Posted by: Rosemary Dempsey, Senior Storyteller

Quality Score. Everybody knows it’s an important part of paid search programs run through Google AdWords and the content network. But how does Google calculate these scores, and why are they so important to our pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns?

According to Google, “A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query - that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad.” It’s important because it influences your keywords’ actual cost-per-clicks, determines if your keyword is a potential result for a user’s search query and even affects how high your ad ranks.

What’s the best way to improve your quality scores? Optimize your account! As Google recommends, your ad groups should have descriptive ad text relevant to each keyword in the group.

Visit Google’s AdWords Help section for more information about quality score and tips for optimizing your paid search programs.

Posted by: Shannon Denny, Project Manager

Google has recently launched a new feature for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that inserts customized site links beneath the ads. At this time, this feature is readily available to PPC advertisers with high quality scores. Google allows advertisers to enter up to 10 sitelinks, and all sitelinks can point to different pages within the site. The higher the quality of the PPC ad, the more site links will be displayed. Below is an example of these sitelinks (highlighted in green) in action:

Sitelinks take up valuable real estate in the Google search results allowing advertisers to “own” the space which will likely lead to an increased click-through rate (CTR). As these links can be modified any time, it is a good idea to keep seasonality and new promotions in mind when planning them out.

Posted by: Leslie Norgren, Project Manager

Yahoo’s Vice President and General Manager of search marketing, David Pann, recently discussed shifts that the company is making to lower costs for paid search campaigns.  Some companies may be seeing PPC clicks discounted as much as 15% depending on the industry.  Pann said that Yahoo has been evaluating cost-per-acquisition numbers for advertisers and that they are now working to change the marketplace so that CPCs are priced “accordingly with the value they deliver to the advertisers.”

Although Yahoo is making swift innovations in search marketing, it may be too soon to determine the importance of their changing pricing structure for paid search.  StatCounter reports that Yahoo’s market share continued to decline in October falling to 8.91%, down from 9.4% in September and 10.5% in August.  With falling market share shifting paid search campaign budgets to Yahoo, to save a few pennies on the dollar may not currently be a wise marketing decision.  Only time will show if Yahoo’s PPC advancements will make a lasting impression on the industry as well as impact the pricing structure for Bing paid search campaigns.

Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Marketing Coordinator

Google recently announced that it is making a major change to its organic search results algorithm. The update, expected to give Google the ability to cache pages more quickly and comprehensively, has been dubbed “Google Caffeine.” Caffeine will affect organic search in several ways, but here are three ways you might not have thought of that it will affect paid search:

1. Paid search may become more necessary to supplement your organic listings.  Changes in the organic listings including rank changes and index-size changes may mean that you’re not getting the organic visibility you’re used to seeing. Now would be a good time to begin watching organic results carefully and making up for any decline in traffic using paid search.
2. Paid search campaigns will need to become more nimble. With the changes in indexing speed brought about by Caffeine, being able to adjust paid search campaigns on the fly will become more and more important.
3. Geo-targeting will become more important.  With Caffeine, there seems to be less of an emphasis on news results and a greater emphasis on local results. Geo-targeting will ensure that your ads show up in precisely the right locations, rather than leaving it up to Google to guess if your ad is relevant to local searches.

Search algorithms will always change. Understanding the right mix between PPC and SEO is essential for maintaining search visibility.

Posted by: John Batchelder, Conversion-Driven Media Specialist

Google recently made a subtle change to their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads by shifting them from the far right side to center-right, just next to organic search results on the user screen. Much discussion has surrounded the reasons behind this shift and the potential effect on click-through rates (CTRs) for both PPC and organic search results.

While there is not yet industry-wide evidence that CTRs will increase significantly for PPC as a result of Google’s change, Blogger Frank Lee of The Search Agents SEO blog recently reported a 10% jump in PPC CTR across multiple clients immediately following the Google shift. This evidence may is not conclusive, but does indicate an initial upswing in CTR as a result of the change. It is reasonable to expect this increase over the short term, as the closer proximity to organic search results naturally places them closer to users’ eyes.  However, as users become accustomed to the new location of PPC ads, CTRs will likely increase at a much lower rate than 10%.

An increase in CTR for paid results will likely lead to some drop in organic CTRs, but not across all search categories. PPC ads perform well when a user is searching for specific products or services. When queries are topical, vague, or rare organic search becomes more relevant as PPC ads cannot target a product or service to the users’ need. Simply put, organic search will continue to offer a more detailed and accurate overall search result.

