I scored better than 8% of Adwords accounts in my spend range. Wow, that’s…humiliating, and quite humbling.

Wordstream has an awesome new Adwords performance grader tool that’s free and compares your account to others in your spend range (that they have previously graded, but they say that it’s millions) using more than 60 different factors. You get a general idea of how you’re doing then recommendations, in sections, for improvement. I like.

Naturally, this all ties into their PPC management software, which is available on a free 7-day trial. As PPC isn’t my main thing, I won’t be trying that out, but I do really like comparison systems, as I think they give us a great idea for where we stand in, um, comparison to everyone else. Everyone else, that is, who has run their account through this system. Still, it’s millions!!

So in addition to learning that I’m worse than 92% of people in my spend range, what else can this tool tell me?

• I am wasting a lot of money and should add negative keywords to my campaign.

• My keywords are too broad. They are like the backside of my fattest chicken, S. Epatha Merkerson.

• I have no good longtails.

• I am neglecting my account and probably losing ground to competitors due to a full 0 recent actions in the past month. That is dedication that you don’t find with just anyone.

• I don’t have enough ads for each group. However, with my worst ad showing a CTR of over 4% (the expected average is 2.3%) I am still smirking slightly.

• I have way, way fewer landing pages than my competitors. I like it that way though, so take that! Why create a landing page just for PPC? I know people do it, but how is that any different than cloaking? OK I’m joking. That rhymes.

Good news though! My Quality Score kicks ass!! I’m better than the rest of you monkeys with a 7.4 compared to the average of 5.2. Go me!!

My CTR is also awesome!!

OK that’s really all I’m doing well here…but seriously, this is one cool FREE tool. My favorite part is the end where there are happy green thumbs up images or scary and sad red thumbs down ones. I’m 50/50.

Now, I have said many times that I love free tools…I also really like tools that spit out data in eye-pleasing ways. I may be about 6, but I do love the graphics here because it makes the analysis much less boring. Once your report is ready it emails you a permanent link in case you want to look at it over and over and over again, or, more professionally, make tweaks to your campaign, then check your performance later on.

Here’s the thing about this tool: it does not compare your campaign to others in your niche, which means that while it is very valuable, you still can’t determine that just because you don’t have the same performance for asbestos removal as you do for discounted boots, you must suck. As mentioned above, it also compares your performance to others who have run their accounts through the grader. Still, since I like to look at performance in terms of trending rather than exact metrics usually, I do think that it’s really useful. I’d also find this quite nice to show to a client who balks at making changes. For example, I don’t have conversion tracking on this account for various reasons. Yes I know it’s critical, so don’t fuss at me, but still, I do not have it. I am not always at liberty to choose the ad wording or keywords either. A report like this is helpful because then my client doesn’t just think it’s me deciding to do something crazy just because I’m bored.

So try it out. It’s free, it’s cool, and you get to either feel superior to others or you can cry into your warm cereal at dinnertime.

I read an interesting article the other day which discussed the importance of targeting and bounce rates and it got me to thinking about the clients that I have had, past and present and the buckets of money I have seen thrown away. So, I decided to put a list together of 10 ways you or your client may be wasting money they could be paying you:

