This blog post is focused on Google AdWords advertising in the United States.  Please note that other search engines and other countries have different rules.

What you can do:

You can use your competitor’s name and other trademarks as target keywords in your ppc campaign.  Competitive ads can bring in relevant traffic that is really affordable, so it’s almost always worth exploring.

Your competitor might call you to complain about this, or send you threatening e-mails.  You should feel free to ignore these requests.

What you can’t do:

You cannot use your competitors name or trademarks in your ad copy.  Google will automatically disapprove the ad if it catches someone else’s trademark in your ad copy that you are not approved to use.  This also means you should not try using dynamic keyword insert to have your competitor’s trademark appear in your ad copy.

How to get the best results:

Since your keywords and ad copy will appear unrelated to Google, you should expect a low quality score.  But even with a low quality score, the cost per click for competitive advertising is usually significantly lower than other keywords.  Following are some tips on how to get the best results:

Ad Copy: The “usual offers” such as a free trial or free shipping won’t be effective here.  Instead, try a complementary offer that can lure in everyone – even prospects who think they have already decided to go with your competitor.  Ideas here are a kit or guide they can download, a whitepaper on a hot industry topic, or access to reviews and comparisons.  Offering substantial discounts can also be effective.  Whatever it is, in this case even more than others, your ad must stand out more and your offer and call to action must be much stronger than the trademark owner’s.

Keywords:  Using only your competitor’s trademark may have limited effectiveness.  But, there are a couple areas where you are likely to find much better performance.  1) Keyword phrases which imply the searcher is still researching and hasn’t yet chosen to go with your competitor.  For example, if I were selling saleforce automation software, I would target the keyword “Salesforce reviews.”  2) Keyword phrases which imply the searcher is frustrated with your competitor.  For example, if I were advertising for Google Chrome, I would target the keyword phrase “IE is slow.”

Just be sure to do unto yourself as you do unto others…. so if someone out there is searching for your own trademark and expressing frustration or skepticism of a scam, be sure that you are the first ad that appears, not your competitor’s!

Are you satisfied with the click-through rate of your Google Adwords campaign?

If you’ve taken the time to target relevant keywords and feel you have a compelling offer in your ad copy, it can be incredibly frustrating when the CTR for your campaign just isn’t at an acceptable level.

If you want to give your click-through rate on Google AdWords a boost, here are five super fast moves you can make:

1)      Try out Modified Broad Match. Look for keywords with a low CTR that are on broad match.  Start using modified broad match for these keywords.  You can do this by putting a + sign before the most important words in the keyword phrase.  Here’s more on how it works from Google AdWords.

2)      Target the same geographic area, but at a lower level. Target all the individual states instead of the United States, or target all the individual cities instead of a state.  This will get you an extra line on your ad copy and make you appear more relevant to searchers.

3)      Add in Negative Keywords. Weed out irrelevant impressions by adding in negative keywords.  Go to Keywords – See Search Terms.  Identify any words that aren’t relevant and add them in as negative keywords.

4)      Fine-tune where your ads display. Change your campaign settings to show ads on Search network only (rather than Search & Content network).  Also, set your campaign device setting to show your ads on computers only instead of computers and mobile devices.

5)      Give your ad some more bold. Copy your best performing ad.  Add it to the ad group with keywords with the lowest CTR.  Put the main keywords from the ad group into the page title, once in the description lines and preceding or trailing the URL display (separated by dashes.)  After adding in this ad, pause the worst-performing ad in the ad group.

Improving your CTR has a direct impact on your quality score and therefore your ad position and cost you pay per click.  So it’s important to shoot for the moon by making regular adjustments to continually improve your performance.

We commonly hear complaints from clients that the conversion numbers reported by Google Adwords and Google Analytics are not accurate.  Most commonly we hear:  “Google AdWords conversions don’t match my transaction log” and “the conversions in Google AdWords and the conversions in Google Analytics don’t match.”  This usually leads to distrust and frustration on the part of the advertiser.  Our standard answer is “no, they won’t match, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t accurate”

Here’s a quick explanation of how conversion reporting works in Google AdWords and Google Analytics.  Once you understand what they are tracking and how they are reporting the data, you’ll be able to look at the data in a whole new light.

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking:

First click attribution:  The keyword that triggers your ad the first time the searcher visits your site will be credited with the conversion (even if they converted on a subsequent visit through a different search).  The conversion date will be recorded on the first day the searcher clicked on your ad (which may be earlier than the actual day the conversion occurred.)  This is why AdWords conversions will not match your transaction log and why the data you see for previous time periods continues to change even after that time period has passed.

