Negative Keyword Conflict Reports: Intro

Every PPC junkie knows negative keywords can make or break a campaign.

Have the right negative keywords and click through rates (CTR) rise, cost per acquisition (CPA) drops, and cost per click (CPC) drops. Have the wrong negative keywords and best case scenario you’re not filtering out unqualified searches. The worst case scenario, you’ve totally screwed yourself by blocking important and relevant searches.

AdCenter has been reaching out to the PPC community lately and Negative Keyword Conflict Reports could be an olive branch of peace to a group of advertisers historically frustrated with AdCenter’s lack of features, usability issues, and lack of support.

Following is a short overview of Negative Keyword Conflict Reports.

Overview:

Adcenter’s Negative Keyword Conflict Report lets you compile a list of negative keywords that conflict with active keywords. Reports display the account, campaign, adgroup, keyword, negative keyword, and conflict level.

Conflict level refers to the account level where the positive keyword conflict is occurring, for example, campaign or adgroup. We’ve also seen numbers in this column when we’ve downloaded the report and are not sure what these are referring too.

Note: This report will still pull negative keyword conflicts from paused adgroups and campaigns if the keywords are still set to active. Be sure to select specific accounts, campaigns, and adgroups under “Report Scope” to avoid wasting time.

Report options and customization is limited to selecting entire accounts or selecting specific accounts, campaigns, or adgroups. There is no option to select a time range since the report is compiled based on the current negative and positive keywords.

The Good:

This is a fantastic tool unique to AdCenter. Reports run quickly and provide invaluable data.

·         This report is especially useful for large and complicated accounts.

·          If you are taking over a new AdCenter account that has been managed by another company this is a must run report.

·         This is a great tool to audit an account before going it live.

·         While Negative Conflict Reports are not quite as essential for smaller accounts it will still save a lot time combing through keywords.

The Bad

No Flexibility.

·         When selecting “Report Scope” you are unable to sort campaigns and adgroups by active, paused, or deleted. This is an annoying time waster for large accounts.

·         Only a limited number of report columns are available. Additional columns would be a welcome addition to Excel Jockeys.

·         This is a report not a live tool.

What I’d Love to See

If this report option was a live and functioning tool I think I’d have to ask for Bill Gates forgiveness for all the awful things I’ve said about AdCenter in the past. If I could click, sort, edit, and bulk change this negative keyword conflict  report information  from AdCenter Desktop I think I’d even buy him lunch.

If I were nit picking, being able to sort by status when selecting specific accounts, campaigns, and adgroups would be a huge time saver for users managing large accounts.

Overall

This is a fantastic and time saving report. It’s a bit limited but it really is hard to complain about. However, like most things AdCenter, it could have been a homerun as a tool but ended up very useful as a report. 

I’m excited to see some advanced tactics developed for this.  Post your tips and tricks below!

Author: Mark Jensen 

Photo Courtesy of http://www.vanishingtattoo.com

Pubcon Las Vegas was epic from start to finish. Not only was there epic dinner, epic karaoke, and epic networking, there also was loads of great PPC information being passed around! I’ve compiled the best tips and tricks from the PPC experts who presented at the conference:

1. Dave Feldman from Microsoft adCenter said, “adCenter Quality Score does NOT affect rank or CPCs – just indicative.”
2. Kerstin Baker-Ash shared about one study which found, “19% of conversions came from GDN. 84% of those were from view-through conversions.”
3. David Szetela said on positioning, “1-3 is magic in search, 1-4 in content. Impressions drop off after that.”
4. Brian Piepgrass from Facebook shared, “People are “performing” on Facebook. If they like your page they are trying to look cool in front of their friends.”
5. Brad Geddes shared several gems:
   
