Internet Marketing

I recently came across two cool AdWords tools that are accessible externally from Google AdWords that I use frequently for keyword research whether it is to find an affiliate bidding on one of my clients’ tradeterms or to do keyword expands and research for negative terms.

Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool - Enter a keyword, then select a Google domain, display language, and location to preview paid ads in that region.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool - Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword expands and to find good negatives to add to your current campaigns.

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I got a nice surprise message from Google reminding me to vote on Tuesday. Does Google really think they are driving votes by messaging all of their Google AdWords advertisers to vote? I felt spammed for some reason. That space is usually reserved for important messages regarding your account and not for public service announcements.

I wonder if Google will release data on how much they made on this year’s elections from advertisers. At least the people behind each campaign have good ads with strong call to actions on them and best practices applied.

Google has recently taken a stance publicly opposing California’s Prop 8 that seeks to amend the state’s constitution and undo the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage, leading co-founder Sergey Brin to release a statement on behalf of Google. “It is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8,” commented Brin, “While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote ‘no’ on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.” I applaud Mr. Brin on showing support to his Gay employees and for supporting same sex marriage rights.

Here is the two political camp’s ads on Google:

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If you are trying to get a higher click through rate on your ad in Google in order to reduce your CPC in your Google AdWord’s campaign here are a few tips and tricks that I recommend you implement and use.

Google has recently (sort of) introduced new quality score measures where they are looking for the most relevant ads to appear on keywords based on a combination and mixture of click through rate, bid price and landing page quality score. This is partially in response to a bunch of junk or non-related ads appearing on some keywords across verticals that they didn’t belong to. Google has really put the squeeze on us as advertisers for others bad behavior. This has caused tons of my client’s keywords to raise to levels that they can’t afford anymore and caused me a ton of grief trying to figure out the balance on getting the algorithm to be friendly again.

I have focused much of my recent attention on A/B testing ad copy and creative along with matching landing pages for specific location or genre based keyword phrases. One of the easiest low hanging fruit methods to increase you CTR on Google is using their keyword insertion tool in your ad title. I have seen click-through’s double easily just by using this tool. Your ad also appears Bolded which makes it jump out on the page when listed next to several other paid ads.

Here is the context that you need to use when applying the keyword insert tool:

{KeyWord: Your Brand Goes Here}

By using an upper case “K” and “W” the keyword phrases will then be capitalized and look more relevant as a match to the web searcher.

Example: the user types in ’seattle barbershops’ and if you use the keyword insert tag above your ad might appear like this below.

Seattle Barbershops
Browse Listings & Reviews of
Seattle Barbershops on Yelp.com.
www.Yelp.com/Seattle/Barbers

actual ad example:

The other tip you might want to implement at ALL times when writing your ads is to Capitalize the first letter of each word and to use ampersand (&) instead of and and at least one call to action word like “Try”, “Browse”, “View”, “Sign-up”, or “Today” and maybe an exclamation point at the end of the call to action phrase!

Now get in there and get your hand dirty under the AdWords hood. Tuning up your car is a little more easier nowadays it seems then running a healthy CPC campaign on Google.

-Brian

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Google recently announced a major update to their display URL policy in AdSense ads in an effort to further incorporate landing page quality to their bid and CTR algorithm which determines what position your ad appears and how relevant the keyword that you are buying is to your landing page.

What do I need to know about the updated display URL policy?

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we’ll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren’t limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we’ll continue to require that your ad’s display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions. For more details about the current display URL policy, please visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47173

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Here are some other important aspects of the policy you may want to keep in mind:

Tracking URLs - Your ads will be approved if the URL of your landing page domain matches that of your display URL domain.

For example, the following would be acceptable:
• Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
• Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
• Landing page URL: www.google.com

However, this example would be unacceptable:
• Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
• Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
• Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com

Sub-Domains

The use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable, provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.
For example, the display URLs below would be acceptable for the landing page URL of http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous, as the top-level domains match:
• sub.google.com
• google.com/extratext
• www.google.com/extratext

Quality Score

Note that changing your display URL may affect your ad’s Quality Score and ad position.

Keyword URLs

Keyword URLs are considered your destination URL (the URL of your landing page); your ad’s display URL must match its destination URL.

Next Steps

While no immediate action will be taken on existing ads, we encourage you to make the necessary changes to all ads within your account. This will ensure that your ads run without being disrupted by future disapprovals related to this policy enforcement. Visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6272 for step-by-step instructions for editing your display URL.

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