Honestly, I’d say that most accounts I’ve seen, and indeed, many I’ve built over the years are much more complex and unwieldly than they need to be.

In general, I’d argue that for most companies, AdWords accounts with smaller keyword inventories can perform just as well as accounts using larger keyword inventories, because they are easier to understand and manage and more likely to become refined over time.

Using brute force to build out long tail lists of tens of thousands of keywords seems like a powerful technique, but the larger the account, the harder to refine, because all the mundane tasks associated with manipulating, and reporting on super large keyword lists is mind-numbing.

If your mind is numb, how can you possibly do all the more interesting and potentially more powerful tasks like writing truly click-worthy new ads, or working on your geo-targeting, sitelinks, landing pages and other more intellectually stimulating tasks?

So, in my opinion, smaller is better, but whether you choose to build out a gigantic long tail, or stay more conservative, in either case, it is important to know if your long tail keywords are improving your account performance or simply costing you money.

Long Tail Overhead

The first step is to determine the actual cost of your long tail keywords. For now, let’s simply define long tail keywords as those keywords in your account that have low search volume and have relatively few impressions, clicks and conversions associated with them.

The head term keywords, on the other hand, are those which have lots and lots of action. These are oversimplified definitions, but I think they will help illustrate the concept.

Head terms are easier to optimize for because the results are easier to interpret. For example, if a keyword gets 3000 clicks and 500 conversions on one version of an ad, and it gets ~3000 clicks and 100  conversions for a different ad, you can be very confident knowing that the  first ad leads to better results.

The problem with the long tail is the exact opposite. Because no single keyword gets very much volume, it is impossible to evaluate its performance.

If you have 5000 long tail keywords and each one gets less than 10 clicks, you can’t make decisions on whether any individual keyword is performing well or not, because you don’t have enough data to make a decision.

Perhaps a few of those clicks lead to conversions, but even then you are stuck with insufficient data to make a case to keep the keyword in your inventory. The same is true if a keyword with 10 clicks has 0 conversions. You can’t kill the keyword based on its performance because you do not have enough data.

Even if you let more time elapse, the problem will always exist that most of your long tail keywords are never going to generate enough volume for you to make a decision to keep them or discard them. You can’t prove any keyword is good and you can’t prove any keyword is bad.

However, you can evaluate them as a whole, and see how much overhead they are adding to your overall conversion costs.

You can do this within AdWords by running a few keyword reports, and applying filters to drill in on the data you want to see. In this case, we’ve run a report to look at the impact of keywords with 10 or more conversions, keywords with one or more but fewer than 10, and then for keywords that have registered no conversions at all.

AdWord Keyword Report with Filters

When you apply the filter, you can see the performance metrics associated with your filter at the bottom of the AdWords report screen:

Running each of the filtered reports, we can summarize the data as follows:

Long Tail Keywords add to Overall Campaign Cost

The productive  head terms (10+ conversions) are bringing half of all conversions. The productive long tail, (1-9 conversions) brings in 40% and the non-productive long tail, brings no conversions and  accounts for 9.25% of all ad spend. In  this case, the long tail overhead adds about $4 to the cost of each conversion.

So, a  question that one might ask is why not simply delete the non-productive long tail keywords and keep the productive ones? Because long tail keywords are by definition keywords that don’t have enough data to informed decisions, whether that’s to keep the productive long tail keywords or to discard the non-productive ones.

The point of  this example is that if you are going to use a long tail strategy, you have to embrace the uncertainty that lies within the fog of long tail keyword inventory and get used to the reality that there is a direct overhead cost associated with maintaining a long tail inventory. An acceptable overhead is one that keeps your overall campaigns profitable, while extending your reach with your search  keyword.

However, one  thing you can do is watch how the long tail overhead varies by month. If the overhead is growing, you will want to take a good look at your long tail keywords, bids and ads.

Identifying Useless Keywords

From these same keyword reports, you can also identify keywords that are not getting any  impression at all. At the bottom right of that same report screen, you can see the number of keywords associated with each filtered keyword segment in your account.

Long Tail can contain lots of deadwood keywords

For this example, we also looked at keywords that were producing no clicks at all. In this case, the long tail contains 10x more keywords that are complete deadwood than keywords that are attracting clicks  and conversions, as summarized here:

Long Tail inventory can contain a lot of dead wood keywords

Even when pursuing a  long tail keyword strategy, it is still a good idea to get rid of completely useless keywords that are only taking up space in your account.

There are times you just want to increase your click-through rates. You might need to raise it to help Quality Scores, increase traffic, or gain visibility for a new product.

Often by just raising click-through rates, you might not be raising your conversion rate. You can even decrease your conversion rates with ads. However, we’re going to focus on raising click-through rates regardless of how it affects other metrics.

As always, you should be testing this for yourself to see what helps your overall account’s goals.

Adding An Extension

One of the easiest ways to increase click-through rate that also helps conversion rate is to use ad extensions. Ad extensions will help you take up more real estate on the page and show additional information with your ads. You can add extensions for local, social, products, and there is even a beta contact and subscription extension.

If you have yet not added extensions, do so now.

Add Sitelinks

Sitelinks are a type of extension so this could be grouped with adding an extension except there is one big difference between all the other extensions and sitelinks.

With the other extensions, only one extension will show with an ad. You can have sitelinks show with another extension. This is another no-brainer to add. With sitelinks, you can add additional benefits or navigation into your site directly from the ad copy.

Extended Headlines

The absolute easiest way to increase click-through rates if your ads are shown above the organic results is to end your description line 1 with a punctuation mark. When you do so, the description line 1 is added to the headline and really makes the ads stand out.

Take a look at these three ads:

The first two ads have very long headlines. The third ad does not. All the third ad has to do to have a longer headline is to add a period after ‘Low Fare Guaranteed On All Flights’. That’s it. As soon as that change was made, the ad would have an extended headline.

Consider The Display URL As Marketing Copy

Your display URL does not have to be an actual URL. As long as your root domain in the ad and site are the same, you can consider the rest of the URL as marketing copy. The display URL can be 35 characters long – don’t waste the space.

You can add a product name, feature, benefit, or other aspects to the display URL to make the ad copy more attractive. To learn more about display URLs, please see the article: Everything You Need To Know About AdWords Display URLs.

