Category Archives: PPC

Google Boost: Warning or Welcoming?

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Heard about Google Boost? No? You’re not alone. And you’re probably the perfect victim, er, candidate.

Boost is a new feature that allows local businesses to purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads directly through their Google Places account instead of messing around in AdWords. It’s only available in a few areas now, but should be rolled out nationwide soon.

Evil Genius or Innocently Helpful?

Boost is simply a stripped-down AdWords integration with a slight improvement on how the ads are presented on a results page and within Google Maps. It’s a brilliant move by Google to reach the companies that don’t yet buy AdWords ads and may not want to learn how. They even have telemarketers reaching out to local businesses to upsell them on Boost and Tags.

With a couple clicks and a credit card, a locally-targeted ad will start showing for keywords that Google deems relevant to your business.

Sounds great, right? Here’s the warning – Boost automatically creates terribly inefficient AdWords campaigns with no easy way to know if the campaigns are successful or not! Even if you log into your AdWords account (same Google account as your Places page), you can’t manage the keywords, bids or ad text associated with the “Places Ads” campaign:

Edit Google Boost Campaigns

Optimize this...

The First Hit is Free

AdWords Boost Campaigns

See what we did here?

Campaigns generated by Boost are automatically added to the Place user’s AdWords account. Didn’t have an AdWords account? You do now. Sneaky!

See where this is going?

Google Boost is simply a gateway into the AdWords cash machine. Almost like magic, Google creates multiple campaigns with hundreds of broad and modified broad match keywords with extremely high automatic CPC bids.

Wow, that’s bold. And dangerous. And potentially a huge windfall for Google.

Once a business realizes they have an AdWords account, they are more likely to increase their spend, add to their campaigns or simply “let it ride” and let Google collect a hefty residual to keep showing the Boost ads in perpetuity.

This could be construed as better than not having any PPC visibility, unless you are the type of person that likes to know whether or not your  marketing investment provides any type of return.

Cons: Transparency, Metrics, Customization

I can’t emphasize this enough: Google Boost campaigns CAN NOT be edited in AdWords.

Advertisers have to go all in.

Within the Boost interface, advertisers only see click and impression volume by keyword category. Cost data are aggregated across the entire Boost campaign. Conversion data are not available because clicks from Boost are not differentiated in Google Analytics unless you link your Analytics and AdWords accounts. This leaves unsophisticated advertisers with no ability to determine if the ads are actually helping build their business or refine the Boost ads for greater efficiency or effectiveness. This leads to my theory of PPC’s intractable problem.

Keyword-level data are available in AdWords but it’s useless if it can’t be changed.

The ad titles themselves are fixed based on the Google Places business name. If a business name is longer than 25 characters, too bad. It will be truncated. The 70 characters of body copy are customizable but only one ad can be run at a time.

Finally, the advertiser can only choose between two destination URLs: the Google Maps Place Page for the business or the home page of the advertiser’s website. Specific landing page URLs are not an option.

Pros: Save Time, Improve Visibility

Some businesses haven’t yet experimented with AdWords, and that’s okay. Using Boost, they can advertise immediately with minimal effort. There’s no need to hire or train anybody to manage a complex AdWords account. (but you get one anyway…)

Search results are enhanced with a blue map pin and details from the Places page that normally are not found in AdWords ads. This could lead to greater visibility and higher interaction rates. This is possibly the ONLY reason to choose Boost for tightly controlled campaigns.

To Drink the Koolaid or Not?

So how well does Google Boost work? Based on my preliminary, unscientific data, not well when compared to existing Google Places content and AdWords campaigns.

Here’s the breakdown after a week:

Channel Actions
(Clicks)		 Impressions CTR Avg. CPC
Google Boost 7 (7) 1,858 0.38% (0.38%) $4.99
AdWords 7 (7) 475 1.47% (1.47%) $3.34
Google Places 16 (11) 100 16% (11%) $0

The final verdict?