   • “If you are trying to update your account for relevancy it may take up to 2 weeks for the changes to take effect.”
   • “Static conversion rates do not exist. They vary from hour to hour and day to day.”
   • “On your landing page forms is the value of what you are asking for equal to what you give out?”
   • “Don’t ask questions that Analytics can answer”
   • “City and state are redundant if you get the zip code”
6. Amanda Watlington, in the Keyword Research session commented,  “There are two types of competitors: competitors on your keywords, and competitors that your client identifies.”
7. Joanna Lord, on strengthening brand on landing pages said, “Use mission statements, testimonials, awards, customer counts, logos, consistency, badges, press mentions, positivity.
8. Michael Black said, “On the display network, match types don’t matter, but exclusions do.”
9. Janet Miller, in the Facebook landing pages session said, "If you use an Iframe in Facebook you can use your existing PPC landing page with just some small tweaks."
10. Mat Siltala tweeted, “Everybody knows what happens in Vegas gets posted on Twitter… FB, Tumblr, etc… hahahah (oh and YouTube)”. Great ORM advice.

This was my first conference and it was better than I bargained for. Awesome information was shared and I met some great people.

If you were at Pubcon Las Vegas, what PPC advice did you find most helpful?

This is our final dental pay per click strategy in our 5 part series. Thus far, we have discussed four important aspects of an effective dental pay per click account:

·         Account structure

·         Dental ads

·         Dental keywords

·         Landings pages with offers

After you have created that solid foundation, it is essential that you take time to optimize your account frequently. In this post you will learn some great tips to help your account improve and save you money.

The follow are things that are ‘musts’ when it comes to frequent dental account optimizations. 

Dental Ad Optimization

1. Select an adgroup and compare the CTR or click through rate of your ads.
2. Pause the ads that have the lower CTR and create a new ad that is based off the best performing ad.
3. Repeat this process for all of your adgroups weekly or at least monthly.

Dental Bid Optimization

1. Select an adgroup and view the keywords. Pay attention to the average position and CPC (cost per click) of your most important keywords.
2. Adjust your bids according to how much you want to spend on a keyword and if you have a desired position.

New Dental Negative Keywords

1. Take a minute to view the search term report found within the keyword tab.
2. Select keywords in the search report that are not relevant to your practice or are searches that show they are not serious about finding a dentist.
3. We recommend that you view this report at least monthly if not weekly

If you have more time to dedicate to your dental pay per click account here are few otherthings we recommend.

New Dental Keywords

1. Use Google’s keyword tool and websites like www.keywordspy.com to find ideas for more relevant dental keywords.
2. Use your search term report to find relevant searches that you are not currently targeting.

Break High Volume Keywords Into New Adgroups

1. Look for keywords in your adgroups that are receiving a high volume of clicks and impressions.
2. Copy one of those search terms like 'dentist' into a new adgroup with all three match types: broad, “phrase”, and [exact].
3. Write ads in the new adgroup that are relevant to the separated keyword.
4. Note that by separating the keyword, you are able to pay special attention to its progress and also write ads that are more relevant than before. This strategy helps with the CTR and quality score improve.

That concludes our 5 part series for Dental Pay Per Click Strategies with Google Adwords. We encourage you to implement these strategies and find how Google Adwords can benefit your practice.  

--Sterling Green

Having great ads and a solid keyword list is great and all, but without a proper landing page and dental offer, you will be hard pressed to get the new patients in your office.

Landing Page

When making an effective landing page, it is first important to first consider your potential patient and why they have come to your website. If you have written an effective ad, you should have called them to an action of some kind. With that call, they are at your site with the expectation that you want them to do something – a phone call, form request, or read about something important. It is important that you make it easy and almost obvious for them to do what you want, on your dental PPC landing page. That might mean:

·         Putting your phone number in big bold numbers at the top of the page

·         Putting a fast, easy form on the landing page

·         Having an arrow pointing to what they need to do

·         Having an obvious link to where you want to send them next

These techniques should always be done tastefully. People aren’t dumb, they will see through a gimmick quickly.  We recommend using a form with a dental offer to get the best results.

Dental Offer

People on the internet will rarely give without getting something in return. That is why we recommend offering some kind of dental offer to new patients. We have seen that having multiple offers, which appeals to a larger group, are more effective than an offer that is very specific. To the right is an example of a form used in a dental pay per click account.

