AdWords Vouchers & their 2nd Secret Expiry Date

Writing about web page http://ppcPromotion.co.uk

For the third time today, I have picked up a client’s new Adwords account and tried to add one of the many Google Adwords new account Vouchers that are floating around. For the third time I came across the error “Sorry, your account is too old to be eligible to redeem this coupon.”

The error message is a link. Does this lead to an explanation of how old is too old? No, I takes you down to the Redeem Code box. As if any change you could make there can change Google’s arbitrary, unpublished, second expiry date for their vouchers.

The most common response to the squeeze approach of Google Adwords sign-up wizard; lets start with your first Ad!, is to go away and get expert help or to find a book. By the time you get back you will not get any help from the Adwords Vouchers.

Robert McGonigle : 16 Jul 2009 09:41 |  Tags: Adwords Google Adwords Vouchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Form Spam via MS Office Live SB to a Sequence of Sign–ups

Writing about web page http://ppcpromotion.co.uk/adwords-audit

My website ppcpromotion.co.uk is hosted on a MS Office Live Small Business site. I used their built-in form-builder and was going to use their paid-for emailer solution too.

For three months now I have been receiving SPAM messages sent via these forms. Microsoft did not have any safeguards such as a catchpa or email verification.

The SPAM was steady, not a flood, at about 100 alerts per month. The example above has one of the more publishable titles and the large text box was stuffed with weblinks. I could have used an external form designer such as FormLogix some time ago but I was doing some research into Email Autoresponders for a client so elected to thy one of these out.

Microsoft seemed to abandon the CRM space by removing their emailer so I knew I had to move. I have used iContact. These were not brilliant but the costs were realistic and their forms plugged into the site and just worked well where others failed. My leaner forms with meaningful action buttons have already proved to be more effective that Microsoft’s standard one that asked all subscribers to Submit. Even with email confirmation conversions have trebled.

The thing that I am still searching for is an autoresponder that will send the next message when triggered by an action, clicking a link or visiting a page, rather than just by number of days or manually.

I have not yet reviewed the Market Leaders such as InfusionSoft; sorry, Price on Application offers go to the bottom of my list. But I looked back at the use of this by emailer experts such as Perry Marshall and realised that he had got me to sign-up afresh for every list I was on. This is actually good practice but if someone accesses your free download this seems a good time to offer more free stuff. Can this be done? If you want to see how powerfully an autoresponder can be used, just click on Perry’s ad, right and sign up for his 5 day tips & free chart. His Friday emails are always entertaining and sometimes invaluable with the alerts that he sends.

Updated to point to the latest site, still hosted on MS Live SB.
I have been using iContact’s forms for signups since then but recently their policy will not double-signup emails with admin@ sales@etc. They will not send the confirmation emails. This would have blocked 30% of my clients over the past 2 years!

Robert McGonigle : 31 May 2009 16:55 |  Tags: Conversions Email Autoresponders Form Spam Improving Conversions Ms-Olsb |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Before you buy online; search the domain name & 'problems'.

Writing about web page http://www.travelsupermarket.com/community/forums/t/car-hire-scams-215.aspx

My family trip to Croatia led me to start searching “zadar car hire”. All of these ask you to fill out all your details to get a quote so I did the ‘why not?’ test first.
I copied their domain name of the top results and “problems” into another search tab and noted the results & was quickly put off three of them.

Some of the more reputable companies such as Sixt were much cheaper through Lastminute etc than on their own site. CarHire3000.com who I have used in the past offered the same prices on their own site. My sister booked the cars and went with Sixt via lastminute.com.

Why the Zafira picture? My passengers demand ‘stadium seating’!

Robert McGonigle : 30 May 2009 23:34 |  Tags: Car Hire Problems Car Hire Scams |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

I finally sorted a Joomla website. Now I've to remove almost 70 alias URLs from the index!

Writing about web page http://www.lickworx.tv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=99&Itemid=124

I have been struggling with two problems using the Joomla ‘content management system’.

1. Getting the menu to show in articles.
2. Changing to ‘search engine friendly URLs’.

I have given up with the second after making the first step broke all the templates. I spotted have that the menu Itemid numbers had all changed so creating a sitemap based on these fixed the missing menus.

Now I just have a list of almost 70 old, defunct alaises to clear from Google’s index.
The sitemap now has the 17 cannonical addresses and from now on this gets manually updated!

Now I can get on with promoting the growing creative enterprise that is LickWorX, creating new music for sonic branding, radio sweepers, digital media & movie / animi soundtracks, which is more fun!

