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Avoid the Downward Quality Score Spiral

May 27, 2010

My rule (and like all rules there are exceptions) is that if your quality score is 6 or below; stop raising bids and start working on quality score.

However, I keep receiving the question: Outside of cost and position; why is quality score so important?

Here’s the answer.

First, take a look at this list of what quality score actually affects in your account:

• If your ad is eligible to be shown in the auction
• What position your ad will be displayed on the search page
• The price you pay for the click
• If products extensions will be displayed with your ad
• If sitelinks will be displayed with your ad
• If location extensions will be displayed with your ad
• If your ad is eligible to be displayed in the top spot above the natural results
• If dynamic keyword insertion will work

Not working on quality score can put a keyword into a negative spiral.

Ad rank (where your ad is displayed in the search results) is a simple formula: ad rank = QS X Max CPC.
Ads are shown in descending order of ad rank (the highest ad rank is position 1, the second highest ad rank is position 2, etc)

Let’s say your paying $2 per click with a quality score of 4. This means your ad rank is 8.

Now let’s say that your competition is bidding $1 with a quality score of 7. This means their ad rank is a 7.

At this point in time your ad appears higher in the search results.

However, with a 4 quality score your ad does not show DKI, it does not show product extension ads, in fact the ad displayed on the SERP is identical to what you see inside your account as none of the ad ‘add-ons’ will be displayed with your ad.

Your competition’s ad, with a 7 quality score, is showing extensions (this could be product or location extensions) and looks nicer on the SERP than your ad. So what happens? Your CTR goes down and theirs goes up.

This causes your quality score to drop even more.
And their quality score to rise.

Over time, their ad starts showing above your ad even through their bid is half of yours.

Then the next advertiser below you has a 7 quality score and their ad is showing product extensions….

The cycle repeats itself until your ad just stops showing because of low quality score reasons.

Spending a little time working with quality score each week might not always result in increasing all of your quality scores; but it will help keep you from falling into a downward spiral.

If you need quality score help; our new training site will have tutorials on quality score as well as a tool where you can quickly see where inside your account you should spend your time optimizing your quality scores.

Google AdWords Remarketing Campaigns: See how we set up our own campaigns

May 21, 2010

Google remarketing campaigns allow you to serve custom ads to users who have visited your website.

My latest Search Engine Land article covers the basics of setting up a remarketing campaign and gives some examples for setting up remarketing ad groups for an ecommerce site. If you are new to remarketing, you might want to take a quick look through that article and learn the basics of how to set up a remarketing campaign as in this article we’re going to make the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of remarketing.

In this article, we will show you how we are setting them up for our new product, Certified Knowledge (note: the site is not fully live yet, but we’re planning out our marketing campaigns now so this is what it will look like once everything is publicly launched).

The Marketing Campaign’s Objectives

Certified Knowledge is a subscription based AdWords learning, PPC tool, and community site. With many subscription products it takes a few visits for someone to finally convert. Therefore, remarketing is a perfect way to serve custom ads to those who have been on the site once, but have not yet bought a subscription.

There are three main benefits of Certified Knowledge (tutorials, tools, and community); therefore, we want to make custom ads based upon what sections someone has visited within the site.

If someone entered the cart but did not buy, we want a very custom message.  For example, if a user started the purchase process but did not complete the transaction; we want to display a custom message or offer specific to the fact that they didn’t finish the purchase process.  This group of cart abandoners still have a better chance of converting than someone who has never been to our website before or looked around the site and didn’t enter the cart, so our bids for this list will be higher than for any other audience.

If someone has subscribed we don’t want to serve then an ad for the membership.

Lastly, the further into the conversion process that someone was, the longer the cookie will last based upon our settings (remarketing ads are displayed based upon a browser having a cookie that corresponds to your lists).

