AdWords Remarketing New Features - Tag Makeover

The various moves of Google are aimed at making remarketing on AdWords simpler and more effective. Google has made some changes to the way advertisers do remarketing on AdWords, and is expanding an ongoing test.

The process of putting tags on websites for creating remarketing lists is undergoing a substantial change. Rather than putting a separate remarketing tag on every page that you want to create a list for, you can just place a single piece of code on every page, but create lists for based upon the URL

For example, you could create a remarketing list that includes every person who visited the sporting goods section of your site, by including all pages that include “sportinggoods” in the URL, such as http://www.yoursite.com/sportinggoods, http://www.yoursite.com/sportinggoods/baseball and http://www.yoursite.com/sportinggoods/football. This change, of course, will make it harder to do remarketing on sites that don’t have URLs structured in this way.

Other examples from Google:

Marketers who use Google Analytics will also be able to create lists within GA, when their accounts are linked. This beta will roll out in waves through the end of the summer.

Additionally, the company is adding the ability to target “like” audiences — people who are similar to the folks on your remarketing list but who haven’t visited your site yet. This capability will be rolling out in the next few weeks.

Google is also expanding an AdWords beta test that lets marketers customize ads based on remarketing lists. For example, if someone who has visited your web site searches for a keyword you’re bidding on, the ad that will display can be customized. (FAQ item for consumers is here.)

About The Author: Pamela Parker 
Source : Search Engine Land

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The Process for SWOT Analysis

A SWOT Analysis is a simple, but effective tool when strategic planning. Many individuals, groups and organizations use the SWOT Analysis to evaluate Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats when faced with a project that has a specific objective in mind.

SWOT can be categorized into two distinct categories; they are internal and external forces. For instance, internal forces include strengths and weaknesses, external forces include opportunities and threats. Many times a SWOT Analysis can be viewed as a matrix; however, you can also choose to view a SWOT Analysis in tree structure form or simply listed as categories within a document.

Creating a SWOT Analysis

In order to create a SWOT Analysis, you must first come up with an objective to achieve. For instance, many organizations and entrepreneurs use the SWOT to achieve goals such as launching a new business, product line, rolling out new employee procedures, etc. For instance, if you are thinking about launching a new business (e.g. fast food restaurant) your SWOT Analysis might proceed as follows:

Create a Clear Objective

It is important to first create a clear objective for your SWOT Analysis; in this case it is to launch a new fast food restaurant that will be profitable.

Analyze your Internal attributes such as Strengths and Weaknesses

It is important to go through the SWOT Analysis and list the attributes that fit into each category. The more attributes you list, the deeper your analysis will be.

Strengths: are those things that are inside your organization or internal to your business that can help you achieve your business goals. Strengths in this situation can consist of strong leadership with years of fast food experience, appropriate financing available, a good location secured to open your business, franchise services and support available, etc.

Weaknesses: These are the attributes that are also inside your organization or internal to your business, but they can be harmful or work against you in achieving your ultimate objective. Weaknesses in this situation can consist of a short time table to launch your business, feuding of partners involved with the business launch, etc.

Opportunities: are considered external forces that just like strengths can be very helpful to achieving your goals. In this case, it can include a low amount of competition in the area, large student population in the area that are generally more prone to purchasing fast food, etc.

Threats: Finally, threats must be assessed to determine what external conditions can be harmful to achieving your goals. In this case an external threat could be the high cost of labor in the area, lower economic growth forecasted for the area and a possible strike looming at food producing plants.

Analyze Your SWOT Matrix

Once Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are listed, now the decision makers must go through the attributes in the listed categories. In each of the categories a more thorough analysis of each attribute listed must take place. The most important outcome from a SWOT Analysis is to determine if a goal or objective can be achieved. If it can’t, you might want to repeat the process including new strengths and opportunities, digging deeper into your analysis.

However, if looking at the SWOT Analysis, you, the decision makers feel that the goal or objective can be achieved, you can start by using the analysis to create a strategy to achieve your goal. One of the ways to get the most out of your SWOT Analysis is to ask basic questions using SWOT. For instance, look at your strengths and figure out how you can maximize each strength to achieve your goals. Look at your weaknesses and figure out how to minimize each weakness. Continue on with external opportunities, figure out the best ways to take advantage of each opportunity and reduce the threats that can cause failure when trying to achieve your goal.

Inherent Weaknesses of the SWOT Analysis

It should be noted that while the SWOT Analysis can be an extremely important strategic planning tool, it does have its downsides. First off, it should be looked at as just one of the many productive tools to consider achieving objectives. Because the SWOT Analysis for the most part is a list making tool, many times more energy can be consumed creating lists, instead of actively solving problems. In addition, in order for a SWOT Analysis to work, you do need a clearly defined objective. Without a clearly defined objective, it will be difficult to focus on the problem or plan a way to achieve your goal. You should also make sure you separate opportunities that are external to the company with strengths that are internal to the company. Clearly defining each category will help you better plan your overall strategies.

Source : Entrepreneur Support

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Know About Mirrored Campaigns in Google AdWord

This post describes how you can easily create these mirrored campaigns in AdWords, as well as sharing some real results.

