This is Part 3 of our PPC Myth series. Please check out Organic Search Traffic is More Qualified Than Paid and Bid Higher to Appear Higher if you missed them.

There’s a lot of PPC experts out there who will tell you to look at your PPC keyword reports and get rid of keywords that don’t convert. Sounds logical, right? Why spend money on losers when you can spend more on winners? Especially when you’re under pressure to show strong ROI (or ROAS - return on ad spend) or are working with a tighter budget in these tough economic times.

But nixing “non-performing” keywords is not always a good idea.

Attribution

Most analytics reports (including your Adwords report) credit the last keyword clicked before conversion. For example, your customer searched for “kids bedroom furniture” on Monday and found a Cars movie race car bed on your site. The customer searched Google for “Cars movie racecar bed” on Tuesday, clicked your paid or organic search listing and completed the purchase on your site. “Cars movie racecar bed” is credited for the $400 while “kids bedroom furniture” registers as a non-converting click. Because the credited keyword is “long tail” - perhaps that click only cost $0.50 while the more competitive “kids bedroom furniture” costs $2.50 - certainly one appears more “profitable” than the other.

Multiple keyword searches and site visits are not uncommon. According to a 2005 comScore study, people perform an average of 13 searches before converting — leaving 12 keywords out in the cold in conversion reports. (Though these keyword searches may lead a customer to other sites, not just your own). Craig from ClickEquations shares some actual data on visitor behavior on his blog.

There is much debate whether philosophically the first or last click should be credited - or credit be divided across keywords. And there are tools like Omniture SiteCatalyst that allow you to use “linear” allocation (again, Craig shares an example).

But this post does not attempt to solve the attribution/allocation dilemma. Because allocation/attribution is not the only thing messing up your keyword reports! Other reasons keywords may not receive the credit they are due:

• Orders placed by telephone. There are ways to track telephone orders, but it is not default in any analytics package.

• Cookie deletion. The customer clears cookies, uses another machine or browser or returns to your site after the original cookie expired. Any of these would fail to correctly credit a keyword. (Some estimates suggest 30% of web users regularly clear cookies)

• The broad match type. For example, the “kids bedroom furniture” keyword may be matched to a search for “kids bunk beds” which you don’t sell. A high volume of searches for “kids bunk beds” and other searches that cause your ad to appear will boost a keyword’s impressions and will either dilute your click through rate (if your ad is not specific to the search term) or your conversion rate (your landing page doesn’t match the search term). If you use broad match - always use the broad match keyword exposure filter.

Before you hit delete…

1. Add this Google Analytics filter so you can see what exact searches trigger ads from your broad match and phrase match keywords. Anything irrelevant gets added as a negative keyword at the Campaign level (to prevent ads from other Ad Groups from appearing).

The benefit will be a better click-through rate (less clicks but far less ad impressions). You’ll have a lower absolute spend because you’re not paying for irrelevant keyword matches anymore, and your higher click-through rate means a lower cost-per-click. Hurrah!

2. Play customer on your own landing pages. Think about search intent - certain keywords are more “informational” than “commercial.” Would someone using the keyword in a search engine hope to find information or a product page? How can you improve your landing page to connect with that visitor? Does this keyword need its own Ad Group with its own landing page?

3. Chop at the Ad Group level. If you need to save money on PPC, figure out which product/categories are low margin, under-performing or are too expensive per click to keep bidding on and pause or delete the entire Ad Group, rather than killing individual keywords.

Again, deleting individual keywords within Ad Groups may not improve your results, because these keywords may not be getting credit for all the “assists” they’ve made to conversion. And your ads may still appear thanks to the broadness of broad match if the same search just gets matched to a similar keyword. If you do remove a keyword, be sure to add it as a negative keyword at the Campaign level.

Because top positions typically receive better click through rates than lower, many people use average position as a KPI (key performance indicator) to measure campaign health, and seek to optimize it — either by trying to improve Quality Score* or raising the maximum CPC (cost per click) for the keyword. For some, raising the bid is easier than trying to figure out how to appease the Google Quality Score god.

*Quality Score is Google’s way of scoring the quality (clever name, hey?) of your ad and landing page relevance and attractiveness to searchers. If you’re interested in learning more about Quality Score, Craig Danuloff of Click Equations is writing a book about it and is dripping out chapters on his blog.

Click through rate (CTR%) is the most important part of Quality Score, according to Google’s own explanation of how it ranks ads (Youtube video). CTR% is followed by ad/landing page relevance and landing page quality. The video goes into detail on how ads with high Quality Scores are rewarded by higher positions and lower average CPCs.

It used to be common practice to crank up your bids when you first launched keywords so they would rank higher and get better click through, and turn them down once you established a good click through history. Today, Google calculates your click through rate at each position it tests your ad in, comparing it against other data it has for advertisers in those positions rather than an average across every position. So there’s no need to bid high - your focus should be improving that click through rate!

