Google adwords :: new tips and technics

It has been a long time since I last wrote about CPC, specially Google adwords.

Here are a few tips/tools I have recently started using a lot, with very positive impact.

1) Quality score

Quality Score is a dynamic variable calculated for each of your keywords. It combines a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query.

This is a very important parameter, which can be used to troubleshoot the performance of each keywords, specially related to the content of the ads and of the landing pages.

I am usually targetting at 7.

• run a report showing quality score for each keyword
• identify each keyword which can potentially bring traffic to the site (significant volume of impressions) and highlight all keywords with a Quality Score <>
• Verify that the ad copy contains these keywords. If not, create a new ad group for this type of keywords, and create a relevant ad containing the keywords in the copy
• Verify that your landing page is optimised for this keywords (meta tags, h1 title, image alt tag, copy contain these keywords). If not, create a new landing page targetting these specific keywords

Note: this process can be very time consuming if you try to apply this to ALL keywords (specially if you have got 1000s listed...). This is why it is important to focus only on keywords bringing potentially significant traffic to the site.

Benefits: A poor quality score usually means that the ad will not be clicked as much as it could be (poor CTR), that conversion rate will not be as good as it could be. By improving your quality score, you ensure that the ad copy and the landing pages are optimised to some extents. Also, a good Quality Score will ensure that you pay less than competitors for a same position.

2) Watch out position 1-2-3 format for your ads.
If your ad is in position 1-2-3, it may be formatted differently by Google (see picture below)

You need to ensure that your ad still makes sense (right punctuation) in both formats.

3) Use the editor
The adwords editor is nice piece of software allowing you to manage your ads more effectively that for the google.com/adwords interface

4) Use the media planner
This is a tool I have very recently started using, and turn your CPC content campaigns into a real media buying tool. Use this tool to build a map of all the sites you want to advertise on.

5) Use Google Insight Search
It is a combination of Google Trend, and Google keywords suggestion tool, providing you with a good way to create your different adgroups. This tool would deserve a post itself, which I will probably add to this blog later on this month.

Web design process

production tools/applications

Had an interesting meeting with Mike Karliner yesterday. We went through some of the tools he is extensively using in his production process. Some were very familiar (such as subversion which we use as version control internally), some not. The list below gives a pretty good toolset for anyone looking into rolling a production process - and everything is open source:

1) Version control
Subversion: The Subversion project arose out of frustration with the limitations of CVS (Concurrent Versions System). Subversion is designed to be like CVS, but to fix its flaws. A key improvement in Subversion is atomic commits. This means that when you commit a changed project, either all the changes succeed or none, like a database transaction.

2) Version Control UI for windows
Tortoise: TortoiseSVN is a cool/efficient/friendly SCM / source control software for Microsoft Windows.

3) Project management / Bugs tracking:
Trac: Trac is a web-based software project management and bug/issue tracking system. It provides an interface to Subversion and an integrated wiki.

4) Data storage
FreeNas: FreeNAS will allow you to turn just about any computer in to a full-featured NAS, complete with a easy to use web-based configuration utility.

5) Server's/applications monitoring
Hobbit monitor: Hobbit is a monitoring solution for servers and network devices and allows you to write or use extensions to monitor just about anything that responds over a network connection. A central server controls and collects the monitoring and displays the results via a fairly easy to use web interface. It will track history and trends (via rrd) and provides a built-in reporting tool. If there is an issue (that you've defined), such as a down host, the interface will turn red and will performs any alerting actions that you've defined, such as sending an email or sms message.

6) Traffic analysis
Cacti: Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. This allows you to build up your own analytics tool, combining data at will, and building very custom reports.

7) External bugs tracker
Mantis: if you are deaing with clients, or have an external team of testers, this tool will let you track and report on bugs fixes and software updates.