30-day cookie: Google AdWords tracks a visitor for 30 days after they click on your ad.

3^rd party cookie:  Google AdWords conversion tracking uses a 3^rd party cookie, which means it’s more vulnerable to being blocked and removed.

Filters invalid clicks.  If you receive invalid clicks that have associated conversions, those conversions will be removed from your AdWords reporting.

Google Analytics:

Last click attribution.  The last keyword the searcher used to access your site when they converted is given credit for the conversion.  The conversion is recorded on the actual day of the conversion event.

6 month cookie.  By default, Google Analytics tracks a visitor for 6 months after they visit your site.

^1st party cookie.  This means it’s a bit less vulnerable to being blocked or removed.

Does not filter invalid clicks.  If you have invalid clicks that led to a conversion being recorded, they are not removed from your Analytics account.

But wait, there’s more!  Knowing only the first clicks and last clicks which led to a conversion is just a small part of the story.  What about all those clicks and impressions in between?

When you have Adwords and Google Analytics sharing data, you can see first clicks, last clicks and all the clicks and impressions in between (referred to as Assists) that resulted in a conversion on your website.  To see these reports, go to your Adwords account and select Reporting -> Conversions.  In the pane on the left-hand side click on the Search Funnels link.

There are several fantastic reports here that will show you all of the clicks and impressions, along with paths and time lags for your conversions.

Using these reports, you can easily get a picture of the role that each of your keywords play in the conversion story to make improvements that will truly improve the performance of your pay-per-click campaign.

When’s the last time you’ve reviewed the settings for your pay-per-click campaign?  There are some default settings you’ll want to modify and also some new features you don’t want to miss out on.

1)  Networks. This one is more well-known, but I mention it here because the recommendations in this blog post focus on the search network only.  No campaign should even run on both the Search and Display Networks (which is the default setting).  Check the “Let me choose…” option to target only one network per campaign.

2)  Devices. By default Google sets your campaign to run on computers and mobile devices with full internet browsers such as the iPhone.  We recommend targeting only one device type per campaign.  Set your campaign to run on desktop and laptop computers only.  If you want to target mobile devices, create a separate campaign.  Mobile behaviors are different, so mobile performance should be viewed and optimized separately.

3) Ad Extensions. Ad Extensions have made such a huge lift in the CTR of ads that AdWords has moved these settings to their own tab.  There are 4 different types of ad extensions you can have displayed with your ads:

Sitelinks Extensions. These are the extra links to your website that appear beneath your ad when you have a great quality score and appear in one of the top ad spots.  Everyone should be using these.  There is no campaign that can’t benefit from the CTR boost that Sitelinks provide.  For more information on how to make the most of your Sitelinks, check out these Sitelinks Recommendations.

Location Extensions.  This setting creates an extra address line that appears beneath your ad.  The address will appear with a link to show a map if it’s in a top ad spot.  Otherwise the address will appear as an extra line of text beneath your ad.  If you are a local business, or trying to drive people to a location, enter your addresses here, or hook to your Google Places account.  We recommend that anyone with a business address use this extension.  The address only displays when it’s within a reasonable distance of the searcher and everyone like to do business with someone close by even if you are a national company.

Phone Extensions.  If you are targeting mobile devices and want to have your phone number displayed and click-to-call enabled, add your phone number here.

Product Extensions.  This setting will enable the searcher to preview your products within your PPC ad.  If you have a product feed that can be visualized, hook up your Google Merchant account here.  We recommend thinking beyond the typical retailer here – pictures of software products, pictures of homes for sale, pictures of hotel rooms – all kinds of businesses can benefit from a Google Merchant Product Feed.

4)  Ad Scheduling.  Every campaign can benefit from Ad Scheduling.  Google Analytics has now made it super easy for you to view your campaign’s performance by day of the week and hour of the day.  Go to Google Analytics -> Traffic Sources -> AdWords -> Day Parts.

Here you will see the performance of your campaign by day of the week within the chart.

And by hour of the day within the table.

There are 2 things you are looking for here:

Any day of the week, or hours of the day that consistently underperform.  You’ll want to either turn these off or lower your bids for these times.

Any day of the week, or hours of the day that have amazing performance.  You can increase your bids for these times so you get the most exposure during the peak performing times.

Once you have top and bottom day and hour performers, go back to your AdWords campaign to the Advanced Settings Ad Scheduling option.

In the ad scheduling popup, make 2 adjustments at the top.  Select the Bid adjustment link and select the 24 hour link.

