Budgeting seems to be the topic on everyone’s minds lately and I can’t help but think that this is due to Google’s subtle, or not so subtle, ways of telling you when you need to raise your bids and budgets. Google now has the ability to show you trends with your keywords, where you “should” be at for positioning and Max CPC’s, and other various tools that are likely to raise your budgets. I don’t think Google is wrong in what they say but I definitely think they have a sneaky way of not really explaining the why to customers.

Way back in 2009, Google introduced their way of showing you when you need to adjust your budget to better fit their needs … I mean your needs and help you get more impressions and clicks. They call this tactic “your campaign is ‘limited by budget.’”

Is “Limited by Budget” Just an AdWords Scam?

We all have a secret, or for some, not so secret skepticism toward anything Google suggests to us regarding our money and budgets. This is the go-to cautionary move, considering we all know how much money Google makes and we all know how much we spend in AdWords. In all fairness to Google, I don’t think this is too much of a “make money” tactic and more of a “hey maybe you should take a look at your account” tactic. Obviously we know they want to make more money but I think they sometimes have a point when they tell you that your campaign(s) are “limited by budget.” For me there is one main reason for this and it can be easy to see once you diagnose the problem.

Here’s the problem: you can’t put all your eggs in one basket and expect everything to be evenly spread. What I mean by this is, you can’t put all your keywords or ad groups in one campaign and expect Google to evenly spread your budget throughout the day. There are always going to be certain keywords that are budget suckers and those are the ones Google seems to always show. Google will base a lot of what they show on trends and if they find a couple of keywords that seem to work, they will show those over some of your other similar keywords, even if those keywords are a better fit. If your campaign(s) seem to always be limited by budget, I can almost guarantee that if you look at the data on your ad groups, you will most likely see that one ad group is miles above the cost of the other ad groups. With this, you will notice that there are also ad groups that are getting no traffic whatsoever. So what do you do?

[MORE: PPC Budget Best Practices]

What to Do When Your Campaigns Are Limited by Budget

What you need to do is (in any order):

Find those ad groups or keywords that are taking up most of your daily budget on a monthly basis.

This is easy to diagnosis because, like I said before, there are always ad groups or keywords that have a 30-70% higher cost than the others.

NEVER move your high-traffic/high-volume keywords out, ALWAYS move your low hanging fruit.

Take those ad groups and keywords that are seeing little to no traffic and create a new campaign for these with their own budgets. It is important to make sure your low-volume keywords can see some of that daily budget and ensure traffic starts coming in. Also, make sure that the budget isn’t over what you can afford. Remember, not all budgets are created equal, and it is important to make sure to never go over your comfort zone with your budgets. Think about it, if your high-traffic ad groups have their own budgets, those will continue to show and now your low-volume ones will see more traffic with their own budget. You never want to lose that historical data on keywords that are performing, so it makes more sense to take out those that aren’t doing as well; those that have little to no traffic will not be affected as much!

Look at the metrics on the keyword level and you will probably notice a trend.

You will see that there are usually 1-5 keywords that are sucking up most of the budgets and costs and leaving little to no budget for the rest of the keywords. My rule of thumb when looking at these keywords is: if those top three keywords that are sucking up most of your budget are not your biggest converters or money makers for your business, then they should be paused or optimized better.

I know what you are thinking: “Those are my high-traffic keywords, why would I want to pause them?” You want to pause them because these really aren’t doing anything for your business other than costing you money. There are probably more suitable keywords in your ad group that will convert better for you if it wasn’t for those costly keywords. Trust me, Google will find a way to spend your money, so do not be afraid to try pausing those costly keywords. Check the data and metrics on those keywords and you will find they are usually costing more and not converting at the rate they should be. They are usually those broad, more generic keywords that will drive traffic but not that qualified traffic you are looking for.  Like I said, those longer tailed keywords or more suitable keywords will start to show up more often and probably convert a whole lot better than the costly ones.

Think outside of the box.

Don’t just look at the obvious metrics, dig a bit deeper. Just because you moved those low hanging keywords and ad groups into their own campaigns with their own budget, does not always guarantee better performance. Everyone always resorts to raising the budget because Google says to do so, but there are other metrics to look at that may help. Typically those keywords are not being shown due to budget issues, and raising your daily budget and adjusting to make new campaigns will help, but you may also want to take a look at the Max CPC’s and the average position when doing this. Giving something its own budget will not guarantee top of page or the number one spot, so make adjustments when you look at the metrics and this will really help you optimize that low hanging fruit. This isn’t always necessary, but PPC is never a guarantee, so the more experimenting you can do, the better your account will perform.

There are definitely countless ways to curtail this problem but this is what I have found successful from helping others with their accounts. If you really think about it, it all makes perfect sense. Of course, you may have the best structure and never have to worry about this but for those of us who never get it right the first time, this is something you are always going to be dealing with (unless you are one of the few that always says “Google never seems to spend all the daily budget” and for those few, that’s a whole other topic and easier to solve!).

Paid search is definitely not a set it and forget it type of industry and there is always going to be some experimentation happening. So make sure to try new things, think outside of the box and you will be golden! If you have any questions or would like to weigh in on this discussion, feel free to leave a comment below!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Our friends at PPC Hero put together an infographic of the Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts in 2013, based on votes from readers, social influence and other influence factors (speaking engagements, books published, channels reached, etc.). We were very excited to see our own Larry Kim in the very top spot! Check out the full graphic below to see all the top experts.

Huge thanks to our buddies at Hanapin for putting this together, and congrats to all the other experts. We're honored to be in your company!

You can read more about the survey's methodology here.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

With the introduction of Google+ authorship, it’s quickly becoming important in the world of SEO and social media to demonstrate who you know. Not only do users want to see that you are connected with industry leaders, but Google wants to see this as well. The more advanced blogs where your content appears and the more advanced people that share your content, the better chance your content has to succeed.

In short, you want to be able to connect with influencers—people in your industry who are well respected, widely published, speak at important conventions, have a success story, etc.— so that you can someday become an influencer yourself. It won’t happen overnight, but there are ways to slowly break into the world of the experts.

How to Track Influencers with Google+ Ripples

One of the lesser known ways to connect with influencers is through Google+ Ripples. The great thing about Ripples is the idea that you can see not just who is sharing your SEO content, but who your specific influencers really are and how to connect with them. You can see who shared your content and gave that content good visibility. That person is absolutely a social media influencer for you, so he/she is someone you should want to meet.

It is the analytics section where you can really check out how you can find influencers and improve the visibility of your content. A great way to start your search is by having a few influencers in mind, and then checking to see whose content they are sharing. Find someone who has a smaller following, and target them first. Take the below example:

If you’re hoping to get Louis Gray of Google to share your content, you might want to first connect with Vicky Gallardo and get her to share your content. This will put you on the radar of someone bigger, like Louis Gray.

If you are unfamiliar with the basics of how Google Ripples work, check out a detailed article I wrote on Search Engine Journal.

Tips and Tricks for Connecting with Social Media Influencers in the Industry

Connecting with influencers is one of those things that works like a domino effect—once you connect with one or two, others will soon follow. Below are a few examples of ways that you can further your connections with some top SEO minds:

• Start commenting on their content and sharing their content, and then connect with them when they really know who you are. It’s all about getting your foot in the door. Mention other high-profile relationships you may have or send over some great sample articles when it comes time to send an email.
• Use Google+ Ripples as discussed above. Don’t just find the social media influencers this way, but manipulate your content in a way that gets it shared by influencers so that you can make a more meaningful connection easier.
• Build up a portfolio of content before you try and pitch something to these influencers. Remember, it’s OK to guest post on lesser-known blogs first (in fact, this is usually how most success stories start).
• Reference them in all your social shares. If you’re going to share someone’s content, reference him/her in the content. Share something on Google+ and tag the author in the post and explain why you like it. The same goes for Twitter and Facebook if possible.

It’s also important to note that all of these tactics work great whether you’re trying to connect with an influencer or not. You should try and treat everyone you talk with in the industry with the same persistence and thoroughness—influencers are just a bit harder to reach sometimes.

[MORE: Should You Buy Pinterest Followers?]

Top Books By Some of the Most Popular Influencers in SEO

I recently wrote an article detailing all of the great SEO books written this year and last year and found that there are more choices out there than many might realize. The following few books are a great way to hear from these influencers when you want to give your eyes a rest from staring at a computer screen, and they’ll give you another outlet to find those really important people in the industry:

• The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Stephen Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessica Strichhiolia
• SEO Fitness Workbooks by Jason McDonald
• The Link Building Book by Paddy Moogan
• SEO for Content Writers and PR Pros by Phil Byrne
• SEO for Beginners by Amit Bhawnani
• Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent

It’s important to realize that many of the tips discussed above will work for any industry. If you’re interested in health, use Google+ ripples to follow those involved in the health field online or consider finding books written by these influencers.

Do you have any tips regarding connecting with industry influencers? How do you find and connect with those you feel are influential in your industry? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro. Amanda writes for Highervisibility.com, a nationally recognized SEO consulting firm that offers national and local SEO services to a wide range of companies across the country.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Ever since Google introduced auto-complete in 2004, predictive search has become a welcome part of our internet interactions, helping us search faster, find results quicker, and discover answers to questions we didn’t even know we had.

As predictive search becomes more powerful, tools like Google Now have become capable of delivering relevant, personalized information to users, all but eliminating the need for search as we know it.

Will Google’s continued efforts in predictive search destroy search engines as we know them today? Is Google Now the beginning of a self-destructive path for the king of search?

In this post we’re looking at all aspects of predictive search – how Google uses it in search engines, the role it plays on mobile devices and in new features like Google Now, and what we can expect for predictive search in the future.

The Origins of Google Predictive Search

Google launched the practice of predictive search back in 2004 with Google Suggest, which was then renamed to Google AutoComplete in 2010.

 image borrowed from blogoscoped.com

Also in 2010, Google Instant came on the scene, generating search results instantly as users type. While Google Instant and AutoComplete are technically separate features, this partnership, resulting in a more advanced Google predictive search engine experience, is often grouped under the umbrella term of Google Instant.

Google Predictive Search: How Does it Work?

Google’s predictive search feature uses a predictive search algorithm based on popular searches to predict a user’s search query as it is typed, providing a dropdown list of suggestions that changes as the user adds more characters to the search input.

You can see predictive search examples below:

Oh Theon, we are so worried about you!

Google, helping out Pokemon trainers everywhere

This may seem like a minor feat, but people type considerably slower than they read, and Google predictive search saves users quite a bit of time by not making them always have to type their full query.

As Google notes, before Google Instant, a typical search took more than 9 seconds to type in, with some searches taking as long as 30-90 seconds to type (I’m guessing that’s the 60+ crowd). Google says that if Google Instant is used globally, over 3.5 billion seconds will be saved each day from Google predictive search, equating to 11 hours saved every second. Not bad, huh? Now all we need is a machine that stores all those hours saved and uses that stolen time to make us immortal.

In some ways, the necessity of Google Instant shows how pathetic we humans have become. I’ve had times when I don’t even know the name of the device I’m searching for, but as I type my query, Google takes pity on my useless human brain and clues me in to what I’m trying to incoherently articulate. It’s demeaning but really helpful!

