There are four Google Adwords Match Types you should be utilizing in your paid search management campaigns.
TIP: Suggest opening your Adwords campaign, go to any ad group that has 500 clicks or more in the date range where that’s most likely to occur.  Refer to your keyword list in that ad group as you read through this article.

When we audit a paid search campaign, we typically find only two match types in use:

1. Broad match - your ad shows up for any of the words, or what Google considers relevant to your wordsExample: red shoes
2. [exact match] - your ad will show up for only [red shoes] if use brackets
   Example: [red shoes]

   Benefits of [Exact Match]: Typically, if enough search volume occurs, and it’s properly bid at or above broad match, it will get higher CTR, potentially higher CVR (if enough clicks occur) and lower cost of conversion.  Might also get lower average CPC.

   Limitations of [Exact Match]: Can deliver very low impressions or clicks, if keyword wasn’t popular enough to begin with, OR there are too many keywords in your exact match (common problem).  Not everyone will search as you’ve constrained, often enough.

• Example: [size 8 women's red shoes]
  OR [womens narrow red pumps size 7.5] – not a good use of exact match.  Too many words.  Too specific.  Recommend no more than 3 words in exact match, and only after you have 100+ clicks to warrant adding [exact match].  This should not replace broad match.  It’s in addition to broad match.  It  must be bid at or higher than broad match (little bird at Google told me this once).

Here are the other two match types, that Bizwatch clients should be utilizing in their paid search campaigns:

1. +Broad +Match +Modifier
   Benefits: requires whatever keyword you put a +in front of to be required in the searcher’s query.  This has become the top performing match type of all of our clients where we handle paid search management.

   Instead of using only [exact match] or broad match, consider adding +broad +match +modifier for 2-3 keyword strings and testing it.  Make sure you adequately bid these keywords at or slightly above your other match types.

   In our experience, we’ve seen +broad +match +modifier  often deliver the best click-thru rates, best conversion rates, lowest cost of conversion and will begin to top your Top Performing Keyword lists in Bizwatch Monthly Reports.
   Example: +red +shoes +8
   Example: +red +pumps +women

   +Broad +Match +Modifier +Limitations: Use if you know the keyword is very popular, based on your keyword research, and potentially after you’ve let campaigns run a while on broad match.  You need to know that the keyword is going to get enough traffic to warrant 2-3 of the keywords being required.  Have questions about this match type, and whether it’s in use in your campaigns? Consider ordering a 3rd Party PPC Audit along with a historical data pull in Bizwatch and we’ll review your data with you and make specific recommendations or we can implement for you.

2. “phrase match”
   Benefits: Requires keyword to exist in that word order, thereby increasing relevancy, and is usually used to increase click-thru rates, conversion rates and lower cost of acquisition.  It typically has a lower average cpc rate, unless the keyword phrase is very popular.

   “Phrase Match” Limitations: as with exact match, and +broad +match +modifier, you really shouldn’t be using these additional match types unless you have proven data that says these keywords consistently get more than 100 clicks every month, and you know they convert (according to all your reports).

   Add this match type AFTER you’ve run your campaign for a while, and know that the keyword has 100+ clicks per month, and potentially converts to leads/revenue.

Some of you might say that there is one more match type, but since it also has match types, we don’t really consider -negative a match type.

1. -negative —> broad match
2. -”phrase match”
3. -[exact match]

When we review Bizwatch Monthly Reports, we typically see a lack of negative keywords in use, or updated monthly and thus, keywords start working their way into campaigns.  I find “see search terms” as downright shocking to review.  Here’s how to look at your “see search terms” and add value.

Click on Drop Down Arrow by See Search Terms (shown above) to Determine Negatives & Match Type Opportunities

I suggest only doing this exercise for keywords that have greater than 100 clicks, and you need to improve click-thru rates, conversion rates, and lower cost of conversion.  You’ll get rid of a lot of junk.  But a word of caution:

If you add -negatives, by reviewing “see search terms” do NOT make all of those negatives [exact match] which is what Google often does in this see search terms section. Add the root term offender, as noted above in the red shoes examples for -doors.

Once you monitor “see search terms”, use +broad +match +modifier, and add -negatives (root offending terms), you’ll be much more likely to increase click-thru rates, conversion rates, and lower cost of conversions.  Your quality scores will likely go up as well.

Increase CTR by Adding +Broad +Match +Modifier & -Negatives

Order Your Monthly Bizwatch Reports for Just $499/month and get more tips just like these to improve your over all ad campaign performance, and year over year trends.

For more information on Google Adwords Match types, read here.

A client of ours wrote me about a week ago, indicating they had a new product to launch nationwide.  We recently audited & onboarded their paid search Adwords campaign, and provided a global ecommerce SEO strategy.  They are managing their Google Merchant / shopping feeds.  SEO & Shopping Feeds perform very well, and are managed by them.

In less than two days, we researched keywords and the prospective competition, created the campaign with five different ad groups, and about three ads per ad group. We created a separate mobile campaign with a smaller subset of keywords.