AdWords advertising allows you to buy search terms in four different ways. These four keyword matching options determine which Google searches can trigger your ads to appear. The first option is broad match, in which the ad appears on similar phrases and relevant variations (e.g. synonyms and plurals). A second option is phrase match which ensures that the ad is showed when the search query contains the exact phrase. This search query can contain other words before or after this phrase. A third option is exact match whereby the ad is displayed only if the search query exactly matches the purchased keyword combination. Finally, there is the negative keyword option which ensures that your ad is not displayed when the search query contains this keyword. With mirrored campaigns, you can reap the benefits of both broad and exact match by creating two identical campaigns that differ only in their use of keyword matching options.

When To Use Mirrored AdWords Campaigns?

The use of mirrored campaigns is particularly suitable for difficult B2B campaigns, in which CPC rates are usually high and coming up with relevant keyword combinations can sometimes be problematic. In addition, testing this method can be worthwhile for campaigns that are currently limited by the daily budget. Since different campaigns already proved that the CPA (cost per acquisition) can significantly decrease it can be stated that the use of mirror campaigns is a must-try optimization for every industry.

Creating mirrored campaigns is especially interesting if historical data is already available in the AdWords account. In this way, the exact search terms can benefit from the historical data. Moreover, the historical data makes it possible to measure the effect of the mirrored campaigns on your CPA.

Creating Mirrored Campaigns In AdWords In 5 Steps

Creating mirrored campaigns can be done in five simple steps in AdWords Editor (partly based on the method of digital marketing specialist Joe McCarthy, 2011).

Step 1: Copy the current campaign for which you want to create a mirrored campaign. Make sure that you copy each ad group, text ads, keywords and negative keywords. Correctly label both campaigns. For example, use the labels "Mirrored - Broad" and "Mirrored - Exact" in the campaign name.

Step 2: Change the keyword matching option in the original campaign to exact match and make sure that broad match is used for keywords in the new campaign (you might also add your keywords at phrase match in this campaign).

Step 3: To ensure that the exact keywords are only activated by the exact mirrored campaign, it is important to add the exact keywords as negative keywords in the mirrored broad campaign.

Step 4: Spread the initial daily budget between the two campaigns. It is advisable to increase the budget allocated to the exact mirror campaign. Furthermore, it is recommended to raise the CPC bid for keywords whereby the message "low search volume" appears to ensure ad impressions for that specific search query.

Step 5: Measure and optimize the campaigns. Check the actual search queries for the broad mirrored campaign tofind out which keywords convert. Next, you can add the converting keywords as exact keywords in the exact mirrored campaign. Also, you should exclude underperforming keywords in the broad mirrored campaign. It is important to keep a close eye on the real search queries because long specific search queries that are triggered via the mirrored broad campaign can result in interesting leads. Finally, in order to calculate the returns of mirrored campaigns you should compare the AdWords cost and conversion data of the mirrored campaigns with the non-divided campaign in the preceding period.

Results Of Mirrored Campaigns

Online marketing agency Expand Online has tested the use of mirrored campaigns in multiple accounts to measure the impact on CPA. The table below shows the results for two different e-commerce campaigns.

Both campaigns have shown a substantial decrease in CPA during the period in which the mirrored campaigns have been created compared with the original non-divided campaign in the preceding period. To be specific: a decrease in CPA of 48.9% and 37.5% has been achieved. Despite the possible seasonal effects and the impact of other optimizations, the results are promising in such a way that we can assume that mirrored campaigns contribute to a lower CPA.

The table above also shows several interesting differences between the results of the broad and exact mirrored campaign. For instance, the conversion rate is higher for the exact campaigns and the average CPA for exact campaigns is considerably lower.

In general, a clear trend towards a declining CPC rate is created when using mirrored campaigns.  Therefore, the cost per acquisition (CPA) can also decrease. The underlying reason can be found in the exact mirrored campaign that usually achieves a higher CTR, due to the fact that keyword combinations are literally used in text ads. Google rewards keywords with higher CTRs by improving the Quality Scores. Subsequently, the average cost per click may decrease while maintaining the same average position. Therefore, you should make sure that the exact campaign is never limited by your daily budget in order to maximize this effect.

Conclusion

The initial results of mirrored AdWords campaigns show that the average cost per click (CPC) can dramatically decrease. Hence, more visitors within the same budget can be achieved. In this way the costs per conversion will fall and make your AdWords campaign more profitable. In short: start experimenting with mirrored campaigns as soon as possible for maximum returns!

This is a guest post by Esther Elberse

Source : WordStream

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SEO Industry History - An Infographic

From the day Alan Emtage created the first search engine, there are so many revolutions happen in the SEO industry. Later that so many search engines came into picture, not all them are hit, some goes higher and later fail to continue the positions, but few search engines reached to the head position, namely Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, ASK and Baidu etc. History of SEO industry has so many twists and excitements, but everything starts changing from the entry of Google, later Google achieved the top position and still continuing its legendary..

Its really such a beautiful journey of SEO, I recommend everyone to read about the history of SEO, which gives you a very good insight about this industry and also you can learn that how it keeps changed and where it is now..

Here is a stunning representation of the history of the SEO industry in an infographic, this is just one step guide for you to understand the entire history of SEO.

History of SEO Industry:

I hope you enjoyed the “History of SEO Industry” article, please do drop your comments, questions and suggestions in the comments section below.

By Arafath Hashmi

Source : Solvater.com

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