We have made some more predictions for the main trends we expect to see this year in terms of web search and online marketing. As usual, the online market continues to develop at a fast rate and new websites or services can change the landscape in a short space of time, but these are our expectations for 2011:

1) Rising CPCs encourage more creativity: the gradually increasing Cost-per-Click (CPC) within PPC advertising campaigns – notably on Google – means that companies have to become more creative to get the best results from their advertising spend. This means getting more targeted with the use of search terms and also increasing the conversion rate from the visitors to the site. With the former, Google already provides a good collection of tools to improve the targeting of an AdWords campaign and to test the best approaches, plus new data segmentation and keyword tools introduced in 2010 should provide more focus. When it comes to conversions, the use of website analytics and conversion testing tools can help companies improve their conversion rates and so maintain the cost-effectiveness of their search engine marketing activity, despite more competitors entering the field.

2) Mobile marketing becomes more prominent: we’ve predicted this before several times and it still hasn’t really happened yet, so will 2011 be the changing point? The signs are certainly there, the technology is in place and the use of Internet-capable mobile phones is rapidly growing. It seems to be more of the mindset of advertisers to harness this new area, particularly for local advertisers, yet with the combination of social media tools (see below) and the integration of PPC advertising on the mobile platform, the opportunities are there. It’s now more a question of the creativity of using mobile marketing and, in some cases, adapting websites to be more accessible on mobile phones, which will herald the rapid growth of this sector, which is forecast by some to grow at a faster rate than the initial take-up of web usage.

3) Location marketing will be a big new opportunity: in the same way that local search marketing has developed over the past few years, companies that are targeting a local catchment area now need to take advantage of location tools – that are accessed through mobile phones and via social networking sites – to attract new business. The initial use of sites like Foursquare started to gain some traction, but the launch of Facebook Places at the end of 2010 is likely to really shake up the market for local businesses. As users of these social networking services identify their location to friends, companies can now use this geo-targeting to provide offers and rewards in a flexible and targeted way that hasn’t been possible before.

4) The line between social media and search becomes blurred: as the previous 2 predictions have shown, we are expecting big changes for this year to come from mobile marketing and social media tools. Social media – now dominated by Facebook – is undoubtedly changing the way people use the web and therefore it provides new opportunities for advertisers, although few have yet to find a solution that can be as cost-effective as search marketing. However, social networking tools are clearly going to develop, by introducing new tools and services to users and advertisers, and therefore can’t be ignored. Microsoft’s Bing search results are now integrated within Facebook, while Google is looking at ways to get more involved in the social networking sector and is therefore likely to become a bigger player, either by innovation or acquisition. Google has also confirmed that social media ‘signals’ are now being used to some extent within search results, so that companies need to consider how to use search and social together, in the most cost-effective way.

5) Video marketing and advertising gains market share: although still a relatively small share of the online advertising sector, video advertising is growing at a rapid pace and provides many new opportunities for advertisers to reach their market in different ways – either through the use of the medium of their websites, or through viral marketing, or by advertising to the online video audience. Google has provided new advertising opportunities and tools through YouTube so that companies can target this massive user base, although of course targeting of the right audience remains essential. Video can also be used as an information or marketing tool on a website, and although different techniques have been tested over the past few years, companies need to find the best use of this medium to suit their market and users.

Recent articles from The Marketing Workbench

The Marketing Workbench is our regular web marketing blog covering news and comment on Internet marketing events and trends. If you want to keep track of current stories you can visit this section of our website on a regular basis, or set up an RSS feed. These are just some of the items posted over the past month:

• Online ad value now exceeds newspapers
• Twitter raises $200m funding
• New enhancements in Google AdWords
• Automated Rules for Google AdWords
• Skipping Ads on YouTube

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s issue and found some useful information for your business. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.



Following on from last month’s issue where we looked at 10 common questions about Search Engine Optimisation and link building, this month we focus on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising and how this can work for your business. We’ve listed the 10 most common questions we’re asked about PPC and Google AdWords, and hopefully we’ve answered some of the burning questions you’ve had too!