We chose not to do product listing ads or product extensions, since those rely on Google Merchant Center feeds, and this was a timed product launch.  Google appears to favor listing a product listing ad or product extension over keywords in this client’s experience, so we didn’t want to take the chance that the Google Merchant feed wouldn’t yet have the new products indexed in Google. Lastly, Google excludes keyword conversion data on those types of ads. We knew we’d need keyword conversion data to tell us which keywords were performing versus those that didn’t.

Within hours of their nationwide product launch, and flipping the switch on the Google Adwords campaign, we could see the campaign was doing extremely well, breaking all other performance records they’d had by very strong numbers across all key performance indicators (KPIs).  Above average conversion rates, click thru rates, low cost of conversion, and an affordable cost of advertising. Having a happy client is always a good thing.

If you have a nationwide product launch in the next month, here are five tactics to promoting your new product using Google Adwords & Merchant Center.  Our next post will be on how to do this using SEO & Social.

1. Create Google Adwords campaign, but remember to pause it immediately or do a start date for when the product launch will go live.  Google unfortunately “immediately” enables a new campaign/ad group, so remember to pause until you’re ready to “flip the switch”.
   

   Start Date for Google Campaign - Remember Google Immediately Enables Campaigns While You Create them

2. Use a third party keyword suggestion tool, like Wordtracker.com.  We use their keyword tool, and would NOT do a PPC or SEO campaign without it.  Do some research in Google about the new product – is there any buzz around it – can you build on that buzz.  What are related search terms? We find that the keywords Wordtracker suggests are spot on for the most popular keywords.  I do not recommend relying on their search numbers as predictive traffic in terms of specific projections, but they are right in terms of which keywords are most popular, in my experience of using their tool for over 10 years.I then recommend you use Bizwatch to track and trend performance across Adwords & SEO.  Our integrated reporting tools pull the data, and consolidate it into one easy to read & intepret report.  Check out Wordtracker, as well as Bizwatch Monthly Reports.
3. Make sure your Google Merchant Center feeds are up to date with the latest compliance rules, and automated every day with the latest product & price offerings.  We found that the client’s feed, which they manage internally, was updated within 24 hours and showing the new product.  Better yet? Their newly launched product was showing up in the middle of Google’s organic search results, in the shopping results.  The product image, pricing looked great!  This could NOT have been done better, and relied heavily on the client to have a good feed with product title reflected in the title and description fields.  More information on Google Merchant Center (must have account set up, integrated with Google Adwords) and be compliant with all field requests.  Read about differences between Product Listing Ads, Product Extensions info.
4. Google Adwords Campaign settings have changed a lot in recent months & weeks.  You have to make sure that your targeted locations are properly set.  You will also note “advanced location” targeting, which is something relatively new.  Make sure that you work with your Google Adwords rep or agency to ensure that your advanced location settings are right for your keywords.  This can cause your campaign to do very well, or plummet in traffic depending on how you set these new advanced location settings.
   

   Determine Nationwide or Targeted Locations Depending on your Campaign

   

   Consider Talking with Google Adwords Rep or Agency on Best Setting For Your Campaign - Can Dramatically Affect Traffic and Results

   There is another change in Adwords campaign settings, on keyword matching options.  You might want to choose “do not show up for close variants” or consider whether or not you want plurals, singular or close variants for your campaigns.I’ve personally found that Google takes a LOT of liberty with “CLOSE VARIANTS” or really what I’ll call “broad-session based” keyword matches.  I often find them to be a way for Google to get more money, and my client to NOT get more sales, in general.  In some instances albeit rare, I’ve been thankful for those keywords but I doubt they’ve ever been greater in sales from the expenses clients have incurred from broad-session based keywords.

   

5. Know your selling proposition.  My client reviewed the initial ads, which required approval, and gave me some advice on the ads.  They wanted pricing included on every ad.I typically avoid keyword variants in Adwords ads, because they might do well for CTR or click-thru rate, but not conversion rates.So, when the client asked us to insert pricing data into the ads, we did just that, and I believe that’s one of the reasons the CTR is so good.  In fact, it’s so much better than the rest of the campaign ad CTRs that we’re going to insert pricing into all their ads.  Takes a little more work, and is something that can be automated eventually, but if you know that price is one of your main selling propositions, use it in your ads to encourage higher CTR.  Lastly, with respect to ads, better CTR often comes from descriptive, accurate ads that are not overly promotional.  Price, product, placement, promotion, right? Today’s Google ads need to reference the product, price, be positioned in the top 2 positions, and properly promoted through budget, keyword choice and monitored for performance and tweaks.

In closing, this client attracted hundreds of new orders, tens of thousands of new online sales, and in-store traffic within a day of launching.  Their Google Merchant Center feed managed internally was automated, updated, and compliant with all requirements imposed by Google.  As a result, they were lucky to also have middle of the page shopping results, in addition to PPC.  They now know which keywords perform best, by choosing NOT to use Google Adwords product listing ads or product extensions.  Sales have continued to do very well, beating every other campaign/ad group key performance indicator (KPI) to date.  SEO will follow, so my next post will talk about how to dovetail your PPC & SEO efforts, and report on which performs best, PPC or SEO?

