No SEM Value Meals Sold Here
Written on May 25th 2009
by John McCarthy

ADOTAS — The other day I followed up with a company that I spoke to earlier about creating a paid search campaign.

This company, located in southern California, is an original equipment manufacturer that primarily sells to other businesses within the state. While this company could sell their products outside of California, the delivery costs of the product make such sales opportunities cost prohibitive.

Upon taking my call, the general manager was extremely ecstatic. He informed me they had selected another agency and launched a search engine optimization campaign. Within 30 days, this firm already had achieved top 10 rankings for many of the company’s keywords, including several #1 rankings.

One might imagine I would be less than ecstatic at this point. Not so. Although I did not get the sale, I shared my congratulations and asked what keywords had noteworthy rankings. He quickly rattled off “city1” keyword, “city2” keyword, “city3” keyword and so forth. Apparently the entire SEO campaign of about 50 terms consisted of geo-targeted keywords. I immediately launched my web browser and validated the general manager’s findings. He was absolutely correct – every keyword he provided was on the first page of Google with many keywords ranking #1.

As I stared at Google’s search results, I realized the page looked really different. The first thing I noticed was there were little to no paid search listings. Then I looked up at the volume of search results: 9,950 pages. “There must be a mistake,” I thought while re-entering the search query. Again, Google returned 9,950 pages.

I then asked the general manager a jaw dropping question, “What is the monthly search volume for the ‘city1’ keyword?” All of the sudden the once ecstatic general manager fell silent. I quickly fired up Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool and found the answer “Not Enough Data”.

It turns out this company had implemented a search engine optimization campaign targeting keywords with no search volume. Yikes! While Google’s keyword tool is not perfect by any means, it is usually within a reasonable ballpark. After analyzing the 100 geo-targeted keywords this company was targeting, only 4 keywords registered any search volume on Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool.

I then reiterated to the general manager why my recommendation to implement a paid search advertising campaign was best for his company. I stated that 15 of his general keywords had over 100,000 queries per month and others 20,000-50,000 queries per month.

I explained how we could target California businesses by employing IP targeting and acquire 12-15% of that search traffic. Furthermore we could implement contextual advertising as well as display advertising and place text ads and banner ads on local sites like the Los Angeles Times along with business blogs visited by the company’s customers. Under such a campaign we could implement all sorts of testing scenarios to maximize conversions such as A/B testing, multivariate, day parting strategies, and bid position by location strategies.

The current bids ranged from $1.15 to $3.25. We estimated the campaign would need a monthly budget of $4,750 a month to target California businesses. While this budget was twice what he agreed to pay the current agency, the manager agreed the proposed campaign would be at least 100 times more targeted than existing efforts.

The general manager thanked me for the call. He wasn’t sure he had a large enough media budget but he would start by looking in his SEO contract for a termination provision. As I hung up the phone, it occurred to me that sales professionals are not talking to clients about suitability. Granted this is not the sexy part of solution selling – but nonetheless the responsible part.
Sales professionals should ask clients about their immediate and long term revenue goals, making sure the solution fits the business needs.

This applies to all traffic generation campaigns – SEO, paid search, affiliate marketing, display advertising, just as it does for website design. If we fail to act like responsible sales professionals we will simply become order takers and this does not appeal to me. Honestly, I for one really don’t ever want to say, “Would you like a side of social media with your SEO value meal today?”

Google AdWords to Show ALL Search Queries
Author : Janet Driscoll-Miller

I just received an email from the Inside AdWords blog crew that put a smile on my face and should for all advertisers too – Google AdWords’ Search Query Report will now show all search queries instead of rolling many queries up under the line item “other unique queries.”

Background: What Is the Search Query Report?

For those of you who are not familiar with the Search Query Report in AdWords, let me first introduce you to this phenomenal tool. Located in the reports area of Google AdWords, the Search Query Report provides insights into the actual search queries that users typed to find and click on your ad. While you may enter keywords into Google AdWords, if you use broad or phrase keyword matching types, you don’t still know the exact words used in or around that phrase that caused your ad to display. Additionally, if you use broad match, your ad may be showing up on synonyms or misspellings of your keywords. The Search Query Report provides the actual keyword search data.

Why Are Actual Keyword Searches Important to Me?

As I mentioned, most advertisers likely do not know all of the exact queries used to display their ads. That can be a problem, because if your broad and phrase match keywords are showing your ad for what may be irrelevant terms, you may get irrelevant clicks. That’s just money wasted.

For instance, let’s say you sell survey software, and you have “survey software” as a phrase match keyword. Great! But if a searcher queries Google for free survey software, your ad may show, since the query contains your phrase match keyword. Unless you have added the word -free as a negative term, your ad may show for that query – even though you sell your software, it may not be free.

The Search Query Report bears that query information out. Once you’ve run the report, you can scan it to find great new options for negative keywords, like -free, further refining your campaigns to make them more efficient.

The Old Problem: “Other Unique Queries”

Before today, the Search Query Report, while very helpful, had one major obstacle: a line item marked “other unique queries.” The report rolled up many (according to them) individual, single-click queries into one line item. I guess the goal there was not to overburden the advertiser with too much data. However, in many cases, the “other unique queries” line item totaled a significant amount of clicks and, thus, ad spend. And if those keywords were not converting? You had no idea what they were to troubleshoot your keywords and negatives.

Yeah, But How Big of a Problem Is It Really?

If you’re not already running Search Query Reports, even before today’s announcement, run one NOW! You’d be amazed at the irrelevant queries that will show your ad – even if you think you’ve caught them all with negative keywords.

Case Study: Deployable Systems

To demonstrate just how powerful the information in the Search Query Report is, I’ll share the story of our client, Deployable Systems. They carry rugged, all-terrain shipping cases – the sort of thing you’d pack if you were going to the battlezone in the deserts of Iraq. Tough stuff. They carry one brand called “storm cases”.

After running a Search Query Report a while back, we found the term hurricane glass vases came up in the results. WHAT? That has to be about the most opposite thing from a storm case! What happened? Because we were using broad match for the storm case term, Google automatically invoked expanded broad match (which you cannot “opt out” of). This caused AdWords to think that hurricane was synonymous with storm and vases was a misspelling of cases. Obviously, we immediately added -hurricane and -vases as negative keywords!

A New Day: Showing ALL Queries

By removing the rolled up line item and replacing with all search queries, Google has provided advertisers with significant insight into how to make their campaigns more cost-efficient. Now you can identify specific keyword combinations that affect AdWords ROI and profitability and address them appropriately as they arise. In some cases, we have clients whose “other unique queries” line may total over $6,000 in advertising spend per month. That’s pretty significant, and we believe that one line item may hold the key to even further cost savings when mining negative keywords.

Janet Driscoll Miller is the CEO and Lead Search Strategist of Search Mojo a full service search engine marketing firm. Her company offers both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services and Pay Per Click (PPC) Management services to help clients improve search engine rankings.

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