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I found this quite funny; doing some keyword research for cleaner searches on Google AdWords one of the suggestions was “crap cleaner”, at least it’s honest I suppose:

Maybe I should setup a test as the competition is unsurprisingly very low. The broad match suggestion for scrubber (sorted by relevance?) might also throw up a few unwanted clicks too!

We were tagged by Kelvin yesterday in his If there was an SEO Genie my one wish would be… post and as I seem to be using Google AdWords Editor more and more these days I thought I’d request a couple of new features.

While I find AdWords Editor great to speed up many tasks such as copying and moving keywords or ad groups, there’s still a couple of things stopping me being completely lazy and having to log into the web based version too.

So if I was an SEO PPC Genie, here are the new Google AdWords Editor features which I’d wish for:

• Quality Score Columns
  The quality score column shows some very useful information, so it makes sense to also have this available using the AdWords Editor software.
• Today’s Figures
  When viewing stats you cannot select the current days figures, sending me back off to my web browser again.
• Account Alerts/New Features
  Another reason to log back into your account is to find out if your funds are running low or to be alerted of the new features.
• Reporting
  It would be nice if you could setup and email or export reports directly from the software.
• Client Manager Area
  Not sure if this one would work so well but it might be useful to have a client overview screen and MCC options.
• Capitalisation of Names
  I’ve had this problem before where the renaming of ad groups or campaigns is not processed if you’re only changing the capitalisation of these names.

I’m sure there are a few more features which I’ve missed that the Google team are probably working on already for the next version, let me know if you think anything should be added to this. And as this is a blog meme I’ve tagged the following UK bloggers to join in with their own wishes; Lyndon, Joe, Gabs, Patrick, David and the mystery PPC Blogger.

Google AdWords have today launched Conversion Optimiser in beta, this is currently only available for campaigns which have received 300 conversions during the last 30 days.

Here’s the new feature alert from my Google AdWords account:

Use the Conversion Optimiser to save time and minimise conversion costs
The Conversion Optimiser lets you specify a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bid for each ad group. Then, this feature continually adjusts your CPC bids to keep your conversion costs under your maximum CPA bid, showing your ads only when you are likely to get conversions. By using the Conversion Optimiser, you can save time while minimising your conversion costs.

This sounds like it could be a very useful tool to predict future conversion rates, which are calculated using the conversion rates of keywords, the users location and also individual websites on the content network.

For example, here are some of the factors that affect the conversion rate on Kim’s custom shirt website:
- The search query. Kim’s conversion rate is higher when users search for custom shirts than when they search for shirts.
- The location of the user. Her conversion rate is highest when her ad shows in New York.
- The conversion history of particular sites. When her ad shows on certain types of content sites in the Google Network, Kim is more likely to get conversions.

Kim does not have access to these details, but they directly affect her conversion rate and costs. By considering these factors every time her ads are eligible to appear, the Conversion Optimiser can show her ads when she is more likely to get conversions, meanwhile working to keep her average cost per conversion below her CPA bid. Using real time performance data allows the Conversion Optimiser to adjust Kim’s bids for better performance than she would get with manual bidding alone.

Update: Google have now announced the new CPA bidding product on their Inside AdWords blog with an introduction to how this works.

Hitwise posted an interesting case study yesterday about the popularity of cheap vs free searches in the UK.

I find that many people regularly set “cheap” and “free” as negative pay per click keywords without testing it’s performance first. In my opinion this is a mistake, firstly because cheap/free searches are very popular so by doing this you’re missing out on a large amount of extra clicks and also people searching for cheap flights might actually be willing to pay for averagely priced flights instead!

This might not always be successful, especially for luxury goods, but there’s certainly no harm in setting up a low-budget campaign containing some exact match cheap/free keyword phrases to test how well this converts into sales.

We are delighted to announce that SEOptimise have today become a Google AdWords Qualified Company. This has been a major target since Stuart Tofts joined the company in April, which we are very happy to have achieved.

We actually met the criteria for becoming a qualified company earlier this month but have had to wait for the status page and logo as these are automatically updated by Google at the end of each month.

I heard a story last week about how someone has setup an AdWords campaign to advertise a charity website without the charities knowledge. The sole intention of the campaign is to gain a high CTR for non-competitive keywords in order to increase their own account’s overall quality score!

While this is quite a sneaky black hat technique it’s clear how it can be very effective. The charities landing page should have a high quality score anyway and if fairly non-competitive, brand name/relevant keywords are bid upon it’s possible that well-known brands will achieve a CTR in the region of 40%+ at a very low CPC. In the long-term the ad spend for this should easily be covered by the overall CPC savings.

This does sound unethical but at the same time the charities are benefiting from extra free traffic and this does seem to comply with Google’s link policy so is it actually that bad? Personally I think the charities should be made aware of this by the advertiser and if there are no complaints it shouldn’t be a problem.

I found this Google ad on LinkedIn today which is an excellent example of why you shouldn’t use dynamic keyword insertion in your PPC campaigns:

TripAdvisor are obviously using the content network (either site or keyword targeted) to display their ads here but the ad title was generated from the page content where the word “Stuart” appeared on my profile page. The content network generally has a very low clickthrough rate anyway but having so little control over the ad title is likely to see this drop much further.

This looks like another one to add to the list of content network mistakes.

I’ve just started running a Google AdWords campaign again for SEOptimise and noticed that there are some inactive keywords. What I found surprising is that one of these keywords is the exact match of UK SEO services, a term which has a poor quality score despite being used within the ad title and also ranking at #18 organically on Google.com with UK SEO services at #4.

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be enough for Google though, perhaps this is a result of the new top ad placement formula as some people have spotted “keywords that have a very high max CPC”.

I’ve rearranged the homepage title tag slightly to use “SEO Services UK” rather than the previous version which separated these keywords, hopefully this will be enough to pass the landing page quality score check and get this upto at least an OK quality score instead!

I just noticed this new suggestion on Google AdWords:

Google Maps is a great way of getting your ads displayed online to a local audience so I’d recommend taking advantage of this and setting up your own local business ads.

I’ve found the content network is an excellent method of getting large quantities of cheap traffic converting at a positive ROI. But in my experience most pay per click campaigns I’ve taken over have not maximised their performance on the content network, below are the main reasons why I’ve found accounts seem to under perform.

• Disregarding the content network completely
  Many advertisers focus only on the search network, I think Anton Konikoff’s quote about getting traffic from contextual ads at SES San Jose yesterday sums up why it’s always worth trying to target this audience; “Provides access to everyone who reads online (not just those who search)”.
• Not setting individual content network bids
  Some people don’t check the “Let me set separate prices for content clicks” campaign setup box, the quality of traffic from the content network is never (or at least very rarely) as high as the search network so you should definitely be setting separate bids here.
• Targeting all worldwide locations
  Click fraud for contextual ads is a commonly discussed issue and is one of the main reasons people choose to stay away from the content network completely. I normally begin by selecting the main English speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia). For high budget account’s it also makes sense to separate countries and regions into individual campaigns so that it’s performance can be tracked and managed individually.
• Not splitting keywords into small ad groups
  This has obvious advantages for the search network as you can use more specifically targeted ad descriptions for each keyword, but it also helps to monitor the cost per conversion of content network clicks more closely.
• Failing to test, test, test
  This is probably the final rule in every search marketing list but trial and error testing is very important to monitor how new changes have affected the account. Keeping a close eye on the cost per conversion figure will help you to set bids based upon it’s performance to keep the campaign cost-effective.

These are all fairly basic tips but I’ve found these changes have a positive impact upon many account’s advertising on the content. To improve this further you could also exclude negative sites and setup pay per action (PPA) and site targeted campaigns.