Creating successful pay-per-click campaigns is not rocket science. It just requires spending a little extra time and focusing a little extra effort to make your ad groups top performers.

The Basics:
1. Focused ad groups

2. Targeted, relevant keyword list

3. Well-written, interesting creatives

4. Tracking parameters

5. Negative keywords

6. Match type

For many marketers or business owners, managing pay-per-click campaigns is just one more thing on an already too long ‘to-do’ list. It is very easy to be sloppy when setting up campaigns. The result is under-performing campaigns and overpriced keywords. Following these basic steps won’t take a ton of time and the results will be well worth it.

1. Focused ad groups – An ad group should not be a catch-all that contains all sorts of unrelated keywords. It should be a well thought out ’sub-category’ of your campaign. For example, an online jeweler may have ad groups for ‘bracelets,’ ‘rings,’ ‘necklaces,’ rather than just ‘all jewelry.’

2. Targeted, relevant keyword list – Any one of your creatives can display as a result for searches on any keyword. Therefore, the keyword list needs to be very relevant to the theme of all creatives in each ad group. In the example of the jeweler simply having one ad group for ‘all jewelry’ with all of the keywords and creatives, could result in a mis-match in results as an ad for a ‘bracelet’ may display when someone searches on ‘ring.’

3. Well written, interesting creatives – Again, because many marketers approach pay-per-click as just one more chore, often times little thought is put into writing the creative. As a result searchers are faced with many boring, similar ads on the results page. There are some basic, best practice tips. Use your keyword in your headline. Use a call-to-action, maybe even a limited offer. One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve heard is to write an ad that is longer than required text limit then rewrite it as many times as it takes to fit within the text limits.

4. Tracking parameters – You will want to be able to see how your ads are doing, not just count clicks. In order to do this, you need to have the appropriate tracking parameters to be able to segment the traffic in your web analytics. Depending on how your campaigns are set up, use the following structure (the actual parameters you use are up to you):

For campaigns with the destination URL set up at the creative level:
www.mydomain.com/?source=google&c=campaign&ag=adgroup&creative=version
source= the search engine or other site
c= the campaign name
ag= the ad group name
creative= version number of the creative (this allows you to test specific versions of each creative)

For campaigns with the destination URL set up at the keyword level:
www.mydomain.com/?source=google&c=campaign&ag=adgroup&kw=keyword
source= the search engine or other site
c= the campaign name
ag= the ad group name
kw= the keyword

5. Negative keywords – Regardless of what your business is, there are searches that you don’t want to show up as a result. In the example of the jeweler, if he only sold high-end jewelry, he would want to make sure to add words like ‘cheap,’ ‘bargain’, ‘discount’ as negative keywords.

6. Match type – One of the most often overlooked option is the match type. Many marketers just let their keywords default to ‘broad match.’ This also can result in a potential mis-match in results. In the example of our jeweler, say one of his key phrases is ’silver bracelets’ as a broad match. Since broad match means that his ad can display as a result of a search on either of the words in the phrase, ads for his silver bracelets would display along with ads to ‘buy silver stock,’ ‘profit from sub-prime mess’ and other results for the search only on ’silver.’

Using ‘exact match’ may result in paying more for a keyword, but the traffic is better qualified. Using ‘phrase match’ is a good alternative when purchasing phrases as it requires that all words (not any words, as in ‘broad match’) must be in the search.

Following these simple steps will ensure that your ads are relevant to what people are actually searching on, your campaigns are trackable, and will likely result in higher CTRs and lower costs!

It’s been a while since we did a simple round up post over here, and since I’ve just spent the better part of Sunday working on a presentation (which will be posted to the Serengeti Communications Resources section after I’ve presented it on Wednesday), I felt that now was the ideal time to step back and write about items of interest in and around the Serengeti Communications team, and the work that we do.

In case I’ve piqued your curiosity regarding my Sunday endeavors, the presentation is titled “Social Search: The Next Steps” and will be delivered at Search Engine Strategies in New York City at 5:30pm on Wednesday. This last session of the day suddenly looks like it’s going to be well attended, as it was announced on Friday that Erik Qualman, the Global VP of Online Marketing for EF Education, and an expert Search Engine Watch blogger, will now also be on the panel. If that suddenly makes you want to rush out there, make sure to say hello, and make sure to only ask me easy, simple questions.

