AdWords Advice - #seopodcast 193

The SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. This is podcast number 193. I decided I learned my lesson. I'm not going to ask how they're doing. I really don't get any feedback. I don't know. I'm not going to do that anymore. We're just going to wonder how they're doing. Yeah. I am actually wondering how you're doing. Above that, I'm actually hoping that you're doing quite well. And since you're listening to the podcast, we know you're doing quite well. Now, as always, there's a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is, if you are on WordPress, be sure to install the right plugins to help you with your SEO. Yeah, definitely. WordPress gives us plenty of tools, plenty of options when building and managing your site. Some of those options go by plugins, and they work well with SEO. I will say this, SEO Ultimate, definitely in Yoast SEO, and even all of us, all of us. We stopped using that one. So, SEO Ultimate and Yoast, those are my preferences. We use those internally, and they work well. So, definitely make sure you're using the right plugins. Please remember, we are your friendly, local, neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is, don't be a douche. What else do we have? If you are in a position to, if you have the capability, if you have the technologies, please, would you please tweet now? What should they tweet? You should tweet hashtag SEOpodcast193. Be sure to tag us in it, at eWebStyle. That way, we can link up, follow you back, and do all of that social networking stuff. You can do us a small favor. There's two small favors that you can do. The first has three steps. Go into iTunes. Make an account. Write a review. If you get good information from our podcast, please do that. When you write a review, go ahead and email us, podcast at e-webStyle.com. And let us know that

you wrote a review, and we'll give you a punch in the face. I think we got a couple punches in the face. We got some punches. Two day. The other thing that you could do, item number two on the list, doesn't have three things. It's write us a G-plus review. If you have a Gmail account, you have a G-plus account, whether you know it or not. You probably need to click three screens saying, yes, okay, that's how it works. Great. Thank you. Let me in. And then you can go to our page. And there's four different ways. Yeah. There's four simple ways to get there. And it's e-webStyle.com slash Google Plus or G Plus or G Plus spelled out or what was the last one? Google Plus spelled out. Yeah, plus with the symbol or plus spelled out. So any one of those, e-webStyle.com slash G Plus or G Plus spelled out or Google Plus or Google Plus spelled out. And it takes you right to our Google Plus page. Leave us a review. Yeah. It's been a while since anyone's written a review on there, so we'd give you like an extra double punch in the face. Punch in the face slash sprinkle some link juice on you maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, some link dust. Ooh, the link dust fairy's been around. Um, link fairy dust. You just need a sound for that, like, bling, bling, bling. Well, we've got the Google monster. Arr. Or pirate. Pirate. We have a referral program. If you have a client that wants SEO, you don't want to do it for them, send them to us. We'll work directly with them, keep you in the loop, and you can get compensated for that. You can get paid. We've got some cool stuff. Actually, this is pretty interesting. One of our content developers came up with this. I thought this was really cool. And it's, yeah, it's literally written on a napkin. High quality product. Experts in SEO. Always available. Reliable. When you talk, we hear. H-E-A-R. High quality

product. Experts in SEO. Always. Always available. Really. Oh, reliable. Really reliable. I just thought that was cool, Sharon. Shout out to A. Hugh. Yeah, good job. Punch in the face. Punch in the face to A. Hugh. We have a review from España. Best content and biggest smiles in iTunes. Ooh, love that. This is Danielle Victoria Garcia. The content of this podcast is very good. They talk about news, but also about internet marketing fun findings. Best of all, with a healthy hint of humor that helps dealing with the day to day, a healthy hint of humor that helps dealing with you. I've never added a review for timing reasons, but these two guys are really worth it. All right, that's what's up. What's his name? Mr. Daniel Garcia. Punch in the face to you, Daniel Garcia. Thank you for tuning in. Most people who tune in tend to either work on a website, work for an agency, or somehow involved in the marketing, the online marketing of that site. Curious to know what you're working on. Why are you tuning in? What are you learning? So hit us up, podcast at edashwefstyle.com. And let us know what you're working on. And do you know if there's anything different that we're talking about that is slightly different because you're over there in Spain, let us know. Yeah, definitely. We wouldn't think much other than the language. And, you know, let us know. So it's un fuerte, how do you say punch? Fuerte. Yeah, I have no clue. Chocar. That's to hit something, like your car. You chocar. When you chocar, you just hit your car. I don't know if that works for punch, though. All right. This is from our Facebook. By the way, you can send us information as well and interact with us. There's a number of ways to do that. Facebook.com slash. ewefstyle. Twitter.com slash. ewefstyle. YouTube.com slash. ewefstyle. And, again, you can email us at podcast at e-wefstyle.com. This one is from our Facebook page, Mark Phantom. Hey, guys, I want to become

