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Friday, August 13, 2004

The Maximum Effect the best tips and examples for adword 95 characters by The Google Team

The Maximum Effect, is a compilation of the best tips and examples you can use to make the most of those 95 characters for your business. We hope you find it useful enough to keep handy as you develop your Google AdWords campaigns.The Google Team

Google

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Combating the Rising Cost of Keywords...Bottom-Up ROI Calculation

Combating the Rising Cost of Keywords: "Before you bid, or even choose advertising vehicles, you need to know how much you can spend on a lead. This is a bottom-up approach, because you must start with the cost of the product you're marketing; figure the amount of overhead that exists in producing, packaging; and delivering that product; add in the profit margin that makes it all worthwhile; then identify what you can comfortably spend on marketing.
Let's say you're selling a clock for $10. You want a 20 percent margin, so you're immediately down to $8. You're buying the clock wholesale from the Black Forest for $7. That leaves you with $1 to comfortably spend getting leads. You may now go out and search for any opportunity that will deliver leads for $1, including search.
Unfortunately, too many marketers haven't taken these steps. They determine bid prices top down, which usually means going to the engines, inputting a keyword, and seeing how much it costs. Most supply chains are quite a bit more complex than the clock example, so you can see why the task hasn't been undertaken. Not only is it way too difficult, it's also outside the responsibility (and skill set) of the marketing department. Generally, they're in charge of advertising. So we get rough guesses instead of bids.
The clock seller, though, is well prepared to develop a bidding strategy. If he learns bids for 'clock' run $1.25, he knows that's not worth it for him. Maybe he'll bid instead on 'black forest clock.' If that phrase is only $0.50, he's in great shape. He makes his margin, but also gets a half-buck bonus on each sale. If 'black forest clock' doubles to $1, too bad. But he's still totally comfortable, as his ROI is built bottom up and untouchable.

Tools Are Necessary!

As keyword costs increase, inefficiencies will be laid bare. They'll be presented to your competitors as weaknesses. Get a handle on them before you begin to see keyword costs rise. As you identify them, you can put together the cost-per-lead you can comfortably pay and optimize your entire campaign around that.

When you're ready for that, you'll realize a select few organizations offer tools you can use to actually put this strategy into place and make it work. Most recently, iProspect released iProspect Search Engine Bidding Agent (iSEBA), an agent-based tool that takes the work you've done to identify your target cost per lead and organizes and optimizes your entire campaign around it.

The next phase of SEM will be about efficiency in your business. It will be galvanized by marketers who experience an increase in per-keyword costs. Now's the time to get ahead of that wave."

Google

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

JupiterResearch Gives Forecast For Paid Search Market

JupiterResearch Gives Forecast For Paid Search Market: "JupiterResearch, division of Jupitermedia, today announced that spending on search engine marketing will nearly triple by 2009. This forecast sees the market for paid search growing 189% from $1.9 billion in 2003 to $5.5 billion in 2009.


As prices rise, the return-on-investment (ROI) from search marketing has started to fall. Search marketers can still achieve a positive ROI, but only through an increased focus on measurement and more intelligent bidding. According to a JupiterResearch executive survey, just one-third of search marketers consider historical effectiveness data or the cost of goods sold when bidding for paid listings. Over half of search marketers use unsophisticated bid strategies or no specific bid strategy at all.

'Due to rising prices, many of the search marketers that used to get a great return on their investment are now only getting a good one,' said Nate Elliott, Associate Analyst at JupiterResearch. 'As ROI continues to fall, marketers will need to do a better job measuring and optimizing their search campaigns. By improving efficiency, search marketers will be able to keep up with the higher prices and still profit from search leads.'"

Google

Case study and Top 10 holiday search terms June July 04

Top 10 holiday search terms
Features: "Top 10 holiday search terms across the Espotting network for the week 29/6 to 5/7


1. Car hire
2. Hotel
3. Holiday
4. Cheap flight
5. Travel guide
6. Camping
7. Short break
8. Cheap Hotel
9. Last minute holiday
10. Package holiday
Provided by Espotting "

