Google

What is the Panda update?

Why?

How To Avoid Panda Problems With Your AdSense

Don't Make The Page Useless

Place Content Before Ads

Avoid Overdoing The Ads

There are plenty of reasons why your click through rate (CTR) is important. The obvious one is that a better CTR means more clicks on an ad. CTR also plays a big part in AdWords’ quality score calculations too, and the better your quality score is the less you’ll pay for clicks.

Bearing the above in mind, this week’s blog post gives you ten tips on how to improve your CTR.

1. Choose the right keywords and make good use of negatives
Your ad will never achieve a good click through rate if it appears for search queries it is not relevant to. Run search query reports to see what keywords are generating ad impressions. Look out for queries that are not relevant to your ads and add these as negative keywords. Take a search for “motorbike rider insurance” for example; the ad highlighted below is for equine insurance, not motorbike insurance.

Petplan could easily avoid appearing for motorbike insurance searches by adding negative keywords like “bike” and “motorbike” to their PPC campaign. Read more on negative keyword optimisation.

2.  Make ad text relevant to your keywords
Simply making sure your ad text contains the keywords you are targeting will increase your CTR. It’s useful to remember that keywords will become bold if they are present in your ad text. It will catch people’s eyes if they see the keywords they just typed into Google in bold and in ad text.

3.  Highlight offers and USPs
All too often we see ads that give people little reason to click on them. The space you have to write your PPC ad is small but there is plenty of room to detail what you’re offering and to highlight your USPs. For example your ad text should mention if there is an end of season sale running, or if you offer free delivery and/or returns. These are the kinds of things that entice people to click.

4.  Include a strong call to action
If you ask people to do what you want them to do in your ad your CTR will improve. Ask them to “Get a Quote Now”, or “Buy Online Now”, or “Sign Up Today” – but never write “Click Here”!

5.  Tell potential customers what’s in it for them
This goes beyond highlighting USPs and including calls to action, instead it's about wording ad text in a way that tells someone what’s in it for them if they click through. For example, in an ad offering gym membership you could just say: “Sign Up for Membership Now” or you could say “Sign Up & Get That Bikini Body”. In reference to a design software download you could say: “Download Design Software Now” or you could say “Download & Increase Productivity”, if you are selling sales training you might say “Book Your Sales Training Now” or you could say “Increase Sales Numbers – Book Now!”

6.  Make the most of ad extensions
CTRs are higher for ads where ad extensions are in place. Even though the ad extensions might not be clicked, an ad with an extension in place occupies more space on a search results page thus drawing the eye in. Take a look at the ads below; Littlewoods is occupying way more space with all its ad extensions enabled in comparison to the Ecosoftware ad that goes unnoticed:

7.  Use extended ad headlines
If an AdWords’ ad’s first line is clearly a sentence, and ends with proper punctuation, then description line one will be ‘moved up’ to become part of the ad’s headline when displayed at the top of Google’s results. You can use this space to give more prominence to any offers or great USPs life Giftlab.com have done below:

8.  Increase position
An ad that is always at the bottom of the search results for highly competitive terms will ultimately have a lower CTR. It is worth considering increasing bids to increase your position – if you do this it’s important to monitor your ROI closely.

9. Check your ad settings
AdWords’ default ad settings mean ads with better CTRs are displayed more often; however, during ad tests for example, you may choose to rotate your ads evenly. It is possible that these ad setting changes have been forgotten and ads with low CTRs will be showing as often as those with much better CTRs. It’s always worth double-checking your ad settings.

10.  Test, test, test!
One of the beauties of online marketing, and in particular AdWords PPC campaigns, is everything can be monitored and tested for true effectiveness. You should test ads with different promotions, calls to action and USPs to see which ones achieve the best click through rates. When looking at ads with the best CTRs try to figure out exactly what is about that ad that generated the better click through rate - was it an offer or a call to action – then factor this knowledge into your new ad text. Pause ads that have lower CTRs and always remember to set reminders when running ad tests to make sure you revisit them to check the results. It’s also a good idea to make a note of what you were testing, for example, a call to action.

If you want a hand, or some advice, on running a successful PPC account, including increasing CTRs, then we’d love to hear from you: contact us.

At Search Engine Strategies 2013 I was privileged to be sharing a platform with Google's Maile Ohye.  Maile is Google's Developer Programs Tech Lead and (like most techie Googlers I've met) is both a very smart person and a very friendly person.

The panel was "Next Generation Site Architecture" and Maile and I shared the various components of this topic across our two presentations resulting in what was, I hope, a rounded and complete hour on the topic, ably moderated by Will Critchlow of Distilled.

Maile started off by asking you to ask yourself whether you and your team were committed to your user experience, wherever those users were, whatever language they spoke, whatever device they happened to be using.  Her talk went on to tell you how Google fitted into the picture.

