Net Gain Marketing

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Search Engine Marketing

AdWords Ad Rotation: How To Restore Even Ad Rotation (Workaround)

AdWords Ad Rotation: How To Restore Even Ad Rotation (Workaround)

UPDATE November 2012:

The post below is about tricking Google AdWords into rotating your ads evenly.

But tricks are no longer necessary: AdWords now has a ‘rotate indefinitely’ option for people who are serious about ad testing. 

Find this in your account under:

Campaign / Campaign settings / Advanced Settings / Ad delivery   …then choose ‘Rotate indefinitely’.

AdWords Ad Rotation Workaround
Rotating ads is a key part of PPC optimisation:
Don’t let that stop in your AdWords account.

Old post follows———————-

Google surprised AdWords users in May this year with their announcement that AdWords ad rotation would automatically stop and favour only the ad with highest CTR, after the ads were active for 30 days.

This sounds reasonable to some people, but for people testing ads carefully based on conversion rate and cost per conversion, the change was a 3-alarm fire.

Now Google has announced a helpful back-step on the ad rotation policy.  The even rotation period is extended from 30 to 90 days, and there is an opt-out form to prevent the change on your account altogether.

Google’s ad rotation settings will switch from ‘rotate’ to favor the ad with highest CTR, unless you take action.  If you don’t want to opt out, and you want to restore even rotation on your ads after the 90 day period, it is not a huge problem.

The method below is tweaked and tested and works just fine…

How To Restore Even Ad Rotation on Active AdWords Ads

First of all, the easy answer: Pause, then un-pause your ads.  This will reset the rotation perios and it will be another 90 days until your ads start to run on a ‘CTR-preferred’ basis.

But if you have hundreds or thousands of ads, pause/un-pause is not a really simple thing!  AdWords Editor lets you pause/un-pause any number of ads, but you could easily get ‘lost’ in the editor, unable to find the right ads to enable after you pause them.  This would be a disaster!

Not to worry.  You can do it all in the live online AdWords interface in just a few minutes.

  1. Create a backup of your account using AdWords Editor:  Open AdWords Editor, click ‘Get recent changes’, complete the account download, review and approve changes as needed, then click File -> Export Backup -> Export whole account…  then save the account backup in a secure place.  If you have a disaster, this will help you restore the account to an earlier state.
  2. In the online AdWords interface (not AdWords Editor), click the Campaigns tab at top, click ‘All online campaigns’ at left, then click ‘Ads’ in the second tabbed menu.  Now you can see all of the ads in your account.
  3. Click on the column heading for ad status; this will sort your ads based on their status.  Active ads should appear at the top.
  4. Go to the bottom of the page and see if all of your ads are shown; there might be multiple pages.  Click on ‘Show rows’ and choose ‘500’ (the maximium value) so you can see as many of your ads as possible (if not all of them).
  5. In the header row above your ads click on the select checkbox, to select all of your ads.  Now look down nerar the bottom of the page – if there are any ads selected that are already paused, un-check those ones!  This will prevent you from reactivating old ads that you don’t want running.
  6. Now, with all of your active ads selected, above the header row click ‘Change status’ and choose ‘Paused’.  Sounds scary, doesn’t it?  Fortunately, (as of June 2011), after you pause the ads the interface will think for a few seconds, then update, and the same ads will still be selected.
  7. Now don’t touch anything…  simply go back to ‘Change status’ and choose ‘Active’.  You’re done. The reactivated AdWords ads will rotate normally.
  8. If you have more than 500 ads, you’ll need to do this page-by-page in lots of 500.  Watch the bottom of your list on each new page, and eventually you’ll get to your paused ads.  When this happens, be careful to select only the active ads on that page before applying the changes.

Now your AdWords ad rotation will run evenly for the next 90 days.

If you have any troubles – or successes – please drop me a note.

 

How to Choose an Online Marketing Consultant

How to Choose an Online Marketing Consultant

Trying to find good online marketing help is a nightmare.

Online marketing is full of self-promoters and tricksters. It is a field full of traps.  Online marketing traps cost you money – without improving your revenue. How can you find online marketing advice you can trust?

There is no reliable protection for the customers of marketing consultants.  But there are a few things you can watch for before you sign up…marketing salesman

Who’s calling?

Are you talking to an experienced marketer – or a fast-talking sales person?  Companies like Australia’s Reach Local have a reputation: Lots of sales staff / undertrained and under-resourced marketing staff.