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3391681
Let's look at an example of an online retailer's Web site conversion rate, and its relation to the PPC advertising bids.
Retailer X sells dress shirts online at $300 each (nice shirts!). Assuming a 10 percent profit margin, he earns $30 per shirt. His Web site's conversion rate is typical of online retailers today -- roughly 2 percent (according to Shop.org). For every 1,000 visitors, Retailer X sells 20 shirts for $6,000. He earns $600 in profit from those sales.
By dividing the $600 profit by the 1,000 visitors, we know the break-even bid is $0.60. So Retailer X's average CPC on Overture or Google AdWords must be $0.60 or less.
Another way of looking at this is by cost of customer acquisition. In this example, the 1,000 visitors at $0.60 CPC cost $600. Divide the cost of the campaign by the number of acquisitions (20). The cost per action (CPA) is $30.
Retailer X's overall PPC advertising campaign must be played under the $0.60 bid ceiling. The higher the bids get, the less of the audience the retailer can reach.
Trouble is, many important keywords already show bid prices over a dollar. Overture's bid price tool shows "dress shirt" sells for $1.13 in position one, and positions two through four cost more than a dollar each (at time of writing).
So far, on some rather obvious keyword targets, Retailer X is out of the game before he even starts.
But this example is based on a 2 percent conversion rate. What would happen if Retailer X could increase the conversion rate to 4 percent, or 10 percent? Obviously, he could increase his bids. At a 4 percent conversion rate, he can support a $1.20 bid and his CPA drops from $30 to $15. Suddenly, Retailer X can compete for the top spots again.
At 8 to 10 percent conversion rate, the PPC advertising campaign becomes extremely profitable. Improving the site's conversion rate is the key to Retailer X remaining competitive in paid search advertising.
With bid prices in some markets increasing quickly, companies that haven't yet launched PPC advertising campaigns are taking a serious risk. Bid prices could increase to a point where, by the time Retailer X starts experimenting with search advertising, it will be too costly to learn. It'll write off the medium altogether due to poor results and a seemingly insurmountable conversion rate deficit.
Worse, chances are Retailer X's competitors are already engaged in PPC advertising and working to improve their site's conversion rates. When Retailer X gets in the game, competitors' head start may provide them with a strong advantage.
There are exceptions to the rule: customer lifetime value, day-part bidding, conversion rate in various positions, and so on. But exceptions don't define the rules. A relationship exists between bid price and conversion rate. That's beyond debate, regardless of the simplified example presented.
The importance of improving your site's conversion rate cannot be overstated. Don't wait until PPC advertising prices become prohibitively expensive to focus on increasing conversion rates.
Marketers who are engaged in a formal conversion enhancement process have increased in their Web sites' conversion rates, sometimes dramatically (a 2 percent conversion rate increasing to 22 percent in at least one case). Conversion rate improvements are achievable if you commit to the process. If bid prices continue to rise, more marketers will be increasingly be forced into making that commitment.


Search Ads Beyond Google & Overture - Live from SES San Jose

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Sherman starts off by saying that there is life outside of Google and Overture. He says that this panel will focus on the opportunities outside of Google and Overture

Peter Hershberg from RepriseMedia was up first, he is here to talk about the other types of engines. Paid listings distribution across the Web is covered by Google (53%) and Overture (45%). So the other 2% is about 2 million searches and the prices on Google and Overture keep climbing. The inventory of search ads is shrinking. So we have Tier II Search (FindWhat, Enhance, LookSmart, Kanoodle, Search 123) and Verticals (Business.com, Industry Crains, TravelZooo, Gamblling.com) and the Shopping Engines (Shopping.com, bizrate and pricegrabber).

The value of working with the alternative PPC engines are:
- More volume
- Lower minimum CPCs (as low as a penny) a good way to test
- Less competition

Google

MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR

MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR:

i recommend readng this article as well as an overview of the paid search market it covers:

Click fraud, search engine spam, trademark fears
Site design mistakes: search-centric and search-ignorant site design
Measuring results beyond clicks
Contextual Ads versus going vertical
Getting your optimized message onto other sites as well...


Click fraud: "Joe Doyle, VP at Realtytrac.com agreed, 'Click fraud is a very serous problem for our site. Overall I build into my overhead an additional 10% just to account for the cost of click fraud.'
To ameliorate the problem, Doyle's tech team runs regular click log reports. 'On some days clicks from Google will suddenly double from 3,000 to 6,000. It's obvious fraud.'
(Side note: Unexpected clicks aren't always related to fraud. Check Yahoo's Buzz Index http://buzz.yahoo.com for other reasons for unusual traffic surges.)"

Site design and landing pages: What should you put on a landing page? Highly relevant copy, trust-building elements (a privacy policy note, testimonials, whatever), and a big fat button to where you want them to go next should be included.

