Anyone using AdWords knows it can be pricey. Lowering your AdWords cost is not as simple as lowering your bids and/or budget. In fact, lowering your bids or budget could hurt the performance of your campaigns making them less profitable. It sounds strange but lowering could, in turn, raise your costs.

What if some of your AdWords traffic is off target or you never wanted it in the first place? Right now, people are clicking on your ads based on searches that aren’t even related to what you’re offering. By eliminating this unwanted traffic, you could save hundreds if not thousands on your next AdWords bill.

Eliminate the junk.

The use of negative keywords will eliminate clicks you don’t want to pay for. If you’re selling business accounting software and it’s not free, you might use the negative keywords ‘freeware’ or ‘free’ so that you won’t receive clicks for searches such as ‘freeware business accounting software.’

Using negative keywords will not only save you money but it will also improve your performance. Google want to deliver relevant ads so by eliminating irrelevant clicks, you are inadvertently offering more relevance. Google reward this relevance by lowering your cost-per-click and improving your ad placement.

Negatives can have negatives.

Negative keywords should be used with caution.

In my experience, using too many of them can make campaign performance stall. This is why I always recommend that you periodically review negative keywords. Keep in mind that once you have added a negative keyword, there are no reports that will inform you of missed opportunities.

Depending on your particular keyword situation, you might find you receive a large number of impressions or even clicks on some broad searches. These are very popular terms that simply send the volume that you’re seeking. Some of those clicks are profitable but many of them are just broad searches. Negative keywords may or may not help in this situation without impacting the all-important profitable clicks.

Although campaigns that target the Google Display Network can use negative keywords, they don’t function the same as those in campaigns that target the Google Search Network. For example, if you were to add the negative keyword ‘free’ to your Display Network campaign, you will still be shown pages that contain the word ‘free.’ In my experience, Google seem to use negative keywords more like suggestions, which are often ignored. Also, Google will only look at 50 negative keywords within a campaign that target the Google Display Network.

Finding the right negatives.

The search terms report is a great source for finding negative keywords. Depending on your particular keyword traffic and its volume, you might easily spot the obvious negative keywords or they might be hidden across thousands of keywords within that report. You just don’t have the time to go over every single one of those several thousand keywords that this report can sometimes generate.

Even if you focus on the terms that are sending you the bulk of the traffic, you would miss out on all the 1 click, 1 impression terms, which can sometimes be in the thousands. You will soon realise that the irrelevant terms are being masked by their insignificance and if a few words were excluded, irrelevant traffic would be excluded thereby saving you money.

In terms of the sometimes massive search terms report, my approach is to split it into a word frequency list. I then sort the list of single words in descending order so the words that occur most often are at the top of the list. I then identify specific words that I feel are off-target and go back to the original search terms report in order to analyse their performance. This is a much easier way to quickly search a large list of keywords when looking for negatives.

I too often see AdWords accounts that have little or no negative keywords but the message here is balance – through trial and error you will discover the right amount of negative keywords that will benefit your AdWords campaigns.

In May 2012 I gave a presentation on Google AdWords at the phenomenal MicroConf conference in Las Vegas.

I rate MicroConf as one of my all-time favourite conferences, and was genuinely honoured to be able to speak there.

My talk was titled Google AdWords: Stop Losing & Start Exploiting (Really).

Please don’t be put-off by my unnerving likeness to a serial-killer version of Jabba the Hutt. It must have been something to do with jet lag. Or something.

A lot of people found the talk to be useful,so I swallowed my pride and vanity and decided to share it here.

It takes a while, but if you’re interested in squeezing a better ROI out of your Google AdWords account, this will be time spent.

Make a coffee, make yourself comfortable and enjoy.

Oh and (preferably non-rude) feedback is appreciated. Hit the comments as you see fit.

Whether you’re handling your own SEO, working with a reliable SEO company, or just hoping it’ll somehow happen on its own, you probably like to measure your SEO performance.

Which is why so many of us monitor rankings for our keywords. The higher the better – more so when we’re above our competition, right?

Rankings, however, in spite of how much we love them, are becoming flawed to the point of irrelevance.

Location.