If you need help with a nationwide product launch, learn more about our new Google Ad PPC campaign setup services & fees, call us at the number listed above, or by filling out our contact form.

For all of us, who have been troubled by Google removing keyword data and labelling it as “not provided”, are finding it’s the top referring organic keyword.  Most of the presenters had some tips on how to get along without the data, and helpful research proving that it will affect far more than 10% of your Google traffic data despite what they originally suggested.  I’ve posted my opinions at the bottom.

Nathan Safran (@nathan_safran) from @conductor spoke.  He had survey data from their research as well as a note from comScore data.

• 55% of respondents 29 or younger
• 7 spend 20 or more hours per week
• 41% make purchases at least online 3x / month
• 9/10 have google account
• 6/10 use gmail.com as primary email
• Half users logged in to Google spend at least 75% of the time they’re online, logged in to Google
• More than half users are logged in

How is it trending? Comscore

• Remember that Google publicly stated it would affect 10% of users

• Comscore said that in January 2012, 42% were logged in

More research from Conductor

• 6/10 out of heavy online purchasers logged-in 75% of the time

• 37% of users are logged in ¼ of the time or less

• About 1/3 is either avoiding it, or they’re not logged in all the time

The Reality? Google’s Not provided is here for foreseeable future.

Max Thomas, Thunder SEO @ThunderMax, San Diego Agency

• Referred to Miranda = Google from Devil Wears Prada
• Speechless = Not Provided

Branded vs Non-Branded Search (not provided) / All Organic Search less (not provided)

• See Google Analytics (new version)
• Organic
• Not Provided report
• Advanced / Default Setting
• Created custom segment – excluded all branded keywords
• Include medium=organic

Results?

• Non-Branded Search Ratio
• 76% is not-branded traffic
• Therefore, 13% was not-provided traffic
• May want to look at not provided by page content or page views

Non-Branded Ratios by Landing Pages

• Which pages got the most non-provided page
• All over the board, but home page seemed to be very high

Want to Get Copy of His Spreadsheet?

• bit.ly/thunderseo-smx

Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Become (Senior SEO Manager)

• Reference to Ally’s Bank Ads – Remember the ad with the girl that get’s promised the bicycle, then when delivered the bicycle, she’s only allowed to be in this little square box – well, that’s kind of what Google has done with its keyword detail.  (I think this is a great analogy and I’ve seen those ads) – So, Google you promised me data, you lured us with all that awesome keyword detail data for free, but then when you got us on board with the concept, you changed the offer, you took that promise of data away.
• Says that if we use Google Analytics data, and we don’t like this, then last-click attribution has errors anyway, so why is this such a problem for us?
• Problem with this is that SEO keyword learnings can no longer be used to fund PPC efforts (I’ve written two blog entries on this)
• Could start analyzing whether or not logged in users are doing something better than those who are not logged in

Segmentation

• Assuming no seasonality – what was the data percentage lost across keywords
• Keyword categorizations – what keyword groups do you generally do well with?
• Relevancy matching – how well do the keywords match your landing page

What is the Future of G+:

• More people using it, the less data we’re going to get
• As time passes, margin of error on keyword accuracy increases
• Importance of search volume, keyword rankings increases
• Problems with Personalization exist
• Treat SEO like you do PPC
• We’re going to go back to basic analytics – content CTR analytics
• Test like PPC

Marty Weintraub, aimClear

• Remember that not set is not - not provided
• Marty is pissed (as we are) that Google just took this data away
• Not provided is leading in keyword referral data (only no keyword analysis possible)
• Search Engine Optimization Queries
• Google Webmaster data sucks in terms of SEO data (we’d agree)
• Advanced Segments shows not provided
• You can recover some of the keywords (SOME) in Google Webmaster Tools
• Go to Your Site on the Web / Top Pages / Search Queries
• Choose page to study – purposely picked with less traffic
• Drill into your keyword data
• can see clicks, not ctr
• Now go into Google Analytics – go to site content / landing pages
• Pick same page as you did in Webmaster Tools
• see visits data (should be similar to visits in webmaster)
• Second dimension of keywords
• Match up your keywords – could build your Excel data spreadsheet
• Google Webmaster Tools does provide additional keyword detail, still not as good as it used to be
• there are now keywords showing up in google webmaster detail that you weren’t getting in google analytics – what is better is the CTR and impression data, that you never got in google analytics

(google personally, i think you just created a real pain in the *$* documentation challenge).

First up is Google’s Product Marketing Manager, Dai Pham

Next up is Craig Hagopian from xAd

• Strong emphasis on mobile is very local-focused
• Mobile-Local Search Access
• App vs browser strategy (do you have both or only browser strategy?)

Why do people go to browser vs app?

• Browser    |    Application
• Browser takes longer to load than an app (browser 10 secs vs 1 sec for app)
• Search results can take longer on browser vs app shorter
• Longer to load details page (7 seconds to load details, 30 seconds to contact)
• For apps, it takes less than 7 seconds to get to contact)
• Across the board, if you didn’t read all those numbers? Apps are faster, much faster!