Yeah, something like that…

Google Auto Complete is a Pop Culture Icon

Predictive search has become a cornerstone of Google’s identity as a search engine, showcasing their creative efforts to make search easier (and serving as further justification for keeping track of so many users’ queries).

Google predictive search is really a pop culture icon in its own right, with predictive search blogs and humorous compilings of unusual Google auto complete search suggestions.

Fast Company created a great piece of web artistry with their Accidental Poetry of Google Predictive Search, showcasing the beauty of happy accidents on Google search. That crazy Google, what will it say next?

This powerful video uses Google predictive search to examine the personal, emotional, and inherently human questions and concerns users bring to the anonymous advice expert and computer soothsayer, the mighty Googs.

How to Turn Off Google Predictive Search

Not everyone sees predictive search as a fun and useful tool; it’s true that Google Instant results will sometimes use your search history to suggest searches, which privacy advocates aren’t thrilled about. Others dislike it because they find Google Instant annoying. Regardless of your reasoning, it’s pretty easy to disable predictive search.

Just run a Google search, click the gear icon in the upper right corner and click “search settings” (NOTE: the gear icon won’t appear until after you’ve run a search).

In search settings you’ll see the option to turn off Google Instant search.

Google Predictive Search: Knowledge Graph

Google’s growing predictive search power gained another foothold with the introduction of its Knowledge Graph in 2013. The Knowledge Graph guesses what type of information a user is searching for when they search a celebrity name or even “museums in Berlin,” and generates specific related content right alongside normal search results.

The Google Knowledge Graph shows that Google isn’t just getting better at predicting users’ questions, but is also getting ever more adept at figuring out what kind of answers users are after.

Google Now Powering Your Life

Google Now embodies the true possibilities of predictive search, serving as a personalized computer assistant that can predict your needs, wants, and deep desires.

For some, Google Now is some strange sorcery, as it delivers important information about the traffic on your morning commute, your updated flight itinerary, and the results of last night’s hockey game on your phone, without you even asking. How did it even know that!?

It’s not magic or mind prediction – the Wizard of Googs is hidden in the Emerald City, behind the curtain, pulling all the strings, smoke, bells, and whistles. In order to provide this relevant info that relates to you and only you, Google uses your private data, accessing (with your permission of course) your Gmail and other info in order to keep tabs on things like flight reservations and hotel bookings.

Google Now has been a group project on Google’s part, combining research and work they’ve done with features like Google Instant, and learning to recognize pop culture references with Knowledge Graph. Google Now is powered by the wealth of search research and Google user services.

Google Now, Apple Later: Apple’s Going After GOKR

Although Google Now is making huge leaps and bounds in predictive search, Apple is always close at the heels – recent rumors claim that Apple may have recently acquired the predictive search app, Gokr. Gokr predictive search uses a kind of knowledge graph that scans and digests info across the web to deliver the appropriate content to users.

Gokr predictive search, combined with Apple’s Siri, could be some serious competition for Google Now.

The Brave New Future of Predictive Search: What’s Next?

With sibling rivalry between Apple and Google for the ultimate virtual personal assistant, we can expect predictive, personal search to become even more popular.

Google Now has been a brilliant move on Google’s part, but one has to wonder if they’re cannibalizing themselves; as predictive search becomes more powerful, the need for classic search engines like Google diminishes. For now, there are still plenty of questions and mysteries we need the Google search engine to answer, but will that always be the case?

Perhaps Google isn’t worried because it sees itself eventually leaving traditional search behind and devoting itself entirely to the final frontier of predictive search.

Google Now is definitely not the end of the line for Google when it comes to predictive search – in fact, we can confidently say it’s only the beginning. With breakthroughs like Google Glass and improved Google voice functionality, it’s hard to say for sure where predictive search fits in.

We can expect to be asked to surrender even more personal data, and with even larger pay-offs. With recent leaks about NSA surveillance, questions about how data should be saved, when and where it should be collected, and how it should be used continue to be major issues. 

In our data-driven world, sacrificing privacy has become an acceptable cost for the advantages of technology. Today it’s a peek at our Gmail, tomorrow it’ll be something else, but no matter what is asked of us, Google drives a hard bargain in making our lives easier in exchange – that’s the price of predictive search.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

We’ve teamed up with Google to make our award-winning AdWords Performance Grader even easier to use and the login process more secure than ever.

The new authentication process, based on OAuth2, enables you to run the free AdWords Performance Grader by signing in with your Google profile – just be sure you use the profile associated with an active Google AdWords account. (The process is similar to using your Facebook account to comment on a blog.) WordStream will then do a one-time read of the data in your AdWords account, while Google controls a secure interaction. The new process is fast, easy and helps ensure the highest level of privacy and security.

Watch this video to see how it works!

To try out the new Grader for yourself, go to www.wordstream.com/google-adwords and follow these steps:

Step 1: Complete the form fields and click the “Continue” button. WordStream will then redirect you to a Google-hosted authentication page.

Step 2: Once you’re on the Google login page, provide your email address and password for the Google account that is associated with your AdWords account. Then click “Sign in.”

If you’re already logged in to your Google account, you won’t even see this step. However, take note of the Google profile that you’re already signed in with. You may need to change this profile if it is not the email address that is associated with your active AdWords account.

Step 3: Once you’ve signed in, click the “Accept” button to authorize WordStream to access your account. This is read-only access and no changes will be made to your account, ever! The language used here is simply Google’s standard verbiage.

If you haven’t already used the Grader to analyze your account, now is the time! It takes just a minute and your free report will be packed with insight on your account’s performance, including:

• Whether or not you’re prepared for the automatic upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns
• How your Quality Score distribution matches up against the recommended curve
• Areas of under-optimization such as landing pages, long-tail keywords and more

Click here to get your free report now.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Our latest white paper is now available for download. Below is an excerpt from the guide. Click here to download the full text of this new, free guide(PDF).

8 Simple Things You Might Be Overlooking In Your AdWords Account

AdWords makes it incredibly easy to set up and run a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, but some advertisers assume that after they've written an ad, typed in some keywords, set the budget, and switched on the campaign, there's nothing more to do except sit back and watch the clicks and conversions roll in.

In reality, any account – large or small – can benefit from a few quick, simple tweaks designed to optimize the advertiser's reach, click-through rate, and return on investment (ROI). These updates don't cost anything extra, and they're simple enough that even someone with limited experience managing accounts and limited time can set them up with ease.

In this guide, we'll offer eight easy-to-implement, impactful techniques to keep in mind when optimizing your ad campaigns. These are common mistakes that new and smaller AdWords advertisers frequently overlook that can help transform underperforming AdWords accounts.

1. Make Sure Conversion Tracking Is Installed

A surprising number of AdWords accounts aren’t even tracking conversions. This makes tasks like optimizing bids and ad text very difficult and imprecise, as you’re unable to actually identify which areas of your campaigns are working. Conversion tracking also lets you compare ad spend vs. ROI. For example, if last month you spent $500 on ads and only sold $400 of goods or services, you'll want to make some adjustments to your campaign.

First, decide what constitutes a conversion for your business. The most obvious example of a conversion is a purchase made through the website, but conversions can also be counted when a customer signs up for a newsletter, fills out an online survey, clicks the "Contact Us" button, downloads an app or whitepaper, calls a phone number from a mobile device, and so on.

Setting up conversion tracking involves generating a bit of HTML code in AdWords that you paste into the URL of the webpage on your site that people visit immediately after completing the conversion (such as an "Order Confirmation" or "Thanks for Contacting Us" page). Visit the Conversions section of the Tools & Analysis tab to get your HTML code.

Once conversion tracking is up and running, you can use the Search Funnels in analytics to track detailed data on your conversions and inform your conversion rate optimization efforts. (Access Search Funnels by clicking the Search Funnels link at the lower left of the Conversions window.)

Analyzing this data can help you gain insights about how customers behave on your website, such as how much time elapsed between when they clicked on your ad for the first time to when they completed the conversion, and how many times they saw your ads before converting.

Tip:

If your goal is to track conversions, consider setting your ad delivery method to "Optimize for conversions" in the Advanced settings section of the Settings tab. When this is selected, the ads deemed most likely to result in conversions will be served in the auction more frequently. (The default setting is to optimize for clicks.)

2. Assign Conversion Values

One of the options within the conversion tracking tab as you’re implementing your conversion code is to designate values for different conversions. This can be very valuable if there are multiple offers on your site – for instance, you can assign different values to a purchase of your product versus a newsletter sign-up or a white paper download, based on your business metrics and how much those conversion types are worth to your business.

Once you've assigned your values you can measure data about the volume of conversions attached to different campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords. Conversion data appears alongside the other information columns in the Campaigns tab.

Assigning conversion values means you can more immediately understand not only the volume of conversions attached to different campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords, but also the actual business impact of those components of your campaigns.

3. Test Multiple Ads

Running multiple ads per campaign is a basic best practice that even the smallest of accounts should make use of....

Click here to download the full guide, "8 Simple Things You Might Be Overlooking in Your AdWords Account" (it's FREE!)

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

It's been a busy few days in the news and many of us have been glued to our "sets" (i.e. Twitter) following the filibuster in the Texas senate and, this morning, the Supreme Court's historic decision to strike down DOMA (the defense of marriage act), the 1996 law which denied federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples. In a cute act of apparent support for gay rights, Google has implemented a rainbow search box for searches related to gay marriage, such as "gay" and "lesbian":

What do you think of Google's show of support? Should the search giant stay out of politics?

You can read about the significance of the rainbow flag to the gay rights movement here.

UPDATE: Though we only noticed this today, Danny Sullivan points out that the rainbow search box was already in place for Gay Pride Month.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Google Reader is going away on July 1, leaving its small but loyal fan based scrambling to find a replacement RSS reader. (This longtime Google Reader user has been very happy since switching to Feedly.)

With Google Reader on its death bed, and iGoogle approaching the end as well, we thought it was high time we revisited some of the many other Google products that we’ve said goodbye to over the years. Many of these products were great ideas that just never caught on with a larger audience; some had overlapping functionality with other products, forcing Google to focus development efforts on one over the other. I still mourn the old, social version of Google Reader. Which Google product still haunts you from beyond the grave?

Our Google Graveyard infographic reviews some of the many great ideas that went dodo-wise at Google over the years. As Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO once said, “We celebrate our failures.” So today we celebrate 10+ years of Google product ghosts, with Google Reader being the latest to pass away.

Click the infographic to see the full-size version.

List of Google Products Retired and Discontinued Since 2006

Google Reader

What it did: An once-robust RSS reader with a small (in Google’s eyes) but very loyal fanbase.

What happened: Google stripped Reader of its social properties in October 2011, then finally axed the product. Date of death: July 2013.

iGoogle

What it did: A customizable homepage containing web feeds and Google Gadgets, launched in May 2005. Renamed iGoogle in April 2007.

What happened: Citing “erosion of the need for the site,” Google will retire iGoogle on November 1, 2013.

