Friday, March 16, 2012

Taking Automated Rules to the next level: Now in My Client Center

Taking Automated Rules to the next level: Now in My Client Center:

We’ve added My Client Center support, so you can now run Automated Rules across multiple client accounts, to help you manage many accounts more quickly, easily and efficiently. To get started, simply click the “Automate” drop-down menu on the Performance or Budget tab:



This AdWords Help Center article walks you through how to set up Automated Rules in My Client Center. As you may notice, the steps are mostly the same as for individual accounts, except that we’ve added sections for account and currency selection:





As always, remember to click the Preview results button to verify that you've set the rule up correctly. Previewing displays the time you’ve chosen for the rule to run in groups according to your clients’ timezones, and allows you to get a glimpse of the changes that the rule will make to the first account you’ve selected.





To see popular types of rules created by advertisers, please see this AdWords Help Center article. To learn more about Automated Rules, please visit Ad Innovations.



Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager

New Google research: Reaching your audience effectively with YouTube TrueView Ads

New Google research: Reaching your audience effectively with YouTube TrueView Ads:
With many Americans spending as much time online as watching TV, media-savvy advertisers are turning to creative new formats to attract attention and customers. We recently surveyed more than 1,600 Americans aged 18-45 and got some interesting insights into TrueView Video Ads, the family of YouTube ad formats that give viewers choice and control over which advertisers' messages they want to see and when.

Some of the best findings from our study include:
  • 8 of 10 viewers preferred TrueView to standard in-stream ads
  • 9 of 10 viewers thought TrueView created a better viewing environment
  • 8 of 10 viewers thought the skip button was very clear
  • Only 1 viewer in 10 always skips ads
Other results give insight into how advertisers can make their TrueView ads even more effective so that viewers watch, not skip, their ads. Based on the research, here are some of the best ways to make your TrueView ads stickier:

Make great ads that people want to watch and that spark their curiosity.
Viewers have the option to skip a TrueView in-stream ad after five seconds, so piquing their interest quickly is important. By far the most popular survey response from people who chose to watch an ad was this one: “I was curious to see what the ad was for.” Attention-grabbing openers and humor also keep people watching.

Include branding in those first seconds.
TrueView advertisers pay only when people actually watch their ads. They’re buying real value, not paying per impression. So, insert your logo or brand name in the first five seconds—which cost you nothing if the viewer doesn’t keep watching. Enjoy those free impressions!

Include new, different information in your TrueView ad if it’s been airing on TV.
In our study, we found that seeing ads on TV affected whether viewers later skipped those same ads on YouTube. To keep them engaged across multiple screens, be sure to provide new product information in the TrueView ad messaging and make it personally relevant to the viewer. Check out this case study from HGTV for great ideas on tweaking and optimizing your TrueView ad.

To read full details of the study and get more tips about creating effective TrueView ads, visit Think Insights.

Posted by Christina Park, Product Marketing Manager, Think with Google

10 Optimization Secrets To Drive More Mobile Traffic From Facebook

10 Optimization Secrets To Drive More Mobile Traffic From Facebook: One of the staggering facts in Facebook’s public filing last month was that 50% of their traffic is driven by mobile devices. That’s about 5x more than the average website. Perhaps even more staggering: the growth rate of their mobile traffic actually exceeded their US growth rate last...



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

6 Interview Questions For Conversion Optimization Hires

6 Interview Questions For Conversion Optimization Hires: So you’re looking to hire someone to do conversion optimization on your team? Here are six interview questions that you might consider asking. The answers aren’t necessarily black-and-white, but these kinds of questions can help reveal how a candidate thinks about conversion...



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Tips For Growing Keyword Seeds With Excel Formulas

Tips For Growing Keyword Seeds With Excel Formulas: Have your seeds germinated yet? Last time, we talked about keywords as “seeds” of ideas; a single keyword to represent an entire keyword cluster. Now it’s time to make our seeds grow. Using the example of Artisan Construction Services again (thanks!), we’ll walk through the process that I use to...



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google Opens Kimono (Slightly) On AdWords Screening Measures

Google Opens Kimono (Slightly) On AdWords Screening Measures: Followers of news about Google AdWords know that problematic errors — instances in which ads that violate the company’s own advertising standards slip by — come up quite regularly. Most recently, Google, along with advertiser ProFlowers, was roundly and publicly criticized for...



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

How To Create An SEO Positive Company Culture

How To Create An SEO Positive Company Culture: My message today is to tear down the walls: not the ones in your website but in your company, between and within divisions. Too many businesses, especially larger companies, divide website responsibilities throughout different parts of the organization chart. Without strong central leadership, this...