The form is very simple, but in the context of the website it is obvious and tasteful. It is also very effective and brings in a large number of new patients every month. The offer is only valid to those that schedule an appointment and come in to redeem it.

It is also important to have a simple and clear navigation on your landing page and content that is relevant to the keyword searched. This not only helps the person surfing your site, but also will help your PPC quality score with Google. A better quality score means a lower cost per click and a better average position.  

So make sure that you have a relevant landing page that has incentive for your new patient. This is a key part in having a successful Dental pay per click account.

--Sterling

This is the third post of a series of dental PPC strategies.  This week we are going to focus our attention on writing keywords that will attract the most relevant traffic and keep you safe from searches that have no relevance.

When developing a good keyword list, we recommend using Google’s keyword tool to start. You can find that tool in the Adwords dashboard under the tools tab or when you click on the “add keywords” button in the keywords tab.  Look for keywords that you know would be relevant to your site and do not be afraid to create a good sized keyword list. Here is an example of keywords found in a “Denture” adgroup:

• [dentures]
• "affordable dentures"
• "cost of dentures"
• [denture]
• "cheap dentures"
• "dentures cost"
• dentures ronan montana
• "partial dentures"
• "low cost dentures"
• "denture implants"
• "same day dentures"

The actual list is much bigger, some adgroups can have up to 40 or 50 keywords in a dental ppc account.

You will notice that some of the keywords are wrapped with “quotations”, [brackets], or nothing at all. This is called ‘keyword match type’ and is a great way to control how your keywords are used by Google’s search engine. The bracket match type is called exact match. The quotation match type is called phrase match. The keyword with nothing wrapped around it is called broad match.  We commonly start a campaign with exact and phrase match to limit search volume to the most relevant traffic and have only a few specific terms use broad match like: dentures ronan montana.

One last tip for your keyword list is to include negative words. Negative keywords are a great way for you to tell Google about specific keywords that are not relevant to your site. This can be used to block out people using related keywords that are not prospective new patients. Here are a few examples of negative keywords we use in a dental ppc account.

• -books
• -employment
• -resumes
• -education
• -staffing
• -seminar
• -career
• -picture
• -supplies

For someone just starting a dental ppc account, we recommend using the ‘see search terms’ report to find what irrelevant search terms are being used to find you. You can find that report by clicking on the keyword tab at the campaign level. Click on the drop down menu titled, ‘see search terms…’ and click all. This report will allow you to see what terms your ads are showing on. Use this report to determine if a keyword is relevant or not and quickly add it as a positive keyword or a negative one.

Please check in next week when we talk about how to use landing pages and dental offers in a dentist pay per click account to more effectively see a return on investment.

- Sterling Green

This is the second in a five part series on Dental Pay Per Click Strategies. This week we are going to be covering how to make a killer dental PPC ad. If you missed last week’s post check out how to make good dental pay per click structure.

Why is the ad so important? For three reasons: 1) it gets you noticed on the SERP and gets you the click 2) it lets the searcher know they found what they are looking for and 3) it sets the expectation for what a searcher can expect on the landing page. If you have a smooth path from ad --> expectation --> landing page --> goal you can expect success from your PPC management. So let’s look at some good ads that work for our dental PPC clients:

• Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion in title to make ad more relevant.
• The keyword "Denture" is mentioned 3 times.
• Funny or witty(ok, at least we think so).
• Call to action.

• Local and geo keywords are empashized. We used the name of the city and nearby school.
• Offer is mentioned in the ad itself preparing searchers for what they can get on the landing page.
• Call to action.

• Title continues to the first line drawing more attention.
• Unique selling propositions highlighting "affordable dental care" and "$99 off".
• Call to action.

As a last note I will simply add that you must always be testing! Have at least 2-3 ads in each adgroup and test different headlines, different ordering of words, different calls to action, different display URL text, and more! You WILL be surprised what you find works for dental PPC ads.

Tune in next week to find out about the best keywords to use in dental ppc accounts.

-Luke

No, the title does not refer to the "geek" "cookies" used for remarketing and other fun things of the sort.  I am talking about purely delicious, sensationally terriffic, appealing to the eye, shipped fresh, sitting on a nice silver platter, gourmet cookies.

