paid search

Misspellings For Paid Search Marketing

April 24, 2012 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

A few days ago, Google announced in their Inside AdWords blog, that it will automatically adjusting misspelled paid search terms and queries to paid search results. Google has been using this for their organic search now for sometime. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like on the organic side. Any user who enters a query with a misspelling or other variation on a common term will be returned relevant, correctly spelled paid search results.

Starting in mid-May, users who misspell a query or enter a singular or plural form of certain terms will see results most likely relevant to their search in both paid and unpaid listings. You may be asking why have they done this? Well, their answer is like it always is – for its users of course. Google says in early experiments they have seen advertisers getting 7% more clicks while keeping cost per clicks comparable. Of course you mileage may vary.

So are you stuck with this new misspelling technology?

Absolutely not. If you rather not have your paid search ads to show up there will be new controls that will allow you to adjust your keyword matching options. As you can see from the above screenshot, you will be able to control this in the campaign settings tab under advanced settings.

Stay tuned as in the next few months I will do a case study on this specific tactic and see if it works or does not!

OutSourcing Your PPC Marketing

April 11, 2012 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

using outsourcing for your paid search marketing campaigns

Really the days of segmenting your paid search marketing (or SEO for that matter) are gone. Most of the time, we working in an environment that has paid search specialists in-house and using us as well. With PPC having so many parts moving at the same time to determine the ROI, (such as landing page testing, ad writing, and other testing opportunities) it has become the norm.

Fact is, if your purchasing is over $10-15,000 a month, you really should be outsourcing some parts of your paid search advertising campaign, just as a business frequently outsources some sides of accounting such as audits, conventional promoting, and legal work some of the time. You could have an agency handling your campaign, you may be using paid campaign management technology, or a consultant.

Reasons Why Companies Done Not Outsource Their Search Marketing

Many companies have reasons on why they do not utilize outsourcing. They range from “to important to our bottom line”, “we are the experts”, “we got burned by one”, or the famous “they will never understand us like we do”. Some of these (and others) can be valid reasons but honestly the majority of the time it is about having the lack of knowledge of using an agency or feeling threatened.

Why Companies Should Use Outsourcing For PPC Purposes

Productiveness – Search management is a time-intensive activity as you are in what ever bid management tool going over ads, keywords, and bids all the time. Remove that function from your internal team so they can focus on more ROI focused tasks such as landing page testing or developing good ROI bait like a solid white paper. These are also tasks when finished provide further bidding leverage on keywords.
Speed to market – Most agencies have huge technical resources at their disposal, they can process even the most complicated campaigns at lightning-fast speed by leveraging bid management tools or just more resources at hand. They can also handle more dedication to your campaign at times when you need it like the holiday season.
In house knowledge development – A good search agency is transparent about their tactics. Your internal staff will benefit from this greatly.
Total accountability. Many of times I have seen issues happen like de-listings or lost of Quality Score. A lot of finger pointing goes on when this happens by the in-house team. If your campaign is mishandled, it is the service provider’s responsibility to mend things. If the supplier can’t ( or will not ) cure the situation to a satisfactory level, you can sue.
Cost – The big one! Agencies trump in-house search marketing departments as they simply have more resources. It really is a terrific example of economy of scale. Having an in-house ppc specialist that is salaried at $40-50,000/year to manage a $120,000 in total spend just does not make sense. The management cost of this is 30-40%. Outsourcing this will cost you between 8-10%. If your business spends less than $100,000 a month on Google, adCenter, and online display, there’s a strong chance you can economize by outsourcing your search and internet promoting management operations. Do the mathematics. Work out how many hours your workers are devoting to Google-related activities, work out how much you are spending, and compare the figure to the plans offered by 1 or 2 selling suppliers.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: campaigns, developing, paid search, ROI

Paid Search Marketing Tips – PPC Marketing Optimization

March 4, 2012 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

Did you know the average paid search marketing account spends $2,500 a month? That should tell you that the majority of companies using paid search are small business. So with a budget how do you maximize these dollars? Here are some paid search tips that are a must:

