Kerstin Baker-Ash

Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part II

Yesterday, in Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part I, we discussed the issues surrounding Google's new beta platform for PPC sitelinks. Today, let's talk about workarounds to the problems, and what this new system can add to your site's ROI potential.

The Workarounds

You've got your four links appearing below your main ads - links that Google has picked for optimization heaven. However, your highest sale volume link isn't appearing because it's CTR is half a percentage point lower than another. The fix is relatively easy - you simply need to work around the system instead of going through it like good boys and girls. In your campaign settings, select the six ads you don't want appearing and delete them. That's it - by removing Google's say over your sitelinks, you remove the need to optimize the titles of the links and the pages they go to. After all, you know best pages within your site for conversion, so you should be able to make a very educated decision about how your site's PPC campaign is displayed in Google.

Campaign settings mean that you're up a certain creek without a paddle if you've structured your account with many ad groups within a single campaign. Firstly, you need to do a bit of restructuring to get the sitelinks for the right campaigns; this may mean building out a campaign with a single ad group, just to make it more tightly targeted. Also, consider this: brand searches are, for the most part, the results that pop up with sitelinks in the natural search results. Your brand results in the natural SERPs are going to be pushed down if you're using paid search sitelinks, so you need to act like a consumer and focus primarily on your brand terms initially. This isn't to say that generic terms (like "insurance", "vacations", "clothes", etc) couldn't be optimized for paid search sitelinks - über-generics are perfect for this beta - it's just good to get a feel for the way searchers interact with your new campaign setup on a safe term first.

Finally, keyword tracking. Honestly, there isn't much of a workaround here. As my confidential informant told me, "the idea here is to increase overall sales." Although tracking results at a keyword level is great and very much recommended in any PPC campaign, treat it like the cherry on your sundae instead of the nuts and track your paid search sitelink results at a campaign level. You should have already split your campaigns out very granularly already, so this tracking will act as close as possible to tracking at the keyword level anyway.

In the Future

How cool would it be if Google came out with a heatmap of SERPs with paid search sitelinks? If they want to keep pushing SEO down (and let's be honest, it's not a money maker by any stretch of the imagination for them), this would be a great case study to analyze eyeball dwell time on PPC sitelinks.

Overall, putting two and two together (more links, more prominence) should make your campaign tick along very nicely. Presumably, the more prominence given to five links from a single advertiser should push it well over the edge in terms of campaign expectations and ROI on brand terms and über-generics.

Are you considering opting in to Google's paid search sitelink beta? Have you already been doing it and found a way to track more granularly than campaign level? If you have, or have any questions about the program, let me know by filling in the comment form below - I'll see if myself or my secret Google snitch can answer them for you.

Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part I

After writing my initial post on paid search sitelinks, I was contacted by someone who is testing sitelinks in the field for a retail client. This person, while wishing to remain anonymous (I've always wanted to say that), has gone through the interface, what the benefits are and why it's not a perfect system yet. 

The Basics

This only works on ads in premium; ads that appear above the natural search results, not alongside them on the left. You can choose up to ten links to appear underneath your main ad - Google will automatically choose four and the settings are applied at campaign level.

The Issues

Since only four links are displayed at one time, you need to find a way to optimize for the best performing links out of the ten you've chosen. Google determines this much like they determine ad rotation - the best CTR wins the game. Even if you want to have all the traffic driving to your biggest money maker, you might be forced to use other links because of a lower CTR. Pants.

Also, these choices are applied at campaign level. So, all the sitelinks will apply to all of the ads eligible in the campaign itself, regardless of ad group. This can result in irrelevant links showing up for your ads.

Presumably, if you're willing to pay top dollar for a premium ad listing (i.e. top position), you'll also have a fancy tracking system in place to track the campaign's effectiveness down to keyword level. Well, scrap it. The sitelink URL usurps the keyword URL - you're no longer tracking at keyword level. 

Tomorrow in Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part II, I'll discuss potential workarounds and optimization techniques to the issues mentioned above. Also, we'll look at the benefits of using sitelinks in your paid search account.