If your site ranks well in one language and country, it won’t automatically rank well in all languages and countries.  There are some coding signals you can use to let Google know the countries and languages you are targeting.

rel=canonical/prev/next

The first two coding signals that Maile covered are the rel=canonical tag for signalling the preferred URL among duplicates, and the rel=prev and rel=next tags for indicating the component pages of a series.  I’ve covered those tags before, in the following posts:

• rel=canonical tag
• rel=prev, rel=next and View-All Pages: New Google Guidance

Maile also offered guidance on how to specify a canonical tag for a non-HTML object (such as a PDF).  This can be done through the HTTP response header for the object, for example like so:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/pdf
Link: <http://www.example.com/white-paper.html>; rel="canonical"
Content-Length: 785710

The technique is specified in more detail on Google’s Webmaster Blog entry “Supporting rel="canonical" HTTP Headers” but the Google blog doesn’t tell you that this technique can also be used to provide canonical alternative URLs for multiple objects of the same type.  For example:

GET /white-paper.pdf?referrer=ABC123 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
(...rest of HTTP request headers...)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/pdf
Link: <http://www.example.com/white-paper.pdf>; rel="canonical"
Content-Length: 785710
(... rest of HTTP response headers...)

rel=alternate hreflang=x

Maile then presented the code for language or regional markup of a page, the “hreflang” attribute.  I’ve not covered that previously on the blog, but have done so at previous SES conferences.  Google covers the mechanics of it quite well in their help document, “rel="alternate" hreflang="x" - Help Google serve the correct language or regional URL” but, despite this, there is much confusion around how to use this tag properly.  The situation has become even more confusing as mobile websites have taken off.  Here’s why: previously, a publisher may have found themselves in a position where they had a duplicate content issue, which rel=canonical was designed to address – now that issue is compounded by multiple languages, multiple regions and multiple platforms (mobile, tablet and desktop).  rel=alternate hreflang=x addresses the multiple languages and regions issue, but it’s quite clumsy code – if you wish to implement it, I would recommend doing so through the sitemaps mechanism described here.  Maile listed a couple of benefits of using rel=alternate hreflang=x:

• Helps discovery of new URLs – URLs that were previously unknown to Google could be added to the crawl schedule once discovered via rel=alternate hreflang=x
• More targeted URLs for searches – it’s more likely that a co.uk domain would be listed for UK searchers, rather than the generic com domain, meaning your visitors get to see appropriate content without you having to implement geo-targeting yourself

Building A Smartphone Site

The remainder of Maile’s presentation went on to explore the multiple platform issues that have become more prevalent since the recent proliferation of mobile sites.  Recent SilverDisc blog posts have touched on this, e.g. “Responsive Website Development Using A Mobile-First Strategy”, but Maile’s approach was subtitled “Building A Smartphone Site” and that’s the angle she took.

Maile began this part of her talk by looking at the difference between feature phones and smartphones, the key differences being:

• Feature phones use cHTML (iMode), WML and WAP, whereas smartphones tend to support HTML5 and can therefore render normal desktop pages
• Feature phones normally have keyboards whereas smartphones normally have a touch UI.

Maile then went on to list the three types of smartphone site – responsive, dynamic, and separate URL – and showed the decision tree for it, which I’ll convert into a table here:

Maile listed the Googlebot user agents that are relevant to mobile:

• Feature phones
  • SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
  • DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H16) (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
• Smartphones
  • Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

This is helpful to know if you’re coding a dynamic or separate mobile site as it allows you to predict which HTTP response and content that the mobile Googlebot will see.

Maile defined a responsive web design as one which used the same HTML at the same URL, and CSS media queries to vary the layout according to the screen size, e.g.

@media only screen and (max-width: 640px) { … }

Note - in practice we’ve found that some common browsers don’t handle media queries well, e.g. IE8, so you’ll find yourself implementing some hacks if you go for a purely responsive design.

Maile cited the BBC FOUR channel as a good example of responsive web design:

When it comes to dynamic-response mobile sites, typically this is done through detecting the user agent and serving appropriate content.  So that Google knows you’re delivering dynamic content, your HTTP response header should include a Vary field as described in Google’s Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites document, e.g. as follows:

GET /page-1 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
(...rest of HTTP request headers...)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
Vary: User-Agent
Content-Length: 5710
(...rest of HTTP request headers...)

The third type of mobile web design, the separate URL, needs relationship annotation code to tell Google the connection between the various different pages.  The two pieces of code needed are rel=alternate and rel=canonical.  For example, suppose we have www.example.com and m.example.com. On www.example.com we would place the following code in the HTML <head> section to indicate that alternative, mobile content was available for devices of limited screen width:

<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (maxwidth:640px)" href="http://m.example.com/" >

On m.example.com we would place the following code in the HTML <head> section to show that the www version was the canonical:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" >

If automatic redirects take place between the m. and www. domains, the redirect should be served with a HTTP Vary field in the response header, for example:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Vary: User-Agent
Location: http://m.example.com/
(... rest of HTTP response headers...)

Google’s SkipRedirect for mobile searches

Maile then went on to describe Google’s SkipRedirect for mobile searches.  In a nutshell, how this works is as follows

1. a user searches Google on a smartphone
2. Google may display the desktop version of a particular URL, title and snippet in its search results
3. the user clicks that particular result
4. Google automatically redirects that user to the mobile equivalent URL i.e. without ever sending the user to the desktop URL.

