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Hi, I’m Richard Fergie, the newest guy at SEOptimise. I’ve been with the company a week now and I’ve just taken (and passed) the Google AdWords exam. I’ve been asked to do a blog post about it so (in the best SEO blog tradition) I decided on doing a top 10 list of things I’ve found useful. Here goes…

1. The Official Resource
The AdWords Learning Centre. If you are a visual or aural learner head straight for the multimedia lessons. If you’re in a hurry, need a quick reference or learn best by reading there are also text lessons. The AdWords learning centre is Google’s own training tool for AdWords so I’d say it is the best resource for presenting information on all of Google’s ad policies in a clear and concise way.
The Learning Centre breaks its course down into short sections (the longest unit is supposed to take 15 minutes) so it is easy to just do a bit at a time and there are also handy quizzes on each subsection.

2. More from the Horse’s Mouth
It’s also worth having a browse through the official AdWords blog to see what’s new in the world of PPC. As Google’s official mouthpiece this blog gives an insight into what Google thinks is important about AdWords. Pretty useful when you remember who sets the exam…

3. O’Reilly Books: Is There Anything They Don’t teach?
Google Advertising Tools published by O’Reilly. Most of this book is aimed at AdSense users; people trying to make money by allowing Google to place PPC ads on their websites. However, the final two sections are entitled “Working with AdWords” and “Using the AdWords APIs.” The APIs section is a lot more detailed than the AdWords Learning Centre and I have to say that most of it went over my head but the “Working with AdWords” section is very good for running you through all the basics of using AdWords.

4. Learning by Doing
I’ve been quite lucky in that I’ve been able to play around with SEOptimise’s own PPC campaign. Messing around like this is a great way of learning so if you do get the chance to even just look at someone else’s already running account I’d jump on it. Expect to see the SEOptimise campaign go from strength to strength now after Kevin actually reviews the ads and keywords for the first time in ages in order to check on my ‘improvements!’

5. Learn. Rank. Dominate. I’ve Got the First Part.
seobook.com turns up sooner or later whenever you are looking for SEO and PPC resources. They have a whole PPC training section of which I think the Pay Per Click 101 video is the most useful.

6. PPC Podcasts
More resources for those of you who are fed up with reading; check out webmasterradio.fm’s PPC-Rockstars which has short podcasts on a variety of PPC issues.

7. A Heroic Resource
The PPC Hero(s) promise “Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management.” Check out their best posts for some great tips and things to watch out for. They also have a very detailed quality score handbook.

8. More on Quality Scores
And speaking of quality score, there is a simple AdWords Quality Scores Factors Chart at the bgtheory.com blog. I had a few of questions on my AdWords exam about what sort of things influence quality scores and what sort of things are influenced by quality scores. This chart clarifies this in a very easy to read way.

9. Even More on Quality Scores
Another good quality score resource is from Redfly Marketing who do a mini case study with 10 Ways to Increase Your AdWords Quality Score. 3 out of 10 posts about quality score might seem excessive, but I think it’s fair to say that any aspect of AdWords that does not affect the quality score is affected by the quality score so getting your head around all the interlinked factors is good exam preparation.

10. And Finally…
I’ve got to mention ppcblog.co.uk, mainly because straight after my test I visited their trademark policy change post. I think the exam was slightly out of date in that it did not group the UK and Ireland in with the US and Canada with regard to trademark policy and after reading their blog post I know that I was right in thinking that the rules about bidding on restricted trademarks are the same in all four countries. Unfortunately I don’t know if I got the question right (by assuming the test just wasn’t up to date) or if I was barking up the wrong tree or even being led astray by a tricky examiner.

That’s all for now folks. Let me know what you think or if you have any other good resources for me to learn from.

Google AdWords have today released a new feature which allows My Client Centre account managers to create campaign templates and share them with managed accounts.

The Google help centre has some information about the campaign templates, I’ve only created a very basic template but this does look like a very useful feature to speed up the setup process for new client accounts or similar campaigns.

I’ve created a quick guide to show how you can create and share campaign templates. The template setup follows the same process as creating a new campaign, it’s just created though the MCC account instead of the individual account. Each template can then be applied to quickly create a new campaign for a selected client account.

1) Create Campaign in Google AdWords Template Center
Please click all images for full-size versions:

2) Publish Campaign
Once you have created a campaign template you need to publish this by clicking into the campaign and selecting the publish button, changing the status from draft to published:

3) Select client and click “Template Library”
And once the campaign is published this will be available to apply to managed client accounts as part of their new template library:

4) Create Campaign from Template
All you need to do is set the campaign name, geo-targeting, URL, budget and start/end dates:

5) Save Campaign
Once the setup is saved, the new campaign will be added to the account and you’re ready to go!

Google AdWords seems to be rolling out some useful features recently, last week it was the snapshot date range comparison and today’s is the option to change number, date and time formatting.

This is a great addition for UK users to avoid any confusion between US and UK date formats.

Here’s the Google AdWords account alert (click for full-size/readable image):

Until now if you’ve heard about the Google AdWords dynamic keyword insertion it’s likely that it’s through a blog or forum, but last week the Google Help Centre added information to answer seven common questions about keyword insertion.

Personally I’ve found keyword insertion can be a great method of improving an adverts clickthrough rate by dynamically inserting the exact query string into the ads title, description or URL. The keywords searched for are also highlighted in bold which helps to draw further attention to your ad, potentially boosting it’s CTR.

The new information from Google is great as this clears up any misconceptions which people may of previously had about keyword insertion, making sure that advertisers have all the details they need to use this method effectively. One concern I had was how keyword insertion affects your ads quality score, for example if an ads quality score is calculated using the default text rather than the dynamically created version, but Google explains that “each keyword’s Quality Score is determined after the keyword is triggered and inserted into the ad seen by the user”.

There’s plenty more information in the Help Centre which is well worth a read even for people who have been using this tactic for a while.

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.