Tag: AdWords

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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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Using Google AdWords Experiments for Testing

The ability to test using AdWords Experiments has been around for a while, but Google is making it much easier now to do some interesting testing in your account. Here is one of my favorite test scenarios and how to set it up.

Test Different Ad Landing Pages for Conversions

1. First create a new version of your AdWords landing page. Typically we go whole hog and really work to create a completely different look. The control page is the normal page and the test page may be more video heavy, have stronger marketing language, and may even be a different layout than the normal page.

2. Using AdWords Editor, copy the ad group in entirety that you want to test. Then paste the copied ad group back into the same campaign. Go to the ad tab and change all the URLs in your test ad group to your new test landing page.

3. Then log back onto the online version of AdWords. Go to the campaign where your test resides and click settings. At the bottom of the page is a link called “experiments”. Click it to open and set up your settings. I will typically do a 50/50 test between the control and test. Set your start and end dates. I will typically do more than 30 days and I will typically set up for 60 but do a full statistical review at 30 days. Save your experiment. Now if Google will not allow it so save – as it will do sometimes, you need to check to see if in your budget setting on the same page you are using eCPC or Enhanced Cost Per Click settings. If you are, you need to move to manual bidding and remove all automation. Then try again to save your experiment.

4. You’re not done yet! Go back to the campaign tab, click to get to the campaign details page where you have all your ad groups showing. You’ll see a new icon at the left in front of the ad group name. Click the drop down and label your original ad group as the control only and your test ad group as experiment only.

If you may changes to ad text or keywords as you are running your test, make sure to use AdWords Editor to copy the changes into both programs.

Some of the interesting results we’ve seen are increases in conversions and increases in phone conversions. To learn more about using AdWords Experiments, here’s a great article written by Tom Demers at Wordstream.

If you are looking for a savvy AdWords account manager, I invite you to call me to chat about your needs.

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The AdWords Quality Score – What Helps, What Hurts

Quality Score in AdWords determines how much you will pay for each click as well as where Google AdWords will show your ads on the page. It behooves every account manager and website owner to strive for the best Quality Score possible to control costs and improve exposure.

So what can you do to improve your own Quality Score?

1. First you need to find it and know what the number is. You can mouse over each keyword to bring up a speech bubble to see your quality score or you can add the Quality Score to your columns when on the keyword tab. You’ll find the Quality Score in the Attributes Section 3 choices down.

2. If your quality score is below 4, typically your cost per click will be impacted as well as your first page bid. Lower than that and Google may start to minimally serve your program. Get to 2 and 3 or lower and your keyword may get the “shown rarely due to Quality Score” notice – which means you may want to pause or delete that keyword.

3. I’ve seen situations where a on-target keyword gets a bad quality score and Google stops serving ads on that keyword. The steps to remediating this type of problem I’ll cover on Thursday so please check back. There are things you can do to try to get Google to show ads again, but it takes more time to solve those types of issues.

4. Here are a few of the relatively unknown facts about Quality Score.

  • Keyword stuffing on your landing page will not help you improve your quality score. Google determines Quality Score based on scoring of your entire website at one domain, not just based on one site page. So transparency and a privacy policy help your landing page/domain Quality Score.
  • Only the exact match variation of your keyword impacts the actual Quality Score. Broad Match and Phrase Match performance do not factor in to the ranking.
  • Keywords with zero impressions will not affect your quality score. Now, keywords with impressions and no clicks and therefore a low CTR will definitely impact your Quality Score.
  • Quality Score is not updated every day. Although your ability to participate in the AdWords auction is calculated with every search that matches phrases and words in your keyword list, be aware that landing page Quality Score and the first page bid are not recalculated. In fact landing page may only be update every month or so.

In conclusion, AdWords Quality Score is a very important factor of success on AdWords. I recommend keeping your keyword list small, don’t include any single words, and select the very best landing page for each keyword in your ad group.

Check back Thursday to find out how to fix a thorny Quality Score problem on a keyword you really like!

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The Value of a SEM Manager

Google has been adding new automation tools into AdWords with the supposition of making the program easier to use, but is it really? Although you can now automate many routine actions such as pausing keywords, enabling keywords, bidding up or bidding down by set criteria automation will never replace the efforts of a seasoned AdWords account manager who makes budget and strategy decisions.

Although automation tools can help to manage large accounts by its very nature there is no reality review done by automation tools that can respond to market changes, auction changes, and a varied marketplace. Although my firm does routinely use automation tools for AdWords account management, we routinely also check the results these tools provide to make sure that the settings are still working for an account. In fact, we will even sort data back 60 to 90 days to make sure that the automation has not run crazy damaging account performance.

Interestingly enough, we are doing a review right now using the Search Funnel reports for clients and are finding out that some keywords paused by automation actually were conversion assist or conversion impression assist keywords and should be re-enabled.

I have found automation is only as good as the account manager you have that sets the automation in place and then verifies and checks that the automation is working for your account.

I’d be glad to chat with you next week about your own AdWords account management needs if you feel that our services would be a match for you.