The Google Grants programme has just celebrated its 10th birthday. Launched in April 2003, this scheme has evolved over the years and Google works with registered charities, providing them with grants to spend in Adwords. However, the number of charities that are actively using this suggests that the majority of UK charities are either overlooking the benefits of this, or are simply not aware of the scheme’s existence. This additional resource of up to $10,000 per month can make a huge difference to a charity’s marketing budgets and so although it can take several months for a grant application to be approved by Google, if you have not yet applied, it is definitely worth doing so here.

This grant does come with a number of restrictions, such as that the ads must only run on Google UK, links in the ads must only be to the pre-approved domain, the ads must be text only and not commercial, there must be no adverts on your own site such as Adsense and each bid must cost no more than $2.

The last criterion is a reasonably new update as Google increased this limit from $1 per click at the end of January. However, this increase in bids came with the announcement that all Grant funded adverts would now be featured underneath any self-funded company or charity adverts. So while this change may open your organisation up to being able to target keywords that were previously outside of this bid limit, sites are likely to have seen a decrease in traffic due to featuring lower down the listings.

However, with the changes that were announced to Adwords just a couple of weeks after this, PPC account managers have been given the opportunity to better manage these adverts. By upgrading to enhanced campaigns, you are now able to manage all devices in one campaign, manually adjust the bid for mobile ads and show call extensions on these mobile ads. This shift from legacy to enhanced campaigns is going to be enforced automatically by the end of June for any accounts that have not made the change themselves. Google have since released a tool that allows you to change campaigns in an account in bulk.

Beyond that, Grant accounts should largely be run in the same way as normal Adwords campaigns. These accounts should be maintained (if you do not work on your account over a 3 month period then Google will stop your funding), the accounts should be well structured and you will need to optimise the account to ensure that you are getting the most out of your spend. Ensure that the keywords that you target are relevant to your organisation and the pages that you are sending visitors to are also relevant and contain a call to action in order to get the best return from your spend.

If you are running a Google Grant account, we would love to know what impact have you noticed since these changes were implemented.

In conjunction with the launch of FocusON for PPC month, we are giving away a Google Chromebook to one lucky reader. Simply visit the PushON Prizes app over at the PushON Facebook page and follow the three simple steps to be in with a chance of winning. HINT: You may want to read FocusON: An Introduction to PPC Marketing first!

The post FocusON: Are You Making The Most Out Of Your Google Grants Account? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Raven Blog – Forecasting Traffic by Keyword Rank:

Do you ever feel buried under a mountain of metrics? Are you grabbing data here, there and everywhere in an attempt to wow clients that, most likely, do not appreciate the value of a beautiful looking bounce rate pie chart? And who can blame them?
The gumption-filled SEO team at Raven have come up with a useful approach to compiling reports which cuts out all but the ‘actionable analytics’ needed to expediently and efficiently run an online marketing campaign. Focusing on these three metrics: traffic, ranking and conversions – is sticking right to the point of a worthwhile SEO campaign. This is especially useful, or indeed, absolutely necessary for serving clients with smaller budgets or other time constraints.

Source: http://raventools.com/blog/how-to-forecast-traffic-by-keyword-rank/

And speaking of pie charts…..

Raven have done it again with an interesting post on how to rustle up an accessible backlink data chart. Charts and diagrams are created to enable the client (and us) to visualise certain sets of data. Without them we would have to resort to lengthy, continuous prose on the poor state of some client or others backlink profile. Raven’s backlink explorer tool allows you to classify backlinks by anchor text type (for example) which you can fashion into a useful and legible pie chart for use in the quest to prove the value, if not necessity, of SEO to your customer.

Source: http://raventools.com/blog/how-to-create-an-easy-to-understand-pie-chart-from-backlink-data/

Google’s rolling out changes to PPC quality score:

The new Google AdWords algorithm goes global this week which means quality scoring will change to factor landing page quality. Giving more weight to ads with landing pages most relevant to the search query will enhance the user’s experience as well as enabling PPC enjoyers to rank better for lower cost-per-click bids.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-tweaks-adwords-to-give-landing-page-quality-more-weight-95488

Google launches “trusted stores” program: 

Google’s new consumer championing scheme has launched this week and goes by the name of Google Trusted Stores.

Designed as an aid to online shoppers; reliable ecommerce sites with a history of timely shipping and good customer service will be furnished with a Trusted Stores badge for their site. Not only does this scheme highlight the trustworthiness of certain honoured vendors -  it offers protection against errors in billing, unfair or non-existent returns policy and slow shipping.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2114053/Google-Trusted-Stores-Launches-with-Etailer-Grades-Free-Purchase-Protection

Export your social data:

With this tool you can export your tweets or other social media data.

It comes with the following claim: “Free your data! Sometimes social networks can go too far. Overzealous privacy policies and poorly thought out redesigns abound! You have an exit strategy!”

Not bad if you want to see what your Facebook status was from 2007 but it will definitely not liberate your data from the clutches of Mark Zuckerberg.

Website: http://export.synack.me/

Daily Mail publishes pre-written “guilty” story for Amanda Knox:

A massive gaff from the Daily Mail who were all too keen to be the first getting news of Amanda Knox’s guilty verdict out there – they published:

“Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction…”

Over-efficiency has not paid off this time for the newspaper as Knox was found not guilty of murder (on appeal) but guilty of slander. No doubt as soon as the reporter heard the judge say ‘guilty’ – he or she hit the publish button.

