Anybody who works in customer service will tell you that it can be a thankless job. Not to say that all days are bad but it can definitely be tiring. I noticed a post on Search Engine Roundtable about an …
by Mike Moran
Have you ever asked yourself whether you paid search program is all that it can be? Most of us suspect that we fall short in some areas, but who has the time to stay on top of every aspect of a Google AdWords account, on top of everything else we do all day? Or perhaps you want to check out what kind of job your agency is doing with all your paid search money. Well, WordStream has put together a scoring tool called AdWords Grader that tries to do exactly that–show you how your paid search campaign compares against everyone else who has scored their own campaigns. And best of all, it’s free.
Recently, WordStream CEO Larry Kim took me through the thought process behind AdWords Grader and shared with me two contrasting anonymized reports–one for a horrendous AdWords account and one for a great one, to show off what AdWords Grader can do. Check them out one after the other and take a closer look here and here.
That’s a lot of data for a free tool, so Larry Kim and team should be commended for providing such value, and the tool is extremely simple to use, also. All you need to do is to put in your credentials for Google AdWords and the tool does the rest.
I asked Larry what his motivation was for the tool, and he told me that “PPC is hard for SMBs” and that “advertisers are struggling more than I previously thought.”
Larry told me that “the problem is that people have the wrong expectation–an instant success–but lack of time and education produces crappy campaigns get penalized by Google and starts a downward spiral that keeps raising your click costs.” He compared the start of most campaigns to “making a bad impression on your in-laws.”
And much of the data revealed by AdWords Grader truly can help search marketers see what they have been missing. Helping people understand Quality Scores, Clickthrough Rates, and their share of impressions can be extremely useful.
Having said that, some of the metrics shown seem dubious to me. As much as I hate to criticize a free tool–I laud WordStream for giving this away–I am not sure that merely looking at negative keywords truly identifies wasted spending or that flagging accounts for less activity means that they are somehow missing the boat. But these are minor quibbles with a tool that is valuable and–did I mention?–free.
It is valuable to know how you stack up against other Adwords accounts, not because you should sit back if you are scoring well or freak out if you’re not. But to the extent that it shows you important metrics that help you focus on where to take action, it’s a good thing.
Originally published on Biznology
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Today’s infographic round-up explores how Google AdWords work, the differences and similarities between Google and Facebook when it comes to security and privacy, and how different airlines use Twitter. View more daily infographic round-ups here. How Google AdWords work: Infographic …
Starting this week, some of you will see enhanced Analytics reports with mobile ad performance metrics. All AdWords reports in the new interface will be gaining a new visual toggle as shown below for “All”, “High-end Mobile” and “Tablet” ads. All AdWords metrics available in Google Analytics can be segmented by these new mobile and tablet dimensions.
As more consumers begin to make use of tablets or high-end mobile devices, businesses need to understand this shift towards mobile and adapt your marketing mix. This mobile ads reporting enhancement in Google Analytics is one of many steps that we are taking towards helping you make more sense of how mobile advertising interacts with your business.
Please let us know what you think, and suggest any other mobile measurement options you’d like to see that help make sense of your mobile advertising effectiveness.
- Phil Mui, Google Analytics team
Today’s infographic roundup looks at pet peeves around the office (are you annoying the hell out of your co-workers?), the impact of local reviews on businesses, how people interact with AdWords, how confident CEOs are, social media’s impact on loyalty, …
All too often, there are still companies who set their daily budget on their Adwords campaigns that is not sufficient in comparison to the available search volume. This will cause lost impression share. If your campaigns are performing according to the KPIs you have set, the budget should not be a…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
This week was a lively one for Boston as we celebrated the future of marketing through the FutureM conference. Compete had the honor of hosting a TastyBytes event with the ARF about turning social media conversations into business advantage.
We wished we could have been at every event, but that’s why we had Bostinnovation around to fill us in! Check out a recap from Thursday’s event: #FutureM: The Future of Location Based Technology, GeoM2 Recap
Companies like Google and Facebook have been dipping their toes in the daily deals industry without a drastic amount of success so far. It’s Amazon’s turn now and in order to increase their chances, they are addressing the fact that the landscape may indeed by saturated by taking advantage of their very own customers. Lifehacker tells us how Amazon is integrating their daily deals into their very own product, the Kindle, to close out the competition: AmazonLocal Deals Coming Soon to Your Kindle with Special Offers Screensaver
I was talking with a colleague about how hacking in the begging of the Internet was experimental and less serious. Gizmodo must have been eavesdropping because they compiled this list of 10 Hackers Who Made History
SEO may seem like a term for a traditional online marketer, but as it turns out, social media marketing can have a part in it as well. Not sure how to optimize your search results via social media outlets? Read Search Engine Watch’s 5 Ways SEO Can Work with Social Media Managers
We’ll leave you with a little gem from Search Engine Watch: 5 Filters Everybody Should Use In Their Adwords Account
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After traveling through Europe on vacation the past couple of weeks, nothing said I was home more than grabbing a slice of New York pizza!
Deciding to do a blog post on the topic, I wanted to find out who the “big cheeses” were in the pizza world and see if I could find some insight into their web strategies.
Using the Keyword Destination tool on Compete.com to get a list of sites referred to by a broad match for the generic keyword “pizza”, I quickly found that Pizzahut.com and Dominos.com were the hands-down winners. Approximately 16% of all “pizza” related search referrals went to Pizzahut.com and 5.8% went to Dominos.com.
Both Pizzahut and Dominos showed strong consumer brand recognition, as seen by looking at branded vs. non-branded search referral data collected by Compete:
With similar patterns in historical UV traffic, these two brands were ripe for comparison:
You would think that two strongly similar brands would show similar ad spend profiles, but I was surprised to see that visitors referred to Pizzahut.com via a search engine were 1.8X more likely to have reached the site through a paid search link as visitors to Dominos.com.
What’s the difference?
Using Compete.com again to analyze keyword search referrals to the two brands provided a bit more insight:
For the sake of brevity I am just including a few keywords, but the general trend was the same. Pizzahut seems to struggle to rank for organic traffic for long-tail phrases, even those containing their brand name. Paid search helps augment low SERP placement by artificially ranking Pizzahut ahead of the couponing sites vying for this sort of referral.
The Bottom Line:
While there are certainly more “slices to the pie” that this brief analysis can’t cover, the bottom line is that there is a constant struggle going on behind the scenes between large brands and third party sites looking to ride on their coattails through coupon offerings, referral links, and product reviews. If you find your manager questioning the value of SEO, consider that the average CPC for a “pizza” broad-match term was $0.63 (source: google adwords keyword estimator), and in Q2-2011 approximately 5 million search referrals were sent to both Pizzahut.com and Dominos.com. Strong SEO efforts can translate into significant savings through reduced ad spend on paid search!
This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week, Gavin Doolan, an Analytics specialist shares some of improvements to AdWords linking in Google Analytics v5.
