Focus On Your Paid Search Landing Pages

Focus: Enhance Paid Search Success by Paying Attention to the Landing Page.

As hard to believe as this sounds in 2014, there are still marketers out there who point niche service and product paid search online ads in blanket carpet bombing style to their company homepage. Just this week I learned about an otherwise talented marketer who directs virtually all of their Adwords ads for a range of complex instruments and services to their company homepage. They wanted to "promote their brand", but they ended up harming the lead generation needed to support "the brand". This sort of behavior is not uncommon.

This less-than-brilliant-behavior can be frequently spotted, especially with Google Adwords. If a competitor engages in such foolishness (and they do) I silently chuckle and thank them for their misdirected efforts. One competitor ran a niche ad for a very specific service, but splashed the ad across an extensive shotgun range of search terms. That poor ad appeared for wide range of non-relevant services for years, equivalent to advertising neon soccer balls to searchers who were looking for canoes, baseballs, and basketballs. This effort was a waste of time and money for my competitor, and for potential clients searching for solutions.

In another recent landing page fiasco, I informed some colleagues that major a competitor was running an ad in Adwords for a key search term they coveted. This caused some initial consternation until I pointed out that the competitor had screwed-up.... they were directing their hard-fought (and expensive to click) ad to their homepage, and there was no link to the service their ad was promoting! Any visitor was in effect stranded and marooned in that situation.... and likely bounced right out of that website. Any clicks bought by that ad were wasted.

This sort of PPC self-inflicted sabotage should remind folks that blindly directing limited paid search ad money to the homepage can be self-defeating and a waste of budget. Chose your landing pages wisely!

Precise landing page targeting matters for paid search:

The beauty of search engines are that people (your potential customers) can find long-tail niche services, products, and information quickly. They want relevant, precise, concise, results in their search results. They don't want to waste their time. So don't waste their time by giving them lousy landing pages!

Your paid ad content and landing page should reflect the same level of precision as the prospect's search. To keep the implicit promise given in your ad content for user relevancy (which is why your ad was clicked), a landing page should be relevant and targeted.

The problem with Homepage as Landing Page:

Using your homepage for a landing page will usually frustrate and vex most paid search visitors. Homepages carry a lot of general information, navigation options, and branding. If someone wants to learn more about your company, then using the homepage as a landing page is fine.

But if someone wants to learn more about a niche techno-widget, for example, that your company sells for determining the ultra-trace analysis of stray protons in parabolic hydrocarbons, then your landing page had better focus on your techno-widget! The less clicks needed to find your product or service the better.

Don't make your landing page visitor work too much to find what they are seeking. You'll lose many of them before they get to the 'money page'. Make it easy for them by landing right on the page which appears to be the most precise and relevant.

By the way, having such an focused long-tail webpage will also work wonders for your organic search engine optimization. Building targeted landing pages for Paid Search can help you win at both paid and organic search rankings and lead generation.

Learn more about Google Adwords and Paid Search:

• Lessons Learned from Ten Years with Google Adwords
• Negative is Positive with Google Adwords

Revive Stagnant Paid Search Campaigns: Brian Geddes @ SMX West 2014

Brad Geddes is one of the acknowledged experts in paid search marketing. I've had the pleasure, and the competitive advantage, of taking his Google Adwords classes in the past. Brad Geddes's presentation "Breathing New Life Into A Tired Paid Search Campaign" at SMX West 2014 is worth a serious look and review, especially for those of us who have been running Adwords campaigns for years. In my case, for over 11 years. Paid Search is too effective for lead generation to be taken for granted, or allowed to wallow on extended auto-pilot mode!

Breathing New Life Into A Tired Paid Search Campaign from Search Marketing Expo - SMX

Paid Search Engine Marketing Organization Tips

With Paid Search Marketing Structure, it is always a good idea to Start at the Top.

If you want to start using Adwords and BING Ads, and are new to paid search marketing, take the high Earth orbital view first, and focus on the big picture. Also called PPC or pay-per-click, here are some useful paid search pointers I recommend you follow before you launch any new paid search campaign.