Source: http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/daily-mail-guuilt/

Linkstant – get notified when your site gets a new backlink:

Brought to us by Tom Critchlow and Rob Ousbey  – the Linkstant code, when placed on your site – will notify you as soon as your sites get any new backlinks. The advantage to using this code is the immediacy of getting live backlink information. This could have many useful applications from motivating your team of link builders  – or in running a reputation management project, as another aid in keeping an eye on reviews or other mentions (provided the critic has put a link to your site in there).  Indexing and crawling can take months, analytics can take several days. However, Linkstant is (probably almost) instant.

Website:  http://www.linkstant.com/

So that was the week that was. Happy online marketing and tune in again right soon for more SEO news, digital reviews and hi-tech tomfoolery.

The post SEO Weekly Round-Up #10 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

I’m very happy to say that our Search Marketing Consultant, Sam passed the Google AdWords Professional Exam on Friday.

We’re very proud that he’s completed it, and with an impressive score too!

The post Another Google AdWords Professional In Our Ranks appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This way, if for example you were promoting Fake Bake tanning products, and were bidding for the keyword “Fake Bake Airbrush Tanning Kit”
You may want to boost your traffic and appear for variations such as “Fake Bake Moisturiser”, “Fake Bake” or “Fake Tan”. You would order your keywords with staggered Cost Per Click (CPC) budgets, something like this:

Exact – 0.50
Phrase – 0.30
Broad – 0.05

And perhaps add in some negative keywords like “home bake” “home baking” “tan leather” “fake boobs”… you get the point!

Bear in mind that your advert will be shown more regularly if you achieve a higher click through rate (CTR), so although your bid staggering will help distribute your advertising budget to the most relevant terms, it’s not fool proof, and if your broad match is making you show up for “fake bake tanning products ruined my marriage”, you’re likely to get a high CTR due to limited competition.

Once you’ve set this up, don’t think you can leave it to fester – you have to be very careful with broad match, and this match type may or may not work for your situation.

Keep your eye on terms that you’re adverts are being show for and keep adding to your negative keyword list. This way you can continually improve your conversion rates, reduce your cost per conversion and improve your return on investment.

The post Can you use Broad, Exact and Phrase Match together in Pay Per Click? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Well, as I was contemplating what match types to delete, add and test together in Google AdWords, I came upon a match type that I’ve not exploited enough.

Embedded match gives you the opportunity to display your advert for a broader range and every variation of a keyword, except for the keyword itself.

Embedded match in action

If you are promoting roof insulation for example, you could use the negative embedded match -[insulation]. So that you will show adverts for keywords such as “roof insulation”, “loft insulation”, etc.

So you’re showing for long tail keyword phrases relevant to your key product of insulation, but you benefit from a lower level of competition, lower cost per click, higher variation of keywords and an end user that is further down the purchase process.

It’s also a good tool to use at the start of a campaign for discovering new good and bad keywords that you can ban using negative match or add these keyphrases in their own right as phrase or exact match.

How to use embedded match

So as not to give away all my secrets, we’ll use the term ‘hamster’.

• Add the negative exact keyword -[hamster]
• Add the broad match keyword “hamster”

In this way, you will appear for ‘hamster accessories’, ‘hamster food’, ‘hamster wheels’, and ‘how to stuff a hamster’, but crucially not the vague and potentially unprofitable term ‘hamster’.

The post Google AdWords PPC – Embedded match appeared first on PushON Ltd.

When you have a number of keywords in your ad group, sometimes it’s handy to use the keyword insertion method when creating your adverts.

This is where you use the text {keyword:default text} to pull in the keyword that a user types to triggers the advert.

This means you can highly relevant and targeted adverts without having to write individual adverts for every one of the keywords you’re bidding on.

Default Pay Per Click Advert Headline

You define your default text in the case where the user searches for a phrase that is too long to fit in your advert.  For example in one of the adverts I’m testing, I’ve used the text “Blue Ultimatt® Emulsion” as the alternative, so if someone types “where can I buy blue emulsion paint” it will display the following advert:

Pay Per Click Advert Keyword Insertion

However when you use the {keyword:default text} in your title or advert, and the text is not too long, it will show in the following format:

As you can see above, the text is all lower case… and not particularly inviting.

Capitalisation of keywords in your advert

What I found out today that was quite useful is that you can change the capitalisation of the keywords use in your advert, so you can display an advert like this instead:

Table of PPC keyword capitalisation

I’ve added a table of capitalisation variations that you can use when writing your pay per click adverts here:

* I wouldn’t advise all caps, unless you really want to shout!

When not to use automatic keyword insertion

There are no hard and fast rules for this, but consider the following:

• If your competitors are all using the keyword insertion method for niche terms, you’re advert isn’t going to stand out one bit.  Check the actual results, and see whether your advert looks invitingly relevant or insipidly generic.
• Are your keywords loosely grouped? If you’re trying to automate too much, you may be churning out adverts that may be relevant to the keywords used, but the landing page won’t match.
• Are you bidding on your competitors brand names? if so, your advert may falsely imply that you’re selling their products.  This isn’t good karma, but more importantly, you’re unlikely to make a sale from someone who specifically wants a product you don’t sell.

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