Open a test account – If you are just starting out you are going to make mistakes, big ones. Ones that can really hurt your Quality Score and that will hurt your wallet with higher costs. Open a test account and have at it. Worst case will be you have done a great job on this account and you will then use it as your primary one.
Change devices to computers and laptops – By default, Google will opt your account into all devices such as mobile, tablets and computers. Yes, mobile is growing rapidly and you will want to have device specific landing pages or websites but focus on computers and laptops while getting your feet wet.
Choose the right keywords – I can not stress this enough. With a small budget every click counts and by finding the keywords that have less competition you will pay less per click and this will make your money go further. WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the tools provided by Google and Yahoo! are all great starting points.
Exact match only – By doing this it will reduce your spending while giving you the highest quality traffic.
Daypart – Paid search marketing is one of the most competitive and tightly managed digital marketplaces that exists today. Yet in this world where daily micro-management of tens of thousands of keywords has become the norm, one of the simplest and most powerful strategies is often overlooked or underutilized. The art of dayparting is to shut down or start your campaign at certain times of the day to give your ads the maximium chance of being clicked by your targeted audiance. Cheryle Pingel, founder and president of Range Online Media, revealed what kinds of shoppers are on the Web and when. Men are generally buying before or at work between 6 and 8 a.m. Women, on the other hand, are shopping in the evening. So, if you’re selling football tickets you might want to boost your listings to a top spot in the morning. But if you run a woman’s shoe store, pause or delete your ad listings until after work hours.
Go Long Tail - Longer Tail terms are ones that appeal to users searching for very niche or specific items. For example, a generic term from the B2C world would be ‘Teddy Bears’. A Long Tail term would be ‘Big Teddy Bears’ or ‘Big Teddy Bear Delivery’. This will help avoid the high cost generic terms and pick up traffic from people doing very specific searches. Not only will the CPC be significantly cheaper, but you’ll tend to find that prospects know exactly what they want, and the quality and number of inquiries resulting from the clicks will be much higher.
Explore Content Networks – Personally I am not a big fan of content networks as they generally offer a lower quality visitor and will eat up your budget quickly. You can police and control campaigns to accommodate for these content network traps by building campaigns specifically for content networks.
Ad Writing – By far the most important thing you can do to optimize your campaign. If your ad copy is stale or less relevant, you may suffer from a low clickthrough rate, which in turn will hurt your quality score (in Google) and make you pay more for your clicks. You can also lose positioning which allows your competitors to have a stronger opportunity to take your visitors. The beauty of this is that you can always have ads rotating, and if your new efforts do not pan out, the major search engines will automatically stick to what was working.
Negative Keywords – A core component to managing your keyword list and saving your budget. Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won’t show for search queries containing that term. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With: campaigns, Daypart Paid, paid search, Range Online Media

Using Long Tail Keywords Still Pays Off

February 14, 2012 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

Is the use of long tail keywords in your paid search marketing and search engine optimization dead

Over the past years, there has been much talk by the PPC management & SEO communities about long-tail keywords. Do they still work? Are they worth the effort? I will tell you that without a doubt yes, but before we going detail let’s start more from the beginning.

What Are Long Tail Keywords Really?

Long-tail keywords are search phrases that tend to be longer than just 2 – 3 words. Often, a searcher will use a long-tail keyword in a follow-up search after trying a short, broad keyword phrase because the broad phrase returned only general results, not specifically what the searcher was looking for. For example, our friend Matt is looking for a new set of golf clubs. A head search (or general search) would be golf clubs, golf irons, etc. Now if Matt is looking for a specific brand of golf clubs such as Cobra, Titleist, or Taylormade he would be better suited to use a long tail keyword such as Taylormade r11 golf clubs instead. As a rule of thumb, long tail keywords follow these core features:

Consist of at least four words or more.
Have a higher degree of specification specifically to the searcher’s goal. Searchers who use long-tail keywords tend to be further down the purchasing funnel which is a good thing.
Have less competing pages and companies bidding on them. This does make it easier to rank higher for these terms in SEO and get a better results in your PPC management campaign.
Have far less popularity in terms of searches performed on them.
Send you a higher qualified visitor.

Like we discussed earlier, long-tail keywords have undergone some dramatic changes in the past few years in terms of how industry experts value them. These changes are reflected in how long-tail keywords can best be applied in both organic search and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Let’s look at organic search first.

