Google AdWords: how to lower your costs while selling more

1. Google AdWords: how to lower your costs while selling moreIf you advertise your website on Google AdWords, chances are that you found out that you can spent a lot of money on AdWords without getting a lot in return.
The reason why many people spend much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads is that they use the wrong settings in their campaigns.

Long tail keywords convert better and there are a lot of them

Several studies found out that long tail keywords have a much higher conversion rate than single word keywords. Long tail keywords are very specific keywords that consists of 4 or more words.
According to a recent Hitwise study, more than 18% of searches contain five or more keywords. In addition, Google says that "20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones [they] haven't seen in at least 90 days, if at all."

The wrong long tail keywords will just cost you money

The facts above indicate that it might be a good idea to use broad match for all of your keywords. It's just not possible to include all possible keywords manually in your campaigns. Google recommend to use broad match with your keywords:
"Broad match is a great way to capitalize on those unexpected, but relevant queries. When you include a keyword as a broad match, your corresponding ad is not only eligible to appear alongside queries with that exact spelling, but it can also capture keyword expansions that include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords."
Unfortunately, it's not that easy. If you use broad match for all of your keywords then your ads will be shown for a lot of unrelated searches and you'll pay a lot of money without getting something in return.
For example, the word "tiger" would be used for searches regarding Tiger Woods, the Siberian tiger, tiger sharks, the town Tiger in Georgia, etc.
For that reason, it is important to exclude the long tail keywords that are not related to your website.

Negative keywords will increase your conversion rate

You can enter so-called negative keywords in your Google AdWords campaigns. If a long tail keyword contains one of your negative keywords, your AdWords ads won't be displayed.
For example, if you enter "-free" as a negative keyword, your AdWords ad is not displayed if someone searches for free things. Negative keywords are an excellent tool for excluding Internet users looking for free items only.
You can also use negative keywords to display an ad for specific target groups. An insurance broker might want to exclude people who are searching for books about insurance. He could enter "book" and "books" as negative keywords.
If one of your keywords has multiple meanings ("tiger" would trigger "tiger woods" and "siberian tiger", "tiger shark", "tiger, georgia") then you should add negative keywords that remove the unrelated searches.

Broad match can help you to get more customers but you have to be very careful with that option. If you use broad match with your keywords, don't forget to use negative keywords so that you don't pay for unwanted traffic.
Many more tips on how to improve your AdWords ads can be found in our eBook "Writing Successful AdWords". If you don't want to use broad match, the keyword manager in IBP can help you to quickly create long tail keywords that target specific groups and regions., said people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment."

 

How to get much better results with Google AdWords

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're taking another look at Google's AdWords system. Most people pay much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads. There are some AdWords statistics that you might not know.
In the news: Bing users are more likely to click on ads, just like all search engines, Bing does not like Flash, Silverlight and images, Google introduces a new AdWords feature and more.
Table of contents:
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1. How to get much better results with Google AdWords
Google's AdWords system is a great way to get more website visitors. However, Google is also a business that needs to make money. That's why most people pay much more for their AdWords ads than they have to.
Open an AdWords account today. Your money might be gone tomorrow.

Many people who start with Google AdWords are surprised how fast Google takes their money and how little results they get.

Google's AdWords program is very popular and the competition is fierce. It has become difficult to find affordable keywords and it has become even more difficult to write ads that return a positive ROI (return on investment) if you don't plan your ads correctly.
Google AdWords offers many good ways to get targeted visitors at a good price. Unfortunately, Google AdWords also offers many ways to waste money very fast.

Plan your ads, save money and get much better results

If you take the time to optimize your AdWords campaigns, you can dramatically lower your monthly AdWords bill while increasing your revenue at the same time.

To help you to optimize your AdWords campaigns, we have just released the 7th edition of our eBook Successful Advertising With Google AdWords.
The eBook covers everything that you need to know to create successful Google AdWords. You'll learn how to:
select the right keywordshow to write profitable adshow to price your adshow to optimize your landing pageshow to conduct a testand much more
A detailed table of contents can be found here.
You can purchase the eBook for its regular price on our AdWords eBook website or for a discounted price if you buy it in a bundle with IBP.