Click Thru Rates

• Apps get higher CTR than browsers
• In fact, calls are about 52%
• Maps and directions about 40%

Optimize the Entire Experience

• Example: LaQuinta hotels
• By adding location to mobile ads, mobile ad brought increase in average CTR

Next up is John Busby

• People use mobile for quick checks, task list management, and a phone call
• Mobile users do not spend much time on each of these tasks
• Address their urgent needs with their smartphones
• You need to be a mobile click-to-call advertiser if you are a business that handles quick questions (restaurant reservations) or complex questions.
• About half of tablet users reported using apps for local business searches (Yelp, Urbanspoon, citysearch)

Best Practices

• Use a tracking number (like Marchex)
• Embed that number in your online assets (search, display, etc)
• Call number is your tracking pixel
• Not every call created equal – only 33% are real calls according to Marchex from their 2011 data
• Not every call is created equal – far from it – therefore you might have something called a cost per qualified call
• Make sure you have phone number not only in the ad, but also on the mobile landing page
• Use an IVR to Determine Intent – (what is an IVR)
• Filters Robo-Dialers
• Establish a Minimum Duration

I’m sitting here listening to this and thinking about the massive impact this could have on phone call volume for some companies.

Jeff Licciardi from Performics is up last.

• 40% of searches are local
• After looking up the number, 61% call the business
• About 20% of searches are coming from mobile (what is it for you – check your Google Analytics data?)
• After Christmas 2011, you might see that there was an uptick in mobile tablet searches, as they might have gotten a tablet.
• About a year ago, when they did this presentation, it was much less, but they think it will double in the next year for mobile/tablet use
• With tablets, you don’t have to bid as high as you do with mobile, thus, need to break them out
• With tablets, your copy and sitelinks can be expanded over mobile
• Tablet users will have diff keywords from mobile
• Landing pages, this goes without saying, please don’t do Flash
• Tablet traffic should go to tablet-specific landing page or desktop pages, not mobile

Mobile Strategy:

1. Bid into top two positions
2. Use sitelinks (2) – Take up 1/4 page this way
3. Location extensions, hyper local formats or offers
4. Click to call/click to download
5. optimize for natural search

Usability Best Practice:

1. No redirects
2. No pop-ups

Q&A:

Q: Should you break out mobile and tablet campaigns?
A: Yes. 1 mobile, 1 tablet, 1 desktop.  Whereas you might have your campaigns now enabled for all, there is enough data now to support separate campaigns, based on different user behavior and needs.

Q: Are there any industries that simply don’t perform on mobile or tablets?
A: Diamond jewelry, some retailers.

Q: For a national retailer, without a physical store, how would they use click-to-call?
A: Will not need location extensions.  Ad creative, sitelinks seems to be best here.

Social Media Analytics Tools – I caught two people’s presentations: Merry Morud and Tami Dalley.  I had not seen speak this week.  Tami Dalley presented before her, but I covered some of her points in the session blog coverage I did yesterday re Facebook.

@MerryMorud from aimClear

Facebook Insights Guide

• Likes vs Shares (latter is of course much better)
• Shows Likes, Reach, Talking About This, Check-In

Identify Your Needs

• Identify Your Needs
• Page Management
• Multiple Accounts
• Social Listening
• Robust Analytics

Button & URL Analytics

• Bit.Ly
• Sharethis
• AddThis (free, demos, interests of users)
• Janrain (free to $2,250 / year)  user login with multiple profiles
• Google Social Interaction Analytics (action oriented)
• Social Mention (free), Trackur ($18-$377)
• Twitter-Specific (The Archivist (free), TweetReach, TwitterCounter (free – $150/mo)
• Facebook (CrowdFactory, $499/mo, Wildfire, PageModo, Vitrue, Shoutlet (competitive data) – build tabs from templates, like-gate (never heard of this before)
• Hootsuite
• MediaFunnel
• BuddyMedia
• Awareness
• Lithium – post to multiple accounts, team collaboration, influencers, posting intell, tab dev, content & like-gate, promote advocates

Powerhouses

• Sysomos – Translation for multinational
• Radian6 – ecommerce integration (does everything)
• RavenTools ($99 and $249/mo) – basecampintegration, social monitoring tools, posting tool, persona manager, knowem integration, white labeled reports

Nice t-shirt giveaway for answering the question “must have tool”?

Q&A:

• Hootsuite – easy to follow hashtags, mentions
• Storeby?
• Crowdbooster
• EdgeRank Checker (3rd party Facebook)
• Bit.ly – beyond the free platform

Check out Annie Cushing’s post on how to do the URL builder…. will add reference when I learn more about what they’re talking about here.

Q: How do you measure offline sales?
A: coupons and redemption rates, promo codes, QR codes

Q: Explain more about Paid Organic -
A: Facebook introduced ticker, news feed (edgerank factors), taking away how much they’re showing people.  Pretty much have to engage with a person heavily, or you will no longer see their updates.  Only guarantee is to do the Facebook Ad Units (posts, updates, likes).  Check out Marty’s (aimClear’s) blog post on this topic, which I will provide.

Q: Which technology improvement has been made that has you most excited?
A: Cover photo idea was great (Facebook Timeline), excited to see what brands are doing with that. Might crowdsource photos and excited to see what we’re going to do with that.  Get creative with the Facebook Timeline.

