Eustondigital blog

Archive for the ‘PPC’ Category

How to Avoid the Robot.txt Writer’s block: Get inspired by the big names!

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

When doing SEO changes for large scale companies, implementing a proper robot.txt is crucial.

I will not go back to the robot.txt definition bla, bla… millions have done that before us and here at Euston Digital we hate duplicate content… we prefer focusing on stunning link building services!

No, instead, just a simple formula to use whenever the geek inside you has a Robot.txt Writer’s block!

So, type “inurl:robots.txt filetype:txt” and, ta-daa! See what the big names are doing.

You will find the robots.txt file from Google, Wikipedia, WebmasterWorld, the White House, Microsoft, W3.org, Facebook, IBM, Amazon, Ebay, New York Times, CNN, YouTube, etc.

Have Geek Fun and stayed tuned for new SEO tips soon.

Charly Wargnier

Tags: robot.txt, SEO
Posted in PPC | No Comments »

ReMarketing on the Google Content Network with Euston Digital

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Euston Digital are excited to be taking part in the Google AdWords Remarketing BETA.

What is Remarketing?

Lets say someone visits your travel website looking for a hotel:

They look at a few hotels, and then leave your website.

Later on that day they’re browsing a website that is part of the Google Content Network. With Remarketing, we can reach out to that person and show them an advert for your website:

The user will be reminded that they were on your website, and decides to return and buy.

Why remarket?

Remarketing has been credited with a real boost to conversion rates. Only 5%-10% of people visiting your website end up buying from you. ‘Remarketing’ targets those people who leave without buying, and nudges them back to your site. They’re already familiar with your brand, and are therefore more likely to convert.

Network Performance

Compared against other Advertising Networks, a Remarketing network outperforms in almost every case.

Campaign Results

Early results indicate that click through rates and conversion rates make these campaigns amoungst the best performing.

Scale

The Google Content network is huge. Make it work in a small way and it will really scale.

How does Remarketing work technically?

We work with Google to produce javascript tags. You will need to place these on your website, on your sign up process, and on your confirmation page.

This javascript sets a user cookie that tells Google whether:

*They’ve visited your website

*They’ve entered the sign up process

*They’ve bought something from you

We can then target those users according to which of these situations apply to them.

For example, for those users who have entered the sign up process but then left, we might want to reach them with an advert that gives them that product at a discount.

For those users who have bought something from you, we might want to reach them with an advert for a complimentary product.

Here’s  a good visual:

For more information about how Euston Digital can use Remarketing to boost your sales, get in touch.

Tags: google, remarketing
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, PPC | No Comments »

How does TV Advertising affect your PPC campaign?

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Here at Euston Digital we have found that an effective and efficient return on on investment can be achieved by running a Pay Per Click AdWords campaign in conjunction with a TV ad campaign.

The mediums work in tandem – TV advertising drives people to search online, and online adverts can raise receptiveness to TV advertising. And if you get it right, then 1+1 can often come to more than 2.

But there are a few things that you need to do to make sure your PPC campaign is capitalising on your TV Ad spend.

Budget
A basic one this, but TV ads can hugely boost both your brand searches, and general searches in the market advertised. You need to make sure your daily caps are set way in excess of any theoretical limit. It would be the worst possible situation for your TV spend to drive people to Google, only to find that the user couldn’t find your site

Use all search engines
PPC specialists tend to put all their effort into Google and give Yahoo, Bing and others require token attention. But the difference with TV adverts is that they tend to make less experienced users search online. And less experienced users are more likely to use search engines other than Google.

Position
It goes without saying that you need to make sure that you are in position 1 across all your brand terms. Many companies survive by picking up the search tidbits left by big spending competitors. A large advertising campaign will drive brand searches: others will try to capitalise on the users’ lack of experience by grabbing their attention high up in the SERPs.

Bidding strategy
Now is the time to be more flexible with your CPA targets and to get more aggressive on generic search terms. Your television ad spend will drive general searches in your market; its reassuring for searchers to find your ads at the top of the SERPs as well as on television. It makes them more likely to buy from you. Its worth raising your CPA targets in the short term to grab as much market share as possible.

Message: Be Official
To start with you need to make your brand name really stands out in the ad copy, so that users are sure that the company they saw on the TV is the same one that they’ve found on Google. Put the brand name in the headline of your ad, and make sure that you use official ‘TM’ signs to add a stamp of authority.