Carry out a search for your given keywords from the luxury of your hotel room in Las Vegas, and you’ll probably see different results than you would at home on the East Coast, in the UK or in Germany.

So which one is correct? All of them. And none of them.

Logged in & rose-tinted search results.

If you’re logged in to any Google service when you search (AdWords, Gmail, Analytics etc.) then you’ll be enjoying the benefits of personalised search. This also factors in previous searches to provide a more personalised experience.

Personalised and objective do not make good bedfellows.

Ah, but what if you’re using a service that not only isn’t logged in, but also takes an average of your rankings from different locations in the world?

Wouldn’t that make rankings more meaningful?

Unfortunately not.

Long tail and the discrete majority.

You’re already familiar with the idea of long-tailed keywords – those little micro-gems that are searched far less than the big & obvious keywords.

Long tail keywords are often overshadowed by the so-called low hanging fruit, yet when you combine all those small figures, you may see that they outweigh your main keywords.

So your main keywords may not actually mean that much anyway.

The numbers may mask the truth.

The problem with focusing on numbers and numbers alone is that you may be blind to what’s actually happening.

Consider the following hypothetical example.

Let’s say you were a small software marketing company based in the UK, and one of your high-performing keywords was software marketing service. It may not produce much by the way of quantity, but when it comes to quality, nothing else comes close.

Every day you go to Google and type in the search software marketing service.

Every day you see that your results are in second place.

As an SEO-savvy company you do your best to optimise your content for that page, but you just can’t seem to make a difference.

Click on the first result, however, and you’ll see something quite significant.

The company in first place doesn’t actually offer software marketing services.

So your second-place ranking isn’t quite the slap in the face it may appear. It’s impossible to say how much more traffic you’d receive by being in first place, but being out-ranked by a non-competing company really isn’t worth losing much sleep over.

Your position or rank in Google’s listings is not only affected by where you’re located and whether or not you’re logged in, but may only play a small role in a big picture when it comes to who you’re competing with. All of which may be dwarfed into insignificance by the combined performance of your long-tail keywords.

My conclusion is that rankings are very much the SEO metric of yesteryear. It’s time to move on.

AdWords acts like an ecosystem of interconnecting and interacting parts. Some advertisers forget the importance of this ecosystem and how each part interacts with one another, which is why they don’t see their AdWords account perform well or they pay more for each click they happen to receive.

Advertisers that do understand how they interact within the ecosystem, will give them an advantage over their competitors.

The five parts of the AdWords ecosystem:

• The searcher
• Google search
• Keywords
• AdWords ad
• Landing page

The searcher and Google search: Even though you are using AdWords in order to advertise your product and/or services, it’s likely that at one point you searched for an answer to your questions or solution to your problems. As it stands right now, Google Search is the place to go in order to find those answers or solutions. This is where the searcher interacts with the advertiser.

Keywords: The searcher uses one or more keywords in order to find what they are looking for (words or phrases that best describe their questions or problems).

The AdWords ads: At the opposite end, the advertiser tries to pre-identify all those potential keywords / searches so they can craft enticing ads that will attract the searcher to click on them.

The landing page: If the searcher clicks on one of those ads, they will land on a page designated by the advertiser.

How do some advertisers make this work while others get it so wrong?

If the advertiser picks the wrong keywords, creates irrelevant ads or sends the searcher to the wrong landing page, they will fail. The advertiser will either pay more for each click or Google will stop showing their ads.

Just because the advertiser is willing to pay for each click doesn’t guarantee their ads will be displayed. If the searcher doesn’t find what they are looking for, they could potentially stop using Google search altogether. That will hurt Google’s bottom line, which is why Google strives to deliver relevant results to the searcher.

The right keywords and ads: If the advertiser chooses the right keywords and creates the right ads, the searcher will click on them – this is the goal, so to speak. The ads must make a connection with the keywords so if the searcher searches for apples, you can’t give them oranges in an ad. Relevance is the key to yours and Google’s success.

The right landing page: When the advertiser sends clicks from their ads to the right web page, it means the searcher has found what they’re looking for. The advertiser is happy, the searcher is happy and Google are happy.