Seasonal Headlines

There is always some holiday or event on the horizon. In just the United States, there are more than 40 holidays at the national level. When you starting adding regional events such as the Boston Marathon, DC Cherry Blossom Festival, state fairs, parades, and much more; the list of events becomes endless.

When you add or reference events in headlines, your ads look very timely and relevant and can often have positive impacts on click-through rates.

Use Trademarks

Many consumers are brand conscious. When someone searches for a brand, they want to see that brand in the ad copy. You do have to be careful of the legalities around trademarks; however, adding those well-recognized words to the ad can make a large difference to your CTRs.

Remove Prices & Ad Discounts

A price in an ad copy reminds the searcher they need to spend money. Often removing the price can help CTRs. It is also useful when you’re not the cheapest ad on the page.

While we don’t like to always spend money, everyone likes a good deal. Instead of putting your price in the ad, switch your offer to a discount. Instead of spending $50, someone is going to save $10. What would you rather do, spend $50 or save $10?

In many countries, people do not get the concept “just because it’s on sale does not mean it’s free.” Discounts often outperform prices in ads.

Give Something Away for Free

Who doesn’t want something for free? Put something in your ad that’s free. A free consultation, free gift, buy one get one free, a free whitepaper. It doesn’t matter – it’s free.

Test For Yourself

While these 8 methods often work – they don’t always.

I recently saw an account where when the word ‘free’ appeared in an ad, their ads had a lower CTR than if they focused on experience or value. Removing all instances of free from the ad copies and switching the value proposition to experience raised both their CTRs and their conversion rates.

The next day, I was working on account in a very similar industry and when the word ‘free’ appeared in the ad, their ads had a much higher CTR and the same conversion rates as the other ad types.

If you need to raise your click-through rates, these ideas can help you gain a solid starting place. However, always test for yourself. Only you can truly know what happens to your account’s profits as you change your ads to bring more visitors to your site.

1.  Include A Privacy Line

In general, a privacy line below the form helps with overall conversions. Try something like “we respect your privacy” or “we do not provide information to third parties”. Other variables we’ve tested around the lead form do not increase conversions as much as this one does. Here, it’s the trust factor that tends to increase form conversion rates.

2.  Go For Fewer Form Elements

Think of gathering information from a client not as an event but as process. The idea is to ease into a relationship with your prospects — you do not want to startle or put buyers on edge by asking too many questions.

For example, with a client who sells windows that block out loud city noises, we obtain basic information like name, email and phone number and follow up with an automated email that requests more information like the size and shape of windows (we provide easy diagrams in a follow up email).

Note: it’s best to send follow up emails sooner rather than later as a hot prospect is better than a cold one. In my testing, the sweet spot is between 3 to 5 fields.

3.  Take Up Less Space With Form Fields

Don’t leave a lot of space in between form fields. The game is to have fewer elements on the page (as I mentioned in #2) and to try to incorporate more elements into a smaller space. Here are a couple ideas:

• Try 2 elements per line to take up less space. For example, ask for first/last name in one field rather than asking for the information in two separate fields.
• Reduce the amount of space between each form field.

Take a look at the Criteo.com screenshot below as an example:

4.  Use Optional Form Fields

Use optional fields on your form to decrease the amount of information requested from the get-go from prospects. Prospects are able to provide more information if they’d like but they are not forced to.

One of my favorite “formulas” is the five-field form with 3 required fields and 2 optional ones. Take a look at suggestions below for some ideas:

• Name – required
• Email – required
• Phone number – required
• City – optional
• State – optional

5. Try A Two-Page Lead Form

Another great option is to use a two-page strategy. Again, encompasses the idea of not moving too fast.

A good analogy to think of here is dating. If you ask your date 100 questions right off the bat, you’re likely to freak out them out and not get a second date. It’s a far more effective to ask questions over a longer period of time (like over a second or third date) than to pounce all over your poor date the second you meet.

Criteo.com uses this strategy effectively. Take a look at the screenshots below:

Page 1 of form:

Page 2 of form:

Note: Two and even three page forms can convert better than one page ones.

6.  Include A Lead Form Above The Fold

In our testing, the best place lead forms convert is in the upper right hand corner of page. I like to include a form at the bottom of the page even if it’s below the fold as it emphasizes the call to action and doesn’t hurt overall conversion figures.

7.  Use Compelling Words On Submit Buttons

Specific and benefit-oriented wording like “get a free obligation quote now” and “get a quote now” tends to convert better than “click here” or a “submit” buttons.

Weaving benefits into the buttons is also an excellent way to reiterate benefits. You’ll likely have many wording ideas so the key idea is to test different ones.

8. Design Buttons That Convert

My absolute favorite button colors are orange and blue, as they tend to provide the best conversions. To determine appropriate button size/wording on buttons, step away from your computer and glance at your screen.

If size is appropriate, you should be able to see both buttons and wording on buttons if you’re walking by the computer. Optimizing for a smaller screen is best to ensure both laptop and desktop users can see buttons.

As I was writing this article, I attended a session on Form Optimization session at PubCon Las Vegas 2011. The final two quick form optimization tips are  from Brad Geddes’s presentation:

9.  Sentence casing is better than phrase casing

10.  Don’t ever use CAPTCHA on forms

Advertising on your brand allows you to:

• Control the message. The text of the message can be kept fresh, highlighting promotions, shipping cut-off dates, whatever makes sense for the brand.
• Direct traffic. Site-links provide an opportunity for users to navigate to the next page deeper rather than just the home page, thereby aiding conversions.
• Occupy real estate. Taking up more space on the SERP means less leakage to affiliates and competitors.
• Capture incremental traffic. In some cases, our research shows that paid search ads on brand names do indeed bring in some incremental traffic. Your mileage will vary, so test this yourself, but in some instances the advertising more than pays for itself without any other considerations.

However, the fact that it is generally wise to advertise on one’s trademark doesn’t change another crucial principal of paid search marketing:

Never, never, never mix the results of brand advertising with competitive non-brand advertising.

All averages lie. Blending the results of brand and non-brand search doesn’t just lie, it will kick you in the teeth and take your lunch money, too.