Next month we’ll continue this special focus of our newsletter with some questions and answers about website analytics and Google Analytics, and then complete this series with a look at the more recent trends in Social Media Marketing.

We hope you enjoy these issues of the newsletter and, as ever, we welcome your feedback and would like to hear from you if there are any other questions we’ve not answered.

On to this month’s edition…

So what is pay-per-click advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising (or PPC) has been the massive growth area in search engine marketing over recent years and refers to the online advertising technique whereby companies can buy ranking positions within the search engine results for their chosen search terms, based on a variable bid price. In doing so, a small advert panel will then appear within the search results (identified as sponsored links, results or sites) on most of the top search engines – typical PPC services are provided by Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing. Once a web searcher clicks on the advertising link that takes them through to the website, then the advertiser is charged a ‘cost per click’ which is based on the original bid price.

Why is PPC advertising so popular?

The rapid growth in PPC advertising expenditure over recent years reflects the popularity of this technique as a marketing tool, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it can be highly targeted by specific search terms, so advertisers can reach their prospective customers at the time they are searching for a product or service. It’s relatively quick and easy to set up an account, although you need to beware of the pitfalls that many new advertisers fall into and waste much of their advertising budget! It’s also a flexible marketing tool that can be used tactically or to test a section of a market, it can be targeted geographically and by website, and the data generated makes it highly measurable. This means that advertisers tend to get a much higher ROI (Return on Investment) from PPC advertising than many other forms of marketing, both online and offline, which is something that can’t easily be ignored!

What’s the difference between optimisation and PPC?

There are some significant differences between the techniques of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising. In simple terms, PPC is a paid advertising technique which can be turned on and off, whereas SEO is a technique that should be developed into every business website to give it a chance to attract site traffic from prospective customers. Both methods target prospective customers through search and can be used together as part of an overall search engine marketing strategy. We recommend testing a PPC campaign first to get your website some immediate web traffic and to test different search terms. Once the PPC campaign has been running for several weeks, the data gained from this can be used to develop or improve an SEO campaign, which can be more cost-effective to run in the long term, as search visits from these listings don’t incur a cost per click.

How much will a PPC advertising campaign cost?

This will largely depend on the market that your website operates in, including the number of search terms that you wish to target, the competitive nature of the campaign (which can increase the bid costs) and the volumes of search traffic. It’s best to start with a test budget or set monthly spend to assess the responses from the campaign, and then decide how to develop the campaign based on the results achieved and your overall objectives. Bid prices for each search term will vary as PPC advertising is essentially an auction where you bid for the highest ranking positions. Niche markets with few competitors could see bids from as little as 5p per click for a top ranking position, whereas more competitive markets with many active advertisers can see bid costs from £5 per click or higher for a top 3 position on Google. It’s therefore important to set your advertising budgets on the expected visitor numbers coming to your site and the conversion rate and value you achieve.

How many keywords and adverts can I use?

This is unlimited and one reason why PPC advertising can be so flexible, since your ranking positions in the search results aren’t so determined by the number of pages or content on your website (as with SEO). You can set up a wide range of relevant search terms and phrases, grouped into themes which are supported by one or more adverts. It’s always good to test a number of different advert creatives and landing pages on a website at one time, to see which work best for your business.

Where can my PPC adverts appear?

Since Google is the market leader in search, their PPC service – Google AdWords – is also very popular and the first place to start advertising. Here you can decide where your adverts will appear, either by geographic location or by network. For example, you can just have your adverts appearing on Google’s search results, or you can expand your coverage to Google’s search partners, which tend to be high-traffic portal sites where search results are provided by Google. You can also use the Display Network and expand your reach across many other third-party websites that carry Google Ads. Also, don’t forget other PPC services, such as Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, which tend to be less competitive and although have a smaller share of the market, can still generate some very cost-effective results (plus these two services are expected to merge soon).

What if my competitors repeatedly click on my adverts?

This is a common concern from advertisers and something that Google and the other PPC services try hard to block. It’s true that an occasional click on your advert by a competitor will result in you being charged for a visit, but any widespread abuse will be picked up by Google’s sophisticated systems that safeguard against this ‘click fraud’ – such as repeated clicks from the same computer, or unusual click behaviour on a page of search results. Google will remove invalid clicks and not charge you for this, and you can see the number of these in the AdWords reports. If you do see any unusual activity such as a spike in visits and click cost, then you do have recourse to contact Google who will review the data and issue a credit, if applicable.