Last month I was approached by online marketing agency E-Channel. E-Channel’s salesman is not a marketer.  He isn’t knowledgeable about AdWords. He didn’t do his homework and he didn’t understand my business. He bragged about technology that’s irrelevant to my business.  He couldn’t find any landing page that his company built.  He showed-off clients’ ads by clicking on them (spending the client’s money).  His pitch fell flat and he couldn’t understand why.  I won’t trust a marketing agency if they won’t send an experienced marketer to talk to me.  (On top of all that, E-Channel’s sales guy was arrogant, rude and aggressive.)

On the other hand, I recently spoke to Crockford-Carlisle about direct response campaigns.  Who did I speak to on the phone? Jerry Crockford. The owner. He was generous with his time and was happy to visit my office. He thought about my situation, asked the right questions and prepared a thoughtful proposal. That’s good business.

Are they trained?

I did some digging and found that E-Channel only has two AdWords-qualified people on staff.  That’s not encouraging.

Google certification isn’t a guarantee you’ve found a smart online marketer.  The exams are easy and affordable.  But most online marketers stay certified and stay on top of the latest changes.  If a marketing agency can’t bother to certify their staff, what else are they skipping?

You should see key staff information and credentials – on the website, on LinkedIn, somewhere.  If there are no marketing credentials listed, are there legitimate recommendations or testimonials from real people?

Agencies that belong to bodies like the Australian Direct Marketing Association are bound by some standards. Belonging to a marketing industry organisation suggests – at least – that an agency is willing to mingle with its peers and to be seen in public.  But it’s no guarantee.

Who owns the work?

Watch out for this!  With a company like Reach Local, you hire them for a while, pay a bundle of money, back out later and find that they’ve nailed-down your campaigns so you can’t access anything – no keyword history, no ad history, nothing.  In my opinion, this is criminal.

Every SEM consultant should work within your existing account and should treat the account like they are a privileged guest – not an owner or a pirate.  Get this in writing.

When you pay for work, the work belongs to you.  Full-stop.

How about a 2-wine lunch?

If your marketing consultant can afford to wine and dine you, you’re paying them too much.

Don’t hire an agency for your ego – hire it for your business.  Go eat lunch with a real friend who’s not charging you for their time!

What about consulting fees?

Listen:  Don’t get robbed.  Be cautious and smart.

Some online marketers charge a percentage of your revenue or a percentage of your PPC budget.  This smells.

Your AdWords account is an asset.  If it creates profitable conversions, it is a valuable asset.  It is YOURS.

Imagine your business…

Today:  Annual budget $100,000.  5,000 conversions. Annual growth 10%.

With a consultant, after one year:  Annual  budget $110,000. Consulting fee 20% (eg. E-Channel) = $20,000.  6000 conversions.

You paid a consultant $20,000 for 500 conversions.  The consultant gets 2X more than Google for those conversions – and you’re still paying Google.

YOU created 90% of the account’s value – did the consultant earn a slice of that?

“If the conversions are profitable, why not?”  Here’s why: You could find an expert to do that work for you on a flat fee. And you might get some additional services with the deal.

Flat monthly fees seem harder to swallow because they aren’t directly linked to your turnover. But if you get a good package of services on a flat fee, it creates a clear business relationship that’s fair and easy to work with.

I worked at Marketing Results in Brisbane.  It was a busy, challenging job with lots of pressure to learn and grow.  Owner Will Swayne takes AdWords very seriously and he takes time to review clients’ situations personally.  No percentage-scams here – Marketing Results clients get high-quality services for around $2000/month. Packages can include AdWords, landing pages, email campaigns, etc.  They build nice websites for fair prices.  They always think about clients’ ROI.  No fluff like meetings, lunches and brand-image workshops.  (Full disclosure:  I used to work there, but I don’t receive anything from them now.)

Get a guarantee.

This is not a popular thing with marketers.

Consulting is hard work and clients expect a lot.  Some clients have dysfunctional businesses and expect a marketer to create profit out of thin air – while nothing at the business changes.  Clients expect consultants to turn a sow’s-ear-business into a silk purse full of cash.

But that’s life as a consultant!  If your consultant won’t stand behind their work somehow, don’t trust them.

Good luck in the online marketing minefield!