an SEO guru. Do you have any suggestions for learning material? Can I read this? It sounds familiar. Watch our podcast. That's the best thing to do because, Frank, and I'll be honest, especially since somebody has already reviewed us and commented about this, a lot of the information that's out there, like our frequent SEO mods, also use their platform, but there's Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, all of these resources provide excellent information about SEO. And what I do is review these frequently, like weekly, daily, and then compile that information and present what we feel is the best information to you guys. So if you don't want to do that, then just watch the podcast. Listen to the podcast. If you want to read it for yourself, we'll post those links on Facebook, or you can go look at them yourself. And so we're kind of the cliff notes of SEO news. That's how it is. I like that. I actually like that. Yeah. Because it's a lot of news out there all the time, not including the news. We publish ourselves and everybody else is publishing. Yeah. We kind of break that down for you. A lot of stuff. In the news, the Galaxy S4 outs the iPhone 5 in camera test, according to somebody. I like Galaxy. They're good. And SAP, you know, so that's the corporate enterprise level software, is planning on hiring autistic employees. Okay. And the logic is that typically people with autism may lack interpersonal skills. Extremely intelligent. And an extremely intelligent and a unique ability to stay incredibly focused for things like looking at data. So, there you go. Think Rain Man working for SAP. And you're in good shape. Yeah, definitely. All right. That's all I got. That is the potatoes of our podcast. It is now time to get to the meat. Okay. So, we got, we'll get to the meat right here. We want to talk PPC. Last week, we talked about, well, last podcast in 192, we talked about SEO and WordPress. So, let's stick

to our online marketing theme. But let's switch gears to pay-per-click. Spent a lot of time on pay-per-click. Came across this article on Search Engine Journal posted by Chris Kent. Ten golden rules of AdWords. This article immediately, immediately captured my attention. So, punch in the face to you, Chris, for the title. So, but more importantly. I think like ten mediocre rules of AdWords were one of the title considerations. I probably still would have clicked it, frankly. It would mainly be AdWords. Ten and then AdWords is what popped out. Because I'm in AdWords daily. And I actually agreed with some of his ten. One of them, a little iffy. But, you know, we'll go through them. So, number one, I totally agree with. Always install conversion tracking. Anytime you're doing paid ads or marketing, period. Whether it's through AdWords, whether it's social, whether, whatever form of marketing you're doing. If you can track your conversion, then definitely set it up. AdWords makes it extremely easy. Whether you're tracking a thank you page or sale or purchase or download or a subscription or whatever it is. AdWords makes it extremely easy to set that up. More importantly, it's like one click and it'll automatically sync with Google Analytics as well. And so, then you can access that conversion data in both platforms. So, definitely make sure you always set up conversion tracking. We'll actually take it a step further. And depending on the conversion, there may be five or six different methods of that conversion. A registration could be a conversion. But you may want to track all of those. The registration, the download, the sale, the subscription. Yeah. You may want to track all of those. Give them all a different title. And definitely track them all. So, especially if you're paying for that traffic. Number two, never send PPC traffic to your homepage. Hmm. I think it depends. The concept is right. The concept is definitely right. Never is the wrong word. Because never is the wrong word. Exactly. Because the way your site is built,