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
   

Top SEO Tips on Multilingual Keywords

Top SEO Tips on Multilingual Keywords: With another language in the mix, making the most of your keywords can feel like climbing Everest. With these simple tips, you can maximize your website’s potential and soon see your rankings improve and the number of visitors increase.

Doodle 4 Google 2012 Ireland Winner Turns Back Time

Doodle 4 Google 2012 Ireland Winner Turns Back Time: The winning logo from Ireland’s 2012 Doodle 4 Google competition has been revealed. The Doodle, which appears on Google Ireland for 24 hours today, was voted as the best out of 300 children’s hand-drawn logos depicting the theme of “I wish…”

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Taking Automated Rules to the next level: Now in My Client Center

Taking Automated Rules to the next level: Now in My Client Center:

We’ve added My Client Center support, so you can now run Automated Rules across multiple client accounts, to help you manage many accounts more quickly, easily and efficiently. To get started, simply click the “Automate” drop-down menu on the Performance or Budget tab:



This AdWords Help Center article walks you through how to set up Automated Rules in My Client Center. As you may notice, the steps are mostly the same as for individual accounts, except that we’ve added sections for account and currency selection:





As always, remember to click the Preview results button to verify that you've set the rule up correctly. Previewing displays the time you’ve chosen for the rule to run in groups according to your clients’ timezones, and allows you to get a glimpse of the changes that the rule will make to the first account you’ve selected.





To see popular types of rules created by advertisers, please see this AdWords Help Center article. To learn more about Automated Rules, please visit Ad Innovations.



Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager

Searching Privately in a Post-Scroogle World

Searching Privately in a Post-Scroogle World: Barry Schwartz covered the full story of Scroogle's closing for Search Engine Land. Here's the short version: about a week ago, Google began blocking the site. The privacy search engine, online since 2003, worked by scraping Google's results without passing along any identifiable information or keeping any itself - thus giving users a measure of privacy they lacked when searching directly at Google itself. Getting blocked in this way might not have killed Scroogle so quickly, but the site also fell victim to a stream of distributed denial of service attacks that started back in December. W...

Is Google Tracking Your iPhone?

Is Google Tracking Your iPhone?: Todd Wasserman covered the story for Mashable. It was also covered by none other than the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, advertising companies have been using special computer code that tricks Apple's Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default. Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer broke the story on his blog earlier this month. He stated that Google and Vibrant Media intentionally circumvent Safari's privacy feature. Media Innovation Group and PointRoll...

Local SEO: Secrets to Killing The Competition

Local SEO: Secrets to Killing The Competition: In this article I'll explain how to absolutely dominate local search by using an example site to show what's being done right, what's being done wrong, and what he should be doing to become the number 1 player in his market. I recently came across a small local business in South Jersey run by a John Pepe He's a tile installer, and if you do a search on south jersey tile installation, he's the second listing. To have his spot, he does far less link building, PPC, advertising, and everything else than the number one guy, or even the other three people below him. However, there are certain thin...

Dominating Local SEO

Dominating Local SEO: So what steps should Pepe take to dominate local SEO? 1) The main site, Pepe Tile and Installation, has to be cleaned up with a much better look and feel. This could easily be done with nearly zero technical know-how by simply using WordPress and a clean-looking two-column theme. As I mentioned yesterday, a better logo for his company could probably be done for as little as $50, and that should also be considered a must. 2) Once WordPress is being used, put links to the social networks that he's using way up top in the sidebar. Use simple 32x32 icons for each of them, and make sure they are ...

Is Google Plus an Empty Hangout?

Is Google Plus an Empty Hangout?: For myself, I have to admit that I rarely check out my Google+ account anymore. Even Debbie Ohi, a very talented friend of mine who took to the new social site like a duck takes to water, wrote in a public post that as much as I prefer Google+'s interface to that of Facebook's, I'm spending way more time on Facebook these days. One reason for this is that the people she most needs to keep in touch with professionally are on Facebook rather than Google+, and she only has so much time for social media. She and I are hardly alone. For whatever reason, lots of Google+ users hardly seem to rememb...

The Problem With Your Website

The Problem With Your Website: I'd wager the same thing could be said of your site. Almost never do I see a fantastically designed site that has proper traffic and lead conversion steps in place that also doesn't have enough traffic. Not only that, but spending time, money, and effort on driving traffic to a site that can't convert that traffic into leads and sales is a waste. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about here. Let's say that, with your various advertising and traffic generation methods, you're spending two thousand dollars a month, and for that you're getting 20,000 visits to your site. I understand...