PS:  A theme I’ve noticed in marketing agencies:  Small agencies = better value and more accountability.

Marketing with Google Places: Free Online Marketing for Offline Businesses

Marketing with Google Places: Free Online Marketing for Offline Businesses

Your business should be represented WELL on Google's maps.
Your business should be represented WELL on Google's maps.

Six simple steps for getting better free online exposure from Google for your offline store or service

If your business is 100% online, this is not for you. But if your business has a physical location that people should know about, you’d better be using Google Places.

Google Places is familiar to most Google users, but millions of business owners haven’t bothered to figure it out – yet it is so easy.   Just adding some simple information for your customers makes it much more powerful.

What’s more, your Google Place listing appears on Google Hotpot – Google’s latest shot at creating a social network for local consumers. Who knows whether Hotspot will take off – but in the meanwhile, take advantage of every bit of free marketing that Google will give you!

Here’s an intro from Google… 
(top tips on using Google Places follows, below)

Here’s how make sure your business looks good on Google Places:

  1. Go to the Google Places main page and log in using your Google account. (Use a Google account on an email address you can share with other people at your business in the future – don’t use your personal Google account.)
  2. Follow the simple instructions for adding details about your business. Google includes tools that let you upload details for multiple locations all at once. Plus (right now), free ‘tags’ that help increase your visibility (currently available in select cities only).  Don’t forget to add your business hours.
  3. Start out with the information people want first when they’re searching on Google: Clear, basic information about your business. Don’t add long, wordy promotional writing; Google users’ don’t read a lot when they are searching, so get right to the point.
  4. Upload GOOD photos.
    1. Ask a shutterbug friend for help or, better still, hire a professional photographer for an hour.
    2. Start with a really nice shot of your shop (not too close-up – this should help new visitors find you, so take it from the street.
    3. Take some nice shots inside your business and pick the best two or three.
    4. Add a couple shots of your products. Don’t take far-away shots with rows of products on shelves – that looks crappy on the web. Instead, take nice close-up shots of popular, attractive products.
    5. Never use photos that you found online or on Google Images. Not ever.
    6. Add your logo or a photo of your main business sign.
    7. Don’t get carried away. Five or six photos is probably enough to start with.
  5. Think about how important customer reviews are for your business. Remember that reviews at Google Places spotlight your customer service. Your job: Make customers happy.  So happy they’ll write reviews about you.  (DON’T post reviews for your own business.  If you must, ask some favourite customers to post reviews for you.)
  6. Read the Google Places User Guide.

Eight Evil Myths About Improving SEO and Getting to Page One on Google

Eight Evil Myths About Improving SEO and Getting to Page One on Google

There’s a lot of silly advice out there about SEO. A lot of it comes from people who are charging someone for SEO work.

Here are a few mistakes to avoid in promoting your website to page-1 on Google.

SEO myths from hell

  1. Spend more money on AdWords to increase your organic rank and give you a good reputation at Google.
    WRONG. Just plain wrong.
  2. Paste long lists of repeating keywords into your pages – covering every possible keyword variation. Link these back-and-forth with additional pages full of keywords.
    WRONG: There are still sites that get away with this, but they are all about getting traffic to drive ad revenue or referral kickbacks.  Apparently it works for ‘link pyramid’ schemes which are common in ‘online adult entertainment’, because they don’t rely on Google.  It is a very bad idea for real businesses, because real people (real customers) hate reading that sort of crap on a website.
  3. Hide keyword lists in your pages using HTML tricks, matching background & text colour, hidden DIVs, etc.
    WRONG: Google is getting smarter all the time and ‘tricky’ SEO can make Google unhappy.  When Google is unhappy, suddenly your site plunges down to page 20 in the search results.
  4. Create lots of new websites on new domains, chock-full of links to your site.
    WRONG: This is another risky behaviour that can make Google very unhappy. INSTEAD, develop linking opportunities on good, popular, relevant websites run by other real people. Look at local blogs related to your industry, business directories, industry-specific directories, professional associations, accrediting bodies’ websites – plus build your profile, audience and activity on social media sites.
  5. Create a keyword-specific website redirect or ‘doorway page’ pushing traffic to your main site.
    WRONG: Google forbids this sort of stuff. Find a trick that works today, and Google might banish you tomorrow.
  6. Add long keyword lists in your HTML keyword meta tags.
    WRONG: Google doesn’t even look at keyword metatags. There are some meta tags that are useful, though.
  7. Update your home page every day.
    WRONG: Lots of top-ranking pages haven’t been updated for years. (But keeping your content current is always a good idea!)
  8. Flash content ruins SEO.
    WRONG: Google is constantly improving it’s ability to index flash content – the flash content just needs to be created by people who know what they are doing.
  9. This list could go on forever with new tricks and scams. Consider this: Even if you manage to trick a search engine – then what?  Will Google buy your product? Think about your customers and readers first.

