews come from? Google Product Search ratings are compiled from a variety of sources including (but not restricted to) Epinions, Google Checkout, Reseller Ratings, Bizrate & PriceGrabber.

How much do they cost? There is no additional charge if a user clicks on an ad featuring a Seller Rating Extension, and there is no cost if a user clicks through just to read reviews.

How can I take advantage? Assuming you’re already registered for Google Product Search (it’s free!) the most important thing you can do is to keep serving your customers well and encouraging them to rate your store. The ratings will show automatically for all eligible queries unless you explicitly opt out here.

Are seller rating extensions a good thing? That’s for you to decide. There are a number of huge advantages to the new extensions, but you will never know if they are truly helping your business until you test. To help decide if the extensions will help or hurt you, SEER has outlined a few pro’s and con’s/potential pitfalls below.

Pros

• The extensions put a new emphasis on online customer service. We always knew that your reputation can have a huge influence on your store. Seller Rating Extensions only increases the influence by putting the ratings front and center.
• Assuming you have a great customer service rating, you can stand out from competitors who may have had a few issues from time to time.
• Having a 5-star rating show for a challenging non-brand term can enhance your visibility & help you stand out from the competition.

Potential Pitfalls

• While you don’t pay for clicks to the review site (and Google claims the review links receive less clicks), these clicks take the user away from your AdWords landing pages and your planned conversion funnel.
• If you have a new or small business, you may be trumped by a store with more reviews or simply may not be eligible.
• The ratings extensions appear (based on preliminary testing) to be trumped by other extensions. If you have SiteLinks, Location Listings, or Product Listing Extensions, the Seller Ratings Extensions will not be shown.
• The Seller Ratings Extensions could punish those who aren’t registered for Google Product Search (or other Comparison Shopping Engines).
  • While Google Product Search is free, it does require a certain amount of maintenance to make sure your product feed is up to date.
  • Other CSE’s that provide Google with reviews (PriceGrabber, BizRate) aren’t cheap and may not be right for your business.

The Seller Rating Extension is certainly a very compelling new AdWords feature; perhaps even more compelling is that Google rolled it out automatically and with almost no notice. Whether or not you are eligible for ratings extensions they provide an always welcomed reminder as to how important customer service is, especially in the E-Commerce space.

SEER will always recommend that you test, test, test to find out what works for your business; Seller Ratings Extensions are no exception! So what do you think – are Seller Ratings Extensions a 5-star feature??

I have been interviewing a bunch of potential hopefuls and I have started thinking how lucky these college students are to have the chance to enter the internet marketing world fresh out of college. If I would have had the same opportunity, it would have saved me a few years of few years of ‘aimlessness’, so to speak, figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up.

After my first gig in the Health Insurance Industry, I took a job with the marketing team of a startup online dating site. The dating site never took off, but the experience gave me my first taste of internet marketing. At the dating site, the clouds parted, and I found my path towards a career in internet marketing.

If your struggling to figure out what you want to do when you grow up, below are 5 traits that if you possess may mean that internet marketing is a good fit for you.

1. Possess a Competitive Spirit: In the summer of 1992, when I was 11 years old, I wanted to be an Olympic Gymnast. The one problem was that I had no formal gymnastic training, but that did not stop me from practicing by doing flips over my couch. For Amanda my colleague at SEER, who is 5 years younger than me, it was the summer of 1996, when she too dreamt of Olympic gold. Ok, so it is not necessary to have had the Olympic gold dream, like Amanda and me, but you do need to have a competitive spirit and an internal drive to be the best. Both Paid Search and SEO is about beating your competitors to maximize web real estate on the coveted first page of Google.

2. Love Puzzles & Games: I know when I was a kid, my mom could not buy puzzles fast enough for me. Now I love a good game of Scrabble. Aaron another fellow Paid Search member enjoys a good game of poker. Games also tie into a competitive spirit, as I still hate to lose, but have matured a bit from throwing the cards in my brother’s face and leaving the table crying. Both SEO and PPC are big puzzles. For SEO, you are spending your time figuring out how to understand the Google Algorithm. PPC is a puzzle in itself. Try fitting a keyword, benefit, distinguishing feature and a call to action into an ad of just 95 characters.