In the end, shifting paid search results closer to organic results will likely cause an increase in overall PPC click-through rates. However, the accuracy of organic search results and users’ active avoidance of online advertisements make the location of PPC ads less influential for CTR than the ability of advertisers to provide a compelling reason to click.

Posted by: Heather Cratty, Senior Accountant

Since Bing has become a part of the search engine world it has slowly increased Microsoft’s market share of search quires in the United States from the previous months.  With an increase of 0.4% in June and 0.5% in July, the new decision engine seems to be revving up usage.  The reality is that Bing has yet to help Microsoft regain its position of 9.5% in July of 2008, as according to ComScore in July of 2009 Bing accounted for only 8.9% of US quires.  A review of current international usage figures reveals no gain since launch and even dropped a percentage in July.  This could be due to the fact that Bing initially launched a more sophisticated version in the US as well as contributed to a generous US marketing campaign.  According to Market Share, the yearly trend for Global usage (international and US combined) shows Microsoft’s percentage decreasing from 3.56 % July 2008 to 3.17 % July of 2009.

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Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager

Are you strapped for cash but under pressure to perform? Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns offer a cost-effective way of driving qualified traffic, and conversions, to your website? To get the most bang for your PPC buck, follow these four simple steps when setting up and optimizing your campaign.

• Focus on Targeted Keywords: Nothing will run your budget quicker than bidding on keywords that are too broad. While you may get a lot of visibility, the clicks you will receive on these ads will likely be very costly and may not drive the most qualified traffic. Honing in on your specific offerings will drive more targeted traffic to your site leading to an increased conversion rate.

• Evaluate Match Types & Negatives: Keywords that are receiving clicks but are not converting may be a sign that people are searching on similar keywords that don’t necessarily mean the same thing. These keywords may be good candidates for exact match, where your ads will only be returned if someone searches on the exact keyword. Another option is to add negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up for searches containing those keywords.

• Adjust Budget Based on Seasonality: Evaluate past campaign performance to determine “peak” conversion times and allocate more budget toward these months, weeks or days. While it’s still important to maintain a PPC presence during the “valley” times, you’re likely to see higher conversion rates during times when decision makers and buyers are in the “Purchase” phase of the buying cycle.

• Evaluate Keywords that Convert: When optimizing your PPC campaign, determine which keywords are not only traffic drivers, but are converting too. These keywords can be broken out into a separate campaign where more of the budget can be allocated toward these top performers.

Having a small PPC budget doesn’t mean you should expect any less from your campaign. Following these four simple steps during the strategy phase and ongoing optimization will lead to increased PPC conversion rates.

Posted by: Chelsea Maxwell, Marketing Coordinator

Suggested search is a helpful tool that is standard on most search engines. Google is taking steps to make it even more useful. Previously, when a user would enter a search query the menu would drop down with a range of possible search terms and clicking on any one of those would send you to a results page. Now, when a user enters a search query the drop-down menu includes hyperlinks, personalized results, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements. For example, if you start typing “AdWords” into Google, you can see the first result in the drop-down menu is an actual link to the AdWords site. The idea is to cut out the results page, ultimately saving the user time. Google says there will not be hyperlinks for all queries, only the ones in which they are pretty sure they know what the user is searching for.

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Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

Setting goals for a new search engine marketing (SEM) program and developing the strategy that will achieve them are your first steps toward high ROI. There are several important factors that arise when you go through this process, ranging from qualitative considerations such as the audience’s awareness of your brand to quantitative considerations including your initial budget.

Let’s take a look at a few of these factors more closely:

• Brand Awareness – Knowing how familiar your target audience is with your brand plays a large role in goal setting and strategy development. This will help you define what tactics to consider as part of your program and what metrics you define as important in achieving your goals. For example, contextual advertising is a great way to generate brand awareness by targeting prospects that are searching for content related to your product/service offerings. However, since this is often primarily a branding tactic, you should expect a much lower click-through rate (CTR) than you might from tactics such as email or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. read more »

Posted by: Rosemary Riley, Senior Copywriter

Forbes has just released the results of its “Ad Effectiveness Survey,” conducted among senior marketing executives during February and March 2009. The survey delved into behaviors and beliefs around digital marketing and forecasts areas of growth and weakness over the next six months.

Highlights include:

• When it comes to influencing brand perception, the most effective tactics were site sponsorships and pay-per-impression programs on digital publications.
• For garnering conversions, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and email were seen as the three most effective tools.
• 82% of marketers are using conversions or sales data.
• 55% use registrations.
• Over the next six months, respondents plan to allocate a higher percentage of digital media dollars to viral marketing (42%) and SEO (40%), while 53% stated they would spend less on Ad Networks.

View the complete survey results.