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There are a lot of theories on the best practices to manage a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign from how to target keywords, what ad text to use, and what to put on your landing page.  Many of these theories pose good arguments and it’s almost impossible to nail down “the perfect” strategy.  Therefore, I thought I would spend some time on identifying some techniques that, I believe, haven’t been done to death and are great resources to use when every thing is not all rosy…negative keywords.

In short, negative keywords are keywords that you can add to virtually any PPC campaign that you don’t want your PPC advertisement to appear in your search results.  In general, most of the PPC campaigns that businesses set-up (and what most PPC vendors want you to use including Google) utilize broad matching.  Using broad matching simply means that your chosen keywords may appear for more key phrases that searchers may use to find your website.  For instance, if you chose to broad match the keyword “minnesota resorts,” your PPC advertisement may also show up for “best minnesota resorts,” another relevant keyword that you likely would want your ad to show up for if you were a Minnesotan resort owner.  Unfortunately, if a searcher also searched for “best alexandria minnesota resorts,” your ad may show up and get clicked on even if you don’t service that area.

To avoid this above scenario, you can add negative keywords to your PPC campaign that will restrict your ad from showing up in search results for which you do not wish to pay.  In most search engines, you can do this by simply adding a keyword to your list with a
“-“ in front of  them. For example in the scenario above the negative would appear as
“-alexandria.”  There are likely some very obvious keywords that you may want to negatively target such as but not limited to: free, ideas, information, guaranteed, jobs, etc.  However, to be really successful, you’ll need a little help from your website analytics.  If you don’t have website analytics installed on your website, there are many great solutions on the market that are free.  If you need some help, I have a post on how to choose website analytics here.  Simply put, I suggest using Google Analytics because it’s not only a great free resource, but also a solution that many businesses have chosen to use  because it integrates well into Google’s popular PPC Adwords program.

Regardless of what analytics provider you choose, you’ll need to know how to identify which keywords you are paying for.  In Google analytics, you can do this by clicking on Traffic Sources => Keywords => Paid.  Typically speaking, I suggest using a quarters worth of data (3 months) to analyze your results so that you get enough data to determine what to negatively target.  Now here’s where the secret is revealed!  From this screen, you will be able to see what keywords are actually clicked on…not just what you intended to purchase.  Look at this list to see what keywords may potentially not be good keyword buys.  There will also be some keywords that are no-brainers.  However, some may not be so obvious.  So, to drill down deeper, you can review each keywords “bounce rate,” “page views per visit,” and “time on-site” to determine if the searcher actually found what they were searching for was relevant to your website.

The bounce rate is a percentage of how many people went deeper than the page they landed on and went back to the search engine.  A percentage of 100% means that all the people that clicked on the ad didn’t go further than the landing page.  Typically speaking, you should look at analyzing keywords that exhibit bounce rates over 30%.  However, two other numbers are also as equally important to factor into your analysis.  They are “pages view per visit” and “average time on-site.” Page views per visit, generally refers to how sticky your content is.  A number over three (for sites that aren’t image heavy) generally means that people are finding the content to be relevant.  Another statistic that also relates to relevancy is how long the visitor stays, AKA- the average time on site per visit.  Unfortunately, there is no secret formula for using these three statistics, so you will have to rely upon your own expertise to find which keywords don’t best represent your products or services.  Always remember, that paying for search engine traffic is not as much about quantity as it is about relevancy.  The longer searchers remain, continue to view pages, and don’t bounce back to where they came from, means that they are engaged and that they are likely finding the information, services, or products for which they were searching.

Your job as the PPC ad manager is not an easy one.  As you can see, to determine which keywords are not worth spending your advertising budget on goes farther and deeper than your pockets or just using your intuition.  However, if you can find the bulk of these non-desirable keywords and put them on your negative keyword list, you will be able to reduce your waste coverage while increasing your ROI.  Best of all, your website visitor experience will increase as more of these searchers find the target at which they are aiming.