1. Stop sending paid traffic to your home!
   1. Your homepage is rarely the page your potential customers are looking for. If I am searching for “buy sony flatscreen 1080p” PLEASE send me to a page with sony flat screen tv’s on it!
   2. Check your homepage’s bounce rate. It is 60% than you should only be sending people searching for “sitename.com” to that page otherwise, you are throwing at least 60% of your money away. Why do I say at least? Because if you are sending all your paid traffic to your homepage than you probably haven’t optimized your paid search ads and are just looking for a high click through rate.
2. Stop duplicating terms in your paid search accounts
   1. It never ceases to amaze me when clients are using the same keyword in multiple ad groups with the same geo-targeting and timing. Don’t do this
3. Have goals for your website
   1. Set goals for your website. “I want to make money.” Isn’t a sufficient goal. Come up with trackable metrics to get you there so you can optimize your website to eventually make you some more money.
   2. Publishing sites – # of page views, repeat visitors, high CPM.
   3. Ecommerce – lifetime value
   4. Lead-gen sites are a monster in and of themselves. If you generate leads so that they become sales then focusing on the lead only is going to inhibit you from making money. Remember, unless you are selling leads, they don’ t make you any money until they become a sale.
4. Don’t cut the long-tail
   1. If you aren’t tracking performance over-time, you are probably missing all of your long-tail terms. Don’t cut terms that are attracting people in the educational phase of the sales-cycle. If you market to them differently you can increase your conversion rate over time. Don’t cut them just because these phrases take a little longer to convert - MARKET TO THEM DIFFERENTLY. These are long sales cycle leads
5. Use negative keywords in your paid search campaigns
   1. This may sound basic, but if you aren’t using negative keywords than you are paying for traffic that will NEVER make you a dollar, pound or euro. If you have paid-search clients or use paid search and using mostly broad match than you really need to spend some time investigating exactly what terms are being clicked on.
6. Learn what terms lead to conversion and optimize your site accordingly
   1. Welcome to the beauty of the internet and web analytics. You can actually tell how people get to your site, what they do there and if they are making you money. It’s brilliant. So why are you optimizing your site based on what you think will work well?
7. Stop making creative decisions based on what your boss thinks is a good idea.
   1. See point 6. We have the ability to test and optimize, which means we can run multiple ad creatives (banner and search) and see what drives the greatest revenue rather than based on the CxO’s affinity to the color blue. Back your decisions with data
8. Test, test, test and SPLIT TEST!
   1. See point 7. Products like Google website optimizer and Omniture’s Test and Target (formerly Offermatica) can optimize your landing pages based on conversions. There is no excuse for not testing your landing pages and assuming that your designers first try is always correct. In all likelihood it is not optimal and assuming it is will make an ass out you but not me because I’m split testing
9. Track how changes to your website affect your bottom line
   1. If designers, programmers, your kids or whomever are making website changes that affect your business– especially your homepage – you should be recording that this is being done and how this is affecting organic placement and conversions. If there is no tracking there is no accountability.
10. Know what your users are clicking on
    1. Heatmaps and click analysis tools, like Crazy Egg are great at letting you know what your users are clicking on and responding to. Using this information to optimize page layout should help you to make the most of the traffic that you have.

Wow…This is true privilege!!! Writing for SEO chicks……. thank you ladies. I am so excited about writing on here, and loving that Lisa actually found this post funny – serious leg slapping involved here and was there a snort……there may have been a little snort laugh, thank you lisa for pushing this forward. I hope that you chicks will ‘digg’ what I write. Recently I’ve been focusing on some of our PPC clients campaigns, and developed an analogy for keyword matching to share with clients and work colleagues. A far-fetched, if not a little warped, theory I know but hear me out……..

Exact Matching

Say you went on a dating site and wanted to find your exact match your Mr. Right and you could target the exact traffic in your ad you would no doubt find the men you were advertising for…..

If you surround your keywords in brackets for example, [tall Spanish man] your ad will only appear when a user searches for that exact phrase, in this order without any other terms in the query. For instance your ad will not be shown for ‘Crazy tall Spanish man’ or ‘tall Spanish woman. ’ Exact match is the most targeted option. With this option you will not receive as many impressions, however you will likely gain the most targeted clicks – users searching for your exact keywords typically want precisely what you are advertising for.

With exact match you will get convertible quality traffic, and maybe just maybe find true amor.

Broad Match

This is for the less fussy dater – put in a specification of your type “wants tall, dark, Spanish man, likes walks in the park and poetry” and does not mind if a “Tall, dark, too many bacon sarnies later, builder from Brixton” replies.