Q:  Should you buy fans?  (reminds me of sessions in years past when we said – would you buy links – and it sounded bad, but people did it, and won with that tactics, regardless of how bad it sounds)
A:  Yes, but be careful.  Others did not respond.

Q:  How do you handle charging for the time it takes to mine the data?
A:  How do you justify it, yes, it’s hard.  If you can track to revenue, it will get easier to defend adding budget. Show small wins to get more budget. Importance of baseline to show growth in profiles.

Jeff Ferguson – Fang Digital  @fangdigital – day to day PPC management
Craig McDonald – Microsoft – PPC governance
Luke Coltrin – Overstock

First up is Jeff Ferguson. My brain is the key that sets me free, Harry Houdini

• How do people spend their time in-house on PPC Management
  His best guess based on managing teams is about 20% Reporting & Analysis; Optimization – 40%; Expansion – 40%
• With regard to Reporting & Analysis:
  Prove that your team is making magic happen
  Understanding your data
  This is your craft – key to greater understanding of what’s happening
• Importance of sharing data (meeting per week) on insights, best practices
• Tools to use: If you’ve got a handful of people, you need tools like Marin, or something like that (or if you need a less expensive solution, check out our company, Bizwatch Search Analytics)
• Need Macro view, trend analysis instead, since daily reporting and making tweaks can create problems
• Ads – put your ads on rotation evenly to test it out
• Limited data on Sitelinks – do the best with what you have
• Expansion – Keywords & bid adjustments; ads; ad types; devices & networks (dream client who says they would spend more if they could – but think they’ve done as much as they can in-house, and need outside help). Test seasonality, day of month, time of day.  Test regional dialects (this has super potential). Test Capitalization in Your Ads.
• Account Structures are done with mirror campaigns vs silo campaigns.  Silo or make complete mirrors.  Dup campaigns, but diff match types & geo settings, networks (one network at a time).  Easy to create with Adwords Editor & Excel (freebies), or other tools like Marin Software (if budget permits).

Next up is Craig McDonald – Microsoft’s Product Manager for adCenter

• Charter – vertical discussion
• Economics – how much do they put into the budget
• Social Media – does it belong in the charter of PPC budgets

What’s the Charter?

• Planning, Strategy
• Budgeting – marketing sizing, top line budgeting
• Campaign Planning & Execution
• Analytics & Reporting
• Competitor Analysis & Tracking – best way to get budget; scare management with competitor success/visibility
• Advocacy – internal evangelism, external promotion, social presence
• Hiring & Management

Economics

• Direct advertisers – key verticals (financial, ecommerce, travel, retail, consumer electronics) – Execution budget for each of these is 4-7%
• Brand advertisers – Key verticals (b2b, pharma, high tech, cpg, auto) – Execution budget is 8-12%
• Media advertisers – Newspaper, Media -  Managed in-house; driving impressions is key goal – Execution budget is 4-6%

Craig talked about 1-3% of advertising budget for technology tools.  He sets a budget of 1M as example, and of that 1-3% would go to technology.  Competitive tracking tools – might be comscore – $30-$50k)  Web Analytics might come out of the IT budget, or be free.

He talked about the headcount budget:

• SEM VP/Dir – $150k salaries
• SEM Mgr – $100-125k
• SEM = $40-$70k
• Total = $500k (1 mgr, 4-5 SEMs)
• SEM Media Mgmt Ratio – $3.9M

Salary Inflation:

• Min Salary vs Max Salary (VP $150k-$250k)
• Director $110k-$150k
• Mgr – $65k-$100k
• Sr SEM Analyst $50k-$75k
• SEM Analyst $35-$50k

Social Media

• Where’s the budget coming from for social media?
• It is being managed in-house – many said they’d do it themselves
• 40% came from independent search
• 10% said budgets coming also from PPC budget
• 42% said it was coming from integrated search budget – might even compete for dollars

Overstock – Luke Coltrin – Director of Online Marketing

They’ve done both in-house and agency.  They’re currently in-house.

• Focus – Challenges with scale
• Automated tasks vs manual management

Challenges with Scale – clearly an issue for Overstock.  How many SKUs do they have, just curious.

• Millions of products.  Cat condos are killer keywords for them.
• Bid automation, massive ad copy changes (promotions change frequently).  Most tools do not have easy UI for this.
• Need for prioritization.

Technology Tools

• You could just about spend your entire job on this – just fielding sales calls
• Account management platform just key to performance
• Talked about Marin, and other niche tools that can add value
• Absolutely favors automated bidding, history of two years on a keyword, and what should the CPA be, CPA should be X. Could limit potential.
• Automated testing, keyword generation – obviously keywords have to be tested

Manual – search query reports (keyword generation)

• Ad copy creation
• Some bidding – product listing ads for example

Q&A Session:

Q: Buy or build your own tool in-house?
A: 4% – need to outsource this part; Jeff Ferguson says he hasn’t seen the need to build tools in-house at the companies he’s worked with; Craig from Microsoft – it’s never cheaper to build this in-house – it’s an issue of core competency – is building a tool the core competency? Probably not.

