If you are reading this you are probably a digital marketer, and that too one in the Search space. Have you made any resolutions for your PPC campaigns yet? Have you committed to doing something different from what you did last year?

At Position² we have compiled a list of 7 PPC resolutions to abide by this year. We strongly believe that you will benefit from this information, a compilation of our focus areas, driven by our experiences, learning, strategies and best practices.

Wishing you the best for a fantastic and a profitable 2012! Let’s get started with the PPC’s 7 key Areas of Focus in 2012.

Get Critiqued:

Kick start 2012 with a audit of your PPC campaigns. Identify if your campaigns are hitting target metrics, measure your ROI – is it what you or your clients expected, study the pitfalls and evaluate things you have not done in a while (may be testing or adding negatives). Identify opportunities right from keywords to ads to landing pages.

PPC accounts can be audited on a variety of parameters. At Position² we use a 40 point benchmark checklist that is built on industry and Position² best practices. Our in-house experts audit across Campaign Structures, Competition, Keywords, Bid Management and Ads to name a few. At the end of the audit your campaigns receives a Best Practices Benchmark Score that tells you how effective your campaigns are.

Cut that Fat:

Evaluate your keywords thoroughly. Identify “the budget hogs”, those that eat-up your budget but do not convert or convert at a high cost per acquisition. Weed them out. Analyze your search query reports and think wisely about keywords that do not make sense for your business- add them as negatives. Dump keywords you should not be bidding on to start with.

Search space will likely get expensive by the day, so focus on common misspellings and long tail keywords for efficiency. Put yourself in the searchers shoes. What would they think of when they need your product or a service? Do they search in short phrases or long or do they search in questions?

This is not limited to just search, target content as well. Look at placement reports, find sites that are working for you and those that are not. Add negative sites. Select sites manually if that is what if required.

Be Relentless:

Conduct tests regularly in 2012 and learn from both success and failure. The flexibility to conduct tests frequently is the beauty of PPC. Testing is one sure way to improve your campaign performance. Start testing keyword positions, ads and landing pages. Test keywords in different match types.

Tests can be as simple as bumping your keywords to top positions for a day or longer and observing the impact or trying new ad messaging (text and images). Eventually you want to get to more detailed tests such as launching large MVTs or SEO VS. PPC testing for example.

Make Friends:

With SEO and Analytics that is. Do not forget, valuable learnings can be drawn from anywhere. So keep evaluating SEO and Analytics performance and reports regularly – at least once a month in our opinion.

You can get significant learnings from SEO and Analytics. For example organic headlines, title tags etc. can be tested in PPC. PPC’s quick customizability and turnaround time could benefit SEO, i.e. if you identify a winner from text ads testing, you could test that message on the site. You can also test landing pages with different designs, layout and content by drawing learnings from PPC and SEO.

It goes without saying that everything you do in digital should be measured and fed right into a robust analytics platform. Study the user behavior, do they stay on your pages once there, if so for how long, where do they go from landing pages, what is the bounce rate, time spent, depth etc.. All this information will help you optimize your PPC campaigns down to a keyword level. There are many benefits of capturing keyword level data within analytics tools, so go ahead and do that.

Improve Your Communication:

Marketing is all about communication. Paid search is no different. In PPC you have a governing principle of Quality Score (QS) that plays a major role in your visibility or lack thereof, therefore the overall performance.

Regularly monitor your QS this year. Analyze why the QS is low or high. Develop appropriate communication strategies to counter low QS. Always look for relevancy across your keywords, ads and landing pages. Modify messaging in your ads and the content on the destination pages to increase relevancy. The higher the relevancy, the higher the QS and better the performance- which means happy customers and a happy you in 2012!

Try Something New:

Go beyond regular Adowrds or MSN. Try Youtube, Linkedin, Facebook, and social and PPC integration with features like Google+ Project. Use Click-to-Call Extension, Communication Extensions and Social Extensions. All these could help you reach targeted audience and some of these, depending on your business, could be more useful than expected. Test these new features and always watch out for latest industry developments and case studies to learn what worked. Be sure to track and measure!

Train your Teams:

All of the above that you plan to accomplish this year is possible only if you have disciplined, subject matter expert, motivated and dedicated PPC professionals. So, make sure you train your employees and team members effectively. Take time out for formal education, set-up casual sessions and most importantly ensure they get enough practical exposure to PPC. If you are a single man/woman team, motivate yourself to learn. Teach yourself and learn from others.