This is the default option. If your ad group contained the keyword ‘tall Spanish man’ , your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained ‘tall, spanish and man’ , in any order and possibly along with other terms. Your ad will also show for singular and plural forms as well as other variations. With this you will gain many impressions and many a curious fellow relying to your ad but not necessarily Mr. Right. This option definitely saves time and effort…… no long nights considering all variations of search terms that could trigger your ad…….ipso facto more time preening oneself for eventual conversion.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is for the lady looking for a particular man but is open to variations or suggestion….. still with me??…..

By entering your keywords in quotation marks, such as “tall Spanish man” your ad will appear when a user searches with the phrase “tall Spanish man” in this order and possibly with terms before or after the phrase. For example the ad could appear for “one handed tall Spanish man” but not for “Spanish trousers for tall man”. Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, but has the flexibility for slight variation that exact match does not.

Negative Keywords

This is a good way of deterring freaky types and time wasters – men that won’t convert- away from your ad….

If your keyword is ‘tall Spanish man’ and you add the negative keyword ‘-hairy ’ your ad will not appear for ‘hairy tall Spanish man’. Negative keywords are especially useful if your account contains lots of broad-matched keywords. This will save you both embarrassment and money on hair removal cream!!!

To Conclude…. (phew)

To find true amor you need to determine what you want from your ad- do you want:

1. A high volume of traffic (interest from any man)

2. A substantial amount of quality traffic – with possible conversions (Men who vary the requirements, but who might just be the one)

3. Guaranteed Conversions (THE ONE……….. Mr right)

Target right traffic =

As of 5th May 2008 Google is lifting the trademark rule for Google AdWords (UK) which prevents advertiser from bidding on branded keywords that are protected by trademark. Enter the brand bidding war and Affiliate heaven!

What was the trademark restriction? Basically if you submitted a Google trademark complain procedure you could prevent your competitor (or anyone else) to bid for your brand name in PPC ads served in the UK and Ireland. The benefit? You would be the only one in the paid listings appearing for your brand term, which means it was very cheap to drive traffic for your protected brand term to your website.

What happens now? Basically, ANYONE can now bid for your brand name. They still can’t use your brand name in their ad text, but they can bid to their hearts content for any brand terms. Which means the CPC (Cost Per Click) for any brand terms are likely to sky rocket! Who will benefit? Yep that’s right, Google! And of course the Affiliates (the guys that steal your traffic and then sells it back to you!).

Google claims that these changes will give the users ‘greater options’ and ‘help them make informed decisions’. HA! Whatever happened to relevancy? Is this really profitable in the long run? Is Google shooting themselves in the foot on this one?

It’s well known that nearly 73% of search engine users prefer (and trusts) Organic results more than Paid search engine results. With the PPC results filling up with even more irrelevant results, will this increase the user’s preference to organic? In my opinion this is a very risky time for Google to be changing anything that can fuck up the quality of their paid search listings.

It’s quite contradicting of Google to put such an emphasis on Quality Score, for them then to say, hey but you can bid on whatever you want, even someone elses brand term, we’ll take your money!

Well, not entirely. IAC has announced that Ask is going to move in a different, but familiar direction.

Step 1:
Lay off 40 employees (8%) of Ask staff

Step 2:
Gear your engine to marred women above 30 living in the Midwestern and Southern US

Step 3:
Bring back the question format – but have it only answer questions about recipes, hobbies, crafting and your kids

Step 4:
Remove Jeeves from carbonite

Step 5:
PROFIT!!!!! . . . . or cease to exist

Maybe they’ll have Jeeves wear a sock puppet next

One of the absolute worst songs ever recorded, in my opinion, is Timbuk 3′s “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.” While I could make a lengthy post out of my utter hatred of this song, I will spare you for now BUT since I seem to have a pathological need to cross reference music in these observations about SEO that must, by this point, seriously annoy many readers, I thought this truly abysmal attempt at music would be a good one to use. I mean really, it’s not good for anything else…certainly not for listening, or anything remotely like that.