3. Enjoy(ed) and Excel(ed) in Analytical Classes, such as Economics, Math or Science classes. Wil actually wanted to be economics teacher before he found his way into Internet Marketing. For Paid Search you can’t be afraid of numbers and have to be comfortable analyzing data. Sure, you need creativity to write ads and help wireframe landing pages, but we are data junkies and spend a great portion of our day determining statistical significance, analyzing trends and calculating ROI. For SEO sure you need creativity to come up with link bait ideas, but you have to enjoy analyzing a sites architecture, monitoring your sites traffic and monitoring your site’s conversions. We know colors and design have their place, but as a team we care more about calls to actions, usability and content with relevant keywords.

4. Love using Excel to figure out better ways to do things: This is similar to number 2. If you actually enjoy learning about pivot tables and neat new Excel formulas, then you will probably also enjoy a life as an internet marketer.

5. Enjoy being a lifelong student: The web is constantly changing. You have to enjoy continual learning because what works well today may not work well tomorrow. Everyone at SEER loves learning about the web and staying on top of industry trends and news. We are constantly sharing blogs and ideas. We even started a SEER Internet Marketing book club, so that we are always growing and learning together.

I hope this helps provide a good gut check to help you figure out if a career in Internet Marketing would be a good fit for you. To other experienced Internet Marketers out there, please add additional traits that you think are common among you and your colleagues.

Per Google’s Help Center, “Search Funnels are a set of new reports describing the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion.” Search Funnels are currently in beta and may not be available for your account (note: you need to have AdWords conversion tracking installed or Analytics linked to your account for Search Funnels to work). If they are enabled, you can find them by hovering over the Reporting tab and clicking on Conversions. On the left side, you should see a link to Search Funnels!

Now, what makes Search Funnels so special?? To this point, all of Google’s conversions were attributed to the last click before the conversion. However, there is a LOT that goes into any sales funnel; why would Google be any different? I’d be willing to bet a good percentage of your conversions don’t occur on the first click. Just like any other sales funnel, there is likely a discovery phase, research/evaluation phase and more before a searcher finally converts. With all buzzwords out of the way, let’s take a deeper dive into the reports that Google so kindly built for us.

I: Path Length report –

The Path Length report is a birds-eye view of the overall length of your Search Funnel in terms of impressions and clicks. Did you expect your customers to find what they want on the first search? The Path Length report will let you how many searches a customer conducts before completing a conversion.

II: Time Lag report -

Similar to the Path Length report, the Time Lag report shows how long it took your customers to convert. Do you have an expensive product that could affect an entire organization? Expect a long lag-time as a searcher is likely evaluating a number of different options. You could shorten up the lag time by offering a softer call to action (for example, a whitepaper download) instead of asking the customer to give away too much information at the outset. Do you offer a low-priced commodity product? Expect the conversion funnel to shorten up as a customer is likely just looking for convenience and a bargain.

The time lag report can be viewed from first impression (time since their first query) first click and last click.

III: Assisted Conversions report –

With the first two reports we’ve established there’s more to a conversion than meets the eye. The Assist Conversion report dives a bit deeper into the conversion funnel and provides us with the extremely important assist metric, helping us find the Steve Nash and Jason Kidd of the conversion funnel. Whenever a keyword is part of a conversion funnel but is not the last click before conversion, it is given an assist conversion (either click or impression based). Let’s say you have a site that sells baseball gear and a customer wants to buy a new bat. The customer proceeds through the following path:

Baseball bats (your ad shows, but they do not click)

Baseball bats (again, your ad shows and no click occurs)

Good baseball bats (click!)

Good baseball bats (another click!)

Louisville bats (your ad shows, but they do not click)

Louisville Slugger (click, purchase, $$$ for you)

The above path would give a click-assisted conversion to “Good Baseball Bats,” impression-assisted conversions to “Baseball Bats” and “Louisville Bats” and finally a last-click conversion to “Louisville Slugger.”

Last click conversions should match what you have in the AdWords interface and represents all conversions that came through your campaign, while assisted conversions will show you who everyone who helped out!. Google also provided us with a calculated field to show us which keywords helped out the most. In the example above, you may want to re-think deleting “baseball bats” because of a low ROI – odds are it has a very high assist-conversion ratio.