Paid Search Sitelinks

First reported in August and September by Darrin Ward (USA) and iCrossing (UK) respectively, Google are now allowing some advertisers additional real estate at the top of the pops in paid SERPs. While this is largely a helpful step for PPC advertisers, what isn't discussed at length is the implications on natural listings, and the impact that has on SEO.

 

It's important to note that there are negative implications for brands invited to participate in the test. Firstly, the tracking needs four new layers added to a campaign to test the efficacy of sitelinks off one brand term. This can be a pain if you set it up with older tracking software which then requires individual tracking tags on the four different pages. A headache, but not an insurmountable obstacle. 

You can't measure brand engagement on a home page when you deeplink searchers to a microsite within the main homepage. The advertiser provides Google with a list of ten possible sitelinks; while they respect the order you give those sitelinks in, Google reserves the right to change your list without notice depending on performance. These are brand searches, not additional query strings with pets, motors or business tacked on to the back - it's also possible that searchers will not feel like their particular query (let's say content insurance) is being met, even though they searched on the pure brand term. Let's not discuss additional revenue generation methods by Google, it's something akin to beating a dead animal with a nuclear weapon.

On the positive side of the argument, you have the potential to give your brand extra prominence (in paid SERPs at least, more on SEO later). More users can engage with different strands of your brand - pets, motors, business, etc - without having to search or navigate through different parts of your site. Let's also not discuss the conversion potential for pure brand queries in paid search without additional sitelink help, either - see dead animal/nuclear weapon reference above.

Does this hurt traffic to natural listings? Potentially. When pages in the natural part of SERPs are pushed further and further down, this can't help with a case for SEO and brand optimization. Forget about outranking on key generic terms, either - if there are three paid ads at the top of the SERP and one of them has sitelinks, you can pretty much forget about appearing above the fold on most computer screens. To be fair, paid sitelinks are largely within the domain of brand terms, not generics. However, the rollout potential is dangerous when you consider the work that goes in to jumping even a one place above a competitor in natural rankings.

It's far too early to comment on the efficacy of Google's newest PPC beta test, but it will be very interesting to see if it increases brand engagement on different areas of a site or drives searchers to exactly the same place they wanted to go in the first place - the home page. 

I'm Back - And My First Google Streetview "Find"

Not so much with a vengeance this time, but a quiet, September-like whimper. With the holidays upon us (not the Jingle Bell kind), I'll share some of my favorite new year recipes (I cooked up a storm this weekend), some new things going on in my world and also a couple of SEM tips and tricks (I'm trying to keep the blog somewhat SEM-y, you know).

First, I thought I'd kick off the month with "the man that Google didn't erase" - a lovely photo of a man on Streetview whose hands, rather than his face, are blurred to mask identity (perhaps he's a famous hand model?). The unfortunate gentleman appears opposite 42 Eversholt Street (near Euston Station) in what looks akin to an early morning hangover nap:

Curiously, he's photographed across the road from a table dancing venue - perhaps the reason for his early morning stupor?

Is Google's Traffic Estimator Accurate?

No.

Google Traffic Estimator accuracy seems to have been lost in the sands of time, updates and shinier tools. It is woefully underestimating traffic for top search trends in the UK. Consider the recent Swine Flu outbreak (which the British media is making into an I am Legend epidemic). On Google Insights for Search, you can clearly see two distinct uplifts in traffic volume; one when it broke in April, and another since we started seeing more and more rates of infection and media attention:

Now take a look at Google Traffic Estimator's traffic predictions for the term "swine flu" - 0 clicks a day? £1 per day? Never mind the mathematics of dividing by zero, but how often is this updated? How can Google suggest using the traffic estimator with results as inaccurate as these:

When projecting costs and clicks for your internal stakeholders or for clients, make a point of querying the accuracy of the Traffic Estimator. Use your own judgement and search engine marketing know-how - remember that it's perhaps in Google's best interests to underestimate so that you will have to feed more money to keep up a seemingly impossibly great traffic level. Never rely on a sole source of information when building a campaign from scratch, or even expanding it.

If there wasn't a case for research before - here's your clear justification to invest in a proper keyword prediction tool or extra resource for human research.