Well, I sure as hell don’t think that the future of paid ads is full of sunshine and light. I may indeed have to wear shades, but it’s to hide my cryin’ eyes. Honestly, the future of paid ads scares the bejaysus out of me and there are three handy reasons for it:

1. Money’s involved and people are really, really stupid when money is involved, especially when there is a LOT of money involved. Stupidity is bad enough on its own, but coupled with the attempt to make more money, it can make you feel like the one vaguely attractive girl at a meeting of the county chess club.
2. Many traditional marketing methods no longer work well, so advertisers are forced to look for alternatives. These alternatives tend to be freakishly invasive and creepy. Just check your Gmail ads sometime after you’ve been emailing your favorite transvestite friend. Ick.
3. Machines will be forced to make judgment calls about what they think you want to see (like with the Gmail ads), and that’s going to be enough to make a freight train take a dirt road. God forbid I ever refer to a cat by the p word.

The Money Plus Stupidity Equation
This usually equals disaster, if I may have a mathletic moment. A Paris Hilton/Jessica Simpson/Lindsey Lohan reference would be too easy here so I’ll spare you. The point here is that when lots of money is being sought or held by people who aren’t overly bright (see above), the world could easily end. I’m sure Timbuk 3 had money, and look at the stupid song that they unleashed upon the world. I wish I had more of a point to make here but I really don’t.

The Personal (AGHHHHH) Touch
Few companies are as high on the shudder factor as Microsoft. They are apparently really interested in audience intelligence, which is defined as “figuring out what kind of person the Web user is based on their surfing and searching habits — and display[ing] ads including video.” Based on my surfing and searching habits, I am one bad seed, let me tell you. I like Cabaret Voltaire videos, knee high leather boots, strawberries and cream, cursing, and the Fibonacci numbers. If I’m being shown ads based on that, god help me. I’ll be expecting some perverted math fetishist to be knocking on my door at any minute. Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad…

Process This!
Think about how you slow down when there’s an accident, and you try to get a good look. This certainly does not mean that you are sexually turned on by car crashes like someone in a J.G. Ballard novel does it? Well, if it does, keep it to yourself please, you pervert. Speaking of J.G. Ballard and his infamous novel, aptly titled Crash, if I’m searching for it and buy it, does anyone know who I’ve purchased it for, or does a machine simply “assume” that it’s for me? Will I then be shown ads that tell me where to buy footage of car crashes? Or how to connect with others who so obviously enjoy car crashes? There’s no way of telling the machine that hey, I’m not the perv, JON is the perv, is there?

It’s a grim future to consider, isn’t it? It’s the same feeling that you get when one of your favorite novels is being made into a movie starring Ben Affleck. First you’re incredulous. You quickly become agitated and try to convince yourself that actually, it’s not Ben, it’s most likely Tom Wilkinson and someone’s gotten really confused. Then, once you accept reality, you cry yourself to sleep after a few vodka tonics. It’s not pretty.

What worries me the most is the invasive bit of this…normally I prattle on (and on) about machines not being able to properly interpret meaning from simple words, and while that’s frightening enough, it’s the invasion that freaks me out the most. I’ve been listening to someone on the radio for 45 seconds and not realized that he’s plugging a product. It’s all become so NATURAL, like those pesky product placements in films that gently suggest to you that, since Bruce Willis likes 7-Up, you should go out and get some. I can look away from billboards, and I can completely ignore ads in magazines or on the sides of the SERPs, but it’s really becoming difficult to completely avoid all forms of advertising. And, as you may have been thinking, marketing is kind of the industry that I’m in right? Most likely that means that I’ll become a creepy (or creepier) and invasive presence in someone’s life at some point in the near future. Go ahead and get some restraining order templates ready because you’ll be needing them.

Has Google gotten suddenly strict with “Display URL”?  Was there a memo?  Did I (and my AdWords rep) miss it?

I decided to trial some of my AdWords Optimisation rep Kevin’s efforts on a group in one of my campaigns.  To begin with, I added one of his ads to one of my groups for testing.