IV: Assist Clicks & Impressions report –

The Assist Clicks & Impressions report dives a bit deeper into our newly-beloved assist metric and shows us exactly how many clicks and impression it takes on each keyword to get the job done. It is important to note that in this report, the “assist” metric is not exclusive in this case meaning. In the previous baseball example, there were two clicks on “Good Baseball Bats” and two searches for “Baseball bats” in the conversion funnel – in this report they would receive two Assist Clicks and two Impression Clicks respectively.

V: First Click Analysis report –

This report is a fairly simple high-level view of conversions sorted by the first clicked campaign/ad group/keyword in a conversion funnel. Each time you click on a given element the report navigates to the next level on the hierarchy. If you click on a campaign, Google displays all the ad groups in that campaign. Same goes for a transition from ad groups to keywords. If you click on a specific keyword and get super granular, you’ll be taken to a report that shows a dashboard of all reports available for that particular keyword.

VI: Last Click Analysis –

See section V; replace all instances of “first” with “last.”

VII: Top Paths report –

Think your brand conversions are responsible for all your conversions? The Top Paths report will likely prove otherwise, showing every click or impression along the conversion funnel. Thanks to the other reports, we know all the keywords that had an influence on the report, but we haven’t yet had a chance to see what order they work in.

Our Google reps let us know a few things that may give you a bit of a ‘scare’ this report, so I may as well call them out now…

1: There will only be a few clear cut leading paths, followed by an extremely long tail.

2: There will be a ton of instances of (filtered path data) showing up in the impression-based reports. Just like the ever-frustrating “x other unique queries” label in Search Query reports, the (filtered path data) metric shows when Google simply doesn’t have enough information to populate the report.

As you can see from this novella-length post, there is a TON available in Google Search Funnels. I hope this brief introduction gave you a good starting point to explore! Oh, and sorry for all the sports references…

How do YOU plan on using search funnels to help your campaigns? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

At first I was really excited about Promoted Tweets and tried to think of which clients we have that could benefit from this. And then it hit me – does anyone actually use the search feature?

I began reading more about how the Promoted Tweets would only show on a search results page and will ultimately disappear if users do not interact with the Tweet.  Interesting concept- but will it work?

(Disclaimer: I don’t research Twitter for a living and I don’t know the stats of who does what when they are Tweeting away – so this is all just my opinion.)

I evaluated how real people actually use Twitter.com (Important to note this was a VERY small audience I evaluated in lieu of timing, mainly myself and a few close Tweeps). I’m 99% positive that in the past year or so that I have had a Twitter account, that I have never used the search future to find information, other than today, which was solely for the purpose of this blog. I have used it however when I want to mention someone I am following in my tweet and I forget what their @ name is. Plus – don’t most people update their Tweets from their phone and third party apps (I personally prefer the Twitter Gadget on my iGoogle-which doesn’t allow you to search)?

So I decided to do a little test and think like a consumer on Twitter. One company that is testing the Promoted Tweets is Starbucks and I know that today they are giving away free coffee to anyone that brings in a reusable mug (go green) for “Tax Day Freebies:”. I know this because I love coffee, I am a fan of them on Facebook and I follow them on Twitter (no judgments necessary).

My Theory:

The common Tweep/Twit/Twitterer/Tweeter/Micro-blogger does not use the Twitter search feature to search for products, etc. So as this “Promoted Tweets” is a good idea – I ultimately think it will fail to bring any actual value to the advertiser.

My Test- Starbucks:

I thought about terms that a consumer of Starbucks and Coffee in general would search for and entered these keywords in the Search bar on my Twitter.com page. Since today is free coffee day my focus is on those types of keywords

Search #1:

I went for the obvious “Starbucks” and discovered my first Promoted Tweet! Wahoo! Success.

Search #2:

My next search was for “Free Coffee.” No Promoted Tweet here- but plenty of free WOM advertising going on! Success? Maybe not for Starbucks – wouldn’t this be opportune time to promote their “Free Coffee” day?

Search #3:

Keyword: “Coffee.” Promoted Tweet- Success, kinda. Most “natural” Tweets were about people spilling their coffee or needing more coffee to get through the day- so Starbucks paying to show up here is a little silly, right?

Search #4”

Keyword: “Coffee Deals,” Promoted Tweet- Success. Again, Why not tailor the message to promote the “Free Coffee” Day?

