If you still don’t believe that negative keywords are important to your PPC Campaign, it is likely that you are losing a lot of money on your ROI. Negative keywords save PPC Campaigns and it is important that all online marketers learn how to generate and manage them effectively.

If your knowledge of negative keyword generation and management is minimal, use this quick article about negative keywords as a kick-start way to negative keyword stardom. After a very short period of time, if you put all that we advise into practice, you will see the difference in your ROI and realize the true importance of negative keywords once and for all.

The main problem with setting up negative keywords is that many people are not aware of how to generate and manage negative keywords successfully. For example, One of our clients wants to target child custody keywords but sometimes they show up for child support which does not generate the cases they are looking for. Therefore we have added child support negative key words to the campaign which has made a huge difference to the results of their campaign.

Whether or not you are already aware, there are ways of selecting negative keywords that are going to work best for you and your campaign.

We are going to share some of the most effective negative keyword selection techniques with you in this article…

The First Important Steps

The following two steps are kind of pre-steps to developing negative keyword lists that you really must take when completely reorganizing your negative keyword list content.

1. Start with the Search Query Report

Always start at the beginning. Download your Search Query Report and find out what keywords people are using to activate your advertisements.

If these keyword terms have nothing to do with your products or services whatsoever, you can begin to use these keywords as negative keywords. It is the best way of approaching negative keyword development at the very beginning of the entire process.

2. Existing Negative Keyword Lists

Remember to then go through your existing negative keyword list. There might be negative keywords on that list which should actually be tuned into positive keywords because they have the potential for generating impressive conversion rates for you and your business.

Go through this list with a fine tooth comb and be very certain that you have not listed a keyword as “negative” when in fact it should be listed as a “positive” keyword. Sometimes our keywords get mixed up and this is why we need to be extra careful when revising what we already have in place.

The Generation of New Negative Keywords for your Campaigns

From now on, the advice and information we provide relates to the direct development of new negative keyword lists and it should help to get negative keywords ordered and structured in your head as well as in your PPC Campaign. Order is the key to most things in life, after all!

Geography Lists
Make a list of negative keywords that will exclude people who are outside of the areas that you sell to in a geographical sense.

If you sell in the US, but not in San Francisco, make San Francisco a negative keyword. If you sell within Nevada, but not to Reno, then make Reno a negative keyword.

Movie Lists
You might not be aware of the fact that your brand name or one of your product names shares an unfortunate relationship with a movie. If this is the case, when people are looking for the movie, they will end up activating one of your PPC Advertisements and costing you money because your product is not what they are looking for and not what they are going to click on.

Your quality score might end up going down too when the search engines decide that your marketing campaign is not relevant to the audience searching on those keywords. So, make sure that you cover your tracks by listing all actors and directors associated with that movie as negative keywords and try to optimize your campaign even further.

Music Lists
The same might be happening with music tracks or album titles too. Do a Google Search check yourself on your keyword terms. If any of them bring up links to music, make those terms negative keywords.

Book Lists
You guessed it! Do you have a product which shares the name with the title or author of a book? Seek them out and mark them as negative.

Top Lists
Do a little research by performing your own Search Engine search with the word “top” or “best” somewhere in the keyword phrase. Find out which sites are listing as the top of something and then use keywords inspired by these competitors and their advertisements as negative keywords in your campaign.

Try to ensure that you are not competing; that the people who see your advertisements were not hoping to see an advertisement by a competitor by using keywords related to that competitor as negative keywords in your campaign.

Finding alternate meanings
This is a really important set of negative keywords to look into if you are advertising your products in other countries. For instance, think about the difference between the word “pants” in the US and the UK. In one country, “pants” are outer-garments and in the other they are underwear.

If you are selling outer-garments from the US to the UK, you need to put “pants” as a NEGATIVE keyword and use “trousers” instead in your positive keyword lists.

This example is basic. Things can start to get more complex when you begin advertising in different languages. You may even find that your brand name has a different meaning when advertising abroad and you might want to develop an international brand name that is going to be better for your company sales abroad.

Trending Topics
Make sure, as a PPC Manager, that you don’t get too self-involved and hibernate away from the world with your computer for too long, because your lack of contact with the world could eventually begin to harm your PPC results. How?

Imagine that you are a specialist book seller and that you had a discount campaign going on George Orwell classics during the time, about 8 years ago, when the UK’s Channel 4 Network first launched the reality TV show, “Big Brother”. You might have had lots of people clicking on your links thinking that they were going to find out information on “Big Brother, Channel 4,” when in actual fact you were trying to sell a 50 year old piece of literature.

Stay up-to-date with what is happening in the world and make sure that you add negative keywords to your lists when necessary to combat the effects of trending topics.

Wrapping up Negative Keyword Generation
In conclusion, there are many more ways of highlighting, generating and managing negative keywords, but the above list already helps to paint the idea of a complex area of PPC Management which is well worth spending some real time over.

Take your time, work systemically through your campaign and learn to make negative keywords really work for you. You will be pleased with the results that well structured negative keyword lists can bring.

