Today I want to talk about writing compelling ad copy that will not only increase your CTR% (click through rate) but also lift your overall conversion rate. It’s easy to blame a poor conversion rate on your landing page but when your paid search campaigns aren’t “top notch”, that could be where the bottleneck is happening.

Obviously your shooting to have your ad copy “catch” the users attention BUT remember to also keep that compelling component go all the way through to the landing page.

C’mon, let me show you what I’m talking about.

Starting Point – The Ad

Let’s say for example I’m looking to purchase a new SLR camera lens for my Nikon D60. So I head over to Google and search for “Nikon D60 Lenses”. Seems like a logical keyword phrase to search right?

Well maybe… here are the top 3 results:

TIP: Out of the top 3 results, none of them are geared specifically for my keyword phrase.

I clicked on the 2nd ad and was directed to this landing page.

No way — Are you serious? Was my search that specific that you couldn’t point me in the right direction?

First of all with these being the top 3 results I was hoping for a little more specific ad copy. Gee I don’t know, how about a more targeted ad like this:

Nikon D60 Lenses (Solid keyword headline)
Wide Selection of Nikon Lenses. (A feature or benefit when visiting our website.)
Buy Today & Get Free Shipping! (Call to Action)
DigitalCameraInfo.com/Nikon-Lenses (Reinforcing the category or product once more.)

Dude Where’s my Car? errr… My Lens?

Sure out of the 3 ads, we’d expect that Amazon would take me to the right place but what’s with that ad copy? “Lens Nikon at Amazon“. What does that even mean? No, just because you put your brand name in your headline doesn’t mean I’m going to click on your ad. Sorry, but you have to try harder than that.

After clicking on the 2nd ad, I was not directed to the Nikon Lens page. This immediately made me want to click the back button.Why make the user dig through your site to find what they’re looking for?

Now, we’ll go into this later but the reason this ad was displayed when I searched this is because he’s buying the term Nikon D60 as a “broad match” term.

Broad Matching Terms: Allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations

This mistake goes back to my last article about the importance of paid search account structure. When you create tightly, crafted campaigns with 10-15 keywords you can avoid this costly mistake.

Wrap it Up with Common Sense

Do you necessarily need to make a Nikon D60 Lens ad group & a Nikon D40 Lens Campaign and so on? No, but if you want a better CTR and maximize your money, do it the right way and stop being lazy. If you’re not taking the time to setup these campaigns very specific, then you’re just throwing your money away.

Lastly, keep in mind that it’s not just your ad copy that’s saying something to your users… You’re landing page is part of the “pre-sale” process as well. Ensuring that your ad copy and landing page copy all mesh well together is key. My point to all of this is to make it easy, precise and to the point

Now go make sure you’re ad copy makes sense from start to finish.

Was this helpful? Let me know if I didn’t touch on something or you need more clarification. In the meantime be sure to Subscribe to my RSS Feed or Follow @jrfarr on Twitter for the next Rockstar PPC installment.

This is Rockstar PPC 101: I’m starting out with the basics as I write these first few posts. We’ll  work towards getting  into much more advanced techniques as we move forward.

Alright, so now that you’ve gone through my “Define.Research. Deploy.” process, you’re ready to start setting up your paid search campaigns. Within that process you should’ve completed the following items:

• Define your Niche
• Research your competition within your niche using Keyword Research Tools
• Solidify your Objective
• Creating a compelling CTA (Call to Action)

With those items behind you, it’s time to talk about the setting up your paid search campaigns. What I mean by that, is how are you going to be organizing your account structure?

Why is Account Structure Important?

The last thing you want to do is start creating a bunch of random campaigns with no real direction. You’ll end up overlapping campaigns, have an un-organized account and will most likely cause you more work.

Back in the day, your campaigns would be stuffed with thousands of keywords with just a few ad groups. Now, I don’t ever have more than 10-15 keywords within an ad group.

