Google AdWords Management & Pay Per Click Marketing Blog
Internet Marketing & Consulting by Windy City Strategies, Chicago Illinois. A full service Internet Consulting company specializing in Pay Per Click Management, PPC, Website Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Local Business Listings, Shopping Portal Management, SEO, and Social Media Marketing, SMM.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Google Page Rank and Internet Consulting
When Windy City Strategies in doing internet consulting, clients ask what the Google page rank is and what it means to them. Well, Google page rank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to a set of hyper-linked set of documents, and from there it measures its importance within the set. In simple terms, how important is your page based on incoming links, and each of those links are weighted too. A page that is linked to by many high page ranked pages themselves will get a high page rank too. If you have no links coming in, you do not have any support for that page, so you will get a low page rank.Now Google page rank is a score between 1-10 with 10 being the best, and this is based on how important Google views your site. The links incoming to the site along with the quality of those links is a major part of the page rank, but not all of it. They also look at relevance of search words on the page along with actual visits. Now all of this is just speculation as Google provides no specific information on how other factors influence the page rank.
The keys to remember is that you have some control with your page rank and your internet consultant can show you how by creating new pages and keeping your site fresh by adding new content from time to time, but as far as score, don't go crazy trying to get that high as fast as possible. That most likely will get you in trouble. Google wants growth with your website instead of making it stagnant through the years. It makes complete sense, and I think Google does a great job with it.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google Adwords marketing with our industry leading internet consulting and pay per click management.
Labels: google-page-rank, internet-consultant, internet-consulting, internet-marketing, page-rank, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
1:43 PM
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Newspapers Folding And Internet Marketing
Internet marketing keeps growing while newspapers keep folding. This is not a good trend for print marketing, but we have known for a couple years now that website marketing is rapidly taking the place of print media in terms of advertising. Since January of this year 120 newspapers have shut down, and more are in the midst of being sold or in bankruptcy protection. The recession has a major role in this crisis with big advertisers in the auto industry, real estate, and local business not being able to advertise in the newspaper like they did before. Also the classifieds are taking a big hit with Craigslist and Monster.com, which in turn has really cut into the profits of newspapers.Well what does this mean for all of us? Well most likely there no longer will be any two newspaper towns, and even then, they will have to create an online paper, and get advertising from there. Newspapers in general are way behind with social media tools and online publishing tools, which means they have lost young readers. News is still in high demand, but you can get a lot of it by paying nothing and just going to the web or cell phone. All this is putting newspapers in such a hole that they may never get out of it, but if they are, they need to move fast, and create a better website marketing strategy.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your online marketing strategy with our top of the line internet consulting, pay per click management, and search engine optimization.
Labels: internet-consulting, internet-marketing, newspapers-folding, pay-per-click-management, social-media-tools, website-marketing
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:03 PM
Monday, March 23, 2009
Internet Marketing and Google Trademarks
Almost every client that we come across here at Windy City Strategies has had concerns about doing internet marketing and how to protect trademarked terms on Google. Just so we are all the same page, a trademark is a logo, phrase, word or symbol that distinguishes a service or product from others in a marketplace. Now Google does not want to arbitrate trademark disputes between trademark owners and the person advertising on the trademark terms. The Google trademark team would rather have the trademark owner settle the dispute by contacting the advertiser in violation, because the advertiser is responsible for the keywords and ad they create. This sometimes does not work, so Google will investigate some complaints that are reasonable, but this only applies to Google Adwords marketing on the sponsored links and not the natural listings. If you have a concern about someone using a website, you must contact the advertiser directly to get this resolved. Google will not get involved.To get your complaint heard by Google, you have to fill out a Google Trademark Complaint, and provide them certain information about the trademark. Once the complaint is reviewed and you win, no advertiser can use your trademark in their ad text. They can use the trademarked term as a keyword, because of freedom of speech, but because of the quality score formula, it will be tough for an advertiser to continue to use the keyword, because a low click through rate is inevitable. Now you the trademark owner is in charge, and you can allow advertisers to use your trademark if you allow them. This is also in the complaint form to allow certain customer id's the permission to use your trademark. I hope this helps answer some questions about Google trademarks.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google Adwords marketing with our top of the line internet consulting and pay per click management.
