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.

Let’s face it: taking on a client’s legacy pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is a little like the tortures of the damned.  Most agencies starting with a new client will instinctively want to just start fresh — make a clean break from the past and just build something perfect from the word go.

But remember the old adage “no pain, no gain.”

Even though your client’s old, poorly-built pay-per-click campaign may cause a gag reflex, an “incremental improvement” approach is still best.  Making incremental changes provides the ability to effectively track the impact of each one while avoiding the kinds of radical end-results that may feel too extreme to the client.  This approach also clearly demonstrates your value to the client.

Here’s some rules we’ve learned along the way to on-board your new client’s PPC campaigns smoothly and efficiently:

1)  Set expectations. Unrealistic expectations pertaining to online advertising still abound.  Many clients expect extremely low click costs and 100 percent of visitors to their website to convert.  Make sure to at least do level-setting on cost, conversions and how long it will take before the campaign will get to target goals.

2) Set-up campaign monitoring and review schedules. Unrealistic expectations about PPC advertising are usually accompanied by ignorance on how to view and judge campaign performance.  Create custom reports for your clients to keep them focused on the same metrics you’ll be focusing on.  It’s also helpful to set up frequent review calls initially to guide the client on how to interpret results.

3)  Adjust the campaign settings. This is an easy place to start after importing a client’s campaign and is an important foundation to have in place before attempting other optimizations.  Some common mistakes we see in the settings are targeting in the search and content networks, targeting computers and mobile devices, targeting more than one language, targeting too big of a geographic area and not taking advantage of ad extensions. Here’s a blog post on some commonly overlooked PPC campaign settings that will help make an impact.

4)  Build-out an exhaustive negative keywords list. This is another crucial element to have in place before you start to judge the performance of other keywords.  One easy place to start to find negative keywords (aside from our own Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies application) is to look inside of AdWords at the keyword list and clicking the “See Search Terms” button.  This shows all of the actual search queries that triggered an ad and then a click.   Having negative keyword lists of at least several hundred (if not a couple thousand) keywords is most effective.

5)  Turn off poor performing keywords. Get rid of the low hanging fruit.  Usually we’ll find some single term keywords set to broad match with a horrible quality score, low CTR, poor traffic quality, no assists and really high cost per conversion.  Eliminate all the budget hogs that just don’t deliver.  (Watch this carefully, however.  Many poorly-built campaigns may, nevertheless, have been delivering traffic that converts by phone or upon repeat visits that don’t show up in conversion reports.  If you delete what appears to be a poor-performing keyword and traffic or offline conversions tank, be the first to spot this and make corrections as appropriate!)

6)  Organize tight-knit ad groups with highly relevant ad copy and landing pages. Organize the “keeper” keywords from the campaign into very small ad groups.  As part of this process, we re-write the ads for each ad group using basic, solid copy along with snippets that have performed well in the past.  Tailor the ad copy and landing pages for each of the ad groups as much as practicable.

7)  Expand on keyword areas that perform. Now that all the ducks are in a row, you can start to build out robust keyword lists for the areas that have shown performance potential.  This can include adding new match types and singular / plural variations into the ad groups you set up in step 5, or expanding in new directions for performing keyword themes and with new ad groups.

Once you’re done, you’ll have a campaign that is delivering results, and easy to monitor and continually improve.  And you’ll also have a client who remained heart attack-free throughout the process!

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.)

Even advanced PPC ad campaign managers can get a little flummoxed by ad groups.  But by setting up campaigns that include tightly-focused ad groups you can greatly improve quality scores, lower costs-per-click, increase click-through rates and reduce bounce rates.  What follows is a high-level Q & A followed by three advanced tips for managing ad groups.

Q: Why do ad groups exist?

A: The purpose of pay-per-click ad groups is to ensure that the most relevant ad appears for a keyword search; and that upon clicking on any given ad, the searcher will arrive at the most relevant landing page.

Q: Won’t Google automatically pick the most relevant keyword from a PPC campaign and show the most closely-related ad?

A: Sadly, No.  If you have any keyword overlap in your campaign (which almost everyone does) factors such as varying bids and quality scores frequently cause a more generic keyword to trigger an ad rather than the more specific one.

Q: How can you set up ad groups to ensure the most relevant ad always appears?

A: Following are three techniques to ensure that your most relevant keyword will be triggered and therefore your most relevant ad (with the most relevant landing page) will be shown.