 
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Certified Knowledge. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.
 

Is your PPC keyword research feeling a little uninspired lately? Keyword targeting in search engines can be accomplished in a number of ways. Most commonly by focusing on products and services and/or themes and functions. Enter your new secret weapon: targeting via the search funnel.

Designing your PPC campaigns around the search funnel helps to reach buyers at different stages in the purchase decision-making process. The search funnel demonstrates that searchers’ queries get more specific as they get closer to the purchase. Understanding how to integrate this into your current PPC strategy can help to take your campaigns to the next level.

The primary stages of the search funnel (also known as buying funnel):

1. Awareness: At this stage, the consumer is just beginning to venture out on search engines to better understand who may offer the product, service, or information they are seeking. Typically the keyword searches will be very general such as “new computers”, “laptop computer”, “plasma tv”, “shoe stores”, etc.
2. Research and comparison: Once the consumer has gathered a bit of general information about what they are seeking, they will continue to research the product or service. Often this will include reading reviews or comparison-shopping online. Searches will begin to include qualifiers that indicate they are researching, such as “laptop computer reviews”. Qualifiers may include: “reviews”, “ratings”, “compare”, “comparison”, etc.
3. Buying: After having gathered information and researching their purchase, the consumer is ready to buy. Now they may be simply checking prices or shipping options. At this stage, we expect to see searches focusing on “Buy / Purchase/ Order” keywords and searches that contain brands, delivery options, “sale” keywords, specific model numbers, and geographic modifiers in search queries.



How can the search funnel work for you? Segment your keyword themes as you normally would, but add further segments for the search funnel stages. This gives you the opportunity to laser target your keywords and customize the experience to the searcher.

Tips to integrate other elements of your PPC strategy to reach buyers across the search funnel:

1. Use specific messaging in your ad copy like “learn more” in the research stage, or “in stock, free delivery” for the buying stage.
2. Serve specific offers that sweeten the deal as the searcher gets closer to the purchase.
3. Determine bids based on your campaign performance at each stage.
4. Determine program ROI by funnel stages to get most bang for your advertising buck.
5. Customize landing pages to inform the purchaser or close the deal.

Considering the search funnel in your PPC campaigns will add a new layer of strategy and complexity, but your efforts should pay off. As your new PPC secret weapon, it will allow you to take your search engine marketing strategy to the next level, with a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Google has updated their information on Quality Score to now include geographic information. This has long been a part of the ‘other relevancy factors’; so it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise.

At present, it’s only used in calculating the quality score for search.

Essentially, Google is looking to see how your account performs in different geographies. At present, this factor is listed to be used at the account level. Hopefully, it will eventually be moved to the campaign level, which is where you can actually specify different geographies.

This should help small businesses who are targeting very locally.

It should also help those who are tightly focusing their keywords and ad copy around specific geographies. You should use one campaign per country at a minimum (another post coming on that soon).

I’ve updated the Quality Score Factors Chart to also include the new geographic information.

Google remarketing campaigns allow you to serve custom ads to users who have visited your website.

My latest Search Engine Land article covers the basics of setting up a remarketing campaign and gives some examples for setting up remarketing ad groups for an ecommerce site. If you are new to remarketing, you might want to take a quick look through that article and learn the basics of how to set up a remarketing campaign as in this article we’re going to make the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of remarketing.

In this article, we will show you how we are setting them up for our new product, Certified Knowledge (note: the site is not fully live yet, but we’re planning out our marketing campaigns now so this is what it will look like once everything is publicly launched).

The Marketing Campaign’s Objectives

Certified Knowledge is a subscription based AdWords learning, PPC tool, and community site. With many subscription products it takes a few visits for someone to finally convert. Therefore, remarketing is a perfect way to serve custom ads to those who have been on the site once, but have not yet bought a subscription.

There are three main benefits of Certified Knowledge (tutorials, tools, and community); therefore, we want to make custom ads based upon what sections someone has visited within the site.

If someone entered the cart but did not buy, we want a very custom message.  For example, if a user started the purchase process but did not complete the transaction; we want to display a custom message or offer specific to the fact that they didn’t finish the purchase process.  This group of cart abandoners still have a better chance of converting than someone who has never been to our website before or looked around the site and didn’t enter the cart, so our bids for this list will be higher than for any other audience.

If someone has subscribed we don’t want to serve then an ad for the membership.

Lastly, the further into the conversion process that someone was, the longer the cookie will last based upon our settings (remarketing ads are displayed based upon a browser having a cookie that corresponds to your lists).

The Remarketing Lists

Google offers the ability to create a straightforward list (a cookie on the computer means they are in a list), or a custom combination which uses Boolean strings to combine audiences into a single list. With some of these lists, I think we could use custom combinations instead of straight lists. However, I’ve not been able to test Google’s Boolean strings yet to be confident in their use. What I’d like to do is add someone to list 1. Then, if they also make it to list 2, remove them from list 2. However, that is not currently possible.