Former Business.com, and Yahoodler, Jessica Bowman wrote a great post last week on what a company should expect to spend on an SEO audit, and what you should expect to get for your money. Don’t forget to check out our services section where we talk about our Audit services.

On March 29th, spare a thought for me and Nate, as we’ll both be running in the Suntrust National Half Marathon, which will wind its way through the streets of Washington, DC. Normally, I’d stand no chance against Nate, but given that he’s having rather painful IT band issues, and apart from the occasional calf pull, I’m in good health. There’s a chance that I can take the bragging rights for the office (at least until Nan and Stacy complete their next Iron Man Triathalons later in the year).

Finally, as you know (if you’ve been keeping an eye on the Serengeti Team page), we’re a growing company – having added 25% of our staff this year already. Over the rest of this year, we intend to continue that growth. So, if you’re interested, have a skillset, and a mindset that you think would fit in with our team; you can contact us at info@serengeticom.com.

I read recently that Google’s homepage is the greatest landing page ever developed. With a market cap of nearly $139 billion, is it in fact true that google.com is the best landing page on the internet?

The goal of Google’s home page is to receive a search, any search. This does not seem to be a difficult task.  The homepage does not describe how to search or what to search for. It barely says “search” at all – only on the “Google Search” button or the “Advanced Search” link.

There are other options and services to explore.  But, the “landing page” says very little about who Google is, what they do, and how to interact with them.

A landing page as simplistic as Google’s for a client wishing to capture email addresses would have more difficulty capturing those email addresses with a simple box and submit button that says, “Submit Email” –  than by utilizing a more full-featured landing page.

And Google’s homepage would not survive their own quality score requirements for PPC landing pages – even for a search query as basic as “search.” There simply is not enough text and information on the Google homepage to offer valuable results for users.

Perhaps, the “landing page” that we should actually be evaluating is the search results page. Besides, many users do not travel to google.com prior to doing a search. My browser has a search box that automatically goes directly to the search results page for the search queries I request.

Is the goal of Google to search or is to receive advertising dollars from people clicking on ads displayed? If google.com is the landing page for receiving advertising dollars, I would expect to see ads more along the lines of perhaps, aol.com.

The lessons of Google’s landing page, whether it is their homepage or their search results page, is TEST! Google is constantly testing, especially their search results page.

Test your landing pages for different elements, test them for ad copy, order of copy, different calls to action, and beat your own benchmarks. There may be value in studying other landing pages, but what Google or some other company does on their site may not translate for your visitors.

Reputation management is a topic that is discussed quite frequently on our blog and is a topic that Nan and Simon have often spoken about at conferences.

Many companies have reputation management issues. How they react to these issues will determine the overall impact it will have on their organization. Some companies are proactive, some are reactive, and still others are either oblivious or have no idea what they should be doing regarding reputation management problems.

University of Phoenix is an example of an organization that has to constantly deal with these types of issues. Being such a large university, they are bound to have disgruntled students. But, the real problem arises when these disgruntled students decide to take action. This is when it can potentially become a major reputation management issue. University of Phoenix did face a serious reputation management problem when the site www.uopsucks.com ranked on the first page of the Google SERPs for the keywords “university of phoenix”.

When prospective students see a site like this they are bound to have second thoughts as to whether this is the right online university for them. University of Phoenix has diligently worked to push this negative site off the first page and have been successful in accomplishing that goal.

This is not the case, however, with Capella University. When you do a search for “capella university” the number two result is for www.capellauniveristy.org. That seems innocent enough until you see the title and description.

The result is that they now have a huge reputation management problem on their hands. It makes you wonder how many prospective students they are losing because of that site. We may not be aware of the actual quality of the education at Capella University or how they treat their students, but www.capellauniversity.org is definitely giving them a black eye whether it is justified or not.

For their sake, hopefully they are aware of this issue and have begun to take the necessary steps to repair their reputation. Only time will tell and if the site is in fact truthful, they have a much more difficult task at hand than just pushing negative sites down in the rankings.