Google Talk

What it did: Desktop instant messaging service that provided text and voice communication.

What happened: Replaced by Google Hangouts on May 15, 2013.

Google Health

What it did: Allows users to store, manage and share all their health and wellness information in one central place.

What happened: Development ceased June 24, 2011; accessible until January 1, 2012; data available for download until January 1, 2013.

Knol

What it did: Google’s attempt at a Wikipedia competitor, Knol enabled subject experts and other users to write authoritative articles related to various topics.

What happened: Content was not accessible after October 1, 2012.

Google Insights for Search

What it did: Similar to Google Trends, Insights for Search provided insight into popular search terms.

What happened: Discontinued since September 27, 2012. The functionality was merged with Google Trends.

Picnik

What it did: An online photo editor. Before being acquired by Google in 2010, Picnik was the default photo editor in Flickr.

What happened: Closed on April 19, 2012.

Google Buzz

What it did: Google Buzz was a social networking, microblogging and messaging tool that was integrated with Gmail, initially (to much chagrin) as an opt-out service.

What happened: Discontinued on December 15, 2011.

Aardvark

What it did: A social search service that facilitated Q&A sessions over live chat, intended to match askers with good answerers.

What happened: Acquired for $50 million in February 2010, Aardvark was discontinued in September 2011.

Sidewiki

What it did: Sidewiki was a browser sidebar tool that allowed users to contribute information to any web page.

What happened: Killed in September 2011 along with a host of other unsuccessful products.

Google Notebook

What it did: A free application that allowed users to save clips of information in an online “notebook.”

What happened: Discontinued in September 2011. Google launched a similar product, Google Keep, in March 2013.

Google Dictionary

What it did: As the name implies, an online dictionary service.

What happened: Shut down without warning in August 2011; part of the functionality was integrated with the define: operator.

Google Labs

What it did: A “playground” where adventurous users could test and provide feedback on prototype projects.

What happened: Discontinued in July 2011.

Google Wave

What it did: Released as an invite-only preview in 2009, Google Wave was a framework that allowed real-time collaborative editing with elements of email, IM, wikis, and social networking.

What happened: Google ceased development of Wave in August 2010 due to lack of interest

SearchWiki

What it did: This feature allowed logged-in users to annotate and re-order search results.

What happened: Search Wiki was discontinued in March 2010.

Dodgeball

What it did: Google bought Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service, in 2005. Its founder went on to leave Google and form Foursquare.

What happened: Google killed Dodgeball in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude.

Jaiku

What it did: Jaiku is to Twitter as Dodgeball is to Foursquare: This microblogging service was so named because the posts resembled haiku.

What happened: Google stopped development on Jaiku in 2009.

Google Lively

What it did: A 3D animated chat program, using avatars, that was only supported on Windows.

What happened: Google Lively only lived six months, going to the chopping block in December 2008.

Google Page Creator

What it did: A basic website creation and hosting tool that required no HTML knowledge.

What happened: Canned in 2008.

Zeitgeist

What it did: Zeitgeist was a collection of popular search queries, including weekly, monthly and yearly lists, plus topic and country specific lists.

What happened: Closed May 2007 and replaced by Hot Trends, a dynamic feature in Google Trends.

Google Answers

What it did: Google's answer to Yahoo Answers employed paid researchers and asked users to bid for a response to their question.

What happened: Users preferred their answers free, and the product was killed in December 2006.

Other discontinued and abandoned Google products include Google X, Google Catalog, Google Web Accelerator, Google Video Player, Google Audio Ads, Google Sets, SearchMash, and Writely.

With Google Reader going away next week, are you still in a state of shock or have you already moved on? (Body’s not even cold yet!) Which dead Google feature do you miss the most?

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Happy late solstice and early Independence Day, y’all! Clap your hands if summer is your favorite month.

These early days of summer are my favorite, before it gets too stiflingly hot to sleep and before my feet get too irreparably disgusting from walking around in flip-flops. While we’re all still in a good mood (right?) let’s review our hottest blog posts from the month of June!

The Top 10 Best AdWords Features You're Not Using– Our new contributor Johnathan Dane put together this list of the most awesome AdWords features that too few people are making use of.

Google AdWords Ad Extensions Cheat Sheet– Thanks to Erin Sagin for this quick cheat sheet that’ll help you figure out which ad extensions to use when.

News Flash: PPC Is Inbound Marketing– This one was posted too late in the month to make it into May’s roundup, so I’m slipping it in here. Larry took SEOmoz’s rebranding as an opportunity to revisit our definition of “inbound marketing” – and PPC counts! 

How Product Listing Ads Are Stealing Your Conversions– PLA’s are the conversion-sucking monsters of the SERP – be afraid!

Image Extend Your Ads: Google Introduces New Image Extensions– Google keeps finding new ways to make ads prettier and more clickable. Image extensions allow even non-e-commerce companies to put pictures in their ads.

12 Alternatives to Buying Pinterest Followers: Put Away Your Wallet, We've Got a Better Way– Thinking of buying Pinterest followers? We don’t recommend it. Here are some more creative ways to get more followers.

How To Get Even More Google Sitelinks!– Google has introduced new ultra-mega-sitelinks – they’re like the T-Rex burger of AdWords ads.

Top 4 Google AdWords Features I'll Be Exploring This Summer– Erin and the rest of our client services team recently met with Google in New York to do some exploring, and here are the tools and features she’s most excited about.

Should I Delete My Low Quality Score Keywords?– Low Quality Score keywords dragging you down? Deleting isn’t always the answer – learn how to approach this problem the right way.

Also, if you missed it, check out our freshly updated Google Graveyard infographic– a (macabre) celebration of retired Google products and services.

Have a great weekend!

Image via Moyan_Brenn

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Banner ads are largely seen these days as fossils from the internet’s dinosaur period, back when blinking text was cool and Angelfire sites were all the rage.

Such online billboard ads have long been considered deceased, dead, and buried, with few mourners grieving the demise of web banner ads. However, a new breed of banner ad has evolved and is on the rise thanks to Google, and they’re hungry for blood (or clicks. Whichever is easier).

Today we’re looking at the horrific past of banner ads, their new and improved counterpart, and how you can make banner ads work for you!

Everyone’s (Least) Favorite Ad: Why Most Banner Ads Stink

 Just like the Iraq War, slavery, and parachute pants, banner ads are an ugly part of our history. They’ve generally been seen as a public nuisance and hideous to boot. Once commonplace, their popularity dive-bombed in 2008, with most users saying good riddance!

As Brian Morrissey of Digiday notes, “The banner ad is now 18 years old. It has become a symbol of all that’s wrong with online advertising. It is more often than not devoid of creativity; it stands out as an intruder on webpages; and it is mostly ignored by readers.”

Harsh words, but not untrue! A couple years ago Solve Media did a report showing just how ghastly click-through rates for web banner ads are. Turns out you’re a LOT more likely to accomplish any number of amazing feats than you are to click a website banner ad. In fact, you’re:

• 31.25 times more likely to win a prize in the Mega Millions
• 87.8 times more likely to apply to Harvard and get in
• 12.5 times more likely to sign up for and complete NAVY SEAL training
• 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash
• 279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest

Welp, time to break out those hiking shoes! Despite these dismal CTRs, some claim that even those run-of-the-mill website banner ads can serve a valuable purpose for advertisers.

Is There More to Banner Ads Than CTR?

These days, standard banners get somewhere around a 0.3% CTR, and while that’s pretty darn terrible, one has to look past CTR to see the big picture.

Many simply want to know, do banner ads work? The answer isn’t so simple, and takes more into account than just CTRs. With internet banner ads, impressions can be nearly as valuable as clicks – they may not be gold, but bronze is still valuable! Marketing Profs reminds us to heed PEAR– Potential Eyeball and Retention. Some banner ads aren’t even designed to get clicked; they are essentially there for branding purposes. Even mosquitos have a purpose in the grand design of advertising.

While some online users claim they ignore all online ads completely, the truth is that we humans aren’t as good at voluntarily blinding ourselves as we think. If a bright, colorful banner appears on your screen, you’ll look at it, and while it may have no affect today, days, months, or even years later it may become relevant.

Maybe you don’t need a new laptop today, but when an ad for that slick new MacBook Air appears on your favorite blog, you may think “Wow, that looks great! I’d love to get my hands on one of those.” A few months later your buddy drinks a few too many Twisted Teas and accidentally pours one all over your computer! Before you know it, you’re mulling over what new laptop to buy and what comes to mind, but that MacBook Air!

While PEAR is a metric that can’t be ignored, it’s incredibly difficult to measure how a banner ads affects click-less assets like brand awareness, and with internet banner ads as a whole being largely ugly and irritating, it’s no surprise banner ads of ages past have such a bad reputation.

Google Gives the Banner Ad a Much Needed Makeover

While old-school banner ads have lost favor in our new online ad age, Google’s new banner ad system, the Google Display Network, gives the banner ad its comeback.

What makes the Google Display Network better than the previous generation of banner ads? A few things, the major one being remarketing.

If you’re not familiar with remarketing, it’s easier to explain it in practice: You’re visiting a beer hobby site, looking for some classic German beer steins to add to your impressive collection. Suddenly you get a call from your friend wanting to know the movie times for Fast and Furious 9, which you two are seeing tonight. You click over to the Regal Cinema website to check the movie time, and after hanging up with your pal, you forget all about the steins. As you click around the web, you see a display banner ad that looks familiar – it’s an ad for those German beer steins you were looking at earlier! Oh man, you totally forgot about those! You click the ad, finish your purchase, and everyone is all smiles.

How is it done? A little cookie hops onto your browser when you visit a site with a remarketing campaign set up. If you navigate away from the page, it might toss up some display banner ads around the Google’s banner ad network, aka the Display Network, trying to get you back to that original product page you were visiting.

Remarketing ads perform drastically better than classic banner ads, with higher CTRs and conversions – up to 36 times higher. Why the increase? Classic banner ads are aligned with interruption marketing; they throw an ad in front users and hope for the best. This technique has been the foundation of most historical advertising, relying on obstructing a user’s natural flow to promote a message. In order to get attention, interruption marketing is often forceful, loud, obnoxious, and strives to be shocking in order to demand attention.

However, remarketing changes all that, transforming interruption marketing into inbound marketing. Inbound marketing tries to merge itself with a user’s natural, organic flow by offering helpful content or something you’ve already shown interest in. Remarketing banner ads are inbound marketing; they don’t scream out the same proclamation to all users – instead, they offer a tailored, targeted, and intent-based ad experience that speaks to each individual user.

Remarketing banner ads may look similar to banner ads of the past, but they’re truly a whole new breed. They are more effective banner ads that are better for users and advertisers.

Google Display Makes it Easy to Craft the Best Banner Ads

Online banner ads are also improving as Google makes it easier for advertisers to craft good banner ads. In efforts to get even more people on the Google Display Network boat, Google offers many tools and resources to help advertisers create banner ads with ease.

AdWords provides help with banner ad design, offering a large range of various banner ad sizes, templates, and tips on banner ad best practices so all advertisers can make great banner ads.