In addition, what I don’t know is if someone is on two different lists; and you use one list as a negative list, it appears that the ad will not be displayed to that person at all. (i.e. if someone is on list a and on list b, and list a is your positive list and list b is your negative list – will the user see the ad?)

Therefore, for the initial setup of our remarketing campaigns (this may change in the future); I’m setting up several lists; and then I’ll use negative lists at the ad group level and CPC manipulation to determine which shows (i.e. if a basic list is worth $0.25 and a more advanced list is worth $1, even if someone is on both, the should see the $1 CPC ad copy for that list).

Here is a list of the remarketing lists that we created and where we put the codes across our website:

Once the lists are created and the scripts placed on the appropriate pages, then it’s time to create the Ad Groups that reach the various audiences.

Remarketing Ad Groups

We are creating an entirely new campaign for our remarketing lists for four reasons:

• Budget. We have a much higher budget than for our placement and discovery campaigns.
• Blocked domains. We don’t want our usual blocked domain list to affect remarketing ads (at least to start)
• Geography: As this product has international appeal (and we’ll do international billing); we are going to start with a few different countries in our campaign list (and refine from there).
• Reach & Frequency: We want a different frequency caps for the ads than our other content campaigns.

Once a new campaign is setup, it’s time to map out the ad groups. The reason to create various remarketing ad groups is when you want to show different ads to different audience lists. At an ad group level, you can add both positive and negative audiences and set a different bid by audience. Therefore, we’re going to build our ad groups from the ads that we’re going to be showing.

In addition, it will be common for some users to be on multiple lists. Therefore, we’re going to use a lot of negative lists to ensure the most relevant ad is being displayed. In cases where someone is on multiple lists, we will also u
se bids to ensure the more specific ad is being shown (so our bids will be the lowest on general ads and highest on close-to-converting individuals).

Ad Group 1: Non-Engaged Users

This ad group is for users who visited the site but did not enter a specific section of the site. Therefore, these are the absolutely least qualified of all the visitors. This is the reason the cookie duration for this list is only 30 days, the shortest of all the lists.

The positive list: All visitor

The negative lists: All the other lists. If someone is on any other list; we don’t want them seeing our general ad; we want a more specific ad served to that user.

The ad: Showcasing all benefits.

Bid: Lowest of all the remarketing lists. These visitors went to at least the homepage, and possibly an interior page; but not one of the very specific pages that is useful for tailoring a separate ad for that user.

Ad Group 2: Price Shoppers

This ad group is for users who visited the pricing section.

The positive list: Pricing

The negative lists: All others except non-engaged users list.

The ad: Showcasing that your time is worth money, and then show how Certified Knowledge can save you time.

Bid: Second lowest of all the remarketing lists. Price conscious users can be difficult to convince. In addition, I’d rather the more specific ad (the ad groups below) be shown to consumers instead of this ad. If someone happens to be on both the non-engaged user list and the price shoppers list, they should see this ad because its bid will be higher than the non-engaged user list.

Ad Group 3: PPC Community

This ad group is for people who visited the PPC community page. I expect that most people who visit this page will also visit other pages across the site. Therefore, while this will be an ad we show, we’re going to put less importance on what I expect the stronger benefits to be: Tools & Training. However, if someone did visit this page, we’re willing to show them this ad (in addition to other ads they may see from the more specific ad groups).

The positive list: PPC community

The negative list: All others except Price Shoppers and Non-engaged users.

The ad: Showcasing the benefits of having access to an active forum, email, and news system.

Bid: Third lowest. Higher than Price Shoppers; lower than PPC Tools & AdWords Tutorials.

Ad Group 4: AdWords Tutorials

This ad group is targeting consumers who examined our tutorials. As we’re going to have many pages explaining the tutorials, this might be broken down into two lists over time: main tutorials page, all training subpages. That sectioning will help us identify those who just glanced at the tutorials versus looked at our videos and read more about the AdWords lessons.

The positive list: AdWords Tutorials

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted email training, Shopping cart abandonment. If someone converted, or was closer to converting than just visiting the features pages, then I want them to see the more specific ad.

The ad: Showcasing what Certified Knowledge can teach you about AdWords with more than 50 lessons, and more than 100 coming by the end of the year.

Bid: Higher than PPC Community and lower than the three negative lists.

Ad Group 5: PPC Tools

This ad group is targeting consumers who examined our toolset. As we’re going to have many pages explaining the tools, this might be broken down into two lists over time: main tools page, all tool subpages. That sectioning will help us identify those who just glanced at the tools versus looked at our videos and read more about the tools.

The positive list: PPC Tools

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted email training, Shopping cart abandonment. If someone converted, or was closer to converting than just visiting the features pages, then I want them to see the more specific ad.

The ad: Showcasing the benefits of the PPC tools we have developed which will save you time in creating ad copies, geographic keywords and keywords. They will help you bid, find quality score issues, find broken links, and help you analyze your site. While most of the ad groups will contain two or three image ads to start (by themes, each theme will have different sizes); I expect this ad group will have more test ads to see what message resonates better.

