How Does Google Adwords Work?

Thank you to our friends at Wordstream for this awesome Infographic on How Google AdWords Works!

Google’s Hangout (video conference) in Google + was used by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu to facilitate their conversation after the Dalai Lama’s visa request for a visit was denied.

Google didn’t miss the opportunity to tout Hangout in the New York times in this article shown on Search Engine Land.

What a lovely convergence of traditional and social media. When warranted, print and direct marketing can be amazing compliments to new and social marketing.

Morsel of the Story: Are you thinking out of the box to include cross-medium promotion?

The Google Web Spam Team is hard working group with one of the hardest jobs in the algorithm, identifying and removing spam from its’ SERP.

This job is so important because it weighs very heavily on the user experience. Their leader, Matt Cutts, does a great job of sharing with the search community and taking feedback (even if there isn’t always agreement on the outcome).

The process for reporting spam has become much easier over time. It’s as simple as completing this Google Spam Report form.

The most difficult aspect of spam reporting is that there is no transparency into the process.

Google’s answer to questions related to spamming is “We don’t take action on individual sites but we use your information to make our algorithm better. Thanks for your report.”

There’s a very good reason for this response. Marketers would spend all day submitting competitors sites as spam in hopes that Google would de-index them. Totally makes sense so far. Right?

What happens when Google has very clearly posted their policy in a particular strategy (in this case, Doorway Pages) and a site has clearly violated the Google Guidelines, yet they continue to be rewarded top of page one placement for a strategy that is clearly outlined as forbidden?

Vanessa Fox wrote these guidelines in 2007 which very clearly state

Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

So why every month for the past 3 years have I had to tell a client, “I’m sorry our competition is winning because Google is valuing a tactic they frown upon”.

I can hear my search marketing brethren saying, “Quit whining and go beat them on your own terms.” Agreed. And yet…

Doorway Pages and Google Spam Report

This page is #1 for the keyword term “base plates”. It very clearly has “little or no original content” nor does it “stand alone”. This site (www.baseplates.com) is exactly one page and it links solely to its’ owners website at AdventureRV.net and their product page for “base plates”.

What possible value does this page have to users? None

What possible reasons does Google have for continuing to give it love for a strategy they’ve condemned for 4 years? Don’t Know.

But would love to get an answer.

What you should know about Google Spam Reports is that you may not ever know.

We help clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies, to mid size ecommerce sites leverage the power of paid and natural search marketing. Strategies for these sites are different (sales, leads, downloads) but the goal is the same-grow the business.

Here are 5 free search marketing tools you can use this week to grow your business.

1
Google Base. faciliates uploading your products via an xml spreadsheet )or 1 at a time if you just have a few products) and this database gets shared in the search results.

Here’s a result on top of Google’s home page for a client (most amazing jam, bbq sauce, honeys, butters created from local farmers) Oregon Growers

Google Base is free and it doesn’t take a lot of time to upload your products, just remember to refresh every 30 days and add new products.

2 Local Listings. If you have a business that benefits from local search, claim your listings from all 3 engines (use getlisted.org to update all engines at once). Google has their Local Business Center and Yahoo and Bing each have their own local listings services. This is a under utilized free service that can help create awareness about your site and your brick and mortar store. Remember to keep your company information consistant between accounts and to supplement those with local citations (InfoUSA, CitySearch, Yellow Pages, DexKnows, etc)

3 Google Webmaster Tools. If you have a Google account, you can sign up for Webmaster Tools. This will analyze your pages (are they indexed, do they have unique title tags/meta descriptions), do you have a site map? It’s a great way to dot your i’s and cross your t’s on some of the foundational elements of natural search.

4 Keyword Research Tools. Keyword research is a first step in good SEO, use these free tools to help you understand what words/phrases your customers are using to find your products/services online, Google AdWords and MS AdCenter both have free tools.

5 Google Analytics. Did I mention free? Back in the day we paid $199 a monthy for Urchin and now Google offers these analytics for free. This reporting package tells you how many visitors you have, how much revenue you’re generating, how visitors are using your site, what keywords they’re using to find you and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Investing your time in these free tools will help you better understand your business and benefit from the power of natural search. Remember there’s no silver bullet to search marketing success, just many things done well at the same time.

Ian Lourie, Google Analytics Guru Extraordinaire, wrote a great article yesterday, “SEO 2009: Adapt or Die”, that succinctly sums up changes to expect from Google’s algorithm that truly reflect site value. Organic click thru rate, time on site and bounce rate, which are reflective of real site performance and usability, will presumably begin playing a larger role in the SERP’s.

Why is this so important? Up until now, it can be argued, a disproportionate part of search placement had to do with SEO tactics that were more technically driven than user driven. Understanding the ins and outs of title tags and meta descriptions, linking strategies and other “traditional” SEO technical on page issues will still be important, but those elements will be complimented by good old fashioned “performance” marketing. The sites that do a better job of truly addressing searcher intent with solution will beginning winning in the SERP’s.