Labels: google-adwords, google-adwords-marketing, google-trademark, google-trademark-complaint, internet-marketing
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:56 PM
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Internet Consulting Google's Editorial Policies
When Windy City Strategies is doing internet consulting on ads, we always go over the Google Adwords editorial policies, because it helps the client understand what cannot be done. Some of them are self explanatory, but there are others that clients want to use in their ad. Let's take a look at a few of Google's Editorial policies.1. Spacing - Correct spacing is important. BuyNow or Buy.Now are not correct and your ad will be disapproved.
2. Punctuations and Symbols - Punctuation cannot be repeated 2 times in a row to attract a users attention. No exclamation point can be used in the title, and only one can be used in the description. Also numbers and letters cannot be used in place of words like 4U.
3. Capitalization- Capital letters can be used for the first letter of each word, but all the letters of a word cannot be capitalized to draw attention to it.
4. Repetition - Repeated words are not to be used in your Google Adwords marketing, like Deals, Deals, Deals for a promotion. There are different ways to write this instead to get past the editorial review.
5. Unacceptable Phrases - Call to action words are great, and should be used, but if they don't describe your product or service you cannot use them. An example is Click Here Now.
6. Superlative Claims - This is something all customers want to strive to and say, which is why Google has decided to not allow subjective phrases like "best" or "#1," unless verified by a 3rd party and shown prominently on your website.
Hopefully you found some of these tips useful.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google Adwords marketing with our top of the line internet consulting and pay per click management.
Labels: google-adwords, google-adwords-marketing, google-editorial-policy, internet-consulting, internet-marketing, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:44 PM
Internet Marketing and Google Adwords Ads
A huge part of internet marketing is the ad that you place in front of potential customers looking for your product or service. If the ad is not enticing enough or not giving the user the information they want, they will skip your ad and go to another. I do not think this is something that you want, and knowing the format of a Google Adwords ad will help you. Text ads contain 4 lines; headline, description, display URL, and destination URL. Now let's talk about each.1. Headline - The headline can contain up to 25 characters and this includes spaces. The headline attracts potential customers to your product or service. Having the keyword that the searcher used is optimal, because it will get bolded, and increase click through rates.
2. Description - The description contains 2 lines of 35 characters, and this also includes spaces. These 2 lines will contain your product, service, information, promotion, or a special. Make your description clear enough to communicate what your are selling or informing them of, but enticing so that the user wants to click your ad. This can be difficult at times, which is why a/b testing is needed.
3. Display URL - The display URL can contain up to 35 characters with spaces. This shows the website that the user will go to if they click your ad.
4. Destination URL - The destination URL can contain up to 1024 characters. This is where the user will land on the website if the ad was clicked. This URL can be different than the display URL, but must be a page withing the same website. You want the user to land within 2 pages of the keyword they searched or you may lose them, because they can't find the product or service.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google Adwords marketing with our top of the line internet consulting and pay per click management.
Labels: a/b-testing, google-adwords, google-adwords-ads, google-display-ads, internet-marketing
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:11 PM
Monday, March 16, 2009
Google Adwords Marketing Destination URL Policy
When creating your Google Adwords marketing account you need to have a destination URL to run an ad, but do you know the policies set forth by Google Adwords? The rules are fairly self explanatory, but here at Windy City Strategies we see accounts from time to time manipulating the rules. First off the destination URL is the web address that an ad will link to, which is called a landing page. These guidelines set forth by Google Adwords are made so that users find what they are looking for quickly and easily. All destination URL's have to meet these 3 rules to be approved, otherwise they will be disapproved.1. It must link to a webpage that works. You do not want someone to click on your ad, get charged, and getting nothing out of your pay per click management campaign. This seems simple enough, but clients forget that creating a new website or updating the site can change the URL's, and this can go undetected for quite a while, and that is frustrating for the client and pay per click manager.
2. The landing page must not be under construction. Well at least the page works, but there is no content to get the potential customer to bite. This again will cost you money with nothing to show.
3. The webpage must not require a program other than the browser to see it. The destination URL must be in HTML. Do not create landing pages that are in MS Word or Adobe Acrobat. If the page needs to have another program to get more information, you need to remember that not all users will be able to view the site, and that definitely will detract from the user experience.