In other words, your landing page declares: "Yes, you are at exactly the right place. It's a safe trustworthy place, here's what to do next."

Obviously this isn't your generic home page. "I frankly think home pages are a terrible invention," said Michael Sack, Chief Product Officer Inceptor. Plus, as Eisenberg said, "60% of search-driven visitors drop off after the first page." If that first page is your generic home page, you're probably losing more than that.

IBM's in-house Search Effectiveness Team Leader Bill Hunt said that they focus on "improving page quality for popular queries each and every month." It's an ongoing process worth investing in.

Tracking results: The search funnel. If you're measuring immediate clicks to conversions, you're missing the brand marketing power of search results, as well as delayed or offline purchases.

Eisenberg suggested, try dividing your search term results into categories roughly by possible intent. Would someone using a term be likely to be doing initial category research, or is it a term only used by consumers with immediate purchase intent?

Dan Thies President SEO Research Labs advised, "Beware of free keyword research offers from PPC engines. Their goal is to increase your spending and overall competition, not your profit."

That said, several speakers mentioned case studies in which a client had increased the number of targeted keywords dramatically and seen leaps in results (probably because when you get ultra-granular, conversions nearly always rise).

Thies also warned against lumping all of your organic traffic into one pot when buying SEO services. "Use a weighted popularity formula, i.e. number of searches multiplied by relevance equals weighted popularity. 100 searches a day, that are 50% relevant, may be only worth 50 searches to you."

Getting your optimized message onto other sites as well...
" PR people don't fully recognize yet that they're not pitching to a human editor anymore; they're pitching to an algorithm." You have to optimize releases just as you would any web page: pick a keyword phrase and use it several times in the release.

We foresee a boom in the press release distribution world when (ok, if) the PR world catches onto this. Why? Just like a Web page, a release should only be optimized for a term or two. If you want to catch more results, you need more pages, or releases.


Google

Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR click fraud

MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR:

I recommend reading this article, it covers:
Overview current marketplace
Click fraud, search engine spam, trademark fears
Measuring results beyond clicks
Site design mistakes: search-centric and search-ignorant site design
Contextual Ads versus going vertical

Highlight:
"Joe Doyle, VP at Realtytrac.com agreed, 'Click fraud is a very serous problem for our site. Overall I build into my overhead an additional 10% just to account for the cost of click fraud.'
To ameliorate the problem, Doyle's tech team runs regular click log reports. 'On some days clicks from Google will suddenly double from 3,000 to 6,000. It's obvious fraud.'
(Side note: Unexpected clicks aren't always related to fraud. Check Yahoo's Buzz Index http://buzz.yahoo.com for other reasons for unusual traffic surges.)"

If you're measuring immediate clicks to conversions, you're missing the brand marketing power of search results, as well as delayed or offline purchases...warned against making snap judgments based on immediate campaign results, "Compare two months of data and averages before removing keywords. One month may look very different from another."

Factors as disparate as click latency, seasonality, competitors' campaigns, and whatever's being mentioned in the news that day can all affect your results.

Google

Overture - Advertise Your Site (PPC Basics)

Overture - Advertise Your Site (Basics)
Yahoo

Reach more customers with Site Match
Site Match, a new service provided by Overture, is part of Yahoo! Search's Content Acquisition Program (CAP). The program includes a simple submission process, frequent content refreshes, and detail reporting.
Eliminate guesswork: Ensure that your pages are reviewed and included in the Yahoo! Search index quickly and refreshed frequently.
Drive More Leads: Complement your Precision Match™ listings by expanding your coverage on search results pages.
Gain Marketing Insight: Use detailed reporting information to improve your pages and optimize program performance.


Key Distinctions between Site Match and Precision Match

Site Match
Web page submission program
Listings appear in the main body of the search results page
Position determined by the relevance of your site content to the user's search request
Listings automatically generated based on your Web page content

Please note: All URLs must pass initial and ongoing quality review to be included. Participation in the program does not guarantee rank in search results; rank is determined by assessing site quality and relevance to search terms.