Paid Search Campaign Structure: 

How should the strategic campaign structure of your account be organized? Allow for future growth and diversification of large and niche campaigns as your targeting and  business grows. Name your campaigns logically, and related them to the target market, service or product. Logical organization of your campaigns will save confusion and frustration later on as you expand your paid search marketing efforts.

Think of your campaign structure as you would planning the future growth of a potentially large city, think about the big-scale organization first. Then drill-down to get the major 'neighborhoods' right. Only then should you be worried about where to put the 'streets' and 'parks'.

Once you have a good strategic understanding of how you want to organize your campaigns, determining sub-categories are next. In Google, these are called Adword Groups.

Adword Group Structure:

Adword groups are the actual niche mini-campaigns which reside in each of your higher-level Campaigns. These should be very focused. It is in the Adword group where you need to think carefully about:

Keywords - What keyword phrases do you want to trigger your ads. Are they sufficiently targeted using long-tail tactics to avoid wasted clicks or hyper-competitive search terms of only partial value to you? Do the keywords you've chosen for an Adword Group make sense together, or are they too broad? Can they be split into two more focused Groups?

Negative Keywords - What (single) keywords do you NOT want to trigger your ads? Negative search terms are extremely useful to help improve focus, lower costs, improve click-through-rates, and raise conversion rates.

Ad Content - What will the Ad say? Is it relevant to the market and keywords you have targeted? Are you running alternate ads to measure relative success? Avoid one-size-fits-all approaches.

Landing Pages - Your landing webpage must be absolutely targeted and customized to the intended audience and market niche. Don't send people to your homepage or some higher level webpage, you'll only frustrate your visitors and risk a low quality score from Google, resulting in lower click-through and conversion rates.

There are more factors to consider…. a lot more. But by getting these four fundamental paid search management principles well-designed and optimized in the beginning, the other many paid search tasks and factors needed for success become easier to manage and optimize.

Paid Search, (Google Adwords, BING Ads) run in a parallel universe to organic search engine marketing. I've been successfully and efficiently managing paid search campaigns for over 10 years now, with Adwords as my paid search top priority.

Lessons Learned from Ten Years with Google Adwords

10 Years Managing Google Adwords

Happy Anniversary Adwords! I've been using Google Adwords for 10 years. Adwords has supported me ever since with a never-ending stream of high quality leads and highly visible branding.

I opened my first Google Adwords account on April 4, 2003. I still manage that account and have added others. My knowledge, experience, and skills managing Adwords have grown, as Adwords itself has evolved over the years.

10 Great Years with
Google Adwords.

In those 10 years, this original account has generated over 3.8 million visits (clicks) for niche B-to-B technical and industrial service websites I manage and/or promote. This history includes Adwords campaigns in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Arabic, Chinese, French, and other languages targeting over 30 nations.

Thanks to continuing education and hands-on use of Adwords, my click-through-rates and conversion rates are strong and continue to rise incrementally in a continuous improvement process. While nothing, and I mean nothing, can replace organic search ranking optimization for quality lead generation, the intelligent use of Adwords has been an indispensable weapon for my success with search engine marketing.

What I learned during 10 Years with Adwords:

• Get Adwords Educated:
  Nothing helps manage Adwords better than learning from experts and keeping up with the latest Adwords features and the latest strategies and tactics. Adwords education saves time, improves efficiency and effectiveness, allowing you to spend less money, reduce wasted efforts and increase quality lead generation and ROI. Keep up with the latest Adwords developments.
  Brian Geddes is a highly rated Adwords expert you should follow, and there are others. Search Engine Strategies (SES) and Search Marketing Expo (SMX) are perhaps the best big conference meetings to learn more about paid search marketing updates, tactics, and advice. The depth of knowledge shared can be amazing. PPC Hero is another paid search blog and newsletter service full of tips and tactics, and they sponsor a devoted all-pay-per-click search conference in the USA.
  Google offers extremely valuable Adwords 101, 201, 301 classes. Take these classes! Take the 301 class again after a few years, as Awords is constantly evolving.
• Control your spend in the face of rising pay-per-click costs:
  Take intelligent steps to manage spending limits with Google. When I started out in 2003, the CPC rate was very low, especially for long-tail search terms. My competitors were oblivious or ignorant of the lead generation and branding power of Adwords for many years, often leaving me a monopoly on key search terms. But between direct and indirect competitors 'waking up'  to coveted search terms and Google tweaking Adwords to force higher CPC rates, the general long term trend for CPC is going up, not down. 
• Budget:
  Google loves you. But Google loves your money even more. Adwords is extremely profitable, and it is the core source of Google's revenues. If you are too generous in your Adwords search settings and parameters, Google will find innovative ways to spend your budget down to the last penny. To reduce waste or bankruptcy, make sure budget settings are locked down, and monitor your spend. While click fraud is rarer these days, you should monitor for sudden trend changes and anomalies. I tend to avoid runnning Adwords in some countries specifically because I experience high click volumes of low quality.
• Campaign Structure:
  Organize and Structure your Adwords campaigns and groups logically and effectively.
• Ad Ranking:
  Being "Number One" in Adwords is not always an advantage. It can be expensive and wasteful, inviting many lower quality clicks. Targeting Rankings alone is not the best approach. What is your real goal: Conversions or Click Throughs? Do you already enjoy high organic search rankings? Then you can look at running ads ranked number 2, 3 or 4. Lower ranked ads will result in lower click throughs, but they will produce a higher quality click rate, attracting more motivated leads and enhancing conversion rates at a lower cost. The top right hand side of Google SERP results is a good position for an Ad.
  There is no simple answer to ad  placement. If the campaign has great filtering for where, when, and to whom, ads are shown, it becomes more cost-effective to target a number one ranking with less risk of wasted spend.
• Keyword Research:
  This may seem like common sense, but it is surprising how much opportunity is missed, or waste produced, from insufficient keyword research. Long-tail search takes work, experimentation and patience, but the results are well worth the effort. Keyword candidates can be found using the Google Keyword Tool, external resources like Wordtracker, your customers, your target markets, your employees, and other sources.
• Adwords Experimenting and Investigating:
  Running multiple ad versions to improve adword group performance is essential and will help improve your ad copy and performance.
  Want to conduct low cost market research? Using Adwords is a very cost-effective way to measure keywords related to potential market interest or popularity.
  Exploit your growing wealth of historical data in Adwords, it can be a true "Big Data" resource for trends and keyword data mining.
• Filter, Filter, Filter:
  With Adwords, less is more. Avoid the easy route of using just broad search terms... you'll get a lot of impressions and clicks, but most will be worthless. Take the time to add long-tail keyword terms, use the vocabulary of our target markets. Use negative search terms (really important). Use Geographic, Language, Device, and Time Zone options as needed. 
• Embrace Your Negative Side When Managing Paid Search Campaigns.
• Track, Track, Track:
  I can't imagine using Adwords without having the Conversion tracking enabled and working. CTR is a good indicator for ad popularity. Conversion Rates are a great indicator for quality. Separate your Display Ad Campaigns for better clarity. I keep my Display Ad Campaigns in a totally different account.
• Know Your Goals:
  What are important to you: Conversions? Visits? Impressions? CTR? Conversion Rate? CPC? Mastering an optimal blend of these factors is idea for lead generation and branding, while keeping to a reasonable budget. Managing Adwords successfully is essentially the equivalent of juggling. Everything is dynamic, fluid, and in motion. An important feature in Adwords is the ability to set your campaign settings to optimize for conversions or clicks. I find greater value from optimizing for conversions, but your goals may differ.

Paid Search Marketing Wisdom @ SES San Francisco 2012

Pay Per Click Analytics Marketing Tips at SES San Francisco 2012

I attended as many PPC focused sessions at SESSF 2012 as I could. The presentation by Steve Latham and Crispin Sheridan was a motivating, and useful addition to the full day of PPC training I had earlier in the week. See Fun With Adwords @ SES San Francisco 2012 for more details on Monday's two 1/2 day classes devoted exclusively to PPC.

Paid Search Analytics and Multi-Touch Attribution Analysis
Moderator: Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board; President, Page Zero Media
Speakers:
Steve Latham, Founder and CEO, Encore Media Metrics
Crispin Sheridan, SES Advisory Board; Sr. Director Search Marketing Strategy, SAP

Make Adwords work smarter for you.