1) Extremely Fine-Grained Ad Groups

Use separate ad groups for all differences in terminology, concept and “tail size”.  This will often translate into 1-5 keywords per ad group, but allows you to write very relevant ad copy and associate the most specific landing page.  In our example below organic coffee, fair trade coffee and organic fair trade coffee each get their own ad group.  The ads for each of these ad groups will re-use the keyword text and the landing page will be focused on what the user has typed in as the search – highlighting organic or the fair trade aspect, or both.

2) Ad-Group Level Negative Keywords

For the purposes of this discussion, I’m not referring to the keywords which are irrelevant to your business, but rather keywords which are used in other ad groups.  In our example we have ad groups which contain broader head terms (organic coffee and fair trade coffee) and ad groups which contain long-tail terms (organic fair trade coffee).  We use the long-tail additions as negatives in the head terms ad group to ensure that if a searcher enters the longer tail term, the long tail keyword and ad will be triggered.  In our example we added fair trade as a negative for the organic groups and organic as a negative for the fair trade groups to ensure that the longer tail term organic fair trade coffee will be triggered when appropriate.

3) Ad Groups By Match Type

For broad match keywords, your ad copy is likely to be somewhat more generic and your landing page may be more general; whereas when a searcher enters a more exact phrase or exact search term, you can make your ad copy and landing page much more specific.  To control the keyword match type that is triggered, break out your match types into separate ad groups and use negative exact and negative phrase keywords to ensure that the most specific keyword match is triggered.  You can see in our example above that each of the match type has its own ad group, with the match types from the other groups used as negatives.

While it is time-consuming to fine-tune your ad groups, having control of the ad that appears (and the associated landing page the searcher is brought to) is a critical component to PPC success.  This advanced set up will also help you to judge your keyword performance in a much more accurate fashion.

One of the major touted benefits of Google AdWords’ Quality Score system for advertisers is that the “little guys” should be able to compete with the “big guys” on a level playing field.

However, 99 percent of the small and medium-sized business that we work with come to us with such low quality scores, they are the ones being punished by the very system that is supposed to help them out.

Many small businesses don’t even know about Quality Score.  Of the businesses that do know about it, most are only familiar with the high-level requirements that keywords, ads and landing pages should all be relevant.  In the mind of the small advertiser, they have created a relevant ad campaign.  Small advertisers lack the time and resources to figure out quality score on their own, and also lack the budget to pay an expert to get them a great quality score.

Big advertisers know about Quality Score, and pay someone to take care of it for them.  So the big advertisers end up with the winning combination of great quality scores and large budgets.

So: how much does Quality Score matter? A ton. Quality Score is a direct factor in determining:

If your ad is eligible to be shown. Keyword / ad combinations with very low quality scores are not always shown.

What position your ad will appear in. Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

How much you pay per click. Actual CPC = (Ad Rank to beat ÷ Quality Score) + $0.01

What’s Quality Score should advertisers be striving for?

First, make sure you are keeping track of your quality score.  Quality Score are actually based on keyword and ad combinations, but in AdWords they are shown at the keyword level   The Quality Score column is hidden by default, so you’ll need to click on the columns option and to add it in.

Google shows a simplified score within AdWords based on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the worst rating and 10 being the best.  They do add some qualitative descriptors to the scores “Poor”, “OK” and “Great.”

You should strive to have all of your keywords show a quality score between 7-10.

For any keywords with a quality score of 1-3.  You’ll need to give some long, hard thought as to how important these are to your advertising campaign.  Most of the time it’s easiest to just delete these and start fresh with new variations.  Keywords with quality scores of 4-6 are usually pretty easily repaired.

The Fastest, Easiest Way to Improve Your Quality Score

Don’t advertise on any single-word keywords. These are too vague, get them out of your account.

Create super small ad groups, so that you can repeat the keywords inside of your ad copy multiple times. Here’s an example:

Getting the picture?  It’s not rocket science, but it is a data entry nightmare.

Check the call out button next to your quality score within AdWords to see if it says anything about your landing page.  If it does, the landing page issue (often speed) needs to be fixed.  If not, don’t worry about your landing page.

Start to use negative keywords.  This will weed out unwanted ad impressions.  Here are two great resources for getting started:

In AdWords, select the Keywords tab, set the date range to view a couple months worth of data.  In the menu select to sell all of the search terms.  Look through this list and add any words that aren’t relevant to your website as negative keywords.