Tips for Improving PPC Click Through Rates

1. Find negative keywords. Add as many negative keywords as possible to reduce impressions for irrelevant or near-relevant keyword searches. Some negative keywords will be applied at the Campaign level, others at the Ad Group level. You can also find negative keywords by adding a broad match exposure filter.

2. Group keywords more tightly. Studies have shown click through is highest when the ad headline includes the exact keyword the searcher typed in (limited to 35 characters) — especially for brand / color / model number searches. So rather than having one big Digital Camera Ad Group with all your brands and models, you would have a Digital Camera group with only unbranded keywords, and Ad Groups for each brand, and model-specific Ad Groups for each brand.

Some keywords might be so popular / high converting they may justify their own Ad Group so you can write an even more specific ad, like “Ashton Kutcher Coolpix.”

3. Write better ad copy. Some tips include:

• Use keywords in your ad’s headline that match your keyword list (you might use Dynamic Keyword Insertion to accomplish this
• Write persuasive ad text including value propositions about your business or enticing calls to action
• Use numbers like prices and percentages
• Capitalize The First Letter Of Each Word. Don’t Laugh, It’s Proven.
• A/B test your ads

In this economy, you can’t afford sloppy PPC campaign management. Make sure you do everything you can to improve Quality Score before you ramp up bids on keywords. After optimizing for CTR%, look at improving landing page relevance, not just to please Google, but to convert more clicks to sales.

Welcome to PPC Myth week! Today is the first installment of a 3 part series challenging common misconceptions about search marketing and analytics.

Myth #1: Organic search more qualified traffic than paid

I was surprised to see in print one of the most respected search marketing gurus state “Organic searchers who click on your pages are highly qualified visitors to your site. They are much more likely to make a purchase than some other kinds of visitors you receive.”

In fairness, the guru went on to explain that banner ad clickers are less qualified than searchers actively looking for a product in a search engine. Nevertheless — to claim that organic searchers are highly qualified is false. It also implies that organic search converts better than paid search, comparison engines, email traffic, affiliate leads and so on. This just ain’t so.

1. SOME organic traffic is better “qualified” than others.

Remember, in this context “qualified” means more likely to purchase. If you look through your organic search referring keywords, you’ll find a number of non-transactional terms, and transactional terms that are not necessarily close to purchase or even relevant to what you offer.

Examples from the 2010 Olympic Store:

• Non-transactional: “vancouver 2010 schedules”
• Transactional, not relevant to our offer: “how do i get tickets for the 2010 winter olympics”
• Transactional, too general: “business card holders” (may like our offering but is likely in research/comparison mode)
• Qualified: “vancouver 2010 sterling silver heart charm bracelet”

Also, organic conversion can vary by search engine. It’s possible for your market, traffic from Yahoo, AOL or MSN sends you more shoppers and Google sends you more information hunters.

2. SEO vs. PPC - it depends on the keywords.

PPC traffic “quality” also depends on which keywords get clicked - especially if you’re using the broad match type. In fact, broad match can trigger some really un-qualified traffic. If you were only bidding on a certain number of close-to-purchase keywords with the exact match type - you *could* argue PPC is more qualified than SEO if your conversion rates also confirm so.

3. Other channels - it depends…

Comparison engine traffic is *typically* closer to purchase since visitors have already evaluated your offer against competitors and the product against other alternatives, comparison engine traffic should convert better in theory. Your results may vary.

Similarly, email and affiliate referrals have been exposed to your brand and offer before clicking through - you’d expect better results for these channels than search. Again, your results may vary.

Type in traffic (no search engine or other site referred the visit) indicates brand awareness, and perhaps preference. Repeat customers, brick-and-mortar customers or people responding to offline advertising may convert higher than SEO/PPC traffic that’s also clicking on several other results to compare. But direct traffic can also indicate you should filter out your own staff’s IP address or you have missed Javascript tags on some pages (causing a null reference).

So what’s the point of this rant? I don’t want anyone making decisions to invest more into SEO than other channels because they heard that organic search is the most qualified traffic. I don’t want you to set the wrong expectations on organic search, and set goals like “increase organic visits” or “increase conversion for organic visitors.”

If you use the broad match type in PPC advertising, negative matched keywords are essential to keeping your campaigns under control. But are you using negative matches to their full potential?

If you’re new to PPC, the broad match type refers to bidding on a keyword like new york pet store and allowing the PPC system (like Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN AdCenter) to match your ads to search queries that include this keyword, regardess of word order.

The way Google’s broad match type works can be broader-than-broad. It employs “Expanded Broad Match” which means your “new york pet store” ad could show for a search on “animal shelters in New York.” There is no opt out for Expanded Broad Match (not to be confused with the Automatic Match beta which is a little different) — it’s the default way Google does its broad match. The only way to prevent your ads for showing up for any search including animal shelters would be to add it as a negative keyword - either at the Campaign or Ad Group level.