Bid: Same as the AdWords Tutorials. I expect it will become slightly higher than the tutorials over time as tutorials are one to three time views for most consumers, and many repeat views will help refresh your knowledge. The tools will be used daily, weekly, or monthly depending on what you’re trying to accomplish inside your account; and therefore, I think will be more valuable over time.

Ad Group 6: Converted Free Email Training

This ad group is for targeting those who signed up for a ‘free lessons training’ via email. Many people who sign up for free training do not have an intent to buy as they just want the free stuff. Others want a trial of what you are offering and have a high chance of converting. However, email open rates can be sporadic on free training offers. Therefore, these ads will both remind them about Certified Knowledge, but also serve as a reminder about the emails delivered to them.

The positive list: Converted Free Email Training

The negative lists: Converted subscription, Shopping Cart Abandoners

The ad: Showcase the Certified Knowledge tutorials with messages to remind them about their email subscription. I’m not sure if they will be something like: “Did you enjoy your free email training from Certified Knowledge? Learn how you can access all of our training” as that might seem a bit creepy to people that we know they have the email – or if they’ll be images more aligned with the training aspects of Certified Knowledge.

Bid: To start, a bit higher than AdWords tutorials & tools lists as these users were willing to give us a name and email address to receive the information. Overtime, the bidding for this list might change significantly up or down.

Ad Group 7: Shopping Cart Abandoners

This ad group is for targeting those who entered the shopping cart but did not convert.

The positive list: Shopping cart abandoners

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted Free email training

I’m making an assumption here that I might change in the future. I’m considering these users more valuable than the converted free email training list as these shoppers were within a submit button of entering their credit card information and becoming customers. I think they will be more valuable than the Converted Free Email Training list – but I might be wrong; therefore, I might test this exact same ad group minus the email training list as a negative list in the future.

The ad: One ad will showcase the Certified Knowledge benefits. One will show a phone number with the benefits that talks about support for any problems. As we start to map out sign-up objections, then we will base the ads around the most common ones.

Bid: The highest of all the lists.

Are all these lists necessary?

Outside of the time to create the actual ads per ad group, setting up one list and one ad group versus seven ad groups and lists is only a few minutes of additional work. We’re using WordPress for this site’s CMS; so adding some custom code to the pages is very simple and will take less than a minute per list. I’m expecting the entire setup (outside of the ad copy creation) to take less than ten minutes. I’ve already set up some remarketing campaigns for the AdWords Seminars and it took less than a minute to setup the list and add the c
ode to the pages for each created list.

The advantage of showing an ad to the consumer based upon their main interests in the site should significantly outweigh the work involved.

The Next Step

Once everything is in place, then remarketing success is all about ad creatives and measurement.

Remarketing has a higher potential of success than almost all other forms of marketing because the user was already involved with your website. Most marketing drives some users to your website based upon a common interest (keyword, placement, email list, etc). Remarketing engages users who have already been on your website and are somewhat familiar with your offerings. This type of campaign can be the final push that someone needs to realize how valuable your service can be to them.

Want to Learn More About Remarketing?

Certified Knowledge Premium members can access more than an hour of lessons about just remarketing. Its just one of the many lesson sections available for members. Not only do members get unlimited access to informative lessons; they also have access to time saving tools.

We never just ask you to trust us blindly; we’ve built our reputation on open and honest data sharing. Therefore, you can take a 7 day free trial to see how a membership can benefit your AdWords knowledge and help you wring more profit from your AdWords campaigns. Start Your Free Trial.

Search and content are different. I think we can all finally agree on that sentiment.

With search, someone is actively looking for information. Their goal is to click on a link.

With content, someone is looking at related information. They may click when they are finished reading the page.

The mentality of active search versus random discovery lends itself to not just using different keywords for your search and content campaigns. It also shows that you should test different landing pages for the two mediums as well.

Here are the results of a test that was conducted using different landing pages across search and content.

The Company’s Products

This company offers two products (Since they are so niche, I’m using the proverbial plumber services instead of their actual product – everything else is the same):

• A database where subscribers can find local services
  • It’s a subscription based model – this is where they make money
• A free listing where local services can input their information and hopefully be hired by the subscribers.
  • The listings are verified. This leads to creating a high trust factor for the consumer
  • The company doesn’t make money on these listings, this is increased value to the subscribers

The Website’s Landing Pages

The website has two different types of pages.

Segmentation page. The home page has two navigation paths: One is for listing services (free) and the other is for finding services (subscription). The page has many trust elements (BBB, SSL, Associations, etc).

City Landing pages. For each major metro, they have a page that lists the city, has a picture of the city, lists the services, how many companies are in their database for that city, etc.

Two very different pages.

Conventional wisdom says to put the Chicago searchers on the Chicago city page, and the Miami searchers on the Miami city page.

Was conventional wisdom correct?

The Actual PPC Test

There were 21 campaigns set up for this test.