Q: Can you discuss how you scaled PPC keyword growth?
A: product based keyword expansion

Q: What types of campaigns are good for out-sourcing?
A: Microsoft’s Craig McDonald said that core competency should be your consideration in terms of outsourcing.  If search is not a major part of your marketing budget, you should be outsourcing.  In his opinion, agencies are not very good at handling projects if your campaign budget is under $1M if they are pricing on percent of spend.  Your account is going to be $50k person as a shared resource.  Jeff Ferguson says that many agencies could be “rent an agency” (Craig’s words) where you bring an agency in for six months with an expectation it could be handed over to in-house.

Q: What about a PPC outsourced audit?
A: Yes, of course, in fact, perhaps once a year (Jeff Ferguson).

Q: For PPC, there can be numerous moving legs.  Do you “incentivize goals”?
A:  Yes, good to do this.

Wall of data – what does the report really tell you? Oh Goodness, Overstock is having to frequently justify paid search advertising because their organic SEO campaigns are doing so well.  Hmm, which is EXACTLY why Google is no longer allowing people to see organic keyword data for about 50% of website keyword visits (See my posts on Not Provided).

Note: I’ve written about this topic personally - do not turn off your PPC because you’re ranked #1 for an SEO listing.  If you do trend analysis, side by side keyword analysis (PPC vs SEO), you will see that PPC sends far more traffic, higher conversions than SEO.  You need both! You have to be consistently ranked top four to get measurable conversions (when you used to be able to track this consistently) in Google Analytics.

Q: What reports should be sent to execs? Exec dashboard
A: Revenue, gross profit, spend, net profit.  We don’t care about CTR and stuff like that.  Top line vs bottom line and if we’re growing it. Microsoft’s Craig says it depends on the company.  What are the questions you’re trying to answer? Dashboards – how did we do, what do we have to change, what’s our marketshare, what’s the voice from social media?

I arrived ten minutes into the presentation, so I don’t have much from BuddyMedia, the first to present at SMX West’s Session on Increasing Facebook Shares & Likes

1) BuddyMedia’s

Talked about how we need to ask for shares;

• <1% ask contact a share CTA; so those who asked to share have a 77% higher share rate;
• What to share (videos, links, make it visual).
• Support Social Sharing
• Embedding Facebook, Twitter, In, G+ widgets
• Avg Facebook Sharer has 240 friends (83% higher than avg user)
• Single Share drives 6 new visitors on average
• Social Sharing – doesn’t make sense if you’re not tracking to conversions to revenue
• Sales resulting from ConversionBuddy shares have 26^ higher AOV average order value than other sales

2) Next up is Aaron Friedman (@aaronfriedman) – Resolution Media

• Facebook has 800M users, engaged audience, 51.1% sharing on Web
• To improve reach (Edgerank, growing audience size, Off FB factors)

Golden Rule

• It goes without saying, it should be a total passionate rendition of what we do – otherwise your fan page will not do much to increase engagement

Edgerank

• E=Affinity – size of your audience, levels of engagement with audience
• Weight
• Time Decay – timeliness of post – over time, relevance decays

Grow Audience

• Issues of selling likes looked down upon (but it’s being done)
• Facebook ads – Great for site launch, about .15 per click

Measurement:

• Uses Kenshoo Social
• Bid management solution
• Advanced targeting options
• @ipullrank – Matt King’s keyword analysis

Quantity vs Quality

• Discussion regarding weight posting vs time decay
• Watch out when you post an item with image/link/description – make sure when you post a link, optimize your title, description and image link
• Study with BrightEdge (SEO Enterprise Tool) – ran sample of over 200 websites; Title about 95 characters before truncation; about 297 characters in description
• http://bit.ly/w1oGlr – Check out their social site audit
• Also check out – http://bit.ly/Ak27ur – @ipullrank’s tool
• Open Graph tags are crucial to the user experience

3) Last up is Dan Robbin (@reachdanro) – Facebook Strategy (formerly with ClickTracks, now at Fox)

• Fox (Ridefox.com)
• Facebook is to support core marketing initiatives (online, offline)
• Chosen to go organic growth method – no payment for likes
• friendships built from common interest
• (Personally, I think this depends on what your site does – for example, I think it might be easier to promote Fox through organic growth).

Types of Content Posted:

• Photo Galleries & Videos, raw and polished footage
• Links: website content, product reviews, event coverage & videos
• contests, special offers
• market research
• fan calls to action (CTA) – ask for caption request on photos

Handling of User Posted Content

• Answer Every Question – Timely Fashion – but also make sure the questions are answered correctly
• Ignore the antagonists
• Remove Only Pure Spam, Hate Posts
• Leave Questions Directed at Community for Community
• Check Hidden Posts Daily

Direct Competitors:

• Fox far outweighs Scrand – they have only 40,000 likes; 779 talking about them
• Fox also outweighs Rock Schrox in likes and talking discussion

How do they compare to other popular bike brands? For example, Trek is global brand, 4x their size – Fox is close to Trek who has 222k likes and nearly 5,000 talking about them

In summary, I think it’s alot easier to generate likes, shares if you have interesting content, thus easier for retailers who have interesting products that have a passionate fan base.  Not just about the product, but about the industry it supports.  So Fox is not about suspensions, it’s about the sports their products are used in (snowboarding, mountain biking).