If the searcher is directed to a website where they struggle to find what they are looking for, they will most likely return to Google and try the next website or they might become frustrated with Google and search elsewhere. Google could interpret this action as though you’re not offering relevant content to the searchers. The advertiser will pay for clicks that don’t produce results.

Getting searchers to click on ads is easy. Just say that you are giving away free HDTVs and masses of people will click on your ads but as it’s unlikely you’re in the business of giving away HDTVs, you need to focus on relevance.

Find the keywords that your potential customers are using. Show them the relevant ads that directly speak to those searches, take them to the relevant landing page so they instantly know their search is now over and they’ve found what they are looking for.

The three Rs: relevant keywords, relevant ads and relevant landing pages.

Hacking has become cool. Actually hacking has already made the transition from cool to mainstream.

We’re bombarded with articles and blog posts on hacking your working methods, schedules, sleep cycles, coffee brewing, education, thinking process and more.

It isn’t, therefore, a huge leap for many businesses to assume that hacking SEO is a logical extension of the same idea. And the “no risk no reward” mentality seems to fit well with the fearlessness of an increasing number of startups and established businesses.

I’ve sat aghast in too many meetings listening to a company’s self-proclaimed SEO Guru explain that “playing it safe means lost revenue”. This is so incredibly wrong on so many different levels.

I’ve consulted for too many companies hit by Panda (62 million results on Google) or hit by Penguin (44 million results).

I’ve seen the results of too many company’s websites being slapped by Google. They’re usually devastating.

We no longer take on companies who belatedly wish to fix the errors of their ways after suffering a Google-inflicted penalty. Not on moral grounds, but because it’s soul destroying.

If you follow or continue to follow the path of black hat SEO, your day of reckoning will come. It could be tomorrow, it could be in six months, or it could even be years from now.

Yet when it happens, you will undoubtedly wish that you’d taken my advice.

Two important points for you to mull over later tonight when you can’t sleep:

(1) Good content doesn’t need dodgy techniques. It just needs to be written correctly and presented to Google in the right way.

(2) The risks of dodgy SEO are greater than you may realise. Last year we worked with a company who were hit by an early Panda release. Within 24 hours of being slapped their sales were down by 85%. Two months after being hit they had to lay-off two of their staff. Not because of what they’d done but because they could no longer afford to pay them.

And for the anti-Google brigade, I understand your feelings towards Google, but don’t let them get in the way of your business.

Google’s rules aren’t laws – but the effects of breaking them may be every bit as serious.

[UPDATE]: Matt Cutts from Google has spoken of interesting times ahead. Google are stamping down that little bit harder.

If you’re running an AdWords account, you need to know how well it’s performing. Is that $10,000 you’re spending each month on AdWords, delivering more in return or are you simply paying for expensive hot air?

Google’s answer to that question is conversion tracking. Take a small code snippet and place it on your sales page. Anyone who clicked on your ad, finds their way to that page would be considered a sale or for AdWords sake, a conversion.

The problem with this approach is that it’s inaccurate and becoming less and less accurate.

The success of AdWords conversion tracking depends on a browser cookie. When you click on an AdWords ad, a cookie is set within your browser. If you happen to run across the page where the conversion tracking snippet was placed, your page view would be considered a conversion within AdWords.

It’s something of a perfect storm. So much is fighting against that little cookie, which makes it difficult to accurately track conversions. This is why it’s important to understand the various limitations to this form of tracking and learn how to work around them.

The AdWords conversion tracking cookie only lasts for 30 days. Are your visitors likely to accept cookies or keep them? Newer browsers are making it easier to not be tracked by default and people are becoming more concerned about their privacy.

Even if the cookie was left in place, the expiration of the cookie must be considered. If the purchase takes place after 30 days of the ad click, the conversion wouldn’t be tracked.

If one computer is used to click on the ad and another is used to purchase, this conversion also wouldn’t be tracked. Multi-device browsing is becoming a bigger issue nowadays. People are searching on their mobile devices and then proceeding to purchase on their desktop computers or the other way around. Different device, different cookie, no conversion!

