Kerstin Baker-Ash

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I Don't Believe in Broad Match

Again, another slightly misleading title. I broadly don't believe in broad match with very few exceptions, none of which fall under user relevancy. I strongly believe that setting everything at broad match is reckless, and suggesting it to clients isn't best practice. This isn't meant to be a sweeping swipe at Google, but I've been left cross-eyed by the numerous reasons for broad match and wanted to get my opinions to the contrary down on a piece of paper (or blog) to make my thoughts clear.

Broad Match Sell #1: ~25% of search terms each month are unique queries.

Great. Humans are different from each other. Wonderful. What that statistic fails to include is the fact that 1% of search terms represent nearly 30% of all queries, according to Search Tools Consulting. What does that mean? Your generic or brand name keyword is singlehandedly responsible for a third of your traffic. Another five eighths is taken up by keywords already in your account (if you've done a long tail keyword buildout - and if you haven't, well... see me after class). We're talking about five percent of potential queries. Potential queries which could be covered largely by phrase match:

Unique query: "summer 2009 travel"

Phrase match: Summer 2009"

Result:

So a couple of search terms come up, but Google and the advertisers largely know that I'm looking to travel in Summer 2009 and have responded to my query appropriately. 

Broad Match Sell #2: We're not going to talk about cost. Nope. Shhh. My fingers are in my ears. I can't hear you! Lalalala.

Next time you're confronted with a "unique relevancy" pitch, try this. Ask them how much more it costs. You'll usually get a roundabout flurry of phrases that sound like "user experience" and "search relevance" but nothing to do with your original question about cost. Why? Because it does cost more. That's the honest truth. Exposing yourself to search queries which aren't entirely relevant to your search term does one of two things:

1. The searcher sees your ad, decides it isn't relevant to their query, and creates an impression without a click for that keyword. Quality Score suffers.
2. The searcher sees your ad, decides you might be able to help them, and clicks through on your ad before leaving the site quickly - you didn't fulfill their expectations. Quality Score suffers, and you pay for a click which never had a chance of converting. 

Wonderful. Two negative outcomes, no positive outcomes in this particular scenario. Just for some graphic representation, take a look at this search I did on "flights to Canada":

  

Fair enough that Ask is appearing, well, everywhere these days in an effort to gain some market share. Let's pretend they don't have a long line of credit with the bank for a moment. I'm not going to click on the ad, but hey - someone might. They've created a situation where their Quality Score is affected by a non-click impression or irrelevant cost for a click that has about as good a chance in converting as Billy Graham does to Judaism. Just so that it doesn't look that I'm taking swipes at Google only, a little broad matching debacle from Yahoo!:

Low Quality Score = higher cost per click. The question to ask your Google rep is why you would want to be paying for irrelevant traffic or bringing down the Quality Score you've worked hard to achieve. Hopefully, their answer is a concession. Yes. You will pay more. No, it makes no sense to broad match on travel when you only offer packages to Botswana.

Broad Match Sell #3: It can be a branding experience.

Okay, I'll give them a bit of "branding experience" leeway for a second. This sits straddling a broad match and a trademark post, the latter of which you all know my opinions on. Just because you can broad match on terms doesn't mean you should. It also doesn't mean that you are perceived as any more relevant to the user, or that you will brand yourself by appearing on searches. Sit back for a moment and think about the last time you engaged with a brand. Here's mine:

Andrew Girdwood tweeted about a tea that he was drinking. In this social media world, it's the equivalent friend telling you about a product that they really like over your morning coffee (or tea). I went to the site, looked around, liked what I saw, and made a purchase. Yes, I have searched on "interesting tea" before, but the engagement with the brand occurred only because someone in my social circle was talking about it. Unless Google/Yahoo!/MSN are willing to give up any empirical evidence to the contrary, I would say that appearing on a broad search does little in the way of a brand lift. Just ask Ask.

Remember, Google and the other engines are sales people too. While it is their job to help you optimize your accounts and get the most out of your campaigns, they're also revenue targeted. With that in mind, make sure you weigh all your options when you explore your match types, and make a decision that is good for you.

Yahoo Cans Content Match

Logging into Yahoo! first thing this morning, I've noticed what was reported yesterday by PPC Hero and Search Engine Land; Yahoo is canning content match in the UK. A bit of mild work is necessary to opt out of the content network:

1. Click on the Administration tab.

2. Click the "Edit" button, found in the "Tactic Settings" box.

3. Set "Content Match Status" to off, then save your changes.

Lather, rinse, repeat for all your accounts. Is this a suggestion by new Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz that there are more changes in store, or is it something that's been on the cards for a while? I suspect it's the latter, and just curious timing rather than a prediction of more cuts.

Three Ways to Make Your PPC Life Easier (and Make You Look Smarter)

At the end of the year, people come out with lists about a myriad of things; the top ten searches of 2008, the top five celebrities of the year, the most popular travel destination, and so on. Search engine marketers aren't exactly staying away from the end-of-the-year-hoopla, with some great suggestions incorporating our yearly "let's put everything in a list!" hysteria. Brian Carter came out with a helpful 4-step process to optimize ad copy, while over on the SEO side of street, Rand Fishkin shared the ten ways he's been using Linkscape to help SEOmoz's SEO projects.

