Ask the PPC Experts

Why do my Bing adgroups show a "Draft" status?

This will occur for one of two reasons. Either the adgroup is missing required information like keywords or ads. Confirm that all objects are loaded and all adgroup settings are in place. If the adgroup is still in 'Draft' status it will need to be 'submitted,' which can be done in the Bing interface by sorting Status by 'Draft,' selecting all adgroups and clicking the 'Submit' button. Clicking the 'Resume' button will not solve the issue.

- Tim

Answered: Jun 21, 2010 - 6:11 pm EST What do you think?

how do I set up for ecommerce tracking?

I assume you are speaking about The publisher and Google analytics when you are asking this question. If you are tracking for Ecommerce the single most important thing you can do is make sure to track revenue in whatever solution you are using. Below are the locations for where you can find the set up pages for your specific accounts publisher tracking pixels.

Google - You can find the Conversion counter under the Opportunities tab, in the Tools section of your Adwords account.
Yahoo - You can find the conversion counter script under the Administration tab under the Analytics section.
Bing - You can find the conversion counter under the Campaigns tab, within the Campaign Settings.

If you are using the publisher tracking pixels then you will be able to insert a revenue variable for Google and Yahoo conversion counters to dynamically capture the value of an order on your website. You will need a coder type person to do this for you. For Bing you can only track conversions, so you can only really manage your accounts using a CPA model with Bing publisher tracking.

If you are using Google Analytics then you will need to enable the ecommerce script on your page. You can find the instructions for doing this at this link:

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55528

- Patrick A.

Answered: May 19, 2010 - 12:28 pm EST What do you think?

My company sells DVDs. How do I best structure my PPC account for the long tail (ie individual DVD titles)? Grouping all titles in the same ad group sounds like a bad thing to do given that each keyword sends the user to a separate title. But creating an ad group for each title sounds like overkill (or is it not?).

The goal of grouping appropriately is to put similar keywords into groups and to give them relevant ad copies. Given the example of individual DVD titles, I completely agree that you would not want to combine everything together. There are three routes I see here and they are ranked by most effective/time consuming:

1. Breakout each title into its own group. Having one title per group is the best option. Assuming you expand on the keywords for each title, each group will be very tight and highly relevant. This can also be done for genres, actors and any other categories.

2. Breakout by top titles and then by genre. The hybrid option can be a great balance of your time. For instance you can build out a highly relevant group for "Avatar": avatar, avatar the movie, avatar dvd, buy avatar movie, buy avatar dvd, etc. Then you can group the lower volume/obscure titles as tightly as possible by genre, actor, or a combination of various factors.

3. Breakout by genre. The final option can be the quickest, but also the least effective depending on how large/small you make your categories. It's easiest to dump everything into large genres like action, drama, and comedy. Or you can build very specific genres like "70s Asian Martial Arts Films".
Even after choosing a grouping method, there is more work to be done like adding negatives, testing ad copy, pausing/moving poor quality score keywords, and the list goes on and on.

- David

Answered: Apr 21, 2010 - 12:13 pm EST What do you think?

What is the mathematical formula that Google AdWords uses to calculate your actual CPC for every search?

Actual CPC = (Ad Rank to beat / Quality Score) + $0.01
Ad Rank is calculated by max CPC x Quality Score.

- David

Answered: Apr 6, 2010 - 5:50 pm EST What do you think?

Hi. Do you know how the different search engines are ranked in the UK - I guess Google.co.uk is no. one, but what about the rest?

Here are the rankings based on market share as of January 2010.

- Google - 90%
- Yahoo - 5%
- Bing - 3%
- Others - 2%

- Mike S.

Answered: Mar 31, 2010 - 3:53 pm EST What do you think?

Dear Sir, is it possible to hide cost data from analytics using adwords. I want to run a campaign for a client and have agreed upon a fixed rate per click for the same. Unfortunately the client has analytics enabled and wants me to link my adwords account to his. I understand that this will enable him to see my actual costs and thereby put me in a situation where i will have to work on a low margin. Your reply in this regard will be of great help. Warm regards

Hi,

It seems to there are 2 Adwords (one belonging to your client and one belonging to yourself) accounts and 1 Google Analytics (GA) account. If this is indeed the case, you cannot link your account to his GA account. You can however have your metrics show up in his account without any cost date. If you are familiar with GA tracking parameters, you could can tag all your URL's with your own unique identifiers. For example:

www.mysite.com?utm_source=myname_Google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign...etc. Please refer to Google's help section if you need more information on GA tagging. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

- Shimal

Answered: Mar 17, 2010 - 2:37 pm EST What do you think?