How can I track the performance of my PPC advertising?

There is lots of data recorded within a PPC advertising account to help you assess and manage the performance of your campaign. The main PPC account interface gives you activity data or you can run tailored reports to analyse the behaviour of search terms, adverts and more. You can track ‘conversions’, which is any action that takes place on your website, as well as phone calls in some cases. You can also link your PPC campaigns to your website analytics (such as Google Analytics) to review an extra level of data on the performance and effectiveness of the visits coming from your search advertising spend.

So is PPC advertising complicated?

Not necessarily, but you need to be careful! Google AdWords makes it very easy to set up a new PPC account and activate a campaign, but Google also makes it very easy to spend your advertising budget quickly – and if this happens you may think that PPC doesn’t work for your business. You need to understand what the best strategies and techniques are, and to use the data to analyse and improve the performance of your campaign. Google is continually adding new tools to help manage an AdWords campaign and so you need to devote the time to using these and refining your bid positions based on the performance of your advertising. As PPC advertising continues to become more competitive, you also need to ensure that you’re making the most of each visit to your site, which is where your website analytics is also important, as will be the need for conversion optimisation (which we’ll cover in more detail in next month’s newsletter).

What about outsourcing my PPC campaign management?

Of course, you can do this and allow specialists – such as the Web Marketing Workshop – to run your campaign for you! When you do outsource your PPC campaign management you need to be careful with some agencies who may charge a set monthly fee that combines your advertising spend and management fee. We clearly distinguish between the two costs as you should know how much actual advertising is being spent, as this will probably vary each month. You also need to make sure that the management of your campaign is completely transparent and that you can see detailed information about search term performance and spend. It’s also not a good idea to get tied into a long-term contract, in case the relationship sours. We don’t operate with any minimum contract period, as we believe our responsiveness, experience and results will speak for themselves! If you’re not yet a client and would like to know more about our PPC management service, please contact us for details.

Google recently introduced some new AdWords reports within the Google Analytics interface, which help to measure what happens after people click on the sponsored listings within the search results. Whilst the information within a Google AdWords account focuses more on the click data received on keywords and adverts, the new Google Analytics reports allow advertisers to see how visitors from an AdWords advertising campaign interact and engage with their website.

One aspect of these reports allows advertisers to determine how a person using a particular match type of keyword (i.e. broad, phrase, or exact) to find a site behaves on it, compared to one that uses a different kind of match type. This information can be applied to individual keywords, or expanded to adgroups and whole campaigns, so it can be used to see how much time these visitors spend on the site, or how many pages they view.

This is very powerful data that enables underlying trends to be detected and AdWords campaign components to be edited accordingly. In particular, this data can be used in conjunction with the existing funnel reports that depict where visitors exit the site before converting to a sale or enquiry.

These new reports are a welcome inclusion for Google Analytics users and will provide the ability to measure the success of AdWords campaigns in more detail, especially with the addition of 3 new reports at the beginning of June. These are in the form of a day parting report, a destination URLs report, and a placements report. This ability to dig deeper into AdWords performance was further enhanced at the same time, with the inclusion of 10 more dimensions that provide even more segmented data.

If you’d like more information on how these new Google Analytics reports can improve the performance of your AdWords campaign, contact us now.

Google AdWords recently announced the introduction of ‘interest-based advertising’ which has now been released from beta testing. Called “remarketing”, this is a new feature for AdWords advertisers who are using the content network and enables advertisers to present their sales messages to previous visitors to their website.

Google claims that the testing period with selected advertisers has proved very successful and the concept allows companies to display tailored ads on sites throughout the Google content network to web users that have previously visited the site from an AdWords link. This is similar to behavioural targeting so that previous activity can be used to target new offers through text, display or video adverts.

Google provides an example of how this might work for an advertiser, such as a basketball team with tickets to sell. By putting a piece of code on the tickets page of their website, this will let them later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network.