Mixing the results of brand and non-brand paid search results leads to a false sense of scale and efficiency for the program which in turn creates chronic problems down the line.

The greater the fraction of overall “paid search” sales brand ads represent the greater these problems become.

Problem 1: Lack of Control

The core problem is that the paid search manager has very little control over the volume of traffic, the conversion rates, or even the cost of brand advertising. The paid search manager can and should test and adjust copy for maximum positive effect.

He or she can and should make sure site links and seller ratings are used to full advantage. S/he can and should test landing page versions and messaging to wring the most successful visits out of brand search traffic.

Assuming the good paid search manager has done these basics, they’ve exercised about all the control they have over brand search performance.

Other than guarding against some crazy CPC penalties Sid Shah and we have seen, the ads will serve at the top of the page for most folks at low cpcs and there won’t be any leverage to get more.

Traffic and conversion volume on brand search will rise and fall largely, if not entirely, as a result of offline marketing, brand awareness, friend referrals, and loyal customers navigating to your doorstep; the paid search manager controls none of those factors.

We’ve seen brand sales account for anywhere between almost nothing for internet pure-plays in start up mode, to over 90% of overall sales for very well established brands with huge offline advertising budgets.

Evaluating the performance of a paid search program by looking at overall numbers, when 70 – 90% of the conversions are on your brand, is ludicrous. You end up being praised or scolded based on factors entirely outside of your control.

Competent people want to be evaluated based on what they control, and in search that’s the performance of competitive non-brand keywords.

Problem 2: Disconnect Between Average Efficiency & Incremental efficiency

We’ve long preached the importance of understanding more than just the average ROI of your paid search efforts, but also the incremental efficiency of the last dollar spent.

Predicated on the notion of Diminishing Marginal Returns, smart marketers will always get more ROI from the first dollar of advertising than the last dollar of advertising, because s/he always picks the lowest hanging fruit available.

Understanding the incremental ROI will let you predict what the next chunk of ad spend is likely to generate.

Because of Diminishing Marginal Returns the incremental ROI is always worse than the average ROI — if it isn’t you’re doing something wrong. Our studies of Bid Simulator data find that within competitive non-brand paid search the incremental ROI is usually on the order of 60% – 80% of the average ROI.

Your average non-brand ROI may be 5 to 1, but additional spend over that same period is likely to be at 4 to 1 or 3 to 1, which may be under water for your business.

However, that disconnect pales in comparison to the disconnect between the two when the average includes brand sales.

We see instances where an advertiser sees an “average ROI” (including brand sales) of 8 to 1, where the competitive non-brand average ROI is 1 to 1, and the incremental ROI is significantly worse than that.

The brand may say: “We’re comfortable letting the overall ROI drop to 7 to 1 for now” but oftentimes they don’t seem to realize that they’re feeding money into a shredder at that point.

Let’s think about a 1 to 1 ROI. You spend a dollar in advertising to drive a dollar in sales. It would be just as efficient to have your paid search manager place orders on your website using the marketing budget to pay for it…and then throw the merchandise in the trash can when it arrives!!!

The 1 to 1 ROI may make sense for some folks, and that’s cool. The point isn’t that you shouldn’t spend for branding purposes, just that incorporating brand data hides the likely ROI on the next dollar spent.

Problem 3: Complete Misread Of Online To Offline Spillover

Hugely misleading studies, like this one, suggesting that for every dollar generated online by search ads there are $6, $7, I’ve even seen a claim of $10 in sales generated offline, make people believe that they’re spending money cost effectively when they aren’t. Not one of these studies has made the brand non-brand distinction.

Obviously, plenty of people want to find a store locator, the nearest State Farm Agent, business hours, in-store availability of what they’re looking for, etc. before they hop in their car and drive to the store or business.

They search for the brand they’re about to drive to, and you can bet your last dollar that the ad that shows up after they search for you by name isn’t capturing much incremental traffic.

Problem 4: Pulling The Wrong Levers

Because the misunderstanding of advertising efficiency is SO profound companies compound their problems by taking money out of other offline channels to pour more money into search because it seems so much more efficient.

“We’re getting an 8 to 1 ROI from paid search and only 2 to 1 from catalog prospecting; let’s dump the catalog and put the money into search.”

I’ve seen this happen more than once with budgets for catalogs, infomercials, circulars, TV ads, etc slashed to put more into search.

Sometimes that’s the right call, but often it’s based on the fundamental misunderstanding we’re describing and it leads to a death spiral.

The advertiser presents us with more money to spend in search and says: “we need sales to grow by 50% to cover the loss of the other marketing efforts”, and frequently paid search sales go nowhere or even decline because the advertising that was driving the brand search was cut off.

Problem 5: Inevitable Disappointment

As a result of the first four problems, the advertiser will invariably end up disappointed with their paid search manager or agency at some point.

Frustration comes because incremental advertising spend in search is hugely inefficient and this comes as a surprise for some reason.

Or, overall sales goals aren’t met because brand sales sag unexpectedly and the paid search manager has no way to compensate. Or the reckless spending encouraged by the combined view is a symptom of deeper business problems resulting in a trip through Chapter 11.

Or someone else in the organization — a CFO, a CEO, a new search manager — comes in, pulls apart the numbers and is horrified at the wasteful spending in competitive non-brand search that was previously hidden from view.

We’ve seen all of these scenarios play out, despite the fact that we have always encouraged our clients to evaluate performance strictly by the non-brand numbers.

With few exceptions, when goals are expressed in terms of aggregate brand and non-brand performance frustration is inevitable.

Advertisers end up frustrated with the paid search manager for not controlling that which s/he doesn’t control, and the paid search manager with their bosses for not understanding this fundamental disconnect.

The Charlatans Don’t Help

Unfortunately, many agencies, engines and others who feed on online advertising have a vested interest in blurring the brand, non-brand distinction.

These folks exaggerate the complexity of search funnels, buying cycles, and now attribution across channels and encourage advertisers to look at data more ‘holistically’ and with less granularity. That’s garbage!

Advertisers should look at data more intelligently, not throw up their hands and call it holistic marketing.

Intelligent use of data includes attribution of credit within paid search and across channels — as we do — and may include complex media mix studies to gauge optimal advertising spending levels for each program.

