Month: November 2013

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Google is Focused on Mobile Search Are You Making It Important?

What Google considers important, you’d better take seriously especially if you want to place in Google’s search results without having to pay to play. What Google is considering very important at this point in time is fully embracing mobile. And not just mobile advertising, but a whole range of mobile options:

  • Mobile advertising using Google AdWords
  • Responsive website design – smartphone viewing capability
  • Location specificity in your content
  • Pricing strategies to combat showrooming

To fully understand Google’s focus on the mobile space, make sure to review Google’s new Mobile Playbook.

Not only does Google consider the implementation of showing your AdWords ads in the mobile space important, but it considers having a mobile responsive website important to place organically. This brave new world of a multi platform dimension is a whole new mind set and a revolutionary way to integrate your users web experience across multiple devices.

As Google states “Mobile changes everything.”  The Mobile Playbook will help you to understand the value of mobile customers so that you can address your content strategy, in-store pricing strategies, and implement new advertising strategies as well as tips such as creating exclusive product lines to prevent price shopping. Google provides an excellent road map with case studies for the forward thinking executive’s review to help them understand that for Google, mobile is a game changer.

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Ad Extensions Will Now Affect Ad Rank in AdWords

Your use of ad extensions will now be factored in by Google AdWords in determining your ad rank and if your ad will show with what attributes and where on the page. This is big news from Google and not to be disregarded. If you have not embraced using ad extensions in your AdWords account, now’s the time to take a very careful look to see if you should.

Read the full release from Google on this topic in this blog post from Google done in the last two weeks.

Google says: Our system for ordering ads on search results pages uses a calculation called Ad Rank. Previously, Ad Rank was calculated using your max CPC bid and your Quality Score. With this update, Ad Rank will also take into account a third component: the expected impact from your ad extensions and formats. In addition, we’ve increased the importance of Ad Rank in determining whether your ad is eligible to be displayed with extensions and formats.

This means that if you are not using location extensions as your online store does not have a store front and a competitor does have a store front and a user may be searching with a smartphone for your products, he will most likely see your competitor’s ad with a map and direction link on how to get to his store.

Google is now actively determining which ads will show with what extensions based on location, device, and search query. It is all about relevance for the searcher with Google now racking and stacking ads by price, ad quality, and pertinent extension use.

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Dealing with Low Search Volume Keywords

In this video Frederick Vallaeys, a former Google AdWords Specialist answers the question on how can an advertiser get AdWords to show their ad for low search volume keywords. You can view the video here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWkO_O2f3NE&feature=youtu.be

Here is my own recommendation on what to do as I don’t agree that broad match keywords are typically best for an AdWords account.

1. If Google has been turning of or not showing your ad for keywords that you really like that are over three words long, try first shortening the phrase. Take a phrase like pest control services in Tom’s River New Jersey and use pest control Tom’s River. Better yet I like the phrase +pest +control +Tom’s +River or +pest control +Tom’s +River. Use broad match modifiers first and test your response with shorter phrases and a + directly in front of important keywords to get more activity.

2. If keywords are not tagged as low search volume keywords, you may have keywords that are simply out of the auction and raising the bid may help them to show.

3. Cut your long tail phrase from five or six keywords down to three or four and use phrase match.

The key in all these cases is to test, test, test. If you still cannot get your keywords using broad match modifier and a shortened phrase to show, then I would but the query and move to full broad match. Watch carefully your search term report and aggressively add in negative keywords to keep your response highly targeted.