Message: Use your strapline
If your TV campaign has a strapline, then repeat that in the final sentence of your ad. It makes sure that users get the a consistent take-away from all your advertising. Again this adds reassurance.

Message: Try to be tailored
Continue to test tailored headlines. It might be that your TV advert does not have strong brand recollection; you need to continue to make sure your adverts reflect the terms that users are searching for.

Create a ‘product + TV’ ad group
If they can’t remember your company name, users will often search for you product + TV, in the hope that Google can find the people who have advertising on TV. For these keywords, it makes sense to create a dedicated ad group and to include a ‘As seen on TV’ message in your advert.

Use keywords from your Strapline
Some users will not be able to remember your company name, but may well search using your strapline. Make sure that you’re bidding on these keywords and consider them as ‘brand’ traffic.

Summary
TV advertising in conjunction with a PPC campaign can deliver strong ROI. But to make sure that you get the most from both, your PPC campaign needs to cover a lot more bases. For help on how Euston Digital can boost the returns from your Pay Per Click Internet marketing, get in touch.

Any comments, please leave them below.

Tags: PPC, tv advertising
Posted in PPC | 1 Comment »

Google AdWords Sitelinks: Taking even more control of the Search Engine Results Page

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

On Tuesday this week Google released a new feature on their AdWords system called ‘Sitelinks’.

What are they?

Sitelinks are additional links that you can place into your AdWords creative that take visitors to other pages on your website. Whilst the headline continues to link through to the main destination page that you set at a keyword or creative level, Sitelinks send users to alternative pages that might also be relevant.

This is what it looks like:

Better user experience

The idea behind Sitelinks, as per usual with Google, is to create a better experience for the user. They have recognised that when searching for a company or a product, there are many alternative bits of information on your website that users might be looking for. By introducing Sitelinks they have made it easier for the user to navigate directly to the most relevant content.

It’s mostly about Brand searches

Google reckons that Sitelinks are going to be most relevant when it comes to brand searches. Whilst brand searches are a clear indication of the intended destination of the user, beyond that the user intention is a bit vague. Google knows that you want to find the website for company X, but it doesn’t know why. And it doesn’t know which page will be the most relevant. Sitelinks let users choose the most relevant page for them

Why this is good for AdWords advertisers

Better user experience is good for advertisers too!
To start with, there’s the reason above, Google’s stated intention. By introducing additional links into your advert you make the user work less, and take them directly to the right page on your website. The easier their life, the fewer clicks they’re forced to make, and the more likely they will be to become a customer of yours

Owning the Search Engine Results Page
As discussed previously, the search engine results page is an important piece of real estate for you to take ownership of. AdWords creatives that contain Sitelinks are twice the size of normal AdWords creative, and therefore use up twice the amount of space. As such they are much more likely to be read and clicked on by users. This pushes other results down the page and lets you own the users eye-time with your creative message.

Giving depth and colour to your service
It’s difficult to sum up your company in 95 characters, which is all you get in a normal AdWords creative. You have to make a judgment about the reason that people are searching for you, and hit them with a message that fits that. In reality, people will search for you for many different reasons. Some might want product A, other might want B. Some might want to read your blog and others of course will be looking for your contact details. By placing all these links in your AdWords creative you can showcase a lot more to the searcher before they even get to your website.

The Holy Grail
This is where I reckon that Sitelinks will transform a good campaign into a slamming campaign. Only certain campaigns are eligible for Sitelinks. These typically have the highest quality scores, and are often brand campaigns.

However, if you are able to add Sitelinks to a generic campaign, then something quite magical can happen. When users who are searching for a non-branded product or service see your Sitelinks enabled ad in position no.1, the chances that it will be clicked are significantly higher than a normal advert. This will drive Click Through Rate through the roof, and mean that you can afford to reduce your bids on that keyword. So you get more traffic for a lower cost. And you take ownership of the SERPs for a generic product. AdWords heaven!

You can add Sitelinks from the Settings page of your campaign, under ad extensions.

Tried Sitelinks? Share your experience below.

Tags: Google AdWords, Sitelinks
Posted in PPC | 7 Comments »

Can you afford to see my adverts?

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

In a move that is gong to incur that wrath of privacy campaigners, Google is planning to look at people’s credit scores before deciding which adverts to show them.

This addresses one of the key issues faced by marketers of luxury items, in that they need to know the person they reach can afford the products that they are advertising.