Click on any days that you want to you identified as over-achievers or under-performers in you Analytics analysis.

To turn them off, just enter the hours you don’t want them to run and select the Not Running option – you can copy them to other days of the week if you want to.

To increase bids, just enter the hours and enter the increased bid percentage for your best performing hours – for example 120%.

To decrease bids for those time periods which perform less well, but you still want your ads to run, you can enter a percentage less that 100% here for those day parts.

For example, common settings for a B2B company are turning off ads on the weekends, bumping up bids during peak hours during the day and lowering bids for off-hours in the middle of the night on week days.  Ad Scheduling is a great way to only pay a premium when you expect to get premium results.

If you’re not using one or more of these features in AdWords with your PPC campaigns, you should start immediately.  (If you’re not already using the Yield Web Marketing Suite, we can help.)

First off, just in case you are not yet using them, Sitelinks ad extensions are now available to all AdWords advertisers.   These extra links to your website display with your ad when 1) your keyword and ad combo has an awesome quality score and 2) your ad appears in the top positions of the search page.

Google, and many others have seen CTRs increase an average of 30% with Sitelinks, so they are really an incredible opportunity to boost the performance of your AdWords advertising.

AdWords allows you to enter up to 10 additional Sitelinks.  When creating your Sitelinks, it’s important to be mindful of the order in which you enter them.  The first two that you enter will get the most impressions, so be sure to make those your most compelling.  It’s also quite rare to see more than 4-6 display with an ad, so there’s no need to spend much effort going beyond six links.

In analyzing how Sitelinks are being used, many advertisers have started out by just including category type links highlighting different sections of their website.

These ads still stand out more than the average ad due to their increased size and coloring.  But, we are advertisers after all, so why miss out on an additional opportunity to advertise and sell, sell, sell!

Each of the Sitelinks can include up to 35 characters, so this is not an advertising opportunity to take lightly.  Here are some tips on how to put those Sitelinks to strong advertising use:

Incorporate offers.   Not only does it make the offers and ads stand out, but it’s also super easy to maintain.  Be sure when the searcher clicks on link they are taken to a page that includes the promotional offer.

Include your phone number. Numbers always stand out in ads and on search pages, so why not have your phone number in bright blue directly underneath your ad?  This is a good opportunity to link to your contact us page.

• Offers with numbers. While we are on the subject of numbers, incorporating the details of your offer in numbers can really stand out.  Here we see some repetition that makes the ad stand out quite a bit.

• Incorporate all ad best practices.  Initial caps, strong calls to action, exclamation points, numbers… this is just another place to use all those pieces of flair that have been successful in your text ads in the past.

A few words of caution:

• Less can be more. While advertisers jump at the chance for all this extra ad text, going overboard can end up making your ad be too hard to digest in the split second that a searcher wants to dedicate to deciphering if it’s worth a click.

• Stay current. Keep Sitelinks up to date for the season and current offers.

While in the beginning of summer grills, patio furniture and air conditioners were hot items, as fall approaches these might be what the searcher is most interested in.

Start getting crafty with your Sitelinks today and watch your CTRs climb.

As I look back over the last few months and consider the developers’ conferences for Twitter, Facebook and Google, when taken together with Apple’s iPad / iAd introductions, the first half of this year has been nothing short of breathtaking.

At the I|O Conference last week, Google made it abundantly clear it’s going after Apple (and many others), and that they’re all in for HTML5. It’s also clear Google is all in for TV by officially introducing Google TV. One last thing Google is all-in for is mobile, and announced a new Android OS.

One thing they don’t seem to care much about any more is search. That is, it would be easy to conclude that, since search per se didn’t come up once during the conference.

But it’s easy to see why all the things Google is all-in for plays into their core search strength. Before I elaborate on this point, however, consider some numbers:

• More than 100,000 Android-enabled devices are being sold every day, overtaking sales of the iPhone worldwide.

• While there are one billion computer users globally, there are two billion mobile users. And as more and more searches emanate from smart phones these days, its getting easier to imagine these outpacing computer-based searches.

• Moreover, there are four billion TV users around the world; in the U.S., folks spend, on average, five hours per day watching the old boob tube (that’s an old-timey term for TV, not porn.)

• According to Google, $70 billion is spent on television advertising in the United States alone.

So, yeah, it’s easy to see why Google is all about these other things: it all comes back to its core search advertising strengths. The embrace of HTML5 similarly plays to their core strength while also improving the prospects of another key Google priority: YouTube (the boob tube of the 21st century).