If you are currently using Google Adwords, you may be interested to hear that Google just made some improvements to its quality score algorithm. In case you are not entirely sure, Google Adwords quality score is a major determinant in how much an advertiser ranks and pays for their keywords relative to competitors. Google’s quality score is based on several factors including but not limited to:

1. Click Through Rate (CTR)
2. Relevance of keywords in relation to its Ad Group
3. Quality of your landing pages
4. Account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
5. Relevance of the keyword/ad to the search query

Essentially, the new quality score adds several new components to increase the relevancy of Google’s search and content network results:

1. Real-time calculation of relevancy of keywords/ad to search queries
2. Keywords will no longer given “inactive” status
3. First page bids will replace minimum bids

Probably the most notable variable above is the real time calculation of keywords and ads because campaign optimization enhancements will have an immediate effect within Google’s network. As the landscape of PPC advertisers is highly dynamic, changing ad text and keywords will likely occur more frequently as competitors will want to continually want higher positions and strive for a lower cost per click. In addition, “first page bids” will enable advertisers to see how much it will cost to receive first page exposure without too much guessing with max bids.

There are a lot of mixed opinions on how the above will benefit an advertiser. Over at the Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal has a humorous ending to his post in that he claims these new changes will immediately translate into more revenue for Google. I have to say that although I agree with that statement, I believe that there are many positive outcomes for SEMs that keep a watchful eye on their PPC campaigns. Moreover, I look at these changes as weeding out lesser experienced campaign managers or do it yourselfers that don’t understand the importance of a well structured and organized Adwords account, one of the most critical components in setting up a PPC campaign in my opinion.

In any regards, if you haven’t read about these recent changes and are a Google Adwords advertiser, I would take a moment to familiarize yourself with these recent enhancements.

I typically get asked about once a week what pay per click management entails as more businesses are getting weary of where their management fee’s are going towards. This isn’t too surprising given the shear amount of companies entering the online PPC arena and want a piece of the action. However, sometimes I’m just dumbfounded by some of the crazy offers i hear such as “We’ll manage your PPC for only $200 a month…no minimum spend required!” If i was was a business owner working with an online marketing company, I guess I would wonder if these claims are true too as well as have some doubt as to how difficult PPC management actually was.

But the straw that broke the camels back for me, just happened a couple of weeks ago when i spoke to a rather large “phone company” that was offering to do PPC management for a guaranteed fixed price per click…which was of course was lower than what one of my clients was paying. What made it extremely difficult to stomach was the fact that the offer wasn’t based on performance, but rather clicks with no gauge to measure the quality of legitimacy of the traffic. But even worse, they proceeded to tell me that they were able to buy it cheaper because of their company’s size and that they had “special arrangements” with the search engines to get better rates.

In case you are new to pay per click advertising, let me start by saying that the above statement is completely false. If you don’t believe me, call major search engines and them yourself. Additionally, pay per click bid rates are not just a function of how much you bid, which also shouldn’t be the cornerstone of your management strategy in the first place.

To put it simply, PPC Management encompasses one goal and that is achieving the highest ROI output given a fixed input. Unfortunately for those that guarantee clicks or just manage bids, this is a difficult goal to achieve. Namely, PPC management entails the following additional important variables:

1. Campaign and account structure- a significant element in how relevancy scores are determined for ad groups and keywords (these are core drivers that reduce your cost per click under a fixed bid)
2. Website content- the next part of the equation and even more important in my opinion is your websites landing pages. Not only do they directly influence your PPC cost per click, but they have direct impact to how well your website converts. If your proposing PPC company is unable to create effective content for your PPC traffic to land to, that should be an immediate sign to steer clear and go with a company that really understands web marketing.
3. Web Analytics- web analytics are absolutely crucial in determining your PPC advertising strategy is effective. Not only will it allow you to precisely measure your action rates, but it will also allow you to identify poor performing traffic that the engines cannot provide.