The use of long-tail keywords in organic search over the past few years has been affected primarily by these things:

The search engine algorithms have gotten increasing more sophisticated they way they display results has changed as well.
Increasing organic search competition due to the inclusion of “blended” search results such as images, videos, tweets, etc.
The increase in highly authoritative social media sites has created more competition for these terms.

Search engines have improved in their ability to determine meaning and intent from search phrases. For example, Google “Instant” really reduces the intent of a users searching behavior including misspellings. More importantly, search engines are better able to “understand” the meaning behind a long-tail search phrase and can present results that are highly relevant. From a SEO perspective this can be troubling as those relevant results don’t contain the exact phrase that the searcher typed and the search engines are improving in their ability to substitute content that has the same meaning as the search phrase without having to match on the exact words.

Second, blended search results, or what Google has called “universal search” do not only include web pages but also tweets, images, video clips, and location-based listings provide a richer environment for the searcher to choose from. Using long-tail keywords not only on your web pages, but on other social media sites as well, can provide a solid benefit in the amount of real estate in the organic results that you can gain ranking for and associate with your brand.

Also the way that social media has increased in popularity changes the way in which organic search is referenced. Highly authoritative and popular online social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn that simplify the creation of content and provide alternative ways to market your brand. In addition, the development of ordinary web pages is greatly simplified through blogging tools like Blogger, WordPress and Typepad. Social media sites provide additional opportunities to rank for long-tail keyword phrases, although the resulting increase in the number of pages indexed by the search engines can make it increasingly difficult to rank on page one for targeted keyword phrases, short or long, that are relevant to your brand.

What About PPC Management Of Long Tail Keywords?

The use of long-tail keywords in PPC management has followed a trend that’s quite the opposite from SEO. While each of the three major search engines has its own set of rules, let’s look specifically at Google AdWords and examine how long-tail keyword usage has changed.Before the day of Quality Score, Google allowed advertisers to sponsor thousands of keywords in an AdWords account. Most paid search marketing experts would take advantage of this fact and exact-match on thousands of long-tail keywords rather than a few short, broad-matched phrases. While most of their keywords would languish unused most of the time, enough clicks would come in to make the plan worthwhile for two reasons. First, long-tail keywords weren’t fought over, so the cost per click was sometimes mere pennies. Second, as we’ve already mentioned, long-tail keywords tend to be highly targeted, so the click quality was excellent as measured by conversion rates.

Of course Google went back to the drawing board and came back with the Quality Score concept, they began penalizing AdGroups that contained lots of low frequency keywords by reducing the overall click-through-rate of the AdGroup. This had the effect of pushing ad positions down while, at the same time, increasing the cost per click for the advertiser.

Today, Google has gone back and done some more tweaks by actually disabling long-tail keywords that were not generating enough impressions, in Google’s opinion. Infrequently-searched keywords generate few clicks and very little revenue for Google, so in a sense, one can understand this move. However, sometimes a low-frequency keyword phrase can actually deliver a few conversions before being shut off, and that hurts.

If you are one that believes in conspiracies, you would think that Google has done this on purpose or just the cost of doing business, but the net result is that Google seems to be forcing advertisers to sponsor mostly broad keywords, using broad and phrase matching options in their paid search marketing campaign. Broad and phrase matched keywords generate a higher number of impressions, but also a greater number of low quality clicks. Ultimately, this has led to higher pay per click costs for advertisers and greater revenues for Google.

In summary, the use of long-tail keywords has seen a shift that you need to be aware of. Today, long-tail keywords can no longer be targeted explicitly and profitably through your paid search marketing campaign, but they still have great shelf life for PPC management. Now with the organic search world, they still are a great sandbox to play in. By no means are long-tail keyword dead!

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: keyword phrases, paid search, PPC, SEO

Paid Search Ad Copy Optimzation

June 20, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

paid search ads for atlanta home builders

Paid search marketing is a very “hands on” search marketing strategy and having a firm or a in-house person work on your PPC campaign is so much more profitable than allowing the search engines to do it for you. I am a big believer that the keywords you bid on and the ads you use are a key factor in conversions. I will go far and say that your business will not succeed in paid search if your keywords and ads are not optimized to their fullest. Today I would like to talk about ad reads in the home builder industry specifically for the Atlanta new homes term and how to optimize them for great click through rates.