A key reason why HTML5 is a darling not only at Google, but also at Apple and Microsoft, is because the as yet un-ratified Web development language supports, among other things, video, graphics and audio. Which means search engine crawlers are now able to index all those bits of web sites that were formerly unindexable (like Flash animations or Flash-enabled video.) Moreover, because these bits can be tagged via HTML5, they can be indexed more accurately.

As search engine optimization pros struggle to understand how to optimize sites for Facebook’s Open Graph, which was announced only a few weeks ago, they must now also contend with migrating to HTML5 – fast. Those that lag might potentially see a diminution in search rank as more nimble sites make the transition faster.

And what about Google TV? First, watch the video. Then, consider all the ways in which Google might use its expertise in marrying just-in-time ads generated from its bidding platform with all the intentions we might express when doing searches (powered by the Android OS and the Chrome browser) via Google TV. Though I imagine they’re going to be more focused on Content Network-type advertising (potentially expanded to enable the just-in-time placement of interstitials in YouTube videos), there will likely also be appropriate ways to include text ads from AdWords.

Users will also be able to visit a favored Web site via Google TV and instantly turn that into a widget displayed on your TV screen, essentially creating a new TV channel that you can tune-in to any time. Add to that all the apps from Google’s app store that will accompany Google TV, and your TV will now go well beyond what your cable provider makes available.

Many of these apps have the potential of bringing social networking components to televised entertainment, such as HitPost, a social app focused on sporting events and which also provides the potential of highly targeted advertising. Advertisers of all stripes will have better targeting capabilities via multiple channels (both literally and figuratively) with much improved measurability.

For brands willing to serve as the early adopters of Google TV advertising opportunities, potentially big rewards – and pitfalls – await. In terms of HTML5, however, that’s a bandwagon all search marketers need to jump on sooner rather than later.  Web developers can get some information from the W3C site, the Standardista Blog and industry leaders are rushing to publish guidelines and materials (follow @HTML5Now on Twitter for regular updates.)

In a world where keyword recommendations are readily available, many advertisers have had the experience of logging into Google’s AdWords and seeing a message next to their campaign budget that says: “Limited by budget.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be limited by anything… especially by my budget!  Here are some answers to frequently asked questions:

What does it mean to be limited by budget?

Google will not display all your ads all the time for your keywords in order to avoid exceeding your daily budget.  If you’ve ever done a search for one of your keywords in the middle of the day and your ad hasn’t appeared, this may be why.

For those of you who live in a world of unlimited funds, Google will tell you the exact dollar amount to raise your budget to so your ads show 100% of the time.  All you have to do is click on the call-out preceding the “Limited by budget” message, raise your budget to the recommended amount and — viola — you are done!

What’s that you say? Money doesn’t grow on the tree in your office?

So is it okay to leave your campaign running in this limited state?

No!  Assuming that you are advertising because you are getting results, you have some keywords that bring in valuable traffic.  Being limited by your budget means that when a searcher types in these top keywords, your ad will not always appear – definitely not okay!

Think of it this way:  Let’s say you are at the horse races.  While you might identify lots of different horses to place bets on, you don’t have enough cash to be able to make all the bets you desire.    So, you determine the horses that you can afford and are most likely to win and then place bets on those.  AdWords works the same way — you should only bet only on keywords that fit into your budget.

How far has your desire exceeded your budget?

Click on the call-out preceding the “Limited by budget” message to find out the percentage of available impressions you are missing out on and Google’s recommended budget.  If you are missing more than 35 percent of available ad impressions and the recommended budget is more than double your current budget, you’ll need to reset your expectations and do some serious pruning.

While I am normally not a fan of machete-style campaign management (scalpels are much better tools), you’ll likely need a pretty heavy blade in order to trim your campaign and bring in line with your budget. 

Criteria for eliminating keywords unworthy of your budget:

Keywords with impressions, but no clicks. If you have a campaign that’s performing, these keywords should be easy to remove.  They are getting impressions, but searchers have not been compelled to click on your ad for them.  Especially focus on deleting keywords with the highest volume of impressions, but no clicks.

Keywords that have never gotten an impression. If your campaign is performing, these are another easy target for decreasing your keyword volume.  You can use Quality Score as another good second indicator – so if there are no impressions for a keyword and the quality score is less than seven, it’s a great candidate for removal.

High traffic keywords with poor results. You’ll want to tread lightly here, but take a look at keywords that do get a lot of clicks and, therefore, use up a lot of your budget.  Look at the stats for the individual keywords.  If you can identify one or more that have a bounce rate that’s over 60 percent, or a time on site less than 1 minute, and that have never brought you a conversion, such keywords are good candidates to pause.  Be very careful here, though, so as not to turn off keywords that assist in bringing back return visitors to your site–and let stats be your guide.