Essentially, with a structured account, you’ll be able to pin-point any item you want in your account which allow for better management. No matter how granular you want to manage your account (e.g. down to the keyword level) you’ll know exactly where everything is within your account.

Paid Search Account Structure & How it Effects your Quality Score

I can’t emphasize enough how important your account structure is. This is one of the biggest factors when talking about Google’s Quality Score. In case you’re not familiar with the quality score, you need to definitely understand it before you setup a Google Adwords account. In short the Google Quality Score is:

The AdWords system calculates a ‘Quality Score’ for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

Back in October of 2008 I did a post on “How to Help your Google Adwords Quality Score“. All of it is still relevant and will play a huge role in building up your quality score.

Inside Google Adwords (and Yahoo! & MSN, etc.) your account is laid out like this.

• Campaigns (e.g. Mens Nike Shoes)
  • Ad Groups (e.g. Nike Shox, Nike Air Max, Nike
  • Ad Copy
  • Keywords

TIP: The more specific you layout your campaigns the more specific your ad copy & keywords will be. Thus, resulting in better ROI and conversion rate.

Solid Account Structure = Extreme Relevance & Google Love

Google’s main goal with their search results is to be as relevant as possible. If you’re campaigns as relevant as possible, Google will reward you for your hard work & effort.

It’s easy to be lazy and throw up a few campaigns and a few ads. Try to avoid that and make it a goal to reach the maximum amount of campaigns within your account.

If you’re not shooting for that, you’re just being lazy.

Let’s look at a few examples

Let me show you a quick example of how a well structured campaign, makes you get more specific & relevant.

In this examples, I’m using the new Nike Shox that just came out, the “Nike Shox NZ id”. You could either setup your own Nike Shox campaigns or just add another ad group to a General Nike Shoes campaign.

If it were me, I would use the more specific example. (See below.)

Campaign Name: Mens Nike Shox
Ad Group: Nike Shox NZ id
Ad Copy:
Nike Shox NZ id
Customize your NZ’s with Nike ID.
Get 20% Off & Free Shipping Today!
www.JRazzlesShoes.com/Nike-Shox-NZ

When you setup your account strucutre this way, you have no choice but to have a very specific ad, that targets very specific keywords. This does a number of things. Compared to the other ads you’ll be displaying next to, you’re more likely to be clicked on and you’ll be linking to correct product page the consumer is looking for.

Here’s what happens when you don’t have account structure

When I searched for “Nike Shox NZ id” these were the top 3 ads to show up.

First thing you’ll notice is out of all 3 results, none of them use the descriptive ad copy to really “sell” the product. It’s unfortunate to see. In my opinion, if the account was structured in a precise manner, they would be much more specific for each product. For the most part, these ads are geared to just the Nike Shox shoe.

But after clicking on each of the ads, it get’s worst.

All of these ads failed to send the me, the visitor, to the appropriate landing page. Out of the 3, Footlocker was the worst, as it sent me to this page:

Uh — what is this?

I mean, it’s nice of you to show me your New Balance shoe collection but your ad told me it would take me to your Nike Shox? Seriously, Footlocker out of all sites out there too. I expect more out of a big company to have it more together. To me, this is a classic case of having an un-structured account which ultimately takes away your ability to manage your entire account.

Either way, just remember to keep it relevant. Having a well thought out account/campaign structure will give you the ability to manage your paid search campaigns at an optimal level.

If you’ve already created a few campaigns within your account, that’s ok. Next time you’re begin setting up new campaigns and ad groups, remember the importance of your paid search account structure.

Was this helpful? Let me know if I didn’t touch on something or you need more clarification. In the meantime be sure to Subscribe to my RSS Feed or Follow @jrfarr on Twitter for the next Rockstar PPC installment.

Twitter is about to “Cash In” all their Traffic

Have you seen Twitters new homepage? They just released it a few days ago. After one glance at Twitters new homepage, are you still thinking Twitter won’t find a way to make money?

Twitter has slowly been expanding their real time search functionality (search.twitter.com) and continues to make it more apparent to their users. The most recent is when they added the search box to the sidebar.

I think eventually, this sidebar will become a “Sponsored Results” section. And as an paid search advertiser myself, I would be a fool to not want to buy paid search ads on Twitter.

That’s exactly what Twitter is going to do.

Get ready for the new Google Adwords. Maybe Twitter Tweetwords

So I just posted this video on the MOJOnomic site. Essentially, this video helps you use a FREE keyword research tool find a new niche and gauge the competition. A lot of people ask me the same questions when they’re entering a new market.

Is there a enough traffic and interest in the niche?

How competitive is that niche?

Well, you’ll be glad to watch this video if those are the questions you’re always asking. And as an added bonus it shows you how to find & explore entirely new niches for you to get into.

I hope you enjoy and any feedback or comments is always an added bonus for me!

Wow, I am seriously excited about the new Google Adwords interface. If you’re using Google Adwords you’ll be 10 x’s more productive when you use the new interface.

Bottom line, it’s clean and simple to navigate and lightening fast.

I wanted take a few screenshots and give some of you a quick sneak peek at the new look. It comes with a few new features and like I said, navigating throughout the system is much faster. Everything seems to shift and refresh with more of a Ajax type feel.

Ok, ok… enough with my obsession with the new interface and on with the screenshot goodness

Campaign Summary

When you login you’re presented with a nice clean “Campaign Summary” view:

(Click to Enlarge)

Super Fast Tab Navigation

Flip through the new tab nav within seconds, no waiting for the page to refresh.

Graph Metrics

New graph metrics are easily changable and again no waiting for the page to refresh.

(Click to Enlarge)

Dual Graph Metrics

New graph metrics are easily changable and again no waiting for the page to refresh.

(Click to Enlarge)

Campaign Views

A few things you’ll notice that have changed is the verbage their using. Instead of Resume and Pause, it’s now Enable and Pause.

(Click to Enlarge)

Ad Network Statistics

This is one of my new favorite features. You can now easily see the performance of not only the search and content network but even further beyond that. In the search network you can see the performance of both the Google Network and the Search Partners Network.

(Click to Enlarge)

Hopefully you got a good idea of what the new interface was like. When speaking with my Google Adwords rep, she said this would hopefully become available to most Adwords users over the course of this year. It really does have some great improvements and I have enjoyed working in the new interface. I need to take the time and let a few Google reps know that they did a great job in upgrading the new Adwords interface.

Has anyone else been put in the Beta test? What are you’re thoughts?

I wanted to put up a few posts about Keyword Research tools. Honestly, maybe a year ago, buying a paid subscription to keyword research tool made sense to me. Now, with the Google “freemium” dealio, it doesn’t make much sense to pour out hundreds of dollars for a paid keyword tool.

I wanted to make a useful list for anyone looking for some FREE keyword research tools. Google has come out with some amazing tools over the past little while. And sure enough, they’re FREE!

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Google Adwords Keyword Tool – This particular keyword tool offers two ways of generating keywords.

1. Enter Descritpive Keywords or Phrases. After adding a few descriptive keywords Google can now find a whole list of keywords based off your short description.
2. Website Content – Enter a URL of a website/your website. Google will search your website for keywords and shoot back relevant keywords.

Google Search Based Keyword Tool

Google Search Based Keyword Tool – If you have an Adwords account it will automatically poplulate the URL’s you use in your account. Select to correct URL and enter a few keywords and phrases and your on your way. If you don’t have a Adwords account just enter a URL and keywords and proceed that way.

Here’s a brief description from Google about their new keyword tool.

The Search-based Keyword Tool provides keyword ideas:

• Based on actual Google search queries
• Matched to specific pages of your website with your ad and search share
• New to your Adwords account (typically excluding keywords matching those already in your account)

Google Insights for Search Keyword Tool

Google Insights for Search – This is another keyword tool launched by Google. The tool is still in Beta but this is one of my favorite keyword tools. You can take a topic and get as granular as you’d like with the keywords.