Q&A:

Discussion regarding branded shortened URLs – the sound is not so good

Q: How much in-house work does it take to create these branded tools
A: Takes about 20 minutes to create a branded shortener

I’m at SMX West 2012, run by Danny Sullivan & Chris Sherman in San Jose, CA this week.  I’m covering a session called Creating Buzz on Twitter and How to Get Retweeted.

Argent Media - @Argent_Media and @si1very talked about buzz words that get you retweeted.

1) Buzz words that create action & get you retweeted:

You, Twitter, Please, Retweet, Post, Blog, Social, Free, Media, Help, Pls retweet, Great, Social media, 10, follow, how to, top, blog post, check out, new blog post

2) Consider creating separate accounts, segmenting your content for different demographics

3) Use Widgets (which we’ve not done yet as part of our template, but need to do this) for Developer Followers, RTs and Links - you could use a daily quote service, but keep in mind that you want to do this sparingly, and not the only thing that you publish through your Twitter account.  (Personally, I’m not a fan of daily quotes).

Next up is ThinkGeek @thinkgeek’s Carrie - Web Community Manager. @Thinkgeek has over 430,000 followers. They also have @thinkgeekspam – it has 9,000 followers, which announces new products.  First account is to build trust and engagement.  The tweets that are not about them get more RTs (retweets). 140,000 retweets in December 2011 and mentioned as most influential retailers.

TIPS:

1. Be timely, informative
2. Funny, entertaining, contests
3. emotional stories about followers
4. Info about our followers

Measurement:

1. Retweets, mentions, replies (cotweet)
2. Link clicks bit.ly
3. Image views – twit.pic
4. Site visits, conversion (domain and tracking)
5. Follower count
6. If you advertise with Twitter, you can get impression data

Frequency:

1. Tweet about once per hour

Times of Day:

1. 12 noon to 2 pm ET – LUNCH HOUR
2. Incoming tweets by hour

Continuing to live post (not really live blog):

Tailor Content by Day:

1. Retailers may be different so no assumptions on time of week
2. Their best time is 9am-1pm ET for best RTs

Top 10 Retweets

1. 113 avg character length
2. 7 text only and day was significant
3. Only 3 links and not tied to date
4. Skynet jokes
5. zero were about ThinkGeek

Top RT

1. Happy Binary Day – It’s 11/1/11 and just 10 more days til 11/11/11 the last binary of the century.

Top clicks

1. Simpsons opening in Minecraft

Getting creative:

1. Test a tweet at two diff times of day
2. when does it get most clicks or RT?
3. Try tweeting photos with twitpic and attribution rather than link
4. Try diff kinds of content, text only, link, video, image
5. Link directly to the good part of video with &t=1m5s url pattern
6. skip to the meat of an article with anchor
7. #don’t overdo #hashtags
8. dress up your icon for special occasions
9. monkey @thinkgeek – dress up their monkey
10. aww – little jedi thinkgeek

Zagg.com up next

@ZaggDaily

1. Offer gift cards once a week giveaway – usually link back to blog
2. Blog, Giveaway, News, Offers – blog is 74% of the traffic
3. Most retweeted: Siri/Android jokes; controversial posts, announcements, video involving kid
4. Offer iPad Giveaways – gave away an iPad an hour – 585,000 visits to Zagg.com, 114% increase in revenue from previous Black Friday, Twitter was #2 referrer, bringing in 11% of referrals, trending topic in some locations, Klout score jumped from 55 to 77 in one day (WOW!).

• Enter the Giveaway, Name, email address, submit entry – Share this giveaway with your friends (2 entries for Facebook), 1 entry for Twitter – INTERESTING that Facebook provided 2 entries – more coverage, more population (I’m guessing). He verified this during Q&A.  A True Facebook fan is more valuable than Twitter.

Q&A:

@thinkGeek says that none of their content is auto-tweeted! wow! or auto-generated. She Tweets between 9a-7pm.  She turns it off after that.  Fascinating!!! You do have to separate eventually from Twitter.  She does not turn it over to another person to catch late night traffic opportunities.

@thinkGeek says Facebook is easier to manage.  Started using Comments section – domain tracking easier to manage.  Higher revenue from Facebook – from volume.

So – social media addictions…. we have them, or we are in denial. 

Q: How many times can one thing be Tweeted in a day, if you really want people to see it?

A: @ThinkGeek – 2x; can’t do 3 times.  She says she can see outrage- uses Reddit to track this?

I’ve been reviewing our retail Bizwatch client annual web traffic reports.  I’ve written recently on Google’s move to “not provided”, which is another way of saying that they’ve chosen to REMOVE keyword detail on a portion of your organic SEO keyword referrals in your analytics reports.

I’m looking at the companies that have potential to suffer the most from Google choosing to no longer provide SEO keyword detail on a growing percentage of non-paid organic traffic. Retailers or Ecommerce companies.