Keywords with a low CTR. Sort your keywords by their click-through rate (CTR).  If you have some keywords with a very low CTR – for example lower than 0.25 percent – and these keywords also have a high bounce rate, low time on site and / or no conversions, these are also good candidates to pause or remove.

Keywords with a bad quality score.  If you have keywords with a quality score of 4 or less and they have no clicks; or the traffic they bring in has a high bounce rate, low time on site and no conversions; these are good candidates to eliminate from your campaign.

Competing keywords. Campaigns frequently contain keywords that essentially compete with each other.  If you don’t know how to identify these, you can hover over the call-out next to a keyword and Google will let you know if that search term is already associated with another ad from your campaign.  It’s best to only have one keyword entering the auction so you aren’t competing against yourself, so pause the ones that are already covered elsewhere if they have not brought in any valuable traffic or conversions.

Please keep focused on your goal as you go through this exercise.  No one likes to cut back.  For every keyword you will hear a little “but” in your head and be very hesitant to take action.  Just remember: you want your ads to appear for your top keywords all the time, and the foregoing are the necessary steps to get there.

Cut out the lowest-performing keywords then give the campaign a couple days to adjust and see how your budget and performance are doing.  It may take several tries before you can get your campaign in line with your budget without sacrificing results.  We recommend that you go slow, but do not delay starting the process!

For those of you managing your PPC campaigns through our Yield Web Marketing Suite, our underlying optimization algorithms undertake these activities for you, recommending keywords to pause and which ones to double-down on, in order to get the best results from your budgets.  And, as always, feel free to contact our Customer Success Reps if you have questions or require guidance — we’re here to help.

But we say Hogwash!

Yes, there are lots of advanced features and complexities to online advertising, but you don’t have to use them. You can get started in a very simple and quick manner.

Here’s your step-by-step guide for using Google to start getting more business today:

1) Go to Google’s Keyword Tool

a.  Select the “Website Content” option
b.  Enter the URL of your home page
c.  Scroll to the bottom and click the link to export the results to Excel

2) Create a Google AdWords Account (if you don’t have one)

3) Create your first campaign in your AdWords Account

a. Create Ad Groups from your Excel export

i. The common terms column translates into your ad groups – create one ad group for each unique common term

b. Put Keywords into your Ad Groups

i. The keywords column includes the keywords you can target – if you agree they are applicable to your business. Add the applicable keywords to each of the ad groups based on the common term they are associated with. For the terms which aren’t applicable to your business – highlight them in red – we’ll get to those later.

c. Write two Ads for each Ad Group

i. Include the common term / ad group name in your headline
ii. Highlight your unique benefits in the first line, but don’t use superlatives. Fancy adjectives are encouraged.
iii. Include a call to action in the second line — something like: Sign up now. Call today for special pricing.
iv. Include your phone number in your ad copy if you want calls.
v. For your display URL use caps to separate the words and remove the http:// — for example:

www.MyWebSite.com

d. Add in Negative Keywords

i. With the campaign selected on the left-hand side, click the keywords tab and scroll all the way to the bottom – click on the negative keywords link. Now add the words within the red-highlighted keyword phrases that are not relevant to your business to the campaign negatives list. Not the whole phrase here – just the irrelevant part.

e. Set up Geo-Targeting

i. With the campaign still selected, click the “Settings” tab. Under locations click the “Edit” link. Click the “Custom” tab – here you can select a radius around your zip code you’d like to advertise for. Save it when you are done.

f. Opt-out of the Content Network

i. On this same “Settings” page, next to “Networks” click the “Edit” link. Deselect “Content.”

g. Enter your budget

i. On this same “Settings” page, enter your budget. Don’t go too low – certainly don’t try anything less than $5.00 per day, but try for $10.00 per day or more if you can. This is one of those situations – like all other marketing situations — where you have to spend money to make money. The beauty of this is that you can track results. You can also pause your campaign at any time if the monthly spend becomes too much.

And Voila! Now you are off to the races. Be sure to ask your new leads where they found you so you can see which customers are coming from your online advertising.

Give it a try. We’ve gotten many non-technical local business owners online this way – and they are amazed at the results! (For businesses who are looking to save time, manage PPC advertising beyond Google alone, or improve results, check out our Yield Web Marketing Suite — it’s a complete, easy and profitable way to manage and optimize your total search marketing effort.)