Several remarketing campaigns could also be run at the same time. For example, the company could offer discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited the tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on a ‘How to get to the arena’ page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who previously visited a YouTube brand channel.

Google states that remarketing is a great way for businesses to display more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities for customers to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest to them.

If you’d like more information about how the remarketing option from Google AdWords could improve the marketing of your business, please contact us for more information.

On March 23rd, the European Court of Justice announced its long-awaited decision in three Google AdWords cases regarding copyright infringement and the use of trademarks, all with favourable outcomes for Google. The result also has implications for AdWords advertisers who bid on the trademarks of competitors.

The Louis Vuitton luxury goods maker had sued Google in France over its AdWords policy which allowed third parties, including LV competitors, to bid on its trademarked terms as keywords. The outcome was that the ECJ supported Google’s position that it merely provides technology services to advertisers who make legally significant judgments using the technology. Therefore the ECJ ruled that advertisers, not Google, make the requisite trademark “use”, and Google can qualify as a web host of its advertisers’ content and thus is eligible for the associated safe harbour, if it remains sufficiently passive.

Google has been using a different approach to trademarks in some countries. For example, in the US & UK, AdWords advertisers can bid on competitor’s trademark keywords although the terms can’t be used in the advert text. In most other countries, including France, Google has a policy of allowing advertisers to protect their own trademark as a keyword, to stop others bidding on it.

These different approaches reflect local copyright legislation but makes for a confused policy and the latest ruling means that parties using AdWords may still sue each other if there’s an alleged trademark violation. Once Google is notified of a violation, it must act, much like copyright claims for unauthorised use of video in the US on YouTube, for example. In such cases Google removes the video at the copyright owners behest and, if it fails to comply with these requests, Google could be liable.

For advertisers that are able to bid on a competitor’s business name or trademarks, they need to determine if this is a worthwhile strategy. Such an approach can create bad feeling between companies and advertisers also have the avoid the charge of trying to ‘pass off’ their own advert and link as a competitors listing, which can also have legal implications as well as create negative feelings from the searcher. Clickthrough rates on competitor keywords tend to be low anyway, which drives up the average cost per click and it can be a policy that can backfire on the advertiser.

Although Google has escaped serious censure from the Louis Vuitton case, it will need to review its position and practices concerning trademarked search terms. Advertisers will also need to consider the implications of bidding against competitor terms within their local copyright legislation, plus companies that are affected by such tactics will need to weigh up the likely cost of responding to advertisers and taking direct legal action against them.

If you’d like more information about how this ruling and how it could affect the marketing of your business through Google AdWords, please contact us now.

At the end of March, Google announced the launch of AdWords Search Funnels, a new series of reports made available to advertisers that provide a greater insight into the ad click and impression behaviour on Google that leads up to a final conversion – such as a sale, contact enquiry or newsletter signup.

The new Search Funnels reports are being rolled out to AdWords accounts over the next month or so and are more detailed than the information previously shown about a conversion, which just mentioned the details about the last search term and advert used before the conversion occurred. Now advertisers can see when customers perform multiple searches before finally converting and also show the full picture by giving an insight into the ads customers interact with during their shopping process. With more advertisers trying to track the ‘attribution’ of a final action, Google is adding a new level of data to try to explain this process.

Google is tracking activity by searcher over a 30 day period, so that it can link previous activity to an eventual conversion. Using a similar report format to Google Analytics, the following reports are now being made available to AdWords advertisers:

• Overview – shows the total conversions; average days to conversion; average ad clicks to conversion; and average ad impressions to conversion
• Top Conversions – gives the number of conversions for each particular conversion type and the value of those conversions (if being tracked)

Sources Analysis

• Assist Clicks and Impressions – shows results based on the number of assisting clicks and impressions, as well as those just from the last click. This means that the keyword was clicked upon, or the impression was shown, on the path to a conversion, but wasn’t necessarily the last click or impression that resulted in a conversion.
• Assist/Last ratios – helps to identify keywords that might be more valuable than they appear from a last click perspective, i.e. they might have been instrumental in getting the conversion, but wouldn’t otherwise get the credit they deserve, as they weren’t the last click. The best way to confirm the assist value of a keyword is by testing it to see if increased bid levels yield improved ROI.
• Assisted Conversions – as above, but performance based on the number of assisted conversions.
• The difference between Assist Clicks vs. Click-Assisted Conversions – the easiest way to understand this is via an example. For a conversion path like: keyword 1 (clicked) > keyword 1 (clicked) > keyword 2 (clicked) > conversion
  keyword 1 would earn 2 Assist Clicks, but only 1 Click-Assisted Conversion.
  The same definition applies for the difference between Assist Impressions vs. Impression-Assisted Conversions.