More reading about SEO best-practice

For a longer, more technical lists of SEO myths, try reading 36 More SEO Myths That Won’t Die.

Google is kind enough to give us a detailed guide for ‘white hat’ SEO.

If you’ve read this whole post and you’re not 100% clear what SEO is, or how it is different from PPC or search engine marketing, read “What is the difference between SEO and SEM…?”

What is the difference between SEM, SEO, PPC and AdWords?

What is the difference between SEM, SEO, PPC and AdWords?

Online marketers and businesspeople talk a lot about SEM, PPC, SEO and AdWords – but these concepts often become confused. This can lead to problems in choosing the ‘online marketing best-next-steps’ for a business.  Here is an overview that helps put it all into perspective…

SEM-SEO-PPC

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

SEM is marketing and technical work designed to increase a website’s visibility on Google and other search engines. SEM can include…

  • SEO (Search Engine Optimisation – more below)
  • SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management – sort of like Public Relations Management for your business’s reputation on search engines),
  • PPC Advertising (Pay-Per-Click Advertising – including ads on Google AdWords, Yahoo and Bing – more below)

SEM is big business.  There are thousands – soon I predict millions – of companies and consultants who specialise in this field.  Companies like Google and Yahoo make almost ALL of their money from SEM, including their huge PPC text ad fees.

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

SEO is work that makes a website ‘search engine friendly’ – with the goal of getting a good position in the search results when people search for words that relate to your website.

SEO relates ONLY to unpaid, ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ search results. This has nothing to do with PPC Advertising.

The best position in organic search results is #1 on the 1st-page. Many businesses have to settle for any 1st-page position, at least as an early goal.

You can’t pay the search engines to get a better organic search position – you have to work at it.

Organic position is important because every time someone visits your site after clicking an organic search result, you have received a visitor who’s probably interested in your website – and you’ve paid nothing to attract that visit (unless you’re paying a lot of money to an SEO consultant).

SEO is directly related to satisfying your online visitors!

What do people want from a website?

They want an easy-to-understand website with clear navigation.  They want to read good writing that is well-organised and logical.  They want to find something that is directly relevant to their original search. They don’t want to hunt around for information.

They want the next steps – getting more info or making a purchase – to be easy and obvious.  They want it to be easy to find their way back to the site.

The good news:  Google and other search engines want the same things from a website as your visitors do.  Once you’ve built a good website for visitors, good basic SEO just calls for a few quite basic technical tasks – to ensure that search engines have an easy time understanding your website.

People often talk about different tricks to improve search engine ranking for their sites.  Some tricks have worked well; these include creating many different pages and sites that all link back-and-forth and repeat the main search words over-and-over-and-over.  The problem is that this forgets about the MAIN point in online marketing: Customers!  A site using lots of SEO tricks is annoying for visitors.  Fortunately, Google and the other engines are getting smarter.  Sites that try these tricks are dropping off of Google’s 1st-page results, whereas honest, good-quality websites with good information are getting preferential treatment.

One area of SEO that is hard to do yourself is link building.

Search engines like sites that have lots of hyperlinks connecting inward and outward with related, relevant websites. You can pay people to accelerate the process (sometimes in tricky, ‘fake’ ways that can be dangerous to your website reputation).  Even without link-building tricks or consultants, links grow in number and relevance naturally over time (IF you have good, unique, relevant content).

To get a few high-value, high-relevance links, be generous when linking to other relevant sites and pages that compliment your own content – and ask owners of other sites to do the same for you.

Social media is pouring gas on the linking fire: Websites that people love get shared within social networks and create thousands of links. Google and other search engines are starting to get on-board, listing profiles within social networks for some searches (especially when the profiles are highly-relevant and popular).  You can make it easy for readers to share your content on social networks.