So let’s start off by showcasing a few ad reads that have popped up when I do a search for the terms “atlanta new homes” and see how they can be optimized:

Ad Copy Strategy Using Atlanta New Homes

Use discounts or pricing – of course this can be great for any retailer but a great way to use this strategy for our example is to showcase home prices “from”. Something like “Atlanta new homes starting from the low 100′s” or ” Covering up to $10,000 is closing costs”.
Using the brand name – this is something that all home builders do very well as they are doing a tremendous amount of traditional and online advertising. The question comes into play when a builder who is not very well known is using their brand within the ad.
Google site links – if you are a premium advertiser, the ads that appear above the natural search results, not alongside them on the left, you can choose up to ten links to appear underneath your main ad – Google will automatically choose four and the settings are applied at campaign level. Many have seen an increase of 30% in their click through rates because of them.
Google extended headlines – as I talked in a previous post, Google has been implementing longer headlines in their premium ads. Ultimately Google will make the call on whether your description line #1 will be moved into the headline of your ad. While you can’t explicitly opt into (or out of) this, you can influence the probability of your ad displaying as such. By crafting your ad so that each line of copy appears as a distinct sentence that ends with proper punctuation, you’ll at least be in a position to have your ad appear with the extended headline.
Urgency/Expiration- I love using this one! Look at every infomercial you see on tv and notice the time remaining or items sold counter? This is exactly what they are doing by relying on your sense of urgency. Reads for our example can be:
1. Atlanta new homes – communities are 90% sold out!
2. We cover all closing costs till July 6th!
3. Over 4,000 new homes sold in Atlanta!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: conversions, paid search, PPC

Paid Search Review|Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney|Arizona PPC Marketing

May 18, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

using spyfu results-a snapshot of the term phoenix personal injury attorney

Paid search marketing is such a crucial element to many companies internet marketing plan and allowing someone or an agency to handle it is a very important part of the success of it and the success of the business from a Internet marketing perspective. I would like to do a quick paid search review using the term Phoenix personal injury attorney using the The Gillespie Law Firm.

PPC Marketing Landscape – Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney

I am a big fan of the the tool SpyFu as it really gives you a greater level of detail in terms of competitive analysis in the paid search arena. Using Spyfu, you can see that our example term is pretty expensive, around $12-15 bucks a click and the competition is heavy. Expect around 600 clicks a month if you are in the top spot and figure each position you are in after the number one position cut that in half. Their are nine major competitors in the space so making every click you get from this highly relevant term is a must.

Paid Search Review – The Ad

Given our example term here is the ad that was showing up:

As you can see this ad is way off the mark! Yes, they have searched for “Phoenix Injury Attorney” and have gotten an ad is about a law firm in Phoenix that could be about helping you with a personal injury case but this is causing a big waste in budget and due to the lack of clicks, will also impact the quality score of the account making this example pay more for a click. Here is a perfect example of letting Google manage your account. Here are a few things to do:

If you want to bid on this term, get an ad that speaks to it. I would suggest setting up a “personal injury” ad group and having all of those keywords reside in there with the appropriate ads.
Use negatives – tell Google that you do not want to show up for this term. If you set your match type to broad match Google is going to server your ad to what it feels is relevant or related to your term.
Use keyword insertion – even though the ad will still not talk to the visitor the right way at least the headline will match. I would consider this the last attempt should you not have the resources to do number 1 or 2.

Paid Search Review – The Landing Page

Here is the landing page that this ad goes to:

I have got to tell you that I really like this site. It is nicely laid out with some really nice conversion element baked into it. For the right terms (Phoenix based DUI attorney terms) I give high marks. For the terms that are not so targeted towards that, there is such a disconnect that it is just throwing money out the window! Let’s assume that somebody did click on the example ad and they land on this page. Is there way that they would call or fill out a form to inquiry about personal injury services? Slim to none and given this is a 15 dollar click, you can now see what I am talking about!

Here a few things we can do about this – 1) create a landing page that is specific to personal injury. Along with an ad this can be a very profitable keyword strategy. 2) If #1 is not an option-do not bid on these terms. Not to sound like a jerk but why even do this if you have no chance of succeeding.

Wrap Up

What it really comes down to is how bad do you want to be bidding on these terms and be part of this keyword market? For me, I do the following:

1) The site is so highly geared towards DUI attorney services that you are better off creating a new domain.