My Conclusion: Out of the 4 terms I tested the only ones I believe people (if anyone would do a search like this on Twitter) would actually search for are “free coffee” and “coffee deals”- So, Starbucks gets a 50% for the day from me (I’ll ignore the fact that the Promoted Tweets showing failed to mention the “Free coffee”).

The Promoted Tweet thing may work or it may not- only time can tell. In my opinion- it’s a waste of advertising dollars in a space where most of the chatter about your brand is free (and hopefully positive), and if the people really want to know about what you have to say they are:

1. Already following you on Twitter or

2. They will find you in the trending topics along with Justin Bieber and what’s #nowplaying.

Again this is purely my opinion, so what do you think?

Has anyone tested this, got results and it has generated a positive ROI for the advertiser?

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!

1. Running Content and Search in the same campaign

Not separating out content into its own campaign is a rookie mistake. I recently saw this rookie mistake being made by a big name agency, on an account spending $60k/month. While it was an incredibly disturbing that an agency would make this mistake, the reason this mistake is made so often is that Google’s default is to run ads on both content and search. The first thing you do when setting up a new campaign is to turn content off and only run search. Content can work great to supplement search but it MUST be managed separately. Why? The intent of content is totally different. Someone reading an article about your industry vs. someone doing a search for what you sell online is completely different and thus, needs to be optimized separately. Also, without even realizing it you may be spending the majority of your budget on the content network. More on this topic can be found here:
Google Adword’s Content Network

2. Only Using Broad Match:

The problem with this approach is that oftentimes one broad match term could be eating up almost your entire budget. By using different match types effectively you can control spend and bidding much more effectively. Below is a great post by PPC hero on how to use the different match types together.

Match Types in Google Adwords

3. Poor Use of Negatives:
Even more disturbing is that many of these accounts with only broad match also are not using negative keywords as effectively as possible. Using Search Query reports on a regular basis to find the unrelated terms you are being matched to, is imperative to eliminate inefficient spend. Details about running these reports can be found at the link below:

Google Search Query Report

Time and time again, I also see campaigns set with Negative terms that prohibit terms that are actually being bidded on from appearing. Take advantage of Google’s Negative Exact and Negative Phrase Option to avoid this common mistake.

4. Campaign Settings Set to All Devices:
Like number 1, new campaigns are automatically set to target all devices, which now include mobile devices. I always opt out of serving ads on mobile devices in the same campaign as computers. Serving ads on mobile devices can be a great way to reach certain audiences, especially when a call is the desired action, but you would want to set up a campaign to target this separately as bids, ad copy and landing pages need to be optimized separately for this medium.

5. Poor Budgeting by Campaigns:
Oftentimes, I see accounts set up that have their budgets set so their ads have very poor visibility throughout the day. While budgets are sometimes necessary for a business, there are so many ways to maximize how you spend your budget. Points 1-4 will actually help your budget spread further. Other tactics include but are not limited to:

a. Separating out your high CPC or top spending keywords in their own campaign so that they do not eat up your entire budget from more tail targeted keywords in the same campaign

b.Take advantage of Day Parting. Scour your Google Analytics for the day of week and time of day that do not convert cost effectively, and use Google’s advanced day parting capabilities to adjust your bids accordingly.

6. Targeting Multiple Countries in One Campaign:
You want to be able optimize each country independently as each market is different. This ties into point 5. What if it turns out that the UK is an extremely cost effective area to drive conversions, but based on the way you have your day parting or budgeting set up, you have no visibility in the UK during the UK business hours? You want to be able control for different time zones, local dialects and competitors independently for each country.

7. Landing Pages that are Not Optimized for PPC Traffic:
Please do not send all of your traffic across all ad groups to a flash home page with no call to action. Your keywords should tie to your ads, which tie to your landing page. More on this topic can be found in the post written by my colleague JoAnne, linked below:

5 Must Read Articles on Landing Page Best Practices

8. Ad Groups that are Not Broken out by Theme:
Break up your ad groups into tightly refined groups so that you can use keywords directly in your ad copy. Not only will your ads be more relevant to your audience, and increase your CTR, but also this will help your Quality Score, which in turn will lower your CPC’s for the same position.

