How to battle inactive keywords
A short video on how to create an Inactive Keyword Report.
Internet Marketing 2.0
The Who What When and Where of Internet MarketingArchive for Internet Marketing
Whooaa I have not posted since April.
I have been really busy friends. I hate that I have not been able to post since April but my clients are keeping me extremely busy. I am going to make up for it though. I’m going to start posting PPC tips, tricks and technique video tutorials. Some really time saving, cost effective PPC management tips that I know will help you out because I use them everyday.
With that being said my next post will be my first tip for you. Enjoy 
Google introduces automatic matching
I was just thinking yesterday that it would be nice to automatically generate new terms based on your existing terms. These new terms would be suggested and incorporated into your existing campaigns automatically as the campaign is running. It is a feature I have been wishing for years for.
Well I log into one of the accounts I manage and guess what, I see the following message:
New! You’ve been selected to try Automatic Matching.
Your campaigns will now have access to a new beta feature: Automatic Matching. This feature shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords.
What is the automatic matching beta? (from Adwords Support)
Automatic matching is an optional feature that helps your ads reach targeted traffic missed by your keyword lists. It works by analyzing the ads, keywords, and landing pages in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.
When automatic matching is first enabled, it dedicates a short period of time to gather information about your campaign. During this period, you won’t see any change to your traffic levels. Once automatic matching has evaluated your campaign, your ads will start to show on additional relevant search queries.
The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or better than your ad group’s current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic.
Automatic matching won’t allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won’t affect the traffic you’re currently receiving. For example, say your campaign’s daily budget is $10, and on average you accrue $8 in traffic in a day. The automatic matching system may add $1 of relevant traffic per day, meaning it will not prevent your ads from accruing the traffic it normally does. Note also that automatic matching will not affect your campaigns if they already capture the majority of relevant traffic.
Here are a few more details about the feature:
- Opting in and out: Automatic matching is applied at the campaign level. You can opt your campaign in and out of automatic matching on your Campaign Settings page.
- Google Network: Automatic matching does not affect your ad delivery on the content network. It does affect your ad delivery on Google and the search network.
- Quality Score: The traffic accrued by automatic matching won’t affect your keywords’ Quality Scores or minimum bids.
- Ad position: When ranking your ads on search queries acquired through automatic matching, the cost-per-click (CPC) bid will approximate the current average CPC of your ad group. Learn more about ad rank for automatic matching.
- Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group’s Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
- Search Query Performance report: You can see the search queries that triggered your ads due to automatic matching by running a Search Query Performance report. The queries will be labeled Automatic in the Search Query Match Type column.
I will update as performance data starts coming in.
Your landing page load time now affects your Adwords Quality Score
Yes, we now have yet another metrix that we have to keep tabs on in order to make the most out of our Adwords campaign while trying to keep the costs low. While I understand some of the reasoning behind the move I think it will have a negative impact on legitimate campaigns that may be using video, flash, an online spokesperson and other very effective methods of marketing to the buyer once they have landed on the landing page.
How is your load time graded? From Google Adwords support:
Each of your keywords will receive a load time ‘grade’ depending on the destination URL associated with that keyword:
- If you assigned a keyword-level destination URL to a particular keyword, then the keyword’s load time grade will be based on that URL.
- If you didn’t assign a keyword-level destination URL, then the keyword’s load time grade will reflect the slowest load time among the ads in the ad group.
Note that we evaluate your load time relative to the average in your geographical region.
How can you determine your grade?
You can see a keyword’s load time grade on the Keyword Analysis page. The following information will be available:
- The load time will receive one of two grades. If it’s graded This page loads slowly, your landing page quality and Quality Score will be negatively affected. If it’s graded No problems found, your landing page quality and Quality Score will not be affected.
- You’ll see the number of redirects the user is taken through after clicking your ad. Typically, the more redirects there are, the slower the load time.
- We’ll report the site’s average load time.
- We’ll provide a comparison of the load time for your site versus other sites in the geographic area. Note that your load time grade is determined relative to the average in your geographical area.
How can you improve it?
The AdWords system re-evaluates landing pages on a regular basis (approximately once a month). If you make significant improvements to your website’s load time, you should see an improved Quality Score and lower minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids. Note that your Quality Score may update incrementally over two to three months after you improve your load time.
Here are some tips for improving load time.
- Use fewer redirects.
- Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.
- Do not use interstitial pages.
- Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.
- Contact your webmaster or webhosting provider to discuss other ways of improving your website’s load time.
You can also use Google’s Webmaster Tools (not available in all languages) to graph the average download time for your site. To do so:
- Sign in to Webmaster Tools with your Google Account login at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview .
- Click your site if you see it on the page. If not, type in the URL of your website in the Sites field and click Add Site.
- Select Tools in the sidebar.
- Click Set crawl rate. Note that you’ll need to have verified your site before you can do so.
- The third graph will show your site’s average load time.
How big of a problem will this be for those using video and flash on the landing page? Only time will tell.