2) You to learn Google AdWords and the system. This is a perfect example of allowing Google to run your bid management and having them put you in places you have no right to be in. This creates multiple issues such as a lower quality scores and waisted budgets with little hope to achieving a positive ROI.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: paid search, Using Spyfu

Landing Page Quality Really Hurting My Quality Score?

May 2, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

This has been such a debate throughout the years. Whether it is with a client or within your company, landing pages and the quality of them and how this impacts your paid search marketing has always been something that has been talked about yet nobody really has had a good answer. Google has made this much easier now to find this out by telling you!

Landing Page Quality – How Do I Know?

Google wants your landing pages to be relevant, ulta relevant to the paid search keywords and ad. They want this so that you convert higher and want to spend more money while limiting any click fraud settlements they have to make. Most industry experts have always said if your search quality score for a keyword (or ad group) has been a 1 out of 10 there must be some kind of violation going on. I really do not subscribe to this theory because many keywords within a poorly structured ad group can give you a QS of 1 yet the overall health of the ad group is good. Google has not been very transparent about this and it has left you guessing as to why. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Notice how it clearly tells you? NICE! You have no idea how many “discussions” I have had with people about how landing pages are causing higher CPCs via bad quality scores. Now they tell you which is which. If you’ve violated an actual Google policy, you’ll get a “site suspended” notice.

My Landing Page Shows No Violation – Now What?

This is where you need to stop and re-evaluate you entire paid search marketing strategy! It starts with your keywords, flows to the ad reads, and converts on the landing page. If you have not adopted a paid search strategy that looks at these key elements as a whole, it is now the time to start! First thing you need to do is is review Google’s terms of service for landing pages at: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=28439&topic=30210&page=guide.cs . Then I would dive deep into your paid search campaign and find where you are doing the right and wrong things! From here you can make changes and optimize.

Google’s offical announcement is located at: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-clarity-in-adwords-for-advertisers.html.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: paid search, QS, search campaign, search keywords

Search Engine Marketing – Paid Search Tips

April 14, 2011 By Frank Pipolo Leave a Comment

the number one ad for the term atlanta lawn mower service

Did you know the average paid search account spends $2,500 a month? That should tell you that the majority of companies using paid search are small businesses. Paid search is a great way to jump start your business but without a solid strategy and at least the basics you can really go through your money quickly and find little results. So with a budget this small how do you maximize these dollars? Here are some paid search tips that are a must:

Choose the right keywords – I can not stress this enough. With a small budget every click counts and by finding the keywords that have less competition you will pay less per click and this will make your money go further. WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the tools provided by Google and Yahoo! are all great starting points. Take a look at this example: The term I used is “Atlanta lawn mower service” and the number one ad leads to this site: This is a perfect example that can break your budget and give you little results.

Daypart - Paid search marketing is one of the most competitive and tightly managed digital marketplaces that exists today. Yet in this world where daily micro-management of tens of thousands of keywords has become the norm, one of the simplest and most powerful strategies is often overlooked or underutilized. The art of dayparting is to shut down or start your campaign at certain times of the day to give your ads the maximum chance of being clicked by your targeted audiance. Cheryle Pingel, founder and president of Range Online Media, revealed what kinds of shoppers are on the Web and when. Men are generally buying before or at work between 6 and 8 a.m. Women, on the other hand, are shopping in the evening. So, if you’re selling football tickets you might want to boost your listings to a top spot in the morning. But if you run a woman’s shoe store, pause or delete your ad listings until after work hours.

Go Long Tail - Longer Tail terms are ones that appeal to users searching for very niche or specific items. For example, a generic term from the B2C world would be ‘Teddy Bears’. A Long Tail term would be ‘Big Teddy Bears’ or ‘Big Teddy Bear Delivery’. This will help avoid the high cost generic terms and pick up traffic from people doing very specific searches. Not only will the CPC be significantly cheaper, but you’ll tend to find that prospects know exactly what they want, and the quality and number of inquiries resulting from the clicks will be much higher.

Explore Content Networks – Personally I am not a big fan of content networks as they generally offer a lower quality visitor and will eat up your budget quickly. You can police and control campaigns to accommodate for these content network traps by building campaigns specifically for content networks.