So in the tradition of many who have come before me (and after me, I highly suspect) - three relatively quick ways to make your PPC life a heckuva lot easier, making you look smarter in the process.

1. We all make reports. Every day, we're tasked to be reporting on something, whether it's daily sales, CTR, conversion rates - anything. Do yourself a huge favor and automate those things if you don't have some sort of automation process in place already. I can't (for the life of me) figure out why Yahoo! hasn't set up an e-mail option, but Google and MSN make it dead simple for the daily grind stuff to be sent directly to your inbox. It also amazes me how few people actually automate reports that take under 60 seconds to set up. Give yourself a Chrismukkakwanzafest gift. Set 'er up.

All of a sudden, you've streamlined your morning report to ten minutes instead of thirty. Smarty pants.

2. RSS feeds. I know, I know. Most of you have them. Do you use them? In your Monday morning company meeting, why not look like the next SEM rockstar by spouting off a bunch of industry news nobody else knows? Compile a list of goodies that you read throughout the day and send them out at five o'clock. You're keeping your colleagues up to date, but you're also sifting through important developments and educating yourself. It's a win-win. Seriously.

3. So you've done all the reporting and the RSSing and you're scratching your head for thoughts on what do do next. Restructure. That's right. The project you've been putting off for centuries, but kinda sorta need to fix at some point in the future. Start small, and start simple. Taking an oft-repeated example, why not build each campaign out by products, and then associated keyword modifiers. Your company sells blue widgets. You're already skirting rockstar status by expanding your negative keyword lists - you've sorted the -red, -green, -yellow and -rainbow. The thing is, you've only got two campaigns - Brand and Generic.  Here's an easy fix:

Brand: Remember that kid in school who you whispered how to spell words to? He still can't spell. Only you're not around to mutter under your breath that it's w-i-d-g-e-t-s; he's typing wedgets, widgits and a bunch of other brand variations and Google hasn't recognized that he's making spelling mistakes yet. This doesn't mean that you type Kerstin's Blue Widgits in your ad copy title (you still feel a tad smug after being crowned the grade two spelling bee champion back in the 80s), but it means that your old classmate can still find the amazing new product you've just come out with.

Generics: Come on. Admit it. When you first set up the campaign, you were so gosh darned excited to get your AdWords account up and running so people could Google you that you dumped all your generic keywords into one ad group. Your product works for tons of people across all walks of life, but they don't want to be served a generic ad that looks like you don't care about them. 

This is ridiculously easy, but very often overlooked - build your keywords out into separate, GRANULAR ad groups. You might have all the keywords already, but why don't you make your customer feel valued by tailoring your ad copy to them? Break out your keywords into niche groups. Put "blue widgets for sem" alongside "sem blue widgets", but don't lump SEOs in the same group. That way, you're not relying on those funny looking brackets to make the ads look relevant (and half the time they don't really work because your long tail is just that: LONG). Three years ago, you would've heard a lot about keyword insertion. "It's a fix-all," they proclaimed from the rooftops. "Now you can target your long tail without a lot of work," they evangelized. Here's the thing: you're going to need to actually put in a bit of grunt work that will literally pay dividends once you've set it live.

Then, as if by magic, your life gets just a bit easier. You can optimize your campaigns more granularly because they make sense to you. Your morning reporting gets a bit quicker. You look like a semi-intelligent SEM while you bust out your breaking news about Google's latest AdWords addition.

There you go - not earth-shattering tips, just a wee slice of easy for a Tuesday morning.

Yahoo's Minimum Bids Kick In

Last night, it looks like Yahoo's minimum bid system kicked in, bringing it up to the sometimes unreasonable level of Google's seemingly arbitrary system. Yes, I get it's all about "relevance" and "value". Yeah.

Clicking on the link takes you directly to the minimum bid screen, making sure you have easy access to change your bids to keep in line with what Yahoo! decides is the best way to get money out of the bid. This one isn't so bad, for a fairly competitive term with a 4/5 QI on Yahoo!:

What's troubling is the big jump for some lower-volume keywords with QIs above 4, positioning regularly between 3 and 5, and a very long history of good CTR in the campaign:

Obviously, the easy fix is to optimize these keywords and make the ad copy more relevant to searchers. My question is, how far can you further optimize a keyword or ad group when your QI is better than average? It seems to me that advertisers are having to bite the bullet, at least over the weekend, to see if keyword optimization actually works. Watch this space.

Ye Olde Bandwagon

Okay, I'm jumping on the bandwagon and blogging about the blogging about Microsoft walking from the table.  Surely you're not surprised that in this industry, the bloggers are the ones all over it?  Since we're such an opinionated and vocal bunch of people as well, why are people suggesting that the chorus are just jumping on the bandwagon and diluting the "authority" of those who were laptop-ready when Steve posted his letter to Jerry?

I'm really looking forward to how this pans out.  Microsoft does have some pretty exciting things on the horizon - things that will endeavour to change how they present search to people.  So, what's next?  While Jerry Yang seems to have tried to make it as undesireable as possible, what has it achieved?  Autonomy from one company, but a move towards reliance on another company.  Lawsuits from shareholders?  Sure.  Although the initial bid opened up a reasonably sized can of worms, this new landscape, where Yahoo is snuggling up to Google and Microsoft will have to re-think their search strategy, is a colossal can of worms and will doubtless lead to a very interesting and volatile summer.

I'm excited - are you?