Windy City strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google Adwords marketing with our top of the line internet consulting and pay per click management.
Labels: google-adwords, google-adwords-marketing, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:40 PM
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Internet Consulting and Invalid Clicks
When Windy City Strategies is doing internet consulting for a client, the topic of invalid clicks seems to come up quite often. Rest assured, all the search engines have measures in place, but today I will discuss Google's policy, since they get around 70% of the search engine traffic.Invalid clicks are clicks that are completed by methods that Google prohibits. Some methods are manual repeated clicking, and repeated automated clicking by use of robots, software or clicking tools. These clicks are intended to drive up the costs to someones Google Adwords marketing. Now Google closely monitors these scenarios among others to protect advertisers from receiving these invalid clicks.
Here are 3 powerful tools that Google also uses to stop invalid clicks:
Detection and filtering techniques - Each click on Adwords is analyzed by the system, and they grab information like IP address, time of click, duplicate clicking, and other measures to isolate and filter out potential invalid clicks.
Advanced monitoring techniques - Google has proprietary technology to analyze clicks and impressions to see if there are patterns that may drive up an advertiser's clicks. This technology catches most invalid clicks prior to them even reaching your reports, but sometimes a pattern is noticed too late, so credits are issued into the Google Adwords marketing account.
The Google team - This team uses specialized tools and techniques to examine invalid clicks. When the system detects potential invalid clicks, this team will gather information from the affected account to see where the source of invalid clicks is coming.
Windy City strategies account managers have been in the internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your pay per click management account with our top of the line internet consulting.
Labels: google-adwords, google-adwords-marketing, internet-consulting, invalid-clicks
posted by Bjorn Torling at
11:44 AM
Reaching The Right Audience With Pay Per Click Management
Reaching your target audience is the goal of any pay per click management account, and Google announced new plans that will help you achieve this goal easier. By using the Google content network, you can match ads to the topic or theme of a web page, but now Google is also going to match the interests of a user too, so you can reach even more customers. This new interest-based advertising is going to be rolled out fully sometime at the end of 2009, but currently they are offering it in a beta version, and you can participate by filling out this form.Now what does the interest-based advertising do? You will be able to reach potential customers based on previous interactions to your website by seeing their interests. By analyzing the interests of visitors to your website, you can create campaigns targeted to those interests. Whether it is branding your site or increasing awareness this is going to be a powerful tool to increase the effectiveness of your pay per click management campaign.
Now as a user, internet-based advertising is going to increase the relevancy of your searches, and by visiting Google's ads preferences manager, you can see what interest-based categories Google has already placed you in, and you can add new interests into your profile, and even delete categories. You can also find the ads preferences manager by clicking on the "ads by Google" links that you will see by searching on the web. For more information on the interest-based advertising program that Google is rolling out, please visit this Google blog.
Labels: ads-preferences-manager, interest-based-advertising, internet-marketing, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
8:42 AM
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Pay Per Click Management Setup
Like the drummer is the backbone of a band, the setup of a pay per click management campaign is the backbone to your internet marketing. A setup takes a while to complete if you take into account that each theme, city or product should have its own ad group or campaign depending on traffic or conversions. Many companies out there do not take the time to do a correct setup, and you will notice it in your results. Remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. At Windy City Strategies, we take the time to create the best account that we possibly can. First we analyze your company's website and the types of products or services you sell. We research your competitors and the particular industry trends for that market. Then we define your objectives for your pay per click management account, and give realistic expectations. We are the experts in our field, while you are the experts in yours, and combining that knowledge is crucial. After we have spoken to you about your goals, and have consulted you on the strategy to reach those goals, it is time to do the keyword research.The keyword research is where your goals, competitor research, products or services, and industry trends all come together to create a list of words that will blanket the community to get the most qualified and relevant traffic to your website. As you can see, this is very important. We will create this list of keywords that will be broken up into ad groups for your review along with the corresponding ad and send it to you the customer for review. At Windy City Strategies, we want to keep you involved with this entire process and stay as transparent as we can with internet consulting.