Robert McGonigle : 05 May 2009 17:34 |  Tags: Database Alias Urls Database Website Problems Joomla Search Engine Friendly Urls Sef Sef-Urls |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Locations provided for DSL visitors are much better but still flawed.

Follow-up to Problems with Location based Search Marketing in the UK from Rob McGonigle on Internet Search & SMEs

I have been running two accounts with UK location targeted campaigns. I have blogged in the past about how this was completely broken in the UK by the limitations of BT’s wholesale ADSL network.

My own campaign still demonstrates this problem and I cannot see my Ads here in Coventry as my fixed IP address still appears to be in London.

The other campaign was remarkably sucessful so I have researched this in more detail. Looking at the 2009 stats from the WMCCM site’s Analytics revealed that 685 different cities have been recorded way up from three. DSL provided about 50% of the visitors so I created 2 Analytics ‘advanced segments’ UK DSL and UK Non-DSL and drilled down to the cities.

London provided 44% of the DSL visitors (about 22% of all visitors) but only provided 26% of the Non-DSL visitors (13% of the total). There is still clearly significant over-reporting of London visitors using DSL

Looking at the Network Locations for any city shows reveals a better picture of the Internet Service Providers and IP pools than the three big centres of 2 years ago. Looking at the picture for London highlights 2 potential groups for over-reporting, see picture right, and click for a larger image.

Single static IP addresses is the largest number and includes my Coventry based IP address. The Carphone Warehouse also stood out. Their traffic resolved to 50 cities but 77% of that was recorded as London. TalkTalk do have some unbundled local loop equipment in BT exchanges, Lambeth was their no.2 location, so the bulk are probably also static IPs provided wholesale by BT.

Robert McGonigle : 27 Apr 2009 14:13 |  Tags: Bt Dsl Bt Wholesale Adsl Geographic Targeting Google Adwords Ppc Tracking Visitor Locations |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Google Adwords 'Broad Matching', selling clicks for bad search queries.

Writing about web page http://www.cope-technology.co.uk/services/design.htm

I have been adding filters to extract the real search terms used by Google’s broad search match visitors. See my previous entry on why I am tracking these terms.

The main aim is to quickly identify the false hits and to add more negative keywords. So for ‘harness assembly’ I had already spotted ‘horse’ as a negative keyword but missed ‘dive’.

Some of the clicks were so wide of the mark like ‘template for circuit chart in house’ for circuit design that I checked further. Template as a snyonym for design? OK, I can see this but why would the searcher click on the Ad, right? This echos back the search term but this was too long so it only shows ‘circuit design’. The ‘surface mount’ may also refer to light switches and mains power sockets but the rest is pure Gobledegook for house wiring.

The search results below reveals the problem. Sometimes even Google cannot find the right results for a search term. But Google Adwords has been finding ways to get clicks for some of these. The poor searcher will still have to refine their search after bouncing from the advertiser’s site but Google will have been paid! If you want to learn more about tracking Google follow this link.

Robert McGonigle : 25 Mar 2009 09:58 |  Tags: Broad Matched Keywords Google Adwords |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Should I trust Business Banking staff that aren't allowed to use Email?

Writing about web page http://ppcpromotion.co.uk/ethos/terms

I have been going through the pain and bureaucracy of setting up a business bank account for the Limited Company. I was on hold for a long period when a young man offered to call me back. I will be going out. Could you email the information? I asked.

He replied that he was not authorized to use external email.
Should I trust a bank that does not trust their employees who set up bank accounts?

Robert McGonigle : 25 Mar 2009 09:12 |  Tags: Business Banking Hsbc Hsbc Policies |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Music & Copyright; If compilation soundtracks still confound what chance Youtube?

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7933565.stm

The dramatic brinkmanship of the bulk copyright negotiations between Youtube UK and the PRS hit the news this morning, see the BBC story.

This reminded me of the problem described in Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail and on this Blog entry that prevents re-runs of TV series such as ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ to be cleared because of all the music copyright problems!