Think about all of the basic types of searches done that include your target keywords, but aren’t relevant: (1) People hunting for jobs (job, jobs, employment, resume, salaries, etc.); people hunting for pictures or presentations (pic, pics, pictures, ppt, etc.); or people hunting for reading material (news, industry, market, blog, blogs, forum, forums, etc.)

So if you are a “little guy” we recommend you start to monitor your quality score and make steps towards having a great quality score to help level your playing field.

We’ve been busy at Yield Software — this is the second big announcement in as many weeks, and there’s more to come — and today’s announcement is going to make a lot of businesses happy. Today we released the newest version of our flagship offering, which we’re calling Yield Web Marketing Suite Lite. It’s a completely free version focused just on PPC campaign management for smaller budgets.

Advertisers continue to shift from more traditional advertising channels, such as direct mail, spot cable, radio, and print ads, to online marketing channels, especially search engine marketing (SEM). However, many are unsuccessful in their SEM efforts and fail to generate the desired returns from their marketing campaigns.

Search engine marketing is a competitive and dynamic marketplace. Manually managing SEM campaigns requires significant domain knowledge and expertise, including understanding bid and competitive dynamics, keyword selection, geo-targeting, conversion tracking, traffic analytics and many other factors.

The Yield Web Marketing Suite automates SEM campaigns using our proprietary bid optimization algorithm, enabling businesses to better compete in PPC advertising. With the introduction of Yield Web Marketing Suite Lite, it’s now also the only algorithmically-driven bid management solution that optimizes campaigns across all three major search engines simultaneously and is completely free. Advertisers can manage up to $500 per month in PPC advertising at no charge. For those who choose to increase their monthly ad budgets or who wish to also use the other two modules in the Yield Web Marketing Suite (Natural Search Optimizer and Landing Page Optimizer) can simply upgrade to our standard system.  Together with our free SEO Analyzer, companies operating under tight marketing budgets now have two important tools to better their web marketing performance at no cost to them.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

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.

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.

We often get questions from customers about which search engines would be best to run their search ads on. What search engines, they often ask, present the road most likely to get them to advertising success?  While in most instances the answer is “optimize across all three major search engines to get at the best possible results”, for some businesses it may make sense to focus on alternative strategies.  But how?

In order to answer this question, let’s think about what you are looking for in a search engine and what pay-per-click (PPC) advertising objectives you’re trying to reach. The answer usually includes some variation of the following:

You want…

exposure and results – leads, sales, strong word-of-mouth, etc.

at an…

affordable cost-per-click and a profitable return on investment.

I’m sure it’s not breaking news, but this scenario can often be quite a challenge for many businesses — particularly small businesses — to achieve. Most businesses just starting out on PPC advertising try out Google because it’s well-known and because, let’s face it, it generates about 65 percent of the total search traffic on the Web. But there are some alternatives out there that may produce results as good as or better than Google at a lower overall cost per acquisition. Sometimes, in other words, it’s best to consider the road less traveled.  Try thinking about your options like this:

1) The Interstate – Google

What’s possible: huge exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: bigger budgets (i.e., $1,000 per month for less competitive keywords; tens of thousands of dollars or more per month for very competitive keywords) and hard work.

For exposure and volume of visitors, this is the place to be seen. And Google is more than capable of bringing in very good results. However, it is also the winner in the categories of highest cost per click and budget you’ll need for exposure.  Because there is such high traffic and competition on Google, they’ve had to institute some very stringent measures in the form of a quality score system, which can be tough to understand and navigate if you are not an expert.

So, although it’s a big wide road with lots of traffic, Google isn’t a casual Sunday drive. This search engine requires a detailed map with lots of turn-by-turn instructions to actually achieve real results.

2) The Side Road – Bing

What’s possible: decent exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: a medium-size budget (i.e., starting at $750 per month for less competitive keywords in less competitive markets).

Though a side road, Bing is no bumpy byway you use only to avoid heavy traffic – in fact, we’ve found Bing can be a shortcut to great online advertising results. Our recent experience with PPC ad campaign results from Bing is, quite simply, “Wow!” If you haven’t tried it yet, it would be well worth your while to give it a shot.