I like a good book, especially a good business book. Sure, you see many people at the beach in the summer with a gossip magazine, a music magazine, or maybe a trashy novel. Not me, give me books like Blue Ocean Strategy, Freakonomics, What Sticks, blink. That is my summer reading.

Of course, Amazon has me hooked with their combo of ‘one-click to buy’ teamed with their recommendations. So, now that the weather is warming up here, I’ve started this summer’s reading list. My first choice was obvious, Seth Godin’s new ‘Meatball Sundae.’

It is, as all his books are, fun to read and filled with great, handy information. In addition to getting a lot of useful tips about marketing in today’s world, I found the chapter about ‘The Man Who Invented Marketing’ very interesting.  The fourteen trends that are detailed in the book are right on the money.

Amazon’s recommendation compliments ‘Meatball Sundae’ perfectly. ‘Now is Gone’ by Geoff Livingston (with Brian Solis) is a very well-researched book about new media. It starts with five steps that a company must face honestly to understand if they are ready to embark into the new, social media. There are great real-life stories of companies who executed social media well, and some who didn’t.

I definitely recommend for anyone who’s company is thinking about entering the new world of social media to read both these books. They paint the realistic picture of the amount of work, resources, and planning that go in to being successful with new media.

At my previous employer, I worked with a gentleman who had been employed by the NRA. He was full of interesting stories, but we’ll return to that at the end of this post.

Earlier this year, I was working on a Search Audit for one of our clients. As is usually done, I took a look at the search results for their brand.

Not bad… not bad indeed. They had plenty of content across multiple sites that had enabled them to lock up the top 20 listings on Google. This particular client also used their 3 letter acronym for branding purposes, which required me to do another search.

So, what did those results tell me? They were a lot different from the branded results. While they did have two top spots and another top 10 listing, the rest were for other completely unrelated sites such as Russian towns, Central American peninsulas, medical conditions, other organizations, and so forth.

Another client of ours is named for a very common word and as you may imagine, they want to naturally rank for that. The word isn’t related to their business, so they don’t have like competition for that word. But, they do have competition from rappers, movies, cultural phenomenons, etc. who also want to / naturally rank for it.

Where am I heading with this? Well, on Friday night, I was reading the latest news through my RSS feed reader and came across an article which discussed how PEPCO had shut off power to 15 million people.

Wow, I thought. I had no idea that PEPCO (Potomac Electric Power Company) had so many customers – after all, they’re only in DC and some counties in Maryland. 15 million people seemed like a heck of a lot more than it should have been. So, rather than just skimming words, I went back to the article and read it completely. I then found out that the article referred to the Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) who had shut power off to the biggest Pakistani city – Karachi.

This got me thinking. The blackout was reported by major media all around the world. A search on Google news for PEPCO had these negative articles displaying first. Luckily for the DC-based PEPCO, the titles of the displayed articles clearly stated that it was a Pakistani issue, not a Potomac one. But, all it takes is a major, ambiguously titled article for PEPCO to have a potential Reputation Management issue that has nothing to do with them – but at a glance, may appear to.

You may think that my 3 letter acronym company from the second paragraph should be safe from this issue – as the other listings that rank for their name are all in different fields. That’s most likely true, but what if one of the other firms that shares the acronym has financial issues and the news is reported just using the acronym? That could be a problem.

So, what is the solution? Well, you can’t really respond to something that’s about a different organization, except to maybe ask whomever is ranking with the negative listing(s) to please clarify the specific entity they’re writing about.

Suddenly, this can become your problem. Therefore, quickly get great content assets out on the web to take up shelf space – forcing the negative listings away from the immediate view (first below the fold, then off the first page).

For the other client I mentioned, the one ranking for the common word should be less of an issue as it’ll be difficult for a story to break for that singular word.

Ok, so now we’re at the end of this post. Let’s return to my former co-worker who, if you’ll remember, previously worked for the NRA. Hands up if you thought he was a gun advocate… nope. He worked for the National Restaurant Association.

See how easy it is to grab hold of the wrong end of the reputation stick.

It has been reported that Google Analytics released a new feature which allows users to opt-in to a benchmarking feature. At first glance, a site may be able to be compared to industry-related sites “of similar size” based on visits, pageviews, pages per visit, bounce rate, average time on site, and percentage of new visits.

