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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Let’s continue our optimization process to improve PPC campaigns’ performance:

Go Vertical

Going vertical is an effective method to lower your cost per click (CPC) and to improve the overall traffic quality. The quality also tends to be better because of the increased propensity for the buyers to use vertical search engines in their purchase decision process. This gives a greater opportunity for those who are with limited budgets to more effectively spend their money online and to get higher ROI.

Keyword Research

While doing the keyword research we debate constantly on what to use with regards to long tail keywords or the head phrases and which would perform better and get more results. Head phrases are generic and broad keywords. The search volumes for these keywords are very high but cost is also quite high. Torso keywords are with 2 to 4 words keywords. The search volume for these keywords are low as compared to the head phrases, but the cost is also low. Long tail keywords are the keyword phrases which are more than 4 words. The cost and the search volume is very low.

While developing keywords for your search campaign make sure you are in the shoes of searcher. The keywords should be related to the target market and useful to the searcher while searching for your product or service.

Quality Score

Google and Yahoo use quality score to increase the quality of ads to improve the user experience. If the advertiser provides the consumer with the best experience possible, then the quality score for the advertiser should be good.  If the quality score is poor, you should check the keywords, ads and landing page and re-cluster the ad groups to improve your quality score.

CPL than CPC / Suggestion: CPL over CPC

The ultimate objective of your search campaign is to lower the cost per conversion. So bid high or bid aggressively on converting keywords and bid low for the other keywords in the campaign. Even when you bid high, you get conversions within your target cost per conversion.

Happy Optimization!

Contributed by Rajasekar Ragavan

• Bid Management in a Complex and Dynamic Search Landscape (0)
• Quality Score myth buster (1)
• Key points for a well optimized PPC campaign (0)

Quality Score is based on the relevance to users search query and user experience in your website or landing page. As per Google bid price policy, the higher your quality score is, the lower you pay for your clicks and the higher you can get in position in PPC ads.

Below are the ways to improve the quality score

• Increase your click-through rates. Always try testing your ads to improve click through rates. Always keep the ad settings to rotate while you are testing ads. This will allow the search engines not to show well-performing ad over the other, but instead they will rotate ads 50/50. As a result you will know the better performing ad which increases click-through rate, which means a higher quality score.

• One way to achieve a higher click-though rate is to have fewer keywords in each ad group. This will allow your text ad to display the actual keyword in your ad group, which results to be more relevant to the target user. This will help you to increase your click through rates.  It’s never late to organize your ad groups to improve your quality score. It’s okay to only have 5 or 10 keywords in each ad group. Adwords Editor will help us in this process to cluster the keywords easily and faster.

• Delete or pause non-performing keywords and ads. By doing this, your quality score improves as your account have only high CTR keywords and ads, all your non-performing ads & keywords are not active.

• Always check your keywords. As quality score depends on how well your keywords relate to your ads, and how your keywords and ads relate to your landing pages. Always try to use your keyword on your landing page.

• Landing page load times do matter. As quality score was implemented to have a great user experience.  Having a slow landing page load time can influence your quality scores. It’s very important to load your landing page within 3 seconds in all browsers, personal computers and Mac systems.

All your keywords in Google will have a quality score associated to them. If you have a quality score fewer than 7 then it’s time to change or test your ads to improve your quality score.  Always try to change keywords in to a different ad group or try changing ad messaging.

These changes will take time to get effect in your account. Might take couple of weeks to build history & improve the quality score.

Contributed By Ajesh B

• Landing Page Optimization – Tips For Effective PPC Campaigns (0)
• Quality Score myth buster (1)
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In the PPC world, a Quality Score is a measure which tells you the relevance of your keyword to the users search query. Specifically, Quality Score is a score given to a particular keyword taking historical data of the keyword’s Click Through Rate, quality of the landing pages, relevance of the ad with the keyword and several other factors.

Why Quality Score is important for a PPC professional? Not because it gives a rating on a scale of ten but as a score which reduces your CPC when your Quality Score moves up, which affects your First Page Bid Estimates and your Ad Position.

Today I would be breaking 5 myths about Quality Score.

1. Restructuring your account does not cause you to lose your Historical Quality Score data. We will not lose the historical performance of keywords, ads and landing pages, all these data is preserved, so feel free to restructure your account to optimize for higher conversion goals.
2. Quality Score does not suffer when your ads are paused or shown infrequently. Quality Score is determined by the performance of a keyword in combination with its ads. So pausing an ad or showing it infrequently does not affect, as these ads are not accruing any performance data. Showing your ads seasonally wouldn’t reduce your Quality Score.
3. A higher bid will not improve your Quality score. A higher bid will increase your Ad position but will not increase your Quality Score, as it is determined by a number of factors like CTR, Ad Relevancy and others.
4. Changing a keyword from broad to exact will not improve its Quality Score. For example a keyword like schools in broad match will show ads for variations of it like B schools, Animation schools etc. Even though your ad might show up in these instances, its performance will have no impact on Quality Score. The keyword’s Quality Score would only be affected by how your ad performed on the search term schools since it exactly matches the keyword. So changing a broad match to exact match will not affect its Quality Score.
5. Ad conversion rate does not affect your Quality Score. Setting an easy conversion event on your landing page to artificially boost conversion rates will not have any effect on Quality Scores of a keyword. So let the landing pages have the required set of fields to collect all the details of the prospective customer.

On the whole it becomes mandatory for a PPC professional to always look into Quality Score as a measure of how his keywords, ads and landing pages are working as whole but not as individual entities and make corrections to increase relevancy between these.