I’ll argue with any search engine marketer that managing PPC is still one of the most difficult mediums online. Be very weary of firms that offer the inexpensive rates just to get your business without making any claims to fame in regards to results. Lastly, when it comes to PPC management, there is a significant amount of knowledge and skill at work. If you are planning to do it yourself or hire a firm, be sure to familiarize yourself with the above key components and gauge capability accordingly.

I recently read an article from the Washington Post Blog stating that Google is putting end to an old prank “the Google Bomb.” If you are new to Google bombing, essentially its a technique that a group of collaborated website owners/bloggers do to get a website to rank for a specific keyword by linking to that site with keyword rich anchor text. Whew! That was a mouthful, but in case you are not entirely sure, perhaps the best example was when you could do a search in Google for “miserable failure” and George Bush’s bio was the first result. This was recently removed about a year ago, but it showed an important aspect to search engine optimization. Simply, links matter a lot when it comes to ranking a site.

I kind of miss the above example because it was a powerful demonstration to show prospective clients the power of linking and why search engine optimization is typically not a one shot deal. In any regards, according to Rick Klau, a member of the Google strategic partner development content acquisition team, Google now looks for these rings of links based on how fast they are built along with other factors. However, Bloggers and other web savvy individuals are already finding ways to work around this new algorithmic change.

It has been my experience that nothing is safe from hackers or pranksters and its likely that new Google Bomb will built given enough time. Regardless, i think its fair to say that Google still places high emphasis on linking and that building link popularity slowly is the best way to play the game for high search rankings.

I spoke to a good search engine marketing friend of mine the other day, in which we discussed the pro’s and con’s of search engine optimization (SEO) vs. pay per click advertising (PPC.) But, first I want to tell you who won, which was me of on my soap box of PPC course…just kidding. We both presented great arguments, but in the end I think we both came out a little wiser.

According to a recent 2007 SEMPO survey, most search engine marketing firms report that a greater portion of their revenue comes from SEO vs. PPC. I found this extremely interesting due to the increasingly high-emphasis of building link popularity when it comes to achieving high SERPS in SEO campaigns. Regardless of whether you agree with the above statistic or not, building great quality link popularity to boost rankings can take time when you are going after highly competitive keyword phrases. And when you are all done trying to sell to the CEO on the benefits of all these great linking efforts…the CFO usually would like to have a word with you. Plus, (as Rodney Dangerfield would say) I’m not sure you’re totally familiar you runs that department, but I assure you it isn’t the boy scouts!

Making the connection and trying to prove immediate value for SEO can be a difficult game when there is high money at stake. In addition, ROI is of the utmost importance proving your firms value which is usually tied to a short window. If you are unable to measure, deliver, or maintain a healthy ROI (which is typically difficult for any medium at startup due to sunk costs), most companies will turn their head to what they know best.

Sure, immediate on-page optimization can deliver immediate results for some company rosy scenarios, but most online business models and websites I run across aren’t that easy. There are typically many fundamental issues with the corporate website that will prove to deliver poor results unless significant attention is turned to fixing the website to make it conversion friendly. This usually ends up in a redesign or a refresh that can delay results even further, which makes achieving the desired goal even longer to attain. A tough sell for most companies at a high level.

Lastly, measuring ROI for SEO is more difficult due to the benchmarking (and agreeing among internal resources) required to do it effectively, where pay per click advertising is relatively straightforward due to the known advertising expenditure that can’t be argued. Its a straight input output game as they say. Additionally, once real ROI is achieved through paid search, it provides a guided roadway for search engine optimization efforts, where the guessing game has been taken out of the question.

In reality, both are really important and should be considered equally if adequate resources exist. However, i think the above presents a strong argument for gaining immediate “honeymoon” trust, is easier to measure, and will guide a path for continued success.