Tonight, I looked at a company that had 126,000 visits that have NO keyword detail
in their organic reports.  Over one hundred thousand visits, and we have absolutely
NO idea what keyword sent them – since they came in from organic listings, and since they came in from a user who was logged into their Google account while searching.

Most likely, anybody in search, advertising or online marketing, or using their
Mobile phone, especially a Droid, is logged into Google or Gmail at all times.
That means their online searches in Google that result in a click to a website
are no longer identifiable by keyword.

So, this is bad, right? But it gets worse.  Check out the next graph.  Not provided by Goals or Conversions.

Over 71,000 conversions – and no keyword detail.  This was just in November & December 2011.

For SEO managers, for online marketing managers, the inability to measure what is working for an ecommerce retailer is a growing problem or worse than
that.  It means that SEO professionals can’t prove specific keywords converted. That keyword could be a brand keyword, or not. It could represent a number of keywords.
It could represent keywords that are converting, represent revenue and
thus, should be expanded upon in paid search.  I’ve seen this for another client.  A top converting previously unrealized keyword in organic search is uncovered in Bizwatch.  The client added that keyword to paid search, and look at the results.

In the graph above, here is a perfect reason why Google should not limit SEO keyword detail.  Smart, savvy marketers will use top converting, high traffic SEO keyword
detail in Google Analytics and / or above using Bizwatch, to uncover missed opportunities that should be in paid search advertising but were previously not.  In the case above, the client realized after reviewing their Bizwatch reports (which pulls from Google Analytics API data and filters, sorts, and has layered algorithms on top) that they had forgotten a match type in their keyword phrase for this top converting keyword.  They added that keyword, and it sent 43 conversions to the client, as well as over $1,000 for one keyword match type to Google.  Both client and Google won in this case.

What type of revenue is this worth to a large retail client below, who no longer can see this type of information on SEO keywords if the user is logged into a Google account while searching? Just how valuable is this keyword, if visits and goals/conversions shown above isn’t enough representation?  Look at the revenue associated with “not provided” in Google for this retailer.

3,800+ transactions.  How much revenue you ask? Over $300,000 in revenue. Average order value above average for the site.

And none of this information is available by keyword anymore.

It’s clearly a way for Google to make SEO’s and analytics professionals’ jobs harder .

Let’s see, maybe Google can choose to offer this data to retailers in its paid version of Google Analytics? Nah, they wouldn’t do that, because then they would be monetizing SEO, right? Something they said they would never do.

Or, in plain English, if you click on the G+ icon above, and are logged into your Google profile, or if you go to Google on your Droid, iPhone, or from your computer, and you happen to be logged in to Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, which is the majority of us who do search marketing or for that matter anything on the Web, well, then your Google keyword search data will no longer be passed onto the websites that you visit.

Google sheepishly said it would affect less than 10% of your traffic data.  I wrote a blog entry on this indicating my concerns and reasoning as to why I think Google chose to disable keyword referral data on organic SEO traffic.

December traffic reports are being analyzed.  We are reviewing Bizwatch top converting high traffic keyword reports, and are beginning to see “NOT PROVIDED” as the top referring, top converting, high traffic keyword.  In fact, in some scenarios, it is the #1 top converting keyword.

Only, we don’t really know what the heck (previously had a different word here) that keyword is, now do we, Google?

What do you do with top converting, high traffic keyword data?

Throw it in the trashcan?

No! You make sure that you show up EVERYWHERE for that keyword.  In fact, I advise clients to make sure they show up in Adwords, yep, PAID SEARCH, PAID ADVERTISING for those top converting, high traffic keywords.

So, today as I’m reviewing Bizwatch traffic reports with one of our long-term clients, and we’re seeing 82 goals reported on a top converting keyword, only it says NOT PROVIDED.

Here’s another client who is spending $15k this month in Google Adwords.  This time next year, when it’s retail advertising time, and when we’ll want to ensure we’re advertising on our TOP CONVERTING/PERFORMING keyword phrases, well, we’ll look back on our Bizwatch reports that pull data from Google Analytics keyword referral reports, and we’ll see this report -
424 top converting keywords will remain a mystery – so we can’t add
that into our Google Adwords campaign.

I can’t do ANYTHING with this information.  Nothing.

NOT PROVIDED is like Google got us all excited with delivering all this great information, teased us, courted us, and then dumped us right before the well, peak or good part.

But not only does the customer lose, SEOs lose, but Google loses.  Because if we can’t take that top converting keyword data and turn it into actionable ideas, or PAID SEARCH GOOGLE ADWORDS & yes, more SEO task items, then we all lose.  We have the potential to begin losing top converting keyword data in more places, like in Adwords, or in Google Product Search, where I’m also beginning to see lack of converting keyword data.  And that’s evil, Google.  Didn’t you say repeatedly, Google, that your goal was to “not be evil”.  Well, exactly what is this?

Google, do the right thing.  Get rid of your crazy concept of NOT PROVIDED.  You are turning down the wrong road here.  It’s not a good direction for anyone.  And it can’t be more of a good thing to come, if you keep going down this road.