I have continued to search around for CD versions of some my best-loved albums having recently found Bob Marley’s ‘Live at the Coliseum’ pressed again but the album that had evaded me the longest was FM, the soundtrack album of the film of the same name. Earlier this year I noted that many of the tracks below were being played on Radio 2.
All of these were attributed back to their original albums but this was too much of a coincidence! I went onto Amazon and found the CDs were available again in the US and bought an import copy. The track list, below, from Amazon is incomplete and in the wrong order. I had to resist putting these back in order!
Life In The Fast Lane, Do It Again, Lido Shuffle, It Keeps You Runnin’, Your Smiling Face, Life’s Been Good, We Will Rock You, FM (Reprise), Night Moves, Fly Like An Eagle, Cold As Ice, Breakdown, Bad Man, Tumbling Dice, Poor Poor Pitiful Me, Livingston Saturday, There’s A Place, Way You Are

The deal being sought by Google’s Youtube is important for the Web 2.0 creative sites such as Animoto. The main creative constraint to creating the movie you want is music copyright. One of my companies, LickWorX creates a large amount of original music to match any sound you want. To discover Geoff Nicholls, composer and musician, also a back-stage and occasionally on-stage member of Black Sabbath, was a founder of LickWorx has just added to the sense of fun it has been to work with them.

Robert McGonigle : 10 Mar 2009 10:12 |  Tags: Animoto FM Soundtrack Geoff Nichols Lickworx Music Copyright |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Split–testing domain names just got more difficult using Google Adwords

Writing about web page http://ppcpromotion.co.uk/whyadwords/startingadwords

I was just noting the results of my latest set of split-testing of historic brands with specific market-targeted domains when I read a warning in one of Perry Mashall’s emails.

Google is tightening the screws on advertisers – again. One of the most effective methods for increasing your CTR and lowering your cost per acquisition is under fire. Perry Marshall.

Google’s simple rule change will outlaw any Ad group with ads that have more that one domain. To get Perry’s entertaining emails and to get early warnings such as this one just click on the panel, above / right, and sign up.

There are other ways to do split testing of domains but it has just got a lot harder for your occasional Adwords user!

To read about split-testing click the link above to my beginners guide.
Split-testing is an idea perfected in US magazines over 100 years ago with the codes in the corner of cut-out coupons and recorded in Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

Robert McGonigle : 05 Feb 2009 18:30 |  Tags: Google Adwords Split Testing Domains Starting Adwords Testing Domain Names |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Web 2.0 and Business : Are Blogs still Effective?

Writing about web page http://cope-technology.blogspot.com/

As my friends over at Cope Technology John & Aidan have moved their news page out to ABlog I came to reflect on the effectiveness of CEO Blogs three years on.

I have two MSc students researching how Web 2.0 interactive sites can help two local companies: Penstamps for kids and Vintage Paints serving the restoration community. My son’s reaction to my musings was that “Blogs are for middle aged men!”

There are at least three factors governing the choice of interactive platform that people use:

1. Functionality: Video on Youtube, mobile content on Twitter.
2. Community: This University’s LARP society uses Facebook so my other son joined and used it for his New Zealand notes.
3. Time: The most popular, hot technology when you got involved. A lot of users are still using text forums because they are familiar with them and trust them.

Still there are a lot of middle aged men in business so how are business Blogs doing? Looking at the Analytics for two of the Blogs I contribute to, both on blogs.warwick.ac.uk , show a dramatic difference.
This Blog has seen 900 unique visitors this month so far viewing an average of 2.5 pages. For the CCM Blog, with half of the content by the same author, the figures are 92 visitors and 1.3 pages. The difference is that I have been more opinionated on this Blog, ranting about Virgin Media etc. Dr. Bal’s Blog will also attract visitors to his forthright views than our more measured content on the CCM Blog.

The same is true for all good CEO Blogs. These work best where the individual expresses their views in a way that they would not add to the corporate site.

Aidan & John have started well with interesting content and mild opinions. They have also launched an exciting range of telemetry modules and M2M Wireless Solutions with some great applications such as keeping the chillers working on the fizzy drinks machines across europe for a well known burger chain.

Robert McGonigle : 29 Jan 2009 11:49 |  Tags: Blogging Blogs Ceo Blogs Web 20 Web 2 0 Web Two Dot Zero |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Still a role for traditional marketing : ABC Desks at BETT 2009

Writing about web page http://www.abcdesks.com/enabling_desks/

Delving into the Analytics for www.abcdesks.com for last week caused me to reflect on traditional marketing; shows, flyers and adverts. You see Christine Micheal & Chris of ABC Desks were at BETT 2009 last week, the worlds largest educational technology show.

The proportion of direct traffic was up from bookmarks and email links.
The proportion of referrals traffic was not notably up as there was no links to any exhibitor from the BETT site. By forcing visitors to cut and paste they throw away the benefit of having their referrals traced back.