There are many valuable ways to look at aggregated data. Performance by category, subcategory, geography, keyword specificity, landing pages, number of ‘tokens’, and other useful classifications can reveal actionable insights.

However, folding in brand results never aids clarity and only causes confusion. While it may, in the short run, make paid search look better than it is, it will invariably make the paid search manager look bad in the long run.

The AdWords and AdCenter change history reports provide a great documentation trail, but they don’t tell the whole story. While they do summarize what’s been changed and when, they do not provide insight, or explain why any particular change was made. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve muttered “Why the heck did they do that?” or more often, “What in the world was I thinking when I made that change?”

Whenever I am asked to audit or manage an existing PPC account, one of the areas I often find lacking in sufficient context is the inventory of negative keywords and in this column, we’ll take a look at how negative keywords can grow out of control and a simple documentation framework for managing them more effectively.

Are Your Negative Keywords Out Of Control?

I am guessing that just about every PPC campaign manager is well aware of the importance of negative keywords and how they reduce unproductive ad impressions, clicks and cost. The topic is written about so frequently in the trade press, that finding and adding negative keywords seems to be everybody’s favorite ‘quick and dirty’ PPC optimization tactic.

Because it is so easy to find and add negative keywords, negative keyword lists tend to get bigger and bigger over time. On top of that, PPC managers often copy and paste negative keyword lists from one ad group or campaign to another and from one network to another, without much forethought, which increases the number of these large, bulky keyword lists you need to manage.

In audits I’ve conducted, I often see substantial numbers of negatives keywords in these lists that have nothing to do with the ad groups/ campaigns they are applied to!

One problem with this sort of sloppy management is that one misapplied negative keyword can instantly kill legitimate impression and click volume. But you are actually lucky if you have that problem because it is easy to detect and fix. A more insidious problem of poorly-managed negative keyword lists is a slow, death-by-degrees decline in performance that is much harder to spot.

The Challenge of Managing Large Inventories of Negative Keywords

One of the challenges with managing negative keywords is a negative keyword may apply solely to a single keyword in your account, it may apply to a group of keywords, or it may apply to all of your keywords. This means you need to deal with each potential negative keyword individually and make a decision which keyword or keywords it applies to and how to apply it inside to your account.

Options include:

• applies exclusively to a single keyword
• applies to a group of keywords
• applies to all of your keywords

You not only have to make this decision for every negative keyword you want to add, but you have to keep track of your decision, so that you don’t find yourself re-examining your decision every time you add a new set of positive keywords.

As you can see, the more negative keyword you, add the more management overhead you have to deal with them.

A Framework For Documenting Negatives

One of the problems with managing negative keywords is that as soon as you add them to your account, you lose track of their association with the positive keywords or search queries they pertained to in the first place. Your positive keywords and your negative keyword lists live in different areas within your campaign structure and can’t be viewed at the same time.

To illustrate, lets take a look at how you find and select your negative keywords. The first step in that process is usually to run a search query and/or analytics report to identify the non-productive queries that you want to prevent, as shown below in an excel spreadsheet:

Finding New Negative Keywords

The purpose of this campaign is to attract people who need help with addiction and are looking for drug rehab facilities in Texas. The primary keyword in this ad group is broad-matched, rehab facility, and so you decide you want to prevent clicks when for some of these search terms (marked in red):

Selecting Negative Keywords from AdWords Report

Selecting out just the negative keywords, in this hypothetical case, you now some words that are completely unrelated to what you do, (nursing homes, full time work and hillsburg ave) which may be campaign level negatives and universally used to block and search queries that contain those words. The other queries that are not directly related to your offerings for this ad group, but they may be applicable for other ad groups.

The next step is to expand your list of possible negatives using synonyms and stemmed versions of your proposed negatives. Including the plural and singular versions is important, especially with AdWords, since negative broad match doesn’t expand its matching to stemmed versions.

This is your potential list of negative keywords to add into your account for this ad group:

Negative Keywords Lists Expanded with Synonyms and Stems

Now that we have a list of negatives  and a list of reasons we are interested in these keywords, we are ready to add them into the account.

Negative Keywords Final Selections

As shown below in the AdWords Editor interface, all you can see that once you load your negative keywords into your campaign, is your list of negative keywords. The context of why you selected them is lost unless you document it yourself either in a spreadsheet or using comments within AdWords Editor.

Negative Keywords Listed in AdWords Editor

So the next step in this process is to finish up the documentation of your in Excel or even within AdWords Editor. Using Excel is simple and you can additional columns and headers as you see fit.

Documenting your Negative Keywords

In this Excel worksheet version of this documentation, the primary goal is to create a simple context for the selection of the negative that maintains the association with the original type of query that let to the negative keyword.  We could also add match-type and other data as the need arises.

If the account is lacking in the advanced use of features, often your conversation will be geared around education and some strategy.

While I often start with the One Minute Account Diagnosis, there are a few signals you can use to see if the account is savvy or not before you start talking to the account manager about increasing the account’s performance.

Conversion Tracking

Every account should be tracking conversions. Sometimes this is in AdWords, other times it might be in Google analytics or their own in-house system.

If the account does not have conversion tracking of some sort, this should be the very first step to getting an account on track.

Extensions

Every account can benefit from some extension. Everyone can use sitelinks. Local accounts can focus on location extensions. E-commerce accounts have product extensions. There are call extensions, social extensions, etc.

If an account does not have any extensions, then the account manager generally needs to be educated in not just extensions, but also top-vs-side performance of ads.

I find a lot of older and very sophisticated accounts often do not have location extensions enabled any longer. These accounts are often large hotel or restaurant chains that took the time to create Local Business Ads, which were retired a few years ago. However, when the ad format was retired, these companies often did not take the time to rework all of the data into location extensions.

Search vs. Display Campaigns

A properly organized account will have separate search and display campaigns. If the campaigns are targeting both search and display, you will usually need to educate the company about the display network and how to properly organize it.

Negative Keywords

Does the account have negative keywords? Are they using negative keyword lists? If yes, then at least the manager knows what negatives are and you can go beyond education to finding the words that need to be blocked.

If the account has zero negative keywords, then you usually end up in a conversation about match types and search queries.