Once the keywords have been approved, we will set the budget for the campaign, and direct where you want these ads to be shown, whether it is towards a local, national, or global audience. At this point the setup is complete, and we are about 2-3 days into it, depending on the size of the account's services or products being advertised.
Now there are many companies out there that say they do pay per click management, but to what level? Some do not charge any setup, while some charge a set one-time fee, but at Windy City Strategies we customize the setups based on each account's needs, and we are up front about this the whole time.
Labels: internet-consulting, keyword-research, pay-per-click-management, pay-per-click-management-setup, pay-per-click-marketing, windy-city-strategies
posted by Bjorn Torling at
6:18 PM
Monday, March 9, 2009
Google Adwords Marketing And Display URL's
When Windy City Strategies does internet consulting with a client, and we are looking over their Google Adwords marketing account we always give advice on little tricks that will get their ad noticed more. The one I would like to discuss today involves the display url.As you may or may not know, when a search is made, Google will bold the search query in ads which helps with click through rates, and gets the ad noticed. This is something Google does to reward clients that take the time to create quality ads, and it works well. Now here is a trick that most people do not use.
The display url is the url displayed on your ad to identify your site to potential customers, and you have a max 35 character limit. Use it all. You should have ad groups with specific ads per product or service already, so if you sell Nike shoes, make your display url www.Example.com/NikeShoes, instead of www.Example.com. Your title in your ad and the end of your display url will be bold. That is one extra noticeable part of your ad, and it works great with your Google Adwords marketing, so take advantage of it.
Labels: display-url, google-adwords, google-adwords-marketing, internet-consulting
posted by Bjorn Torling at
3:56 PM
Thursday, March 5, 2009
A/B Testing And Pay Per Click Management
One critical part in your pay per click management campaign that we see most people not doing right is A/B testing of ads. A/B testing, or split testing is when you have baseline data, and then you do one change at a time to improve conversion rates. You only do one change at a time, so you know if your results were positive or negative. By doing too many changes, you will not be able to pinpoint which change made the result. To start A/B testing, you can either create two different ads going to one landing page, or two ads that are the same going to two different landing pages. Now make sure you edit the settings, so the ads rotate, and show evenly, that way you have data that is 50-50. Let these ads or landing pages run for at least 100 clicks each for optimal results, but if it is not highly searched let if go for several weeks. Now let's analyze the results.The amount of data in the results may seem a bit overwhelming for some, but Windy City Strategies internet consulting helps our customers understand what each part of the data specifically means to the navigability of the website so that the client can adjust its internet marketing where it's most needed.
First, let's take a look at the two different ads going to one landing page. The ad with the highest click through rate is the one that potential customers like, but that does not mean that it is the best. If you are an informational or service site that does not have conversion tracking, the click through rate is the most important, and if that is the case, take the ad with the lowest CTR, and create a new one to compete against the ad that performed the best. Now if you have conversion tracking, the highest click through rate does not mean that it brought you the most conversions. You have to take this into account while implementing pay per click management strategies, because conversions make you money.
Now the scenario with two of the same ads going to two different landing pages is about the same as the last scenario, except now you are analyzing the landing pages. Which one performed the best? Again, look at the click through rates if you don't have conversion tracking, and use the best performing landing page, or create another page to compete against the better performing page. If you don't have another page to analyze, create another ad going to the better performing landing page, and now do A/B testing for ads. If you do have conversion tracking, use the best converting landing page, and create another ad, and start doing A/B testing again. I hope these scenarios and tips help you with your internet marketing.