A Google spokesperson confirmed this week that they had been working with research firm Compete on whether it would be possible to add credit score targeting to adverts on the Google content network.

Google might be allowed to identify consumers with good credit, based on information they submitted when applying for credit cards online.

This information would be made available to advertisers on an aggregated basis so they could better reach their target market.

“Let’s say we have an advertiser who wants to reach consumers with a high FICO [credit] score who applied for mortgages in the first quarter,” a spokesperson said. “We can provide the advertiser with a list of websites on our Google content network that index against this segment.”

However, any move to make use of this data could be met with fierce resistance by groups wishing to preserve online anonymity.

In November 2008 NebuAd – who target users based on their web surfing habits, information purchased from ISPs – were sued by web users of felt their privacy rights had been violated.

And of course here in the UK behavioural targeting company Phorm has run into resistance whichever way it has turned, and is yet to launch at all.

Would you mind being targeted based on your credit worthiness? Do you sell an upmarket product and not want to waste your advertising on people who can’t afford the product? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: google
Posted in PPC, Search Engines | 9 Comments »

Searches up, clicks down

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Some research by Comscore, an online traffic measurement company, came out last week. It was covered in some depth over on Techcrunch.

The research is based on US traffic, but it applies here too.

Comscore have basically found that whilst the number of searches rose last year by 68%, the number of clicks on search advertisements went up by just 18%.

Here’s a graph that shows it all:

Comscore are attributing the relative decline in clicks compared to searches to the increasing length of search queries. They say that as the number of 3, 4 or 5 word searches increases, adverts are less likely to appear because advertisers are less like to have those word combinations in their AdWords account.

Comscore say: “And this apparently reduces the likelihood that an advertiser has bid to have his/her ad included in the results page from these longer queries, due to paid search advertising strategies that limit ad coverage, such as Exact Match, Negative Match, and bid management software campaign optimization.”

Techcrunch think that this doesn’t explain it enough. They reckon that clicks on adverts have declined because many US advertisers have reduced or stopped their AdWords campaigns.

They say: “Sharper Image, Wickes Furniture, Levitz, Foot Locker, Wilson’s Leather, Ann Taylor, Zales, Mervyn’s, Macy’s, Circuit City and a ton of other retailers are either shutting down entirely or closing lots of stores… All of these companies used to spend tons of money on paid search ads. Those budgets don’t exist any more.”

Another idea is that as Google gets better at displaying more relevant results pages (SERPs), maybe users are less drawn to the sponsored AdWords ads because they find what they want in the organic listings. I haven’t got any evidence for that, it just seems like logical conclusion.

Whatever the reason, once again its a good opportunity for your to get your website to the top of the SERPs. Make sure you are ranking highly for the specific search phrases that people will use that are relevant to your website.

Do you find yourself clicking less on ads these days? Or have you never done so? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: PPC
Posted in PPC, Search Engines | No Comments »

Do we like Bing?

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Research from Hitwise UK out this week shows how well Microsoft’s the new search engine ‘Bing’ is getting on in the UK. We all know how well the US has taken to it. But whilst Americans are bombarded with a $100m advertising campaign for the new engine, over here we’ve had to be content with a few niche press releases.

The UK stats show that following the official June 3rd launch Bing’s market share grew significantly. If you exclude Google US and UK, Bing was the third ranked search engine, making up almost 11% of the UK market. After the launch hype, traffic has declined although the average length of visit has grown to over 8 minutes.

And what are people looking for on Bing? Well the top search term for the week ending 6th June was ‘facebook’, which made up 3.94% of all searches.

Branded terms (those that include a company or product name) make up the other big numbers (as usual), but despite that there are 5 generic terms in Bing’s top 100.

More of a concern for Bing is that a significant proportion of its ‘downstream’ traffic – those websites that people visit after having been on Bing -were other search engines. This suggests that people tried Bing our before returning to their favourite search engine.

And another concern for Bing is who they are stealing market share from. Most people visiting Bing came from MSN UK- another of Microsoft’s search engines. There’s obviously not a lot of point in building a brand new search engine if the only people who end up using it were previously customers of your other search engine. Microsoft would clearly rather convert users from Google and Yahoo.

Here’s a graph showing UK visits to Bing, from Hitwise.

Have you tried Bing yet? If so, what do you think? And how does your website rank well in Bing’s Search Engine Results Page? Leave us a comment below.

Posted in PPC, Search Engines | 5 Comments »