This is something you need to be aware of, especially when implementing your own mobile redirects as you could find it very confusing when searchers aren’t hitting the desktop domain/URL you expect them to.

Best Practices For Next Generation Site Architecture

Maile’s advice, when selecting an architecture for your smartphone site, was to consider your users first.  Think about the context they’re in and what their expectations are.  Use responsive web design if it’s right for your users, as it’s good for Google too.  If you can’t use a responsive design, understand the tradeoffs and pitfalls of the dynamic or separate alternatives and make sure you implement them correctly.

Each URL should deliver the same content regardless of the user’s IP or language preferences.  Maile described this as “shareable URLs”, i.e. if you send a URL to a friend in a different country, they should be able to look at the same content as you.  My rule of thumb for this is “Each piece of unique content, indexed once, at the best URL for it.”  It has stood me in good stead for many years.

Think about page speed – this is especially important for mobile users, of course.  The architecture you use must scale to new users and network distances.

Don’t redirect lots of different desktop URLs to one smartphone URL.  If you don’t have a smartphone version of a URL, then show the desktop version instead.

Summary

Maile summarised her talk as follows:

1. Be as educated as possible when making technical site architecture decisions
2. Use signals such as those described in this post to help Google understand your site
3. Test continually!

Thanks to Maile and Will for a great session.  In a future blog post I’ll provide my own presentation from the show.

This article is part one of a three part series:

Part 1: Is AdSense Right For You?

Part 2: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (You Are Here!)

Part 3: Panda Problems: Laying Out Your Website To Avoid Panda Attack

Once you're set up with AdSense you'll soon want to get a firm grip on the reins of the beast. You're probably obsessively checking the ads on your site to see if they're working, and just what kind of ads Google think are appropriate to show on your site.

Before we begin we should point out the above approach isn't the most helpful way to work out just what's being shown. While we advocate a proactive stance on managing what ads appear on your site there's so many other factors (such as location and personalisation) which make this approach the least effective way to keep an eye on things. Better ways are to use the ad review centre or ask your community for their thoughts on the adverts.

Managing your ads through AdSense is easy and you're likely to want to do it for a number of reasons:

1. You want ads to fit your audience (The Good)

2. You want to avoid advertising competitors (The Bad)

3. You want to keep out low quality ads (The Ugly)

Why would you want to do any of these things? Well, you want ads which fit your audience because if the ads do fit your audience, they're more likely to click - meaning (some) cash for you!  The flip side of this is you want to keep out low quality ads to avoid reducing your CTR. You also want to keep your site free of crappy "One weird trick" or "One tip for a flat belly" ads which could bring your entire site into disrepute. Finally, and quite simply, you don't want to advertise competitors on your website.

Get Your Ads Audience Fit

To get a rough fit for ads and your audience, head over to the "Allow & Block ads" tab in Google AdSense and click "General Categories"

Here you will see a ton of categories which you can allow and block with the slider on the left hand-side.

If you already know your audience, you can make sure that only certain categories appear to your visitors - hopefully improving certain click through rates for your site. Don't underestimate the ability for a site to advertise across visitors’ interests however, it's not as simple as showing a tech ad because you run a tech site; these people drive, eat, insure and impulse purchase as much as the next person. 

If you're unsure about your audience we suggest you run all AdSense categories to begin with.

From the General Categories view you can see the % of ad impressions and earnings - by looking at these you can see what earns you the most, and what takes up the most impressions in your inventory.

To improve this in the future you could block underperforming categories - categories which serve a large number of ad impressions, but don't provide you with at least an equal percentage of your clicks. It's usually best to investigate any of these categories by looking at the sub categories and working out where the "drop" is. 

Ideally, by blocking (sub)categories which under-perform you will populate your site with more ads from better performing categories. Keep track month-to-month and see what improvements come from you actions. It's also worth noting that there is a limit of 50 blocked categories and sub-categories, so choose what you block wisely.

One Tip For Super Sensitive Categories 

In addition to the general categories you'll want to take a look at the "sensitive" categories. This includes sections which are more likely to produce offensive and, to be honest, crap, ads. The sensitive ads categories include things like Dating, Drugs & Supplements, Get Rich Quick, Sex, Religion, Weight Loss and even Black Magic - i.e. the kind of thing you wouldn't necessarily talk about at the dinner table with your grandmother.

These are all set to "blocked" by default, but it's worth checking if you can unblock any of them if they fit with your target market. Once you've done this, you're set up, right? No more rubbish ads?

Not quite. The content network which AdSense runs from is simply gigantic.

There's no way Google is going to manage this for you, so you (and they) have to trust that advertisers are honest about what their ads are about.

And, while you may block the Dating category on your website, if a wiley advertiser wants to pretend that in fact their advert for "Local Ladies Of Unsure Virtue In Your Area" is indeed about investment, gardening or any of your un-blocked categories there's really nothing stopping them.

That is, there's nothing stopping them except you (and the deterrent of being penalised by Google if they get caught).