You don’t have to set up all your banner ads for remarketing campaigns, but we recommend putting in the effort to experiment with remarketing. Advertisers are usually shocked by the hefty conversion rates for remarketing campaigns – give it a try!

Banner Ads Are Back & Better Than Ever!

This new generation of improved banner ads means great things for advertisers, especially considering the popularity of images these days. Pinterest is a great example, showing the insatiable hunger users have for image-based content. Some of the most popular Pinterest images feature a single colorful image with a simple line of text that could easily be mistaken for a good banner ad. 

Lock your doors, hide your kids, the banner ad is back and better than ever! The Google Display Network’s remarketing capabilities are bringing the banner ad into a new and glorious era.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Here at WordStream, I am not only a Customer Success Specialist, but I am also a Premier Consultant. As a Premier Consultant I meet with clients every two to four weeks to discuss the state of their account and what they should be doing to improve it. On these calls we can really dig into what our advertisers need to be doing to improve their account, whether that’s setting up brand new remarketing campaigns, digging into how to improve quality score, or helping to analyze advanced metrics in Google Analytics.

Part of my usual process when I get a brand new Premier Consulting client is to first run through a checklist of items to determine what shape the account is in and what areas we can target to work on first together. I focus on the basic structural aspects in an account first, and then work to more advanced topics once the basics are covered.

I’m not going to give away the secret sauce of our Premier Consulting services; however the information I’m going to share in this blog post provides insight into parts of the checklist I go through so you can get a better handle on your own or your clients’ overall account.

BONUS: Click here to download a simplified version of this checklist as a PDF.

1. Campaigns:
   1. Location– Ensure they’re only targeting the locations where they do business.
   2. Language– Make sure they’re only advertising in the language the ads are written in.
   3. Search vs. Display– Check to make sure no campaigns are targeting both the Search Network and Display Network. If there are any, suggest that they split them into separate campaigns.
   4. Mobile– Whether they’re on enhanced campaigns or legacy campaigns, I’ll segment their campaign data by device and check their campaign settings to get a sense if they have evaluated their mobile situation. Conversion data can be significantly different on different platforms and also, some clients are surprised at their ratio of their mobile to desktop traffic.
2. Ad Groups:
   1. Size– Check out any ad groups that are over 20-30 keywords in size. Chances are they may be able to be broken down into smaller ad groups that will be more focused on a specific topic, which will help them craft better ads and direct to appropriate landing pages.
   2. Topic– Spot check some of the ad groups with the highest clicks, impressions, and cost to make sure that they’re all tightly packed around the same topic. Sometimes even smaller groups can be unfocused and could be targets to split up.
   3. Number of ads– I usually like to see two or three ads per ad group in my clients’ accounts. This means they can test ads against each other to continually optimize (versus if they only had 1 ad running), but also means that they’ll be able to collect actionable data fast enough (if they have 4+ ads running per group it will take longer to collect the data).
3.  Keywords:
   1. Match Types– The most common thing I look for here is to see if they are using too many broad match keywords– some clients have started working with me with accounts that are only on broad match. In most cases where this occurs, they haven’t had a chance to look into the best match types for their keywords. A second thing I’ll look for is to see if they are using match types that may be too restrictive. For example there are some cases where a phrase match type is used where a modified broad match type would be more appropriate. The phrase match may be too restrictive for the queries the client is actually hoping their keyword will match to.
4. Search Queries:
   1. In the WordStream PPC Advisor software, I’ll jump into their QueryStream on the account level and look through their search queries with the most impressions, cost, and clicks. This can indicate that there’s work to do adding negative keywords and/or changing match types on keywords. If you’re not using WordStream PPC Advisor, you can get similar information from the Search Query Report in Google.
5. Other:
   1. Conversion Tracking– If a client doesn’t have conversion tracking set up already, this is always action item number one to get them on the right track.
   2. Ad Extensions– I’ll make sure they’re using appropriate ad extensions for their business and resources.
   3. Other Red Flags– This can include anything that could cause serious problems but doesn’t appear too often. One recent example of something that fit under this bucket was a case where someone was running a product listing ad and regular search ads in the same ad group.

Those are the main basics I’ll take a look at when evaluating a new client’s account and deciding what to focus on during our initial Premier Consulting sessions, but there are plenty of other items on my actual checklist I use for my clients.

Once we have gone through an overview of the basics and have evaluated what shape the account is in, then the true Premier Consulting starts – discussing various advanced tactics and optimizations like scheduling, bidding strategy, possible expansion areas, peel and stick opportunities, etc. However, knowing where an account stands right off the bat is truly the difference between success and struggle.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Note: A version of this mobile marketing case study appears on the AdWords blog (PDF version).

The rundown

WordStream client Colombo Hurd upgraded its largest AdWords campaign to Enhanced Campaigns in April. Because mobile traffic has tended to be more valuable to the law firm, they decided to ramp up their local mobile marketing investment and increased mobile bids by +25%. As of early May, Colombo Hurd had increased customer conversion rate on mobile ads by a factor of three and reduced the cost of a new customer acquisition by 149% with the new mobile marketing campaign.

The Goals

• Increase conversions
• Generate phone calls to schedule in-person consultations
• Improve sophistication of mobile-targeted advertising

The Approach

• Upgraded largest campaign to EC and monitored results
• Adjusted CPC bid for mobile devices to +25%
• Set up call tracking

The Results

• Mobile ads had higher ad positions and higher CTR at a lower CPC
• The mobile traffic converted at a 3x higher rate for about 1/3 the cost

Founded in 2006, Colombo Hurd is a successful law firm headquartered in Orlando, Florida, with an additional office in Miami. The firm’s target clients include corporations and investors that are looking to bring employees to the US, family immigration clients and deportees in need of legal counsel and removal defense. 

Colombo Hurd’s business is driven primarily from referrals and paid search. The firm spends approximately $10,000 a month on online advertising with AdWords. They currently do not have an in-house PPC manager. One of the law partners works with us to manage the paid search account with the help of our software, PPC Advisor, and a dedicated rep, Erin Sagin.

Prior to migrating to Enhanced Campaigns, Colombo Hurd was targeting all devices across campaigns (no specific mobile marketing strategy) and had not set up call tracking.  

Making local mobile traffic count

The team at Colombo Hurd believed that mobile traffic was valuable to its business. However, they had not found the time to enable sophisticated device targeting and other mobile advertising options, such as call tracking. Rather, all the firm’s campaigns were set to target all devices, and receptionists accepting incoming calls were instructed to make note of referral sources. This made it difficult to track mobile marketing ROI.

Enhanced Campaigns are designed for a multi-screen world, where people switch seamlessly between desktops and mobile devices, as well as uber-busy advertisers, who can now manage bids across devices from a single, scalable campaign. By setting multiple bid adjustments to target what’s most important to your business, AdWords automatically determines the best ad to appear. This helps you reach your most valuable customers and connect with them anytime, anywhere and from any device. In addition, Enhanced Campaigns simplify mobile conversion tracking, so advertisers can allocate their budgets to the channels that deliver the best leads.

Upgrading for more control over device, time and location

WordStream and Colombo Hurd used the Enhanced Campaigns Transition Wizard to transition the firm’s largest campaign, increasing bids by 25% for mobile devices. The whole process took less than 30 minutes. To optimize their mobile marketing strategy, they created mobile-preferred ad text for each ad group, using mobile-specific CTAs such as “Call Now.” Then they upgraded to the new call extensions – key because the firm’s most valuable leads come through phone calls. They elected to track call conversions and took advantage of the call length feature to designate conversions as calls that last longer than three minutes.

In addition, they adjusted time-of-day bids. Because daytime calls during office hours, when a lawyer is available to screen potential clients, tend to be most valuable to the firm, bids were increased by 20% from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Finally, they set up radius targeting – in the form of concentric circles in a 5-, 20- and 50-mile radius around the Orlando office – in order to capture and identify location trends and adjust bids accordingly at a later time.  

Capturing the value of mobile traffic with enhanced campaigns

The results so far have been powerful. Colombo Hurd found that a high proportion of its traffic – 42% – comes from mobile devices, so the client quickly moved to mobile-optimize more ad groups and start plans for developing a better mobile site. The new mobile marketing ads demonstrated compelling performance, with:

• A higher average position than desktop ads (1.2 versus 2.2)
• A higher click-through rate (2.88% versus 1.88%)
• Lower cost per click ($13.23 versus $15.31)

Interestingly, desktop and tablet CPCs were almost identical.

The new call tracking feature enabled Colombo Hurd to get a clear picture of the ROI of its mobile advertising spend. The firm found that mobile ads in the upgraded campaign converted at three times the rate of desktop ads (with a 29% conversion rate to customer compared to 10% on desktop). In addition, the cost to acquire a customer from mobile marketing was significantly lower, at $56 per new client compared to $170 for desktop form submits.

Moving to Enhanced Campaigns has really proven the value of mobile traffic to Colombo Hurd’s client acquisition efforts. The firm plans to continue migrating its existing ad groups and campaigns into mobile-targeted campaigns and further optimizing its website for those audiences and devices.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

No search marketing campaign can guarantee a 100% purchase rate. Simply put, many visitors just aren't ready to buy... yet. Marketing automation technology and best practices close that gap, turning every website visitor into a lead to be loved and nurtured. 

As marketing best practices have evolved over the years, so has modern marketing automation. Today, consumers make decisions on their own terms and expect marketing messages to be relevant both to their interests and where they are in the buying process. Delivering the wrong message at the wrong time is both annoying and a waste of $$.

The marketing climate has been moving in this direction for many years. From the dawn of radio and television, consumer choice has increased and marketers have been forced to continually refine their messaging tactics.

You might even say that the recent explosion of marketing automation is the dawn of a new era that has been a long time coming! And by utilizing the right marketing automation solution and implementing some best practices, you can put these new trends to work for you.

We created this infographic to provide a visual interpretation of the evolution of modern marketing. Learn how advances in radio, television, the internet, social media, and the arrival of marketing automation technology have paved the way for modern marketing as we know it today.

This is a guest post by Caroline Higgins, Community Outreach Strategist at Marketo, a provider of marketing automation solutions.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

As the deadline to migrate to Enhanced Campaigns looms ahead (it's in 12 days!), advertisers are becoming increasingly anxious about how these new features will impact their paid search accounts. Here are the answers to some of my clients’ top five most frequently asked questions about Enhanced Campaigns:

Q: How do I determine my bid modifier for mobile?

A: If you’ve advertised on mobile devices in the past, take some time to segment your performance by device and assess your mobile success. Consider how you are performing at your current CPCs and set your bid modifiers accordingly. If you are new to the mobile space, Google recommends using this formula to calculate an appropriate bid adjustment: 100% x ((value per mobile click/value per desktop click) – 1)). Regardless of which method you use, be sure to keep an eye on your mobile marketing strategy and performance and tweak your bids accordingly.

Q: If I don’t have a mobile website yet, what do I do?

A: Developing a mobile-friendly version of your website should be at the top of your PPC to-do list. Now that Google is flooding the mobile space, it is critical that you give your mobile searchers a positive experience. There is no sense in paying for clicks to send your searchers to pages that offer little chance of conversion. If you’re looking for a cheap interim solution, check out http://www.dudamobile.com/. This service allows you to convert your existing webpages to a mobile-optimized site.