The best part of this change is that, for the most part, it can’t be faked. The proof will be in the pudding. If a visitor clicks through to a site, spends time on a site, takes action on a site, the site will have more value than a site that visitors just click on from the search results and abandon.

This is great news for companies who have invested in website usability. Shari Thurow, a highly respected usability expert, has been touting this concept for years-if you have an online presence, you have two customers, the search engines and your visitors. These changes will make visitors a more important part of the search equation.

So how do you prepare for these changes? Begin focusing effort, not just on SEO, but on website usability. What are the business goals of your website? What do you want people to do once they get to your website? Do you make it easy for them to take that action? Have you created a site that provides a solution for your online client?

These questions will begin having impact, not just on your conversion, but on your search placement.

So how do you know if your site is “usable”. Here is a checklist:

*Have you defined your online business goals?
Ask the question, what do you want your visitors to do online? We have a real estate client that had a bounce rate of nearly 50% (an average bounce rate). We redesigned the site to meet the visitors goal for the site, search for property. We utilized above the fold prime positioning on the home page to address that goal. The client examined the main elements of a property search: price range and location. This change improved the bounce rate from nearly 50% to 12.91% bounce rate, meaning that, after the design change, about 87% of visitors take at least a single action on the website. Google will see this as a positive for the site as their job is providing the most relevant results for their customers.

*Are your business goals apparent on your website?
We had a client whose business goal was to get people to call the office for a quote, but the phone number was nowhere to be found on the home page. Make sure your business goals (and your relevance to your visitors) is apparent on your home page. If you want to use your site as a lead generator, make it easy for a visitor to leave at least an email address so you can begin the sales cycle. If your top seller is a red suede pump, make sure that your customers can single click from the home page to the red suede pump, choose a size and check out. In a word, respect your visitors. One of my favorite analogies for assessing and adding value to a web visitor is assessing value of a visitor to a brick and mortar clothing store on Madison Ave in New York City. What is the value of that visitor? As a proprietor, you’ve purchased/leased an expensive location, you’ve advertised and marketed your business. The minute a visitor walks in the store, staff treat them like gold because it has cost a great deal of money just to get them to walk into the store. As online businesses, we need to address our visitors with the same amount of care and respect. If a visitor comes to your website, you should serve them the information and guidance they are seeking, if you do anything else you will lose them. Up until now, that was just a great way to improve conversion on your website, now it may mean the difference between being found or not being found online by your potential customers.

*Are your customers converting from a “click” to a “customer”?
This is where the rubber meets the road. It doesn’t matter what your CEO believes, or what your lead designer believes or what your SEO Firm believes. Visitor behavior is what matters. If your visitors take the action you prepare for them and become customers and contribute to the bottom line, you’re winning. Whether your business goal is to generate a lead or close a sale, your visitor defines the success of your site, not just ranking #1 for a specific term or having the most visits. The great news is that now conversion isn’t just a usability goal it’s a search goal and, ultimately, a most important online business goal.

Okay, my last blog was about Google tools, but this is worth noting. Googles New Search Tool in beta is kinda cool. The premise is reverse engineering keywords as an intelligence tool (of course they want you to use it to increase ad spend for AdWords, but whatever.

*Based on actual Google search queries
*Matched to specific pages of your website with your ad and search share

They load keyword suggestions based on content already on your site. Then it shows you how competitive the word is and, here’s the self serving element, cost af the word in an AdWord campaign.

Try it and tell me what you think;)

Since involvement with the search industry in 2001, we’ve used the SERP define as part of our reporting criteria to clients. It is one way to gauge effectiveness of natural search efforts. Once we show page one placement for a keyword or phrase then we show the amount of visits generated by that placement, then behavior of that traffic and the conversion of that traffic, pretty straightforward.

Now that personalized search define and custom SERPs are more common than ever, the search industry is left without a metric that it has used to dazzle current and prospective clients. It’s exciting when you can tell a client that they are #1 on Google for an important search query, but what do we as an industry do now that SERPs are difficult to replicate? What I see on my query is very likely to vary from what my client sees because of customized results. We can run the reports with personalized search off and advise clients to do the same so we can be on the same page, but results for their potential traffic will vary due to custom results that can be driven by geography, bookmarks, past queries and other information because engines want to drive the highest level of relevance for users.

This is great for users, but it can present some complexity for search marketers. This change in the search algorithm define places us in the same situation as more traditional marketing efforts. We can still monitor our visits and track them back to the engines, then proceed to return on investment and conversion. Though some search marketers may fear this transition we should be excited about it. We are now left to embrace more traditional, grown up methods of success like quantifiable growth, roi and increased revenue for our clients.

There are still many search marketers that point to their client SERPs and congratulate themselves for being masters of the universe. The real power of search lies in helping our clients complete the sales cycle (or other conversion goal), not just giving them placement on an engine. What does personalized search and custom SERP’s mean to SEO? Maybe it means it’s time for search to grow up and take its’ rightful place among traditional marketing strategies. Growing up means getting more responsible, and that’s good news for the industry and our clients.