you tend to have pages focused on a specific action. And so, if, for example, if your action is to get someone to subscribe to a newsletter and you have a page about your newsletter on your site, then your paid campaign shouldn't take people to the homepage. It should take people to that newsletter subscription page. However, if your site is designed well enough and your homepage converts because you have all of your CTAs and converting elements on the homepage. And USPs. And things of that nature because the homepage is usually designed the best. Then I think it's okay. Especially if you're in a very niche industry. Dump truck. Yeah. You're in a very niche industry. So, if they get to your homepage, then they're likely the information they're looking for is going to be relevant. It's going to be there. Then land them on the homepage. I'm not getting a dump truck. Yeah. Like, the guy, the client I was talking to this week, or potential client I was talking to this week, he's a dump truck. He owns a fleet of dump trucks. And they move dirt. They move dirt. And, you know, I was on the phone with him. I'm like, you know, you just need your phone number. Yeah. His phone number was kind of hidden. Your website needs to confirm that you do, in fact, move dirt. You don't need to pontificate about the best way to move dirt. Nobody cares how you move dirt. You don't need to talk about the speed at which you can move the dirt. You just need their phone number. So, they call you and ask you to move the dirt. So, in regards to sending PPC traffic to your homepage, we'll take that on a case-by-case basis. I will say that if you have internal pages that are more focused on a product that you're marketing, make sure you land those ads on those pages. No doubt. Which is, let me take this time to say, one of the things we do here is try

to make sure that all of the pages convert. So, whether it's the homepage, whether it's a sub-page, even that sub-page, we'll have the right CTAs. It will have the right phone numbers. Forms will be visible. Because no matter which page you land on, we want you to be able to convert if we can. Number three, never bid more than your conversion rate. Now, this one was interesting. I had never really looked at it from an analytical perspective in regards to the numbers. My logic was always, which is kind of similar. He just added an analogy. Not an analogy. He added an equation to it. And so, for example, my logic was I know how much your average value per client is, and I know how much your paid budget is. And so, that in itself helps me to dictate and determine how much I should bid on a specific keyphrase. He actually gave a value. He says, and I'll explain it. He says, don't bid more on a certain keyphrase than you should. For example, if you have a landing page that converts at 2%, and the average customer is worth about $100 of profit, and you plan on profiting at least a 10% profit margin, then you shouldn't bid more than $1.80 for that particular keyphrase. So, to give you some easy numbers, let's say your conversion rate is 2%, and using his same number, it's $100. Okay, and so you're converting 2% of those, that's roughly $2, right? So, you shouldn't bid more than $2 for that specific phrase. Because if you're bidding more than $2, then you're probably not profiting as much as you could. Important note, and it is listed there, lifetime value of the customer. Lifetime value. So, we were running a campaign for a candle manufacturer. You know, an individual cell may be worth a profit of $1.50 or $2. And we were willing to run that campaign at a break-even or a slight loss, because people who bought candles from them will buy again. So, I may be

losing money this month, but that person, I don't have to pay to get that person back next month. And so, the actual value of that client is the lifetime value. Yeah, look at the lifetime value. If you know your product is a repeat business sort of product, but they have to come back and get it again, like printer ink and things of that nature, then definitely keep that in mind. But pretty good value, at the end of the day, is basically saying, you know, don't outspend. You know, what you don't want to do is spend a lot of money on paid traffic, get a lot of traffic coming in, and they convert and purchase. But you're still not making money because you're out, you're overbidding. So, don't do that. One other problem with that equation, on day one, you do not know your conversion rate. Exactly. You can't know your conversion rate. So, the question then becomes, is one month enough to help me define my conversion rate? Yeah, we recommend 90 days. Yeah. You know, that's the smallest amount of contract time for a PPC campaign. And that's because it's going to take the first 30 days just to get your words in, make sure we're bidding on the right terms. It's going to take month two to tweak that and make sure you're actually getting some ROI. And month three for us to kind of tailor it some more and constantly prune and tweak it. By then, you will have made some money. And at that point, it's time to either up the budget or make some adjustments. And so, yeah, if you won't know when you first start off, dedicate some time, which is not on the list. But dedicate some time to your AdWords. Understand that it's going to take you probably three months to figure it all out. So, it goes back to our old saying, do not throw money against the wall and see if it sticks. Go after it with a plan. Definitely. Number four, always separate display