You might have a situation where a person who clicked on the ad might not be responsible for making the final purchase. That tends to occur with business products. Different people, different browsers,  no conversion!

So how do you deal with these overwhelming conversion tracking inaccuracies?

Start by understanding that AdWords conversion tracking can only take you so far. Keep in mind that it will be difficult to tell what percentage actually were tracked. Are you seeing 20% or 90% of those who have converted?

Start tracking what you can track. If you’re paying for clicks that ultimately leave your website within a few seconds, you might want to eliminate that traffic. Track those who stay on your site for a set amount of time. Use Google Analytics to accomplish this and import that goal into AdWords as a conversion.

If you are selling software and you’re offering a trial download, visitors will probably want to try before they buy. Tracking downloads will give you an idea of what is and what is not working within AdWords.

Start thinking about your website visitors. Get into their heads and think about what they would do after they clicked on your AdWords ad. What do you want them to do after they click on your ad?

Start tracking that if you can.

I just got back from MicroConf 2013, where I had the honour of speaking to an incredible group of entrepreneurs about SEO.

My presentation appeared to go down well, yet many will remember it for two reasons.

The first was my demonstration of how careful you need to be when giving cash to an SEO consultant.

The second was my stupidly talking about my dislike of the word awesome.

I suppose that in hindsight I deserved that.

Yet an awe**** idea did come out of it, and I’ll soon be working on an ebook version of the presentation. Watch this space.

Two last points:

The awe**** in this post of course refers to aweless.

The final point:

I hate slang.

If you have an AdWords account, it’s crucial you regularly check how well it’s performing. If you don’t, you might as well be running a charity for Google.

Here is a list of metrics that should help you gauge how well your account is performing:

Conversion tracking
In my years of managing AdWords accounts, I’ve come across many that don’t have a conversion tracking setup or are tracking completely the wrong thing.

For those who are unfamiliar with conversion tracking, it helps you understand what is happening on your website after someone clicks on your AdWords ad. Did they click on your ad and sign up for your newsletter, download or purchase your software?

It’s important to keep in mind that conversion tracking is only an indicator. Its accuracy depends on how people ultimately perform a conversion. For example, are there multiple people involved in the conversion process, do people use multiple devices or computers when performing a conversion, does the time between clicking on your ad to the point of converting last longer than 30 days? If these are true, you will have difficulties tracking conversions. Also, if you only see a small amount of conversion data, you won’t be able to act on it.

If you happen to have an account with ample conversion data, the following metrics should help understand your conversion performance.

Cost per conversion: The total AdWords cost divided by the total number of conversions. How much are you paying for all the conversions you just received? If each conversion is a sale, you should be able to use this information in order to tell if you are spending more on AdWords than you make in return.

Conversion rate: The number of conversions divided by the total number of clicks. The higher the number means more of your clicks are resulting in conversions.

Conversions: After someone clicks on your ad, what did they do on your website?

Total conversion value: This is the actual value for all the conversions received. When setting up conversion tracking you can assign a value to the conversion. Even if this is a dynamic value, you can inject it right into the conversion tracking code so it is reported back to AdWords. If this value is lower than your total cost for your AdWords traffic, it could mean that you are paying more for your AdWords traffic than you are making from it.

How are each of these metrics trending over time? Even if you don’t have a high level of accuracy with your current conversion tracking configuration, seeing how each of these metrics performs over time can help determine how your account is performing.

I’m sure that we can all agree that if the conversions are on an increasing trend, the conversion rate is also improving and if the cost per conversion is on the decline, you possibly have an ideal situation.

Cost
Depending on what your goal is, evaluating cost will be determined through the following values:

Average cost per click (CPC): The total cost divided by total clicks.

How does this value look over time? If it’s on the rise, it could mean your competition is stepping up their efforts? If it’s on the decline, it could mean your quality score has improved and you’re able to show your ads at a lower cost per conversion? Are you seeing a weekly trend? You might be seeing a situation where your average CPC is increasing during the middle of the week and declining over the weekend.

Total Cost: The total cost for all the clicks on your ads during a particular date range.

Are you using up your daily budget? Have a look at your cost for the past 30 days and divide it by 30. How has your cost been trending over time?