Labels: a/b-testing, click-through-rate, internet-consulting, internet-marketing, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
4:44 PM
Monday, March 2, 2009
Google Adwords Marketing With Keyword Matching
When doing Google Adwords marketing it is critical to understand the different ways to market a keyword. The three different variations are exact, phrase and broad match. Now let's use the keyword red car and see what the three different variations can do to help your Google Adwords marketing. First off, we can use this keyword as a plural, so we are going to have exact, phrase and broad match based on red car and red cars, so you will have a total of six keyword variation. The exact match variation of red car(s), are for searchers that are actually only typing in those words. This is great to see clicks going to this because you know you are right on target with your potential clients. The phrase match version are for searchers that are adding words in front, behind or in front and behind of red car(s). Red car(s) has to be in that order though. Broad match is by far the keyword match that you need to watch out for, as this can hurt your internet marketing. This keyword match picks up all the variations of a keyword that you don't have, but also matches you with keywords that can pertain to that keyword. Terms like car(s) red, blue car, car seats, truck, motorcycle and rear view mirror can show for that keyword, so you need to make sure you do reports to find out what you are being shown on and create negatives on keywords you don't want to show, while adding keywords that can help you. Hope this helps you understand the different types of keyword variations in Google Adwords.Labels: google-adwords, google-adwords-marketing, internet-marketing, keyword-match, keyword-match-variations
posted by Bjorn Torling at
1:42 PM
Yahoo Search Marketing Advanced Targeting Capabilities
As a certified and leading pay per click management firm, we find out many enhancements that the search engines roll out before the public finds out. Today, I am going to share with you the next enhancement by Yahoo Search Marketing. In mid March 2009, they are going to have the ability to day part, enhanced geo-targeting, bid adjustments based on specific location, and better implicit content match targeting. The day parting is an enhancement that will help clients immediately, as they can pause accounts on weekends, and advertise on specific business hours. Previously you had to manually do this, which caused customers to become irritable with Yahoo. The geo-targeting is now going to incorporate zip codes, so you can target specific area of a city that brings in the best rate on investment for your company. This is crucial as there are areas of a city that you do not want to go. All and all I think the enhancement is going to help Yahoo, but they are still way behind Google Adwords.Labels: pay-per-click-management, yahoo-search-marketing, yahoo-search-marketing-advanced-targeting-capabilities
posted by Bjorn Torling at
1:15 PM
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Internet Marketing And Why It is Important
Nowadays internet marketing is becoming the future and quickly. With billions upon billions of searches monthly and growing it is a necessity to have a website and brand yourself in your field of expertise, and market your product or service. 80% of people do searches online to research a product before purchasing, get price quotes from local services before settling on an internet marketing company, and even do research on the company itself to see what customers are saying about them. Can you afford to not get a website?The problem is people believe that all you need to do is get a website, and magically you are being shown to everybody, but that is just not the case. Like the operations of your company, it takes time and energy. Think of your website as an extension of your business. To get a job as a marine biologist, you can't just wake up one morning and put on your resume that you are a marine biologist and start to do research or get a job. You need to get yourself an education, and even get some training through an internship to support your knowledge. Your website is the same. You need to create landing pages, optimize those pages, write blogs, do press releases, pay per click advertising, etc to get the results you want. The problem though is some people just don't have the time, so you need an internet marketing company to help them. A good internet marketer will let them know what they can do easily on their own, while some of the more time consuming aspects can be given to the internet marketing company, so get out there and give your website the time it needs and beat your competitors.
Labels: internet-marketing, internet-marketing-company
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:03 PM
Landing Pages And Pay Per Click Management
When we are doing internet consulting, one of the main things we look over is how your website is going to interact with a potential customer. More specifically, your landing pages for your products or services. The three things that a quality landing page needs is relevant and original content, transparency, and navigability. By doing these extremely simple things, you will decrease your keywords cost per clicks, increase your keyword-targeted ad's position, more likely to convert your traffic into paying customers, and develop a positive experience for your customer.Here are some tips to help with your pay per click management:
Relevant and original content means that the customer should be able to easily find what the ad promises. Don't confuse them, because you will lose them, and make sure the ad link brings them to the best page on your site about the product or service. The page itself should have its own unique content. Do not copy from another site. If you copy content, you will get penalized by the search engines.
Transparency is where you build trust with the customer. Define clearly what your business entails, and honor the deals that you are advertising. Do not ask for customer information unless you must have it. They may think you are a spamming site. If you do need their information, make sure you have dialogue that lets them know what you are going to do with their information.
For navigability, make sure that the path for a potential customer to buy something or get information is direct, and don't use pop ups and make sure the pages load quickly. If you make the process difficult you will lose them.
These are simple tips to make your pay per click management account run much better, while getting more customers, and paying less. For more information on these suggestions take a look at this Google help page.
Labels: internet-consulting, landing-page-quality, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
10:36 AM
