I panicked, thinking I had accidentally changed the geo-target settings in Google AdWords. After assuring that this was not the case, I started looking into what could possibly be causing this.

Let me set the stage a little bit here:

Client – Lethbridge College

Geo-Target – Most of Canada

I looked at the Google Analytics reports and sure enough, just over 100 visits from the Philippines and close to 200 from the USA. Why on earth is this happening?

I dug around a little bit more but couldn’t find anything so I did the only thing I could think of: call Google! I spoke to a very friendly individual who put me on hold while he investigated. A few moments later, he came back on the phone and assured me that all the settings were fine. This is happening because Google doesn’t only use a users IP address to serve ads. WHAT? Apparently, the IP address is used but so are geo-specific terms such as ‘Calgary’ or ‘Lethbridge’. So I dug a bit deeper into the Analytics data. Sure enough, the keywords indicated searches like “Lethbridge College” or “college in Lethbridge”.

This case is a little out of the ordinary because the ‘business name’ has the city name in it. Normally, when a business name is something like, for example, Anduro, these searches would not generally result in ads showing for “internet marketing” in Europe, when we are targeting Canada.

I wanted to take it one step further. Why would they want to pay for these people to click on the ads? Interestingly enough, a lot of these clicks resulted in conversions. This tells me that someone in the Philippines is looking to come to Canada to go to college/university and found Lethbridge College as a result.

That’s good but is it worth it? Turns out it is! The cost/conversion in the Philippines is 72.5% LOWER than in Canada. That is incredible.

Granted, there are a lot less clicks and a lot less conversions but there is no need to panic over the ads showing in different countries.

The Google rep also told me that they are working on implementing a setting that allows advertisers to turn this off. Now that I have been looking into it some more, I am not sure I would. The cost/conversion is so much lower – why not advertise there? In this case, it works out but in the future, I will really need to think about whether or not it makes sense to advertise elsewhere.

For a local painting company – not so much. But a school catering to a vast number of people? Absolutely.

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.

There are many reports available to the AdWords advertiser – some helpful, some just a lot of data on a page with no real value. One of the helpful ones is called the Search Query report. This report spits back, essentially, a list of keywords users have used and have seen your ads. The reason this is helpful is if you are using different match types (which I hope you are!) there are a lot of variations of keywords that you may or may not have included making this list incredibly helpful. You can also see which words your ads showed up for that you may not want to show for and you can then add these words as negative keywords.

A big one I have been seeing a lot is a local company selling their product only in that particular city, with the geo target set to that city. So for example, if I have a jewelry store in Calgary and I am only interested in local customers, I can set the target to Calgary only. But if someone in Calgary searches for ‘jewelry store in vancouver’ my ad will show up if one of my keywords is phrase match ‘jewelry store’. This will show up in the report and I can add vancouver as a negative keyword.

On the flip side of that, maybe someone typed in ‘calgary jewelry store’ and my ad would have shown. If I have broad match terms, I could add calgary jewelry store as a phrase match term and slowly eliminate the need for broad match terms which often have high impressions and show the ads for some pretty interesting combinations of words! They are also very good at using up your budget quickly.

When you run the search query report, you can specify which campaign or adgroups you want to run the report on.

With this new feature, you can log in to your account and while you are looking at each adgroups keywords, click the “See Search Terms” link and it will show you all of the keywords used for that particular adgroup. This is so much easier than running the report every time and then having to sort by adgroup etc.

The real time saver though, is the fact that you can add keywords right there. With a click of the mouse! You can also add negative keywords just as easily.



You can either select specific keywords and see what variations users have used or you can simply click on See search terms… and then select All. This will give you a complete list.

Fantastic tool that has already saved me a ton of time! Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

In online marketing the key is to gently coax website visitors through an evolution into website participants.  Whether we are talking about Pay Per Click platforms or ecommerce sites, visitors need to be participating – clicking – in order to increase the conversion rate and, hence, the ROI.  As evidenced by the 2 million Google Search results, this process is not a hard science with tried and tested methods – it is an art.  There are a lot of web users who are more than happy to simply be visitors – just hoping to pass GO and collect their proverbial $200.  After reviewing a few of the Google Search results and thinking of my own online experiences I have identified two key concepts that website owners should keep in mind when trying to entice visitors to take that first step toward earning the highly esteemed blue Participant ribbon.

• The need to participate:
  • In today’s fast paced world, people do not take the time to do things they do not need or want to do.   The end goal of the conversion must be valuable and secure for the visitor as well as for the website owner.  Nurture the desire to participate by clearly communicating the value of the conversion to the website visitor.  Encourage return business by adding an additional thank you page after the conversion step is completed.
• The ability to participate:
  • Expand on the concept of the Big Orange Button (BOB).  Keep the visitor on task by ensuring that the information, design and feel of the website are consistent from the landing page through to the actual conversion step.  Limit distractions, make the next step(s) obvious and encourage and enable the visitor to act quickly.

It is well recognized that higher conversion rates can translate into higher ROI and a few well executed website adjustments can help to increase conversion rates.  So, welcome to all visitors.  Now, ready… set…participate!!

- Jenn -

Guest post done by Jenn. It just so happens that Anduro Marketing offers what we call an “Increasing Conversions Session”. To find out more, contact us.

1. Relevant Content
The first factor is to have a tight connection between the ad and the landing page. We aim for similar content between the ad, the keywords and the content of the landing page. This is important not only for maintaining high Google quality scores and keeping the price per click as low as possible but also to improve conversion rates. Costs can skyrocket when we set up ads that are directed to landing pages with content that is loosely related or irrelevant and conversions can plummet when a connection is not made between the ad and the landing page.

2. Conversion Rates
The second aspect is generating conversions from the landing page which is ultimately measured by ROI. Some tricks of the trade to increase conversions include:

• Adding a big orange button (BOB) – the button doesn’t have to be “orange”.
• Having relevant buttons above the fold
• Minimizing distractions on the page
• Linking to a page with a form on it
• Listing the benefits and value
• Add micro conversion features

Solution
Every company and the products they offer are different. The solution to both problems is to design and develop landing pages that are relevant and encourage a positive  response.

Simple diagram. Great descriptions. Easy to navigate. Clear. Well put together.

Enjoy!

Essentially, if you are looking to make changes to your account, you can click on this tab and it will give you suggestions on how you could improve the account. The tool is new so right now there are only Budget and Keyword changes ideas but there is a promise that there is more to come.

I tried this tool out on a client of ours and found that, of course, Google wants me to increase the budget and add keywords. What was surprising though, is that the increase was only $0.60/day! This really won’t make them a ton of extra money but according to the tool, will increase the traffic by an estimated 121 clicks/month.

I am always a bit skeptical of new Google tools because I am never sure if the tools are meant to help the advertiser or Google but this one seems to be not so terrible – if you always keep in mind that Google is a business and they need to make money!

Here is a link to some more information about the Opportunities tab which I have actually used a few times. There are good keyword suggestions which you may have missed. For the most part though, it is just a way to check you are on the right track.

There is also another blog post about this that I received a while ago and would like to share.

The title is, “When to Restructure Your PPC Campaign or Completely Start Over” by Amanda Chaney.

She points out 5 scenarios which may lead you to have to make a decision to either restructure or start over:

1. Change of Direction – company is going in a new direction, with a new site

2. Client Evolution – long standing account may not be working anymore since the internet and search behaviors change.

3. Site Redesign – if the site is undergoing a redesign, so should the PPC account.

4. Reporting Reasons – companies may want to see data grouped differently, focus on certain aspects of their site etc.

5. Poor History – if the account has poor history such as poorly written ads or poorly organized structure.

I would like to give my input here.

If at all possible, I don’t think it is a good idea to start over unless you have to. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Account history is a big deal – especially with Google Adwords. Google bases a lot of decisions on the account history and how the account has been managed in the past. Having a good account history will help and if you just go a restart from scratch, you will lose all the history. This is not only not great from Google’s perspective but just think about all the useful data you are losing. What can you use to compare the new data to? The account will have changed too much to compare it to the old campaigns so you have no real way of determining if the campaign is successful.

2. Making drastic changes when a client is making drastic changes to their website spells out trouble. We did this with a client of ours recently and here are the issues: they were getting a lot of conversions before they launched their new site and we redid their PPC campaign. All these changes were made and conversions dropped like a rock. We obviously had no way of knowing for sure if the problem was the PPC Campaign or the website. After about 3 months, we figured out that it was actually the site and not the campaign (CTR was much higher and more people were getting to the site but not covnerting). So be cautious when making drastic changes – either to your site or the campaign.

Small changes are better to make than big ones. The results may not be as obvious but in the end you know what changes made the difference.

So to recap, unless you really have to, I would always try to redesign rather than start fresh. What do you think?

From here, you can select which bid you want to use and how many “estimated clicks, impressions etc” this will get you.

This is all good and great but I just found an article with an interesting point of view and one I don’t think should be ignored. I actually share the same point of view and am always skeptical of Google’s intentions – are they trying to help US or themselves? Generally, the tools are helpful but should be used with caution and common sense.

This one for example, makes you wonder if the increased bids will actually get you more traffic or more just put money in the Google pocket!

Read this article called Google’s Bid Simulator Tool – Check Under the Hood Before Buying  by Tad Miller at searchmarketingsage . It explains the tool and reasons to use with caution in much more detail than I have!

Facebook Ads was recently nominated for the Best SocialMedia Platform for Marketers’ category in the 2009 Search Engine Watch Awards. The winner will be announced this week at the SES conference in San Jose, CA.

Wow! Let’s see who the winner is.