Here are some key takeaways:

  • A tightly controlled AdWords account will outperform a Google Boost campaign with little effort.
  • Businesses that are not on Google Places or haven’t optimized their listing are missing the biggest (and cheapest) opportunity to improve their visibility in search results.
  • Boost is a stripped-down AdWords gateway. If your business is interested in advertising online, skip Boost and go straight to AdWords. Even if you have to hire somebody to set up and manage it for you, the cost savings over Boost will likely pay for the consultant.

You’ve Optimized Your Site. Now What?

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Are you running out of ideas to further optimize your site and online presence for search engines? Did a recent redesign or SEO campaign address ALL of the accessibility, relevance and credibility issues your site faced? Do your internal processes include SEO input and are all your customer-facing teams active contributing to your SEO success?

Congrats, my friend. You’ve reached SEO Nirvana. You should write a book!

In reality, SEO is never done. But for the sake of argument let’s assume you’ve maxed out your SEO potential and need something else to justify your salary and follow up on your “big win”. What do you do next to continue to improve your business?
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My Take on Google Instant

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I have been flooded with questions from clients, colleagues and friends since Google’s announcement of Instant search. If you’re not familiar with Instant search, check out this quick video I shot before the official announcement. Or, of course there’s always a highly polished video from Google:

The new reality of SEO and PPC?

Personally, I found Google Instant distracting at first. After a couple of days, I am pleasantly surprised that it seems useful in a lot of cases where I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. The general use case is somebody starting with a broad search (i.e. “flowers”) that will benefit from seeing suggested search queries based on their predicted intent (such as “flower delivery in richmond, va”).

That being said, the implications for SEO and PPC marketers are currently being discussed and analyzed throughout the industry. Here are the key themes that I believe are becoming the new reality:

1. More concentration on “head” terms. These high search volume, highly competitive, expensive keywords are likely to show up more often in Google’s suggested or predicted queries. Our keyword research needs to take these suggested or predicted queries into account so that we can optimize websites and PPC campaigns accordingly.

2. Long Tail keywords will be less productive. As Jeremy indicated, I believe most searchers will be distracted or tempted to click earlier as the search results change in real-time. This will likely lead to more clicks on head terms and more search query refinements.

3. Ultimately, relevance is still key. Organic and paid search rankings have not changed with Instant. No matter how the User Experience of search evolves, a well-thought out SEO strategy will include tactics to improve a site’s relevance to the keywords people are most likely to search for. Even if you rank #1 for a popular query, a poorly written Title tag or call to action are going to diminish the likelihood of people clicking on your organic search result or converting on your site.

4. Google will get richer. The logic behind this is obvious, since the head keywords are typically more expensive on a Cost Per Click basis. When it comes to their golden goose, Google really only makes UX changes like this that will improve their bottom line.

5. Brands matter more than ever. Large brands stand to gain considerably because Google inherently trusts them more. Over the last year, we’ve seen Google start to rank well known brands higher than lesser known but potentially better-optimized sites. This evolution is not debated in the industry, but the pundits and experts disagree on whether or not this actually improves search results and the search experience for the average Google user. I tend to believe that less variety and choice leads to lower quality search results.

6. Instant doesn’t mean permanent. Google is well known for launching a major UX change or search feature only to roll it back if user acceptance is not high and/or it doesn’t have the intended outcome (higher profitability for GOOG, better user experience, ease of use, etc.) Remember how short-lived Google Wave and real-time search results were?

7. The proof is in the analytics. We won’t know the full impact of Instant on SEO and PPC until marketers and analysts have had time to gather and interpret any changes in site analytics or campaign metrics. I expect to see preliminary results being reported as early as next week but a full understanding may take weeks or months, especially when seasonality is considered.

8. Remain calm. We’re on the leading edge of this change and word travels fast in the SEM industry. We are better off taking a wait-and-see approach to making changes rather than jumping into the unknown. Even waiting a few weeks or months to modify an SEO or PPC strategy will still likely give you an advantage over the vast majority of competitors that will be slower to act (if they act at all).

I hope this puts your mind at ease. It’s an exciting change to keep an eye on, but the end result will ultimately depend on whether or not the average Google user accepts the changes or not.