Coming from a programming background, I’ll often make one change at a time, test, and then if everything is OK change some more.  Sometimes I forget myself and recklessly make hundreds of changes with no documentation.  I also drink alcohol and eat foods high in sugar and fat.  I must have a death wish

For the rejected AdWords ad, Kevin was using a shortened version of my URL that I had used elsewhere *but* it was a 404 URL.  For example, if my real URL was http://www.yummychocs.com/home/nothome/somewherenew/yummy/chocs/index.html I was displaying http://www.yummychocs.com/chocs/

When reviewing AdWords guidelines, I was given the impression that short but non existent URLs were acceptable.  Indeed, I was trying to be representative of the landing page within character limits.

I looked at Google’s advise and while it says: “If your actual destination URL link is too long to use as your display URL, use a shortened version (such as your homepage) that meets the character limit for this field” it does not specify that the URL has to be a valid page on the site.

Is anyone else using URLs that 404 in their Google AdWords “display URL”?  Has anyone else found this happen to their account?  Is Google violating their own guidelines when optimizing client accounts?

The English Speaking Union was the location of the “B2B Marketing Debate” (watch the video!) between SEO and PPC. SEO experts Lisa Ditlefsen, head of search at Base One and Andrew Girdwood, head of search at Big Mouth Media debated with PPC defenders Stuart Small from Google and Simon Norris from Periscopix.

With over £700 million being spent annually on paid advertising within search engines, pay per click (PPC) advertising is often seen as the easy way in to the top spot on search result pages. Easy to change, start, stop and completely transparent, Stuart asserted that PPC was a better, more targeted way to gain leads.

Stuart Small from Google mooted that with 85% of all B2B purchases starting in a search engine, paid search ads were vital to any business. Google sees 80% of searchers clicking on organic results, with 20% of all searches clicking on a search ad.

With SEO perceived as a “black art” taking time, expert knowledge and effort, both Lisa Ditlefsen and Andrew Girdwood tackled the issue expertly, mooting that organic results were often perceived as more directly relevant, with a lower overall cost.

With three times the interest in SEO, paid search ads just don’t generate as much interest. PPC is a “money eating machine” according to Andrew. “People don’t want to put more money in. For B2B campaigns SEO has a definite advantage over PPC.”

Lisa Ditlefsen spoke about how SEO is like buying a house and PPC is like renting. While initial costs may seem larger, SEO is by far the cheaper investment. A well optimised site lasts in the SERPs, while a poor site with PPC lasts only as long as the money.

Simon Norris mooted that organic results were manipulated by devious SEO methods. To counter, Andrew Girdwood argued that Google was excellent at filtering spam out of the index “Google does an excellent job at this. ‘Gaming’ the search engine is just no longer possible the way it used to be.”

Simon also claimed that Google is trying to increase the number of ads clicked on by searchers and that personalisation changes the ads shown based on user intention. “That is not true” said Stuart Small from Google. “Google is very careful about privacy and we do not change ads based on people being logged on to Google. That is completely wrong.”

At the end of the debate, search engine optimisation won. No contest really, considering who was fighting the SEO side

You have made a promise to yourself to be a better you, as you do every new years. There is a whole industry based around New Years Resolutions, but it has changed entirely. If five years ago you started a food journal on January 1st, by now you might have added the “My Diet” application on Facebook, which has about 520 daily active users.

With so many people searching the web right now, how are web based companies capitalizing on New Years? As people are Googling this week, whether it be for a new diet, exercise routine, budget planning, etc., will your website have something to offer?

I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed with the SERPS for New Years Resolutions. Actually, there was only a handful of “resolutioners” that bid on the keywords “New Years Resolution“. I guess (in a nutshell) I expected a lot more creativity. There were hardly even any PSA type sites to help quit smoking (for those who made that their resolution).

