If youre looking for better web site ROI, chances are:
* The web is only one part of your business
* You have a specific budget for your web site, and
* You want the site to not only carry its own weight, and
* Why cant it make you some extra Yahoo or Google PPC profits, too
The corporate situation: budgets need to be closely monitored, and tech people cant get carried away with unnecessary frills.
My experience learning search engine marketing ROI and becoming an SEO expert was more guerilla than corporate.
Beginning in 1999, I learned about ranking high on search engines and increased online traffic flying by the seat of my pants. By early 2005, Id learned how to get tens of thousands of visitors per month, had started my own SEO training course, and had made more than $20,000 two months in a row.
As it turns out, web site design itself doesnt lead to better web site ROI... at least not the graphic kind of web design most people think of.
Ironically, the flashy flash web sites everyone raves about often prevent you from getting increased online traffic. Search engines analyze sites based on their text- they cant see flash yet, and who knows if they ever will. If your text is in graphics without alt tags or in flash movies only, youll never get high search rankings.
There are loads of web designers out there who want to get paid to make you a beautiful web site, but dont know the first thing about helping you improve your web site ROI. Though independent web design entrepreneurs have to know enough about business to survive themselves, corporate web designers may never have had to learn about running a business or getting good web site ROI.
On the flipside, I spent so long raising myself by my own bootstraps that Ive learned how to
* Boost web site traffic for free
* Make free money from Google without AdSense click fraud
* Build my own ecommerce web sites
* Profit from smart PPC bid management
To get better web site ROI, naturally you have to lower your investment and/or increase your profits.
Where do the profits that lead to better web site ROI come from
* Traffic (free or paid)
* Converting Prospects
* Selling new products to previous customers
Here are some review questions for your business:
Are you getting free online traffic by ranking high on search engines If not, why not Is your website search engine optimizedConsider getting search engine placement improvement, taking an SEO training course, or getting affordable small business SEO from an Ethical SEO Firm.
Are you adding to and updating your contentGoogle prefers fresh content, and other search engines may follow suit.
Are your internal linking and navigational structure optimalGoogle Guy says internal links from your own site count as much as links from other sites- how many times is each page in your site linked to from other pages in your site
If youre running multiple pay per click (PPC) campaigns: What is your PPC campaign management plan How diligent are you with PPC bid management Are you meeting your break even points for all PPC bids except new ones Are you dumping the PPC bids that dont work
If youre sell products or services: Do you have special pages with sales copywriting for each product or service Is your conversion rate on all sales pages at least 1% Have you tried to increase your conversion rate to 2% or 3% by tweaking your sales copy and using split tests
Are you diligent about increase your web sites stickiness Are you staying in touch with previous customers via an opt-in, third-party managaed ezine Do you offer ezine subscribers them helpful tips and resources Do you monitor which articles subscribers read more Do you use the ezine to upsell Do you use the ezine to get feedback on products and services
Are your new products and service changes based on consumer feedback Do you have any digital products (ebooks, audiobooks, special reports, etc.) Do you use visitor polls for market intelligence
Those are just a few questions to help you see which way lies the real road to better web site ROI. If youre interested in my Web consulting services, you can answer those questions on my needs analysis feedback form.
Now here are a few concrete suggestions to improve things on your web site:
1. Get more free traffic
All visitors are candidates for sales conversion and profits. Free traffic is without expense, so that means better web site ROI. Search engine optimize your web site after taking an SEO training class, or get affordable small business SEO.
Ever had a keyphrase review for your business sector done If not, get one. Optimised keyword marketing can be free, or PPC. It all starts with identifying the right keywords.
Targeting the proper keyphrases is one of the three major factors in writing your web site sales copy.
2. Only do profitable pay-per-click advertising
Buy pay per click ads without PPC bid management is throwing your money away.
Make sure you have a clear plan in place for every phrase on which you bid. Know what conversion rate you need for each. Send each phrase to specific and different web pages, and monitor your success rate. If you cant tweak conversion rates high enough to profit on a pay per click phrase, ditch it!