Cost per conversion: The total cost divided by total number of conversions.

If you have determined how much you are prepared to pay per conversion, you can use this value to see if you are paying too much for your AdWords traffic.

Keywords and Ads
To understand how your keywords and ads are performing, you need to analyse the following areas of your account: 

Clickthrough rate (CTR): CTR is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions. This value helps you gauge the performance of your keywords and ads.

If you have a low CTR, this could mean your keywords aren’t very relevant to the searcher. For example, if you were to bid on the keyword ‘fresh apples’ and your ads only spoke about how fresh your oranges were, it’s likely most people won’t click on your ads. This would result in a low CTR for your keywords and your ads.

If you have a high CTR, this could mean that your keyword and ads are seen as relevant to the searcher. It could also mean that your ads are compelling enough to click on. For example, if you were to bid on the term ‘buy HDTV online’ and your ads explained how you were giving away free HDTVs, I suspect you would see a large number of clicks on your ads.

Average position: The average position will tell you how your keywords and ads rank when compared with other advertisers. Depending on how your ad ranks, it will be shown either above or below other advertisers. Too far down on the page could mean that no one will see your ads.

Relevance is extremely important when it comes to AdWords. If your keywords and ads are relevant, you will most likely see a higher CTR. If your keywords and ads are less relevant, CTR is likely to be lower and could mean an increase to the amount you pay per click. Your ads will show less and less because Google want to show ads that are relevant to the searcher.

You might also be experiencing a low CTR because of a low average position. If your ads are displayed lower down on the page, there is the possibility they aren’t being seen or they’re not being displayed on the first page of search results. You ads might be relevant to the keywords but if no one sees your ads, you won’t receive many clicks but you will have those impressions. Your only option in this case might be to increase your bid so that you will potentially be display in a higher position. Also, keep in mind that increasing your bid does not guarantee a higher position. It all depends on how Google determine your relevance and your competition’s rankings.

How targeted are your keywords and Ads?

Relevant keywords and ads are the key to your AdWords success. CTR can provide some insight as to how targeted your keywords and ads are, however it is not the sole indicator. Sometimes, you need to have a second look at the keywords and ads to see if they are targeted.

Put yourself in the position of the searcher: If you search for one of your keywords, do your ads directly speak to that keyword? If your keywords are slightly related to your ads, you will have a difficult time making that connection with the person who just performed that search. How do your ads compare with your competitors ads? Are your competitor’s ads more compelling?

Search terms report:

Depending on how you bid on your keywords, Google could display your ads to people that aren’t interested in what you are offering. The search terms report will help you see the real terms that are triggering your ads.

For example, you may have bid on the broad match keyword music recording software. Your ads could be displayed to people that search for the word audio or sound. You might even receive clicks on your ads for terms like music download or download music. This is because broad match will trigger your ads for broader searches.

If you aren’t offering downloadable music, these clicks could become extremely costly. You can use the search terms report in order to find negative keywords so that you can exclude that type of broad traffic. 

Campaign structure:

How you have structured your campaign could have a direct impact on how much you pay each time someone clicks on your AdWords ads.

AdWords success is achieved by delivering relevance. If you have one campaign with one ad group, hundreds of keywords and only one ad, how relevant can that one ad be to hundreds of keywords? It can’t.

The ideal structure would be one keyword to many ads then each ad would be directly relevant to the keyword. The problem with that approach is managing the massive number of campaigns and ad groups needed to support that configuration. This is why you need to strike the right balance.

When someone searches for one of your keywords, showing them an ad that directly connects with that keyword is ideal. For example, if you are selling project management software and bidding on terms such as project management as well as online collaboration, your ads may perform better if you focus on those two areas separately. This is accomplished by creating multiple ad groups for each keyword theme.

You always need to be asking yourself if the keywords and ads in that one ad group connect with each other. Do they answer the search, question, or problem?

Once you understand how to gauge your AdWords account’s performance, you will be able to improve on it.

You may have noticed that the frequency of our posts has plummeted slightly over recent months. We’re moving the whole of our website into WordPress, and it’s slow and painful.