The Remarketing Lists

Google offers the ability to create a straightforward list (a cookie on the computer means they are in a list), or a custom combination which uses Boolean strings to combine audiences into a single list. With some of these lists, I think we could use custom combinations instead of straight lists. However, I’ve not been able to test Google’s Boolean strings yet to be confident in their use. What I’d like to do is add someone to list 1. Then, if they also make it to list 2, remove them from list 2. However, that is not currently possible.

In addition, what I don’t know is if someone is on two different lists; and you use one list as a negative list, it appears that the ad will not be displayed to that person at all. (i.e. if someone is on list a and on list b, and list a is your positive list and list b is your negative list – will the user see the ad?)

Therefore, for the initial setup of our remarketing campaigns (this may change in the future); I’m setting up several lists; and then I’ll use negative lists at the ad group level and CPC manipulation to determine which shows (i.e. if a basic list is worth $0.25 and a more advanced list is worth $1, even if someone is on both, the should see the $1 CPC ad copy for that list).

Here is a list of the remarketing lists that we created and where we put the codes across our website:

List Name	Purpose	Placed	Cookie Duration
All visitors	Reach everyone who examined in the offer	Global Footer	30 days
PPC Tools	Reach those who examined the Tools section	PPC Tools pages	60 days
AdWords Tutorials	Reach those who entered the tutorial section	AdWords Video page	60 days
PPC Community	Reach those looking for community engagement	PPC community page	60 days
Pricing	Reach price conscious shoppers	Visited price page	60 days
Shopping cart abandonment	Reach consumers who showed intent to buy but did not finish	All pages except confirmation of cart	90 days
Converted: Free email training	Free 5 email training message for sneak peak. Reach these consumers who showed high interest in system.	Thank you for subscribing email confirmation page	90 days
Converted: Subscription	If someone subscribed, want to make sure we don’t serve them ads	Thank you for subscribing page after billing info entered	360 days

 

Once the lists are created and the scripts placed on the appropriate pages, then it’s time to create the Ad Groups that reach the various audiences.

Remarketing Ad Groups

We are creating an entirely new campaign for our remarketing lists for four reasons:

• Budget. We have a much higher budget than for our placement and discovery campaigns.
• Blocked domains. We don’t want our usual blocked domain list to affect remarketing ads (at least to start)
• Geography: As this product has international appeal (and we’ll do international billing); we are going to start with a few different countries in our campaign list (and refine from there).
• Reach & Frequency: We want a different frequency caps for the ads than our other content campaigns.

Once a new campaign is setup, it’s time to map out the ad groups. The reason to create various remarketing ad groups is when you want to show different ads to different audience lists. At an ad group level, you can add both positive and negative audiences and set a different bid by audience. Therefore, we’re going to build our ad groups from the ads that we’re going to be showing.

In addition, it will be common for some users to be on multiple lists. Therefore, we’re going to use a lot of negative lists to ensure the most relevant ad is being displayed. In cases where someone is on multiple lists, we will also use bids to ensure the more specific ad is being shown (so our bids will be the lowest on general ads and highest on close-to-converting individuals).

Ad Group 1: Non-Engaged Users

This ad group is for users who visited the site but did not enter a specific section of the site. Therefore, these are the absolutely least qualified of all the visitors. This is the reason the cookie duration for this list is only 30 days, the shortest of all the lists.

The positive list: All visitor

The negative lists: All the other lists. If someone is on any other list; we don’t want them seeing our general ad; we want a more specific ad served to that user.

The ad: Showcasing all benefits.

Bid: Lowest of all the remarketing lists. These visitors went to at least the homepage, and possibly an interior page; but not one of the very specific pages that is useful for tailoring a separate ad for that user.

Ad Group 2: Price Shoppers

This ad group is for users who visited the pricing section.

The positive list: Pricing

The negative lists: All others except non-engaged users list.

The ad: Showcasing that your time is worth money, and then show how Certified Knowledge can save you time.

Bid: Second lowest of all the remarketing lists. Price conscious users can be difficult to convince. In addition, I’d rather the more specific ad (the ad groups below) be shown to consumers instead of this ad. If someone happens to be on both the non-engaged user list and the price shoppers list, they should see this ad because its bid will be higher than the non-engaged user list.

