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Posts Tagged ‘Google AdWords’

AdWords Location Extensions: Making it easy for Mobile users to find you

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

When in front of a PC, users often have time to sit back, relax and take time to research the right solution for them. But when a user searches from a mobile phone, they’re usually want to take action. They’re out and about, and want to find answers straight away, with the minimum of hassle or fuss.

This action is often finding your business, or getting your contact details. Mobile users often use maps to find a business and work out how to get there. Thanks to AdWords Location Extensions it’s now possible to put your phone number and location on an expandable map, which can appear either in apps or on Mobile websites on the Google Display Network (GDN).

What does it look like?

The ad looks like a banner text ad along with an icon representing a business. Users can click to expand, and a map shows up with a marker for your location, a click to call phone number and an option to get directions.

These ads are very powerful. As they’re based on where the user is, they will see the number and business address that’s nearest to them. This is a key way to boost visitors to your actual physical business location.

Another great feature is that you only get charged when someone clicks and visits your website, not when they expand your map or get directions. The click to call cost is the same as the CPC of a visit to the website.

How do I set it up?

1. To start with, on the settings tab make sure your campaign is opted into the Google Display Network.

2. Next, opt to display your campaign on iPhones and other smartphone devices with full Internet browsers.

3. Then, on the extensions tab from the overview page, set up location extensions and add your phone number and address.

4. Upload a business logo, or choose from the set of icons available.

The map and placemarker ad will now automatically be generated when users perform a local search from their mobile device.

That’s it

Do you carry out business and meet customers at a physical location? Do you have single or multiple retail outlets? Use location extensions to make it easy for local people to find your business. And then let us know about how you get on!

Tags: Google AdWords, location extensions
Posted in Mobile, PPC | No Comments »

How to plan a campaign on the Google Display Network

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

The Google Display Network (GDN) is the new umbrella name for what used to be called the Google Content Network. Having been seen by many to have saturated the commercial upside of search, Google has rebranded to make it clear that it has big growth plans for content, display, and graphical advertising options.

There’s lots of ways to go about adding a campaign to the GDN. These include:

Keyword based targeting
Site and page-specific targeting
Category based targeting
Audience targeting
Remarketing

And you can use a combination of these targeting tools to improve your targeting options. For example, if you only want to target people who have been on your website previously, who are into travel, and who are reading a travel article on the News site, then you can choose:

Remarketing with audience targeting, and then select keyword based category targeting.

The Google Ad Planner

Google also lets advertisers make use of their (previously agency focused) Double Click Ad Planner. With this tool you can identify sites where you can reach your audience.

To start with, research sites that you know your audience spends time on, or target them by location, interest, demographic or keyword search.

You can choose from pre-defined audiences that are commonly used by marketers. You can also make use of subdomain or ad placements to target by greater detail. You can also use the Ad Planner 1000 to find the largest sites on the web.

The tool is interactive which means that you can rank the sites according to the criteria. And with lists you can note the best sites and placements for use in the future.

You can also use the tool to plan non-Google campaigns by just filtering to those sites not in the GDN. And if you’re fixed on just one or more forms of creative – such as video – you can filter to just those too.

Once you’ve drilled down to just those sites that you’re interested in, you can then grab detailed information from the planner, including traffic stats, demographics and unique visitor metrics.

When you’ve found the sites that fit your criteria, you can add them to your media plan, and either export it straight into your Adwords account or download it as a CSV.

Here’s a video that takes you though the whole process:

That’s it

The Google Ad Planner is an effective tool to plan online campaigns both on and off the GDN. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Tags: gdn, google ad planner, Google AdWords, google display network
Posted in Display | No Comments »

Good Reviews can now boost your AdWords campaign

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

We’ve written previously about the importance of fostering positive review. Great user feedback should form the cornerstone of your social media strategy.

Reviews are set to become even more important, as is now Google starting to include ratings within your AdWords creative. Called ‘Seller Rating Extensions’, these are designed to make it easier for users to identify those merchants who are highly rated.

This is what they look like:

Appearing as a series of stars from Google Product Search, these rating are aggregated from a series of review sites across the web

In order to get star ratings on your ads, you need to be rated in Google Product Search with at least 4 or more stars, along with at least 30 reviews. Those searching can choose to look at the reviews before they visit your site. And you only get charged once they click to visit your website.

What to do?

If you’re not already appearing in Google Product Search, then now is the time to start to get listed. Let us know if you want help with that.

