Tag: Google AdWords

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Matt Cutts States ECommerce As We Know It Is Dead

This video from Google’s Lead Web Spam Engineer, Matt Cutts, literally quashes ecommerce as we know it. Make sure you watch this video which states Google’s view of ecommerce sites and be prepared to give up trying to get organic placement for ecommerce enterprises that are reselling products.

Watching this video from Matt Cutts is incredibly concerning and illustrates a HUGE change from Google in regards to how stores can and will be placing and thus selling on Google.com.

Here’s the hard truth from the video:

1. If you are not selling your own unique products, but rather selling someone else’s products as an affiliate or reseller, you must have unique product content on your pages and invest in differentiating yourself from other competing sites as Google will no longer allow you organic placement on Google.com. Matt Cutts clearly states the harsh reality in this video – as an issue for Google in regards to search quality.

2. If you do set up a store borrowing product content from your manufacturer you should expect to only be able to bring in sales and traffic from an investment on Google AdWords. Paying for SEO services to assist your site in improving organic placement will be money wasted if you have not addressed the most important consideration for your site’s ranking which Cutts says is the issue of duplicate content.

3. Matt states that if you don’t have the time or where with all to create unique content for your products, that you should not be posting them and selling on the Web.

With nearly all ecommerce stores picking up cookie cutter content on products this is a very huge hit from Google in regards to how store can and should sell on the Web. Will this impact stores like Amazon and big box stores like Best Buy? Certainly, but the greater impact will be on small enterprises that have made a good living from selling on the Web and have just recently seen their organic placement drop from the Google Panda update.

As I watched the video, I grew increasingly concerned that these new revelations would have serious and long term impact in regards to how small business owners will sell and promote their products on the Web. I see this as a very strong shift to move businesses into paying to play on Google by forcing businesses to get visibility using Google AdWords. As I provide AdWords services this is not necessarily a bad thing for my business, but a very strong indicator and warning to the SEO industry that Google is changing their business model significantly.

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Google AdWords – Why I Am Testing Dynamic Search Ads

I just asked all the time what are you watching, what’s new and exciting, what trends to you see happening? This week I will be writing three blog posts about what I’m watching and why. Today’s post is about the new Google AdWords Dynamic Search Ads.

This is why I am watching and testing Dynamic Search Ads right now:

1. With AdWords spidering my website and choosing to show landing pages that match a user’s query I may be able to expand my advertising reach and improve my conversions and ROI. In the hangout Google states the following statistics on performance.

“When compared to broad match keywords the click through rate will typically be 12% higher and the cost per conversion will be 25% lower.”

2. By not having to exhaustively select keywords for a program and with Google dynamically creating the ad title using the user’s search query, and Google choosing the landing page to show the prospect, targeting is improved and unique for each query.

3. Static information rich and e-commerce sites can benefit from Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).

4. DSA work with accounts that contain both regular keyword targeted programs. In fact Google states that with DSA the advertiser will get more activity than with keyword targeted ads alone.

5. The potential to know and understand the potential buyer and what the like versus what you are wanting to push may very well change advertising plans for some clients; allowing the user to be the advertising revenue driver.

You can watch the video from +GoogleAds from the hangout last week on the topic. I think you will find the potential for some clients very interesting.

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Google AdWords Introduces Shared Budgets for Campaigns

Just this past week Google announced a very big change in how they do budgets for your AdWords account. Introducing Shared Budgets for Google AdWords campaigns. You can read the full release on the Google blog.

Although this sounds great, I have already had experience with Shared Budgets already last week and want to let you know to be careful and choose carefully what you share.

With a Shared Budget, this is how it is supposed to work. You select which Campaigns (not ad groups) you want to share budgets between. If you have one campaign that does not spend its daily budget on a regular basis and one which does, you can choose to share budgets. Google says this:

“Using shared budgets allows automatic adjustments across campaigns, so you don’t have to constantly monitor and change individual campaign budgets throughout the day.”

It sounds good, that money not spent on the one weaker campaign, would flow over to fund the stronger campaign when needed. BUT, this is the reality of what I have already seen this last week on set up.

I set up Shared Budgets, what happened by noon one day is that the entire account budget was spent by a “hog” of a campaign effectively shutting down exposure for the full account. No metering out there, or leftovers given to the strong program, the stronger program overrode all settings of the weaker programs and took every single cent all $166.66 dollars, all of them!

The lesson learned is to be very careful what you share with AdWords Shared Budgets. Watch carefully after you set up the share both several times during the day and for statistical data. Make sure you are not funding a hog at the expense of the rest of the campaigns in your account.

By using Shared Budgets, you are effectively putting all shared campaigns in one campaign and the strong campaign now acting as an ad group in a single campaign will take the most cash at the expense of the others.

I think the idea is great, the but actual execution can create havoc with an account’s funding structure. Use Shared Budgets carefully and watchfully.

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Last Tidbits on Product Listing Ads Using Your Merchant Data Feed

Here are my last tidbits on using Google AdWords to show Product Listing Ads (PLA) pulled from your Google Merchant Center Data Feed.

  1. Make sure to click to validate your data feed once set up in Google AdWords so you are sure that you have everything properly connected in order to assure that ads will be show. This is done by clicking the “validate” button.
  2. Use Targets and Filters appropriated to determine what products will show. Filters operate at the campaign level and targets operate at the ad group and product level.
  3. Each product target you set up should be in its own ad group to maximize opportunities for the products to show.
  4. Start with a bid for your PLA that is comparable to your existing cost per click advertising programs.
  5. The relevance of your product and your bid WILL impact when your product shows.
  6. Bid higher on specific product targets than you do on all products.
  7. Use custom created AdWords URL to improve product tracking in your product data feed.
  8. On product listing ads you do not enter keywords in your program, but you do set up negative keywords to target your program.
  9. Promotional text is applied at the ad group level. This is where you would add a note like Free Shipping.
  10. Google will not always show your promotional text. It will depend on the space available.

You can view the full video below.