Interaction Analysis

• First & Last Click Analysis – these reports are based on what was first clicked leading to conversion, or was last clicked prior to a conversion in terms of each campaign, ad group, or keyword. The reports are designed for advanced analysis of conversion paths by being able to drill down into the next hierarchy from campaign level.
• Top Paths (clicks, impressions & transitions) – shows the most common conversion paths based on ads that were shown and/or clicked prior to conversion.
• Click paths – represent the sequence of keywords that were clicked by customers prior to converting.
• Impressions paths – are useful for exploring the breadth of related keywords customers were searching for prior to converting.
• Transition paths – are useful for seeing conversion paths that consist of different keywords and how customers transition between keywords.

Time Analysis

• Time Lag – shows how long it takes for a customer to convert from the first click, first impression, or last click on your advert.
• Path Length – details the percentage of conversions that had a certain number of clicks, or impressions before them. e.g. 1 click 20%; 2 clicks 30% etc. If the majority of conversions happen after multiple clicks, the next step is to identify opportunities to take action using the other reports.

As shown above, the range of different reporting options are now much more extensive and also quite complex. Advertisers therefore need to understand what the data is showing and how it has been tracked. However, this change will allow advertisers to analyse keywords far more effectively and will help with one of the biggest problems companies have when trying to filter out ‘research only’ terms from ‘buying terms’, since research terms like ‘fashion’ or ‘cruise holidays’ or ‘TVs’ are often very broad. So through these AdWords funnels, advertisers can now identify which keywords are for research and which keywords are the money terms and develop a strategy accordingly.

If you’d like more information about how Google’s new Search Funnels could improve the marketing of your business, please contact us.

As Google Analytics becomes more widely used by business websites to track online activity, it’s also possible to link a Google Adwords account into the data, which helps to add an extra level of information about the effectiveness of this form of pay-per-click advertising. However, a common issue that arises from this data is the discrepancy between the numbers of clicks reported by an AdWords campaign, and the visits data shown by Google Analytics.

Once a Google AdWords campaign is linked to an Analytics account, it’s possible to view additional data within Analytics on how the PPC activity is working. The Analytics reports show data for clicks – which most closely match the figures shown in the AdWords interface – as well as for visits. There are often differences for each of these numbers between the two accounts and this discrepancy can occur for a number of reasons, even if the Google Analytics code has been implemented correctly.

Many people believe that AdWords clicks and Analytics visits are the same thing, but this is not true. In Google Analytics, there is an important distinction between the clicks in an AdWords Campaigns report (which shows how many times the adverts were clicked by visitors) and visits, such as the numbers shown in the Search Engines and Visitors reports, which are the number of unique sessions initiated by visitors.

Of course the first thing to check is that the Analytics code has been implemented correctly on all pages of a website and that the AdWords account is linked. If these elements are working correctly, then there are a number of reasons why the numbers may not match, such as:

• A visitor who clicks on the PPC advert and gets re-directed to another page wouldn’t be tagged by Analytics as an Adwords referral visitor. This would record one click and no Adwords visit.
• Visitors who do comparison shopping may move between different adverts, clicking on each advert multiple times to remind themselves of particular products or prices, after having seen others. Adwords would record this as multiple clicks, whereas Analytics recognises the multiple page views as the same visit, (if performed during the same session). This would record multiple clicks and just 1 visit.
• A visitor may clicks on the advert but doesn’t progress through to the site, by either pressing the stop or back button. This would not activate the Analytics code and would therefore record 1 click, but no visit.
• Website visitors must have JavaScript, images and cookies enabled in their browsers in order for Analytics to report their visit. However, if these settings are disabled for any reason, the data will not be recorded by Analytics, although AdWords will still be able to register these visitors because it only tracks clicks to the advert.
• Google AdWords automatically recognises and filters out invalid clicks, such as those from an industry competitor who clicks on your advert multiple times from the same IP address (possibly during multiple sessions), in a misguided attempt to raise your advertising costs. These invalid clicks aren’t included in Analytics reports, but the visits to the site are included. So, this would record 1 click and numerous visits.
• There can also be an issue with repeat visitors. This is because a campaign-tracking cookie will remain for 6 months after a visitor clicks on an AdWords advert and so if the visitor returns to a website within that period, Google Analytics will still be able to credit the visit to the original campaign but AdWords won’t show this as another click.

It’s therefore important for Google AdWords advertisers to understand the reasons for these discrepancies, so they can accurately assess the figures reported by Analytics to maximise the Google Adwords campaign’s performance.

If you’d like to know more about this issue and how it might affect your Analytics data, please contact us for a discussion.

The Bid Simulator is a new tool that has recently been introduced by Google as part of their new AdWords management interface. The tool can be used by advertisers to view the potential impact of a different bid level within the advertising results for each search term being used, but what value does it really offer?

Using data from the past 7 days, the Bid Simulator tool re-calculates the number of impressions for which an advert could have shown had the advertiser chosen a different maximum CPC, as well as how many clicks the ad could have received for those impressions and how much those clicks could have cost.

According to Google, the new feature provides “increased transparency into the AdWords auction and provides the insight to make more informed bidding decisions about advertising objectives”. The figures are, of course, estimates based on expected behaviour and recent trends, and the initial feedback from professional PPC marketers has been mostly negative about this new tool’s real intentions.

The way in which the tool regularly indicates the benefits of an increase of bid levels has been treated with wide-spread scepticism. It often shows that raising bid levels by large amounts can increase the number of impressions (which doesn’t necessarily correspond to a rise in clickthrough rates). So it would seem to be more beneficial to focus upon improving quality scores to lower cost-per-clicks and improving advert copy, rather than just manipulating bids levels to increase impressions.

A Google spokesman stated, when questioned about the high frequency of raising bid levels within the tool, that “shown bids are not recommendations but are simulations for various bids to give insight to the advertiser. The feature aims to show missed opportunity”. Also that “past performances cannot guarantee future results so the simulations should not be taken as exact, they are simply predictions”.

It’s an important point that an advertiser should keep in mind when using the Bid Simulator so that the predictions need to be viewed with a pinch of salt, like most of Google’s PPC projections. In other words, rather than being recommendations, they are just projection models with a large frequency of incredibly high simulated bids.

Professional PPC marketers have the impression that Google created this tool to take advantage of ‘rookies’ and other irregular users of AdWords by encouraging advertisers to bid highly in order to simply make more money from their clicks – so not encouraging the creation of highly optimised campaigns, or the reduction of cost-per-clicks through improved quality scores.

Thus, it is suspected that many full-time search marketers will find the Bid Simulator will only demonstrate the projection that they really don’t want to pay any more than they already are, and so the focus on bid management needs to be placed in different areas.

If you’d like to know more about this new bid management tool and the implications for your AdWords management, please contact us for further information.

The use of Keyword Matching in Google Adwords is an important concept for advertisers to understand for fine-tuning a keyword list so that targeting and bid management can be improved. Without it, much of a budget may be wasted by casting the advertising net too widely or too narrowly.

There are three types of keyword matching available to AdWords advertisers: broad, phrase and exact matching. Broad matching is the default setting for all keywords included in an AdGroup list of search terms, unless otherwise specified by the advertiser. With this type of match, the sponsored link advert will appear when a searcher types in the targeted keywords anywhere within their search query. With a phrase match, the advert will appear if the searcher types in the keyword phrase in the same order, even if they include additional words before or after it. With an exact match, the searcher must enter the same word or phrase appearing in the keyword list, with no additional words before or after it.

