Denver SEO Blog: Web Development, SEO & Marketing

If you are using Pay Per Click advertising with Google or Yahoo, you are probably aware of what it feels like to light money on fire. If you have a limited amount of money, you get a bad feeling in your stomach.

Google and Yahoo have two main ways on displaying the advertisements you are paying for: to searchers, and across their content network. The content network consists of web pages that may have articles containing your keywords, and it is the focus of our five tips.

You see, these content ads are shown to a completely different audience than search ads. Search ads are usually shown to visitors actively engaged in the buying process. Whether they are doing preliminary research, evaluating features, or comparing prices, search visitors are on a completely different wavelength than the group being shown your content ads.

Here are some tips to make sure your Content ad campaign is as effective as possible:

1. Treat your content ad completely different from your search ad
First of all, consider placing your content ad in a new campaign. You want to keep it separate from your search ad, and let it evolve in it’s own direction over time. Don’t let it get too close to your search ad - keep them separated! Be sure to use different ad copy and ad titles: Everything about your content ad should be different than your search ad.

2. Setup Google link alerts to see where your ads are showing
Want to know where your ads are showing? Of course you do - It tells you where your money is being burned spent! Sign up for Google Alerts for the search term “domain.com”

Using this service, you’ll receive email alerts whenever Google comes across your ad. Sometimes, you will see your ad has shown up on a page that you don’t necessarily want it to. Google’s guess may sometimes be wrong. After all, “Pad Printing” doesn’t always refer to printing on notepads. You should log back into Google AdWords - or Yahoo Search Marketing - and exclude that site from your list of allowed sites on which to show ads.

3. Use different display URLs to split test

Your display URL is part of the advertisement. Google recognizes this, and so allows you to choose a URL different from the actual location to display to your prospective visitors.

Try different display URLs and watch the results: Is one getting a better “Click Through Rate”? Improve the worst of the two, and test some more.

4. Split test your landing pages, too

It might also be that traffic from certain content ads converts better than others. Set up a split test with two identical content ads, but send visitors to two different “landing pages”. These landing pages are just the destinations that your ad leads visitors to. They might be named “Contact-Us.html” and “Contact.html”, if you are selling a service. Using Google Analytics, you can sometimes see which landing page converts best into a visitor clicking your “contact us” form.

5. Make sure display URLs also redirect
Google crawls through javascript links, and we’ve seen several cases where links from AdWords get into Google’s index. The URL that you choose for Google to display may actually direct traffic right to your site! We call this effect “PPC leakthrough”, because these links are leaking out of the adwords system and into Google’s main index.
For example, on our myKarateStore.com advertisement for “Wing Chun Dummies”, we use “http://www.myKarateStore.com/dummy/” as the URL displayed in the ad. Even though that page is not the exact location Google’s AdWords system directs visitors to, we make sure it goes somewhere meaningful.

More tips to save money with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing! Get Joy Milkowski’s “Amazing Results with Google AdWords” course - it pays for itself.

Tags: seo, search engine optimization, website design, website development

Site Reference has a new article on Google’s new semantic indexing in it’s algorithm. While search engines have traditionally focused on keyword density and link popularity, the semantic web promises relevancy based on natural language. The article is a great introduction to the concepts of semantic indexing.

Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo warned that ad sales were growing in two key sectors, but not growing as quickly as they had hoped. Semel’s warning was about the Auto and Financial services sectors. He added: “But Yahoo was careful to note that it cannot tell whether the current slowdown is a sign of broader trouble or is limited to ads from the auto and financial sectors.“

Some page content can give Google’s AdSense the wrong impression of what your page may be about. On a page with multiple topics, your AdSense ads can come up with ads that are neither relevant nor profitable. To get around this problem, Google AdSense has a little known feature called “Section Targeting”.

To particularly emphasize a section, enclose the text in these tags:
<!– google_ad_section_start –>
The text to be emphasized is here
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

To have a section of text ignored, use this variation:
<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>
Text to ignore goes here
<!– google_ad_section_end –>
There is currently no limit as to how often you can use these tags. However, it may take one or two weeks before you see any changes. It is important to give AdSense big chunks of text to work with - avoid giving sections of text that are too small.