Cosmetic Surgery Marketing: Inbound Marketing and SEO

Cosmetic Surgery Marketing: Inbound Marketing and SEO: Missing The Golden Opportunity Cosmetic surgeons often spend a large amount of money on their marketing. Most have great looking websites with lots of before and after pictures. I've seen several with fairly in-depth link building programs to try and maintain good search rankings. The problem is that the face of SEO is rapidly changing. Link building doesn't even begin to be good enough anymore. The changes at Google (and Bing) mean that social signals are playing a prominent role in who gets ranked and where. This is so strong at Google that simply putting the right people into your circles...

Give Your Blog a Fighting Chance

Give Your Blog a Fighting Chance: Recently I read Neil Patel's piece on mistakes that will bury your blog posts. It occurred to me that warnings like don't forget do not get remembered well. So let's look at his list of mistakes, and turn them around so you know what you should be doing to avoid those mistakes. Patel starts with the first thing most readers of your blog posts will see - your headline. They'll see this long before they arrive at your website. It's picked up and displayed on the search engine results page, in feed readers, subject lines, and even links included on social media sites, if you've structured your ...

Internet Marketing Strategy: Going Inbound

Internet Marketing Strategy: Going Inbound: First, a definition: Inbound Marketing is the convergence of content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization (from my article What Is Inbound Marketing). Going one step farther, inbound marketing is all about turning yourself into the undisputed authority in your market. It's about becoming so overwhelmingly recognized in your market that people will literally line up to do business with you over and above anyone else, at the same time that you're charging many times more than anyone else. Outbound marketing is about advertising. The problem is that anyone can adverti...

Location Matters for Online Ads

Location Matters for Online Ads: Before I get into that, let me give you some numbers to back what I've said about online advertising. If you're still convinced that print will always be bigger than the Internet, think again. It's growing fast - and this year, according to emarketer, it's set to catch up with print, at least in the U.S. The digital marketing research company noted that online ad spending was expected to reach nearly $40 billion. In fact, emarketer said that This year, US online ad spending will exceed the total spent on print magazines and newspapers for the first time, at $39.5 billion vs. $33.8 billion. ...

Bing Linked Pages Simpler than Google+ Author Markup

Bing Linked Pages Simpler than Google+ Author Markup: At first glance Bing Linked Pages sounds like an answer to Google's content authorship markup. However any resemblance is short lived as they do different things. Bing Linked Pages seeks to connect content that is about you rather than written by you

How to Train an SEO in 5 Days

How to Train an SEO in 5 Days: Looking to train an SEO from scratch? This plan covers the key subjects and essential tools SEOs need to learn to use to ensure they become an effective team member. Here’s how to squeeze it all into a week of morning and afternoon sessions.

Google's Search Quality Meeting Video: Where's the Beef?

Google's Search Quality Meeting Video: Where's the Beef?: Google has released an "uncut" 8-minute video of a search quality meeting to show the process of how Google improves its search engine. However, the video is hardly revealing – I wish they'd give us search marketers a little bit more meat.

Google-Apple Search Deal Attracts FTC Attention

Google-Apple Search Deal Attracts FTC Attention: Google's position as the default search engine on Apple's mobile devices is drawing scrutiny from the U.S. FTC. Apple has been subpoenaed for information on its deals with Google to make it the preferred search engine on iPhones and iPads.

Google Launches GetMo Mobile Optimization Initiative in UK

Google Launches GetMo Mobile Optimization Initiative in UK: Google says the UK GetMo campaign aims to provide webmasters and developers with tools for optimizing sites to run on mobile browsers. Based on the company's GoMo U.S. campaign, GetMo offers testing materials, developer guides, and case studies.

How to Quantify Brand or Engagement Marketing With Paid Search

How to Quantify Brand or Engagement Marketing With Paid Search: By measuring the right set of metrics, you can create scenarios around users exposed to your different marketing efforts. This can help you hone in on effective strategies and tactics for your brand or engagement marketing. Quantify, then optimize.

Keyword ROI: The Key SEO Ingredient

Keyword ROI: The Key SEO Ingredient: The best business model should rule the search engine results pages. Increasingly the ability to make money from a particular keyword is the key to successful SEO, along with the ability and willingness to put in the required efforts.

Check out your new image ads from the AdWords Display Ad Builder

Check out your new image ads from the AdWords Display Ad Builder:
Image and video ads on the Google Display Network can have a strong impact on the success of your online marketing campaigns. These ads convey your messages in more engaging and memorable ways, enticing viewers to buy what you’re selling.