For a pet store, especially an online pet store, adding animal shelter as a negative match should prevent animal shelters and shelter animal from appearing.

-animal shelter

But what about this situation: You sell books, music, DVDs, video games and software including Microsoft Office software. A hot seller is the Microsoft Office Home edition. You’re bidding on microsoft office home and checking your exact keyword referrals as per this hack, you found clicks for the following:

microsoft office home
home office
office space dvd
the office dvd
the office dvd UK
office software
ms office software
office home
home office
office home software

1. Office home and home office are completely different searches with different intents and landing page expectations. Broad match can trigger ads for any word order, and you can’t add -home office as a negative keyword and keep showing up for Office Home. Using -”home office” or -[home office] will help. Since you don’t sell home office furniture, it would make sense to apply the negative to the entire campaign.

2. You sell the movies “Office Space” and “The Office” series — UK and US editions. You don’t want to add “The Office” as a negative keyword at the Campaign level - it will prevent ads from appearing for relevant Ad Groups and keywords. Instead, you add…

-”the office”
-”office space”

…to your Microsoft Office Home Ad Group, and…

-”the office UK”
-”office space”

…to your The Office (US) group, and so on.

You may ask, if you’re bidding on Office Space and The Office DVD UK in other Ad Groups, why would you need to add negatives to other groups that don’t include those keywords? The answer is Quality Score.

Your Microsoft Office Home group may have a higher click through rate history, a higher bid or any other measure of relevance that makes up Google’s Quality Score (other PPC programs also use a Quality Score algorithm of their own). Or you may have reached your max budget in one Ad Group, so an ad from another appears.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to see the exact keywords that your broad match ads are triggering. If you’re not sure how, here’s a full tutorial to help you set up the right filters in Google Analytics. Even if you’re not using Google Analytics as your primary analytics tool, you should at least be using it for this. It’s the best keyword research tool to find the irrelevant “long tail” terms that are costing you money. I guarantee you’ll be shocked at some of the searches the Adwords system will match your keywords to.

You want to view the keywords by Ad Group. So when you’re in Google Analytics, follow this path:

Traffic Sources / Adwords / Adwords Campaigns / {select campaign} / {select Ad Group}

Unfortunately you can’t see all the keywords that trigger ad impressions, only the ones you pay for when the customers click. What’s more shocking than Adwords showing your ads for some keywords is that people actually click on them! I am amazed the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store ads for 2010 Olympics gets clicked for searches like 2012 judo olympic tryouts!

In addition to constantly checking my Analytics reports, I also do proactive negative keyword research with the Google Keyword Research tool. Enter a keyword you broad match and let the keyword tool suggest synonyms. This will uncover some and not all of what Google considers semantically relevant - but the terms you’ll discover are likely the highest searched terms, so better to add negatives before your ad appears for them:

You really are never finished researching negative keywords.

Last summer we did a collaborative post with fellow Vancouverites VKI Studios called Stop Google Analytics from Stealing Your Valuable Keyword Data. Google Analytics really isn’t “stealing”, rather “concealing” the actual search queries that trigger your paid search ads when you’re using broad match. It’s a “ye have not because ye ask not” situation.

“Ask and ye shall receive,” and by ask I mean set up a couple custom filters that will expose this data to you. I will be so bold to say that if you can not see exact keyword referrals you have no business using the broad match type! (<---And I rarely use exclamation points or blog the same topic twice!!!)

This trick has become the most important keyword research tool I use after a campaigns launch (I use a few methods of keyword research to set up Ad Groups including the Google Keyword Tool). Once the campaign is underway, I use the exact keyword referrals to discover negative keywords, uncover new Ad Group and product opportunities and to understand more about how people search. What's missing is transactional data for each keyword, unfortunately.

I decided to screencast the set up process for a few reasons.

1) To share this tip again with our new readers (we've almost doubled in readership last summer) and remind those who have put off adding the filter to set it up ASAP.
2) To show you how quick and easy this is and provide you with a resource (printable PDF) that will give you the confidence that you can set this filter up yourself!
3) To show you how to find your data in Google Analytics by AdGroup, so you can add apply the appropriate negative keywords at the Ad Group level.

If you bear with me to the end, I share some of the crazy matches we've been getting for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic store’s broad matched keywords. You’ll see why I value this information so much!

Can’t see video? View it here.

Companion Resources

Download “Cheat Sheet” Instructions (PDF)

Cut and Paste Values:

As with almost all multi-part filters, sequence is critical and must be ordered accordingly using the “Assign Filter Order” page for the profile.

First Filter:

Field A -> Extract A: Referral: (\?|&)(q|p|query)=([^&]*)
Field B -> Extract B: Campaign Medium: (cpc|ppc)
Output To -> Constructor: Custom Field 1: $A3

Second Filter:

Field A -> Extract A: Custom Field 1: (.*)
Field B -> Extract B: Campaign Term: (.*)
Output To -> Constructor: Campaign Term: $B1 ($A1)