Pay-per-click

Increasing an AdWords quality score can sometimes be an exercise in frustration and one where you really feel like you are beating your head against the wall. We use a number of methodologies within AdWords and on the destination site for increasing AdWords Quality Score.

Be very specific

As we have written about before, when people search, they search with intent. They are looking for something very specific so you want to capture that search either organically or with AdWords. However, what we have seen when we start to audit client's AdWords account is a hodgepodge of words that can be very broad. For example if someone selling golf lessons buys the keyword golf, his ad will show up for searches like golf courses. Because the ad gets so many impressions, the click through rate will be very low, and anything less than 1% will drive your quality score down. 

So for keywords, you need to pick keywords very specifically around what you sell. We typically will use something called a modifier and pair it with a negative keyword list to get very specific results. A modifier for golf lessons would be written like this +golf +lessons, so when someone Googles Princeton NJ golf lessons, our ad appears. If you use a modifier, it's imperative you use a negative keyword list to limit your searches as any combination of golf lessons will trigger the ad. For example, you would want to use negative keywords like bad so when someone Google bad golf lessons, your ad doesn't appear. Recently, we started a new campaign on Google AdWords for social media marketing agency, our keyword modifier looks like this: 

For each product we offer, we recommend setting up one Ad Group with no more than 4 keyword modifiers. This will keep the ads tight and relevant.

Use Keywords within the ads

Now that you have your keywords set, it's time to create an ad. Similiar to modifiers within AdWords, we use something called Keyword Insertion within our ads to make them more relevant to what people just Googled. Let's say someone Google NYC Golf Lessons. Our ad is written like this.

Top {Keyword: Golf Lesson}

Reduce Strokes in a month

Email or call us to start!

To the user, due to keyword insertion, the ad they will see will look like this:

Top NYC Golf Lessons

Reduce Strokes in a month

Email or call us to start

This makes the ad much more relevant to the user which will directly effect the quality score of the keyword and indirectly if the click through rate is high. In order to increase our click through rate for social media marketing agency, we used keyword insertion that looks like this: 

Use Multiple Landing Page

Once an ad campaign is created, it's very important for the landing page the person is being directed to be what they are looking for. This means that the keywords you have in Google must be on the webpage you are directing them. Imagine having a yellow pages ad under painting, and the ad is for travel, this is why your landing page should be what the person is looking for. Once your ad starts, Google will start to measure. If your landing page has a high bounce rate, then Google will decrease your quality score. If your page has a low bounce rate, Google will raise your score.

Lastly, one thing you can do is experiment with multiple landing pages. Recently we added landing pages on our site for ad campaigns around social media agency and content marketing agency that direct people to pages tailored for those keywords specifically rather than our more general product pages.

Analyze

One of the last things we tell people is they need to be patient. It's going to take Google some amount of time to increase and decrease quality scores based on your history. Some keywords that are not super competitive will change faster, while others will change slower. You should check once a week on your keywords and pause or delete any keyword with a quality score less than two and a click through rate less than 1 %.

We saw this cartoon earlier today from our friends at MTP. This is a perfect illustration on why you need to market your business. Marketing can be tough. In a lot of ways you are putting money in something that you must have 100% faith in. You are buying AdWords or an SEO consultant or putting effort into your Facebook and Twitter, and paying for things that may or may not pan out. However, there are some things you can do to help make sure your work and your dollars are having an impact. You should always have a goal. Stuff like...

• I want to double my leads
• I want to generate $100,000 in revenue
• I want to lower my marketing costs.

What you shouldn't have is...

• I want to double my website traffic
• I want 2,000 Facebook/Fans and followers
• I want to lots of eyeballs

The last three goals aren't good indicators of your business. If you are spending money on marketing are you seeing a return on that money you are spending? If you can't answer that basic return question you are more likely to give up on your marketing, like the man on the bottom, who gives up right before hitting all those diamonds. But if you are like the guy above, you know that you are getting closer and closer to diamonds, i.e. real revenue. 

Found this great infographic on Internet Marketing from Voltier Digital. This really illuminates why any business small and large needs to embrace digital marketing.

Why use Internet Marketing? It's a decent enough question after all if your magazine ads are working, why change? First of all, the question should be more like, why should I spend more in Internet Marketing like SEO, Pay-per-click and Social media than I do on traditional forms of advertisement? 

In order to answer these questions we look at a great new source for marketing data called think insights from Google which has all the below marketing stats:

1. According to McKinsey & Co. Advertisers get a 7:1 ROI on search.
2. If you are buying traditional media, remember the cell phone because 71% of smartphone users have searched after seeing an ad.
3. 82.6% of Internet users use search according to eMarketer
4. 70% of smartphone users use their phone while shopping per Google
5. 30% of all restaurant search are done on a mobile phone. This is from Google internal data.

So, for anyone running a marketing program and planning for 2012, the world is moving faster and faster into a networked age. Traditional media continues to have a place in today's marketing but it is simply a means for people to search you out giving your competitors equal opportunity to present themselves during that search. So...some takeaways while planning for 2012:

• Your search budget should increase because if you aren't being found your competitors are. On the flip side of the coin, if your competitors aren't busy with SEO, then you have an advantage.
• Your search budget consists of two levers: 1. Get and keep your website search engine optimized. Measure traffic from every keyword and where you rank and 2. You need to spend money on PPC so you can capture competitor traffic and prevent your competitor from bidding on your name, products and industry.
• You site needs to be mobile optimized. While its great that any website looks good on an iPhone, the ones that look great will bring in foot traffic and make it easier to shop.

Some great facts from webmarketing 123 on the digital media trends happening in 2011 and will continue into 2012. Not surprisingly, SEO is one of the best lead generators for both business to business leads and business to consumer leads. Our opinion is the reason SEO is a great lead generation tool is due to the sweat equity involved in building good SEO. As we have detailed, you always need to create content and make sure that content is coded correctly on our site. Once you have the content and code right, getting other sites to link to you can create a snowball effect of traffic and leads. We feel this digital media trend will continue for the next few years as more and more people understand the niche marketing available for lower cost via SEO.

Another digital media trend is the continued rise of social media and the fact that most brands will be increasing both the social media and SEO budgets while keeping PPC about the same. This shows more faith in social media as a relevant channel for all kinds of business. What's also interesting is the fact the people are still learning about the power of social media and the fact a lot people are still learning about cross promotional digital strategy. Some good stuff from this infographic.