There were good strategic key points and take-aways in this informative session. Some suggestions may seem obvious to someone familar with Adwords, but these points go deep and require going beyond the routine.... using drill-down efforts to really benefit from gained knowledge and insight. These suggestions can have subtle and important implications in the success of your PPC campaigns.

A good rule of thumb is to never get complacent with your PPC campaigns. Ignorance is not bliss with PPC, it is merely just another way for Google to make more money off your Adwords account!

• Paid Search is much faster than any other marketing channels. Exploit this advantage.
• Paid Search provides a sense of urgency, on a constant basis.
• Paid Search provides a form of inexpensive market research. 
• Start your PPC campaigns with actions, then apply and study the analytics.
• PPC Factors and Measurements to look at:
  CPA (cost per action), ROAS (return on ad spend), CTR, Conversion Rates, Ad Quality Score, Match Type, Ad Text.
• Bid Management Tools can be useful. Try automated tools for routine work. Monitor!
• Inaccurate bids are some of the biggest costs in PPC today.
• The Quality Score is connected to search intent. A poor quality score score can be a warning of misguided notions about potential client behavior.

There are 7 suggested areas ripe for PPC Campaign Improvement:

1. CTR and Conversion:

• Ad Content makes a big difference. 
• Test your ads often. Don't rest. Try A B tests. Use Ad extensions. 
• Conversion Rates can be misleading if the volume is low. Don't assume!
• Understand and use setting filters and negative search terms.

2. CTR on Keywords:

• "Sculpt" your campaigns. Remove or move poor quality score keywords. Filter. Use negative search terms to weed out wasteful clicks. Focused keywords "tend" to perform better than broad search.
• Get the keywords closer in intent to your ads.
• Get more granular in your campaigns and ad groups.
• Conversion Rate is an important quality factor, but what if the search term is generating quality first time visitors who are researching, in discovery mode, and don't convert on the first click? It is very important to use analytical data to track actual behavior over time before slashing low conversion rate keywords.

3. Bad Segments:

• Are there differences between device behavior? PC versus Tablet versus Mobile? Apple versus PC?
• Are time zone settings, geography and language campaigns in need of dire attention?
• Adwords 'teems with waste' - - find and prune.

4. Attribution and Analytics:

• Try to understand how PPC works with your other marketing channels. Dig into Analytics for insight. The book Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Cliftin is highly recommended.

5. Steady and Constant Account Adjustment and Expansion:

• Always look at adding new products, services, offerings. 
• Capture trends and opportunities before your competition have time to think about it or react.
• Target category leadership.
• Try using Display Ads, Geography and Language settings. 
• Never stop experimenting. 

6. Reshape your Adwords accounts to pursue 'high intent keywords'.

7. Be proactive. Less reactive.

• Over time, you'll be spending much more of your PPC time working on opportunities than fixing problems.

Google Adwords Approaches Infinity

Adwords Account Limits now let's you add "3 Million Keywords" to your Account.

3 Million Keywords and Counting.....

I just read Google Adwords' "Account Limits" web-page and I'm impressed. Effectively, for most marketeers and reasonably sane people, Google has reached near-infinity in terms of options available.... moving beyond mere stars and galaxies and into big-bang cosmic dust clouds when it comes to how massive you want to make your Adword campaigns.

I've been successfully managing Adwords accounts and campaigns targeting global, regional, language, and niche markets and geographies since 2003. Adwords is an extremely effective way to generate leads, advertise, and brand your services and products. Paid Search (Adwords, Bing) is one of the major pillars of Search Engine Marketing, along with (of course) Organic Search Optimization.

Newly updated information on Adwords account limits is very impressive:

AdWords account limits:
These are the limits for an AdWords account:
10,000 campaigns
20,000 ad groups per campaign
5,000 keywords per ad group
4 million active or paused ads per account
3 million keywords per account
10,000 location targets
100,000 active ad extensions per account
1.3 million references to ad extensions

Google goes on to say "Most advertisers don't reach this limit". Indeed..... I hope they are right because managing such massive accounts effectively and efficiently would require a small army to run it, along with a huge spend budget. At least now you know you'll likely never run out of keyword, campaign and ad group options with Adwords!
Learn more at Adwords Account Limits.
Learn more about using negative search terms for positive effect: Negative is Positive with Google Adwords