• Campaign 1: Search only using Geo-modified keywords (i.e. Chicago Plumber)
• Campaign 2-11 (10 campaigns): Search only using location targeted campaigns (i.e. each campaign only targeted a single city such as Chicago, NYC, Miami, etc). Keywords were not geo specific (i.e. Plumber)
• Campaign 12-21 (10 campaigns) Content only. Location targeted campaigns using the same cities, keywords and ad copy as the Search only campaigns above (essentially, the exact same campaign, just content instead of search targeted)

The visitors for all the campaigns were sent to two different landing pages:

• Home page (which is a segmentation page)
• City Landing page which corresponded to the appropriate city for the IP targeting campaign or geographic keywords

For this test, only a subscription was considered a conversion. Listing free information was not considered a conversion as it’s not the way the company makes money.

A very simple split test was used to execute all of the testing.

The Resulting PPC Data

The Search Campaigns (campaigns 1-11) all had very similar data. There were a few outliers at the keyword / ad copy intersection. However, in general every campaign behaved very similarly. This includes both geo-modified keywords and location targeted campaigns (which doesn’t always happen).

The Content Campaigns (12-21) also had similar data. There were a few more outliers in this campaign, but those outliers made up less than 10% of the keyword / ad copy intersections, and less than 8% of the total clicks and impressions.

Was conventional wisdom correct?

Conventional wisdom says the city pages should outperform the home page. After all, those pages are more specific to the user – correct?

Upon first examination, it appears that conventional wisdom was correct. The conversion rate and cost per conversion are lower for the city landing page than the home page.

However, never combine search and content when examining data – NEVER.

On the content network, conventional wisdom was correct. The City Landing Pages had a cost per conversion of $8.99 vs. the $13.34 for the Home Page. Not surprising.

On the search network, conventional wisdom failed. The Home Page had a lower cost per conversion and higher conversion rate than the City Landing Pages.

Here’s the data to examine:

Another reason to test search vs. content is conversion rates. In this instance, the content network outperformed the search network in terms of cost per conversion and conversion rates. This is not always true – it’s why you test.

What’s the lesson?

Search and content are very different.

The user engagement process is different.

The offers can be different.

The keywords can be different.

The ad copy can be different.

In fact, every campaign setting and ad group feature can be optimized differently for search vs. content.

Your conversion rate and cost per conversion are often very different.

When running reports, make sure you’re looking at just search or just content data. If you combine them, you won’t see an accurate picture of what’s really transpiring in your marketing efforts.

If you’re not testing, then you’re losing money. It really is that simple. Test, but test and measure appropriately.

I’m trying something new to see your reaction. I receive a lot of questions via email about PPC; in fact more than I can ever hope to answer. Some of them are much more popular than others – so I thought I’d try blogging the answers to various questions.

If you have a question, feel free to contact us with the ‘PPC Question’ subject.

Today’s question comes from an AdWords seminar attendee (don’t worry, I’m keeping the questioners anonymous) and concerns how location targeting and the content network work together on AdWords.

Location Targeting Overview

First a quick word about location targeting. When you choose a region, Google shows ads based upon someone being in that region or using geographic keywords which would show the intent to find information within that region.

For example, if you were targeting Chicago with the keyword hotel. Your ad could show in two situations. First, someone searched for hotel within the Chicago metro. The second way is someone searched for Chicago hotel.

In the first instance, the user being located inside the metro, this is an easy decision – location targeting equals user’s location and the ad is shown.

In the second instance, the assumption being made is that if someone is explicitly looking for information within a metro, then their location does not matter as their intent is to find information within that metro.

Hopefully that makes sense. If not, please comment or contact me and I’ll do a full post on the two location targeting options.

Content Network & Location Targeting

The content network follows all the rules set at the campaign level, and one of those is location targeting. So, in that instance the quick answer to the question is ‘yes, the content network displays ads based upon location targeting settings’.

However, there is also a slightly more ambiguous answer. The content network scans a page to find what the page is about to best serve ads. Therefore, if you consider the second instance above – someone looking for information within a geography, then it stands to reason that sometimes that may come into play in showing ads on the content network.

Therefore, if someone is reading a geographically based article, say about Chicago hotels, they may still see ads for Chicago hotels even though they are outside of that region.

If someone is reading an article about hotels in general, and they aren’t located in our example city Chicago, then they would not see the advertiser’s Chicago location targeted ad.

The Quick Answer

Don’t you love this is at the bottom of the post?

The content network follows all campaign setting rules.

Location targeting is a campaign setting rule.

If someone is within your target geography reading an article that corresponds to your AdGroup theme, then your ads can be shown.

If someone is outside your target geography reading an article that corresponds to your AdGroup theme and the article is about the geography your are targeting, your ads can show.

If someone is outside your geography and the article does not include your geography, then your ads will not show.