Therefore by using exact matches in an AdWords campaign helps to reduce the potential number of advert displays generated by common words and phrases because they cause the advert to be displayed less often than through a broad or phrase match. For example, the use of a broad match for the term ‘jump start’ (used to sell vehicle jump leads), would cause the advert to appear each time someone queries anything with ‘jump’ and ‘start’ in their search query, which could have no relevance to what’s being advertised. Searchers would see the advert, but not click on it, thus reducing the clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword, which would also reduce the Quality Score⁷ and increase the potential cost per click. So, by enclosing [jump start] in square brackets as an exact match, the advert would only appear if both words are used in the correct order and nothing else was included in the query, thus improving the relevancy of the ad to the searcher and also the chance of achieving a click from a prospective customer.

Phrase matching, by using quotation marks around a search phrase of 2 or more words, would cause the advert to appear only when “jump start” was queried in that order, with other words either before or after it. Therefore ‘jump start my car’, or ‘how to jump start’, would lead to a relevant display of the advert that searchers are more likely to click upon, especially with a fairly specific phrase such as this. It is a good balance to achieve between the number of times an advert is displayed and its relevancy to the search query.

Broad matching is the least targeted method of search term selection and can pull the CTR percentage down quite dramatically if not used carefully with common or general words. If the term ‘jump start’ is used in the keyword list with no brackets or commas surrounding the phrase, then the advert would appear every time the words ‘jump’ and ‘start’ appears in any length of search query and in any order. Thus the advertising would be targeting a much wider audience, but with a lower chance of the advert being clicked upon, as the search queries may have nothing to do with starting a car.

Therefore by fine-tuning a keyword list with these types of matching, it helps to improve the targeting of the PPC adverts to particular types of searches and also helps to provide more information on how searchers may be using the search terms in a query. It also allows more flexible bid management around a search phrase to target these different uses and to try to focus on the right intent of the searcher, thereby making substantial cost savings possible and a more effective, targeted campaign.

If you’d like to know more about how keyword matching can be used in your Google AdWords campaign, please contact us now for advice and recommendations.

Google has made a number of notable changes to their search results in the past month. The first development has increased the frequency of local business listings being displayed within the first page of the search results, which has a significant benefit for local advertisers. The second enhancement concerns the inclusion of additional ‘sitelinks’ below selected search listings, which offers the searcher more opportunities to enter the listed website at different points.

The recent change that Google has made to the use of the Local Business Listings means that the small map and accompanying business listings for up to 10 companies are now appearing across more search results, rather than ones that specifically include a location within the search phrase. Google is trying to recognise typical search phrases that would have a local search intent (such as ‘plumbers’ or ‘accommodation’), even if the searcher has not included a location term in their search. When this happens, Google will display the business listings below the top 3 ranking results and bases the map and location details on the recognised IP address of a searcher’s ISP (Internet Service Provider).

The intention is clearly to focus the results to meet a searcher’s intended need and although the method of targeting is by no means a perfect solution, this is an important enhancement that may improve clickthroughs for companies listed in the local business listings. Therefore it’s now more important than ever that companies who are targeting a local market ensure that their business is listed on this section of Google and is optimised as effectively as possible to increase the chances of being found.

The second recent change to Google’s rankings concerns the ‘sitelinks’ displayed below selected websites in the ranking results. These have been visible for some time for large websites or when a specific business website is searched for, with the intention of giving searchers an idea of what the site includes and also more opportunities to click directly into a prominent section of the site. Previously these were displayed as a short list below the main ranking result and for the first search result only. Google has now introduced an expansion of these sitelinks into a single row of links, which will be displayed even for results that aren’t in the first position. This will help to show searchers some relevant sub-pages within more sites and potential increase the opportunities for people will clickthrough into the ranked website.

Google says that, just like the previous sitelinks, the new one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users. Therefore site owners can’t tell Google which links to include, but they can block some or all of these links if there is any reason they may not want to show them. This can be done through a Google Webmasters account, but removing these links is not recommended in most cases because the inclusion of these additional links will probably increase the visibility of, and traffic to, a website, whilst also improving the experience of users.

To find out more about increasing the marketing opportunities for your website on Google’s search results, please contact us now for more information.