Below is a great link to how Quality Score, Ad Position and CPC are all related and why point 8 is so important when managing a paid search account.

Quality Score Ad Position and CPC What and How They All Connected Together

9. No Ad Copy Testing:

Building on the importance of Quality Score, make sure you are always testing and tweaking ad copy to increase you CTR, which in turn helps your Quality Score. You should pay attention to each ad variations conversion rate as well. More on how SEER evaluates and tests ad copy is included in this post, written by colleague Crystal:

5 Simple Steps for PPC Ad Testing Strategy

10. For e-commerce Sites, Not Optimizing to Revenue:

When a completed purchase is your target conversion goal, it is imperative that revenue tracking is installed. Doing this requires a dynamic variable (the order subtotal value) in place of the static variable provided by Google. If you’re unfamiliar with revenue tracking, Google has a great Video Tutorial explaining the process step by step. Without having revenue tracking installed properly, you are unable to measure the true profitability of a PPC project. But it doesn’t end with revenue tracking; product margins are just as important when optimizing an ecommerce account. Google uses a metric called ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), which is a simplified version of ROI. The main problem with optimizing around ROAS is that product cost is not considered. Quite often, even a campaign with a seemingly healthy ROAS (let’s say 600%) may be generating a net loss for the client. For a more in depth explanation of the difference between optimizing around ROAS and ROI, check out Joanne’s on the SEER blog:

My Roas is Over 600% and I’m Losing Money

Have any additional mistakes you see over and over again you would like to add to this list? If so, post your comment below!

Unlike most fraudulent clicks that will often cause a spike in your CPA as they do not result in conversions, what made this spike unique is that conversions also spiked over this same period.

Below is the graph of Clicks vs. Conversions:

Not much had changed in the account and there was no noteworthy press to speak of to explain this spike. My gut told me that the over 200% spike in clicks and the nearly 400% spike in conversions was unfortunately too good to be true.

I turned to Google Analytics to investigate my suspicion and evaluated the following:

• Were they from the same IP address?
• Were they from the same network?
• Were they from the same location?

The answer to all these questions was no.

Still not satisfied that these leads were legitimate, I reached out to my client to see if the leads looked real in their database. On the surface they actually did. The email addresses were different and the forms were filled out. It is important to note that the conversion in this case is a completed form. For this client the lead to sale turnaround time is about 2 weeks, so I told my client to let me know what the final lead to sale conversion rate was and how it compared to the website’s rate on average.

Despite the leads looking legitimate on the surface, I still felt this spike was unrealistic and I did not want to wait two weeks before we found out that all these leads were not legitimate sales prospects. I turned to Yahoo new placement tool, which was released in September 2009, to see if it was a particular search partner that was responsible for the spike.

I found my culprit, the domain, http://www.trafficz.com/. This one placement month over month increased over 2000% (that final 0 is not a typo), not two hundred, but two thousand percent!

Moreover, all the conversions were attributed to one keyword on standard match. I immediately excluded this placement from my account, as this one word in that one placement caused the entire spike.

Two weeks have gone by and it turns out my suspicions about the leads driven by Traffickz were confirmed. Not one of the leads actually resulted in a final sale. The typical conversion rate for this site in a 2 week period is MUCH GREATER than 0%. (I am not providing the actual conversion rate here to protect the confidentiality of my client)

I believe the forms were filled out were by a computer program with fake people’s information. What makes this type of fraud so hard to detect is that program made the leads look like they were coming from different IP addresses and geographic locations. This was not your ever day click spammer. These guys were sophisticated and I can see why Yahoo’s click fraud protection system did not catch these spammers automatically.

I have reported this click fraud to Yahoo and am still waiting for an answer. I am going to push hard for a credit on this one, as we are talking thousands of dollars of SPAMMY traffic. I am confident that the people at Yahoo will see this traffic for what it is, aka fraud, and provide the account with a credit.

This experience will not force me to abandon Yahoo all together, and I am not suggesting you do either. Yahoo comprises about 17% of all traffic and is a very important supplement to Google Traffic. Yet, for clients with limited budgets I may look to Bing before Yahoo when expanding. I would tell the people at Yahoo that they should choose their search partners more wisely for their long term success.