There are several different factors that affect Google AdWords Quality Score. It’s time to walk through each in detail and list the major contributing factors to each.First, it’s important to note why Quality Score matters. One’s Ad Rank(the position an ad shows on a search result or across the content network) is based upon max cost per click and quality score. The current formula is:

Ad Rank = [(keyword / ad group] quality score) X Max CPC

The reason keyword / ad group is in brackets is that for search the keyword quality score is used and for content the ad group quality score is used.

It’s very possible to pay less than your competitors and have a higher ad rank. Instead of raising bids, there are times when it’s more appropriate to raise quality score.

For keywords, every keyword has a quality score associated with it. So, when talking about the below factors, they exist at the keyword level. This is important to keep in mind when talking about ad copy (and possibly landing pages) as it will be associated with multiple keywords.

Note:how to view your quality score.

Let’s dig into the factors.

Click Through Rate on Google.com

• All time history
• Most recent history

It’s important to note, this is the CTR on Google.com only. The search network CTR does not matter. The click through rate on the content network does not matter. Google.com is the only search interface that Google can completely control and measure, therefore, it’s the only place where CTR matters (in terms of quality score, there are some other reasons CTR matters for ad serving).

The CTR is normalized by position. AdWords understands that an ad in position 1 is going to receive (on average) a higher CTR than an ad in position 5. Therefore, they aren’t going to penalize the advertisers in position 5 for having a lower click through rate than the advertiser in the first position.

The CTR is predicted by keyword. Search intent differs by keyword. The search term ‘TV’ is very ambiguous. It could be a search for TV repair, plasma TV, TV guide, TV instructions, etc. Therefore, it’s predicted CTR is low. There are times that a 2% CTR may be well above the predicted, and hence 2% could be a very high CTR. In other cases, 2% may be quite low because the term is very commercial, the user intent well known, and those search results could have CTRs in the 8%+ range.

All time history is used. A keyword’s all time CTR history within your account influences the ranking algorithm.

Most recent CTR history. The most recent impressions for a keyword matter more than the all time history. In essence, a keyword can always be saved’.

Ad Copy

How closely does your ad copy reflect your keywords? Ad Group organization is key to starting this process. Your ad copy should describe each keyword in the ad group. Each search has a different user intent, therefore, your ad copy needs to take a user’s intent for that keyword as it relates to your website in mind.

Does your ad contain the keyword? Of course, each ad can not contain every single keyword. Google understands themes, stemming, and latent semantic indexing. If your ad does not contain the keyword (the closest match), does the ad copy contain the overall theme of the keyword? (Again, please read the ad group organization article as themes can be quite granular).

Note: the use of dynamic insertion does not mean your ad copy contains the keyword.

Quick Tip: If you split test ads, you can run an ad copy report that lists the CPC by individual ad. This may give you insight into how the ads are affecting your quality score.

Landing Page

The landing page is where a visitor is sent after clicking on an ad. Often, the quality score of a landing page and the usability of a landing page overlap from what is relevant to quality score versus what a business should be doing to provide a good user experience. Remember, Google thinks of searchers as their users, so they want them to have a good search experience so they come back to Google to search again.

The landing page should, just like the ad copy, contain the keyword or the keyword’s theme. It should also provide a unique experience for the user. Every time someone does a search, they are looking for an answer. Does your page help them find that answer?

A good example is a mortgage form. If someone searches for ‘3 year arm mortgage’, are you sending them to a mortgage form fill? Do they have the opportunity to understand the difference between a ‘3 year arm mortgage’ and an ‘interest only mortgage’?

Here’s a quick checklist for landing pages:

• Does your page collect personal information?
  • If so, does it have an SSL certificate and a privacy policy?
• Do you have an ‘about us’ page?
• Do you have a ‘contact us’ page?
• Do you have relevant information to the search query?
• Do you have unique information?
• Do you have related content to the search query?

Related: Google’s Organic webmaster guidelines.

Account Quality Score

I’ll dig into the account quality score more in-depth later. However, the account quality score is used in the keyword quality score formula, so it’s important to define it somewhat.

If you think about all of your keywords and how many impressions and clicks each one received, you could ‘roll up’ your entire account into a single quality score. This is essentially how high (or low) of a quality your entire account has. While this has little impact upon the keyword quality score, it does have some influence. Therefore, under performing keywords can hurt your quality score.

Other Relevancy Factors

“There are over 100 factors that can affect quality score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved.” – Google Engineer.

These other factors are items which you will have little or no control over, and won’t even be used at all times, therefore, it’s important not to get too concerned about this ambiguous statement.

If you think about the query ‘plumbing repair’ there are generally two main search intents:

• Someone looking for a plumber
• Someone looking for information to do it them self

In this instance, additional weight for IP targeting may not matter at all. (Other’s may, but in this instance IP targeting won’t make a huge difference).

When changing the query to ‘plumbing repair services’, or ‘Maryland plumbing repair’ odds are one is now looking for a plumber. Suddenly the geographic keywords can trigger IP targeted campaigns. And since it’s most likely a local query, a plumber who is serving ads only to Maryland may receive a little bump over someone bidding on just the keyword ‘plumbing repair’.