Bing very often provides a lower cost-per-click than Google, which means a lower budget is required for full exposure. Bing also offers a much easier on-ramp since its quality guidelines are much less opaque than Google’s. With Bing, you can just turn on something basic and get good results without all the hassle of divining what your quality score is and why. We’ve also seen very impressive traffic quality and conversion results from Bing over the last couple months. It looks like Bing is certainly on the rise as a search engine and should not be underestimated.

3) Well Off the Beaten Path – Business.com

What’s possible: modest exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: smaller budgets can suffice (i.e. $250 per month for less competitive keywords).

While everyone has heard of Google and Bing, not everyone has considered Business.com. Many businesses just don’t have the budget to compete for the keywords in their space and markets on Google and Bing. Many of these advertisers, however, have found PPC advertising success with Business.com. It’s the exact same style of advertising as conducted on Google and Bing, but for much lower costs, while still delivering results. So if your budget is too limited for Google and your space is too crowded on Bing, try out Business.com.

4) Off-Road – Facebook

What’s possible: targeted exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: small-to-medium size budgets.

Though not exactly the same sort of PPC advertising as the others, the ad platform on Facebook is similar in many ways to what you will find on Google, Bing and Business.com.  On the Facebook platform, you specify keywords that folks you’re targeting use in their profiles and updates, and you can also specify demographic, psychographic and geographic characteristics to further target your ad.  While mostly text, Facebook ads can also include a single graphical element, which its easy-to-use system helps you to incorporate into your ads step-by-step.

Facebook is vying with Google to be the most-visited website in the world (it may have already surpassed Google, in fact), and it’s a traffic source that should not be overlooked.  Because it’s not exactly the same kind of thoroughfare as the search engines listed above, you do need to spend some time understanding the differences and nuances involved.  But don’t let that deter you from experimenting with this potentially rich source of traffic to your website.

5) Uncharted Territory – Yahoo! Search

What’s possible: good exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: larger budgets.

Later this year, Bing and Yahoo! will integrate search engine operations, and Bing will begin providing results for searches completed on Yahoo!  Currently one of the top three most visited sites in the world, with an enormously popular email system and some of the best-trafficked content portals on the Web (think Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Personals or Yahoo! Autos), Yahoo! Search should not be overlooked.  Still, it’s clear this search engine is in a state of massive transition.  It can be tough to optimize campaigns on Yahoo! and its rules are in many ways quite dissimilar to those in use on Google and Bing, which means you need to bring a whole different intuitive sense to using the system.  And costs-per-click for your keywords are often similar (or identical) to Google’s, though you can get some bargains on Yahoo!  Finally, in our experience traffic and conversions from Yahoo! have fallen behind Bing’s performance of late, so while there are still opportunities on Yahoo!, it’s probably best not to use Yahoo! as a primary search advertising conduit until the Bing-Yahoo! integration is completed late this year and early next year.

Currently, the Yield Web Marketing Suite makes it both easy and profitable to coordinate and optimize your PPC ad campaigns across Google, Yahoo! Search and Bing.  And we’re actively looking at how to expand to include additional PPC ad platforms.  But let’s face it: in most cases, the best road map for acquiring traffic at the lowest possible cost is optimizing your PPC campaigns across the three best-known, most-used engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Our services experts are always available to you to help you to get the most from your pay-per-click advertising campaigns and to provide objective advice about roads less traveled, so never hesitate to ask for help.

A great pay-per-click (PPC) keyword strategy is central to any campaign’s success, so getting your list right is absolutely critical. Once your campaign is live, the Yield Web Marketing Suite works every day to make recommendations to you about new keywords you might consider together with negative keyword recommendations. This guide, then, will help you create a great keyword list in advance of launching a new campaign in four easy steps: 1) Questions; 2) Keyword Tools; 3) Variations; and 4) Assembly.

1) Questions.

Use the following question categories to start making your list. As you go through and answer these questions, keep your thoughts organized into the different buckets – we’ll keep using these categories in future steps. Throughout this guide we’ll use an example of a restaurant for you to get a feel for how it works.

