I was a little discouraged by the campaign performance when I tested this feature in beta, however, now that testing is done, I will happily test out conversion optimizer again and report back with my findings.

FYI - You will not be eligible for conversion optimizer if you are not tracking conversions.  Click here for more information regarding conversion tracking.

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• Account structure: You may want to create a new ad group around high-traffic keywords that you find particularly relevant. Closely target ad text and a specific landing page to the small, narrowly-focused set of similar keywords you’ve found through the Keyword Tool.
• Budget planning: See how much traffic is available to your keywords so you can better plan your budget.
• Keyword choice: Search for and select the relevant keywords most likely to return quality leads within your budget.

I do not believe that these search volume numbers are broken down to a geo-targeted level if you are creating a local or regional campaign, however, I have found this tool to be VERY valuable in creating new campaigns and ad groups and is a great complement to the current advertiser competition metric.

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Looking deeper into the account, these 4 keywords were producing roughly 4 conversions per day in their current account structure.

To my amazement, an account this large and an agency of this size was running only ONE campaign in Google!  That means those 4 money producing keywords were sharing the daily budget with all of the other keywords.

The first change we made to this account was to break out the account to multiple campaigns dedicating budget dollars to these specific keywords.  The result . . . the 4 main keywords are now producing roughly 30 conversions per day.  A 650% INCREASE IN CONVERSIONS!

Give high converting keywords the respect and budget they deserve, use multiple campaigns.  Google allows 25 campaigns per account and 100 ad groups per campaign.

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Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Wikipedia defines SMM as a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, BOOMj, YouTube, Dailymotion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions, Shopit and others.

The goals of each SMM campaign differs for every business or organization, however the majority involve some form of building an idea or brand awareness, increasing visibility, encouraging brand feedback and dialogue as well as selling a product or service. SMM also includes online reputation management and community management.

Social Media for Business - The First Step?
GET SOCIAL - In this article, Muhammad Saleem presents the ingredients of a successful social media campaign. You’re going to hear me say it time and again because its the secret to connecting with your audience/customers.. Make Friends… Be Social… No Spam… No Advertising Talk… Be Human… Connect!

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Xposure Marketing will act as a consultant for Deliver The Dream’s online marketing efforts. Xposure will employ a mixture of PPC, SEO and Social Networking strategies to drive traffic and donations to this worthy organization.

I look forward to sharing our successes with you soon!

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The internet provides numerous opportunities for businesses and individuals to market themselves. Start a conversation with your contacts by sending this video using their name as the subject of the story. Imagine the response you’ll receive… just click on the video to get started.

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What are negative keywords?
Google defines negative keywords as a core component of a successful keyword list.  Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won’t show for search queries containing that term.  By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.

If the objective of your site is to attract as many visitors as possible, maybe negative keywords are not right for you, but if you are interested in driving more qualified, converting traffic to your site, you should take a serious look at them.

It is also an interesting exercise for your company. It forces you to think about your site and company in a whole new way. You know your business, you know how people find you, you know who your customers are, BUT, are you paying for traffic that can be avoided because someone out there doesn’t know what they are looking for or how to find it?

For example, if your site sells gift baskets filled with fruit and one of your best sellers is a basket of oranges, you would want negatives of –county, -choppers, -festival, etc… In this case, you are telling AdWords that you do not want your ad to show up for your keyword orange when someone searches for orange county choppers or orange county or orange festival.  Another example is if your company sells horse barns, you could have negatives of –noble, -and noble, etc… I can’t begin to tell you how many people search for the bookstore Barnes and Noble as Barns and Noble. By adding these negatives, you will ensure that when someone is searching for the book of the month, your horse barn does not show up in the sponsored search.  An ad that shows up for a horse barn when searching for Barnes and Noble is so far fetched, someone may even click on your ad even though that is the farthest from the content they were looking for, just because it is so off the wall.

Start brainstorming about negatives today! If anything, you may learn something new about your company and/or your customers.

Click here for official information from Google on how to use negative keywords with Google.

FYI, Yahoo Search Marketing refers to this keyword matching strategy as Excluded Words.

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One of the greatest challenges to maintaining a relevant internet presence is keeping up-to-date with search engine rule changes, requirements, new technologies/strategies, and current trends. Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t have the time or resources to devote to search engine marketing research. Don’t worry about it. We’re going to do it for you. Just bookmark this blog, and visit it often. You can thank us later.

In addition to reporting online marketing news, we’re going to provide personal advice and tips for improving your site’s popularity on the web. It looks like Rob has already begun with some excellent information on landing pages. Here’s my first tip:

Start a blog and post once a day. Make it happen. Start today!

What’s the big deal about blogs?

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Please let me start by saying, welcome to onlinemarketingnews.org.  I look forward to posting and sharing as much insight as possible into the world of Search Engine Marketing and hope that you will enjoy reading and sharing your comments. Now on to the post. . .

Clients always ask, how can we drive more traffic to our site while staying within budget and lowering our cpa? Sounds like an overwhelming request, but it’s definitely within reach.

Among the many strategies, one would require a total campaign review to “Trim The Fat,” where all non-performing keywords would be lowered in bid or paused all together. However, right now I would like to focus on quality score.

Quality Score
Quality score (Google) is calculated by numerous factors, including click-through-rate (ctr), historical performance, and the keyword occurrence in the text of the destination URL.

Your ad’s position in Google is determined as follows:

Maximum Keyword Bid x Quality Score = Ad Position

Gone are the days where a strategy of outbidding your competition will guarantee a higher ad position. Google is working everyday to bring more relevance to their users and giving priority to a site that has relevant content to the users search query. Therefore, LETS BUILD A MORE RELEVANT DESTINATION URL, or LANDING PAGE.

Landing Pages
Building a keyword relevant landing page will show Google that you are sending their users directly to a page that speaks to the user, rather than having them search through your site for the information they wanted up front. Create a trust between the user and your site that by clicking on your ad and visiting your site, they will enjoy a unique experience (hopefully leading to a conversion or sale).

In closing, remember to test. Consistently test the effectiveness of your landing pages by offering variations in layout, graphics, text and call to action and make the necessary tweaks to ensure the user converts on your site, not your competition.

Did You Know?
By increasing your quality score you may in fact PAY LESS than your competition per click while showing up higher in the sponsored search results?

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