However, if the query were ‘plumbing repair books’, that’s not inherently a local query. So now the IP targeting isn’t helping at all, in fact, since one is most likely looking for book reviews or information to do it them self. In this instance, the national book chain bidding on ‘plumbing repair’ may get a bump over the IP targeting campaign bidding on the same keyword.

While these factors could be IP targeting, ad scheduling, personalized search, user location, user intent, demographic targeting, etc – they are small factors and should be understood, but not fretted over.

Closing Thoughts

Once upon a time, Google used a straightforward CTR X CPC method of determining ad rank. This maximized profits. The higher your CTR and the more you bid, the more Google made from each ad position. Quality score doesn’t maximize short term profits – it a move to maximize long term revenue. Google thinks of searchers as their users. If a searcher has a good experience on Google.com, they are more likely to come back and search again, click again, and increase lifetime visitor values.

What quality score does is try to ensure that searchers are having a good experience. If you make decisions around maximizing the user experience, odds are you will be maximizing your quality score in the process. This is not only good from an AdWords quality score standpoint, it’s also good for your website as users are more likely to come back to your site when they have a similar question.

If you are using automated software to change bids based upon some criteria, you shouldn’t just rely on the technology to make all of your decisions, you should also make sure you have a high quality score so that the technology isn’t just changing bids for low quality score keywords and ad copy. Since PPC is the new SEO, how do SEOs do their work? I don’t think you’ll see too many good SEOs automating all of their decision making processes (some – yes, all -no). The same goes for PPC.

Quality score can sound intimidating. It can be frustrating at times. However, once you start to break it down into each factor, and then maximize each of those factors, it’s a very manageable process.

Your quality score is one of the most important items you can understand and improve to help your AdWords rankings. The higher your quality score, the less you are going to pay per click, and the more potential exposure.

Doesn’t everyone want to pay less than their competitors and yet have their ads show higher in the search results?

IP Targeting is one of the technologies that Google, MSN, and Yahoo employ to target searchers.  IP Targeting is often misunderstood. It has both advantages and disadvantages; however, before those can be discussed, we must first look at how the technology functions.

Assigning IP Addresses

Whenever you logon to the web, your computer is assigned an IP address from your host (your internet access provider). This is essentially your computer’s address on the web. However, as it’s assigned from your host, your address is tied to your host’s as much as it’s assigned to your computer.

The major engines (and many others) map these IP addresses to physical locations. Since there is an actual location associated with your computer, ads can then be served based upon your actual location.

The advantage of this technology is regional targeting. The job of an advertiser is to connect with searchers. Connecting on a local level is one method advertisers can employ so that searchers relate to the advertisement.

However, the disadvantage is that advertisers may be connecting with the incorrect geography.

IP Targeting Map

In this example, the grey area represents a DMA (Chicago in this example). There are three searchers, and two host providers.

Searcher 1 is located inside Chicago, and the host provider is located inside Chicago; therefore, the ads served to searcher 1 are geographically appropriate.

Searcher 2 is located outside Chicago, however, the host provider is inside Chicago; so this searcher will see ads targeted to the major city in the area, however, they aren’t as specific as possible. This most often happens in the suburbs of large cities, or when there are few host providers in an area (usually rural).

Search 3 is located inside Chicago, however, the host provider is outside the city. Therefore, searcher 3 will not see geographic ads for Chicago, however, they might see them for the location where host 2 is located.

How often are irrelevant geographic ads served?

I don’t believe there are exact statistics of this measure, as when it occurs, the technology thinks its being mapped appropriately.

Based upon what I’ve heard, what I’ve seen, etc – I don’t think it happens that often. However, it happens often enough that the limits (and advantages of connecting geographically with a searcher) should be known.

However, for those users it does occur for, it can be quite annoying. I’m a case in point here. I live in northern Chicago and my host provider is in Evanston (the city just to the north of me), so when I’m at home, I see Evanston ads, not Chicago ones. The advantage is that I often travel to Evanston for shopping as its closer than downtown Chicago. The disadvantage is that I’m downtown almost everyday, so if I’m searching for downtown Chicago locations, I see inappropriate ads. At my house, I’m searcher 3.

The good point is that when I’m at the office (located in the loop), I see Chicago ads; so I’m searcher 1 while in the office.

In addition, there are other geographic technologies at play. This is only one of the mappings that the major engines do to serve geographic ads – there are others which can help reduce how often IPs are incorrectly mapped.

Geo Qualified Keywords

Using geographic targeting in the engines does not mean that only those in your targeted region will see your ads. The engines use geo-keyword mappings to also show your ads. I’ll make this the subject of another article – however, it is important to note that if you only serve ads to Chicago, and someone in New York City uses the geo-qualifier Chicago (with your normal keywords) – your ads could be shown.

Drilling down on geographic keywords is an article that goes into depth about the geo-keyword possibilities.

The AOL Conundrum

For several years, all AOL users appeared to come from Virginia. This was because AOL routed all IP addresses through their Virginia servers. However, AOL is no longer a major issue for IP targeting.

