Home: Message List - Event: Paid Search

Event: Paid Search

CommunityTeam — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:29:53 GMT

Community Members,

Please join us in welcoming Michelle Conceison to your Small Business Online Community. Michelle is here to answer questions on how paid search can benefit you. Today, Michelle will be using the screen name Conceison.

About Michelle:
Michelle Conceison is the VP Director of Media at Digitas. She currently leads the Paid Search Marketing team in Digitas' Boston location.

To all Community Members
If you have questions for Michelle, post it here by simply hitting reply and then refresh your browsers often to view Michelle's responses. Michelle will try to answer as many of your questions as possible; however she may not get to all of them. You must be a registered user of the site to particpate.

Join Now - http://smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/create-account.jspa

The event will be moderated to queue the questions for our guest. After a question is posted it may be delayed and/or moved into a queue. You do not need to repost. Your question has been received but is in a queue waiting for the guest response. Please note, Michelle will first answer the pre-event questions that community members were kind enough to ask in advance.

Remember the community guidelines; stay on topic and be professional.

So, what's your question?

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

SBOCTeam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:20:46 GMT

Michelle,

On behalf of the SBOC Team and the members of the Small Business Online Community, we wanted to say we truly appreciated your time today and your professional responses to user questions.

Community members, while our session with Michelle has now concluded, please feel free to discuss today's session and the questions answered. Again, if you'd like more information about Michelle and Digitas, visit:

http://www.digitas.com

Thanks again,
The SBOC Team

Thank You Bank of America Small Business Online Community!

Conceison — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:17:36 GMT

Well, it's been an honor to participate in this online forum. Hope it's been helpful.

There are a lot of handy online resources you can check out regarding paid search for further reading. Thought I'd share some of my favorite links...

Interpreter - you asked about where you can go to find out how much search volume is available on a given keyword or group of keywords. Try out Google, Yahoo and MSN all have Trends tools you should try on for size. Really fun tools that show changes in popularity of keywords. For more practical application, all the engines also have Traffic Estimator tools that help you plan your keyword budgets and plans.

Here are these two tools for Google, since you will have a Google person handy next week should you have follow up questions about how to use them...

TRENDS http://www.google.com/trends
TRAFFIC ESTIMATOR http://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficE
stimatorSandbox

Search Engine Watch is a great aggregator of search marketing industry information, opinions and events. From 101 to 505, it's there. And there's even a lot of history of search content, that we search folk love to geek out about. http://www.searchenginewatch.com

Finally, while there are a lot of sophisticated competitive firms like HitWise, ComScore and Compete out there in the marketplace that you should also review (and I consult with religiously), I have always found the folks at MarketingSherpa to have relevant things to say about all sorts of topics that are pertinent to small business. They are thoughtful, relevant, realistic, and straightforward. You might want to check them out, too. http://www.marketingsherpa.com

Happy Searching!

Cheers,
Michelle

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

SBOCTeam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:01:39 GMT

Michelle, as we wrap up, are there any resources that you could direct users to for additional help?

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

Conceison — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:00:27 GMT

Hi jeffhoyer,

As noted above, many local listing companies syndicate their information, so you should make sure you local listing with then engines are up-to-date, but also update information with local yellow pages and phone companies. Sometimes that information appears in search engine results. And on some engines more than others.

If you are looking to update your Natural listings, take a look at the meta tags on your web pages. Could be you have some old info burried in there to remove.

Good info is what the engines want. What you want. And what customers want. So folks are eager to help get that cleared up...

Cheers,
MC

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

SBOCTeam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:56:09 GMT

jeffhoyer asks:

How does a small business get their listings "correct" on the Internet? There seems to be a lot of bad information out there.

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

Conceison — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:53:16 GMT

Hi Caffeinated!

There are indeed multiple ways to buy locally targeted search.

In most of the major search engines, you are able to "geo-target" your search listings so your ads only appear when the keywords of your choosing are searched in the geographic region you define. Geo-targeting can be done by Country, State, DMA, City, and in some cases even by a given radius around a pinpoint latitude/longitude location. In your case, 10 miles around your computer screen...

Just remember, the more you target your ads, the more you reduce the number of searches on which your ads appear. You might also want to consider running on keywords that include the names of towns/neighborhoods in the area you are targeting. Or even keywords that are frequently searched in the area in general, because it is a local "hot topic." That might help you gain additional "reach" - impressions.

As for bang for your buck and not going overboard, well...
It really depends on what type of keywords you want to appear on. Some of the most expensive keywords on the internet are local, but those are usually for lawyer's offices believe it or not. Restaurants are highly competitive in the Boston market, so you can expect to see some other folks bidding against you.

I would suggest you also explore Local Business Ads on Google - and make sure your restaurant is listed in Google Maps - that will help your local search campaigns on these types of keywords in particular. If you participate in any local printed or digital Yellow Pages marketing programs, also be sure to ask them who they partner with online, as many of these folks syndicate their listings to other online local content sites and maps properties. So you may gain exposure that way in search listings as well.

Hope this is helpful.

Cheers,
Michelle

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

SBOCTeam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:48:43 GMT

Looks like we have time for one more, maybe two more questions.

This one comes from caffeinated.

Hi Michelle,

I want to capture my local market, say within a 10 mile radius of my business. Are there different levels of paid searches? Local vs state-wide vs nationally? I obviously want more bang for my buck but don't want to go overboard. Thanks in advance for your help.

Best Regards,
caffeinated

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

Conceison — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:44:39 GMT

Hi amspcs,

Curious... How strong is your CTR% from keyword to keyword? Are you in High Avg Position? Might want to take a look at how those correlate to your ratings from Google - not just your Max Bids.

Bid is only one element of your Quality Score (Google) or Quality Index (Yahoo). The rating you get from the engines depends heavily on CTR% (which is impacted most by your position and your ad text/offer) and on the number of people who have found your ads helpful (indicted primarily in Clicks - but also can be indicated by the rate at which these people returned to search again, or also clicked on other links on the page, etc.)

The engines don't tell us definitively how Quality Score is computed.

I suggest you review:

your Ad Text to make sure your listings are as relevant to the keywords in your Ad Groups as can be
your Ad Groups to make sure your keywords are sufficiently broken out by topic in there
your Match Types to be sure you are targeting your ads effectively and not wasting any Impressions

One other idea...
Do you notice a topical correlation between which keywords start at Great, which at OK and which at Poor? You might learn something about how Google sees your site, account, and/or keyword lists from that trend.

Hopefully that helps you get more Greats and Oks!

And don't feel bad - greats aren't easy to get... Keep at it...

MC

Re: Live Now - Event: Paid Search

SBOCTeam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:27:28 GMT

Great! We have an interesting question from amspcs

I have tried PPC...some success but not worth the effort yet. Thankfully I don't give up easily. When keywords are chosen for my ad group, Google PPC rates them as either GREAT!, OK, or POOR. When I first begin the campaign, invariable I get several GREAT!'s and a few OK.s As time goes on, in an attempt to raise my positon, I gradually increase my bid in an effort to find 'just the right' bid. It seems the higher I go in my bid, the worse my keyword rankings get. Now, I'm up to $2.25 bid (from original $.50, and instead of GREAT!'s and OK's, every single one of my keywords is rated POOR. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah PLEASE explain.