and search. This is key. For anybody who's working in AdWords and you're setting up campaigns, you can set up search campaigns, right? So, this is, you know, searching the results page. Or you can set up display campaigns where you may be running remarketing or banner ads and things like that. You have the option, and Google should frankly just remove that option, but you have the option to run those in the same campaign. His recommendation is to separate them. My recommendation is also to separate them. Reason being, you have more control over the budget. You have more control over the keywords. And look at it like this here. From a search, it's strictly keyword focused, right? You choose the keywords you bid on that you pay when they click. From a display, it's more themed. Your words will, based on the keywords you choose, your ads may or may not show. And you don't necessarily get charged per click for each one. It's more about impressions and things like that. So, definitely keep those separate. Don't run them at the same time. You may even want to, it's easier to track conversions that way. Number five, extensions are your friends. Boo. He's right and it sucks. Yeah. Because Google wants you to add more extensions, you know, like your phone number or your address or things like that. The problem I have with extensions, well, mainly just one, and that's the phone number extension, is because Google is changing it and they're going to force us to use Google Voice. And so, anybody like myself who's doing call tracking and you have your own block of numbers you have access to and things like that, this kind of throws it out the window. And so, it sucks, but it's necessary. If you can, use that extension, meaning it's proven. It increases your click-throughs. And frankly, if your phone number's there, they may not even click. They may just call. Yeah. Which is why Google is forcing you to use Google Voice because they just may call.

So... Well, and Google wants to know... Probably the reason they're forcing Google Voice is so that they know how many dollars they're losing. Mm-hmm. By people not clicking. So, will they charge if a call happens? I believe so. Or maybe that's the plan. Because that's... Yeah. It's brilliant and it sucks. I don't know if it's any time. So, yeah, that was number five. Number six, negative keywords are your friends. I couldn't agree more. Negative keywords are your friends. It's worth saying twice. Make sure that when you are managing this PPC campaign, that you take advantage of negative keywords. Negative keywords are those words you don't want to show up for. So, if you are, I don't know, selling cell phones... FYI is the best example. FYI. Yeah. Well, FYI is a good negative word. Free is a good negative word. DIY, do-it-yourself, how-to. These all come from my default list of negatives that I give every client. But the more you pay attention to a campaign, then the more you will learn about terms that you should add. For example, if you're selling cell phones, you may not want to show for, let's say, a mobile device. Or a cell phone tower. Or a tower or something like that. Because then you may start ranking for, like, tablets and things like that and spending your money and that's not what you sell. And so, you know, definitely monitor your keyword detail of all keyword detail in AdWords to see which you're showing up for and add negatives. I like this one. At least log into your account once a day. At least log in once a day. I log in daily. Luckily, I'm using my client center so I can see everybody at once. But log in, make sure everything's spending, nothing looks out of whack and wonky. Make sure that your budget's there, frankly, that you are getting clicks. Because if you don't log in, then you don't know. And if you at least log in once a day and look at it, then