There are many more AOL broadband users than dial-up users these days. Broadband users are assigned IP addresses differently than dial-up, so they can be served regional ads.

Those users still using dial-up (this stat came from someone at Google) is less than 0.5% of web traffic. It should also be noted, that the engines keep a list of providers and IP addresses that are black listed from being served IP targeted ads because of known limitations with those hosts.

Closing Notes

There are other items that are also commonly used to serve regional ads such as user registration data (Microsoft Passport accounts, Yahoo accounts, etc), geographic keywords, and others.

IP targeting should be noted as a technology used in PPC regional targeting, not the entire process. It’s a common mistake to refer to regional targeting (or geographic targeting) as IP targeting. IP targeting is just one technology among many that are used to serve regional based ads.

However, it is very important as advertisers to understand both the benefits and limitations of the technologies being employed. Ultimately, you should control your ad serving, and being informed is the best way to take full control of your PPC campaigns.

Since Google AdWords is so complex, this book is intended to be used in two ways. First, read it straight through to learn about the different strategies possible. After you have read it once, then this book is intended to be a reference book that you can refer back to as you are optimizing your account.

Each chapter ends with a best practices section that contains easy-to-comprehend points about the subject material to quickly refresh your memory.

Secondly, the last chapter of this book is a step-by-step guide to getting things done. Refer to that chapter when you are opening or optimizing accounts and follow along. If there is a step where you need more information, simply refer back to the chapter where that topic is covered in detail.

By reading and then referring back to this book, implementing new AdWords strategies to optimize your account will save you time and money.

Chapter 1: Understanding Search Theory: Learn the history of PPC advertising and the psychology of search.

Chapter 2: Keyword Research: How the buying funnel and your keywords work together. Control when your ad is displayed through using a combination of both positive and negative keywords.

Chapter 3: Keyword Tools: Extracting Valuable Data from Google: Learn how to combine Google’s spiders with a dictionary to improve your keyword research. Learn how to use other Google & and Microsoft free tools to improve your account.

Chapter 4: Writing Compelling Ads: From benefits to features to trademarks to Unique Selling Propositions:  Learn to write ads that connect with the searcher.

Chapter 5: Landing Pages that Convert Searchers into Buyers: Learn how to choose the best page on your site for every keyword. Then ensure the proper elements of usability, trust, and option control exist on the page to convert the searcher into a buyer.

Chapter 6: Advanced Optimization Techniques: Learn strategies for increase increasing conversion rates, click- through rate, traffic, and ad impressions.

Chapter 7: Demystifying Quality Score: Each quality score factors is torn apart, examined, and put back together so you can see exactly how your quality score is determined. Then, learn strategies for managing and increasing quality scores.

Chapter 8: Beyond Text: Image, Video, and Mobile Ads: There is more to Google than text ads. Dive into the best uses of video, image, and mobile ads.

Chapter 9: Understanding the Content Network: The content network may be the most misunderstood and least optimized section part of AdWords. Understand how the content network really works and how to start taking advantage of it.

Chapter 10: Advanced Content Network Techniques: The content network’s reach is significantly larger than Google’s search reach. These techniques will help you find new customers that who have never searched for your products.

Chapter 11: Advanced Geographic Targeting: Control exactly where your ad is shown. Understand the technology so you can avoid pitfalls and take advantage of displaying unique messages through location targeting.

Chapter 12: Save Time & and Scale Accounts with the AdWords Editor: When accounts include hundreds of thousands of keywords, and tens of thousands of pieces of ad copies, they can be difficult to create and optimize. This chapter will examine how to save you time in creating and managing small to enormous accounts through the AdWords Editor.

Chapter 13: Profitable Bid Strategies: Examine your business model so that you can set and measure your marketing goals to ensure your company is profitable. Then, learn to how to set and manage bids by ROI, profit, position, day of the week, and time of day. Formulas and Excel walkthroughs are included so no one gets lost in the math and calculations.

Chapter 14: Successful Account Organization Strategies: Success starts with account organization. Read tips, tricks, and strategies that will help you find the correct organization for your AdWords account.

Chapter 15: Testing Techniques That Will Increase Profits: Testing ad copy and landing pages are is essential to continuously increasing profits. Learn not just how to create and measure a test, but find out also how to determine how much money you make every single time an ad is displayed.

Chapter 16: AdWords Reports: How to Extract Actionable Information: Learn how to create and use all the valuable data that your AdWords account accumulates. Create a reporting schedule so that you always have access to the data necessary to improve your account.

Chapter 17: Step- by- Step: Create & and Monitor Your AdWords Account: After sixteen 16 chapters packed with information, it is time for a step-by-step walkthrough of how to create and optimize each campaign type based upon what you have learned. Refer back to this chapter every time you are working in AdWords to see what to do next.

Glossary: If you do not recognize an acronym or piece of jargon, refer to this handy reference guide to look up the term.

Own a Copy of Advanced Google AdWords

Buy it at Amazon Today!

Read testimonials

See chapter contents

Learn about the author