[question]
What is a Negative Keyword?
[/question]
[answer]
A negative keyword is a word that you define in a campaign or ad group within Google AdWords. The word you define as a negative keyword is a term that will not trigger an advertisement of yours. Negative keywords are added to campaigns so that broad terms, or terms that share the same language, do not trigger advertisements. Words defined as negative keywords may bear some similarities to your keywords, but will ultimately help you target your text ads in a more direct, niche manner.
[/answer]
[question]
If you decide to research using broad keyword universes would you say that conversely affects your quality score?
[/question]
[answer]
I would and from a process standpoint if you’re just starting off with an Adwords campaign we actually recommend you pull all three counts. The exact match and these counts are for people who type exactly that set of characters in that order. And then the next level up from that, is a phrase match count, which basically means the user has typed in a longer phrase. And then when we pull to broad-match. A broad-match basically says that the user has used those words but they may have scrambled the order of those words in terms of their overall search. So consequently the volume gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
We would always tell you start off as targeted; you know lesson one in any direct response campaign whether you’re talking you know about direct mail or pay per click advertising is to start targeted because if you can’t make the targeted run work in terms of your return on investment goals there’s no way you’re going to make the phrase of the broad-match stuff work. So start targeted and keep track of the other numbers so you know what your upside is and then there’s all sorts of advanced techniques in terms of pay per click buying where for example we might be carrying one campaign that was an exact match campaign and we might be running a different campaign that was a broad-match campaign. So for some keywords we might only be able to achieve our return on investment goals with exactly match criteria running an exact match media select and pay per click where we’re only bidding on the exact matches. And then we might have other phrases where we can make the broad-match term play, which of course is always going to get you the–you know that long tail. You’re going to pick up all of the goofy keyword phrases that people type in that you could never have anticipated with an exact match or probably even a phrase match.
[/answer]
[question]
Is it recommended to not use the sub-domains?
[/question]
[answer]
We would tell you that’s a good test. If you’ve got an incredibly strong brand like an Amazon let’s say, and you know you’re the Amazon of your market, then leading with the structure where your URL outcome is first is probably the right thing to do. So the best practice is to lead with your brand but this is again, test, test, test; depending on the offer and depending on your brand you might find you do better in some cases by pushing the offer out into a sub-domain position. Remember, you’ve got flexibility here that as long as it’s the same root that you’re resolving to you can make the URL say anything you want it to say.
[/answer]
[question]
Would Google frown upon the redirect from some domain to the URL extension?
[/question]
[answer]
No, not to the best of our knowledge. Basically somebody who uses a sub-domain format and resolves to a sub-directory URL, again, as long it’s the same root that that you’re resolving to.
[/answer]
[question]
What is a Google quality score?
[/question]
[answer]
Your Adwords are going to get a quality score from Google. It’s calculated every time your keyword search matches a search query or your keyword matches a search query and every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad. So the score is one to ten and it’s all done automatically Quality scores are Google’s check on the system trying to assure that both the users and the advertisers are getting a fair deal and holding up the high standards that Google has about doing no evil. And in fact, Google would actually rather not display any ad than to display ads that diminish the overall Google user’s experience.
Quality scores are very important. They affect whether your ad will-enter the auction for a particular query and they also affect the relative position your ad gets on any page of search results.
Additionally, with higher scores you’re able to appear above the organic search results. That’s kind of cool. And only those ads with high-quality scores can use the dynamic keyword insertion.
[/answer]
[question]
How effective are text ads for acquiring names to rapid conversion landing pages and do you have any benchmarks in terms of people who clicked on an ad?
[/question]
[answer]
Sure. About a third of the Gold Members use pay per click to drive traffic into their rapid conversion landing pages. Interestingly the conversion rates on pay per click versus the conversion rates on SEO or banner advertising or any other source, once they get to the rapid conversion landing page don’t tend to vary that much because the advertising the way our Gold Members would be doing it is pretty targeted. So, whether they’ve pulled an SEO ranking or whether they’ve got what I’m going to call a display text ad, the kind of stuff that we talk about that the Motley Fool uses, where they’re actually running banner ads in a banner ad network but if you look at the ads, the Death of Wal-Mart is the one you’ll see all the time, it looks like a Google text ad.
So very effective, and what does that mean? Well rapid conversion landing pages across our member group right now, the data Kim and I have access to, would probably tell you anywhere from 10 to 30-percent conversion rates are the range with 20-percent being the average. I can tell you from a cost-per-click standpoint; I can’t share other people’s data, but Kim from time to time runs Google Adwords campaigns in her market to acquire subscribers. And I want to say the range is in the $8 to $12 per new subscriber, cost per lead.
[/answer]
[question]
Is it true that text ads are more effective for B2C than B2B?
[/question]
[answer]
I would say no. And in particular, if you kind of look at Peter’s original statistic about the fact that two-thirds of all spending in any marketplace tends to be text ads versus display ads. I suppose if I was going to make a cut on this, that kind of traditional wisdom is that text ads work best for direct response advertising where you’re measuring cost per lead or cost per order or cost per new email subscriber, and display ads where you’re looking for impressions and not clicks, is just a whole other kettle of fish. And display advertising if anything would probably be more prevalent where you’ve got products that are available and at your grocery store. We’re talking consumer packaged goods.
I think display advertising actually is much more compatible with the B2C side of the market where it’s not a direct response ad. You’re trying to drive in-store buying, in-store traffic and brand preference. Whereas I think a direct response marketer in the B2B place is much more common, you know even if it’s the kind of stuff we see at Computer World. Well over half of their online revenue now for www.computerworld.com comes out of the IDG Connect Program which effectively is a text ad program driving into their own lead generation pages for clients like Cisco and IBM.
So unless you’re packaged goods, unless you’re trying to drive traffic into a brick and mortar store, text ads in general I think are the preferred medium in terms of online advertising and I think the numbers really bear that out.
[/answer]