Ad Blocking In Google AdSense

The main ways to stop poor advertisers, or a competitor, from advertising on your site are by: 

1. Blocking URLS

2. Blocking AdWords Accounts

3. Blocking Networks

All of these require vigilance and keeping an eye on the AdSense on your site. You can do this by hanging around on your site enough to see AdSense (fairly ineffective, but can catch the big problems) or using the ads review centre (good for catching the smaller issues).

Blocking URLS

Blocking URLs is the best way of dealing with competitors. You know their URLs so you can simply add the URLs to the URL block list to stop any ads showing. Bear in mind however that they may use separate domains for landing pages - so you'll still have to keep an eye out!

If you want to block everything from the domain “example.com” this is all you need to put in the URL field - this will catch:

example.com

www.example.com

example.com/page

www.example.com/page

subdomain.example.com

If you'd like to just on a more specific level, you merely need to be more specific. Full details here can be found here.

If you're running your own advertising on the content network, you may want to block your own website from appearing on the page - after all, you needn't advertise your own site to those already on it.

Blocking Accounts

One of the best ways to keep an eye on the ads which AdSense serves  to your site is to use the Ads Review Centre. This shows you a selection of the advertisers and the ads they are showing. You can scroll through the lists to see ads displaying and, most importantly, block individual ads and individual AdWords accounts.

To block individual ads, just click the red block symbol.

To block whole AdWords accounts, use the cog which appears when you hover over the questionable ad.

If you've made a mistake, or you want to review blocked AdWords accounts you need to view the "settings" page (which allows you to unblock advertisers) and to review individual blocked ads you should look at the "blocked" page.

By default AdSense accounts are set to display all ads without review. You can, if you have time, set ads to "hold" until you've reviewed them. This can be a time consuming and expensive - although you are guaranteed agreeable ads on your site. For the most part we recommend letting AdSense do its thing.

Blocking networks

Networks are the partners which Google has joined up with to provide ads. These are usually large ad buying agencies (many of which you'll recognise). Most of the time you'll find that networks play along nicely, however there are occasions that you'll want to turn ad networks off these could be:

1. Serving Incorrect Region/Language Specific Ads: While many networks are quite clever with their location targeting you will occasionally find a network making a mistake - for example, serving German language ads on your UK site. Many networks are broken into regions (for example: AOL: Advertising.com (JP), AOL: Advertising.com (UK) and AOL: Advertising.com (US)) and turning off ads from certain regions can fix this problem.

2. Consistently Poor Ads: It is fairly rare, but it does happen. We know that even massive companies aren't infallible. If you find a network constantly providing poor quality ads, your best bet is to just switch them off - this tends to be less of a headache than hunting down individual ads they may be serving. 

You can turn any individual network on or off in the "Ad networks" tab under "Allow & block ads" with the slider. Because these advertisers compete for the inventory of your site it's better to have as many networks activated as possible - the more competition there is, the higher the price will be pushed.

What Now?

You're probably pretty set up for the time being - but it's a good idea to keep your eye on the ads and look for small ways in which you can improve the quality and relevance of ads served. Finding a little time each day to have a look at the ad review centre, or responding to community requests to get rid of certain types of ad can improve the overall quality of your ads and in turn the first impression your site gives.

Next: Panda Problems!

AdSense, Google's display advertising platform, has a lot going for it, from the vast pool of advertisers it attracts to its excellent tracking and ease of set-up. 

You may have some concerns though. What about all those blogs with the terrible "one tip for a flat belly" ads running on them? Will your site immediately come to resemble one of those? Or worse, what if you get it right, but you've set up your ad templates in a way which sees you penalised by Google's recent Panda updates? Your hard-fought rankings could be savaged.

Never fear though, we're on hand to offer advice and guidance as to what you need to consider before belly-flopping into the world of AdSense! 

This article is part one of a three part series:

Part 1: Is AdSense Right For You? (You Are Here!)

Part 2: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Part 3: Panda Problems: Laying Out Your Website To Avoid Panda Attack

How Does AdSense Work?

Google AdSense works by you, the ‘publisher’, placing a small snippet of code on your website to display any ads which AdSense wishes to deliver to your page. A pool of advertisers bid for these ad spaces on your, and others’, website. This collection of websites is known as the Google Display Network. The higher the quality of the publisher's website, and the tougher the competition for placement on that website, the higher the cost is to the advertiser and the more profit to be shared between the publisher and Google. Ads are placed on a publisher’s site based on page content and general site affinity - as well as things like the visitor's search history.

When a visitor to your site clicks on an ad you get paid, Google gets paid and hopefully the advertiser gets a customer. Sounds like winners all round surely? Yes, most of the time but there are some drawbacks  - we'll deal with these in the Limitations of AdSense section below.

Is AdSense Right For You?

Before you begin you need to know whether AdSense is an advertising solution that works for your website. There are two main types of websites out there – ‘ecommerce’ sites which directly sell services and goods, and ‘content’ websites such as blogs, forums and social sites.

If you run a content website you should feel confident that AdSense is for you. Why? Because you don't have another revenue stream to interrupt. AdSense is good for websites which don't have a direct way of making money through a product or service on offer.