Which is why we hired a company to do the job for us. Equally slow and painful.

But we’re almost there – please bear with us, we’ll be back very shortly.

Google Analytics makes it easy to make bad decisions. Really bad decisions.

There’s nothing wrong with Analytics as such, aside from some poor design decisions. But it’s a power tool.

But unlike many power tools, it doesn’t come with a bright warning sticker, and there are no gleaming blades and loud noises to tap into our common sense and scare us.

In the wrong hands, Analytics is dangerous. And most of the hands using it are indeed the wrong hands.

Log into your Analytics account, and the first thing you see looks something like this:

If you look closely, you’ll see that most of that information is more or less meaningless.

To make life easier, I’ve highlighted the information that serves no real purpose:

Most of it is technically correct, but easily/usually misunderstood. And misunderstood information becomes dangerous when acted upon.

Basic big mistakes.

Number of visitors:

Meaningless.

If your website goes from 50 to 500 visitors a day, who cares?

What if the original visitors were targeted and interested in what you sell, while the new visitors were interested in a blog post, but didn’t go beyond that single page?

Would you rather have low volumes of targeted traffic or high volumes of visitors who couldn’t care less about your products?

It’s obvious, right? But this is the first thing you see in your Analytics account.

Page views.

Meaningless.

In theory it’s a good indicator of quality: the more pages people view the more interested they may be.

But this is averaged out, even though Google don’t remind you of this.

Consider the above example of your website getting 50 visitors a day, and they view an average of five pages. That’s quite good.

But the additional 450 visitors only view one page before leaving.

So the average now falls to 1.4 pages.

But what does that mean? That all the visitors are only viewing just over one page of content?

Intermediate big mistakes.

Bounce rates.

Meaningless.

The above scenario saw an influx of an additional 450 visitors a day who went no further than the blog post.

Some might never again have any contact with you. Others may remember your website and products in the future. Others may follow you on social media channels.

One, as happened to our company, might become one of your biggest clients of all time.

Pages per visit.

Meaningless.

See above.

New vs. returning.

Meaningless.

Even ignoring the technical potholes that may affect the accuracy of this information, what does it actually mean?

If your website does a great job of selling your products, a significant number of visitors may buy on their first visit. Never to return.

But some good publicity will result in a surge of new visitors.

Both scenarios can skew the data.

It’s neither good nor bad if your return visitor count is high. It depends on the goals of your website, and where your visitors come from.

Advanced big mistakes.

Poor sampling.

When comparing data from two different time periods, always make sure that you’re comparing like with like. Don’t let the Analytics confuse you.

Logging into an Analytics account at the time of writing this shows me the following 31-day date range by default:

If I then choose to compare to the default previous period, the following dates will be selected.

The problem is that the latter date range includes five weekends; the earlier period only four.

Yet your website sees different trends during weekdays and weekends.

More poor sampling.

The above example included Christmas and New Year, a time that most websites will see a drop in activity on their website.

Compare January with December and you’ll see most “metrics” improve – but again, this is meaningless.

Another common mistake is to look at too small a data sample. For example trying to gauge the success of a page on your website looking at a five day sample with only 25 visitors in total.

Sticking to time intervals of seven days is safer, as is looking at reasonable volumes of data.

Mobile visitors have poor “metrics”, therefore mobile visitors aren’t worth investing in.

You can already see where this is going, but I heard two variations of this identical argument last month alone.

Mobile visitors are never going to engage with your website if what they see on their device looks crappy.

So where does all of this leave us?

Analytics is great – in the past our company paid a lot of money for tools that didn’t even come close to what we now get for free.

But Analytics is very easy to misread.

Five tips to keep you on track:

1 – Understand Google’s terminology and learn to correctly read what you’re looking at.

2 – Go into your Analytics account with a specific purpose. “Just checking what’s happening” will only lead to wasted time.

3 – Setup dashboards to make life (much) easier.

4 – Embrace your inner-cynic. Imagine the data is telling a story you don’t agree with. Pick flaws.

5 - Embrace your inner-cynic. Imagine the data is telling a story you don’t agree with. Pick flaws. (It’s worth saying twice)