A significant part of AdWords management involves educated trial and error. No matter how well you know your product, your markets and Google’s system, there is no way to accurately predict which ads will work and which will fall flat on their faces. AdWords visitors are probably quite different from your regular visitors – different needs and behavioural patterns, so new strategies may … Read More
25 ways to get Google AdWords wrong. Mistake #1: bad names
AdWords is complicated enough already. Don’t add to the chaos by using strange abbreviations. A new campaign named first-cont-01 might make sense next week, but in a year’s time, the person handling your account may be baffled. There’s a better way. Clear names make navigation and analysis quicker and easier. Campaign: discounts US and Canada Ad group: 20 percent Use the … Read More
Buying a diamond
I’m not. But I thought it would make a good example. Let’s imagine I was twenty years younger, and looking to buy a diamond. Being a twenty year old male means that I wouldn’t know the first thing about diamonds, so my first port of call to expand my mind would be to Google: “advice on buying a diamond”. Let’s … Read More
Great deal, bad design
I just received an email from one of the UK’s main grocery outlets. The email looked clean, fresh and inviting. For each of the offers they had a picture of the product, the name, price, saving and original price. Here’s what I found interesting. I was more interested in the original price (shown with a line through it) than the … Read More
BBC News: great content, horrible website
As a very regular user of the BBC news website, and someone who works with website optimisation and usability, I was geekishly excited when I heard that the BBC were in the process of a major redesign. Yet what a disappointment! The preview certainly sounded good: • a fresh, updated design, with more space for the main stories of the … Read More
Official: No average position on Google’s display network. “You do not even need to look at that column.”???
Average position is a reasonably useful indicator within your AdWords account. So how is average position calculated for ads on Google’s Display (content) Network? Ads aren’t always displayed vertically, so what do the numbers actually mean? We contacted Google’s support for clarification, and their answer was a little surprising: “Thank you for your patience in awaiting this email. I understand … Read More
The reality of AdWords SiteLinks
In case you haven’t noticed, Google have recently opened up a somewhat old feature to all AdWords account holders: Ad SiteLinks. In short, it can potentially make your ad stand out from those of your competition. To use it is rather easy. Go to your campaign settings, and under the ad extensions section you will find an item offering to … Read More
How and why most of the world needs Facebook sexual health in their advertising
Research by Dan Zarrella suggests that certain words have a greater impact in social media than others. The Most Facebook-Shareable Words vs. The Least Shareable Words on Facebook. Not exactly a great surprise, but the research also found that “techie and social-media dork favorite topics like Twitter, Google, and the iPhone aren’t very popular with the mainstream Facebook audience“. So … Read More
AdWords ads DO affect your organic rankings. Probably.
There are those who believe that paying for Google AdWords ads will result in their previously invisible website shooting up the ‘regular’ rankings. Sadly that simply isn’t the case. AdWords ads are completely separate from the organic listings. However there is a very real possibility that ads may impact the CTR of organic listings, or, for that matter, vice-versa. An … Read More
Grow up: the web is not another dimension!
The internet has been with us for some time now, so why do the media continue to portray it as something new, dark and fearful? Newspapers and news websites are full of stories like “woman murdered by internet date“, “internet use linked to depression“, “does the internet reinforce prejudices” and more. All of these are actual headlines from the BBC … Read More