Q: Can I avoid advertising on mobile devices?

A: If you’re looking to game the system, there is one loophole you can exploit. Adjust your mobile bid modifier to -100%. This will allow you to steer clear of advertising to mobile devices.

Q: Why can’t I adjust my bid for tablets?

A: Perhaps the most controversial change that came along with Enhanced Campaigns is that Google no longer differentiates between tablet and desktop searches. Therefore, the base bid that is assigned to desktop devices will automatically be applied to tablets. Frustrating as this may be, Google makes a strong case for the new combo. It argues that the line between these two devices is becoming blurry. Searchers are swapping desktops for tablets as their go-to home computers. Therefore, search activity on these devices are starting to align and similar performance can be expected across them. Unfortunately, if you are looking to steer clear of advertising on tablets, you are out of luck.

And finally, the burning Q:

Why should I bother upgrading my account before the Enhanced Campaign migration deadline on July 22?

A: Come July 22, Google will automatically upgrade all legacy campaigns to meet their new requirements. Since you can’t avoid the transition, embrace it. Doing the migration yourself allows you to control your bid adjustments and ensure that all similar campaigns are merged correctly. AdWords has even provided an upgrade center to guide you through the process quickly. If you don’t address this by July 22, Google will upgrade the account, but it might not be pretty. They will apply their “recommended” bid adjustments, but they will not auto-merge similar campaigns or update your Google sitelinks and call extensions. If your campaigns are segmented by device, this could be extremely detrimental to your account, as it would produce duplicate campaigns. In this case, being proactive will certainly pay off.

To learn more about the impending upgrade, check out our Enhanced Campaigns Video Toolkit, with six how-to videos to walk you through the migration.

Best of luck as you prepare for the migration!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Your bids are competitive, your ads are laser targeted, and you've tested and tweaked your landing page to get the highest possible conversion rate. Ever.

You feel like Leonardo DiCaprio stand-spooning Kate Winslet on the Titanic, breathing in that fresh scent of saltwater greenbacks while your sales and leads keep pouring in. You're a marketing genius (and you've earned the right to call yourself that).

But then you wake up. 

Realizing that your 1997 GeoCities hosted landing page hasn't seen an improvement since, well, 1997. And your potential profits are like a leaking ship. Slowly. Dripping. Away. 

While you’re staying profitable (for now), your competitors are figuring out ways to improve, enhance, and build trust and relationships with clients that could have been yours. All because their first impression was more impressive than yours.

But don’t worry. There’s still time to improve your landing page conversion rates. 

First, let’s clear the air and separate fact from fiction.

FACT: Your biggest conversion rate gains won't come from the new ad you create, they'll come from the landing page you test.

FICTION: Landing page testing is difficult and expensive, not to mention time-consuming.

The goal of this post is to give you proven ideas to test and try on your own site to increase your landing page conversion rates and lower your cost per acquisition.

Let’s get to work!

1. Test Your Headline & Value Proposition

Not only is the headline one of the first things a person sees when on your site, but did you know that on average, only 2 out of 10 people continue to read what’s after the headline?

Talk about do or die!

The goal of your headline should be for your visitor to feel compelled enough to read whatever’s next.

Here are some tips for landing page headline testing:

• Keep it simple and clear, as clarity almost always trumps persuasion, e.g. “We’ll Improve Your Conversion Rates, Guaranteed.”
• Promise to solve a unique problem your visitor is facing. Give them a solution.
• Does your headline match what your ad is saying? If not, test this out to see the power of consistency.
• Use “Title Case for Your Headlines” and “Subhead case for your subheads.”
• Start it off as a question. For example: Want More Conversions For Less Money?
• Try National Enquirer type headlines:“Godly New Fruit Melts Away Fat. American Moms Now In A Frenzy!” Just make sure you’re being truthful.
• Use words that sell, like Free, Discover, Secret, Results, Quick, Guaranteed, etc.
• Are you funny? Then try humor.
• Use the wording “How To.....”

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Your job is to get creative and test them out, as every type of headline will yield different results.

And whether you’re writing headlines for PPC landing pages or trying to SEO your blog post, make sure you’re compelling, honest, and leave the reader wanting more.

Here’s another little trick: The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer is a free tool that lets you test different variations of your headline, and then gives you a percentage score telling you whether your headline is more intellectual, empathetic, or spiritual and what emotional marketing value it has.

The higher the percentage, the more emotional marketing power there is in your headline.

For example, here are some of the headlines I tested with the EMVHA:

1. 12 Landing Page Changes That Will Shock Your Conversion Rates (10%)
2. Higher Conversion Rates With Lower Costs, The Fast Way (11.11%)
3. Improve Your Conversion Rates With These Easy Tips (37.5%)
4. 12 Quick & Fast Ways To Get More Sales, Leads, and Sign Ups (18.18%)
5. 12 Easy Landing Page Tweaks That Will Shock Your Conversions, Starting Today (38.46%)
6. Woah! 12 Ideas To Increase Your Conversion Rates (37.50%)
7. Do Your Conversion Rates Need A Little Lift? (25%)
8. These 12 Easy Tricks Will Increase Your Conversion Rates, Starting Today. (45.45%)
9. WARNING: Increasing Your Conversion Rate Is Easier Than You Thought (30%)

(Of course, you’ll still want to run your own A/B tests, since “emotion” is subjective, and your audience might not enjoy being manipulated emotionally.)

Much like your headline, your value proposition is something that is unique to your business, like your USP, and it’s very similar to what you’d want to communicate in your headline.

If you know the pain points and fears your potential customer is facing, this should help you write a headline and value proposition specifically tailored to them.

2. Add Testimonials & Reviews

Positive endorsements give your visitors assurance that you’re legit – if they’re done right.

Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing there is, and testimonials, reviews, and endorsements are your closest thing to social proof.

Many companies put up landing page testimonials that are way too generic and weak. They’re simply not believable. Stuff like:

“Great work!” - John A.

“Wow!” - Vicky H.

“We’re making so much more money now!” - Frank Q.

And my favorite...

“Thanks.” - Ricky B.

Not only are these testimonials insanely short, but they come off as fake.

Who is Vicky? And who the hell is Ricky?

You want to use testimonials that describe how your client has benefited from something you’ve helped with. The more detail there is, the more “human” they are. And the more human, the more believable.

Here’s a better example (not real):

“Not only did WordStream help me overcome my fear of marketing, but they showed me exactly where my advertising dollars were being wasted and which areas were more profitable than others. My business now has a 72% better ROI than before.” - James Van Der Beek, CEO of DawsonsCreekDVDs.com

Note that the full name and business are included, as well details about what kind of results they got with the product/service. Not only is this testimonial more convincing, but it can be used as a reference if your potential customer is still not convinced about doing business with you.

If you don’t think testimonials are important, take a look at our CrazyEgg heat map from a testimonial on the KlientBoost site:

We have a slider for our testimonials, and it’s obvious that the clicks are red hot. People do care about this stuff!

Do you have well-known clients that are higher up the brand food chain? Use them instead of your average mom n’ pop store. Those people are the people your new customers are aspiring to be!

But be careful. The easy, quick, and wrong way to do this is to write the testimonials yourself, or go on Fiverr and hire someone to do it. I’ve spotted a couple of companies with testimonials from the same person because of their picture. Ouch!

If you can, ask your clients for their LinkedIn picture, as they already have that online. That way they’re more likely to go with it and let you use their picture.

3. Optimize Your Lead Capture Form

Your lead gen/capture form may be the quickest and easiest area for conversion rate improvement on your landing page.

Many studies have been conducted about landing page forms, and it’s a general consensus that the more information you ask for, the lower your conversion rate will be.

See, even if the visitor doesn’t actually start to fill out the form, they’ll still see it and may decide whether or not they want to start filling it out based on the number of fields. A high number of required fields will either scare them away, or they’ll abandon it half way through.

Do you ask for both first and last name? Why? Why not just “Name”?

Are you asking for their company name too? Why?! You can get that later!

What about different home phone, cell phone, work phone fields?

Here’s a test we ran for Cash4UsedCars.com, an online car selling service.

Their old form looked like this:

Here’s the new form (note that they wanted to keep the first and last name fields):

The result? A 77% increase in conversion rates and a decrease of 42% cost per lead.

While this was more of a radical redesign, we are still testing all the elements of the page to continually improve the conversion rates.

Here’s another example from one of our clients, Second Wave Recycling, an online cell phone donation charity. This one’s a bit more creative. Their old form:

And the new form:

The result of this landing page test was a 53% increase in donations. That's with no change in advertising budget, no change in the ads, and no change in the bids. 

We made it visually simpler and easier to distinguish between the two options. Either print a free pre-paid USPS label, or request a pre-paid envelope. We also made the copy easier to read, added some directional cues, and changed the color of the buttons.

But what if your form has a ton of required information and you’re not able to reduce the amount of fields?

Let me introduce you to the power of the progress bar.

The progress bar is a simple solution to break up your form into multiple steps so people aren’t overwhelmed with a form that’s as long as the dead sea scrolls. You can see a simple educational one in action right here.

4. Put Landing Page Visitors in the Isolation Tank

One common theme you see with strong PPC landing pages is isolation.

The Cash4UsedCars landing page I showed you earlier is a great example of an isolated landing page that only has one purpose and no other links, besides some hidden away in the footer.

No header links and nothing else you can click on that might distract you from filling out the form.

This method of isolating the visitor is a great combatant of something called the Zeigarnik Effect. The Zeigarnik Effect occurs when your brain feels dissonance from uncompleted tasks. You’ll remember these unfinished tasks better than the ones you finished.

So with only one task on the site, it’s easier for visitors to focus on that and complete the conversion. Keep that in mind when you create your landing pages.

5. Test Button Color, Shape, and Size

There's a science behind Amazon’s, Apple’s, and Target’s rounded corner buttons. The color, shape, and size of the button is a huge part of conversion psychology.

The button on your site is the #1 most important item that you want clicked. So it’s vital to make sure it’s performing at peak condition, like Michael Phelps was during the 2008 Olympics (and not how he performed afterwards).

Here are some things to consider:

COLOR: Your button’s color should contrast from the rest of the site so it sticks out. Don’t make it the same colors as other elements on your site.

Take LegalZoom for example.

Orange is the opposite of blue, red the opposite of green, and purple the opposite of yellow. Use this color wheel to find your complementary and contrasting color for your button test.

What’s the best practice? It’s widely accepted that orange is a great “click color” because it creates the feeling of buying or selling, it’s energetic. Both Unbounce and SiteTuners use it on their sites – and they’re conversion rate optimization companies, so they should know!

Red, on the other hand, creates a sense of urgency and could work just as well, or even better than an orange button. Don’t make assumptions – your tests will determine which button color works best for you.

You’ll never find one color that makes everyone happy. But you’ll find one that makes the majority happy, and that’s the one that’s best for your landing page conversion rates.