Ad Writing – By far the most important thing you can do to optimize your campaign. If your ad copy is stale or less relevant, you may suffer from a low clickthrough rate, which in turn will hurt your quality score (in Google) and make you pay more for your clicks. You can also lose positioning which allows your competitors to have a stronger opportunity to take your visitors. The beauty of this is that you can always have ads rotating, and if your new efforts do not pan out, the major search engines will automatically stick to what was working. Take a look at the ads to the left that came up for me when I used the search term “Atlanta lawn service. These ads lack the necessary attention grabber necessary in my opinion to get visitors to click on them consistently.

Negative Keywords – A core component to managing your keyword list and saving your budget. Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won’t show for search queries containing that term. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI. Take a look at this example: My search was for “landscaping software” and got the following ads: the third ad really needs to use negative keywords! The amount of unwanted clicks (if any due to a bad ad) can crush your budget.

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: campaigns, Daypart Paid, paid search, Range Online Media

How SEO and PPC Can Optimize Each Other

February 14, 2011 By Frank Pipolo 1 Comment

Search engine optimization and paid search marketing have always been like “neighbors” to most companies and agencies instead of “family”. Some small businesses I have worked with in the past have outsourced one function while having a in-house resource for the other. This is fine and can be very successful but the lack of communication between the two that happens the majority of the time, causes inefficiencies in optimization of both functions. If your company resembles this condition here are some tips on how SEO and PPC Marketing can help optimize each other.

Have your search engine marketing and paid search work together

Benefits of Optimization of Paid Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

There have been a few studies done on this topic that have shown when you combine a website that ranks high from SEO with paid search ads being displayed on the same keyword you double your overall traffic from that keyword. In 2007 a company called I Company did an in depth study called “Natural & Search Symbiosis” that showed:

92% increase in clicks
45% increase in actions taken on the site
45% increase in orders
44% increase in page views
40% increase in visitors
40% increase in time spent on site

If you think about it, it just makes sense. Your taking up more valuable real estate in which your potential customers see you more and you are also limiting the competition to be seen as well.

Share Top Converting Keywords

By sharing the top converting search engine optimization keywords and paid search keywords with each function you give yourself a great opportunity to increase your conversion rates on both sides by:

Allowing PPC to incorporate those keywords into their campaign
Allowing search to raise positioning for those terms should they already be within a specific search campaign
Give SEO more keywords to target
Give SEO valuable information that will drive a targeted link building campaign

Share Top Search Ads & SEO Titles

SEO is just not about high rankings but click throughs as well. Don’t get me wrong, you need high placement from SEO to get traffic but once you are placed in the top 10 for a specific keyword your title of the page is what drives the visitor to click similar to your paid search ad drives click as well. A great tactic I have used is to incorporate top ad titles from your search marketing ads as page titles for your SEO pages and vice versa. If you are already seeing that visitors are responding to these titles with a high click rate then why not maximize this?

By using a co-optimized method it will prove that the limitations of one discipline can be helped by the strengths of the other. This will help keep PPC costs down and drive overall conversions and efficiency up. If done correctly, this dual optimization will save you time and money by giving your team more time to test, more time to report, and more time to refine each campaign.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: conversion rates, optimization, paid search, ppc marketing, search campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search keywords, SEO, small businesses

Paid Search News – Google Testing Longer Headlines

February 8, 2011 By Frank Pipolo 1 Comment

google testing paid search marketing ads - longer headlines

I just recently created a post on paid search marketing 101 for the small business and thought this would be a great add on to that post. Google has been and always will be a big believer in conversion optimization testing. Think about it for a second. Why wouldn’t they be right?

a big advantage for your paid search ads

The more conversions, in this case clicks, the more they make. They have been testing over the past few weeks longer headlines within selected paid search ads. This is part of the blog post on their official blog:

“We’re continually testing variations of our search results page to optimize performance for both you and our users. Similarly, you’re probably always trying to find ways to maximize each line of your ad to get your message across to users. To help, we’ll soon be making a change to certain ads that will allow you to display more information where it’s most likely to be noticed–in the headline.” You can read the full blog post here.

How Do You Get Them?

You have to be one of the top ads for that search term and your first description line needs to have the punctuation. My research has show me that this is only happening to description lines that end in a period.