Modified Broad Match

Is the account using all broad match? If yes, you need to have a serious talk about match types. I find that many accounts use broad match for good reason, but have never heard of modified broad match. Modified broad match is a nice middle ground between phrase and broad match.

If an account is using all exact and phrase match, the account was often set up and optimized more than two years ago when expanded broad match was spending too much money without enough conversions.

Default Bids

Are all the keywords bids ‘default’? This means that all the bids are at the ad group level and are often 0.25, 0.50, 1.00, 2.00, 3.00, etc. If so, Odds are the account has no bidding strategy at all.

There are times when you need to bid at the ad group level such as when you have a lack of keyword data. However, if you are bidding from some conversion metric, then some of the bids should be precise numbers such as 1.03, 0.29, 0.98, etc.

If all the bids are roughly the same, then you need to have a chat about bidding strategies that often ends up being about the company’s marketing goals.

Filters & Automated Rules

If an account has saved filters, automated reporting, or has set up automated rules, then usually the PPC manager is fairly educated. These are strong signals that you are going to talk to a smart person who wants a second opinion or is too overworked to get into the nitty gritty data analysis that can help out an account.

Conclusion

There are many other signals you could use to determine how savvy an account is; however, I have found these signals are indicative of how savvy the account is as a whole.

Also, you can see all of these settings in just a few minutes of time. I do recommend using the AdWords editor as that will show you all the campaigns at once so you can quickly see mobile, tablet, desktop, search, display, time of day, location, and other settings from a single screen.

Just because these items are in place does not mean the account is perfect and well run. Also, not having all of these items in place does not mean the account is poorly managed. These settings give you an indication of how many features the account is using so that you can speak to the education level of the account.

You should know your audience, and in a PPC audit – the audience is the account manager and maybe their boss. Therefore, understanding the account manager’s knowledge will help you speak to your audience so that you can make sure you’re spending your time on strategy versus education so at the end of the audit – everyone is happy with the outcome.

Canonical Form

The canonical form of a keyword refers to the form of the keyword that Paid Search Engines use behind the scenes to match keywords to actual search queries. It is sometimes referred to as Normal Form (Normalized Form) or Equivalent Form. For this article, let’s call this Canonical Form, or Canonicalization.

Wikipedia has a good canonicalization reference, in case you are curious about the origin or use of the word. Every Search Engine does this a bit differently, but the basic principles are similar. So let’s cover this a bit theoretically, without dwelling on the details or the particular differences between Search Engines. We can start with case (e.g.: upper-case vs. lower-case letters).

Upper Case vs. Lower Case

Case is insignificant in paid search (at least, from a keyword matching perspective). Search engine canonicalization will match a user query for “nasa” with an exact-match paid-keyword “NASA.”

Search Engines regard the canonical form of “NASA” to be “nasa,” and they both are considered to match the user query exactly. For that matter, “NaSa” would also be an exact match, as well as every other combination of upper and lower letters. Similar things happen for punctuation.

Punctuation

In general, the rule is that punctuation is replaced with a space to translate to the canonical form. For example, you may have noticed that searches for “bikes com” will match your exact-match paid-keyword “bikes.com” and vice-versa. Likewise, leading, trailing, and double-spaces are all insignificant.

A user-query for “bicycle  store” will match a paid-keyword “ bicycle store” (with a leading-space and a “  ” double-space). AdCenter provides a list of extraneous characters on their help site. AdWords provides a list of ignored symbols on their help site.

Possessives

AdCenter addresses most of the high-volume and regular possessives directly (but not all of them). For example, the search query “Mike’s Bike” is equivalent to the canonical form “mike bike.”

In AdWords, it would be “mike s bike.” In adCenter’s parlance, adCenter normalizes the possessive form of words, such as Mike’s to Mike.

Plurals

Canonical form can collapse plurals together (but will not always do so). A user-query for “bikes” could match an exact-match paid-keyword “bike.” (Please note: I am aware this example is in direct contrast to the information provided via the link below with regards to plurals of the word “bike.” It is just an example for illustration. Check your own user query report to find examples where plurals are treated as equivalent and delivered as exact-match.)

Likewise for non-standard plurals, like “battery” and “batteries.” They may be treated as equivalent. Of the canonicalizations covered so far, this one seems to be the most inconsistently applied across search engines and over time.

Noise Words

Canonicalization can remove “noise words” from the mix as well. For example, Ad Center will canonicalize a paid keyword “bike for the beach” to be “bike beach.”

The noise words “for” and “the” are not considered when AdCenter matches the canonical form of your paid-keyword to the user-query. AdCenter provides a list of extraneous words on their help site. (I didn’t find an equivalent list on AdWords help – maybe the community will add it to the comments, below?)

So Far…

So far we have: (letter) case, punctuation, whitespace, and plurality, and possession, but there is more.

Did you notice that we have crossed into territory where canonicalization might start to modify the intent of the original search query? “Bike for the beach” implies a different user intent than “bike beach.” The former quite clearly looking for a bike, while the latter would most likely be looking for a place. This does not stop here – there is more.

Misspellings & Closely-Related Words

Taking this one step further, canonicalization will sometimes collapse misspellings, and even seemingly different words to be the same. I am going to use theoretical, illustrative examples here, without claiming that either engine actually canonicalizes these particular keywords in this exact way.

So, an example then; Consider a paid-keyword “bike mart.” Canonicalization could collapse misspellings like “bikemarte” to be equivalent. Similarly synonym substitutions can be made. “Cycle mart” could conceivably be canonicalized to “bike mart” (Again, this is an example meant to be illustrative. I don’t think the search engines have ever actually canonicalized “cycle” to “bike.”)

These canonicalizations happen in particular with brands that happen to be slight misspellings, and also as we reach into the tail for more specific keywords.

AdWords Specific Notes: “site:” & Broad-Match Modifier In Negatives

AdWords will remove “site:” words from your keyword as part of canonicalization. For example, if you add “site:SearchEngineLand.com Crosby” as a keyword, AdWords will consider that equivalent to a keyword “crosby.” It will ignore the rest.

Likewise, if you use “+” either accidentally or in an attempt to trigger broad-match-modifier functionality in a negative keyword, the “+” is ignored as an extraneous symbol. It has no effect.

When & Where is Canonicalization Happening?