SHAPE: Sometimes, buttons with sharp corners don’t convert as well as ones with rounded corners. Here’s why:

1. Rounded corners are easier for the eyes and brain to process.
2. We’ve been conditioned to be wary of sharp corners, as they can pose a threat. That also applies to buttons (crazy, right?).
3. Sharp corners also tend to act as arrows, directing attention away from the button and not toward what’s inside, the call to action.

Consider, instead of a regular rectangle, square, oval, or round shape, using a combination of shapes. Amazon uses a combination of a circle and a rectangle:

The only way to figure out which one works best for you is, again, to test it out.

SIZE: Finally, your button size is also worthy of some easy testing. Increase or decrease its size to determine what gives you the highest conversion rates. (Hint: Bigger is usually better!)

6. Test Button Call-To-Action

Sometimes the call to action (CTA) on your button is more important than what the button looks like, and it’s also easier to test.

Take this test from Michael Aagaard at ContentVerve.com, for example.

By adding relevancy and value to the button’s CTA and also changing the form title, the landing page conversion rate increased by 31.54%.

The best approach is to focus on what the value and relevance is for the visitor. The vagueness of “Submit” doesn’t do much to tell the visitor what they'll be getting.

Here’s an interesting video with some of Aagaard’s button call-to-action findings:

His suggestions for testing your button CTA include:

• Test the font color.
• Test using “My” instead of “Your.”
• Don’t focus on what a visitor has to do, focus on what they’ll get.
• Change verbs to “Get” where it makes sense. (“Get To Cart” doesn’t.)
• Test a right-pointing arrow on your button’s left side.
• Add value and relevancy to the button.
• Test a headline CTA and a subhead CTA.
• Test a hover effect that changes the color of the button.

7. Try a Chat Tool for Your Landing Page

For potential customers, calling someone at your company could feel extremely threatening.

Right there on the other side of the phone is a salesman waiting like a cat about to attack.

He’s got his hair slicked, script ready, his objection blockers rehearsed, and he just finished his third 5-Hour Energy shot while taking a look at his ankle tattoo saying “A.B.C.” (Always. Be. Closing).

He’s gonna get you.

But it’s not just the salesman on the other end of the line that’s a problem. What about the expectation of the dreaded call answering machine? "Sorry, zero is an invalid function, please try again."

So how do you calm a visitor who knows that by calling, you have their phone number, and by emailing, you have their email address?

Meet Olark. Olark is by far my favorite solution when it comes to website chat. It looks great and has some unique features that allow for in-depth data and customization:

1. See what city your visitors are from within the chat.
2. See what page they’re currently on.
3. See how long they’ve been on your site.
4. Add any attention-grabbing image (like me juggling).
5. Round robin operator system.
6. Easy split-testing of greeter texts.

But most importantly, it’s an easy way for your prospective clients to get answers without having to pick up the phone, and it’s a lot faster than email.

We don’t require your name, email, phone number, or social security before the chat starts. We let our visitors hit the ground running with no lead capture.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many of our new clients have started their relationship with us via Olark. (We call it Cupid!)

8. Look Here! (Add Directional Cues)

Directional cues are like finger pointers. They try to move your attention to wherever they’re pointing.

There are two types of directional cues: explicit and implicit.

Explicit directional cues are like arrows that are obviously trying to move your attention to the form or the button the site wants you to click on.

Here’s one from CrazyEgg’s pricing page:

Implicit directional cues are more subtle. They’re like that woman-drinking-a-green-juice-out-of-a-mason-jar-because-all-the-other-glasses-were-dirty type of look.

See how she’s looking in the direction of the form? (Even though it looks like she’s actually by-passing the form and eyeballing that ice cream truck in the distance?)

And here’s everyone’s favorite gecko.

(The red arrows are only there to show you the subtle directional cues. They weren’t there in the live image.)

And to prove how powerful directional cues can be, take a look at these eye tracking examples and see the difference based on directional cues or lack thereof. Red indicates laser-focused eyes.

vs.

The difference is clear.

9. Create Explainer Videos & Sliders

You know those white board animated videos you see on websites that are around 1 to 3 minutes long? Those are explainer videos.

Explainer videos are, well, videos that explain what your business does. And if done right, these little animated masterpieces could increase your conversion rates by 30% (or more).

Why are they so effective? The answer has to do with our attention spans.

Our online attention spans have been steadily declining because of the speed of information we’re able to retrieve.

We don’t want to read books that have too many pages. We don’t even want to read a newspaper!

Explainer videos are easy to consume and understand because they’re visual and can arouse more emotions than reading.

But don’t just go all Steven Spielberg on me here. Explainer videos can be a bit tricky, so here are some tips:

1. Explainer videos can be very expensive and hard to A/B split test since you’ll have to create uniquely different videos to do so. Plan things carefully.
2. You might think the idea is all in the animation, but really it’s in the script. Spend some time creating a killer script.
3. Think about voiceovers too. You want someone who meshes with your business identity. Do you sell saddles? Talk like a Texan. Do you rent out bouncey dragons? Talk like a kid. Do you want to sound super-smart and impress Americans? Talk like a Brit. (J/K. Sort of.)
4. Include your best features/benefits and direct viewers with a call to action at the end of the video.
5. Keep it as short as possible. Anything after a minute and a half will be hard to watch.

Want to see some examples? Here’s a look at WordStream’s own explainer video they use for their PPC landing pages:

And here’s a look at ours over at KlientBoost:

Even though creating an explainer video isn’t easy, it’s well worth the effort if done right. And if you’ve ever thought about it before, make sure you do your research and inquire about pricing, because some providers aren’t the cheapest.

An alternative to explainer videos would be image sliders that have proven to sometimes work better than explainer videos.

Visual Website Optimizer created a case study in which the image slider had a 35% higher conversion rate lift than the explainer video. (However, in this case, the explainer video was almost 5 minutes long and very technical.)

Either way, an image slider or explainer video (or both!) is a great test if you have the resources.

10.  Employ Trust Badges & Guarantees

Trust badges are pretty commonplace these days. Like product listing ads, it’s a must-test if you’re running an e-commerce store.

Badges like these have been known to help increase landing page conversion rates

It’s obvious that people care about your level of trustworthiness when shopping with you. But did you know that people will actually click on the badges, look at your https:// connection, and investigate your reviews to make sure you’re legit before even considering doing business with you?

A fellow Dane by the name of Karsten Lund ran a 6-month long A/B test in which he added just one badge in the header for an e-commerce store. The result? 32% conversion rate increase.

Here are some quick ideas for badge and seal tests:

1. Move your seal or badge closer to the desired action (like the “Place Order” button).
2. Add the seal or badge to your header.
3. Make it clickable so that it’s not just an image, taking people to the third-party verification of your site.
4. Don’t overdo your badges. We’re not looking to start any fashion trends here.

Do you have any corporate rewards or big media mentions? Include those on your site as well. And if possible, add the images as links going straight to the mentions. Make sure they open up in new tabs and don’t take the visitor away from your site.

Now when it comes to guarantees, KISSmetrics made some interesting findings.

Here are some different guarantees you can test out:

1. 100% Money Back Guarantee
2. 100% Risk Free Guarantee
3. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
4. The Lifetime Guarantee
5. Lowest Price Guarantee
6. The Free Trial
7. The Extreme Guarantee (Zappo’s 365 day return policy)

All poised to disrupt your conversion rates in some way. How much? That’s for you to find out.

11. Stop Hoarding & Remove Your Clutter

You might think it’s necessary to provide a visitor with all the benefits and everything you can offer on your landing page.

It’s not.

Sometimes removing unnecessary paragraphs can improve the experience for the visitor and make it easier to understand, thereby increasing conversion rates.

Remember, attention spans have never been lower than they are today.

So take a look at your site, and say goodbye to that prized paragraph you’re so proud of.

It’s time to clean up.

12. Fancy it Up & Be Ridiculous

As a wise person once said, “Don’t take yourself so seriously, no one else does.”

We’re living in an age of visual eye candy. Social sites like Pinterest and Instagram are not popular because people loved pinboards before they were digital or photography before there were filters. People love these sites because they can express themselves and be unique.

Don’t try to fit in. Try to stand out.

When people like something because “it’s different,” they tell their friends and their friends will tell their friends.

Before you know it, you’re not just a company, but a source of inspiration.

One great example is Groupon’s cat:

It has nothing to do with business, but it’s fun.

Here’s a fun Mad Libs style twist on the regular lead generation form that actually increased conversions by 40%.

Bonus Landing Page Conversion Rate Tips

Here are a few final things to consider before I let you go:

• When you do make changes to your site, make sure you test one major thing at a time, i.e. redesign, layout, headline etc. (If you change too many things at once, some of the changes might have improved conversion rate while others didn’t, and you won’t know what worked and what didn’t.)
• You want to reach statistical significance with at least a 95% confidence level. (To be on the safe side, make sure your increase in conversions is actually from the change you made, not some external reason you can’t control, like seasonal variance.) You can use this easy calculator to test if your results are significant.
• No testing is foolproof. Making your button bigger or having more testimonials does not guarantee an increase in conversion rate; it could actually make it worse! Be smart and don’t make assumptions.
• Never. Stop. Testing.
• Sometimes it can take weeks, even months before you reach a significant result. Use this calculator to determine how long you should run your A/B tests for.
• Remember that getting the sale doesn't end on the landing page. Look at your approach in terms of how you talk and communicate, and mystery shop your competition and your own employees. Even if you have a 42% lead gen conversion rate on your landing page, your real conversion rate could be much lower when it comes to actually sealing the deal.

Want To Learn More About Conversion Rate Optimization?

Follow these CRO expert blogs:

• Unbounce
• ContentVerve
• ConversionXL
• WiderFunnel
• KISSMetrics
• CrazyEgg
• SiteTuners
• Visual Website Optimizer
• Optimizely

Happy converting!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Recently, we did our best to put the lie to the myth that PPC is outbound marketing. There’s a persistent idea that cost is the determining factor that separates inbound and outbound marketing. But we believe that all marketing has costs – since no channel is free, what matters is ROI. So inbound marketing isn't free marketing, but rather is defined by context and intention.

Like organic content marketing, PPC ads are driven by context and user intent – in other words, the ads are only triggered when they’re relevant to what people are already searching for. And with increasingly more effective and blinged out ad types, PPC is more and more likely to meet a searcher’s needs just as well, if not better, than an organic result. (We believe that for commercial searches, PPC is better – that’s why fancy ads like PLA’s suck up all the intent on the SERP.)

Today, we’re happy to announce some upcoming and ongoing partnerships with two of the biggest and best providers of inbound marketing services and thought leadership: HubSpot (our neighbors across the river!) and Moz.

Introducing the HubSpot PPC Hub

We recently partnered with HubSpot to create a new source of paid search marketing expertise: the HubSpot PPC Hub.

This resource center provides educational content based on the five key habits we believe are the greatest determiners of PPC success:

Habit 1: Regular Account Activity

Habit 2: Quality Score Optimization

Habit 3: Eliminating Wasted Spend

Habit 4: PPC Ad Optimization

Habit 5:Landing Page Optimization

Each month, we’ll release new content to help marketers master each of these five habits. You can start learning the importance of regular account activity now, and by November, you’ll be your company’s PPC pundit!