Though you should not completely write off Yahoo, I suggest the following to protect your accounts against this new form of click fraud keep the following in mind:

• Make sure you or your agency monitors weekly if not daily for any unusual spikes in traffic for each engine
• Click spammers are getting smarter making click fraud harder to detect using the usual measures such as IP address, location, bounce rate or conversion rate.
• Click Fraud does not only hurt your numbers at times by causing spikes in your CPA, but can also deceivingly help your numbers by increasing conversions.
• If something seems way too good to be true, it probably is.
• Fight for credits back to your account for fraudulent traffic.
• Make Yahoo’s Ad Delivery Report part of your optimization process and look for suspicious search partners to exclude

The first tool to be examined in this process is SemRush.

SemRush – The Good

The best part about SemRush is the amount of data that is stored in the database. SemRush is “Currently indexing top 20 results on 30 million keywords across more than 13 million domains.” That is a TON of data. SemRush also boasts several tools including:

• Google Keywords – Shows keywords that rank for the current domain.
• Adwords Keywords – Shows any Adwords ads that land on the current domain.
• Competitors in Google – Shows the domains that share keywords with the current domain.
• Competitors in Adwords – Shows the domains that have Adwords ads running for the same keywords on the current domain.
• Adwords Ads Texts – Shows a summary of all Adwords ads found landing on the current domain.
• Potential Ad Buyers – Shows you can sites that buy AdWords on your keywords.
• Potential Ad Sellers – Shows you sites with visitors that are the same with visitors from your AdWords campaign.

Full descriptions of these tools can be found at: SemRush

So what makes all of these tools and this data useful for SEO and SEM campaigns? I will highlight some of the better uses of the first four of these tools.

The Google Keywords reports allow you to find a significant portion of the keywords that you rank in the top 20 for (this portion will vary depending on how mainstream the site is) along with several metrics describing the keyword. Perhaps the simplest use of this tool is to look at the combination of position and search volume. If there is a keyword with a high search volume ranked just off of the first page, in position 11 or 12 perhaps, if you specifically target that keyword you may be able to push it to the first page with minimal effort. Competitors in Google is best used for keyword discovery and to keep an eye on how much traffic your competitors are getting on shared keywords.

The Adwords Keywords report is most useful when examining a competitor. If you are managing Adwords for a domain, you will have access to that accounts Adwords information. Therefore the best use of this tool is to enter a competitor’s domain to examine their Adwords strategy. By entering a competitor’s domain you will be able to see a majority of keywords they are bidding on along with several metrics, including estimating volume and cpc. Using this information it should be possible to find quality keywords to add to your campaign.

Competitors in Adwords is best used to find sites that share a significant number of keywords with your domains and give you a brief overview of how they are doing compared to your campaigns. If you discover competitors using this tool, and then use the Adwords Keywords report you have a very powerful combination.

The most powerful aspect of this tool is the ability to export data, specifically via the API. Considering the amount of data stored in SemRush’s database, examining the data manually is far too time consuming. By allowing data to be exported, you may apply rules or filters to the data, and only examine the results that meet the criteria you are looking for.

SemRush – The Bad

The best part about SemRush is the amount of data that can be searched; however the size of the database is also its Achilles heel. Data displayed in reports can be incorrect or outdated. This may include Ads being displayed in results that don’t exist, or incorrect rankings in keyword reports etc. Let’s take a minute to look at why the size of SemRush’s database is the cause of this problem.

SemRush tracks over 30 million keywords, and several statistics associated with them. For each keyword at least several queries must be made.

• The Google Search Engine
• The Adwords Traffic Estimator
• The Google Keyword Tool

This results in millions upon millions of queries that must be made to Google. All of the while SemRush must make these queries in such a way to not incur any penalties or be throttled. As a result gathering this data takes a significant amount of time. The three most recent US database updates have been on June 9th, August 3rd, and September 29th, which means the database is
currently being updated roughly every eight weeks.

While SEO campaigns often require several months to generate results SEM campaigns do not. Many SEM campaigns are seasonal; react quickly to changes in the marketplace; or are otherwise changing frequently. While it is beneficial to have access to competitor’s ads, you cannot run an Adwords campaign using just a snapshot of the marketplace every eight weeks.