Interesting AdWords statistics
Hundreds of thousands of businesses advertise on Google AdWords but 80% of Google's US revenue comes from about 1.5% of the advertisers (large companies such as Amazon, eBay, BizRate, etc., source: SEMrush). The overall industry average click fraud rate in Q2 was 12.7%. That's down from 13.8% for Q1 2009 and from the 16.2% rate reported for Q2 2008. (source: ClickForensics)Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. The paid clicks in Q2/2009 were up 15 percent year-over-year, but down 2 percent from the first quarter. (source: Google Q2/2009 earnings summary)
If you want to lower your monthly AdWords bill while increasing your revenue at the same time then you should get the AdWords eBook now.
Editor's note: We'll continue with our regular articles next week.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Are Bing users twice as likely to click on an ad than Google users?

"According to a study by search-advertising network Chitika, visitors who arrive at sites from organic search results on Bing are 55 percent more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google.
Chitika looked at the clickthrough rates from 32 million ad impressions across its network of more than 50,000 sites in a week in July. Visitors from Bing clicked on an ad 1.5 percent of the time on average, versus a 0.97 percent clickthrough rate for Google visitors and a 1.24 percent clickthrough rate for Yahoo."

Official Bing statement: images and Flash and script, oh my!

"Don't put important text content into graphics. The search engine bot can't see image file content as you and I can. To the bot, references to images are merely links to external, binary files in the HTML code, the contents of which can't be indexed. Keep your page's important content (the stuff you want indexed so it is discoverable by search engines) in text form within the webpage. Use images instead for illustrations, photos, designs, and other, non-text elements on the page. [...]
The same recommendation goes for animations in the form of Flash and Silverlight. These are great technologies to use to present videos, instructional information, entertainment, and much more. But don't bury your useful text content within animations. Use them as enhancements of, not replacements for, your on-page, text-based content. [...]
Don’t use script or images for site navigation. Bots can’t read script. They can’t execute it to see what happens. That’s why you need to be judicious in your use of script on your site."

"Setting the right bids in search marketing does require some calculations. [...] Cost-per-action measures how much advertising spend is required to get one action (in this case, one buyer). Most of the variables are fixed, but you control the cost per click and, therefore, the number of clicks you receive."
Editor's note: A much more detailed overview on how to price your PPC bids can be found in our AdWords eBook.

"Location extensions allow you to 'extend' your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. This new feature will be fully available in the coming weeks, with some advertisers having access to the feature starting today. [...]
Once extensions are set up, we'll dynamically match your business locations to a user's location or search terms and show the address with your text ads."

"The name is 'world wide web', but it's not always. What are some of Google's services that will only work in one country, or a limited set of countries? (Unless perhaps you route around the block – geolocation by IP, as it's often implemented, is not an impossible hurdle.)"

Search engine newslets
Some webmasters think that Google might have updated its algorithm.Stealth search engine Blekko raises $11.5 million.Search engine ChaCha raises another $4 million.Former Googler Sanjeev Agrawal to lead just-funded mobile search startup Aloqa.Has your Google web history been hacked?Chinese search giant Baidu posts gains.Zoom photo navigation in Google street view (video).For Mozilla and Google, group hugs get tricky.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
3. New IBP 11.5 now with Google's keyword tools

Based on user feedback we have improved the keyword manager in IBP 11 so that it now supports the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool in many different languages.

In addition to the unique keyword database of KeywordIndex.com, IBP 11.5 now also supports the keyword tools of Google AdWords. That means that you can now get the number of searches for keywords in many languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and more.

IBP 11.5 is currently available in a beta version. We plan to release the final version of IBP 11.5 within the next four weeks. Click here to get the beta version of IBP 11.5.
Note: IBP version 11.5 will be a free update for you if you have the current version.
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