In the spirit of learning and teaching, here are a few great sources to follow: ClickZ, SearchEngineLand, Adwords Blog, Hubspot and Sempo.

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Do you Think Bid Management is Simple? Think Again…

On the surface PPC bid management seems to be about reducing bids for keywords that do not hit your targets and increasing bids for those that do. The reality though is far more complex.

It is quite possible that the fundamental objective of your PPC (Pay per Click) campaigns is to drive the most relevant traffic to your site. It is also quite likely that you want these searchers to take certain actions on your site that add value to your marketing and sales efforts. These actions or conversions can be a sale/purchase, a whitepaper download, a form fill etc…

Needless to say each of these actions has a different level of importance to your business; therefore investing the same amount of your budget to acquire all these different conversions does not make sense. Meaning, having the same cost per conversion/cost per acquisition for all keywords that drive these conversions does not make business sense. Accordingly, the bid management for such keywords cannot be governed by a blanket bidding strategy.

As you develop your bidding strategy it is important to keep in mind that search engines have a major role to play in the bid price you pay and in turn your keyword ranking. Let’s take Google for example. Today Google determines the actual cost of your keywords with a series of complex calculations including Quality Score, Cost per Click (CPC), relevancy of your landing pages etc. only further making the bid price assignment more complex.

Combine this complexity with the sheer volume of keywords you need to manage. How confident are you of the CPCs you picked for your keywords? How well positioned are you to manage your keywords in today’s complex and dynamic search space? Attempting to even calculate an accurate keyword bid price manually can be a daunting task. But a sophisticated automated way of managing bids can help maximize your time as well as your marketing ROI.

Position²’s AutoBid Engine™

At Position2 we have developed a sophisticated AutoBid Engine™ to dramatically improve performance across our clientele. The AutoBid Engine™ is designed to accurately manage bids for individual keywords to achieve your ROI objectives. This is virtually impossible on manual and rule based bid management systems.

Reasons why you should consider Position²’s AutoBid Engine™:

• This proprietary tool is designed on a prediction model, one that can, based on your historic performance, forecast and recommend optimal bid prices down to an individual keyword level.
• Our technology is especially useful when your campaigns have multiple conversions, each of whose importance is different for your business. Using this tool you can custom define the weight for each conversion and let the system optimize your campaigns.
• The advanced algorithms emulate the search engine bid environment on a real-time basis and assess if your campaigns are performing at the optimal potential. Appropriate decisions are made based on the findings and your goals.
• The automated platform also allows campaign managers to expand keywords exponentially. It helps discover keywords fast and efficiently.

Your gains from the AutoBid Engine™:

• A customized tool for your business/industry to maximize results on your marketing investments per your ROI requirements.
• Increase in market share and profitability by predictably estimating and scaling up paid search campaigns to adapt to your marketing goals.
• Save time in managing complex campaigns with hassle-free integration of bidding and reporting engines.

Conclusion

Complexity with the search engine algorithms is here to stay and so is the uncertainty with users’ actions on your site, i.e. uncertainty about most of your keywords performance. A marketer who has found the right way to work with these forces is more likely to be successful in his/her PPC efforts compared to those who make decisions based on short term and on inadequate or unclear keyword data.

Your employees can be expected to make best decisions with the experience and knowledge they have. But to best utilize their expertise you need the right tools. Having Position²’s AutoBid Engine™ on your side means just that. With its unique algorithm it is designed to cater to every unique need of your business and to help you maximize returns from your PPC campaigns.

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Google rolled out the “Instant” update last week. Needless to say, it has generated lot of interest in the search marketing community, and has both marketers and practitioners coming forth with their analysis and assessment on the impact it will have. The team at Position² has been following developments and is pleased to present views as well as a checklist of a few action items. These are based on interactions with experts at Google, and internal tests. Watch out for more updates in the days to come – Position² Team

For those who came in late…

Google Instant was released by the search engine giant to enable “Faster Searches, Smarter Predictions and Instant Results”, in their words. The entire SEO community wasted no time in going into a huddle to discuss the possible pros and cons, and how they’d have to change their methodologies. Online discussion boards are raging with opinions that run from “Now that’s useful, why didn’t they think of it before?” to “I don’t want Google to put words in my mouth!”.

We saw this coming with the introduction of Google Suggest, which automatically suggests popular searches as you’re typing in your query. Users who were logged in to Google would often see several lines of personalized searches right below the search box, and clicking on any one of them would give you a results page populated with SERPs for the keywords chosen.