Canonicalization applies to negatives and all match types. Canonicalization happens prior to matching via match type, it is like a pre-filter for comparing keywords and user queries. It is always on; You can’t turn it off.

Gather Your Own Data

Don’t take my word for it. You can gather your own evidence. Pull a search query report from a Search Engine that includes both the paid-keyword and paid-match-type, and the user-query it matched. Better yet, pull it from your own analytics source. You may be surprised at what you find.

Why?

Paid Search Engines are businesses (and that is a good thing, believe it or not.) As businesses, they monetize searches by collecting fees from advertisers who pay-per-click in a competitive auction market for each keyword. They are motivated to generate the most value from those searches.

In an admittedly simplistic view, they may seek to “maximize profit, ” “maximize user value,” or “maximize advertiser value,” or some combination of all three. Let’s consider the “keyword market” for each user query the Search Engine receives.

On one hand, Search Engines could provide literal interpretation of the user-queries, and require advertisers to discover and manage all of the various forms of punctuation, capitalization, etc. to match each user-query literally.

In our example above, this would require an advertiser to run 2^4 variations of “NASA” to cover the various ways people could search for “NASA” using different capitalization (e.g.: “Nasa”, “nASA”,etc.). Clearly, this is way too granular, provides minimal incremental value, and would be quite burdensome on the advertisers. Advertisers would stop short of full coverage because it just wouldn’t be worth it. So Advertiser burdens would detract from user-value, and ultimately, Search Engine value.

On the other extreme, Search Engines could collapse everything. Advertisers would have one thing to manage, and would be eligible to appear on every SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for any user-query. Selling travel? Bid $5.25 for “run of site” on Google.com. Selling bird feeders? Bid $5.15 for run of site on Google.com…

Obviously, that would not provide anywhere near the value generated by breaking up the keyword markets in a more granular way. We need to draw a line somewhere. That is the game Search Engines play, and thankfully they play as rational businesses.

In this context, the low-level canonicalizations of case, punctuation, etc. are readily explained. But what about the more interesting cases? Now that we have set the stage, let’s consider a more interesting example; “bike” and “cycle” (theoretically, of course).

Let’s say that searches for “bike” monetize for the Search Engines at $.15 CPC, and searches for “cycle” monetize at $.10. If we could collapse the two keywords, we’d be looking at an incremental $.5 per click every time a user clicks on an ad after searching for “cycle.” Granted, this gets complicated fast as we could argue that the value is diminished, so the advertisers would adjust their bids down, which would reduce the effective CPC and mitigate the expected gains. Yes, they probably would.

We could also consider CTR, ad relevance, etc. They would all be impacted. It is a moving target to be sure. The point is; the Search Engine has a mechanism for collapsing keyword markets (or leaving them distinct). They play this game according to whatever their goals and values are, and just as with most human endeavors, they play it imperfectly.

So What?

This is the fun part. What can you, the discerning PPC Advertiser that you are, do about all of this? You can use it to your advantage to save time and to optimize your accounts.

For starters, you are already reaping the rewards of matching all the different combinations of capitalization, punctuation, misspellings, and other variations on your keywords that just don’t matter. Now that you know why and how, there are also some things you may start to notice, and some things you can do more actively.

For example, have you ever wondered why adCenter Desktop is kicking out words as duplicates, when they don’t appear to actually be duplicates? AdCenter added a canonicalization filter to the Desktop Editor. It stops words from being uploaded before they even make it to adCenter. The same thing would happen if you tried to add them via the Web interface. AdWords tends to allow you to add them regardless, and then sorts it out later by dividing up the traffic between them. While adCenter can be a bit obtrusive in this process, I personally like knowing that every keyword is a unique keyword in adCenter. This brings us to our next opportunity.

You can also save yourself the effort of adding all the different variations of “YourSite.com”, “YourSite com”, “www.YourSite.com”, “www YourSite com”, etc. Just because AdWords or adCenter lets you add them, doesn’t mean they are adding coverage or doing good things to your account. A generalized best practice is to manage all of your keywords in lower case, replacing all punctuation with ” “, and trimming all leading, trailing and double spaces.

If you want to be really complete, you could even remove all the extraneous noise words; this helps you make sure you are not bloating your account with effective duplicates. One possible exception would be if you are using Dynamic Keyword Insertion and have a word like “NASA” that should appear in all caps. In this case, you would of course want to add the keyword with all caps.

Let’s take that a step further and actively remove effective duplicates from your account (e.g.: words that you have been able to add, but that have equivalent canonical forms). If you have them in your account now, you are effectively dividing your traffic arbitrarily between them.

You have an opportunity to collapse that data down into one keyword, removing bloat and giving you more direct control over bids, ads, destination URLs, etc. For the coders out there, adCenter provides an API call GetNormalizedStrings Service Function to assist with this process.

Here is an Excel formula that does much of the basic canonicalization work for you:

=TRIM((SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(CLEAN(LOWER(A1)),"'"," "),"."," "),","," "),"-"," ")))

You could safely use this on the majority of your keyword and negative-keyword operations and improve the manageability of your accounts.

Here is one last handy trick (and if you have read this far, you deserve some gold stars). You can reset AdWords Quality Score on a keyword by adding it with different capitalization. Try it out in your account.

Go find a keyword with a terrible Quality Score (4 or lower), then add that keyword with different capitalization. You should start out with a default (hopefully higher) Quality Score. Here is your chance to breathe new life into that dying keyword! Now make sure you have the best ads possible, great negatives, and a healthy bid to get this one back on the starting lineup.

Good Luck out there, and Happy Holidays!

Overall, the discussion was great, but chopping up the issue into facets missed the broader implications of PSE. So, I thought I’d close out my blogging for 2011 with a prescription of my own and how such changes could impact paid advertising.

Let’s start from first principles and address the question: “What do users want from a search engine?”

The most concise answer might be: we want the engine to provide results that match our intent.

When I search for “pictures of Abraham Lincoln” I want the results to be images of Abraham Lincoln, not websites that have those images. If I search for “Newton’s gravitational constant” I’d like PSE to give me the number, not websites where I might find that information. If I search for Walmart, why not take me to their website directly, or perhaps to a map if I’m searching on a mobile device?