The evidence of the impact of the traditional marketing came from the search results! This was the huge increase in searches for the ABC Desks brand and many partial domain name searches such as www.abcdesks etc. Over 100 additional visitors viewed 7 or more pages from the site; due diligence indeed.

Even when we are copying from a flyer we are most likely to type into the Google search bar. With visitors from all over the world, and most of the additional online visitors showing as in London the search engine share still stood at over 95% Google.

Robert McGonigle : 19 Jan 2009 16:12 |  Tags: Abc Desks Email Links Enabling Desks Flyers Ict Desks Traditional Marketing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Bidding on Failed & Bust Company Names | Latest 2009 Downturn Lessons

Writing about web page http://ppcpromotion.co.uk/bust-company-names

The downturn is accelerating fast in the midlands region. In November many of the companies I rushed around could see very little to concern them but the list of failed customers, suppliers and competitors has accelerated over the holiday period.

Strong companies could sit back and rationalise that the market needs to lose some capacity. Except that my stories now place all of the failed and bust conpanies within somebody elses supply chain. The most famous victim was Zavvi on the high street being taken down by the failure of their major supplier, the distribution arm of Woolworths.

This year, already, clients have informed me about many competitors going under and I have run Adwords Campaigns on 7 bust company names in 4 distinct industry sectors. These ads will only work for a short period so time is of the essence. Clients have been able to take up the urgent orders that the failed company have left behind.

You need to be very careful with bidding on any competitors name, even if they are in administration as these can continue as going concerns, be subject to buy-outs etc. If you have a competitor that gone under – get in touch with Rob at PPC Promotion now!

If you believe that a competitor is bidding on your company name or brands then the simplest response is to bid on your own brand to increase the costs to them.

Robert McGonigle : 16 Jan 2009 19:23 |  Tags: Bid On Competitors Names Bust Company Names Downturn Failed Company Names Google Adwords The Downturn |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Google Adwords widens 'broad match' algorithm & keeps the actual terms secret.

Writing about web page http://ppcPromotion.co.uk/adwords-roi

I have been tracking the broad match keywords closely on a few campaigns recently and observing more clicks. Perry Marshall confirmed that others have seen the same effect driving down average click-through-rates.

The other thing that Google does, that means that all Adwords customers should keep a careful eye on their campaign, is mask the real keyword terms they are sending you. If they broad match the term ‘laser cutting’ with ‘cutting paper with a laser’ your webstats or Google Analytics will show a hit for ‘laser cutting’.

It is not surprising that Google knows the marketing intelligence value of this data and does not pass it on but combined with the ‘broad search’ changes it also hides how they are optimising their revenue.

Robert McGonigle : 22 Dec 2008 16:40 |  Tags: Broad Match Google Adwords Google Analytics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

More ID needed to pick up Parcel from the delivery depot.

I just caught the Business Post delivery man on the footpath. He asked my surname and got me to sign for the Dell. I realised just how lucky when I was that their nearest depot was in by Fort Dunlop south of the M6. I had only just returned past their road!

To get your parcel from the depot needs a different level of ID however. The new signs in the local City Link depot, a lot closer, off the A444, look for two forms of ID.

1. A passport, photo driving licence, etc.
2. A recent utility bill or similar.
   They are being forced to these lengths because of the scams that are being perpetrated using parcel pick-up.

The root cause of these problems are the ease of masking our identities on the internet and mobile phones. In South Korea trust e-business is so strong that it is used by the large majority of the population of all ages. No-one there can access the internet or email without linking to their national id card number.

One argument against the UK’s proposed ID card is the risk of identity theft. Surely no worse that struggling out of a depot in the dark behind a large box with 2 or three forms of ID in your pocket.

Robert McGonigle : 14 Dec 2008 23:30 |  Tags: Collecting Parcels ID National ID Card Passport Photo Card |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why does pay–per–click bidding on your own brand work so well?

Writing about web page http://www.frost-electroplating.co.uk/directions.html

I have recently been reviewing a series of Adwords groups that bid on my client’s brands and company names. Some of these are common names, there are a lot of Nova Engineerings out there. But 25% of them were looking for an engineering company in Coventry. Others had changed brands so N.T. Frost became Frost Electroplating and the Adwords have been slowly educating their customers and has faded.

Other results were remarkable; 30% click-through-rate for slightly shorter versions of company names. ‘Simmons Epoxy’ at 66% was the highest return. Simmons Mouldings are synonymous with epoxy resin sinks and lab benchtops so people just search for the name and the material!