What cuts into your web site ROI more than pay per click advertising at a loss
And dont think its branding. There are much better ways to do branding, and lots of them are free. Branding goals/internet marketing strategy are a whole other ballgame.
3. Convert more prospects
Hopefully you already have a most wanted response (MWR).
Perhaps youve developed customer profiles and/or modeled customer acquisition and retention phrases. However you group your prospects, make sure you split-test your web copywriting to develop the most powerful sales pages possible.
Your traffic cost for each phrase shouldnt change much from month to month- either its free, or youre doing alert PPC bid management, so improving your conversion rates will lead to better web site ROI (as well as allow you to pay higher bids as the phrase becomes more competitive).
4. Encourage Community and Get Feedback
Dont be afraid to let your customers talk to each other- theyll talk either where youre aware of it, or behind your back. Use forums to help them and find out what they need. Use polls, articles in your e-zine (e newsletter), and free offers to motivate them to answer your specific questions.
The best way to stay in business, sell more, and increase ROI is to know what they need and give it to them. Remember, its easier to keep a customer than to get a new one.
Since 1999, San Diego SEO Consultant Brian B. Carter, MS, has reached more than 2 million readers online. His most popular site ranks in the top 1% of all major websites. Brians second book, How I Made $78,024.44 in Six Months Using the Newest Secrets of AdSense and Overlooked Keywords will be available in October, 2005. For more, see
The past 2 years have seen explosive growth of a new online advertising channel called sponsored search or paid search. The rapid acceptance of this new form of advertising has been due to two substantial benefits that this offered to the online advertiser, viz. an ability to connect the sales return and the investment (normally considered an impossible option in the world of conventional advertising) and a possibility of reaching out to a vast number of online population who have opted in to visit the advertisers site (again unlike other forms of advertising that are normally imposed on the audience without their always wanting the same).PPC advertising qualifies as an effective advertising form that can be very well classified as direct marketing and sales and also conventional advertising. Indeed, it is currently the only advertising form to have this unique distinction.
Needless to mention, the benefit set offered by paid search has made it the most desired form of online advertising today. The number of advertisers for all categories has increased at an astronomical pace leading to heightened competition intensity that in turn has led to often a three to four fold increase in the cost per click (the basic unit in the paid search program) in a span of one year. The advertisers who had rushed in hoping for a high ROI are struggling to break-even on their investments. A seemingly un-sophisticated form of advertising that had looked like the panacea for all the online advertising performance woes, suddenly was proving to be too complex even for the sophisticated advertiser.
This article tries to unravel the complexities of paid search and suggest best practices that would help advertisers to run an improved campaign.
A holistic view to paid search campaign optimization:
We at NetElixir divide a paid search campaign into six sub parts.
1. Optimization Strategy
2. Execution1: Objective Oriented Keyword Selection
3. Execution 2: Creative Development and Landing Page Testing
4. Execution 3:Optimal profile maintenance
5. Execution 4:Security
6. Execution 5:Real Time Performance Analysis and Optimization
Optimization Strategy:
Formulation of an effective campaign optimization strategy that takes into account the overall business objectives, external environmental factors including competition strategy, industry scenario, other situational elements, share of voice of paid search in the total online advertising mix and short term campaign objectives and timelines. The outcome of this stage is document that details out the optimization strategy and also drills it down to an operational plan with clear goals (long term as well as short term), allocated resources and pre-set performance checkpoints. The strategy stage lays down the frame work for a system oriented approach to paid search campaign optimization. We have found that the vastly superior performance that NetElixir is able to deliver for their clients is a result of a systemic approach rather than random gut feel approach.Any strategy note is just a wonderful piece of document thats of no practical use till it is executed. The key to achieving success in paid search advertising is an ability to effectively and efficiently convert strategy into an executable plan.
NetElixir sub-divides the execution stage into 5 sub parts (mentioned above).
Execution stage#1: Objective oriented keyword selection
You or your competitor has a finite budget at your disposal to invest on paid search advertising. The challenge here is to utilize the budget in a manner that generates maximum returns. Selection of an optimal set of keywords to place your advertisement on in a manner that optimal reach and return are achieved within the finite budgetary constraint, is indeed a complex task.