Names: What are all the names of the products or services that you sell? (i.e., restaurant, dining, dinner, bar, grill, happy hour, brunch, buffet, steak joint)

Adjectives: What are common adjectives used to describe those products? (i.e., steak, fine, fancy, all you can eat, affordable, 5 star, best)

Attributes: What attributes does your product have? (i.e., fireplace, live music, bands, entertainment, lounge, full bar, gift cards lakeside, lakeshore, shore, on the water, views)

Searcher Desires: What actions does the searcher want to take with your product? (i.e., eat, takeout, drink, dance, walking distance)

Website Actions: What are the actions you want people to take on your site? (i.e., reserve, reservations, order)

Website Information: What types of information do you offer on your site? (i.e., reviews, specials, pictures, menu)

Location: Where are you located? (i.e., San Mateo, San Mateo, CA, San Mateo, California, Bay Area, South of San Francisco, Close to town, in town, by town, around town, near town, local)

Emotions: How are your searchers feeling, or what do they want to feel? (i.e., hungry, romantic, casual, low-key, cozy)

Events: Under what circumstances does the searcher need you? (i.e., special occasion, group party, valentines, anniversary, thanksgiving, girls night out)

2) Keyword Tools.

Now that you’ve got a starter list, let’s expand it beyond the terms that you naturally think of. Following are some great tools you can use to expand your keyword list. As you find related terms through these following keyword sources, put them into the buckets you started to use above. It will make building your actual keyword list later on much easier. Also, as you go along and see words that you don’t want your ads to appear for, and make note of those for your negative keywords list.

Thesaurus.com: Enter your words from above and jot down all the applicable terms for saying the same thing. Their visual thesaurus can is a great way to see the data. Jot down antonyms that you wouldn’t want your ads to appear for as negative keywords.

Quintura.com: Enter some of your key product phrases from above. Click on items that are related to you to see more ideas appear. Be sure to read through the results on the right-hand side of the page for even more ideas.

Google Search: Wow, this one seems boring, eh? But, it’s a great tool. Enter you basic keywords – as you are entering pay attention to the related searches that Google displays as you type. Then after you click search take some time to read through the ad copy, the organic listings and check out some of the websites. You’ll be surprised how many variations on your keywords you’ll discover here.

Google WonderWheel: As long as you’ve got Google open, click on the Show Options link at the top. Then on the left-hand side click on the Wonder Wheel option. This works in a similar way to Quintura. Just click around the wheel to find related terms.

Google Related Searches: One more option inside of Google is the Related Searches. Click on the Related Searches link (you’ll see this right above the Wonder Wheel option). Click on any of the related searches at the top to view their results and scan through the page for great terms.

Competitor Websites: One of those few times your competitors actually have some value to offer you! Visit your competitor’s websites and look at the terms they use to describe their product and make sure you’ve got those covered as well. This is also great insight into the keywords they are likely using in their pay per click campaigns.

Google Alerts: Sign up for a comprehensive Google Alert pertaining to your product. This is a fantastic source to find out how people are talking about your product and what they are looking for. It’s also one of the best sources to develop a robust set of negative keywords.

TweetBeeb: Keep track of what people are saying about your product type, industry or location on Twitter. Similar to a Google Alert, but based on Tweets.

Yahoo Answers: Do a search for your product or industry and look for the terms that people are using to talk about it and what they are typically seeking.

3) Variations.

You should now have a pretty hearty list of categorized words and also a great start at a list of negatives. Now it’s time for just a few finishing touches to the words that you have identified so far.

Singulars / Plurals: Make sure to include the singular and plural version of all of your keywords.

Hyphen, Non-Hyphen, 2 words, 1 word versions of the word: web site, website, web-site,

Apostrophe and non-apostrophe versions of words: San Mateo’s, San Mateos

4) Assembly.

Drum roll please… all that’s left is to assemble your keyword research! Here’s how to put your keyword phrases together:

Names + Adjectives (lakeshore restaurant, fine dining restaurant)
Names + Attributes (restaurant with live music, byob restaurants)
Names + Searcher Desires (eat at bar restaurant, Chinese takeout)
Names + Website Actions (restaurant reservations, order restaurant gift card)
Names + Website Information (restaurant reviews, restaurant menus)
Names + Location (restaurants in san mateo, local breakfast buffet)
Names + Emotions (romantic restaurant, cozy steak joint)
Names + Events (restaurant for valentines, thanksgiving brunch)

To branch into longer-tail keywords, just use combos of three categories at a time. For example: Event + Name + Location (i.e., “special occasion restaurant in the bay area”).

Now you are off to the races. If you don’t have a big enough budget to support your fantastic list, start small and slowly introduce more as you find the keyword niches that bring you customers.