Locating Quality Score:

For the purpose of this tutorial and to spend up your whole Google Pay per click life i would recommend the Google adwords editor tool. It can be located by clicking here. Not only is the interface easier to navigate through, it also allows you to mass upload changes to your Google adwords campaigns. Information on the Google adwords editor tool can come later. For now we are using the Google adwords editor tool as a visual display. Its easier to view your quality score across the whole campaign. A visual of this is below:

How is Adwords Quality score calculated?

Quality score is created by Adwords for each of your keywords. Adwords or Google more specifically look at a number of factors in measuring the relevance of your keyword is to your chosen ad text and the search query. Quality score tends to change frequently and can dependant on the performance of your campaign on a whole.

Google further explanation surrounding quality score breaks down the way its created into a variety of factors. The quality score influences the actual CPC (Cost per click) of your chosen keyword. Typically a keyword with a high quality score will have a better Cost per click. Google adwords also produces a estimated first page bid which is the amount it will cost for your ad to appear on the first page of the paid ad inclusion. This is another factor controlled by quality score. Again a keyword with a high quality score will typically have a lower first page estimate as the relevance of the keyword aligned to your ad text will be significant.

First page bid estimate is located directly next to quality score within the Google Adwords editor.

Google Adwords Quality Score in a Nut shell

Google adwords quality score is used in order to ensure relevant ad’s appear to the right users within the Google search engine and network. My experience of quality score within the Google search engine is that those ad’s with a high quality score tend to be the more relevant ad’s, those of which typically earn more clicks, appear in higher positions within the Google paid rankings and bring your campaigns the most success.

My Experience

Quality score tends to help you realise those keywords which you need to remove from your account and those which are potentially high performing keywords. You need a research your target audience thoroughly and not merely follow ‘generic’ Adwords advice. I concede its ironic me saying this while writing a blog however i cannot stress that although the things i talk about are important they shouldn’t be the only things you concentrate on.

Tailor defined pay per click campaigns are the way forward and areas like quality score should be used as a guidance tool only.

Within my clients account focusing on water feature campaigns one of the keywords i had in my account was ‘gift for gardeners’ the other keyword was ‘barrel water features’. The ad text was as followed for each:

Gift for Gardeners
UK Leading Water Feature Supplier
Huge Range Of Christmas Gift Ideas

and the other ad text was as followed:

Barrel Water Features
Huge range of Oak Barrel Features,
A Fantastic Christmas Gift Idea!

One of these has a quality score of 4 whereas the other comes in with a 10. I want some feedback guys on which one you think would attain the greater quality score and why Little test for those willing to answer. Thank you very much for reading.

Ryan

The Google keyword tool can be located through the following link attributed to the screenshot. Within the screenshot i have done a search for ‘google adwords keyword tool’ which is the topic of this blog.

I am supplied with the following results.

: The Keyword
: Advertisers competition ( The amount of competition from a search perspective attributed to this keyword)
: Local search volume for the previous month (This is related to the country you have chosen for your local search volume). This can be changed through the following area of the keyword search tool.

Clicking the edit button you can display which local search volume you want. Easy hey?

: Global monthly search volume. If you are catering for the wider audience then this is a key feature you need to look for.

Why Is this tool important?

The data within the Google Adwords keyword tool is brought to you by Google which means the accuracy of the data is as current as it can be. Google wouldn’t provide its customer base with incorrect data as this would surely hinder the development of their Google adwords advertising platform

What to do with this information?

As i stressed earlier please don’t use this tool as the only method for your keyword research. This should be in-depth, related to the niche in question and contain longer tail keywords. The keyword tool does however give you an alternative perspective within your search criteria.

Case Study

A recent project of mine involved a ecommerce website selling ‘water features’. I typically search around the term to provide a basis for my research. Using the keyword tool i would add the most broad term linked to the product and then use further keywords produced to form the basis of my campaign. The keyword tool brought back variations of the products the ecommerce site sells include ‘water fountains, self contained water features’ to name a few. Due to my limited knowledge of Water features this provided basic information for me to detail my further keyword building around. The keyword search tool does the basic jobs of supplying you with keyword examples. Its up to you to find the longer tailed keywords to really find those niche clients

Seeing the bigger picture

There is endless features involved within the Google keyword tool. Once i have searched my selected keyword i typically change settings within the drop down menu provided.

When choosing which columns to display click to show all the columns as shown in the screenshot above. This will provide the following information:

Within these new fields you will be presented with estimated position, estimated average cost per click, when the highest volume of searches occurred and most significantly the search volumes trend by month.  This is extremely important as the overall volume of searches doesn’t highlight when the keyword is my popular.

This was extremely important when producing keywords for ‘Water features’ as the volume of searches were significantly lower in the winter months than in summer months. Sounds obvious really but its amazing the mistakes online marketing individuals make when advertising through paid search especially with a seasonal product like water features.