The complexity arises due to the following reasons (not an exhaustive list):
1. Each website is different. The best visitors for your competitors website need not be the best for your website. This uniqueness has to be accounted for during the keyword selection phase.
2. The number of keywords that exist for any category is huge. Due to the obvious budgetary reasons (that is inextricably linked with achievement of an adequate ROI), it does not make sense to advertise on all keywords. It simply increases spend and pulls down the ROI because traffic from all keywords do not convert into sales in the same proportion. To identify the optimal set of keywords to put the set into a live campaign to continuously test how the keywords are performing and to take appropriate actions that increases the net return per keyword can only be performed with the help of advanced data mining, warehousing and modeling techniques that assimilates keyword data from the various search engines, tests the keywords against the set objectives, compresses the number of keywords so that it fits the budgetary requirements and scrubs the keywords on the basis of their assumed position on the conversion funnel. A word about the conversion funnel and keyword scrub. Conversion funnel is a simple inverted funnel that depicts the conversions as we move down from generic keywords to specific keywords.
An example: For the category hotel, keyword hotel would be on the top of the funnel being a generic term and the keyword cheap hotel room in Torrance would be at the bottom of the funnel. The keyword thats at the top of the funnel hotel would get many more searches than the keyword thats lower down the funnel like cheap hotel room in Torrance. Also, the % conversion (number of visitors that convert into customers/total number of visitors) is higher for cheap hotel room in Torrance than the keyword hotel. (The tacit assumption here is the website being advertised belongs to a hotelier in Torrance).
3. A match of the selected keywords with the set objectives is another important point to take note of. Marriott can not afford to be absent on the keyword hotel (because reach and additional customers are what it is advertising for other than the profile visibility), but a small time hotel in Dallas need not advertise on the keyword hotel (because that would be wasting money). The objectives for the aforementioned hotels are different and so must be the keyword selection.
4. Done in an unorganized manner manually, selection of the optimal set of keywords (assuming it is possible to generate an optimal set) would take a long time. Example: selecting the most optimal 500 keywords out of a consideration set of 50,000 keywords might take over 60 hours if done manually by two persons. Technology and experience saves this time that otherwise can be used in getting the campaign to go live quickly. Also the level of optimality is vastly superior having been powered by past data trends.
Keyword selection was not considered to be very important till about 2004. Till 2004 paid search campaign management was considered bid management. It was only sometime in mid-2004 (I would even go ahead and say that Search Engine Strategies Conference, San Jose in August 2004, for the first time emphasized the importance of keyword selection) that advertisers and agencies started assigning importance to this critical stage of campaign management. However, there is always a gap between realization and implementation. Very few search marketers have been able to develop technology that can perform this stage in an efficient and intelligent manner.
Execution stage #2: Creative Development and Landing Page Testing
To break out from the competitive ad clutter such that the target traffic clicks on the advertisement, attractive and unique ad copies are needed. I would not delve much on this topic as its pretty much devoid of any technology influence and needs creativity, patience and consistency. Creativity: The search engines limit the number of characters you can use in the copy. Hence, in a limited number of words the selling proposition or the benefit has to be effectively conveyed in a manner that it stands out from the competitor advertisements.
Patience: We have validated over multiple campaigns the fact that customized ad copy works better than a standard ad copy being applied for all keywords. However, it can be a challenge to write 1000 different ads to test the performance of the same and to rewrite the ones that are not performing up to expectations. It calls for enormous amount of patience and is a time consuming manual task.
Consistency: Search engines follow rather stringent editorial guidelines to evaluate which ad can be displayed. Therefore, a certain degree of consistency in the ad copy is often necessary.
An important task I would say that it is almost critical is assigning of the right landing page where the visitor is taken to. We have done studies on over 20 live campaigns and this also has been studied extensively on a larger scale by various agencies that show that assigning of the right landing page that minimizes the number of subsequent clicks increases the chances of conversion by at least 15%. Again, this remains mostly a manual task and often be quite time consuming. Example would be assigning specific landing pages for a site that sells over 15,000 different items.