This data has been argued to only be of value to the extent that related sites opt-in and are of a similar size. I have further reservations regarding the actual concrete value of Google Analytics benchmarking. Google’s definition of a related site may differ from what others in the industry define as similar.

Though I have yet to see the category list, how granular could it possibly be? Would an informational portal for healthcare fall under the same category as rehab centers, nursing homes, and hospitals?

Are some forms of sites less likely to use Google Analytics as opposed to paid solutions such as ClickTracks, WebTrends, Omniture? Could this make the amount of aggregated data much smaller and perhaps, not representative of the industry?

While benchmarking against other sites does have worth, there is more value in benchmarking one’s own site and regularly working to improve upon that benchmark.

With Serengeti audits, we provide crucial information about your traffic history and the implications of this raw data. Because we immerse ourselves within the industries of our clients, embrace our clients’ missions, and join in their strategic marketing goals; we offer succinct advice to best improve online marketing efforts. These tangible results drive more qualified traffic to your site which will ultimately, convert on your site.

One of the many treasured clients of Serengeti is the Kids Wish Network. It is a privilege to create support for their efforts to help benefit sick, ailing children.

Please see our video of young, sweet Ashley who sadly has passed on. Ashley’s valiant story is profound and moving. Her last wish – to meet Country-pop singer, Martina McBride was fulfilled through the kind souls and benefactors of kidswishnetwork.org.

We all are humbled and honored to assist in these nurturing endeavors where, ultimately – a child’s wish can come true.

If you’ve ever called my cell phone you’ve been greeted with a message to enjoy the music and then a bit of the Elvis Costello song, ‘What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding.’ It’s a great song, one of my favorites. But I have to admit that it is a bit less than a professional greeting. So I decided that I would change my message and record a more professional greeting. Or so I thought. I spent a better part of a Saturday calling my cell trying to figure it out, even going to the web site to see if there were instructions. No luck. I was confronted with a lot of confusing options and even more confusing (and useless) information on the Web site. It should not have been that difficult.

The same is true in a lot of what is being written about analytics and new reporting standards for campaigns. I’ve read a lot of articles about the new ‘Engagement Mapping’ and even as a person who has spent more than the last few years involved every day in analtyics I am confused. Basically the concept behind ‘Engagement Mapping’ is the latent conversion. Because the nature of the internet makes it so easy to do just a little more research before making a purchase or signing up to receive more information about a product, it is unlikely that you will click on an ad or search results and immediately convert.

This is not a new concept. This has always been a fact of the internet and always been information that you could get. If you search ‘latent conversions’ you will find articles that date back to 2003. Of course like everything, it is easy IF you know where to look for it.

In my experience ClickTracks has always done a good job of simply showing latent conversions in both their Search report and their Campaign report. Now you can even create a ’segment’ to break out campaigns to see the latent conversions.

Other packages offer metrics like frequency and recency that allow you to piece together information about campaigns with latent conversions.

Regardless of what tools you are using latent conversions have always been and will always be an important factor when analyzing campaigns, especially since the number and percentage of latent conversion is generally signficant.

The obvious answer for this is that search volume does not predict success; what determines success is your ability to grab as big a share of the qualified volume of those search queries that you can.

However, just for fun – I thought I’d head over to Google Trends and take a look at the search volume over the last 30 days for the top 4 grossing movies for this weekend, and see if there was any correlation.

As you can see, this clearly shows that “Vantage Point”, which has been out for 2 weeks had a huge jump in searches last weekend, when it actually was the no.1 movie in the US. “The Other Boleyn Girl”, in it’s first week of release is not far behind, with a fair drop off down to new release, “Semi Pro.”  This was followed by 3 week old “The Spiderwick Chronicles”, which does not seem to have had much of a jump in volume over that period.

Looking at the news references for these 4 movies, “Semi-Pro” doesn’t even register, so there doesn’t appear to be much behind it.

So, now that we’ve seen the search volume, let’s take a look at the estimated grosses for this weekend…

Whoops… that doesn’t look like the order of the search volume shown in Google Trends.

So, it looks like the lesson from this is that you shouldn’t base your assumptions on one set of data, or assume that just because Google says something it auto-magically makes it so.

Just remember this, the next time you see someone posting election search data to prove who the winner will be…