With the Google Insights tool you can search by:

• Categories
• Seasonality
• Demographic Distribution

This can all be researched by this simple search box.

Let me show you a few examples from Google:

Creating an Advertising Message

Can’t decide what to message to send to your consumers? Use the Google Insights tool. Click on the screen shot above to see how the research from this tool can help create an advertising message.

Researching Seasonallity

One of my favorite parts of the tool. How often do you see a lift in traffic or a dip and traffic and you wonder if it’s seasonality? I know I do all the time. This is a great way to use Google Insights to research seasonality from any date range you’d like.

Creating Brand Associations

Use the category filter to see what other brands will be competing in your space.

Exploring New Markets

How many times a month or week are you researching a new search landscape or industry. Stop flying blind and get sloid numbers to back up your initial thoughts.

Just from the 3 tools from Google look at the complexity, flexibility and insights you can gain from a FREE keyword research tool. I think the days of paid keyword research tools are fading, especially now that Google has made its stamp in the industry.

What FREE keyword research tools are you using?

Today Google Adwords announced they are launching a new Beta test for their Adwords Interface. Some advertisers I think might be a bit nervous but theres no need to worry about anything changing with your campaigns. This is only chaning the look and feel of the Google Adwords interface.

We’ve just asked a small group of US advertisers to start testing an updated web interface for AdWords. (If you’re in the test pool, you’ll see an alert when you sign in to your account.)

We’re testing changes to the ways that AdWords advertisers see and manage the data in their accounts. These changes should make it easier to tackle common tasks, like navigating between campaigns and editing keywords across several ad groups. We hope the updates will give advertisers clearer insights into their ad campaigns and simpler ways to act on those insights.

To answer a common question: The updates we’re testing won’t affect how ads run. Bidding, ranking, Quality Score, and the other key AdWords performance fundamentals are not changing with these updates.

We’ve started advertiser testing very early, while we’re still working on changes to the updated interface, so that we can make adjustments based on comments from our testers. That’s one reason why this test group is pretty small. We’ll gradually increase the number of advertisers testing the updated interface (and make it available to international testers) in the coming months. We’ll be sharing more details about key features along the way.

In the meantime, if you’d like to be considered for the test, please submit your AdWords account information on our beta sign-up page and we’ll contact you when we’re ready to add you as a tester.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 9:30 AM

Are managing a big bulk of Paid Search campaigns?

If you’re running some hefty campaigns through Google Adwords then it might be time to check out the Adwords Editor.

What is the Adwords Editor?

AdWords Editor is a custom Google application (which is FREE) for managing your ad campaigns. Use it to download your account, update your campaigns with powerful editing tools, then upload your changes to AdWords.

• Work offline, then upload your changes any time.
• Make bulk changes (such as updating bids or adding keywords) in just a few steps.
• Copy or move items between ad groups and campaigns
• Navigate through your account quickly and easily.
• Circulate proposed changes and get feedback from other users.

A few reasons I find it useful

There are those days when managing paid search campaigns when the hammer comes down.  When it feels like something will take a week to complete.  I know I have been there and more times then I can count, the Adwords Editor has really saved some headaches and most importantly, my time.

Time Saving – No need to wait for Adwords to load the next page as your creating new ad copy, or making bulk changes.  The tool is an offline application.  Just load up the Adwords Editor, find the account you want to edit and you’ll be done in no time.

Changing Destination URL’s – If you have 100 campaigns that all need the dest. URL’s changed because your client just got this new tracking system and want’s to track variables in the URL then this is a life saver.  Find the account in the Adwords Editor, sort by “ads” and updated the dest. URL’s within minutes.

Updating Bids – You can easily select a handful of ad groups you want to update the bids for in seconds.