What Google Instant does is take the process to its logical conclusion and display actual search results. The rationale being that it takes several seconds to type in a query, but only fractions of a second to read the suggestions that show up, thereby speeding up every search. With Instant, every suggestion that comes up for 3 seconds or more (while typing pauses) is counted as an “impression” though not a click-through or visit.

Though actual search results for those who type in their query and hit “Search” still haven’t changed with Google Instant, some bloggers are bemoaning the fact that long-tail results may not even register or be included, due to popular results crowding them out, along with other changes in the algorithms used to present search results. Others talk of having to rejigger their strategies to give more importance to keyword selection and organic results.

Impact on PPC Campaigns

PPC is an area where we want to keep a close tab on performance and ROI. Naturally, this update raised a lot of concerns. These included questions like, “will we see a sudden jump in impressions?” “Will the lower CTR start affecting the quality score, is there an impact on match types and how we use them?” “Will using generic head terms in a phrase result in a deluge of unwanted clicks?” and so on. We started by posing a few of these questions to the experts at Google

How will my impression volume change?
We’re not able to determine the degree to which you impressions will change. For some advertisers, the number of impressions might increase or decrease.

• How would match types work now?
  Google Instant is a user interface innovation. It simply pre-populates search results based on our best prediction of what the user is looking for. Therefore, match types will not be affected.
• How will it impact my Quality Score?
  This does not change the way we determine the relevance or quality of your ads. As always, we look at yours ad’s performance relative to that of other ads’ for the same query, position, and UI treatment (including whether or not an ad was served using the new Google Instant interface).
• What will happen to my CTR?
  We expect performance metrics to fluctuate as a result of Instant and we encourage you to monitor post-launch metrics and adjust accordingly.
• If my CTR goes down, then my performance will go down and my ad won’t rank well. How do I fix this?
  In general, all advertisers will be affected equally by Google Instant. Therefore, we don’t anticipate any changes in relative advertiser performance.
• Will this impact my ad rank?
  No. This will not impact your ad rank.

In addition to the above, here’s a link to Google AdWords Help Center.

Based on the above, and a few intense sessions of brainstorming, we came up with this “WIP checklist”.

The PPC Google Instant Checklist

1. Monitor account for unnatural spikes/dips in impressions, CPC, CTR and Quality Score.
   
   E.g. If there is a significant increase in impressions for a particular keyword the follow up action would typically involve:

   • Look at match type.
   • Simulate a search, see what triggered the increase. Most likely it will be a very generic head term. In case it’s a phrase or broad match – moving to exact will be a good solution. Or in cases possible – adding negative terms can help.

   E.g. if the keyword is “email marketing”, the increase in impressions can be attributed to “email” which has high search volumes. In this case one cannot add “email” as a negative term, the best option is to move it to phrase or exact.
   
   If the keyword is “web security”, the increase in impression could be due to ads being shown when a user types “web”. Here again, going exact or phrase is the solution.

2. Since Google Instant is sort of an extension of Google Suggest, use Google Suggest to expand keywords and also add negative keywords – where relevant and possible. Here is a good source to get some tips on this.
3. Importance of keyword in the ad copy. With ads being shown and refreshed in a span of 3 seconds (that’s the minimum duration for it to be counted as an impression), text in bold will register faster in the user’s eye.
4. Death of the long tail? With Google putting key phrases into the searchers mind, how many users will type in long tail key phrases? Chances are they will spot something that someone else has already typed.

Impact on SEO Campaigns

From an SEO perspective, one of the biggest impact is going to be on what key phrases users are lead to by the Google Instant prompt.

For e.g., if I initiate a search for “debt consolidation”, and after I type in “debt” – if Google suggests “debt elimination”, the likelihood of the latter being clicked on is higher. So when identifying the key phrases to target – Google Trends & Suggest results play an important role.

The SEO Google Instant Checklist

1. Relook at target keywords based on Google Suggest.
2. It will be all the more important to focus on keywords that have higher search volumes. Since suggest is based on this. This will not have a big impact as search volumes do play a role in how we select keywords.
3. Top 10, may need to be replaced with Top 5. With quick refreshes of pages as a user types the query, do not expect the user’s eye to go beyond the top 5 results pages

To conclude, we do expect Google Instant to have an impact, but how significant the impact will be, remains to be seen. Google Instant has already changed the way the team at Position2 uses search. For most average users, what remains to be seen is how long the novelty factor captures attention, or if a majority of people after some time get tired and just turn it off. The search marketer, for now, needs to play a wait and watch game.