As Amanda Sibley, Global Marketing Relations Manager at HubSpot, put it, “PPC has been a valuable channel of quality lead generation for HubSpot, and we find it complements our organic search strategies. So we’re excited to be partnering with WordStream to bring our audience high-quality PPC content.”

Check it out!

Register for Our Upcoming Mozinar: Mastering the New Inbound Marketing

In addition, Larry Kim and Moz CEO Rand Fishkin will partner on July 23 to co-host a free webinar (or Mozinar, for you fellow Moz fans) on new-style inbound marketing:

Mastering the Flow: How to Make the New Inbound Marketing Work for You

7/23 @ 11 AM PDT / 2 PM EDT

Whether it’s SEO, PPC, email, or content marketing, the new inbound marketing is about earning attention organically when your customers are looking for you, not interrupting their flow. Learn from some of the best in the business, Moz CEO Rand Fishkin and WordStream founder Larry Kim, why smart inbound marketing is responsible for 90%+ of clicks on the web, and how to make inbound marketing work for you.

Register now– we’ll see you there!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Online ads have become a daily part of internet life. For new marketers, it can be confusing getting a grasp on the scope and variety of online ads available. We've compiled a thorough list to help catagorize and explain each form of online ads present on the web. Enjoy!

Google Search Ads

Google search ads appear alongside the search engine result page when users search a keyword query on Google. These ads are PPC, or pay-per-click ads, in which advertisers pay for each ad click. Google’s PPC search ads are managed by Google’s AdWords advertising platform, which allows advertisers to bid on keywords, craft ad text, set budgets, and more. To advertise on Google AdWords, you'll need to create a Google AdWords Account. 

AdWords Ads

AdWords ads are advertisements created within Google’s AdWords advertising platform, identical to Google search ads.

PPC Ads

PPC ads, AKA pay-per-click ads, are advertisements in which the cost of advertising is determined by the number of clicks an ad receives. AdWords and Bing Ads both use a pay-per-click model.

Bing Ads

Bing ads are similar to Google ads in that they work on a pay-per-click basis. Advertisers can manage their ads through the Bing Ads service, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter. You can get started with creating Bing Ads here once you have a Bing Ads Account.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads exist in many different forms, each offering unique pros and cons for advertisers looking to market on Facebook. To learn all about Facebook advertising, read our Facebook Marketing blog post.

Marketplace ads appear in the side columns of the Facebook website with a headline, copy, and an image.

Promoted Posts are Facebook ads that let advertisers pay a flat rate to promote a single post on their Facebook business page. The promoted post reaches more fans and friends of fans than a regular post.

Sponsored Stories show a user’s interaction with an advertisers page or product to the user’s friends and larger network. Sponsored Stories are also one form of Facebook ads that can appear in a user’s newsfeed.

FBX, or Facebook Exchange, are Facebook ads that implement remarketing. These ads take into account a user’s web surfing history data, letting an advertiser show an ad for a product a user was looking at earlier on the advertiser’s website.

Twitter Ads

Twitter ads refer to the paid boosts that brands on Twitter can use to extend the reach of their tweets, promote a chosen hashtag, or gain more followers.

Promoted Tweets lets advertisers’ tweets reach more people’s home feeds, and offer a healthy batch of targeting options. Twitter ads also include Promoted Accounts, letting advertisers show up more often in Twitter’s Who to Follow recommendation feature. Promoted Trends gets your custom hashtag in the Trends bar, earning additional attention and notice from the Twitterverse. If you're looking to advertise on Twitter, be sure to measure social media roi.

Tumblr Ads

Tumblr ads come in a few different formats – Tumblr Radar and Spotlight allow for “sponsors,” aka advertisers, to be featured in areas where Tumblr highlights unique content and accounts. With 54 million users posting 70 million posts per day that get over half a billion page views each day, the Tumblr community is an active and lively one.

Tumblr also offers sponsored web post ads, which are pieces of Tumblr content crafted by advertisers that appear in users’ main dashboard feed, integrated with normal, user-generated content. These Tumblr ads have small dollar signs to mark them as advertising content. In order to post your online ads onto the Tumblr platform, you'll have to become a Tumblr sponsor.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are image-based advertisements that often appear in the side, top, and bottom sections of websites. They can range widely in terms of size, design, and function. You'll typically find them in all sorts of news-based websites, blogs, and specialized web communities. Many websites brokerage their ad space with ad exchanges such as Google's Display Network, or you can buy the ad space in the same manner you'd buy an ad on a newspaper.

Google Display Ads

Google Display Ads are a form of contextual banner ads used in the Google Display Network, Google’s collection of network sites that agree to host display ads. The Google Display Network also includes Google properties such as YouTube, Gmail, Blogger, etc. Google Display ads can be text, images, and even video based. To serve online ads on the Google Display Network, you need to start by using Google AdWords.

Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads (see similar, Google Remarketing) entice a user to visit a site by taking into account the user’s past web history. When a user visits a website, a retargetting campaign cookie is attached to the visitor, taking note of what pages and products the user visits while browsing the site.

Once the user leaves the advertiser’s site and begins journeying to other websites, targetting ads can be made to appear in certain ad spaces, displaying ads that specifically call out what the user was looking at on the advertiser’s site earlier.

Retargeting ads tend to perform drastically better than regular banner ads, with higher click-through rates and conversions. If you're already using Google AdWords, we have a step-by-step tutorial on creating your own Google AdWords remarketing ad.

Flash Ads

Flash ads are banner ads that use Flash design, often featuring interactive elements to entice users. While flash is still used subtly in certain display ads, the playful, interactive, and somewhat hokey flash ads that were common in the millennial years are no longer considered a popular form of banner ad.

Reddit Ads

Reddit ads are advertisements featuring a headline title, destination URL, and an optional photo. Reddit ads work on a bid-based system, in which advertisers can set campaign budgets and choose how long they want their campaign to run for. Reddit ads allow for some unique targeting options and are often fairly cheap, with low cost-per-impressions.

What really makes Reddit ads unique are the comments and voting – users can upvote or downvote your ad, giving advertisers an easy read on if users like or dislike an ad. Each ad, like all other posts on Reddit, has a comment section. This can be useful for advertisers because it allows users to provide direct feedback that goes straight to the advertiser.

The best Reddit ads take their audience into consideration – Reddit is predominantly frequented by a young, tech-savvy audience, mostly males. On a whole, the Reddit community is very wary of blatant marketing, so posting a Reddit advertisement can be a bit like playing with fire. If done properly, Reddit ads can bring a lot of attention for low cost. You can advertise on Reddit through their website.

Mobile Ads

Mobile ads are ads that appear on smartphones, tablets, and any other mobile device. Many social media platforms, websites, and apps offer their own unique mobile ad options. If you advertise on Google AdWords, you can advertise to mobile devices by taking advantage of Enhanced Campaigns.

Photo by Rob Zand

In-Game Ads

In-Game ads are advertisements that exist within computer or video games. One of the most common examples of in-game advertising is billboards appearing in sport games. In-game ads also might appear as brand-name products like guns, cars, or clothing that exist as gaming status symbols.

AdMob Ads

AdMob Ads are advertisements that appear within mobile apps. AdMob itself is Google’s mobile advertising platform, enabling app creators to make revenue off of free games by offering ad space, and allowing advertisers to get ad spots in the most popular mobile games and apps.

AdMob ads can appear as mobile-optimized text ads, image-based banner ads, or even interstitials ads, which use rich HTML5. 

Email Ads

Email ads are advertisements sent to users via web mail. Email ads can be used to notify subscribers of certain promotions, discounts, or new features, among other uses.

Most email advertisements feature a large image with minimal text; users will not waste large amounts of time reading email ads, so it’s important to make your message as clear and concise as possible. Email ads also rely on a compelling subject line to ensure that a user will open the email.

Email ads have specific rules – the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, created to prevent email spam for users, authorizes a $16,000 penalty per violation for spamming individuals, which is why many email marketers in the US use an email service or software to make sure they are in compliance with the Act.

Gmail Ads

Gmail ads in Google’s online email service are contextual ads that are generated by an automated process that scans a user’s emails to discover interests and topics that are relevant to the user. If a user is writing and receiving many emails about air conditioners, that user may see ads about air conditions appear within the Gmail client.

While privacy advocates are wary of such practices, Gmail advertising is fully automated and Google asserts that no humans read user emails, only robots.

Video Ads

Video ads are growing in popularity as better internet speed performance and online advancements make it fast and easy to watch videos on the web. The most successful video ads avoid blatant advertising, opting instead for educational, how-to video content that naturally appeals to users, with some (if any) product suggestions discreetly integrated. Humorous video ads also perform well, with some funny video ad campaigns finding enormous success, especially when an interactive element is added. 

YouTube Ads

YouTube ads are ads that appear on Google’s video-sharing site. Since Google obtained ownership of YouTube, advertising on YouTube has become nearly as easy and customizable as advertising on AdWords.

YouTube ads provide a number of targeting options and several different ad formats. YouTube advertisements can appear as banner ads, in-video overlay ads, in-stream video ads (which are video ads that appear before or during another YouTube video), as well as several other setups.

Pinterest Ads

Pinterest ads are simply pieces of content pinned by brands and advertisers. When marketing a specific product, marketers create Pinterest advertisements by adding a dollar sign before the price amount to the description. This tells Pinterest that this item is for sale at that specific price. Pinterest marketers can then link the pinned item to the official product page to drive retail traffic.

Some marketers also implement their own form of Pinterest advertising by hosting contests on Pinterest. While this doesn’t result in direct sales, contests are a great way to drum up user attention, engagement, and boost site traffic, depending on how the contest is organized. Take note that while you do not have to pay Pinterest to create ads, you will have to spend significant time and effort to create beautiful online ads to attract lurking buyers on Pinterest. Note that Pinterest ads work best on tangible B2C products.

Instagram Ads

There are at the moment no “official” Instagram ads – just brands being creative and producing Instagram pics that can be shared right alongside user-crafted content.

Vine Ads

Vine ads operate the same way Instagram ads do – there are no official Vine ads at the moment, but many brands and advertisers produce Vine video ads that serve as natural content-based advertising, integrating with regular used-crafted content. 

Good Vine ads take a clue from other successful Vines by creating 6-second content that stands out, often implementing stop-motion techniques. 

Other Forms of Advertising

While we're primarily concerned with showing online ad examples, it's worth giving a quick overview of other more common, offline forms of advertising as well!

TV Ads

TV ads are a very expensive but still well regarded form of advertising that’s as old as television itself.

TV ads are a form of outbound marketing, also known as interruption marketing, which relies on interrupting viewers in an effort to get their attention. In order to avoid being received as obnoxious by viewers, many television ads now make an effort to appeal to a viewer’s emotions through humor, a sense of goodwill, nostalgia, or even sometimes anger or sadness. For many TV ads, the main objective is to be emotionally powerful and memorable.