you can quickly tell when you need to make adjustments. Now, of course, plan to make adjustments anyway. But log in at least once, even if you didn't plan on making adjustments that day, just to make sure everything's running smoothly. Number eight, and we're almost done. Your ad should always have a call to action. Duh. You know, this is an ad. You want people to call you. So make sure you have a call to action in your ad. That goes without saying. I will say this. Since we're talking AdWords and Google gives you that flexibility, be creative with your call to action. Take advantage of keyword insertion and things like that. And then, and that way your ad can be more prominent and have a higher click through. Number nine, set ROI goals. Right. So we talked about conversion tracking earlier. So part of that is understanding how much money you should be making based on whatever your ad is or whatever your product is, whatever your marketing. Set those sort of goals. So, you know, if you got 10 clicks and, and five of them actually turned into business, how much money should you have made? Right. That's a great goal to know. And if you did make that, then you can know how. If you didn't, you can also backtrack and figure out what happened. So definitely set ROI goals. Last but not least, number 10, test, test, test. After you set all this up, after you get your goals and your conversion tracking, you've added your negatives, you've logged in every day, you got your phone number, you're using extensions. After you've done all this, you've separated, you know, display from search, now test it. And then test it again. Yeah. And then rinse and repeat and test it again. Yeah. And constantly test it. You have running A and B ads, for example. If A ads working better than B ads, stop using B ads, use A ad, and create variations of A ad and start testing all over again. And continue

to test, because that's the only way you can constantly improve your campaign. Boom. There goes the meat. That was delicious. Yeah. Got algo, cataclysm, and blank stare. Oh, man. We missed it in the beginning. I forgot to ask. So this is our segment. It's called the Algorithm Cataclysm. Oh, yeah. That looks awesome. I can't help but compliment that special effect. So on May 22nd, 2013, it was like the other day, Google released Penguin 2.0. That's what our listener got hit by. That was the other day. So Penguin 2.0, similar to the first Penguin, was targeting links and spam. But more importantly, 2.0 had a focus on sites that sell links that offer page rank. And so I was like, okay. They're trying to really hone in on the people buying and selling links and swapping links and this and that. Then I got to thinking, well, the only reason people sell links is because they give page rank. So why create an algorithm that targets that? Instead, just target them. Because that's the only reason to sell a link is because it passes page rank. I can't think of anyone selling links that don't. Why would you buy a link that didn't have any linkages? But anyway, Penguin 2.0 is targeting those. And so if that's a practice you're participating in, buying links and doing all this here. You probably saw some changes that you didn't like. If you probably, if you didn't, you will. Because I'm pretty sure, just like the first algorithm updates, they just released it. It'll probably be a data refresh coming in the next few weeks. And that'll likely be, you know, Penguin 2.1 or something. And so, yeah, don't buy links is what the boy is down to. Don't buy links. Do not buy links. Period. Period. What else we got? Blank stare. Blank stare. We got two blank stares. Yeah. This is all the way blank. This first blank goes to Yahoo. Right? So they spent $2 billion on Tumblr. Yeah. And they're going to keep the porn

problem. How does that fit in with the Yahoo brand? Yeah, I don't know. And I like, I almost like Ms. Mayer's response. So they, you know, everybody knows the big pink elephant in the room is that Tumblr has a porn issue. And so she got on there. She says, well, our plan is to, is to not change Tumblr's primary usage. Which happens to be porn. Which happens to be porn. Okay. So, so, yeah, blank stare to you guys. Like, I just don't know if that's a good move. Like, I understand purchasing the usership and all of those people. But nobody's, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if it was worth $2 million. Like, that was more than Flickr. That was more than Overture. Like, all the other things they bought, they spent more for Tumblr. Good luck with that. Yeah. And the second one goes to Google. Google Plus. Dude, have you logged into the Plus recently? So, they, they, it looks like Pinterest. Ah. Really? Pinterest Plus? Pinterest Plus. That was that. P Plus. Yeah. So, come on, Google. Now, I will say, it actually looks okay. As a matter of fact, it looks better than Pinterest. Yeah. But still, though, it looks like Pinterest. Well, today's blank stare news, maybe tomorrow's, wow, that was a good decision. Yeah, it might be, but it still looks like Pinterest. It's still a copycat. Man, so that was it, man. All right. Well, you have been listening to podcast number 193, the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. We are titled, again, the SEO podcast, Unmanned Secrets of Internet Marketing. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burns. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Slightly raised up, highbrow, highbrow. Tamely, gamely, headed my way. She's gonna set me free.