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A large number of websites have a chat feature to interact with their visitors. This allows them to

   - Offer real time assistance and advice

   - Promote a service/product to the visitor

Some chat applications offer integration with web analytics tools. The Google Analytics blog gives an example of such a tool here.

We tracked some chat conversations for a client using Google Analytics and analyzed the data obtained. Here is what we found.

Visitors to a site (xyz.com) can discuss their technical problems by chatting online with a support executive. The goal of this chat application is to solve technical queries as well as persuade the visitor to sign up for an annual service package.

Why is tracking important?: We recommended tracking ‘chats’ to analyze

1. Paid/Organic keywords resulting in chat
2. Locations from where people initiate conversations
3. Contributions of chat to conversions (sign ups)

Implementation: Clicking on a chat button on the website opened a new window, on a third party domain. This domain did not allow placing the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) thereby ruling out cross domain tracking.

We recommended putting virtual pageview code linked to the ‘on click’ event of the “Chat Now” button. “Virtual pageview” was suggested instead of “event tracking” as we wanted to carry out a funnel analysis on the conversations.

Analysis: A funnel was set up in Google Analytics which tracked clicks on the chat button – from initiating a chat conversation to signing up for the annual service package. A majority of the conversations originated from a particular segment of the visitors, for which this analysis was done.

On analyzing this funnel we realized that the first step itself was a bottleneck in this funnel as only 9% of visitors proceeded to the next step (Registration Page) after the chat session. (First two steps Shown in Fig 1)


Fig 1: Funnel Report – Pre Analysis

A high drop rate could also indicate a technical issue with the chat application like,

1. Long loading time.
2. Long response times while chatting due to issues with the chat server.

Both the possibilities were evaluated and discarded after conducting several dummy chats from our side.

We investigated this matter and it was concluded that an inefficient sales process at the client’s end (during the chat) was causing the visitor drop off.

We recommended better sales training to the online support staff so that chat visitors could be converted at a better rate. Here are some of the inputs shared with the client:

• Asking for a phone number does ensure that the visitor initiating the chat is genuine, but this information should be asked only after a certain level of trust has been built during the chat session. The visitor needs to be assured of company credentials, only then he/she will be comfortable in providing their phone number. Building trust with a visitor could be a time consuming process.
• Analyze the chat scripts of all successful sales and then build a “model script” based on that.
• Identify the best chat representative (in terms of conversions) for managing shifts.

Results: Here is the funnel report after implementing our suggestions. (The duration of the funnel is same as Fig 1)


Fig 2: Funnel Report – Post Analysis

The results are tabulated below:

Supporting results

The average time spent on chat increased by 30% after implementing our suggestions. It indicates a better engagement with visitors (as building trust takes time).

The above experiment demonstrates the use of web analytics for finding and fixing issues in the chat conversion process. Here the issue is not related to website design or usability but can be addressed using insights from web analytics.

The analysis helped the client to increase their ROI. We look forward to sharing similar experiments in the future.

Contributed by Ravi Shukla, Analytics Team

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What does a customer get, of a Landing Page? He/she clicks the ads to come into the Landing Page (LP) to get what they want or what they’re looking for. So as advertisers, it’s our duty to keep them interested in our LPs.

What this Landing Page is all about?

In online advertising a lead capture page (a landing page) is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on a PPC ad. The page will display content which is an extension of the PPC ad. The landing page can be customized in PPC campaigns to measure the effectiveness of different ads.

Let’s see few interesting optimization points that’s required in any landing page to keep the customer interested & add value to their visit.

Clean & clear headline: Crisp is how the landing page headlines should be. Language used should be exact. This way you keep your visitor oriented and engaged.

Straight forward Call to Action: Tell the visitors what they need to do. Use buttons or well-linked text or you can use both. We can use a minimum of 2 call to action in a short landing page while 3-5 in a long LP (usually long LP is not preferred, but if there’s no way out because of the number of products, need to use them).

Emphasize benefits: Why will someone care about your company/product/service until it benefits him/her. The benefits are to be brought out in the content. This will help the visitor to quickly act accordingly.

Persuasive message: The message conveyed has to be persuasive. The features, products/services & the benefits can always be put forward in an urge manner which helps the visitor to make a decision.