In that case your consideration should not be so much whether display advertising is best for your website, but more whether AdSense display advertising is the best option for you: in most cases it will be at the very least a happy medium. Because of the sheer size of the AdSense network there's almost no limit to the kinds of niches which AdSense can find relevant ads for. Even if your direct ad sales pay better and are more directly relevant to your visitors, AdSense is a handy tool to fall back on for remnant or backfill campaigns (i.e. the impressions that remain once your premium advertisers have had their share).

However, if you do have a product to sell, or some other means of converting visitors into cash, then AdSense probably isn't for you.

Why You Shouldn't Use AdSense (Or Any Advertising) On Your Ecommerce Site

With an ecommerce site you're likely to have built your site as a funnel from the first landing page (e.g. via PPC, organic or direct traffic) through to your checkout/conversion page. You have probably spent a great deal of time working out what's the smoothest, quickest way to turn a fresh visitor into a customer. Sticking an ad on the page is like putting a "diversion" sign on the 100m track.

Every AdSense placement is an attempt to distract visitors from your website to their product page and into their funnel - and you certainly don't want that.

There's even a fair chance that your competitors are running AdSense campaigns which, as you're in the same industry, will have a great deal of relevancy to your site and your customers. You wouldn't want to advertise your competitors' products next to your own would you?

If that hasn't dissuaded you from running AdSense on an ecommerce site (or you have a hybrid site containing a mixture of content and ecommerce elements) here are a few quick rules to keep in mind:

1. Keep your competitors off the page: You can do this fairly easily within AdSense using the allow and block ads facility. We'll cover this in a later AdSense blog entry.

2. Don't advertise at key conversion points: This should be a no-brainer, but it's something that can slip through when defining advertising areas of a website template. Advertising on the checkout or shopping basket pages is the same as suggesting that the customer really must shop around first!

3. Don't place ads in better positions than products: Ad placement is a tricky proposition in the post-Google Panda world, but as a general rule of thumb they should be a secondary source of income and be treated as such.

AdSense - What You Need To Know

Once you've decided that AdSense is for you there are a few things you need to keep in mind regarding the rules and applications of AdSense.

Getting Set Up

Getting set up with AdSense is simple. Head over here and sign up with your Google account.  Once set up you can start creating ads on the "My Ads" page. Here you choose your ad type (text, image & rich media, or both), ad size, and if you're using text - the way that appears.

What's Best?

When it comes to AdSense ad units there's a desire to just put "the best" out there - whatever that is. It used to be that image/display advertising would bring better returns than text ads, but this isn't as clear cut any more. 

The position pushed by Google is that a mix of image and text ads is the best option as it makes the advertising pool massive - more advertisers means more bids for positions,  means the better rate you (and Google) get. While this may be the case it really does depend on your site. 

We suggest tracking performance over time and testing to see what combination of text and image advertising works for you. For example, you may want to test whether having text ads in one location improves the CPC of other ad units across the page or if visitors are more likely to be drawn to image ads when they're placed within text blocks.

Regarding ad sizes, this usually depends on the layout of your site, but a variety is encouraged. We've found that large MPUs (366x280) tend to earn a higher CPC than ads of other shapes and sizes - but this again may be due to their prominent positioning on most of the pages they're present on. Generally speaking however you want to tend towards larger, newer ad unit sizes as older sizes (such as 468x60 and 120x600) are no longer as widely supported by advertisers.

If you currently have an old template for your site which contains smaller, less popular ad-types, updating this to allow new ad formats can be a very quick way to improve AdSense revenues.

Limits of AdSense

There are a few limits to AdSense - and falling foul of Google's policies can see you booted out of the AdSense club pretty fast.

There is a maximum of 3 content ad units per page and only one of Google’s new, and frankly giant, 300x600px ad units per page. Google put limits on the number of units per page to avoid publishers putting dense collections of AdSense on a page making it impossible to avoid clicking ads (this is against the rules) or, alternatively, providing millions of unseen impression.

Other limits include not making your ads look like content (and vice versa), aligning images with ads so the images look like they're part of the ad, placing other websites displaying AdSense ads in frames on your site, placing ads on sites with pop-ups, reloading ads on a cycle or encouraging accidental clicks in any way. In short, if there is an obvious way to game Google AdSense, it's been tried already and you're not going to last long if you try it!

What Now?

If you intend to run AdSense on your site you should get started by designing or updating your ad template and have a good read of the Google AdSense Ad Placement Policies document. Once you've got AdSense running you should begin to test different combinations of ad type across your pages and optimize what works best for you.

Next: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of Google AdSense

If you use Google anywhere near as much as we do, you’re sure to appreciate these ten simple methods for making your searches more effective.

1. Search for an exact phrase

This particular trick is quite well-known. If you know the exact keywords that you’re looking for, it is a good idea to enclose your search in quotation marks. Google will limit the results to the exact phrase that you have specified.

2. Exclude keywords from your search

If you want to exclude a particular keyword from your search results you can add a – (minus) symbol in front of that keyword. For example, you might be researching the city of Sunderland but have no interest in the football team (search for sunderland -football) or you might want to make a  cheesecake but don’t like strawberries (search for cheesecake recipes -strawberries).