Newspaper Ads

News ads are thought by many to be a thing of the past, but they still offer value, especially when targeting audiences who may not be online often. News ads can build brand awareness, although tracking the performance of newspaper advertisements is nearly impossible. Online ads, on the other hand, offer audience targeting options, performance measurement analytics, and a wealth of other advantages against classic news ads.

Radio Ads

Radio ads are similar to TV ads and newspaper ads in that they too are a form of outbound marketing that seeks out attention through interruption. As with other forms of advertising that don’t operate online, radio ads can be difficult to measure and track.

Urban Advertising

Urban advertising is advertising that, at its most basic, exists in densely populated cities. Urban advertising often takes advantage of setting to shock or inspire awe in viewers. Urban advertising also often exists as a form of alternative advertising, using unconventional or unique methods of spreading a message.

Photo from Curbanism

Photo by Arturo de Albornoz

Promoting products and services while trying to compete with mega-giants like Amazon and Walmart is often a daunting task for small business owners. The good news is that Google AdWords has created a way for advertisers to do just that. Bigger brands may have an advantage when it comes to PPC, but they don’t hold all the cards. Even with a small budget, you can get impressions and clicks on Google with a smart account  structure and the right targeting options.

Having consulted hundreds of small and medium-sized business (SMBs) owners and marketing managers, my eyes have been opened to the struggles they face every day.

The Problem

Let me take a second to set the stage. Anyone who tells you that AdWords is easy or that they can guarantee you numbers is lying to you. AdWords is complicated and difficult to master, but when done right, it can yield amazing returns.

Not only does it take preparation to master but it takes time and affection. Think of your AdWords account like a new dog.

Is your AdWords account looking at you with sad eyes?

Set it and forget it doesn’t work with your dog and it doesn’t work with AdWords either. You need to love your account, take care of it, clean it up, and feed it. I can tell you it loves the taste of money. If you take the time to nurture your account it will yield you a return.

Keep it Simple

One misconception I hear time and time again is that you need a large account with thousands of keywords. You don’t. Running a small business means you wear multiple hats. You don’t need a huge account to be successful. In fact with that amount of keywords you have a greater opportunity to overreach and waste money.

Start small and progressively grow your account. I mentioned before that you need to spend the time to nurture the account, so the smaller you keep it the less time you will need to put in.

Tracking Your AdWords Progress

Tracking is one of the most important things you can do to your account. I highly recommend setting up Google Analytics with your website for in-depth analysis. Otherwise, conversion tracking is a must, as it will tell you which Campaigns, Ad Groups, Keywords, Ads, etc. are performing for you while also telling you where you are flushing money down the drain (do I have any plumbers out there?).

Don’t Overreach

Overreaching can be an account killer and it can take a couple forms. For example, incorrectly targeting your ads. Whether it’s location, device, or network targeting or simply the match types you choose for your keywords, incorrectly targeting ads is going to waste your money. Make sure you have refined your targeting choices and your match types to focus your traffic down to pre-qualified viewers. Prequalifying will allow you to get higher click-through rates and with that higher conversion rates. This means more $$$$$ in your pocket!

Don’t Overpay – Set a Consistent AdWords Budget

Another common struggle I see is trying to be the top advertisement on the page. While it is important to get up to the top, it doesn’t need to happen, especially if you don’t have a large budget.

Let’s take a step back and look at budgeting. Setting a daily budget is important when it comes to how much money you will spend in a month. Here is a simple formula to budget setting:

(Total Marketing Budget * Percentage towards AdWords)/Days in the Month = Daily Budget

I can’t stress enough how you should set your budget and stick with it. Don’t go in day after day and change your budget. If you set everything correctly, you will not go over budget and you wont have to pause your account two weeks into the month. Changing your budget frequently can actually reduce your account’s performance, because Google will have to recalibrate how they show your ads.

AdWords Bidding for Small Businesses

Bidding helps determine positioning, so calculate how much you should be bidding based off of your budget to ensure an ROI. Try this formula to determine your bids:

Revenue or Customer’s LTV * conversion rate = Max Bid

Once you have determined your max bid, your quality score will determine your ad positioning. The higher your quality score the more likely you are to rank towards the top of the page.

Next Steps

Now that we have focused our traffic, set our budget and determined our bids, we are well on our way towards running a successful (profitable) account.

Remarketing is a great next step for the average small business owner. Remarketing will allow you to show your ads to people who have previously shown interested in your products or services. If you are worried that remarketing won’t work for you, just keep an eye out for our WordStream display ads. I’m sure now that you have read this you will be followed around by our offerings. Remarketing often yields high conversion rates and is a great way for small business owners to spend their precious advertising budget.

AdWords is very complicated and can often be frustrating, so follow the strategies I’ve listed above and you will be well on your way towards AdWords success. Remember, in the end Adwords is about turning a profit so focus your strategy around being profitable. Don’t worry if you are not the first ad on the page because you can and will still make money while on the side of the page. All you should worry about is staying in the black. This will help you drive more traffic and grow your business over time. Once you’ve got your account to a spot where you can devote a larger budget, you can then take that opportunity to move up in the results. But for now, start small, refine your targeting and manage your bids and budget closely.

One last thing I would like to point out is this neat comment section we have below. Please don’t hesitate to respond with questions or comments. And let me ask you this: As a small business, what struggles have you faced? What has and has not worked for you in the past?

Image via Sukanto Debnath

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Quality Score: Is it the be-all-end-all of AdWords metrics, or no big deal? You’ll get a different answer depending on who you ask. Proponents believe Quality Score is a good measure of the health of your account – high scores tend to correlate with lower costs and better results across the board. Detractors will say QS is a distraction and all that really matters is your cost per conversion, because that’s how you determine your ROI.

So who’s right? What should you focus on in your PPC reporting?

What Is Quality Score?

As a quick refresher, Quality Score is a metric Google uses to determine where advertisers rank on the SERP and how much they pay. Although AdWords functions as a kind of auction, if the system was purely determined by bids, spammy companies with lousy, irrelevant ads could always bid their way to the top. Quality Score serves as a check against rule by budget alone, by requiring advertisers to prove their relevance.

Better, more relevant ads generally get higher click-through rates (CTR), so CTR is one of the major components of Quality Score. Other factors that influence your QS include:

• The relevance of your keyword to its ad group.
• Landing page quality.
• The relevance of your ad text.
• Your historical account performance.

Every time one of your ads qualifies to be displayed on a SERP, based on what keywords you’re bidding on and what match types you’re using, Google calculates a score between 1 and 10 for your ad on the fly. The higher your score, the better your ad rank will be – in fact a high Quality Score can qualify you to rank above people who are bidding more than you.

But Quality Score doesn’t just affect your ad position – it also has an enormous effect on how much you pay when someone clicks your ad.

How Quality Score Affects Cost Per Click

Your cost per click (CPC) is determined by the following formula: the ad rank of the advertiser below you, divided by your Quality Score, plus 1 cent. The chart below illustrates how this formula makes it possible to rank higher than advertisers who are actually paying more.

This is all well-known. What’s not so well-known is that Quality Score is even more valuable today than it used to be. I’ll explain how in the next section.

The Changing Relationship Between CPC & Quality Score

In 2009, Craig Danuloff at Click Equations published some charts that showed how much you save by raising your Quality Score. They looked like this:

At the high end, a QS of 10 provided a 30% discount on CPC compared to someone whose Quality Score was 7. At the low end, having a Quality Score of 1 forced you to pay 600% more. (Suckers.)

Back in March, I decided to revisit these numbers. Craig originally used 7 as the neutral value because it was the mean Quality Score across most accounts at the time. The thing is, average Quality Scores have fallen over time. In 2013, impression-weighted average Quality Score in 2013 is closer to 5.

If you’re thinking, “So what?,” let me make it clear: That drop in the average Quality Score means that having a QS of 10 now saves you 50% over the average advertiser – 66% more than it saved you four years ago. Even a meh QS of 6 saves you about 17% – in 2009, a 6 would have cost you. Here’s what the savings look like given the new landscape:

Of course, some people will still tell you that Quality Score is overrated, because CPC savings are meaningless compared to cost per conversion.

Why Optimizing for Quality Score and Optimizing for CPA Are the Same Thing

What those Quality Score detractors don’t seem to realize is that QS is every bit as important in determining your cost per conversion, as well. Here’s how I know:

To quantify the relationship between cost per conversion and Quality Score, I manually compiled CPA data from thousands of campaigns across several hundred WordStream client accounts, representing about $100 million in annualized spend.

I then plotted the average cost-per-conversion versus the impression-weighted Quality Score for each campaign. Here’s what it looked like:

The data reveals that there is a very strong relationship between average cost per conversion and average Quality Score. Just as above, the higher your Quality Score is, the lower your CPA will be on average. So optimizing for Quality Score and optimizing for CPA are essentially the same thing.

The below table show how much you’ll save on CPA (not CPC) if your Quality Score is higher than 5:

Note that if your QS is below the average, you’ll essentially pay a penalty – up to 64% more per action than your average competitor. In a nutshell, for every Quality Score point above the average 5/10 score, your CPA will drop by 16% on average. Conversely, for every Quality Score point below the average of 5/10, your CPA will rise by 16%.

Michael Wiegand at Portent found similar results a few months back – that for each point that your QS goes up, there was an average CPA reduction of 22%. The main difference between his study and mine is that my data size is about 100x bigger.

It’s worth pointing out that I didn’t see a big difference in average conversion rates vs. Quality Scores. I found that keywords with high Quality Scores converted only slightly better than low Quality Score keywords, meaning that lower CPAs are primarily driven by lower costs per click— which are a direct result of your Quality Score.

(Note: I wrote about my findings over at Search Engine Land last week– there’s some interesting discussion in the comments over there, so check it out if you want to dig into the data in more detail.)

4 Ways to Improve Your Quality Score

At the risk of repeating myself, I think these numbers show that optimizing for Quality Score and optimizing for cost are essentially the same thing. High Quality Scores give you lower costs per click, and lower CPCs almost always translate into lower costs per conversion.

So how do you get your Quality Scores up above the average? Here are four quick tips:

• Use ad extensions.Google AdWords ad extensions and Google sitelinks make your ads bigger with more places to click, so they increase CTR (at no extra cost).
• Write better ad text. We co-wrote a guide with PPC Hero that has ten tricks for increasing CTR, including no-brainer stuff like using symbols and exclamation points.
• Bid on brand terms. Branded keywords tend to have really high click-through and conversion rates and they can bring up your whole account average.
• Be more methodical about account organization. Don’t just add new keywords to the same ad group until it’s 200 large. Make sure each ad group is organized around a clear theme. If an ad group has 50+ keywords, try to break it down into smaller, tighter groups.

I also recommend getting our free Quality Score toolkit. In addition to a white paper, cheatsheet, and video, it includes a Quality Score worksheet you can use to find your account’s average Quality Score, both raw and weighted by impressions, plus impressions, clicks, conversions, average position, CPC, CTR, conversion rate and other metrics for your keywords at each Quality Score level, for each match type and for different query lengths (1 to 10 words). Download it here.

So what do you think about these results? Let me know in the comments. Got problems with my data? Bring it on.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.