Ad Group 3: PPC Community

This ad group is for people who visited the PPC community page. I expect that most people who visit this page will also visit other pages across the site. Therefore, while this will be an ad we show, we’re going to put less importance on what I expect the stronger benefits to be: Tools & Training. However, if someone did visit this page, we’re willing to show them this ad (in addition to other ads they may see from the more specific ad groups).

The positive list: PPC community

The negative list: All others except Price Shoppers and Non-engaged users.

The ad: Showcasing the benefits of having access to an active forum, email, and news system.

Bid: Third lowest. Higher than Price Shoppers; lower than PPC Tools & AdWords Tutorials.

Ad Group 4: AdWords Tutorials

This ad group is targeting consumers who examined our tutorials. As we’re going to have many pages explaining the tutorials, this might be broken down into two lists over time: main tutorials page, all training subpages. That sectioning will help us identify those who just glanced at the tutorials versus looked at our videos and read more about the AdWords lessons.

The positive list: AdWords Tutorials

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted email training, Shopping cart abandonment. If someone converted, or was closer to converting than just visiting the features pages, then I want them to see the more specific ad.

The ad: Showcasing what Certified Knowledge can teach you about AdWords with more than 50 lessons, and more than 100 coming by the end of the year.

Bid: Higher than PPC Community and lower than the three negative lists.

Ad Group 5: PPC Tools

This ad group is targeting consumers who examined our toolset. As we’re going to have many pages explaining the tools, this might be broken down into two lists over time: main tools page, all tool subpages. That sectioning will help us identify those who just glanced at the tools versus looked at our videos and read more about the tools.

The positive list: PPC Tools

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted email training, Shopping cart abandonment. If someone converted, or was closer to converting than just visiting the features pages, then I want them to see the more specific ad.

The ad: Showcasing the benefits of the PPC tools we have developed which will save you time in creating ad copies, geographic keywords and keywords. They will help you bid, find quality score issues, find broken links, and help you analyze your site. While most of the ad groups will contain two or three image ads to start (by themes, each theme will have different sizes); I expect this ad group will have more test ads to see what message resonates better.

Bid: Same as the AdWords Tutorials. I expect it will become slightly higher than the tutorials over time as tutorials are one to three time views for most consumers, and many repeat views will help refresh your knowledge. The tools will be used daily, weekly, or monthly depending on what you’re trying to accomplish inside your account; and therefore, I think will be more valuable over time.

Ad Group 6: Converted Free Email Training

This ad group is for targeting those who signed up for a ‘free lessons training’ via email. Many people who sign up for free training do not have an intent to buy as they just want the free stuff. Others want a trial of what you are offering and have a high chance of converting. However, email open rates can be sporadic on free training offers. Therefore, these ads will both remind them about Certified Knowledge, but also serve as a reminder about the emails delivered to them.

The positive list: Converted Free Email Training

The negative lists: Converted subscription, Shopping Cart Abandoners

The ad: Showcase the Certified Knowledge tutorials with messages to remind them about their email subscription. I’m not sure if they will be something like: “Did you enjoy your free email training from Certified Knowledge? Learn how you can access all of our training” as that might seem a bit creepy to people that we know they have the email – or if they’ll be images more aligned with the training aspects of Certified Knowledge.

Bid: To start, a bit higher than AdWords tutorials & tools lists as these users were willing to give us a name and email address to receive the information. Overtime, the bidding for this list might change significantly up or down.

Ad Group 7: Shopping Cart Abandoners

This ad group is for targeting those who entered the shopping cart but did not convert.

The positive list: Shopping cart abandoners

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted Free email training

I’m making an assumption here that I might change in the future. I’m considering these users more valuable than the converted free email training list as these shoppers were within a submit button of entering their credit card information and becoming customers. I think they will be more valuable than the Converted Free Email Training list – but I might be wrong; therefore, I might test this exact same ad group minus the email training list as a negative list in the future.

The ad: One ad will showcase the Certified Knowledge benefits. One will show a phone number with the benefits that talks about support for any problems. As we start to map out sign-up objections, then we will base the ads around the most common ones.

Bid: The highest of all the lists.

Are all these lists necessary?

Outside of the time to create the actual ads per ad group, setting up one list and one ad group versus seven ad groups and lists is only a few minutes of additional work. We’re using WordPress for this site’s CMS; so adding some custom code to the pages is very simple and will take less than a minute per list. I’m expecting the entire setup (outside of the ad copy creation) to take less than ten minutes. I’ve already set up some remarketing campaigns for the AdWords Seminars and it took less than a minute to setup the list and add the code to the pages for each created list.

The advantage of showing an ad to the consumer based upon their main interests in the site should significantly outweigh the work involved.

The Next Step

Once everything is in place, then remarketing success is all about ad creatives and measurement.

Remarketing has a higher potential of success than almost all other forms of marketing because the user was already involved with your website. Most marketing drives some users to your website based upon a common interest (keyword, placement, email list, etc). Remarketing engages users who have already been on your website and are somewhat familiar with your offerings. This type of campaign can be the final push that someone needs to realize how valuable your service can be to them.

Google’s New Match Type Now Live – Modified Broad Match

May 11, 2010

I was lucky enough to be in the beta of modified broad match and have been using this match type for a couple months now to great success. Google lifted the veil of secrecy today about the new match type and let me know that I can now blog about it.

Broad match increases reach. Phrase match increases relevancy. The new modified broad match gives you the flexibility of broad match with the control of phrase match.

Broad match is useful because: “20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all?” – source.

While the fact that so many queries are unique often led people to using broad match – the returns often aren’t there. This new match type gives you some control over how a broad matched word can be matched.

To use this match type, go to your account and add a + (plus) symbol in front of one or more words in your keyword phrase. Then, the word/s with the +sign must either be in the query or a close variant must be in the query. A close variant is a misspelling (flor instead of floor), plural (flowers instead of flower), or stemmed version (running instead of run).

Keyword	Possible Matches	Notes
running +shoes	running shoes running shoe tennis shoes	The word +shoes or it’s variant ‘shoe’ is in every query
+running +shoe	running shoes running shoe run shoe shoes for running	Both +shoe and +running must be in the query or have a variant in the query
+extra +wide running +shoes	Extra wide running shoes Extra wide exercise shoes Extra wide walking shoes	All the words are matched or closely matched except for ‘running’

The use of the new modified broad match will help expand your possible matches while still keeping those same matches under control. Broad match and negative keywords do work well  together, and this new match type will open up some new possibilities for broad and negative match combinations. Just remember that these new matches will still not convert higher than your exact match keywords.

If you wish to try this out, I’d suggest picking a few select ad groups where you are having problems gaining the exposure you desire, and then following these steps:

• Create a new ad group using those same keywords with the new plus modifiers
• If the old ad group has all broad match, then set a higher CPC for these new match types
• If the old ad group has all exact and phrase match, then set a lower CPC for these new match types
• Let the ad group run and collect some data
• Run the search query report examining these two ad groups and their variations
• Set appropriate bids based upon conversions

The reason to create a new ad group in this example is that you can only see search query data at the ad group level. While you can see the match type; you cannot see the keyword and match type combination that triggered a query. Over time, you might get rid of one of these ad groups and combine the keywords back into a single ad group. However, this is a new match type and there are bound to be some odd combinations that you will be shown for.

When trying out a brand new function with AdWords, it can be useful to look at the new features in isolation from other variables.

Introducing Google AdWords Certified Partners. Google Advertising Professional Program is being shut down.

April 26, 2010

Google has been doing some serious thinking about the GAP (Google Advertising Professional) program for at least three years.

A while ago they redid the entire learning center. No one seems to completely understand this change as all their nice videos are gone replace by text and a fewer number of lessons.

Then AdWords launched Agency Land.

And today they launch their new certification program.

Here are the main differences:

Individual Qualification

Old Days: One test and spend requirement.

Now: Two tests (one basic and any one of the advanced tests) and no spend requirement.

This seems that the individual qualification is more a resume bullet point than a way of attracting business.

Certified Partner

Old Days: This was a qualified company. Qualified companies required 3 GAPs and a nice spend requirement.

Now: Need one Individual Qualification and spend $10k/quarter. This is a much lower threshold to become a partner than the old ‘qualified company’ logo.

Others

While Google still offers logos for analytics, website optimizer, etc – the AdWords Reseller and AdWords Company qualified logos showed both a combination of size (more than 1 employee) and spend.

AdWords Reseller

There is so much speculation around the reseller programs demise or massive change that I won’t even speculate here. It is the only section of the Advanced AdWords Book that Google legal & Google marketing asked me to alter.

Free API  Credits

Here’s the really good news. Agencies will now get API credits based upon client spend. In the old days, an individual advertiser or reseller could get free quote points, but agencies had to pay for it. Now, just like individual advertisers; agencies can be eligible for credits if they have an agency page (a free listing page on Google’s site that you can create once you’re a partner).

You get 250 units per $1 spent. This is an excellent ratio of free API units. Few companies are going to need to buy additional API units (and if they do – they might need to examine their their usage first).

[update]Google called me to make sure people realized that you didn’t just get API credits by having a profile page. You still need to apply for the credits[/update]

What’s Next

Individual qualification has become a bullet point. Certified partners are just old GAPs with one good client ($10/quarter). The reseller program is going under major restructuring. It seems the only logical step is to make the old AdWords Resellers a program for large agencies.

There’s definitely a few tiers that is not well recognized here:

• The large agency: $1 million month or quarter. These agencies handle big accounts and are splitting the spend between multiple channels.
• The medium agency: $1 million / year, with 100 clients and 3-5 GAPs. If this agency gets 1 or 2 big clients, they might be 2-3 million/year in spend, but most of their clients are small.
• The small personal big client agency: This agency has 1-3 GAPs, but has one or two huge clients and spends $100k/month or more
• The small personal small spend agency: This agency has 1-3 GAPs, 10-40 clients per GAP, and manages roughly $50k-$250k of spend per month.

Google does not need this many tiers of logos. That I wouldn’t claim. However, having the above 4 agencies using the same Certified Partner logo that having one client who spend $3.5k/month will earn you doesn’t seem right either.

Expect to see a lot of posts about the new tests. The toughness of the new advanced tests (I haven’t taken any yet – I’m hoping they are *hard* and fair). And speculation about how to recognize those larger agencies.

AdWords Updates Display URL Policy – New Policy Still Falls Short

January 14, 2010

Google has finally updated their Display URL policy so that if you use a shared domain (such as blogspot), then you need to be more accurate in your portrayal of the destination URL.

For instance, if your URL was: mybusiness.blogspot.com, all you had to do was use blogspot.com in your destination URL and you would meet the policy. In fact, you could have even used YourCompetitor.blogspot.com as the display URL and taken them to your page.

While blogspot is an easy one to pick one, I think that this ruling occurred (and will be modified one more time) because of the sudden influx of Google.com URLs.

Legitimately Use Google.com as Your Display URL

If you use Google Apps or Google Pages, then you can have a site hosted at:

sites.google.com/a/Customize

If site.google.com/a/Customize is the destination URL, you can use Google.com as the display URL.

With Blogspot, every site has a subdomain and therefore this is an easy ruling to apply.

With Google pages and Google sites, the URL is a folder and not a subdomain and therefore makes it difficult to pick a URL that accurately describes where the user is going.

In fact, you may see destination URLs that are: Google.com/AdWords or Google.com/Coupons that actually go to sites.google.com/a/SpammyOffer.

This is a good move from Google, it just needs to go further to clarify how to handle folders within a subdomain or what constitutes ‘additional information’ that is actually relevant to the consumer.

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