My Favorite: Downloading your Google Account/Campaigns/Ad Groups – This is my favorite feature of the Adwords Editor.  Sometimes you have everything looking so great in Adwords but you’ve not giving the same tender loving care to Yahoo! and MSN.  Well, Yahoo! & MSN have made it possible to accept your downloaded Google Accounts and import them right into their systems.  Saving you time to work on other things while they upload the new account or campaign.

There are tons more features and benefits of the Adwords Editor so I can’t name them all.  If you have a question about a particular feature, let me know and I’m sure it’s something you can use this tool for.

Anyway, I’m almost positive that someone experienced with paid search is using this.  I’m also sure that a big majority of your aren’t.  Don’t be afraid to try it out and see if it provides some value to you.  This is just another way to be more effiecient and make better use of your time.

So… are you using the Adwords Editor?  Was this helpful?  Let me know

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P.S. – You can Follow Me on TWITTER.

Today it came to me so clearly… The old days of Google Adwords are long, long gone.  Yeah, we all knew that but are we doing anything about it.  It’s just like anything else where you get stuck in your old ways ya know.

What I’m talking about is the new Google Adwords Quality Score update.  Don’t know what that is? Read about it here.

On top of that, I’m actually afraid to change anything with my Adwords accounts because who knows what keywords will get the boot!

But, don’t let that scare you.  Don’t be afraid to re-vamp your old paid search campaigns.  If you want “Google Love” then that’s what you have to do to get it.

I’ll admit, I was one of those peeps.  I was one of those complainers.  “This new Google Qualtiy Score update is awful, what were they thinking?”  Yeah, it does have a few bugs in it, but it’s time stop complaining and it’s time to do something about it.

At least that’s what I have been doing over the past few months.  One thing that has helped me is creating an idea of what it is I’m actually doing to help the quality score.  I like to call it, having “tight” campaigns and ad groups.  Gone are the days of 2,000 keywords in an ad group.  10-15 keywords in an group is where we have landed. Bringing more and more relevacny to your campaigns, ad groups, keywords and of course your ad copy.

I know everyone and their dog has talked about how to help quality score, but try not to get tangled up in the B.S. and stick to a simple plan.  Keep your campagins tight and you’ll be good.  Just remember, if your not exceeeding the amount of campaigns and ad groups in your accounts, then you’re not doing enough.

Best of luck and hope that helps you on your paid search journey!

More to come…

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P.S. – You can Follow Me on TWITTER.

Now, I can’t give away secrets on this topic, but I can tell you what affects your Quality Score and what you can do to fix that.  I’ll start with an interesting factoid about your quality score.

There are 100 factors that affect your Google Adwords Quality Score.

When you have a higher quality score you gain a huge advantage over your competitors and you pocket.

You awarded in with:

• Lower Minimum Bids
• Higher Placement for your Paid Search Ads

2005 Quality Score implemented by Google – The overall goal was to create a better user experience and of course, more relevancy.

What are some the Quality Score Factors?

• Historical CTR
• Relevance of the keywords
• Quality of Landing Page
• Relevance of landing page
• Landing Page load time

What actions can you take to help your Quality Score?

Account Organization

• Number 1 factor on Quality Score
• Keep your campaigns tight
• Keep your campaigns and ad groups relevant with each other
• You should only have 15 keywords in each ad group

Content

• Content Rich
• Robust, Descriptive
• Unique to your site

Usability

• Useful, relevant, direct response to query
• Consider the user experience

Navigation

• Keep the flow going
• Guide your visitor down a path

Transparency

• Nature of Business
• Interaction with Computer
• Use of personal information

Load Time

• Minimize your Re-directs (301’s)
• Balance design and content considerations
• Work around for slow servers

Testing, Testing, Testing

• Focus on your CTR%
• Balance design and content considerations
• Work around for slow servers

The biggest point that Google, Yahoo! and (slightly) MSN is trying to get across is to just be relevant.  If you aren’t getting granular with your paid search campaigns then you’re not doing all that you can with your paid search campaigns.

Are you being conscious of your accounts Quality Score?

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P.S. – You can Follow Me on TWITTER.