But herein lies the rub: sometimes the user’s intent is obvious, sometimes, as with that last example, it’s somewhat unclear, and other times it is utterly ambiguous. Google and Bing try to guess based on the behavior of other users who conducted similar searches, based on the browser’s past activity, based on geography, and a host of other factors.

The engines have done an amazing job of “organizing the world’s information” as the Google folks describe it, and the intent matching continues to improve, but we’re still pretty far from understanding exactly what Susy wants this time when she searches for “Golf”.

The perfect search engine will not be able to read user’s minds either – at least, not in my lifetime – but, until we get to clairvoyance, the next best notion might be: how quickly can PSE return results that match the user’s real intent? In many circumstances, the fastest way to get comprehensive results is to ask follow up questions.

The perfect search engine should recognize degrees of ambiguity and respond with:

• Exactly what I ask for when the intent is clear,
• A range of potential options (universal search) when it’s less clear, and
• Appropriate follow up questions when the answers will get the user what they want quicker than they will get it from an array of widely disparate choices.

Many people search for “furniture” but very few actually want something that vague.

Quick refinement options, targeted appropriately might be the best response. For example: “Indoor or outdoor furniture?” “What type of furniture?”

Most good websites do this already, through navigation drop downs and shopping widgets.

The results of these refined searches would get users much closer to their end goal and save them lots of time looking through websites that don’t carry what they’re actually after.

How The Perfect Search Engine Would Affect Advertisers

Advertisers would benefit tremendously from this as well. Instead of competing for traffic they may not actually want (because the user really wanted a mission-style dining room set, and they sell inexpensive living room and bedroom furniture) they can compete for traffic after the user has clarified their intent. This would improve conversion rates, and save users time as well.

Let’s think about “flights to Cancun”. Spitting out websites that will then ask questions about dates and accoutrements is okay, but the future might see the engines take all the information needed from the user and then show the choices from the airlines directly bypassing the OTAs entirely.

In eCommerce, perhaps the PSE would provide the same type of navigation options to get user’s to the product level before shipping them off to the advertiser’s site.

PSE has to figure out how to present the right questions and options, and exercise judgment in when to seek follow up and how many refinement questions to offer.

Clearly, we don’t want PSE to turn into Mr. Clippy.

Effectively PSE could evolve into the uber-website, taking most of the weight off of internal site navigation because the users come into the advertiser’s site at the right level of depth in the first place.

Perhaps the perfect SERP would have a handful of “best guesses” at the top — paid or organic or some of each — with a prominent set of pull down refinements targeted to the category.

User: “Attorney” PSE: “Here are some general listings for “Attorney”, but to expedite your search, please select the type of attorney do you need from the following list.”

Perhaps today’s engines are heading down this path already. Quite possible that they’ve been down this path and found it to be less user friendly than I imagine (not PSERP but LSERP where the “L” is for lousy).

Perhaps this isn’t as different from “instant” as I think it could be.

What Does The Perfect Search Engine Look Like For Advertisers?

The other question the panel mentioned but didn’t have time to flesh out was: is there a difference between what users would find to be PSE and what the advertisers would find to be PSE?

I think the answer is “no”. Satisfying the user’s intent on the first non-engine page will save users time and frustration, encouraging more search. Getting users what they want on the first click will greatly improve conversion rates for advertisers by better qualifying the traffic.

Increasing the value of the traffic will increase the price advertisers are willing to pay which will more than compensate PSE for the reduction in fruitless clicks. Win-Win-Win.

A New Year’s present for all of us?

I hope you and Mrs. Claus are doing well.

I have been an especially good advertiser this year, and so I hope you don’t mind that my asking for a few special gifts this year that will be greatly appreciated by all of us Google AdWords advertisers.

Yrs Trly,

Matt

(P.S.  I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked all my reader friends to add their own special requests  in the comments section below.)

1. Two Month Vacation for AdWords Product Managers

The top item on my wishlist, Santa, is that you please send all the AdWords product marketing managers somewhere warm, sunny and without Internet access for a few months’ holiday so they can’t invent or schedule any new feature launches for a while.

The product managers certainly have earned their holiday, Santa, but honestly, this really is a present for the AdWords advertisers and AdWords engineering teams. We need some catch up time.

Slowing down the marketing team for a little while will give us advertisers the time we need to properly evaluate the plethora of recently announced ad formats, targeting, scheduling and bidding options, and then to re-engineer our own campaign management processes so we can fully take advantage of them.

Keeping the product managers offline for just a few months will also help the AdWords development engineering teams do some catching up, too. They’ll have extra time to do more front-end engineering on new features before launch, more time to put finishing touches on soon-to-be-released features, and more time to fix-up and document previously-introduced features and AdWords extensions, some of which are on my wishlist, below.

2.  A New AdWords Ad Scheduler Based On The Searcher’s Time Zone

The next thing on my list, Santa, is a new AdWords Ad Scheduler. The current Ad Scheduler is so 20^th  century.

For example, if we want show ads only from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm all across the United States, we have to create 3-5 separate campaigns to make that happen because the current scheduler bases its ad delivery on the time-zone setting of our AdWords account, not the local user.

I would like a new AdWords Ad Scheduler this year that is smart enough to know what time it is in each time zone in which we want to show our ads without our having to spell it out!

(P.S. Santa, I am not the only one who wants this.  One of my friends, Barry Schwartz did a survey of AdWords users back in 2009 and almost everyone he asked (88%) said they would like to have a better AdWords Ad Scheduler, too.)

3.  Geo-Targeting At Ad Group Level

I’d really like a new geo-targeting system that lets us specify the geo-targeting at either the campaign or ad group level.

Until this fall, when Google expanded AdWords maximum limits to 500 campaigns per account and 20,000 ad groups per campaign, it was virtually impossible to efficiently run large complex localized national and multinational campaigns.  However, with a  new ad group level targeting capability, we would still have much better flexibility in the design of comprehensive, sophisticated ad campaigns.

While you are at it, Santa, it would also be very nice to  have ad scheduling, demographic targeting, and ad rotation set at the ad group level, too. If we had all these features at the ad group level, we could do so many more interesting experiments with Google’s ACE, too.

