Google Sponsored Search
Thinking About Getting on the Google Sponsored Search Results?
You have your business up and running, now it’s time to get
seen. For new businesses the long game of SEO, Content Marketing, and Social
Media Marketing won’t show an ROI for much too long (that’s not to say you
shouldn’t start working on it, but expect to wait months or even more than a
year to see some traction). Google sponsored search
can get your site in front of eyeballs really quickly and, if run effectively,
can get you a solid return while you build your other channels.
Appearance
It will be clearly labeled “Ad”
(Google has changed the appearance of ads vs organic results many times, check
out this timeline from Search Engine Land).
The Auction
How does Google decide what
ads show up and how they are positioned? There are four main factors that go
into Ad Rank; Bid
Amount, Quality Score, Thresholds and Competition. Google also lists context of
the query (you don’t want to be found for irrelevant searches anyway) and extensions
(use them!)
Bidding is based on a Second Price Auction. Basically the highest bidder pays one cent more than what the second
highest bidder bid, the second highest pays one cent more than what the third
highest bid, etc. There are a number of bidding strategies including Manual CPC, Enhanced CPC, Target ROAS,
Target CPA
and Maximize Conversions. (Wordstream
has an interesting piece on bid strategies). It is important to note that this
is on a pay-per-click system as well, you only pay when your ad is clicked on.
Generally, the highest bidder will claim the
best positioning. This however is not always the case because Quality Score
also plays a role. This score is calculated from three main factors; expected
click-through rate (usually based on historical data), relevance and landing
page experience.
Thresholds refer to the
auction floor. The minimum bid that advertisers need to pay to play, if the maximum
bid is below the threshold it will not be eligible to appear. That means that
if none of the bids are above the threshold, no ads will appear.
Competition refers to other
players that are also in the auction. Your placement will depend on their bids
and quality scores.
Keywords
Key(word)s open doors. Proper
keyword selection is absolutely huge and doing your research is crucial to
running effective campaigns. You’ll hear some different names for them, but
keywords are divided into three main categories by length; short-tail (1-2
words), medium-tail (2-3 words) and long-tail (3+ words).
When selecting keywords keep
relevancy in mind. Use negative keywords to eliminate any potentially
irrelevent impressions. If you sell living room furniture only, using negative
keywords like “outdoor” or “office” can help ensure that your ads only show in
the most relevant of searches.
Look into using long-tail
keywords. Although long-tail keywords may be searched less often, they show
greater intent. If a user searches “basketball,” then they could be looking for
a number of different things like scores, videos, rules, etc. If, however, they
search “spalding basketball backboard,” then they are much more likely to
convert.
Make sure your landing pages
are relevant to your keywords. Google pays attention to the relevance of where
ads send a user.
How can you find out what
your target audience is typing into Google so you can focus on the right
keywords? Using tools is a great way to find what keywords will work for you,
and there are a lot of them.
Google Keyword Planner is a
good place to start (Ahrefs has a great blog that
covers how to use it like a pro), but there are many more including Google Search Console, Ubersuggest, SEMrush, and
Soovle. These tools work in different ways, some will give
you suggestions for keywords, others will show you what keywords your
competition ranks for and most will show you some kind of statistics associated
with different keywords.
Google Ads has a video specifically about
choosing the right keywords. They offer the following five tips:
Performance Indicators
Why does advertising exist?
When it comes down to it advertisers are all about ROI. There are a lot of
different ways to determine how well your campaigns are running. These are
called KPI’s (key performance indicators)
There are many different
KPI’s , but here are a few that are relevant to PPC ads:
·
Return On Ad
Spend (ROAS)
·
Conversions
·
Conversion Rate
·
Clicks
·
Cost Per
Acquisition (CPA)
·
Click-Through
Rate (CTR)
The KPI’s you choose to focus
on should be directly connected to your business goals. They should be metrics
that can show you whether or not you are on the path to achieve what you set
out to. If your goal is to build awareness, then impressions and clicks would
be good KPI’s. If your goal is to increase sales in your online store, then
Conversions, CPA, and/ or Conversion Rate may be the KPI’s you want to focus
your attention on.
Conclusion
It’s easy to get started on
Google’s sponsored search, but there’s a lot that goes into doing it well.
Understanding the auction, choosing proper keywords and building strategies
around your business can be challenging. Many business owners are already too
busy running their business to devote the needed time to develop and maintain
effective strategies. If you are finding that you are unable to plan, implement
and optimize your marketing, it may be a good idea to outsource. Running
ineffective campaigns is throwing money away.
As a Premier Google Partner,
Direct Placement offers it’s trademark service Direct Placement® on Google at a
flat monthly rate with data directly from Google to support proper keyword
selection. This is 24/7 risk free placement on the front page of Google without
the headache of paying for extra clicks.
Direct Placement, LLC is a digital marketing agency dedicated to shaping
our advertising efforts to best fit your company’s needs. We are a Google
Premier Partner and Bing Ads Accredited Company that specializes in a number of
digital advertising formats. From our trademarked flat-rate SEM marketing
service to social media marketing and even directory profile creation, we have
a number of services that we can use to help your company thrive. Contact Direct Placement, LLC to learn more about how we can start transforming
your business one click at a time! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter,
or Blogger for more regular marketing content.
Direct Placement
makes paid search easy. We are a Google Premier Partner with a team of certified Professionals
ready to boost your ad to the top of search results. Get started now.
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