Precision Match
Paid listing advertising program
Listings appear in the sponsored search results sections of partner sites
Position determined by bidding on a specific keyword
Advertisers create listings by writing titles and descriptions


Summary of Site Match Benefits:

More exposure for your site - reach more than 75% of active internet users*
A simple, single point of submission to multiple web portals such as Yahoo!, AltaVista and AlltheWeb
Frequent refresh of your pages - every 48 hours
Daily reporting to track and optimize performance
Site Match Xchange™ for Large Customers
Site Match Xchange is available for customers with budgets of $5,000 per month or more, and who want to submit 1000+ Web pages to the program. For these customers, we provide a dedicated account representative and an XML feed for Web pages. Please contact your Overture Representative for more information.

Please note: All URLs must pass initial and ongoing quality review to be included. Participation in the program does not guarantee rank in search results; rank is determined by assessing site quality and relevance to search terms.

Google

Monday, August 09, 2004

Buying cycle and Advanced Search Term Research Issues - Live from SES San Jose

Advanced Search Term Research Issues - Live from SES San Jose: "There are four different stages of an online buyer and he will discuss this in more detail later.

The Buying Cycle: (1) The awareness stage; provide info pages to educate, target phrases in the 'i need' format, built trust with the searcher, and 8.7% of potential customers use search for this phrase. (2) The research stage; offer comparisons, target competitors search terms, and 68.3% of potential customers use search for this phrase. (3) Decision phase; write your product reviews/articles, license content from review sites, list customer testimonials, target search terms that aid in the decision process, and 42.6% of people use search for this phase. (4) Buying phase; focus on model numbers, make sure the product page content matches those phrases, add buzzwords 'free shipping', and 28.2% of potential customers use search for this phrase.

Low Cost Products have fewer searches, less need for multiple search terms, and lower the costs the higher the likelihood of an online conversion. There are fewer instances for research types (comparison reviews) for these low cost keywords.

High cost products have increased number of searches per day, target all the phases of the buying process, and anticipate where the conversions will take place.

The number of keywords searched from July 2004:
2 word phrases reduced 2.5% since 01/04
3 word phrases increased 1.22%"

Google

Ppc Bounce Rate -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Ppc Bounce Rate -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Bounce Rate:

For those who are unfamiliar with the term in this context, bounce rate is a measure of what visitors do upon entering a page on your website.

i.e. do the leave immediately without clicking a further links (i.e. do they BOUNCE) or do they stick around, buy or visit more pages."

Google

Questions for Scott Garell, Ask Jeeves' Executive VP of Search

Questions for Scott Garell, Ask Jeeves' Executive VP of Search: "The Emeryville, Calif.-based search company has been on a whirlwind course of growth, achieved through acquisitions and new technology. Its purchase of Interactive Search Holdings in May gave it a stake in several second tier portals and their accompanying e-mail offerings. Ask Jeeves also bought Tukaroo in June, vaulting it into the desktop search space, to which many industry watchers have conveyed 'next big thing' status.
Further, Ask Jeeves is developing new technology in-house at a rapid rate. Recently added to its proprietary Teoma engine are innovations such as 'binoculars,' a graphical search tool. Simultaneously, the company dropped paid inclusion completely from its offerings. It has reported significant boosts in sales and more than doubled its Internet traffic, becoming the sixth most-trafficked Web property in June. "

[approximately] 40 million unique users a month across our properties. We have been growing faster than the market every quarter this year.

The acquisition of ISH enhanced our position in the search market and helped us build a diverse portfolio of brands that will deliver varied search experiences to varied target segments. These include MyWay, Excite and iwon. MyWay is a very rapidly growing portal, because it's so clean, so fast and gives the users what they want. It's in the top five portals on the Web.

E-mail is a very important loyalty-driving tool for those portal properties. Since we've officially closed the portal acquisition for only a couple months, we're still figuring out how to optimize it.

Q. You just renewed your deal to let Google handle keyword bidding on Ask Jeeves' search network for three more years. Why not develop your own keyword management system to replace the Google relationship?

A. It's a great partnership. Our volume drives more people into their network, and we think it's better to be building our site around the user experience, so that when people come, they're getting what we consider to be a better and different experience. It's good for advertisers and good for users.

Q. How would you describe Ask Jeeves' culture, as a new employee?

A. I think you have a very driven, hungry and aggressive team. Think about this company having survived some tough times, and then getting the Teoma technology and improving the user experience. The people who came through that have an incredible intensity and focus and hunger.

We are not satisfied with having a 7 percent share. We think there is plenty of room in this category for a third company to situate, and we're building a long-term goal around that. It's been very inspiring.