4.  A New Version Of Sitelinks & Other Ad Extensions

Santa, I was really excited a few years ago when Google rolled out a boatload of new ad extensions that showed promise for improving click-through rates. In particular, we were excited by the possibilities of the Sitelinks extensions.

However, somewhere between the concept and implementation of Sitelinks, many seemingly obvious features got left on the drawing board.

For example, Sitelinks were implemented at the campaign level, even though ads they apply to are controlled at the ad group level. There is no way to track individual Sitelink URLs, A/B test the links, control rotation of the site links, and so on. Melissa Mackey did a nice job of describing  all the pain points of Sitelinks deficiencies in an article a few months ago.

For Christmas this year, Santa, I’d really like a new version of  Sitelinks that is fully integrated with all the other great Google impression, click, and conversion tracking mechanisms and which can be managed at the ad group level and reported at the ad group, ad and keyword levels, as we’ve come to expect with  all Google AdWords elements.

5.  A New Dimension & Google Analytics Tracking Variable: utm_adgrp

Santa, I have had this item on my wish list for a few years – ever since Google bought the Urchin software and it became Google Analytics.

For the life of me, I can’t  figure out why a variable for tracking ad groups has never been added to Google Analytics.

Why doesn't Google Analytics have an ad group dimension?

Google AdWords has always had a Campaign/Adgroup/Keyword hierarchy, and it seems odd not to carry that through to Analytics tracking variables and reports.

Santa, can you please bring us a new version of Analytics that includes a standard campaign variable, utm_adgrp,  that allows ad group tracking and reporting within Analytics?

6. AdWords Editor That Is 100% Representative Of The Online GUI

Santa, we really like AdWords Editor because it saves us so much time in campaign management. However, the versions available  always seem to be 2-3 steps behind the online interface.

Can you please bring us a new version that is completely up-to-date?

7.  Historical Quality Score Reports

I’d sure like a new set of reports within AdWords that tell us how our quality scores change over time as we optimize our accounts. It  doesn’t have to be a fancy report, just something that tells us when we are getting hotter and when we are getting colder with our efforts to optimize our campaigns.

While you are at it Santa, and I know this is probably too much to ask, but can you please give us some help with some of our QS4 keywords?

We have tons of them that have great click through rates, and even better conversion rates, but according to AdWords relevancy algorithms,  they only rank a quality score of 4 and so we are sure they are costing us more than they should because of the way quality score influences ad rank and effective bid prices?

Well, I have a lot more items on my AdWords wishlist,  Santa, but if you can just work on these, (and any other wishes that other readers want to add in the comments below), I would be very grateful.

Merry Christmas.

Marketers are willing to oblige and throw offers and discounts at shoppers. It’s party time for the credit cards. It’s also a time to break many of your tried and true marketing rules, and your remarketing campaigns are no different.

Today, we’ll examine a method for setting up and executing holiday remarketing campaigns.

Collect All The Cookies You Can

I’ve written previously about how to segment your remarketing campaignsso that your ads are always reflective of the visitor’s behavior on your site. While that strategy works throughout the year – either don’t use it, or add this strategy to it during the holiday season.

This is not the time to start overly segmenting your visitors or letting your remarketing cookies expire.

If you segment too heavily, then you have locked a consumer into a certain set of ads. During the holidays, we aren’t looking for ourselves – we’re shopping for others. Therefore, interests change as often as the Christmas tree lights burnout.

You can either create new lists that are just for the holidays with long cookie durations, or you can increase the length of your current cookies.If you’re the planning type, I’d suggest making new lists so that you do not have to remember how you’ve affected your current lists after the holidays.

Now, put everyone in this list. Yes, everyone. Those who shopped, abandoned their carts, or checked out. You might not even think of this as a remarketing list; but as another type of targeted display advertising.

During the normal year, you might exclude those who converted from seeing your ads immediately after the conversion event. However, if someone checked out on your site and had a good experience, when they need something else (and we all need something else during the holidays), then your ad is a reminder to come back to buy from you yet again. Set as many cookies as you can to increase your shopper list size.

Create Ads By Holiday Deadlines

Next, create a list of holiday segmentations based upon your offers and limitations. For each time frame, think about your offers and benefits for that timeframe. For instance:

• Black Friday / Cyber Monday – deep discounts
• From Cyber Monday for two weeks – typical discounts for the holidays
• Two weeks before the Holidays – Free shipping until December 24th
• One week before the holiday – last chance to order for Christmas Eve delivery
• The day before the holiday – forgot to order something? Buy a digital giftcard.
• Post-holiday – After Holiday Sales Special
• etc…

This is a very generic list. Take a look at your marketing efforts, offline material, previous holiday offers, and write something that is much more geared towards your business. Just remember these two facts:

• The closer it gets to the holiday, the more ‘good enough’ suffices
• During holiday seasons, the benefits should be for the product buyer, not the product user

Submit All Your Ads Now

Once you have your timeframes created, write ads for each timeframe. Then pause the ads and submit them now. By submitting them now, they will be approved (Google reviews paused ads) so that you aren’t trying to get ads approved at the last moment. Put the dates in your calendar for each timeframe. When the date arrives, pause one ad and unpause the next one. If you don’t want to try and remember to pause and unpause ads, you can create a different campaign for each timeframe and use the campaign start and end date feature.

Raise Your Frequency Caps

Lastly, raise your frequency caps. You have to be careful not to creep out your customers; however, during the holiday season, consumers are more accustomed to being bombarded with ads from every direction. Since their credit cards are sitting next to their keyboards, make sure your ad is there the next time they want to type those numbers into someone’s shopping cart.Put a reminder in your calendar to adjust your frequency cap downwards after the holiday to your typical levels.

Conclusion

The holidays are one of the most stressful times for people. We all want to give the perfect gift. We also want to find that perfect gift on sale. The only way for us to find the perfect gift on sale is to pay more attention to ads and offers during the holidays. The further the holiday is away, the lower the stress levels; and the more willing we are to look for the perfect gift and deep discounts.

As the holidays approach, the stress levels increase; and the more we want to find ‘good enough’; but we still want it on sale. Segmentation in your marketing efforts is always essential. However, instead of segmenting your remarketing ads based upon site activity; segment your ads based upon the stress levels associated with a quickly approaching holiday.