Once your product is live, make sure you work hard to get as many reviews as possible. Here’s some easy to follow advice on growing positive reviews. For in depth expert advice on that and other part of your social media marketing strategy, get in touch.

Tags: Google AdWords, reviews, Social Media
Posted in PPC, Social Media | No Comments »

Are your AdWords campaigns better than your competitors?

Friday, July 9th, 2010

It’s been about a year since the Google AdWords User Interface underwent a huge overhaul.

One of the interesting new elements is the ‘opportunities’ tab. Here Google makes new keyword suggestions based on search query data, allowing you to add or exclude them directly to your campaigns.

There’s a new Beta feature just added which improves this even further, by allowing you to compare your campaign performance to those of similar advertisers.

Analyze competition

This tool looks at campaign activity over the previous two weeks, and sorts it into categories that make up the advertiser products or services. It then analyses the continuity between search query, keyword, ad text and landing page text. Based on this analysis, the tool then produces a bar graph indicating performance compared to other advertisers in the same category.

If you hover over the ‘competitive range’, you can see the median and mean performance for other advertisers in the range, and the extreme top and bottom too.

The metrics which you can compare to other advertisers include Impressions, clicks, average position and CTR.

This screen grab shows how a campaign CTR is compared to competitors:

You can also export the data to a .csv file.

Campaign Management

This tool is a powerful aid to campaign management and reporting. It allows you to prove that your campaigns are performing well against others; and gives you insights into the area which you need to work on.

For example, if you find that your campaign is getting impressions than the competitors, then you might want to take action. This is not necessarily something to worry about – maybe you’re just running your campaign on exact match – but this means that you can at least see and upper ceiling of how many more times your ad could be appearing. Want some more impressions? Then it’s time to expand your keyword list and take a look at using phrase or expanded broad match [link].

If your campaigns are under performing against competitor CTR, then without a doubt this means that it’s time to check the continuity between your keywords and ads. Are you keywords broken down and tied to matching ads? Are you giving searches the product they’re looking for? Are you selling it in a compelling way? Take a look at how others are promoting their services and test some new ideas.

Want to know more? Take a look at this video all about the new feature.

If you want to know how Euston Digital can help with your Pay Per Click campaign, then get in touch.

Tags: Google AdWords, pay per click
Posted in PPC | No Comments »

Google AdWords Sitelinks: An update

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Last year we let you know all about a great new feature in AdWords called Sitelinks.

This is what it looks like:

This feature lets you add additional words to your AdWords creative that link to deeper pages within your site.

From a users perspective its great – you can quickly navigate to the best page on the destination website. And from an AdWords advertiser perspective its good news too – you can dominate more of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) and boost CTR through the roof.

An update

Sitelinks used to appear just for the top advertiser, and only when that advertiser had a high quality score. In the last week Google has updated ‘Sitelinks’ so that more than 1 advertiser can recieve them. Here’s an example:

What does this mean for Advertisers?

Its mixed news. If you were previously the top advertiser and the only one with Sitelinks, you’ve now lost that privileged position. As your CTR drops you’re going to have to increase your bids to maintain position.

However, if you were not the top advertisers, now you’ve got an opportunity to boost CTR with sitelinks even when you’re outside of the top position.

Try it, test it.

As ever, the only way to work out what is best for each campaign is to test adding Sitelinks, and see what effect it has on CTR, Cost and ultimately ROI.

If you want Euston Digital to use our world class pay per click management to help you test, then get in touch.

Tags: Google AdWords, quality score, Sitelinks
Posted in PPC | No Comments »

Euston Digital achieves AdWords Certified Partner Status

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Back in 2003 Euston Digital was the first agency to become Google AdWords Professionals. We achieved this by taking and passing the very first AdWords exam.

The Google AdWords Professional Program has now been replaced by the AdWords Certified Partner program.

This basic difference is that the new program raises the bar on being AdWords qualified. The old exam has been replaced by four new ones. There’s the Basic AdWords Certification. And then there are advanced exams in Search, Display and Analytics.

Euston Digital are part of the first wave of agencies to achieve this status. This means that our clients can be reassured we’re on the cutting edge of developments in paid search advertising. We stay up to date with the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts, and our clients can be sure our knowledge will help them effectively manage their campaigns campaigns.

Here’s the shiny new logo, along with a link to our new status checker:

To find out how our Pay Per Click Management can help turn a profit from your search campaigns, get in touch.

Tags: AdWords certified partner, adwords professionals, Google AdWords
Posted in PPC | No Comments »

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 | 9 Comments »