Sports and Search

Google, in their infinite wisdom, has given us a very easy way to obsessively check scores in a non-work threatening way. Since moving to the UK and marrying into a family of Cricket fans, I've found myself very interested in the Ashes, a marathon of tests and days of Cricket every two years between England and Australia. Naturally, I like to keep up to date with the boys' progress, but don't want it to take up too much time (wicket gone? Great. Back to work). Unfortunately, Google doesn't make it easy to search for one or two simple words (Ashes or Ashes Test):

Instead, you're forced to hunt and peck around until you come to the conclusion that you should be typing in "England Australia":

While I'm pleased at the current score (which would mean an historic English win at Lord's), I would be an even happier camper if Google didn't make it so hard to type out nearly twice the number of characters necessary to get an up to date score.

Checking on the BBC site now - England have just won their first test match against Australia at Lord's since 1934. Yippee!

AdSense in Local Currencies

Although AdSense has been available in local currencies from the 15th of June, they've sent a reminder e-mail around to make sure you feel worse about your earnings than you already did.

Nine European countries, all but one with currencies (okay, one big Eurozone) valued above the US dollar, will be able to pull earnings reports in their own currency. Although we'll be able to save on conversion costs at the end of the month, you do have to accept a new set of terms and conditions in order to zap your bank account with Euros, Pounds and Francs. The semi-glaring change in the new terms and conditions is the shift from jurisdiction in California to English or "local" law (in all of the countries now served with local AdSense currency reports.

I won't be able to retire just yet on my AdSense earnings, but I can feel worse about my pittance by changing currencies into a stronger British Pound:

Currency Distinction

I've just noticed this in the MCC today - going from a simple pound sign (£) to the distinction between countries who also use their own "pounds" (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan and Malta come to mind). What I'm finding confusing is that the international standard (when it comes to making currency distinctions) is not UK£ but GBP, harkening perhaps to the days before the Euro (EUR) when Ireland also used a currency called a "Punt" (or a pound, if you're an English-speaker).

In the accounts where US Dollars (USD) are the currency of choice, we're sadly left without an indication of whether or not it's a Canadian, Taiwanese or Cook Islands Dollar. Why the sudden singular distinction for the UK Pound?

It seems a bit buggy or a CMS update (like the peering eye of the AdWords Yellow Dot from a week ago). Anyone got any ideas on why the sudden switch happened?

Shoddy Results on the Content Network

I'm for matchmaking as much as the next person - the world definitely needs more happy people. I'm even for advertising dating sites on the content network, just possibly looking at the context of where you're targeting before you let loose on an unsuspecting population.

I was looking for an iCrossing report on paid and natural search synergy (very interesting, if you're looking - the report from 2007 is here). This is where Scribd's AdSense gets a bit interesting:

How the first ad passed through editorial is que$tionable, but how a search report on paid and natural search synergy manages to trigger a Tamil LifePartner ad is a big headscratcher. Perhaps somewhere in the myriad keywords there's a "partner" or "synergy" insertion, but this is the big reason why people don't trust the content network fully for a professional marketing campaign.

Sure, it's up to the individual site owner and the person targeting the content network to make site exceptions, but you can't guarantee anything because the content network is blind. Site targeting has improved the way you can make sure you're targeting the right audience, but Google's content network as it stands is pretty shoddy.

To the folks at BharatMatrimony.com, maybe map out your ideal audience and switch to site targeting - free advice to get a much better return on investment. To the people at Visman, please try to hire a copywriter who speaks English.

Call Google - They Can Fix It!

If you can't fix it, Google can. As cynical as I'd like to be (and I'm pretty cynical when it comes to Google offering to "maximize" an account for you), it might be a helpful service (which has, I know, been provided for years) to create a brand new account with the search giant.

What seasoned search veterans need to know is that the service Google provides is on a basic level. Increase spend. Change match types to broad match. Increase maximum CPC. Some of the basics that search marketers would recommend; building out keywords, changing ad copy, dayparting to save money - they don't seemed to be mentioned in an initial chat. I'm all for Google sharing information, but hopefully people can understand that it's in Google's best interests to share the information which sees you spending more money.