I have a client who has an account with yellowpages.com. I have been working with them making sure they are in all the local directories, link building, e-mail marketing and more. They also pay Yellow Pages $90 to submit to other directories. Should I tell them it\'s too much or should I continue to have them work with yellow pages too.

Hi,

The answer depends on the economics of your clients business as well as yours. The first step in determining if that $90 is worth it, is through tracking. Do you have any way of attributing if a lead or a sale came from YellowPages.com? If so, look at the value generated from YellowPages.com and see if there was positive ROI was generated.

If you don't have any tracking setup, consider a third party tracking solution like Google Analytics so you can measure your performance. If you feel you can take that $90 and put it to better use somewhere else, put together some evidence to support your claim for your client and have a conversation with them in that regard.

- Shimal

Answered: Mar 15, 2010 - 6:07 pm EST What do you think?

What is the best way to figure out the keywords you should be targeting?

There are many tools available to help with keyword discovery. However all tools will fall into two main categories: suggestions based on industry traffic and suggestions based on your account’s traffic.

Industry Traffic:
The tools that fall under this category include keyword suggestions that come from users searching for products/subjects related to the industry you specify. Most of these tools allow you to input generic words related to your industry and will suggest keywords that are related to your inputted words. A free Google keyword expansion tool can be found at http://www.google.com/sktool/. Other tools are more comprehensive but come with a fee. A search for 'keyword discovery tools' while bring back more options.

Account Traffic:
To see keyword suggestions based on your own traffic will require a tracking system or search query report. Seeing how your account offers keywords in Broad/Phrase/Advanced match types, the search engines will show your ads on keywords you don’t have within your account. These search query reports will give you insight on what words users are searching for and can bring to your attention new keywords to target. This report is currently available by Google for free.

- Mike S.

Answered: Mar 11, 2010 - 5:49 pm EST What do you think?

Are there markets that you feel are too saturated to start a new PPC campaign? Examples like health insurance, lock smiths, and finance seem to have high CPC's that make achieving an acceptable ROI difficult to improbable for new businesses.

Thank you for your question. While the answer does depend on your internal economics, there are strategies you can employ to help achieve acceptable ROI results. Consider a portfolio approach to managing your SEM campaign and focusing on quality score.

While there is no official information on the weight quality score plays in SEM campaigns, there is no doubt that quality score can have a very big impact on your SEM campaigns. Focusing on Quality Score and achieving a quality score that is higher than your competitors can propel you to the top of your listings, while at the same time, keeping you costs low.

The key to a successful portfolio approach to SEM includes the following:
- Creating an extensive list of long tail keywords that are still qualified, but have less competition.
- Geo modifying your keywords (i.e. "san francisco lock smiths", "chatsworth locksmith")
- Qualifying you keyword set with prefixes and suffixes will not only allow you to better qualify you audience, but also allow you to achieve a lower CPL/higher ROI because of the inherent higher conversion rates.
- Hopefully you will have a variety of keywords performing under your CPL/ higher than your ROI goal with no room for improvement in volume or position. This should allow you start using more competitive terms at a slightly higher CPL, or slight lower ROI. The combined over performers and under performers should lead to your overall SEM CPL/ROI goal.

When determining if this approach is feasible, consider if your economics truly allow you to have loss leaders in your portfolio approach.

- Shimal

Answered: Mar 5, 2010 - 4:22 pm EST What do you think?

How should quality score be leveraged when optimizing a campaign.

There is a inverse relationship between Google's Quality Score (QS) and CPC. As keyword QS increases, the CPC decreases, & vice versa. Google makes this fact blatantly clear. However, Google is less open about the weight they give each variable in their 'QS formula' (link to QS variables: http://bit.ly/9Y7ly8)

With this inverse relationship in mind, QS should be given high importance when you are optimizing your Campaigns. Keywords with low Quality Scores (less than 4) should be purged or put into an isolation group for remediation. Keywords with mediocre QS should also be isolated into groups where you will work to increase their QS over a set period of time. Keywords that improve during this time period can be removed from the isolation group. Keywords that fail to improve should be evaluated to determine whether or not they are worth keeping.

The takeaway here is that QS is an important component to consider when optimizing your Campaigns as you are surely overpaying on keywords running with low to mediocre QS. Most importantly, improving QS on your low to mediocre keywords can translate into material cost savings as the inverse relationship between QS and CPC is realized.

- Patrick H.

Answered: Mar 1, 2010 - 5:50 pm EST What do you think?