Another major concern about SemRush is that it only tracks the first 20 results per keyword. There could be many instances where it would be useful to know keywords beyond simply the first 20 results. Also, SemRush only tracks the ranking for one search engine, Google. While Google is the most dominant search engine with approximately 65% of the market share all other major search engines are ignored. If there were ever a large shift in market shares, SemRush may not be a good indication of how terms are ranking.

SemRush – The Ugly

The dangerous part of SemRush however, is all of that information does not magically appear in the database upon the update! It has to be gathered over the eight weeks prior. The problem is you do not have any way of knowing at what time during the process the keyword you are examining was added to the database. Here is an example (this is an extreme example to illustrate what COULD happen not what is most likely):

On September 29th after the database was updated you checked a keyword, and it says you are ranked #1 for that keyword. You do a search for the keyword and to your surprise; you aren’t even on the first page! How did this happen? Unknown to you, the keyword you are checking was the very first of the 30 million keywords to be updated, and that query was run on August 4th. Since then your ranking tanked and you were no longer on the first page.

If you do not check your keywords and this happened it would take until the next update of the database for you to be alerted to this problem.

While this is an extreme example to illustrate the danger, it’s important to understand that when the database is updated, to some extent all of the data is old. It could be only a day old, or it could be significantly older than that, though no older than the last database update.

Takeaways

SemRush has a massive collection of data, and a number of very useful tools to go along with it. It is great when used to get an idea of the marketplace, find out information about competitors, and to find new keywords. However due to the size of the database, and therefore the infrequent updates and potentially inaccurate information displayed, it is not the best tool for tracking any of your domains. Additionally in order to make best use of the data, some methodology must be created to avoid manually sorting through the huge amounts of information.

***After contacting SemRush’s support team they indicated they try to update their database each month. According to their news feed I haven’t seen any updates in less than eight weeks, but if they do start to update the database once a month the impact of the negative issues discussed will be reduced.

***If you have any other favorite uses of SemRush, or disagree with any aspects of the post, please feel free to comment!

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)

My colleague Joanne, recently wrote a blog on helping e-commerce clients determine if they are profitable when they include SEER’s fees. She uses her calculator and the method she describes in her blog for the e-commerce clients she manages and in doing so she helps our client sleep better at night because they know even with SEER’s fees and their variable costs she is able to achieve increasing profitability.

The SEER team has recently enhanced this calculator to help both lead generation clients and e commerce clients determine profitability when all cost and fees are taken into consideration. The excel file is linked here, but will eventually be made into a widget on the SEER site.

The goal of this calculator is to help clients and potential clients determine with all fees included whether or not their paid search campaign is returning a profit.

To use this calculator you need the following information:

1. Monthly Budget
2. Set Up Fee (if applicable)
3. Commission or Flat Fee paid to the Agency
4. The average CPC for the account
5. The Lead to Conversion rate (leads/clicks)
6. Sales to Lead Ratio – for e commerce clients this will be 100%. For lead generation clients knowing this ratio is essential for evaluating the profitability of the account
7. Average Order Value
8. Variable Cost or Profit Margin

All other fields can be calculated with this given information.

1. Profit/Sale = Average Order Value – Average Variable Cost
2. Clicks = Total Budget/ CPC
3. Leads = Leads to Conversion Rate * Clicks
4. Sales = Sales to Lead Ratio * Leads
5. Revenue = Sales * Profit per Sale
6. Monthly Fees to Agency = Flat Fee or Commission + “Setup Fee/12”
7. Total Cost = Monthly Budget + Cost to Agency + Variable Cost
8. Profit = Revenue(E) – Total Cost(G)

Let’s look at how this calculator can be used, with the following assumptions held constant.

1. Sales to Lead ratio = 25%,
2. Average order value = $3,500
3. Profit margin = 25% or $2625

Scenario 1: No Agency

Monthly Budget = 5K,
Set Up Fee = 0
Agency Fee = 0
Avg. CPC = $5
Lead Conv. Rate = 3%

Plugging in these assumptions into the calculator, as seen below the client is doing ok and able to generate $1,562 in profit a month on his own without an agency.

Scenario 2 No Change in Performance with Agency

Monthly Budget = 5K,
Set Up Fee = $6,000
Agency Fee = $2,000 Flat fee
Avg. CPC = $5
Lead Conv. Rate = 3%

In the example below you can see that total profit for the month fell from $1,562 to $63 by adding agency fees with no improvement in performance. The conclusion from this example is that an agency better increase performance to justify their fees.