The Display Ad Builder tool within AdWords already lets you easily create image and video ads for free and gives you the flexibility to customize these ads to suit your needs. Check out these image ads for examples of what you can create:



But today we’re announcing a new feature that essentially builds your image ads for you.

The Display Ad Builder now automatically creates suggested image ads, using the existing text ads in your campaign.
  • Click on the suggested ad that you like best.
  • If necessary, customize any fonts, text, or colors that need tweaking.
  • Then incorporate the ad into one of your ad groups. It’s that simple.
Check out your suggested ads now>>

You don’t even have to be in the Display Ad Builder tool to use this new feature.
  • If you’re in one of your ad groups, you can select an existing text ad and under “More Actions,” choose “Generate Display Ad.”
  • AdWords will create an image ad based on the text ad you selected.

If you want to create your ad from scratch, you can always choose from hundreds of template designs.
  • Add your text and customize the fonts, colors, and background.
  • Choose images from the AdWords stock gallery, from your computer, or straight off your website.
  • Review the ad in all formats to make sure it looks right, then add it to your campaign.
For more information about Display Ad Builder, visit the Display Network website.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords and AdSense statistics temporarily delayed

AdWords and AdSense statistics temporarily delayed:
As some of you may have noticed, since approximately 2pm PST this Monday, March 5th, there's been a delay for statistics reported in AdWords and AdSense. While the reports are delayed, whether you are an AdWords advertiser or an AdSense publisher, your ads are serving as usual, with no disruptions.

This is a result of a temporary technical issue with our "statistics pipeline" (this is the system that translates the raw data into meaningful and actionable metrics for you). Our engineers are working hard to resolve the issue, and should have all your stats updated, current and complete by early Tuesday morning (PST).

We appreciate your patience. We'll update this post with any additional information and status reports.

Update, March 6, 2012: As of approximately 2 am PST this morning, most AdWords and AdSense stats are back to normal in your accounts. A few daily reports, including the search query report, geo reports, and domain and url reports will not be fully restored until approximately midnight PST today. Thank you for your continuing patience!

Update, March 7, 2012: We’re happy to report all stats and reports in your AdWords and AdSense accounts are completely restored, and back to normal. Thanks!

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Opportunities for sitelinks

Opportunities for sitelinks: A fast, simple way to increase your AdWords performance is adding sitelinks to your campaigns. If your campaign is eligible to show sitelinks but it doesn’t have them them up yet, it’s probably missing a good opportunity. To help out, we're adding sitelinks to the AdWords Opportunities tab

Now, when we detect that your campaign is performing well enough to show ad sitelinks, but does not yet have them set up, we’ll show you that idea in the Opportunities tab. You'll also get a personalized estimate of the impact on clicks and cost if sitelinks were implemented, based on your last week’s campaign stats.




Here are two tips to keep in mind when you're setting up ad sitelinks:
  1. Our systems automatically determine which sitelinks perform best and show them more frequently. So adding more than the minimum number of suggested sitelinks can boost your performance.
  2. Sitelinks can appear with any of the ads in your campaign. So choose website destinations and sitelink text that make sense across all of your ads.
To learn more about the Opportunities tab, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Mark Martel, AdWords Product Marketing

Webinar tomorrow: Making Mobile-friendly Websites

Webinar tomorrow: Making Mobile-friendly Websites: Mobile searches have grown 400% in the last two years, but many businesses today still don't have mobile optimized sites. A mobile optimized site will allow users to have a great experience on your site while browsing on their mobile devices. Whether your customers are contacting you or making a purchase, this session will walk you through the ten best practices for building a better mobile site so you can get more customers while they are using mobile devices. This webinar will be hosted by one of our in-house Mobile Websites specialists who will also be on hand to answer questions after the webinar.

The session will take place on Tuesday, March 13, at 3pm GMT. Register Now!

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Announcing AdWords campaign limits increase

Announcing AdWords campaign limits increase:
Last year we increased the limits for all advertisers to 500 campaigns and 3 million keywords per AdWords account. Today, in response to feedback from many of our advertisers, we are pleased to announce yet another AdWords campaign limit increase.

It is now possible to have 10,000 campaigns (includes active and paused campaigns) per account. With this change, it is now possible to easily manage and monitor more campaigns in a single place.

AdWords Editor, the AdWords API, and all other AdWords services are compatible with the new limits.

A full list of all account limits, including creative and ad extension limits, is available in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew