Take a look at these three exact and phrase match keywords in Adwords:

[car insurance]          “car insurance quote”          [car insurance quotes]

At the moment only these search queries will show ads for the terms stated above.

Car insurance                        need car insurance quote                car insurance quotes

The changes will allow close variants of the search terms to appear as well like the following:

Car inseurnce                        need car insurance quotes              car insurance quote

From mid May phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, misspellings, singular and plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations.

Based on Google’s research and testing they believe these new features will greatly benefit users and advertisers.

At least 7% of search queries online contain misspellings and the longer the query the higher the rate.

Even with perfect spelling variations occur between users that are searching for exactly the same product such as “climb Kilimanjaro” and “climbing Kilimanjaro” or “mens hiking shoes” and “men’s hiking shoes”.

Google’s organic search systems detect and compensate for misspellings and close variants.

Google has been testing these new changes with advertisers and the participants have seen positive results.

I believe this will help all advertisers as we spend a lot of time making sure that misspelling of keywords and other close variants are included in our keyword lists.  You will still have an option in advanced settings to use the original setting or make use of the new matching behavior.

Try it out and tell us what your findings are.

Any PPC manager worth his salt will agree that Google Adwords sitelinks are a powerful optimization tool. So how exactly does this seemingly minor change impact so greatly on ad performance?

The enhanced ad offers the user more choices, for instance if you are advertising a small business such as the local supermarket, your ad could offer the user alternatives such as vegetables, fruits, canned good etc, making it more targeted and more relevant for the user.

Adding sitelinks to your ads has proven time and time again to lower CTR and thus improve quality score.

An Ad with sitelinks also takes up more of the Google real estate, making it more visible than your competitors’ ads, thus enticing users to click on your ad instead.

Here is an example of what an ad with sitelinks looks like on the Google SERP’s

Previously adding sitelinks meant that users would see a set of four links beneath the main ad, but recently Google unveiled their enhanced sitelinks, that has certainly gotten PPC advertisers excited.

Now instead of merely displaying links beneath your ad, you can now feature all your alternate ads, provided that they are located within the account and are closely related. Another criterion is that the ad is ranked number one on the Google SERP’s.

The enhanced Google sitelinks will look like this:

You can be certain that an ad like this will definitely grab the attention of the user and also allow PPC managers an opportunity to optimize their accounts further.

Google has announced that in testing they found that people reported that the ads containing the enhanced sitelinks performed better than those with the traditional sitelinks.

So if you aren’t already using Google sitelinks, you should get started.

Happy Marketing!

Christmas is just around the corner, and that means that the Shopping frenzy is well underway. It is this time of year that holds the most promise for all online stores, provided they are quick enough to sharpen their online campaigns to grab the attention of those eager buyers out there. So here are the few tips that can help strengthen your PPC techniques to get those high ROIs this Christmas.

The festive period means shops are selling Christmas trees, stockings, advent calendars and singing Christmas collectibles; all of which signals that the countdown to Christmas has begun.

So what should you be doing now in preparation for a lucrative Christmas?

Here are a few things you can do during this festive season:

The first step is to look at your account’s history:

Analyse your accounts past metrics such as cost per click, impressions and conversion rate in order to plan your strategy effectively. One metric that is pretty useful is the average position of the text ads and the related performance, so you will know more or less how to position your “special ads” to achieve the best results.

Choose relevant keywords and match types:

Ensure that you add festive keywords to your keyword list such as “Christmas gifts, Christmas hampers, Wine for Christmas” etc. Be sure to also include variations and misspellings as well, in this case it would be prudent to include search terms such as “Xmas gifts, Holiday activities, Xmas table decor” etc. You could even further improve relevancy, if for example you sold Christmas trees online, you could include keywords that include a clear call to action, such as “Buy Christmas Trees”. This type of keyword is great for your ROI. Another key point is to be aware of match types, if you are operating on a large advertising spend, a campaign incorporating all match types would be feasible, however if you have a smaller budget, you can try limiting the campaigns to exact and phrase match keywords.

Inject some glitter to your ad text:

This is the time of year where the competition is quite stiff, so in order to grab the user’s attention, you need to have ad text that really jumps off the page. Include call to actions, free offers and special discount prices in the ad text and more importantly include the “Christmas” terms as well.

Landing pages and website:

It’s important to keep the Christmas feel and theme on your landing pages and website, Christmas is a significant time for many people and these little touches can make a big difference in persuading users who have clicked through to convert by making a purchase.

Happy Marketing This Christmas Season!

OK, so you’ve just registered your domain for your new company and got your logo designed together with your website, it’s up and running and live. The next thing you do is Google yourself to see if you can find yourself and you find: Nothing!

The thing with brand new domains is that it takes some time for Google to know it’s there. You will eventually feature organically for your brand name or domain name, but not immediately. One thing that you can do to ensure immediate results is to run a branded PPC campaign where you only show an ad on the search engine result pages when someone type in your company name or misspellings thereof.

This will ensure that you will be seen when someone is looking for your company. The clicks for these branded terms will also be fairly cheap as there will be little or no competition. Google Adwords has got a setting called site links that is only enabled when you have a campaign that has a very good quality score and feature mostly in the first position. Now with a branded PPC campaign it is very easy to achieve this. The site links will display up to 4 of your products or services with direct links to their pages on your website, this will give the user a greater experience as they can see what your main products or services  are from your ad and  go directly to that page.

I have found that a lot of people have the Google page as their browser homepage and whenever they open it up they type whatever website address they want to go to directly in the search box. The problem with this is that they might be potential customers and if they don’t find you in that search result, they will think that your website doesn’t exist or that it is broken (believe me I had people phoning me tell me that their website is not working because they can’t find it on Google).

So if you just launched a new website get a branded PPC campaign going to make people aware of your brand. Even if your website has been indexed and appears in the first position keep your PPC campaign active and up there and make use of site links to direct people to your most popular products or services.

The display URL  is the URL displayed on your ad to identify your site to users. Google adjusted their display URL policy for sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as blogspot.com) to make this more clear.

As from this week, all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations.

Let’s say I wanted to create an ad linking to this blog: http://adwords.blogspot.com. In the past, blogspot.com would have been an acceptable display URL. Because there are so many independent blogs hosted on http://blogspot.com however, we now require the display URL to reflect the specific blog reached upon clicking the ad– in this case: adwords.blogspot.com.

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com