3. Search within a specific site

If you want to limit your Google search to a specific site, use the site:  search operator. This can be very useful if the website you want to search doesn’t have its own internal site search (or if the internet site search isn’t very good). The below example demonstrates a search of the Guardian’s site for the keyword skyfall. If you don’t include a keyword in the search then Google will return a list of all the URLs it has indexed for that domain.

4. Use the related search synonym

Include synonyms in Google’s results by placing the ~ sign in front of your keyword. For example, a search for ~cheap holidays will also return returns for low cost holidays.

5. Search by file type

Search for specific document type by using the filetype: modifier. The following example demonstrates a search for a .pdf version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

6. Search for related sites

Use the related:  modifier to find websites relating to a domain of your choice. This tool is ideal for identifying online competitors. Alternatively, you could just use it to find similar websites to the ones you already enjoy browsing!

7. Search by image

Google’s “search by image” function is relatively new. It allows users to start their search with an image rather than keywords. To use this function, drag and drop a local image file into Google’s image search (you can also upload the image, search by URL or drag the image from Google’s image results). Google has identified the painting below as being Turner’s “Flint Castle” – very impressive!

8. Find cinema times

If you’re looking for local showings of the latest film releases, Google is a great place to start. Search for movie:[movie name] [your postcode/town] to compare showing times at local cinemas. Use the options on the left hand side to refine your results. To ensure the search works correctly, make sure you don’t use a space in your postcode.

9. Calculator tool

Can’t find a calculator function on your desktop or mobile? Use Google’s built in calculator tool! Simply enter your expression into the search box to bring up Google’s calculator.

10. Convert currency and other measures

Searching Google for “currency converter” will bring up the function.

You can also use Google to convert measures, such as the following:

Bonus YouTube tip:

When viewing a video, use your left and right keyboard arrows to rewind/fast-forward 5 seconds or your up and down keys to increase/decrease the volume by 5%.

Happy Googling!

Google AdWords ad extensions are a great way to improve the performance of your PPC ads. Ad extensions use more space in the paid search results and can significantly improve your CTR – these are just two reasons why you should be using ad extensions in your AdWords PPC campaigns.

There are lots of ad extensions to choose from including sitelink extensions, seller ratings and social extensions, and I think many advertisers would agree that keeping track of the different ad extensions and knowing which ones to use for your business can be tricky. That’s why we have compiled a simple guide to AdWords ad extensions to help!

Sitelink extensions

Take users deeper into your site, and closer to converting, with sitelink extensions. Sitelinks are ideal for taking users directly to content that you think they might be interested in so when choosing sitelinks, think about your popular product lines, new releases and best deals.

You can have up to ten sitelink extensions in a campaign, which are supposed to take users to unique landing pages, but many advertisers actually use them as an extension of their ad text and send them all to the same landing page. For example, the sitelink extensions in the below ad, which was triggered for a search on “watches”, actually all take users to the homepage rather than a page for branded watches or to the watches recently advertised on TV.

To make better use their sitelink extensions, this advertiser should consider taking people to specific areas of the site like “mens watches”, “ladies watches” and “branded watches”. Google are starting to become stricter when monitoring sitelinks so make sure your sitelink extensions go to unique landing pages to avoid them being disapproved!

Call extensions

If your PPC campaigns target mobile phone devices then call extensions are a must! Call extensions are used to insert a click-to-call phone number next to your ad so that people can call you directly from the search results. But don’t disregard call extensions if your campaigns target desktop computers as they are still a useful addition if you want to increase calls. If you offer a service which you want people to book or reserve quickly over the phone then call extensions are ideal. The below example shows call extensions in an ad for a hotel, even though the ad is targeting people using desktop computers.

Google recently introduced ‘call forwarding numbers’ to let advertisers see call metrics like call duration and area code. On mobiles you are only charged for the cost-per-click, like before, but campaigns targeting desktop computers with the forwarding number will be charged a minimum of £1.00 per call. You can opt out of using the Google call forwarding number so make sure you do this if you don’t want to incur the extra costs. If you can’t decide whether to use the call forwarding number, ask yourself how many calls you get and whether it would be valuable to get a deeper insight into those calls.

Social extensions

Link your Google+ page to your AdWords ads with social extensions to boost your social presence. Once you have linked your Google+ page to your ads, searchers will be able to see the number of Google+ followers you have and go directly to your Google+ page to engage with your brand. If a Google+ user has a friend in their circles who has +1’d your brand then it will also say this in the ad - increasing the chances of them clicking your ad or visiting your Google+ page. To read more about Google+ and why you should have a Google+ page, read Mary’s blog post Google+ and Why You Need A Google+ Brand Page!

Seller ratings

If you have received thirty reviews in the past twelve months on review sites around the Internet with an average rating of four out of five or better, then you’ll be pleased to hear that your PPC ads are eligible to display seller rating extensions. Seller rating extensions can improve CTR by inserting a star rating into your ads to show people that you are a recommended retailer. Seller rating extensions are absolutely free - you just pay for clicks on your ad like normal. 