Tight copy: Too much of content is always boring for someone who needs info quickly. Lack of clutter, clear & specific detailed content will help any visitor clicking the ad. Readers will read long landing page copy as long as you keep building a strong, motivating case for him/her to act. However, remember 2 things which are critical with respect to landing page copy.

However, remember 2 things which are critical with respect to copy on landing page:

• Longer copy helps when you’re looking to close a sale
• Shorter copy helps for subscription sign-up or free trial or download whitepaper (especially anything which doesn’t require money)

Mention offers clearly: Keep your body copy in line with the offer. There has to be a logical progression from your headline to the landing page offers.

Highlight key info in bulleted points: Most of the viewers usually browse through & not read the content. Information is needed quickly. Make sure that they get everything required without having them to slow down.

Contact, Certificates & Testimonials check: Ensure that the contact details are mentioned appropriately in the landing page, so that the visitors can reach you easily (either on Phone/ Email). Certificates and testimonials builds trust in the minds of the visitors about your company & services.

The form has to be visible on the upper fold: Ask not for too much but the necessary info to complete the desired action (sale/lead). Be judicious & confidential in the given information. To be placed in the upper fold so that the visitor can access it easily.

Simple clean images: Images are always the eye-catchers. The landing page images used have to be a supportive medium for the content in the landing page. If the offering is a service, then you can show an image which explains the offering.

Remember to keep your visitor comfortable in your landing page. This traffic is paid for the each visit, hence treat the guests well to make them referrals soon & to ensure ROI.

Contributed by Leo VJ, PPC Team

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Google AdWords has implemented yet another new feature for AdWords PPC advertisers. This really cool new feature is specifically designed to provide users with more options to click on. An advertiser can create richer, more relevant ads that improve the value of their brand terms and other targeted keywords. The feature will show up to four additional links under the main ad for ads that “meet a certain high quality threshold.” It allows advertisers to extend the value of existing Google AdWords ads by providing additional links to content deep within their sites, instead of sending all users to the same landing page.

Example of Ad Sitelinks



With Ad Sitelinks, you can point to specific information on your site, such as hotels, flights booking, holiday packages or even seasonal promotions. Early participants in Ad Sitelinks, like MakeMyTrip, found that presenting multiple link options made it easier to direct users to relevant information on their sites, driving them deeper into the conversion funnel.

Currently Ad Sitelinks is only being launched to advertisers that meet a high-quality threshold. If your account qualifies, go to your Campaign Settings Tab, then to the “Ad extensions” section. Look for “Show additional links to my site.”

Benefits of Ad Sitelinks

- Ad Sitelinks provides advertisers with a good way of promoting seasonal services or products.

- It allows visitors easier access to deeper content of your website, thereby potentially increasing conversion rates.

- It makes for more targeted search for the user. For example, a user searching for the key phrase “Make My Trip” could be looking for a flight, hotel or a bus ticket. Normally, this user would just see an ad that leads to a single landing page. With Ad Sitelinks showing more focused links in the site, it allows much finer targeting.

Contributed by Manisha Singh

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The Position² team was very excited when we announced the formal release of our in-house Bid Management platform late last year, and we have been seeing tremendous success in its adoption across companies. We have been developing and using it for the last four years for our existing customer base. And yes, there are still a few skeptics out there who do not realize the importance or need for automated bid management. Would you really want to use a scissor to mow your lawn?

Building A Case For Automated Bid Management

If you manage PPC campaigns with a budget of more than $50,000 per month, you will relate to the facts that we present in this graphic. There is always more competition, so you need to keep looking out for them as they affect the performance of your campaigns.

You have less time to respond: you need to be quick to take advantage of market driven changes and developments, or your competitors will. Newer technologies: search engines are constantly upgrading and modifying their systems, you need to ensure it is leveraged in the best possible way. Then there are scalability challenges associated with higher spends. More keywords, more ads, more landing pages, whew!

To top it all, everyone in your organization, including the CEO in most cases, is involved in how your search marketing is performing.

The Challenge

It is all about coverage and optimization. Coverage is about how you can reach more of your potential audience, and optimization refers to reaching them at the best possible return on investment. Let me share this example of a hypothetical book store that sells one book. The book I use in this example is ‘The Lost Symbol’ by Dan Brown, and your challenge is to reach out to all potential buyers in the most cost effective way. Two dimensions as explained below;

1. Increasing Coverage
   
   Discovery of additional keywords, so you start with a core set and keep expanding that set, hypothetically as much as you possibly can efficiently manage.
   