Google

Affiliate Marketing and SEM Revisited

Affiliate Marketing and SEM Revisited: "I discovered all my initial assumptions were wrong. My position was if you ran an affiliate marketing program, you should prohibit your affiliate network from engaging in any paid search advertising. It would drive up bid prices. You'd end up competing with yourself, effectively, for a finite number of paid search positions on a finite universe of keywords. What I learned convinced me I was wrong. To review, the merchants I interviewed taught me three things:
Affiliates extend your paid search advertising budget.


Competing with affiliates on the same keywords is valuable because they help you dominate the page.


If your affiliates are restricted from paid search advertising, they'll simply switch teams and bid for the same keywords on behalf of your competition."

Google

Saturday, August 07, 2004

travmedia.com Awards

travmedia.com: "The new and improved Visit London awards, to be held at the Natural History Museum on October 18, has attracted several high profile sponsors. The sponsors will get the extra benefits of a higher-profile awards ceremony and, by getting in first, will be well placed to continue their relationship with the awards as they continue to increase in size and profile.

Visit London�s annual industry awards has been renamed, upsized, given a new look, and a bigger profile in 2004 following the restructure of Visit London last year. The evening is funded via a combination of ticket sales and sponsorship of the awards title plus individual categories.

David Hornby, Commercial Director for Visit London said: �we want an awards ceremony that reflects our world-class visitor product. The step-change for this important event means that we can go all out to provide a night to remember for the nominees and guests.�

Two new categories this year are Best Event, recognising London�s diverse events sector, and London Nightlife, eligible for entry by any entertainment providers from theatres to nightclubs.

Sponsorship opportunities are still available and tickets for the event will be available soon � keep checking at www.visitlondon.com/corporate for more information.

Ends

Further information from Zo� Shurgold, PR Manager Long Haul on +44 (0)20 7234 5844, or email zshurgold@visitlondon.com.

Notes to Editors
Visit London�s role is to promote London as the world�s most exciting city, targeting domestic and overseas leisure and business visitors as well as Londoners. The London Development Agency has been delegated responsibility for the promotion and development of tourism in London by the Mayor. Visit London has been appointed by them to deliver on mark"

Google

Benchmarking and Baselines in SEM

Benchmarking and Baselines in SEM: "With search engine marketing (SEM), each marketer actually controls her own conversion percentages. By managing campaigns around keywords, engines, and creative executions that deliver specific return on investment (ROI), you can easily skew conversion percentages by adjusting the keyword mix.
For example, last week I wrote about the Westin St. Francis hotel's brand keywords. Westin emphasizes brand keywords with great conversion rates but runs a balanced campaign that includes keywords with lower conversion metrics and good ROI. If Westin's agency wanted to increase conversion percentage, it would just need to pull some keywords with average ROI and lower conversions. Similarly, the campaign strategy could be adapted for more aggressive ROI, adding keywords that convert more poorly...

To a great extent, each marketer controls his own conversion rate. Instead, use internal benchmarking, or baselining. Beating your own baseline numbers is as satisfying as beating the competition because much of the lift comes from the competition. When you run smart, efficient campaigns, you take orders away from the competition while meeting ROI objectives.

To set up an internal baseline, measure your critical statistics. Use whatever statistics are part of your business or marketing objectives. Marketers typically include conversion percentage, order volume, and an ROI metric (e.g., cost per order, cost per lead, or revenue per dollar spent). Some also include a profit-related metric because they want to know the tradeoffs between profit (or ROI) and volume. This tradeoff is an economic or accounting concept relating to the change in one variable factor that is based on a forced change in the other factor. Such baseline testing is known as "elasticity testing," which I'll cover in a future column.

Once you have a baseline, begin measuring your performance against yourself. As you make changes to positions, bids, keyword mix, landing pages, product price, and ad creative, compare results against your baseline. Any improvements will show up in the baseline reports. Experiment to understand how campaign changes affect your overall marketing and business goals.

Remember, in auction-based paid search, results are influenced by not only your actions but also the competition's. A sudden product price war or crazy competitor can turn winning keyword settings into a horrid mess. Similarly, seasonality affects conversion and the pay-per-click (PPC) marketplace.

Expect to see a certain amount of volatility in your baseline caused by external factors. Baselines help gauge success by extending beyond measurement and tracking to provide a window on the market. In auction-based PPC search, the latest competition may be total lunatics, but you're stuck with them. To get the most out of PPC search, beat your own conversion baselines. Your competition will suffer while you succeed."

Google
Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.