The same can be applied for many areas of ecommerce paid search advertising. If your company sells suntan cream then using the keyword tool to identify the monthly trends can help make strategic decisions on when to spend the bulk of the yearly advertising budget. This type of knowledge is crucial in order to produce success paid search marketing campaigns.

I hope this is of help to you guys. Please comment away and retweet, digg or stumble upon my post. Very much appreciated.

Thanks

Ryan

In the meantime i will leave you with a picture of how I feel at the moment. Freelancing is not an easy ride I will vouch for that. Maybe that could be my next blog?

Thanks for your time,
Ryan

What is it?
Ad scheduling can be defined down to the minor detail of a 30 minute period. For example: Running a pay per click campaign for a company who’s opening hours are Monday to Friday 9-5, it could be of benefit to tailor the ad scheduling to mirror the opening hours. A business not open at weekends but advertising on weekends could waste marketing funds by having Google Ad’s showing through the weekend.

I am currently working on Paid search for an E commerce company who’s limited budget needs to spread across the month proportionally. With this in mind we took the decision to schedule ad’s to disappear through the times of 9-11:30am and 2-4pm Monday to Friday as these are the times when the majority of potential customers will be working. This scheduling allows the budget to be allocated to times where people are more likely to convert.

How to Schedule Ad’s within Google Adwords:
Scheduling your Ad’s within Google adwords is another simple process however if your unaware as to where to locate this information its a difficult procedure. Everything is simple when you know how.

Logging into your Google adwords account simple click on your Campaigns tab at the top of the website.

You will then reach the campaigns page. From this page click the Settings tab and you will see a list of your campaigns and the following information:

You will see the campaigns,location,language,networks and devices,bid type, budget end date and ad scheduling tabs followed by information relating to each one of your campaigns. Click on the corresponding Ad scheduling option and you will be presented with the following screen.

Click on the day of the week you would like to schedule and implement the times you would like your ad’s to appear. As you can see i have constructed the following:

Once this is completed you can press the OK button and this will schedule the ad’s to appear at the times selected for the day selected. To copy these across the whole 7 days of the week or the 5 working days then click the copy tabs and you will be met with the following command.

Clicking this will allow the scheduling to be copied across the days of the week you desire.

How can Ad scheduling Benefit my account?:
Ad scheduling is a fundamental aspect of Paid search advertising. Implementing Ad scheduling allows costs to be controlled over periods of the day which are unlikely to convert for the type of business your marketing is targeting.

Furthermore the inclusion of ad scheduling allows more of your budget to be used on the times of day where people are more likely to convert. This enables budget to be used appropriately and more effectively in meeting your marketing goals.

Thanks for reading.

I was first introduced to the power of Analytics when working on a large scale product for an online network of Windows, Doors and Conservatory sunroom suppliers. I couldn’t believe the accessibility and the tools available for a free program. I guess this just further enforces Google’s dominance within the online sector.

In this blog we will look at the importance of adding filters to your Google analytics. Filters within your blog to do exactly what it says on the tin, filter out any unwanted traffic. Many people may be thinking ‘Why would I want to filter out traffic?’

That is a good question which has a simple answer. There was an example of this very question when working with a specific. We’d just launched a new website for a high profile client and spent continuous hours checking the site, links, meta tags, all the things us Online marketing guru’s do. The next day through checking the analytics we had received 40 impressions on a brand spanking new site. We thought to ourselves ‘FANTASTIC!’

Further analysis however resulted in us realising we’d forgot to add filters to the Analytics account and it was actually our impressions. School boy error? Indeedy.

Filters are something so small which make a huge difference in separating ‘authentic’ realistic traffic from your own visits. Adding a filter is simple. Log into your online control panel and you will have a list of your domains as shown before.

To the far right hand side you will be able to see the ‘Actions’ header. Underneath this clearly stated is an ‘edit’ button. Pressing this button you will move to the following page below.

At the bottom section of the page there will be a heading stating ‘Filters applied to Profile’. To the right hand side of this simply ‘Add Filter’ and you will be prompted with the following page.

The name of the filter doesn’t matter. I usually name the filter in correspondence with the computer i am on. For example: My work filter for all websites i create is labelled ‘Work’ Filter’. Simple really. The primary use for my filters is IP addresses. Upon entering the Filter name simply change the drop down menu stating ‘Filter type’ to ‘Exclude all traffic from an IP address’

To find out your IP address i use the following site.

The site will automatically provide you with your IP address of which you can then post into the ‘IP Address’ filter section. Following this, simply save changes to the filter and the filter will be added to your URL. A very simple procedure which helps refine the traffic to your site so that you know the traffic you are receiving is actually useful traffic as opposed to your own testing mechanisms.

Although a very simple procedure it is very effective in using Analytics properly. I tend to cover all computers i use with the filter on all websites i use. I also ask clients for their unique IP address and add filters to Google analytic profiles i have created for them. Clients who you work for will love checking and rechecking their own website so this filter will be useful.

Thanks for reading people. Hope this helped. The small things always have benefits.