Execution Stage #3: Optimal profile maintenance
This is often called bid management. At NetElixir we prefer to call this process profile placement primarily because bid management is restrictive and focuses on the action rather than the outcome. Also, those of you familiar with Google Adwords would know that Google lists the ads on the basis of CTR and CPC multiplier therefore placing an equal importance on the relevance and content of the ad along with the bid amount. Finally, and most importantly, our research has shown that to ensure an optimal outcome, much more than random reactive bid changes is required. We call this the keyword optimization process. This process involves a constant review and update of bids (and also ad copy for Google) for the keywords an advertiser is advertising on. However, the activity and outcome for one keyword is linked to that for the other keywords. Random bid management is replaced with data based - pro-active profile placement that is aligned with the set objectives. Moreover, campaign management is not at an individual keyword level but at a campaign level. The advantage of this system is an effective resource return distribution between the keywords. To put this is simple terms lets consider an example.
Lets assume, that an advertiser spends $20,000/month on Overture/Yahoo advertising on 100 keywords. In the conventional bid management process, the bids for some keywords are raised or lowered (mostly in reaction to competitive pressures) without considering whats happening or should happen to the listing position of the other keywords. Also, the distribution of allocated budget between keywords is random. However, in the process we use at NetElixir, a change in the listing position of one keyword immediately affects all the other keywords. Also, the resource/budget allocation is determined by performance. This is because in our system, we optimize the entire campaign 24/7 and not individual keywords. Our system is pro-active and not reactive like the current bid management systems.
The net difference is almost a 10% improvement in the overall campaign performance maybe more in some cases, compared to what the available bid management tools are able to deliver.
Execution Stage#4: Security
An inherent risk arguably the biggest of the paid search model is the threat of click fraud and impression fraud (on Google). With the explosive growth of paid search, the fraud issues have become threats to reckon with. 100% security from the various types of fraud is a myth. No systems exist today that can guarantee this.
The easiest and the most commonly used method to track fraudulent clicks is to track the ip from which the clicks originate and establish the possible suspicious patterns. Also, clicks originating from unwanted geographies can be easily tracked back through ip.
The problem in detecting the occurrence of click fraud occurs when no distinct pattern can be established in the ips. This can be caused due to reasons like cyclical clicking by a team of hired fraudulent clickers with different ips in one or more geographies.
Other than the ip based click fraud detection tool that NetElixir uses, our clients have gained because of our preventive approach (rather than a post mortem approach) that keeps a track of real time click activity (keeping a check for volume surges more than 50% of the standard, etc) and takes an immediate action to control/ prevent any potential damage.
Execution Stage#5: Real Time Performance Analysis and OptimizationAn ability to efficiently assimilate, measure, analyze and make sense of the real time performance data is a key requirement for running an optimized campaign. This is often easier said than done. This needs an advanced analytics and data management and interpretation system plus active intellectual horsepower working almost 24/7 that tries to derive sense from the data and use the same for refining the campaign performance.Unfortunately, a majority of the advertisers ignore or are oblivious of the importance of real time performance analysis and optimization. Ignoring this stage is almost like committing hara kiri.
Just by conducting this stage in the desired manner, a performance improvement of almost 15-20% can be achieved.
The discussion above and the points raised therein can perplex an un-sophisticated search advertiser. However, the intention of this article is not to overwhelm the advertisers and make them think that paid search advertising is not for them. The points mentioned can be treated as some of the many best practices applicable for paid search advertising. We have validated these over campaigns ranging from $5000/month to $500,000/month and 50 keywords to 10,000 keywords.
Indeed, paid search advertising is not simple. However, by following the best practices mentioned in this article a search advertiser can reap substantial benefits and mostly generate a positive ROI from their campaign spend.
For a free consultation on the Best Practices in PPC Advertising contact us on 877.283.2631 or write to us on info@netelixir.com
Tulika Bose is a Director at NetElixir Inc. She is in charge of client operations for the Company. She has extensive - first hand experience in paid search campaign optimization. She is actively involved in educating the search advertisers across the world on the best practices of campaign management.