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August 5, 2015July 31, 2015

Google AdWords is Still the Best Way to Drive Lead Traffic

Google Partner Badge — McCord Web Services is one of the few Google Partners in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area.

Hands down, Google AdWords is still the very best way to drive quality lead traffic to your website and business. Even with cost per click prices seeming to be higher this year, AdWords still generates a positive lead flow. But are they higher?

For more information on trends in AdWords cost per click, here is a great article to expand your knowledge.

For many of the Google AdWords accounts that I manage there has actually been a click cost decrease. Here is a sampling over a wide variety of business sectors as an example comparing July activity this year to July activity in 2014.

Ecommerce store for small dollar products 2015 = $0.59 | 2014 = $0.41- 20% increase in average cost per click.

Medical services 2015 = $1.60 | 2014 = $1.79 – 6% decrease in average cost per click.

Cosmetic medical services 2015 = $3.02 | 2014 = $3.67 – 18% decrease in average cost per click.

Home services 2015 = $6.10 | 2014 = $8.36 – 28% decrease in the average cost per click.

Industrial equipment 2015 = $2.05 | 2014 = $3.14 – 35% decrease in the average cost per click.

No wonder Google AdWords is changing the quality score and trying to boost mobile cost per clicks? Mobile activity has really mixed up the equation for advertisers impacting both cost per click and the number of lead conversions as well as the price to generate a lead.

That being said, there is no other vehicle other than Bing Ads that I’ve found for my clients that comes close to generating the number of targeted leads that Google AdWords does.

August 3, 2015July 31, 2015

Will Google AdWords Change to Quality Score Impact You?

Google announced this important notice just this past week:

Starting today, we will be updating how we report 1-10 Quality Scores for keywords [https://goo.gl/c4Oi7]. This update only affects reporting. There is no change to ad serving such as how auction-time quality signals affect Ad Rank and CPC. The most significant part of the change is that keywords without traffic will now, by default, receive a score of 6, and Average for the three components of Quality Score. Once keywords gather enough impressions, scores will update about a day or so later.Behind the scenes, this change will allow us to simplify some of our core systems, letting us focus our attention on improving reporting accuracy for keywords with traffic.

This could be good or this could be bad. Understand that AdWords quality score impacts the price you pay to get into the AdWords auction and affects the price to appear on the first page of the search results. Although the statement seems like an improvement – rating keywords without traffic to a 6, to me this seems only a cosmetic improvement.

The truth is that Google knows from other advertisers already, what the quality score typically is on a keyword phrase, but now it appears to be waiting for your program to run to allow for the quality score to be more indicative of other factors that may impact your own personal score; such as landing page and ad text.

My personal feeling is based on other news that the cost per click had decreased overall for Google AdWords based on the impact of mobile activity that this is not an innocuous update but rather a strategic push to boost profitability for Google across all devices. We may not see of understand yet this change to quality score yet, but will certainly see the results this next month.

July 22, 2015July 17, 2015

Mobile Has to Be a Part of Your Google AdWords Equation

I have been managing Google AdWords accounts for around nine years. This depth of experience has given me a unique point of view.

Here are a few nuggets to share with you on the topic of mobile.

1. Advertising in the mobile space has to be a part of your Google AdWords strategy. For some clients all leads will come in via mobile, for others just a part, and for some none.

2. If you are a lawyer, dentist, or a doctor where you have a mix of patient age groups, you will see strong activity in the mobile ad space and strong conversion activity there.

3. If your product or service deals with immediate decisions such as an animal emergency room your activity will be in the mobile ad space and nearly all of your lead conversions will be by phone.

4. Even if your business is tech software, know that although you may not get leads from mobile, early decision making and research is being done initially on mobile. It is better to control your ad spend on mobile in that case instead of totally moving out of mobile.

5. There is no single combination of what works best for businesses in mobile at this time and there does not seem to be one pattern of behavior that is repeated across diverse industries. What I have definitely seen is that mobile should be a very important part of every AdWords program.

If you need help with your Google AdWords campaigns I invite you to review our services and qualifications. We may just be the perfect match for your pay per click management needs.

July 20, 2015July 17, 2015

What Are You Doing to Wean Yourself Off Pay Per Click?

Puzzle pieces — We put the pieces together for you to build great, sharable content.

Have you been grumping about your pay per click bill? Do you look at the unpaid listings on Google.com and dream about appearing in the top ten results?

If you are only spending your marketing dollars on Google AdWords and not investing in building great content for your website by using an on-domain blog then you are never going to wean yourself off pay per click advertising.

You can get organic search activity, social shares, and build natural links when you regularly write blog posts on your website. Google and Bing love that you are keeping your content fresh and that you are building slow, natural links. The first page a new visitor sees may just be a blog post which then leads them into your website. You may even build your e-newsletter subscriber base from great blog content.

More site owners are moving away from blogging and moving into pay per click advertising forgetting that although pay per click has an immediate return, blogging and content building have a place in a long term marketing strategy that builds value for search engines and enhances prospect engagement as well as keeping readers on your website longer.

If you are thinking about blogging, I invite you to read samples of posts we have written to see if now may be the time for you to start posting again on your blog. Our capable blog writers and knowledgeable oversight makes the creation of sharable content easy.