But as the following examples will demonstrate, if you were to choose a strong agency that can increase performance metrics, the results will improve your profitability.

Scenario 3: Agency with Improvement in Conversion Rate

Monthly Budget = 5K,
Avg. CPC = $5
Lead Conv. Rate from 3% to 5%
Agency Fees = 1k Flat fee
Set Up Fee = 6K

This example illustrates how improving the lead to conversion ratio from 3% to 5% can change the profitability.

How can an agency increase conversion rate? At the onset, they will help you re-organize the account and will do extensive keyword research to identify keywords that have the potential to convert. They will then make sure that they organize these keywords into tightly themed groups, with ad copy that speaks to the keywords that you are targeting. They will also work with you to find the best pages to land these clicks on or recommend that landing pages be developed to target these keywords directly and ensure their ad copy includes any offers or benefits emphasized on the landing page.

Also, a strong agency will watch your account like a hawk and identify any keywords that have very low conversion rates using Google tracking or high bounce rates using Google Analytics. They may lower bids on these terms, or suggest a new landing page, or even eliminate these terms so more of your budget is available for the higher converting terms. Additionally, they will use Search Query reports to eliminate irrelevant terms you are being matched to by adding negatives to your account. Combined, this continual tweaking should influence your conversion rate in a positive way. They may also suggest landing page improvements and test these changes using the website optimizer to help develop the page that has the highest overall conversion rate.

These steps will not only impact your conversion rate, but may also increase your Quality Score, which in turn will influence the CPC you will have to pay for any given position. In other words, with a better quality score you may be paying less than your competitor for a better position. The impacts of quality score are not factored into the calculator example below, but is just another reason why not using an agency may be costing you money.

Plugging in the increase in conversion rate into the PPC calculator, illustrates how increasing your conversion rate, which results in more leads, which results in more PROFITABLE sales, may take your monthly profitability from $1,563 in our original non agency scenario to $4,438 with fees included

Scenario 4: Agency w/ Improvement in Conversion Rate and Account Expansion

Monthly Budget from 5k to10K,
Avg. CPC = $5
Lead Conv. Rate = 5%
Agency Fees = 1k Flat Fee
Set Up Fee = 6K

Now, in our final scenario your agency not only helps you increase your conversion rate but they also help you expand your campaign which pushes your Monthly Budget to 10K. Again is this realistic? The answer again, is yes VERY. An agency can help you expand into engines you were not using like Yahoo and MSN. This is a no brainer for many clients because if every lead is profitable to you, than the more leads the more profit, so why not expand what you know works in Google into Yahoo and MSN. Additionally, a strong agency should have a plan and set goals on how they plan to profitably expand your account. They should look tirelessly for new keyword ideas, using Google Analytics for what types of terms are working organically. Additionally, they should look at Search Query Reports on a regular basis to find additional terms that you are being matched to with broad matches, which may spur on new keyword recommendations. An agency will help you expand profitably because they will be monitoring the account daily and providing reports on a weekly or bi weekly schedule, which will help them catch quickly what is not working.

Plugging the increase in budget into the PPC calculator, with all other factors remaining constant, illustrates how increasing your budget, which results in more clicks, which results in more leads, which results in more PROFITABLE sales could take your monthly profitability from $1,563 in our original non agency scenario to $10,375, fees included!

The next question you may ask, is now that I know all this, why should I use an agency? This question could be its own blog and there has been a lot written on this topic. Below are some posts that help answer this question.

1. Why You Need to Outsource
2. Search Engine Watch Forum – Outsource PPC
3. Why Outsource your PPC Advertising

Now, even if you choose the right agency these performance enhancements cannot be expected over night. Typically it takes about three months of tweaking and testing for an agency to achieve the efficiencies that were described in this post. Moreover, not every client is the same, so expanding the account without your CPA increasing dramatically may not be possible in your industry. However, the PPC calculator helps you see what type of improvements an agency needs to make to cover their fees. As seen in the scenarios explained, in many instances you cannot afford not to test working with an agency. Not only will you save time by not having to manage the account yourself, but you may also be missing out on huge profits that a seasoned professional can help you achieve.