Location extensions

Location extensions insert your address into your ad so that people can easily find you and get directions, which is particularly useful if your campaigns target mobile phones. It’s important to remember that location extensions should only be used if your business operates from a physical location like shops and restaurants. If your business operates online then think about using call extensions instead. 

Product extensions

If you use Google Merchant Centre you can show people specific products you sell with product extensions. Google displays products it thinks are suitable based on the user’s search query, along with an image, price and title. Product extensions are ideal if you are a retailer with an e-commerce site looking to increase online sales. With product extensions you just pay the CPC that you would normally pay when someone clicks your ad to go through to your site. It’s free if someone simply clicks to expand the product extensions box. The below examples of product extensions appeared on a search for “lawnmowers”. 

If you want more advice on how to use Google AdWords ad extensions in your PPC campaigns then get in touch and we will be happy to help! 

If you’re working hard to deliver visitors to your site with well targeted keywords and compelling ads but aren’t seeing sales happen then your ecommerce product pages might be in need of some TLC!

Having well optimised product pages means you give yourself the best chance of making the sale. We’ve got tons of tips for you on how to improve your ecommerce product pages. Implementing just a few changes could see your conversion rate improve.

Clear Call to Action
I know this sounds obvious but you’d be surprised at how well hidden some sites’ call to actions are. Make sure yours is clear and that the language you use on the button clearly describes what you want the shopper to do. Button text like “Buy Now” or “Add to Basket” is used worldwide for the simple reason: it works!

An example of a hidden call to action can be seen below:

Make the Most of Images

• Use high quality product images. Pixelated images look unprofessional and could put people off your site and your products
• The ability to zoom in and out of images is very useful. For example, if you were buying a wedding dress online you’d want to be able to zoom into an image to view the crystal detailing on the bodice. You may be surprised to hear that many wedding dress shops do not offer this functionality!
• Use images to display your products in context. For example:
• Show someone holding the hedge cutter you’re selling. This will give a clearer indication of its actual size
• Show the dining table you’re selling fully laid out for a meal. This will bring it to life and make it easier for the shopper to picture the table in action!
• Put the clothes or shoes you’re selling on a person with other items of clothing. This shows how an outfit might be put together. It may also encourage more purchases
• Offer 360° product view functionality. At the very least show images of your products from all angles
• Consider asking customers to send in their own images of products they’ve bought in use in exchange for vouchers or a prize. You’ll have more product images on file and other shoppers will be reassured that people are buying from you.

Product Descriptions & Info

• Make product descriptions unique where possible. Standard manufacturer descriptions can sometimes be uninspiring and are also likely to be used in multiple places elsewhere on the web
• Describe features of your products alongside the advantages they pose. For example:

POOR: Aluminium outdoor dining table with six armchairs
GOOD: Relax outdoors with this contemporary, aluminium outdoor dining table which comes with six armchairs. This stylish garden furniture set is perfect for al fresco dining this summer
POOR: Petrol lawn mower. 32.5kg with 41cm cutting width
GOOD: This unique petrol lawn mower weighs in at a very light 32.5kg making it easy to manoeuvre in even awkward spaces. The generous 41cm cutting width means you’ll have the lawn mowed in no time at all

• Look at users’ reviews of your products. You’d be surprised at what interesting points they’ll make about the product(s) you’re selling that even the manufacturer doesn’t know or promote
• Think about what questions customers ask themselves before buying your product. Work the answers to commonly asked questions into your product descriptions
• Include all sizing and/or weight information
• If your product is compatible with other products then detail this. An example might be a solar powered phone charger – detail all of the mobile phones/devices this is compatible with
• Include size guides where relevant. If you are a UK retailer marketing to US customers show comparable sizes, e.g. a UK size 12 is a US size 10

Instil Confidence

• Returns policy - make sure this is easily accessible from the product page and that it is easy to understand
• Delivery details – make sure these are accurate and show costs where applicable along with estimated delivery times
• Link to customer reviews of your brand. Positive reviews from real people count for a lot

Cross Sell
Increase customer satisfaction and the value of an average shopping basket by cross-selling. For example, if you’re selling a laptop then offer anti-virus software as an optional added extra. You should also suggest other products people may like to buy that are similar to the product they’re looking at. If they then do not want the initial product there’s another option ready and waiting for them.

Reduce Fuss
If you have too much going on on your product page you risk confusing your shopper leaving them frustrated and ready to hit the browser back button. ASOS have good product pages which has the important information presented clearly but without too much fuss:

 Clear USPs

• If you offer free delivery on everything make sure this is clearly visible
• If you are offering 10% off everything make sure this is clear

Star Ratings & Reviews
If you have these for your products then display them clearly. Don’t hide your happy customers’ reviews away under a ‘testimonials’ menu link that’s out of sight.

Most Important Information First
Make sure you feature important information first on your product page. The information that must be clear can include the price, delivery information and the key product information which will be specific to your product vertical.

Social Sharing Buttons
Having Facebook ‘Like’ or a Google +1 buttons on your product pages works well on multiple levels. If people have already shared your product these numbers are likely to be visible – this instils confidence. Sharing products via social media also offers other benefits including increased brand awareness and SEO advantages.

If you’d like more information on improving your ecommerce conversion rate then get in touch!