Many of these companies have good websites that are top of Google’s results for their brands. So why the high click-through-rate for the little text ads? The main reason is that the page title does not echo the search. Good page titles will emphasise the company’s products and services and add the brand to the end but there should be one that puts the company name first and one that has location in the title.

Examples from Frost Electroplating’s new titles:

Contact Frost Electroplating for Specialist, Technical Service
Find Frost Electroplating in Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

The rest of the site puts the products and services first:

Plating Services using Gold, Silver etc. | Frost Electroplating | UK
Plating to TS16949 Quality using XRF, AAS | Frost Electroplating.

I have been asking around as to why we search more for information we already have? When the buyer is in another building at the request of the MD or board he will use the local PC to find the phone number. But mostly two words in your Search Toolbar is quicker than the filing cabinet, telephone book etc.

You can see my guide to bidding your own brand over at ppcPromotion.co.uk .

Robert McGonigle : 03 Dec 2008 10:09 |  Tags: Bid On Brands Google Adwords Pay Per Click |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Are Google trialling 'Automatic Matching' of Keywords on their UK Adwords?

Writing about web page http://www.webpronews.com/tag/automatic-matching

Last weekend I was working on an Adwords account by searching on common negative keywords for a Gold Plating group by searching for ‘gold plated’. My client, Frost Electroplating, a ‘world class’ industrial and technical electroplater to the automotive and aerospace sectors, is looking for specialist volume plating not the domestic and giftware described as ‘plate’ or ‘gold plated’.

I was concerned when I found that two of the Frost Electroplating ads appeared as I searched for ‘gold plated’. One for ‘gold plating’ and even more unlikely a second for ‘gold electroplating’. I checked through the two groups concerned then searched their entire campaign to confirm that the word ‘plated’ was not added to any keyword list.

I hope that this was just a glitch with Google’s ‘broad match’ algorithm and I have explicitly added ‘plating’ to the negative keywords. This behaviour matches perfectly the Beta trial in the US of Adwords ‘Automatic Matching’ of Keywords. Here any spare budget is used up by bidding on keywords selected by Google’s increasingly sophisticated Keyword Suggestion tools.

Automatic Matching has been widely derided and the results for Google’s US beta clients has been poor. Even the example they used in their invitation email fails to inspire confidence.

I’m excited to tell you that you have been selected to participate in a beta for our new Automatic Matching feature which will be starting on February 28th.

Automatic Matching automatically extends your campaign’s reach by using surplus budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries that are not already triggered by your keyword lists. By analyzing the structure and content of your website and AdWords campaigns, we deliver more impressions and clicks while maintaining your current CTRs and CPCs.

For example, If you sold Adidas shoes on your website, Automatic Matching would automatically crawl your landing page and target your campaigns to queries such as: “shoes” “adidas” “athletic”, etc., and less obvious ones such as “slippers” that our system has determined will benefit you and likely lead to a conversion on your site.

Now in fact the Campaign in question did not have any spare budget and Google recommended an increase, now implemented so this should not have run. Neither has ‘automatic matching’ been announced in the UK. Even if this is a tweek to the ‘broad match’ algorithm this needs watching.

Do your own search on ‘automatic matching google’ to read the response in the US with headlines like ‘Automatic Matching Feeds Google Your Budget’ ‘Do not fall for this’ and ‘A Tax on Lazy SEO’.

Robert McGonigle : 18 Nov 2008 10:58 |  Tags: Adwords Automatic Matching Automatic Matching Google Adwords Negative Keywords Uk Adwords |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Online Webstats from Google Analytics, etc just keep improving for you.

Writing about web page http://www.google.com/analytics/indexu.html

I have recently been trying out the new Advanced Segments on Google Analytics. This is just one of several new ‘enterprize class’ features that have been introduced.

I have been using both Analytics online and Sawmill server log processing offline alongside each other for a couple of years. Initially the friendly, fast interface of Analytics could not match the ability of Sawmill to filter, then slice then slice again through the data. Sawmill needed loads of processing power but our two students who tackled data mining of the www.wmccm.co.uk visitor data last year still found most of their results using Sawmill. Their work also helped the team to use Google Analytics better.

Advanced segments represents an enormous catch-up move by Analytics. I have used this to pick out our visitors who view the tenders on CCM and confirmed that these represent about half of our company registrations with two easy clicks. I have not updated to the latest Sawmill release and I am sure that they are also progressing rapidly as a market leader.