That last activity can tie into your email marketing, if you encourage people to share email content by putting it into your website or blog and giving them easy links that lead to the sharing tools at social network sites.

PPC = Pay-Per-Click Advertising
(AdWords is one flavor of PPC Advertising)

PPC includes ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing – these are the ads you see at the top and right-hand side of search pages – or even on Facebook pages.

Google AdWords vs Organic Search Results
It is easy to spot 'AdWords' paid ads in your Google search results

Usually PPC ads cost nothing to display – when a viewer clicks on the ad, only then is an advertiser is charged for the ad – hence ‘pay-per-click’.

In some cases ads are charged per 1000 ‘impressions’ (1 impression = the ad appears one time on a webpage displayed on one person’s computer).

The most popular PPC program is Google’s AdWords, accounting for around 90% of PPC ad dollars.  In my experience, AdWords has been the most profitable choice due to the high percentage of total web search traffic on Google.  AdWords is, however, becoming more competitive and costly every day which reduces the return on every advertising dollar you invest.  Other networks are working hard to offer attractive systems and traffic to advertisers – trying to get a bigger piece of Google’s pie.

The most popular PPC ads are text ads like you see on Google’s search page. Video and display ads (display ads have a photo or graphic or logo) are also common and can appear on almost any website (although they are generally ‘served’ from an advertising provider like Google).

PPC is a very easy way to promote your website when getting a 1st-page organic position is a longer-term, more difficult goal.

PPC is generally profitable when your business targets a specific segment of the market with a relatively unique product or service or offer – and when there are not a lot of competitors bidding against your ads and driving up the cost of your PPC efforts.

The basic measures of PPC accounts are:

  • CPC (Cost Per Click – the amount you pay each time someone clicks an ad and is directed to your site). CPC can range from a few cents for specialised, uncompetitive business niches – up to $50 or more for highly competitive industries like financial services.
  • Cost Per Conversion (the amount you spend before you get one sale, signup or other goal). If you ‘convert’ one out of ten visitors, and you pay $1.00 for each visitor from Google (ie: CPC = $1.00), then your Cost Per Conversion will be $10.00.

Choosing the right bit of SEM for your website

Some people guess that common sense and intuition are all that’s needed, but SEM is not as easy as it seems.

On the other hand, SEM consultants and web developers are notorious. They talk clients into doing everything all at once – paying huge fees for huge projects, when just a bit of the work on the right bits creates 90% of the profitable impact.

An experienced person can spot the best items to work on in order to make changes that pay off and, often, these are not the most costly items.  Making a profit online demands the right decisions!

CPC can range from a few cents for specialised, uncompetitive business niches – up to $50 or more for highly competitive industries like financial services.

Simple Tool for Writing PPC (AdWords) Text Ads

Simple Tool for Writing PPC (AdWords) Text Ads

Writing unique ads for lots of adgroups can be a slow and tedious process, especially when you build a big AdWords campaign from scratch. Using keywords strategically in every ad – not ‘cheating’ with keyword insertion, which can result in sloppy-looking ads – is a lot of work.  But it can save you money (and make you money)!

Here’s a simple solution I came up with working on a GOMCHA project……

First of all, you should be using Google’s AdWords Editor software. It is easy to use and saves a LOT of time. AdWords Editor includes features not available in the online AdWords interface (eg. drag and drop keywords among adgroups).  Get AdWords Editor from Google, here.

But, even with AdWords Editor, writing dozens or hundreds of ads is a slow process.

The Solution

Using a simple spreadsheet you can:

  • view and edit all of your new ads at once,
  • copy and paste text between your ads, and
  • check that your text fits into Google’s character limits.

When you are done, just save as a CSV file and import into AdWords Editor – voila!  You’ve saved a lot of time.

Screenshot of the AdWords text ad writing tool
Screenshot of the AdWords text ad writing tool

–>  Download the AdWords PPC Text Ad Writing Tool here, for free

(It is a  no-nonsense download in .xls format.)

Note: This tool is not for first-time AdWords users. Best to get some experience with AdWords and AdWords Editor, then move on to this later when you need to write lots of ads.

Included:

Sheet 1 shows you the character count of each line in your new ads and helps you make new ad versions.

Sheet 2 has important tips for writing effective text ads for AdWords.

Sheet 3 has instructions for creating your ads and importing into AdWords Editor.

Download the AdWords PPC Text Ad Writing Tool

Happy advertising!