What Do I Have To Do To My Ads?

Nothing as long as your search ad has a the correct punctuation in the first description line.

What Is The Big Deal About This?

It makes your ads different and in the world of paid search this is a premium. Anything you can do to look different against your competition will help you drive more qualified traffic to your site and hopefully convert to more sales. Take a look at my example and notice the difference between the 1st and 3rd search ad from the 2nd one? It makes a big difference in how the ad stands out.

So What Can I Expect From This?

Google says that they have seen higher click through rates for these ads and that is about all they will give us on this topic. I can tell you that I expect to see a 10-15% increase in your click through rate but I do have a client that has been fortunate enough to receive this upgrade in their marketing ad throughout the past few weeks and has seen a 25-35% increase in click through rate. A very nice gain!

OK I Am Sold – What’s Next?

First of all, Google is NOT recommending you optimize your PPC ads for this upgrade. I would attend to agree as an overall search marketing strategy but would look at opportunities to do this now on a keyword by keyword basis. Ask yourself:

Is your ad already in the top spot for that keyword?
Does your first description line end in a period (or exclamation point)?
Are you happy with the results from this ad you are getting currently?

You may think the last bullet point is crazy. Why wouldn’t you want additional clicks of qualified traffic? Just remember that this is a test and you have to treat it as if you were heading off to Vegas with pocket full of money. There are no guarantees in gambling that your going to win and the same holds true for testing. Honestly, I am a gambling man (even though this is not a big gamble to do) so I would start researching your keywords, find out where you are positioned, and tweak those ads to make sure the first description line ends in a period. Hopefully the Google paid search gods will sprinkle down some magic dust upon you!

Filed Under: Paid Search Marketing Tagged With: conversion, conversions, headlines, marketing 101, optimization, paid search, PPC, search ads, search term, small business

Misspellings For Paid Search Marketing

So are you stuck with this new misspelling technology?

OutSourcing Your PPC Marketing

Reasons Why Companies Done Not Outsource Their Search Marketing

Why Companies Should Use Outsourcing For PPC Purposes

Paid Search Marketing Tips – PPC Marketing Optimization

Using Long Tail Keywords Still Pays Off

What Are Long Tail Keywords Really?

The use of long-tail keywords in organic search over the past few years has been affected primarily by these things:

What About PPC Management Of Long Tail Keywords?

Paid Search Ad Copy Optimzation

Ad Copy Strategy Using Atlanta New Homes

Paid Search Review|Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney|Arizona PPC Marketing

PPC Marketing Landscape – Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney

Paid Search Review – The Ad

Paid Search Review – The Landing Page

Wrap Up

Landing Page Quality Really Hurting My Quality Score?

Landing Page Quality – How Do I Know?

My Landing Page Shows No Violation – Now What?

Search Engine Marketing – Paid Search Tips

How SEO and PPC Can Optimize Each Other

Benefits of Optimization of Paid Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

Share Top Converting Keywords

Share Top Search Ads & SEO Titles

Paid Search News – Google Testing Longer Headlines

How Do You Get Them?

What Do I Have To Do To My Ads?

What Is The Big Deal About This?

So What Can I Expect From This?

OK I Am Sold – What’s Next?

Your Online Success Starts Today!

Blogroll

So are you stuck with this new misspelling technology?

Reasons Why Companies Done Not Outsource Their Search Marketing

Why Companies Should Use Outsourcing For PPC Purposes

What Are Long Tail Keywords Really?

The use of long-tail keywords in organic search over the past few years has been affected primarily by these things:

What About PPC Management Of Long Tail Keywords?

Ad Copy Strategy Using Atlanta New Homes

PPC Marketing Landscape – Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney

Paid Search Review – The Ad

Paid Search Review – The Landing Page

Wrap Up

Landing Page Quality – How Do I Know?

My Landing Page Shows No Violation – Now What?

Benefits of Optimization of Paid Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

Share Top Converting Keywords

Share Top Search Ads & SEO Titles

How Do You Get Them?

What Do I Have To Do To My Ads?

What Is The Big Deal About This?

So What Can I Expect From This?

OK I Am Sold – What’s Next?

Stay Connected With Us:

Your Online Success Starts Today!

Blogroll