After 9 or 10 years of selling these cookie baskets online, Heidi's Heavenly Cookies (HHC) has come to us looking to take their online presence up another notch.  The last couple of days we have dove into their Google Analytics and Google Adwords accounts to sift through years of data.  While we were working on that, Heidi Nel, Founder of HHC, decided to help us better understand exactly what we would be helping her sell online by sending us a cookie gift basket.  

I was impressed!  So impressed.  Heidi is a smart lady.  Having tasted her cookies I have a HUGELY increased desire to help her sell more of these amazing cookies online.  I can't even describe how impressed I was using words, so I will use pictures:

Yep, perishable.  No preservatives in this deliciousness! Hey, whats that purple thing?

A hand written thank you note for helping her with online marketing, before we have even touched her website!

Man this box is heavy! What's inside?  The first layer of padding.

Ice packs.  Underneath the first layer of padding. Note the thickness of just the outside layer of padding.  As you will see in the following pictures, she could have shipped us eggs and they wouldn't have broke.

There were 12 of these ice packs.  The cookies were cold.  She could have shipped us ice cream!  In the summer, from Georgia to Idaho, yeah, I guess that is smart.

The first deliciousness.  Talk about fancy wrapping for one treat.  Notice all of that bubble wrap.

Angels were singing in the background as I peeled away the last layer of bubble wrap off of the top of the cookie platter.

The package looked like it was just picked up from the local bakery a few minutes ago!

50 gourmet cookies on a silver platter and a whole team of happy search engine marketers! Check it out, with in all of the fancy wrapping the cookie platter is cover in another layer of vaccuum sealed plastic to keep the cookies in place so they don't crumble.

The cookies in all their glory on the conference room table.  My favorites were the Macaroons and the the Toffee covered cookies.  YUM! My mouth is watering just finishing this post.

A SINCERE THANK YOU TO HEIDI'S HEAVENLY COOKIES FOR THE COOKIE GIFT!

The following post is the first of a series on Dental Pay Per Click Strategies. When creating any confident, relevant dental pay per click account, account structure plays a strong hand in the account working effectively and you making changes efficiently.

After creating your dentist ppc account, you begin your setup by creating a campaign. The campaign should have a relevant name and is where your settings are determined, as well as your specific geo-targeting. Within your campaign you will create a series of adgroups.

Adgroups are just as the name implies. This is where you separate ads and keywords by relevancy. For example, for a dentist that offers dental implants, sedation dentistry, and is a dentist in Ronan, Montana; they will want to create an adgroup for “dental implants”, one for “sedation dentistry”, and one for “Ronan Dentist”.

Each Adgroup should include keywords and ads that are relevant to that group.  Below are some examples:

• Adgroup- Implants
  • Keywords- dental implants, implants, tooth implants.
  • Ad- Need Dental Implants? 25 Years Experience in Dental Implants. Call Us Today!

• Adgroup- Sedation Dentistry
  • Keywords- sedation dentist, dental sedation, sedation dentistry
  • Ad- Sedation Dentist in Ronan. Stop Worrying. See a Sedation Dentist Pro. Schedule Now!

• Adgroup- Ronan Dentist
  • Keywords- ronan dentist, ronan dental, dentist
  • Ad- Trusted Ronan Dentist. Find A Trusted Ronan Dentist. Call Today!

That is the basic structure of a dentist ppc account. If you need to add more adgroups because of new services offered, or if you need to create a new campaign because you want to target a different part of a city, you can accomplish that quickly and stay organized at the same time.

Also keep in mind that keeping the adgroups relevant and organized will do more than just help you work faster. Google puts a lot of weight on relevancy. The more relevant your adgroups are, the better your quality score will be. Quality score is one of the metrics that effects how much you pay for your position. A higher quality score yields a better average position and a lower cost per click. This is really where structure becomes important for any dental ppc account.

See our next post on great dental PPC ads next week!

Sterling Green

Dental PPC Account Manager