Of course, some websites are not totally flexible and they may not have anything to offer when it comes to resolutions or capitalizations…fine. But for the most part, the job of Internet Marketers is to use swift tactics to stimulate the user into believing they have a reason to be at your website; whether it be for a New Year’s sale or the debut a new product. This gives them a chance to participate and engage with your brand, your commodity and keeping them there. So, if you are smart (and have budgeted correctly) you can make new years work for you just by using Social Media.

Ultimately, capitalization is defined as using something to one’s advantage; how is it that you can market YOUR brand to your advantage?

The #1 Top New Years Resolution is: To Lose Weight (not a surprise). We were all caught up in that resolution one time or another, if not still.

According to this article, companies-capitalize-on-New-Years.

However, companies are still capitalizing on the scheme of “Losing Weight in ’08.”

“Weight Watchers International is debuting a billboard in Times Square in a campaign for the first quarter of 2008 that will include television and print ads, an Internet video and MySpace page.” What about Facebook? I think, Weight Watchers International should really be more attentive to their market. Don’t they know that people prefer Facebook over Myspace?!

Facebook Application Developers didn’t waste any time this New Years. They were really thinking about “capitalizing” on their New Years Resolution. Remarkably, there were 29 Active Applications with the keywords “New Years”. The New Year Resolution 2008 Application has 2,836 daily active users, compared to other applications; that is a very large number.

Of course the Blogosphere naturally goes crazy with the concept of New Years. Millions of boring “end of the year lists” to read, but Aaron Wall took a different approach. He wrote a new years resolution; not for himself (not that I know of) but for SEO Book. What is YOUR blog(s) or website(s) resolution?

In the case of other Social Media sites, there were 157,000 New Years Youtube videos. Nevertheless, it was common to see many New Years Day photos spreading around Flickr. In particular, many pictures depicting what New Years day and celebrations looked like from different perspectives and areas of the world.

Have you ever had a client who did NOT do well in PPC? I have one now, and here’s why I don’t think that it’s simply my being an idiot (although it doesn’t help the case) that’s causing the ads to perform poorly: I’ve been able to do well in every other paid campaign that I’ve ever run. Really well, in many cases, with seriously high conversion rates and excellent ROI. However, I can’t crack this nut.

There are obviously industries that perform best in certain arenas, whether it be organic listings, paid listings, billboards, magazine ads, etc. radio spots, etc. However, I’m on a quest to figure out what I could try to make sure I’m doing everything possible to drive relevant traffic to this client’s site so I wanted to dive headfirst into PPC demographics. Obviously I’m diving in headfirst. How else would you dive?

Anyway, here’s what I can find easily…different people use different engines. Well well well, who knew? Other than that, I can’t find much concrete data to support my half-baked idea about how this one client is not traditionally sought out by people using the internet to find their services. However, does that mean that this is an impossible dream? We’ve had a few conversions, which tells me that there are at least a few (um, 3 to be exact) people who are getting the message.

Here’s something to compound the problem, too: I don’t have access to their analytics. Sure, I can request a report but it’s not the same as being right there in it on a daily basis. I also don’t have the ability to throw tracking code up all over the site, or mess with anything other than meta tags for various reasons. So what DO I have? I have a nice relevant landing page with a contact us form that gets filled out. The contact us form gives a user everything he or she needs in terms of information to provide in order to receive an accurate quote. It really is a lovely form too. I have a nice concise ad that gives a user relevant info, quick and simple. The URL is that of a trusted company in the US and abroad, too. But I’m getting nothing.

I’ve asked the other SEO Chicks/brainiacs about this as well, and they’ve had some excellent insight ranging from the slower conversion cycle for B2B ads to the notion that many B2B “shoppers” will search online and then call or come by in person to do business to my aforementioned half-baked idea of this truly not being a traditional industry that attracts online users. However, does that mean that this is going to be impossible? Are there really some industries that simply do not, at least not at this time, do well online? Can anything be done about it?

So in a post about how to get more user comments, it was suggested that the writer ASK for input. I’m asking…if anyone has ANY advice for me on this one, please let me know. I would be most appreciative.