   What’s really important is that you need to have a fast and efficient way to discover keywords, we are dealing in the “hundred thousands of keywords” range here and you will agree that automation is the only way out.
   
   An automated system could run each keyword through a process of discovery, day in and day out without coffee breaks!
2. Increasing Returns
   
   This is the other dimension. Among the keywords that you have identified, how do you maximize your returns? As shown below, the only way is to manage each keyword individually, as each one has a unique bid-value point at which it provides the best returns. Imagine doing it manually for thousands of keywords on a daily basis.
   
   

Statistical Methods Have Evolved Too!

There were simple rules that were executed using spreadsheet based tools. This was followed by model based systems, and now complex portfolio based systems allow for more accurate bid management. So while skeptics questioned the initial inefficient methods, technology has caught up and Auto Bid Management seems to be a no brainer.



To sum it up, In a situation like this, manual bid management, and rule based systems with long campaign cycles is a sure shot recipe for diminishing returns. You need to embrace automated bid management that can provide improved performance and better returns for investments.

The Position² AutoBid Recommendation Engine



Here is a quick peek into our AutoBid Recommendation Engine. The system takes input via APIs from major search engines (it supports Google, Yahoo, Bing at this point in time). Campaign managers can configure parameters, which are primarily the target values of CPL, CPCs etc. The platform then takes over, and can make bid changes automatically or we also have provision for manual intervention. Since we provide services, we have seen this as a must have feature for nearly all our clients.

Bid Management Methodology

The engine uses complex algorithms and curve fitting programs to model the search engine bid environment and identify optimum bids. To explain it in simple words, take a look at the charts below.

Model Based Bidding:



The engine predicts expected clicks for all possible bid values, using the data collected on a minimum of 2 clicks.

If you were doing it manually, it would mean trying out all possible bid values (which is actually infinite!)

This data is then used to model a conversion rate. The model looks at how similar keywords and keywords in the same cluster have performed.

This data is used to identify the optimum CPA value for each keyword, yes each keyword. And this is done on a regular basis. If you ask why, we are operating in a dynamic environment, to get the best results you need to do it regularly.

Portfolio Based Bidding:



Extending the above, graphs are plotted for each keyword, and the optimum bids across keywords for budgets are plotted.

Does It Really Work?

We would like to share 2 case examples where we were able to improve performance significantly.

Case I – Online Books Retailer:

Like any other online books retailer, we were dealing with over 5 million titles, so it was a very complex account structure. High seasonality and event based activities, needing fast turnarounds. A significant variation in profit per unit, as prices of books had a wide range.

Here is a summary of activities across 3 key parameters: Coverage, optimization and speed.



The results are there to see – 9x increase in sales and CPA reduced by 80%



Case II – Online University:

The challenge was to get 20,000 applications for the courses in a period of 5 weeks. We were dealing with over 30 different courses and local region preferences.

Summary of activities:



Results:



Conclusion

As you can see, there’s no magic, it is a simple common sense driven approach aided by some cool technology that can help improve the performance of PPC campaigns. While there are many automated bid management systems out there, what is key is to understand whether they operate on simple rules or portfolio optimization. The performance you need will come from systems that are based on portfolio optimization.

As a simple way to see how or whether the AutoBid engine can really improve performance, you can test it out on a single use basis. We offer an online Search Marketing Efficiency scoring interface, where you can upload your data, and let our engine analyze it to come up with a report on the ideal metrics your campaign should be giving you. A sample report snapshot is below.

In case your score is less than 6, you can get substantial improvement in performance. Go ahead, it’s free and has no strings attached.

Contributed by Vinod Nambiar, Director of Global Delivery, Position²

This article is based on a webinar that was delivered by us as part of the formal launch of the AutoBid Recommendations Engine.

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Is it true that we have to set a CPC bid limit when we’re using automatic bidding?

The above question will be answered in the following paragraphs.

With automatic bidding, the Search Engine Marketing systems (like: Adwords, Adcenter & Search Marketing) adjust the bids automatically to earn the most clicks possible within the given budget. It isn’t possible to set a specific CPC bid. However, we can set an upper limit on the CPC bids for the entire campaign. This is the CPC bid limit. Specify a bid limit and the Search Engine Marketing system will never bid over the specified limit for any single click.