Contributed By Chetan Prakash

• Bid Management in a Complex and Dynamic Search Landscape (0)
• Improving Performance of PPC Campaigns (0)
• How to Improve Quality Score (0)

Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) allows you to insert any one of your keywords into your advertisement text. You need to use the following syntax in your ads {KeyWord:default term}. The default term is used by Google AdWords when the keyword is not allowed to be inserted (For example, if it exceeds the character limit).

Certain facts about Dynamic Keyword Insertion

• Note that Google AdWords adds keyword, but not necessarily the search term. If you are using Broad Match, the advertisement may not be very relevant.Google actually inserts the keyword that is triggered by the user’s query. For instance, if the keyword in your account is “tour package” and the query is “tour package Thailand” and you’ve elected dynamic keyword insertion in your Advertisement Title, the advertisement title will be “tour package”
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion does not improve your Quality Score. As Google evaluates the advertisement copy and keyword to the search query in real time, it uses the actual advertisement (after DKI) being seen by the searcher to determine the Quality Score. Dynamic Keyword Insertion does not improve your quality score directly; however, it indirectly helps your quality score by increasing your keywords’ Click Through Rate.
• While your keywords may be approved for your advertisement group, it is possible they are inappropriate for insertion into your advertisement text. When this happens, the keyword is conditionally approved, with a restriction from insertion into your ad. That is, the keyword can trigger and show your advertisement to users, but it will not actually appear in your advertisement text.
• If the searched keyword contains than 25 characters, in some cases, the Google AdWords title may exceed the 25-character limit. The advertisement title can extend past the 25-character limit and Google AdWords will accept it as long as the default text remains 25 characters, or less.
• Be careful while using DKI for ads that target content network. You cannot monitor and manage ads on content sites closely. Search ads appear based on a keyword search, while Content ads are placed on a page by taking an overall theme of all the keywords in an Advertisement Group. It entirely depends on Google which keyword to insert for which site and by doing so you can show irrelevant ads.

Although there are a few problems while using the DKI system, its saves a lot of time spent in creating ads for each keyword and helps boost the CTR.

Contributed by Manisha Singh

• Bid Management in a Complex and Dynamic Search Landscape (0)
• How to Improve Quality Score (0)
• Quality Score myth buster (1)

Google gives each keyword in your AdWord account a Quality Score or QS. QS is a numerical value that ranges between 1 and 10. To allot a keyword to an advertiser, Google conducts an auction. Keywords with high QS are eligible to enter the auction more easily and at a lower cost compared to keywords with a lower QS. Google’s goal is to encourage relevant ads for their users and their pricing system is designed in a way that favors relevant ads and keywords, i.e. ads that get a high click-through and therefore make Google more money.

The following factors determine a keyword QS:
•    Keyword’s click-through rate (CTR)
•    The relevance of the keyword and ad text to its ad group and the keyword’s landing page.
•    Landing page load time.
•    Keyword performance history.

Facts:
•    A Quality Score is calculated by the number of times a keyword matches a search query or, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad.
•    A First Page Bid is an amount advertisers in an auction pay, on average, for first page placement. So, if the first page estimate matches the ROI goal, then bid for the first page to obtain clicks and develop your CTR.
•    The only keywords that affect the overall QS of an account are the ones with really low CTR, which means that they have accrued impressions but have few or no clicks. Keywords with no impressions will not affect your score. It’s also important to note that the number of impressions weights the effect a keyword has on your Quality Score. So, a keyword with 0.0% CTR and 10 impressions will have a smaller overall affect than a keyword with 1,000 impressions and 0.0% CTR. So, in most cases long tail keywords have low volume and so the effect is minor (even if the word is performing poorly). The only time advertisers can run into trouble is when they have a large number of low traffic volume keywords. The total sum of all these impressions add up and can pull down an account’s performance.

Tips to improve quality score:
•    Write relevant ad copies - An ad copy should be relevant to your keyword and landing page’s content. Incorporating both into your ad will get the best possible Quality Score.
•    Remove/pause ineffective keywords that continuously achieve a low quality score, because they affect the overall QS of an account.
The moment you load a keyword into AdWords, it receives a Quality Score. This initial Quality Score is determined by each keyword’s performance history, including other advertisers. Google AdWords has monitors s a keyword’s historical performance for multiple advertisers who target this keyword. Google determines an aggregate score and this is becomes a “base score.” This score is a keyword’s starting point with regard to Quality Score.
•    Make your landing page more relevant – Your landing page and ad copy should provide a smooth presentation. The landing page should deliver on whatever is promised, offered or advertised in the ad.
•    Make your website more credible – To acquire a significant QS, you need a good website as well. Not just the landing page, but it appears that the entire site has to meet certain criteria such as: a contact page, a privacy policy, and at least three pages of relevant content. Google cares about the quality of the site and that is why the QS is called Quality Score. So, as long as you have a good, high quality website, and the page you send the searcher to matches with their search, your keyword can earn a very high QS.
•    Establish a pattern of high quality campaigns- Google uses data to establish patterns and trends. When you create several campaigns that earn a high QS, Google will reward your future campaigns with a higher quality rating.
•    Choose a more focused keyword matching option - Consider using a phrase or an exact match for your keywords to narrow down the search phrases that can trigger your pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Although you will get fewer impressions, the ones you do get will be much more applicable to your PPC ad.

Contributed by Manisha Singh

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