It was looking at two /stats pages last night provided by ISPs or their web developer that shocked me into blogging about this topic. They were so outdated, and frankly pathetic, as to be of no real use. Neither even matched the basic free online Xtreme service of 3 years ago. The problem is that these depend on someone to update the stats package, to download the latest tools.

If you are professional enough to need to use a complete package such as Sawmill then there may still be a good business case to upgrade to their latest licence. But the real advantage of the ‘computing in the cloud’ offerings from Google, Microsoft in their Live Office SB suite, etc. is that they continue to improve without you having to do a thing!

Robert McGonigle : 07 Nov 2008 12:14 |  Tags: Advanced Segments Google Analytics Ms-Olsb Stats Webserver Log Webstats |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Credit Crunch, Recession, Increasing Adwords Competition & the new Google Adwords Quality Score

Writing about web page http://www.startup-support.co.uk

All the recent bad news and forecasts of recession, whether exaggerated or prescient, is having the effect of driving more business to Adwords. Vanity marketing on broadcast media and glossy supplements is cut while spending on marketing where you can measure the cost per acquisition has increased.

The number of competitors has been growing. Today there are 226 potential text Ads for the term “cnc milling” five times as many as a couple of years ago! There are many of these that are irrelevant or poorly written but even well constructed ads now need to bid over £1 to appear on the first page such is the desperate competition. (Campaigns that perform well can bring their bids down from these highs.)
Even in less competitive areas I have seen a remarkably consistent linear reduction of clicks for campaigns with a fixed budget. I have seen this 2008 trend in the graph, right, in over a dozen campaigns.

The way Google manages Keyword quality scores has also changed. You will no longer see “Keyword disabled” as the quality score is calculated dynamically. With an ‘OK’ or ‘Poor’ QS rating the keywords will just be shown less often and at less competitive times.
If you hover over the Magnifying Glass icon by your keywords, see example left, you can now see your Quality Score as a mark out of 10.

The lessons are that Adwords advertisers need to constantly monitor their campaigns and constantly test and improve. They need to improve their conversions, not just their traffic, to build their business not just Google’s.

Robert McGonigle : 31 Oct 2008 12:00 |  Tags: Adwords Qs Adwords Quality Score Credit Crunch Downturn Google Adwords Quality Score Recession |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Cost of Bidding for the Top Position on Google Adwords

Writing about web page http://ppcPromotion.co.uk/adwords-roi

One of my companies recently raised their Google Adwords bids and budget. They were effectively giving Google enough budget to place their Ads consistently at position number 1. We discussed this and left the bids high but used position preference to bid for position no 3. The client then modified this to position 2.
The table shows how the clicks and the costs ramped up from position 3 to 2 to 1. The average cost-per-click, CPC, ramped from 24p to 31p to 52p which does not look as bad as the total cost. The problem was that they were paying the increased CPC for all of the clicks. If we look again at the figures and cost the extra clicks then we can see that the incremental CPCs go from 24p to 68p to 97p.
It was notable that being at no.1 did bring in a lot more clicks. Further analysis showed that these extra clicks were for more general keywords that had not yet been optimised into their own Ad Group. The good news was that these extra clicks could be generated for a lot less than 97p each.

Robert McGonigle : 21 Oct 2008 12:47 |  Tags: Cpc Google Adwords Keyword Bidding Position Preference Ppc Search Marketing |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reverse 'Bread Crumb Trail' generates good titles for eCommerce Shopping Cart Sites

Writing about web page http://www.penstamps.com

I first came across the idea of using the reverse ‘bread crumb trail’ when looking at the www.warwickmusic.com site. This is an excellent ecommerce site that is integrated into the Warwick Music’s backend Sage system. Their categories, subcategories and product pages were logically organised and well titled.but some interim product lists were not comprehensively titled. I noted how well their ‘bread crumb trail’ read backwards.
Home › Sheet Music › Choral › School Musicals
became
School Musicals Choral Sheet Music – Warwick Music
Switching all titles to the reverse of the ‘bread crumb trail’ order worked well.

Looking at www.penstamps.com , an X-CART site, this did not work so well with Penstamps :: Range :: Fountain becoming the ambiguous Fountain :: Range :: Penstamps. Indeed reading the ‘bread crumb trail’ backwards becomes a good test for the categoty structure.

The roller ball page, above, is now titled:
Roller Ball :: Stamp Pens :: Penstamps – Stamp Pen Shop

Robert McGonigle : 07 Oct 2008 14:30 |  Tags: Bread Crumb Trail Ecommerce Online Shopping Cart X-Cart |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem