Interesting article over at Conversation Marketing about bidding on your own brand name. The post throws up some good arguments, but like all things in life one rule simple does not fit all. Aswell as reasons to bid on your own brand there are equally very good arguments against bidding on brand and it really depends on the business circumstances as to whether it makes sense for you.

When bidding on brand one thing you should always do is track brand performance separately from your non brand campaigns.

There are some agencies who will encourage you to bid against your brand and then proceed to lump it all into one to make the overall figures of your campaign appear far more successful than they actually are; effectively hiding the poorer performance of non brand campaigns.

Things to consider when bidding against your own brand -

1) Other Advertisers
2) Organic Placement
3) Brand Volume
4) Affiliates

1. Other Advertisers - Are there any other adverts displaying against your brand? If there are other advertisers appearing against your brand then I would advise to bid against your brand no matter where you are placed organically. This increases your exposure or shelf space so to speak. If you have a trademark, submit an application to Google to stop other advertisers appearing against your brand in the UK. For US advertisers this works a little differently, you can’t trademark protect keywords, only the use of your trademark within adtext. So those targetting the US will have to maintain a degree of vigilance in monitoring the SERPS if at the time of checking their were no other advertisers.

2. Organic Placement - Where are you placed organically? You should be in the very top position for your brand unless you have an extremely generic or competitive brand name (or a new site!). If you are not top then you should bid against your brand to avoid losing any visitors. If you are top organically and there are no advertisers bidding against your brand then it makes sense to save your money and not bid against your brand. You should however take into consideration point number 4.

3. Brand Volume - How much volume do you get to your brand?. If your brand volume is quite low then cost will be equally small. However, if you are a large brand, bare in mind that you could get a serious amount of your volume going through the PPC advert obviously at a cost. In theory the larger brands should be able to afford this, but it still might be better spent elsewhere.

4. Affiliates - You should have terms and conditions in place to limit affiliates from bidding against brand anyway, whether that’s paid or organically. Obviously if you don’t have affiliates this will not be a problem, but those that do need to consider affiliates because bidding against your own brand can act as protection, especially in the US where you cannot trademark the use of keywords.

Conclusion

In general if you have no other advertisers displaying adverts against your brand name and you are placed at the top organically, then you should not bid against brand. There is no need to pay extra when the difference in clicks from a top organic placement against aggregate clicks via an organic top placement with a PPC advert are generally fairly small. I have seen the research which shows increases, but I have also seen many instances where you are simply paying a cost with no extra benefit.

Although average CPC’s on branded keywords in these circumstances are also very small, if you are a large brand then actually this can equate to a significant amount of volume. Some brands can incurr costs into the thousands each month as an example.

Would this spend not be better funelled back into the paid or organic search campaign?. That said, you will need to monitor your brand within the SERPS, in terms of other advertisers and affiliates especially if you do not have a trademark or are based in the US.

A Happy Medium

There are mediums to be had when bidding on brand. If you are concerned that you are losing out on some misspellings of brand or long tail brand related queries then you can use embedded match to show for the queries you want to.

This allows you to bid broad on your core brand keyword(s) and negatively match out exact (or phrase) match keywords where you are sure you rank organically in top positions. So you can run search query reports (and use log data) to negatively match out further queries you identify where you rank in the top position and believe you would be incurring cost for no reason. Alternatively you could just bid using exact match where you believe you need to show your ad. The Adwords example from the help centre explains embedded match -

“Example: An advertiser selling Toy Story merchandise might use the embedded match option of a negative and exact match on -[Toy Story]. This way, the advertiser’s ads appear for Toy Story dolls and Toy Story products, but not for the exact match Toy Story.”

Still Not Sure?

Like I said at the start, one rule does not fit all. The best thing to do is test and see what works best for you.

Looks like there has been a site links update, thanks big G.

Interesting to see which pages Google chose. The Amy Alexandra post was just a little testing I did for fun and was certainly not one of my most linked to pages, but traffic wise its been pretty big…

Am I being to cynical but page load time as another factor in quality score?. Why?
According to Google it’s all in the name of ‘user experience’ and hence it’s going to be added into the quality score algo in Adwords sometime soon.

I don’t get it. Why bother?

Surely if site load time is long and delayed meaning the user experience for a visitor is that awful then they will simply go elsewhere, meaning the advertiser will lose out on conversion. Ultimately if it was that much of a problem it would be detrimental to the advertisers business and they would naturally drop out of the bidding or just fix their problem.

So what’s the point? Isn’t this basically just organic and self fixing anyway?

Do we really need a load time algo to dictate how fast a site should be…it raises more questions and worries about what happens if the site has a small or temporary issue etc. Apparently Google will be clarifying the new factor but still…

If user experience was really the key then develop a system where campaigns automatically pause when there is a certain server or site response over a given time instead of just making advertisers pay extra. Or something.

I have finally found some time to make some changes to the blog. So lets get rid of those sitewide blogroll / links that seem to come with a lot of the ‘out of the box’ WP themes available.

Before -

<h3>Links</h3>
<ul class=”list”>
<?php get_links(-1, ‘<li>’, ‘</li>’, ‘ - ‘); ?>
</ul>

After -

< ?php
if ( is_home() )
{
?>
<h3>Links</h3>
<ul class=”list”>
<?php
get_links(-1,’<li>’, ‘</li>’, ‘ - ‘);
?>
</ul>
<?php
}
?>

Job done.

Wow, there seems to be a lot of talk about some rule changes for Adwords display urls that is kicking up a bit of a stir. The original article was from over at PPC Hero blog - Google updates adwords display url policy.

“As of April 1, Google will be making significant changes to their enforcement of display URL policies. The “Policy Team” has taken a stricter stance on the relationship between display URLs and destination URLs — and they will be allowing few exceptions to their rules. In short, if your destination URL is www.example.com, your display URL must be www.example.com. Just to alleviate any confusion: display URLs are what is displayed in your ad text – destination URLs are where your ad text leads post-click.“

To me there has been no change. The ad level destination url has always had to of directed traffic to the same TLD as the display url to pass manual approval. Googles ad policies can be seen here.

So for example -

Display url - www.ppcblog.co.uk
Destination url - www.ppcblog.com

Would never pass manual ad approval. Or at least if your not working from an agency account/MCC.

So, I cannot see the fuss with the “rule changes” or envisage them really impacting many people. There are still plenty of ways around them -

• Taking advantage of companies multiple TLD’s (that do not redirect) to display two ads per SERP
• Redirects (after manual approval) or cloaking
• I-framed landing pages

I wrote about some of these blackhat PPC methods.

In theory, you should NEVER have been able to use ppcbloggy.com as your display url in an effort to display for ppcblog.co.uk even with a redirect. Bridge pages and redirects have never been allowed and I have had adverts banned quite a few times due to this (testing obviously).

Although obviously they do work if you implement them after manual approval with the correct technique.

So Shoemoneys posts about dominating the entire SERPS still may or may not be caught depending on the method used. It worked because they had different domains as the display url and were either simply taking advantage of the period between manual and auto ad approval using multiple Adwords accounts… (which will get caught in the end)

OR

They complied with the rules (display and destination urls match) and then added a redirect after the manual approval (without amending the advert) which will still not be picked up until someone points it out. Google need to pick up redirects after manual approval to spot these things…

So there is no confusion here, this is only for TLD’s. You can still play with the / of display urls even if the page does not exist.

Example -

www.ppcblog.co.uk/Whatever etc

Discussion over at Sphinn.

I am suprised by how often I still see how budget caps are used in PPC campaigns. Such a basic thing can make a real difference to performance and return.

Budget caps are there to prevent you from overspending as a safety precaution and are not a primary method that should be used to control spend. They are great as a fail safe measure but they are not a performance effective method of controlling spend and are often a sign of a lazy marketeer or someone who does not know what they are doing.

Budget caps are great for those new to PPC but experts should know better and be able to control spend by cost per click (CPC) using caps merely as a back up precaution.

Simply put, if your campaigns are hitting their budgets daily you are not getting the most out of your paid search campaign.

Why?

Not only will your ads go offline meaning you will miss out on conversion when you reach your caps but by not reducing average CPC you are missing out on receiving more clicks for your spend, heightening the chance of additional conversion. If conversion rate (and avg basket value) remain equal you will get more clicks, more sales, a reduction in CPA and an increase in ROI. Nice.

There is a valid argument in some industries that very high rank is key to conversion and that lowering average CPC and hence ad rank, conversion rate will fall aswell. This is more in those industries or products that are heavy on the trust factor, like finance, loans, insurance and sometimes travel. So test conversion against your rank & evaluate whats best for you. If you are convinced you cannot reduce rank on key terms (or increase your caps), reduce costs elsewhere and increase ad delivery by optimising account structure, keyword lists and ads.

More often that not you will find that you will get less window shoppers and higher conversion in lower positions than the top 3 and a lower average CPC to boot all equating to a better return on ad spend.

So go check your caps…

I think thats my best post title to date.

In all seriousness, I cannot believe just how bad Microsofts search engine is right now. It’s umbelievable how wrong they get the ‘easy’ stuff still, like simple searches for brands / sites and exact match domains.

A search for ‘Myspace‘.

Pretty bad, lets try some more.

• A search for ‘Digg‘. The ‘Disability Information For Greater Glasgow’ is top, but I am guessing the majority of people will be searching for the other ‘Digg’…

• A search for ‘Reddit‘. Wikipedia top, need I say more.

• A search for ‘Mahalo‘. Wikipedia top again here.

• A search for ‘Delicious‘. Not on the first page!. OK, lets help them out a little. A search for ‘Del.icio.us‘. Still not to be seen, although Wikipedia is now in the results…

Shocking.

Now run those searches on the new Wiki search alpha, I’d argue that the very top result (not the full SERP) are actually better…

1) You need to be number 1 - Leave your ego at the login, you do not have to rank number 1 for the pay per click campaign to work or to get volume. Concentrate and optimise on conversion and ROI

2) You will pay 1p a click if there are no other advertisers - Minimum bids & actual CPC are quality based & some engines have set minimum CPC’s.

3) The content network is all bad - Actually no. There are a lot of scare stories out there but in fact the content network can perform very well in some markets and for certain businesses. Set up the content network seperate to search, test and evaluate. Consider placement targetting on Google and remember site exlusion. Yes, even domain parking ads can work.

4) Broad /Advanced match is all bad - Used in the correct manner broad match & Yahoos advanced match can be very effective. The expanded match element of Google broad match can be very unpredictable, but run search query reports to understand the real search queries behind those clicks and use negative match.

5) Bidding high increases your quality score - CTR and hence quality score are normalized to it’s position. So coming in with a high bid will get you more clicks (& in turn history) QUICKER but not necessarily improve your QS or Avg CPC.

6) There is only one search engine - Despite the myth, there are other search engines out there other than Google that should be tested. Google may have the highest volume, but it will not necessarily deliver the best ROI to your campaign. Test Yahoo and MSN/adCenter and consider the many other search engines out there such as Miva, Webfinder, Mirago and Yell. There are plenty more in the U.S.

7) PPC has a bearing on natural rankings - No, no, no. It doesn’t. The javacript does not act as anchor text!!!!.

Advertising spend has a bearing on quality score and hence ad rank - Even small advertisers can have great quality scores and 1p minimum bids. Take the tin foil hats off.

9) PPC is only short-term until organic rankings arrive - Pay per click can integrate with your SEO campaign. Test and measure individual and aggregate campaign data - If the PPC campaign delivers the right ROI then why stop?

10) PPC Optimisation is a one time event - Like SEO, it’s not a set up and forget campaign. Optimisation & performance improvement is a continuous process. Like your business, pay per click campaigns continue to develop, change and evolve.

11) Optimisation is campaign only, not the site - Don’t expect miracles from a campaign if you will not consider landing page and site improvements. That simple.

12) Deleting will delete history - History is kept at account level on Adwords. Delete a keyword and replace it elsewhere, its quality score will remain the same. Only individual adverts history are lost on edit, but this previous performance is still factored into relating quality scores and overall account quality score.

13) Adwords / Yahoo! / adCenter hates me - Maybe, but before complaning and going completely mad, make sure you read the help centre. I mean r-e-a-l-l-y read it.

Forget Dmoz, why not implement Google Checkout and appear on a Google own PR8 (toolbar…) page?

The Google Checkout Directory has a fair few links, but why not apply?

“To apply for the store directory, contact us. In your request, specify the login email address for your merchant account and your store’s display name and product category.“

Remember, Google do not condone buying, selling or exchanging of links but offering them out for promoting a product is fine.

Especially if you put through a lot of sales.

Lets talk ‘blackhat PPC’. After I read a article over at SEW sometime back about blackhat pay per click, I thought I would write about a few other sneaky tricks used within PPC. More specifically in the PPC affiliate marketing space. You see some pretty interesting methods used here in particular because there is that much more inter competition. Affiliates in competition with other affiliates, the merchant’s internal marketing department or agency, the affiliate network over merchant terms and of course the paid search system itself. In many ways the merchant, the affiliate and the network have the same goal; to increase visitors or sales to the site, yet each party has their very own self serving objectives which are anything but in unison.

There are a number of tricks I have seen used to bend completely flaunt many affiliate programs terms & policies. One of the most common PPC policies is to disallow affiliates from bidding against merchant brand terms, as the merchant will generally get that sale 99% of the time anyway not having to pay a premium to an affiliate for it. From the other side, obviously it makes sense for an affiliate to bid against brand as it cuts away the hard work of finding a niche as & they know it will convert. It’s a low hanging fruit.

Another popular affiliate network policy is to ban affiliates from sending traffic direct to a merchants site because the merchant or ad agency are already running a paid search campaign, the merchant does not trust affiliates to uphold their ‘brand image’ within adverts or perhaps for a variety of other reasons.

So, how do affiliates bypass these rules, working within the ad platforms own system while keeping under the radar of the merchant, the affiliate network and perhaps an ad agency keeping an eye on the SERPS? The price of getting caught might be a loss of commissions, getting kicked off the affiliate program or even the network all together.

Let’s look at some of the methods used -

1) Bidding At Certain Times – Brand bidding at certain times of the day or week when they know there is less chance of someone in-house, agency or affiliate network seeing the offending adverts. Evenings & weekends are the obvious choices or a couple of minutes here and there will often go unnoticed. Advertisers don’t even have to be at their computer to do this with Google kindly providing ad scheduling.

2) Geo-targeting – Geo-targeting of smaller individual locations or those where the merchant, their agency or affiliate network are not based. Advertisers can custom geo-target away from those areas, again thanks to Googles ever increasing Adwords tools inventory.

3) IP Exclusion - As Google explains “refine your targeting by preventing specific Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from seeing your ads”. Find out the IP of those you don’t want to see your ad and ban them so they can’t see your advert. Now that is naughty.

4) Advert Tricks - This is pretty sneaky & I have seen this more than you might think. This only happens if the merchant is running their own adverts against their own branded terms. The affiliate simply copies the merchants advert EXACTLY and bids higher to gain a higher ad rank that will replace the merchants own advert. At a glance the merchant will believe their advert is still running, although obviously it’s that of the affiliates. If the merchant digs a little deeper and views the destination url the affiliate might get spotted, but this method is generally used intermittently. If the merchant/ad agency notices they are no longer receiving clicks for there core keywords it will raise suspicion - so this is often used with 1, 2 & 5.

5) Masking Affiliate Urls - I have heard of software from some of the affiliate networks that claim to detect brand bidders by scraping the search engines and monitoring ad urls. (Although this is of course, depending on whether this detection system is not blocked by either 2 or 3 above in the first place). How do naughty affiliates attempt to protect themselves so their affiliate url is not spotted in adverts immediately? Well, by masking the url & affiliate ID within a url redirect. The likes of Tinyurl make this very easy for anyone. In fact, the affiliate might be using multiple redirects to make it a little harder again to be identified without proper investigation that might confuse the average merchant or online marketer.

6) Sending Traffic To A Different Domain - This is not rocket science. This can even be accomplished without setting up redirects, just a little understanding and knowledge of how the automatic and manual ad approvals work at the search engines. Advertisers can take advantage of the time between automatic approval and a manual review, but it’s actually even simpler for affiliates to trick the system after the manual review period.

As an example, lets say an affiliate wants the advert display url to be affiliatename.com, but they want to send traffic direct to a different domain, merchantssite.com. By playing nice at first, affiliates can simply set up their advert with the same display url and destination url to affiliatename.com. The affiliate can allow their advert to go through manual approval. It takes roughly 48hrs (in the week) for the advert to pass through manual approval in Adwords (ads can even be paused during this period) before the affiliate can whip in a keyword level url for the real destination they want to send traffic to. Keyword level urls take precedence over ad level urls and they do not go through manual approval like adverts do.

Another method that is frequently used to get past the one display url per SERP policy from the search engines is to simply send traffic to affiliatename.com and after the manual approval throw in a server side redirect over to the site of choice. That way the advert has not been amended and will not get manually reviewed again.

7) Using Broad Match To Bypass Trademarks – Here in the UK, businesses can protect their trademark brand names in both adverts and keywords on Google by submitting an application. While this method can be very effective for some brands, it can also sometimes be bypassed by the use of broad match. Take the well known car company ‘Land Rover’ as an example. For sometime they protected their band online on Google and hence the keyword ‘Land Rover’ was a trademarked term and would not display ads when used as a keyword. An easy way to get around this was simply having the keyword ‘Rover Land’ on broad match and sure enough it would trigger the advert against a search for ‘Land Rover’. It can be as simple as that. So while trademarking can work great for some businesses, it can easily be bypassed for others.

These are just some examples of blackhat PPC in the affiliate marketing space. All of the above tricks can be spotted if you know what you are doing. The ad preview tool goes a long way to help, but is by no means full proof.

So if you’re a merchant, how sure are you that your PPC affiliates are playing nice?