AdWords Comparison Ads – What Might the Future Have in Store

Since 2009 Google AdWords have been testing Comparison Ads.  They first tested Comparison Ads for finance products, including mortgages, in the US. Here in the UK credit card Comparison Ads were visible from February 2010 onwards.

Comparison Ads appear both below and above the top three PPC Ads. This ad type pushes down the organic results - a common theme with Google’s ad extensions. It is also worth noting that when a Comparison Ad is shown in the very top position it also pushes down PPC ads. 



The slightly different look of Comparison Ads to the regular ads is likely to mean higher CTRs.  Asking for small amounts of information from people after they have searched on a keyword will enable Google to deliver more relevant results. Google can assume the users’ search intent from both keywords searched on and also from interaction with the Comparison Ad.

The Comparison Ads are straightforward to use.  You simply state what you’re interested in within the Comparison Ad (for example all cards, balance transfer rates, purchase rates or representative APR) and you then click on the ad. There is then a very short form to complete which enables Google to present you with a list of relevant credit cards that should meet your needs.



You can click on the cards you’re interested in to compare them and explore them in more detail:

 

The whole process is very simple. The ability to compare different cards, side-by-side, is something other comparison sites often don’t do well. Many will simply list the deals without the details. If you find a card you like you can click “Apply Now” which takes you to a highly relevant landing page on the retailer’s website.

What Does the Future Hold?

The rise of the Comparison Ad is strongly noticeable in the US. Google’s Hotel Finder ads started appearing in there in December 2011. The Hotel Finder ad format may be different to the Comparison Ad examples above, but they too are being labelled as Comparison Ads and are ‘achieving’ those prime top spots in the paid ads:
 


If Google decides to expand on their Comparison Ad offerings, we may see them showing Comparison Ads for other verticals. Maybe Google will show Comparison Ads for highly competitive areas, like insurance, where existing comparison sites heavily compete against each other.

Google even has the potential to create Comparison Ads for retail products too. Within Google Shopping you are already presented with tables that compare prices for one particular product.

There is also the possibility of Comparison Ads appearing for travel related searches too - Google may use its Flight Search tool to present people relevant Comparison Ads in this area.

Google’s launch of the new enhanced ad sitelinks got us talking and led us to ask Google – “How many ad extensions can appear at once in an ad?”

If you use multiple types of ad extensions you’ll be pleased to hear that, in theory, they can all show at once! In the PPC manager’s dream an ad could look like this:

“Fantastic”, you say? It certainly could be (but spare a thought for the SEO troopers who have probably spent years fighting for that top spot in the natural results). An ad of this size means you can probably wave “Bye bye” to competitors as your CTRs and conversions soar.

Ad Extensions in Reality

Sadly, it seems for the most part you’ll struggle to get more than two of your ad extensions to appear at once. It’s ultimately Google who decides which ad extension will be shown. If one ad is deemed more relevant than another to Google then that ad’s likely to have more extensions within it.

If you’ve built up a good review base and seller ratings appear in your ads then these are likely to show pretty much all of the time along with other ad extensions including location extensions, product extensions or sitelinks.

If Google thinks your ads are really, really relevant to a search query you might be rewarded with an ad that displays sitelinks, seller ratings and product extensions – well done you!

Use Ad Extensions Wisely

Ad extensions can be great for CTRs; ads see an average uplift of 30%. An ad extension can take someone to the most relevant part of your site whether it is a particular product page or your contact details leading to increased conversion rates.

It’s easy to see the attraction of enabling as many ad extensions as possible but before you go too crazy consider their use cautiously. Not all ad extensions are suitable for every business! If they’re not used carefully your potential customers could end up in the wrong place.

More generally, it’s possible that too many different types of ad extensions in Google’s results could cause confusion. A searcher may wonder why ExampleA.com has product images in their ad whereas ExampleB.com may have text links to different parts of their website. Searchers may struggle deciding where and what to click on.

Ad Extensions: Quick Tips

·                     Ensure the right ad extension is used in the right place. You don’t want a location extension enabled if from your physical location you do not sell the product or service – opt for sitelinks instead

·                     Where possible highlight offers within sitelinks as this could lead to better CTRs

·                     Be descriptive within sitelinks and make best use of the character allowance you have

·                     If you have a physical location then make sure your Google Places listing is fully optimised! Spelling mistakes, inaccurate information and poor pictures can let you down

·                     When adding a phone number as part of a call or location extension, where possible use a number with a local prefix. We all know that 0800 numbers are not free from a mobile phone

·                     For good product extensions make sure your Google Merchant Centre feed is well optimised and that your product info is as up to date as possible. It’s no good showing a fantastic price that is out of date once a person clicks through to your website

·                     Keep an eye on your competitors and ensure that they are not ahead of your game. If they’re running a fantastic offer in a sitelink – can you match it or beat it? If not, come up with an alternative offer

·                     Ensure your Google+ Page looks good if you’re opted into social extensions. Remember, you’ll need to verify your Google+ Page on your site if you want social extensions to appear in your ads. Click here for more info.

If all this seems too complicated, you could always get SilverDisc to do it for you!