If it’s important for us to control the cost of individual clicks on our ad, it’s good to specify a CPC bid limit. Say if we sell a product that costs $5.00, we may wish to set a CPC bid limit of $5.00 maximum, so we never pay more than the maximum limit for a click.

By setting a limit we have more control over our costs, but we also may restrict the ad position or the number of click the ads receive. If we choose not to set a click price limit, automatic bidding will function the same way as it normally does, choosing whatever maximum CPC bids it determines will earn the most clicks possible within the set budget.

If a lot more control is required from our end on a day-to-day basis, manual bidding for clicks will be the best advised process to go for. Nevertheless for long campaigns & low budgets, Auto bidding is very useful.

Here are 3 key points which will help us understand the working of Automatic Bidding

• When you place a bid, you enter the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for the item. The seller and other bidders don’t know your maximum bid.

• We’ll place bids using the automatic bid increment amount, which is based on the current high bid. We’ll bid only if it’s necessary to make sure that we remain the high bidder, or to meet the reserve price, up to our maximum amount.

• If another bidder places the same maximum bid or higher, we’ll place another bid. Our maximum bid is kept confidential until it is exceeded by another bidder.

Contributed by Leo V J

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Keywords are an integral part of any online advertising campaign; however what is sometimes overlooked is the equal importance of negative keywords which are word filters that disqualify ads being triggered by users search query. For instance if “iPhone” is one of your keyword, each time somebody runs a search for that keyword your ad will be displayed. If someone were to run a search for the term “iPhone problems” your ad will also be displayed, since the main keyword “iPhone” is present in the search query. To avoid bloating total impressions, with irrelevant searches it’s important to add “Problem” as your negative keyword, so that “ iPhone Problem” query wont trigger your ad.

Every search engine advertiser should be using negative keywords in their Pay Per Click (PPC) account. Having a comprehensive and well built negative keyword list will ensure targeted visits which can significantly improve not only your CTR, but your conversion rate too. However, not using negative keywords can mean that your ads show to users who aren’t interested in your business or service. This untargeted traffic can lower your keywords’ ‘Quality Scores’ and hurt your return on investment. With quality score mechanism being executed on all major PPC platforms, click through rate (CTR) is even more important now than it ever was.

It’s important to remember that over-using negative keywords can result in a very limited advertising audience. Consider all your potential keywords carefully, including negative keywords, before you add them to your account.

How to find negative keywords idea:

1.Google Keyword Tool : Place your keywords in the keyword tool box and make sure to click “synonyms” checkbox. Google shows keywords it thinks are related to your product or service. Check the Keyword column for any search queries that are irrelevant to your product or business and that you wouldn’t want triggering your ads. Click the downward-pointing arrow in the Match Type column for each keyword that you want to add as a negative match. Also, paste your URL into the “Website Content” box to see what the Google thinks what your site/pages may be about. Check the “Include other pages on my site…” checkbox to get a rounded view.

2. Search Query Report : Pull a search query report at regular intervals on your PPC account to make sure your ads are not being triggered by terms you don’t want them to appear. The new Google interface has a new feature which is somewhat hidden. It  helps you run a search query report at the ad group level without actually running a full-blown report to find additional keywords or negative keywords. Under the keywords tab, click the ‘see search terms’ drop down and click ‘all’ or ’selected’ You will see the actual search queries that displayed your ads, just like running a search query report for a particular ad group. Search queries that are not relevant to your product/services can be added as a negative keywords right from this window.  Just click the box next to that particular keyword and click ‘Add as negative keyword’.

3. Analytics : It can be an amazing source of negative keywords. Look at your organic data and not just your PPC data. If you are unsure of any terms, do a simple search for the keyword and see what results pop up. You might be surprised.

4. Use A Thesaurus: Run your main keywords through a thesaurus. There is no way you could possibly know every single synonym of your main keywords. Thesaurus not only helps in expanding your negative keyword list but also your main keyword list.

5. Industry Related: Use product and industry knowledge. Words that are similar or spelled similar to your product or service name? Terms you are certain people will be searching which are not related to your product or service or that are related and you do not offer. Remember that there are products released every day, so set up Google Alert for your keywords.

Once you’re done with adding negatives at your campaign or adgroup level, check for account performance, whether it has made any difference in terms of CTR , quality score and conversions. This is definitely not an exhaustive list on how to create a negative keyword list but it sure is a good start.

Contributed by Shweta Gaonkar

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