How to poison your competitor’s PPC campaigns

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For the record, I DO NOT advocate this method of poisoning competitors’ PPC campaigns but it exists and you should be aware of it. I’ve seen it on a few client accounts and have taken steps to mitigate the damage. It’s an ongoing, evolving problem so you should check regularly to see if you are being targeted.

Here’s the bottom line. Your competitors have a vested interest in seeing your campaigns fail by becoming wildly inefficient and unprofitable. They can get more customers for less money while you pay more for fewer.

How it works

A savvy competitor knows you are bidding on some of the same keywords. In this example, I’ll use “dining room furniture” (phrase match) as the keyword in question for two companies that sell dining room furniture.

You, like a good PPC marketer, set up your campaigns with keywords (i.e. “dining room furniture”) and negative keywords (i.e. “antique”, “plastic” or “zebra print”) to filter out keywords for products that you don’t carry. Normally this would be enough to keep your ads showing for only the most relevant search queries and minimize wasted clicks but it may not go far enough.

Your competitor could use automated search tools (rank checkers, bot nets, or simple scripts) that search for long queries that trigger your AdWords ads hundreds or thousands of times and rarely, if ever, click on them.

Why it’s a problem for you

Eventually, your keywords and ads suffer from unusually low Click-Through-Rate (CTR). The lower CTR results in lower Quality Scores and higher Costs Per Click (CPC).

In plain English: your ads are clicked less frequently than Google expects. Since the big G are not going to make much money that way, they will lower your ads’ Quality Score, which makes your ad rank lower and costs you more per click.

Meanwhile, your competitor has already taken steps to make sure their keywords are not affected. See “How to fix it” below.

How to detect it

Use the Google AdWords Search Query Performance report to identify the search queries that resulted in your PPC ads being triggered and clicked.

In my client’s case, I saw many variations like these:

  • 3 piece dining sets kitchen dining room furniture furniture (136 impressions, 1 click)
  • wood dining room chairs kitchen dining room furniture furniture (92/1)
  • for the home furniture kitchen & dining furniture kitchen & dining sets (111/1)
  • for the home furniture kitchen & dining furniture kitchen & dining tables (192/1)

These phrases look odd, and there were dozens or hundreds of variations each receiving a few hundred to several thousand searches per month. They even seem to fall into templates and patterns.

Typically, they have some very similar characteristics:

  • Repeated keywords such as “furniture furniture”
  • Extremely long-tail phrases that don’t make sense
  • Queries that would not normally receive hundreds or thousands of impressions and very few clicks

Obviously, not all high-volume keyword are going to fall into this category. It’s really only the weird ones that you need to watch out for.

How to fix it

Once you’ve run the Search Query Performance report for your campaigns, comb the list carefully looking for query variations that meet the criteria above. Once you figure out the patterns for these queries, they become easier to find.

Extract snippets of those queries and add them to your negative keyword list for each campaign. As an example I added the following:

  • [furniture furniture] (exact match)
  • [dining furniture kitchen & dining] (exact match)

This will prevent my client’s ads from appearing when the automated search tools repeat these queries over and over. Our Quality Scores rise and our CPC falls. Every time.

My hunch is that your competitors know the keyword phrases and have already added them to their negative keyword list so their ads don’t show up when their bots are let loose. Sneaky, eh?

Taking 30 minutes to tweak your accounts can save you thousands of dollars each month and result in more conversions from your PPC campaigns. Do this once a month to stay on top of changes to their methodologies.

Where to go from here

Just some fun ideas if you are still being affected by these attacks:

  • Some simple log file analysis can be used to capture the IP addresses of your website visitors that click on these ads. If you can trace those IP addresses to a competitor, great. More than likely though, they will be anonymized or run through a bot net or proxy server somewhere. After all, if they are devious enough to pull off these schenanigans, they are probably clever enough to hide their tracks.
  • Use the AdWords IP Exclusion tool to prevent certain IP addresses from seeing and clicking on your ads.
  • Report the activity through AdWords support or contact your AdWords rep for help.

Anybody else out there seeing this? What have you done to fix it? Any other tips?

(CC photo credit: gato gato gato on Flickr)