Google unveiled their new quality score feature today. One can now view a quality score column and see how their keywords are preforming. However, it’s not easy to find as it’s hidden by default.

Here’s the step by step instructions on adding your quality score column to your keyword view.

First, navigate to the keywords in your AdGroup. Next, click on the ‘customize colums’ option seen below.

This will let you see the drop down menu:

Click on ‘Show Quality Score’.

Your AdGroups will now look like this:

To learn more about how quality score is calculated, please refer to my quality score presentation.

Added: If you campaign is content only, you will not be able to view this column. The quality score column will only be shown if you have search distribution.

Yahoo just announced that you can now search the Yahoo Developer Network code base using Krugle.

I found this interesting as I just did a quick writeup on my favorite code search engines in which someone from Krugle responded a couple of times.

Microsoft supports dynamic link insertion. I did a full write up about it a week ago. Microsoft was kind enough to go through the documentation and make suggestions of where clarification was necessary.

I’ve just updated the Microsoft adCenter Dynamic Links article with all of the appropriate information.

In addition, I also found where one can go through all of the adCenter FAQs without being logged into adCenter.

If you follow this link; and the click on ‘View More Questions’ you can access all of the adCenter FAQs (and search through them) without being logged into your account.

AdWords site targeting allows advertisers to pay CPM rates to appear on specific content network sites.

At present, if an advertiser only wants to appear on specific content network sites, they can’t just pay a cost per click or bid into position – they must pay on a CPM auction model.

For many advertisers this adds another level of complexity to managing a campaign. To be successful with Site Targeting, one must:

• Know where a publisher is showing ads on a page (above/below fold)
• Understand the publisher’s audience
• Convert CPM into CPC to determine relative effectiveness
• Track Site Targeting campaigns separately
• Bid in CPM while other advertisers are bidding in CPC (difficult to see placement, what one needs to bid for high exposure on a website).

I do use a decent amount of Site Targeting and have been fond of it in certain situations. If one steps out of direct response marketing and into brand awareness or product launches, Site Targeting is essentially another banner buy.

It’ also the only area in AdWords where one can target by demographic.

AdWords has recently announced that they have a beta program for allowing advertisers to pay in CPC with Site Targeting campaigns. I’m very interested in finding out how this program compares to the typical content network. If it does work as it sounds, it could completely change how advertisers bid on the content network.

If you’d like to signup for the beta, the form is here:
https://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/cpc_sitetargeting

by Brad Geddes

Scraping RSS feeds or stealing entire websites is the bane of any webmaster. Unfortunately, there’s not an easy way to keep RSS feeds from being scraped or used. However, there are certain things you can do to make the scraped content work for you.

The ultimate goals are to make sure that you are credited with your own writings and that someone can get from the scraped feed to your website. Hence, you’ll get both links and visitors by following some simple suggestions.

1. Use absolute URLs.
2. Begin posts by including your name and/or blog.
3. Hyperlink your name to your about page.
4. Include a link within the first 2 lines to one of your blog entries.
5. Link to at least one to two of your posts in the body of the entry (depending on the length)
6. Include the name of your blog within the post.
7. Include a link at the end of your post to ‘related or other information’.
8. Quote yourself or reference another post within the body of the text.

It’s difficult to follow all of these guidelines on every post. However, for your favorite posts – it’s suggested that you take a bit of time to make sure you end up with the credit for your own writings.

Google maps has recently started showing subway stops on maps. It seems much more prominent to see these icons on the directions page than on the general maps page.

However, if you were traveling to Chicago, this map would be quite confusing.

First off, several of those metros don’t connect. While the pins mark the stations, Chicago has several different trains that run downtown (named ‘the el’) and one often has to switch trains (and know where to transfer) to find a destination.

The second aspect is that mapping software doesn’t seem to take under ground vs above ground into determining directions. I will admit that the above is probably a trick query, it’s for Intelligentsia Coffee’s Pedway location (the pedway is an underground walkway that connects several parts of downtown Chicago. There’s no way to drive to this location, but you’d never know it from the map’s directions.

Overall, it’s probably a precursor of things to come. It would be very useful to be able to use a search engine’s mapping site to find public transportation directions. New York and Chicago can be difficult cities to navigate by car. It’s often faster and easier (once one understands the systems) to use public transportation. However, easy access to that information can sometimes be difficult.

Transitchicago.com is useful for finding door to door public transportation directions. However, if you’re trying to find a restaurant, read reviews, see what’s close, and then want directions to that restaurant, a search engine is the more logical choice to find that information.

Hopefully, we can look forward to finding public transportation directions on maps.google.com sometime in the near future. It would be an extremely useful tool.

Yahoo is sending out emails offering custom assistance for Panama upgrades. What’s interesting is that I received these emails even for a small account spending under $20 per month and another account which hasn’t been active in over two years.

There seem to be two subject lines that they are using:

• Need Help Restructuring Your Account?
• Call us Today to Help Restructure Your Account

If you need custom help understanding the upgrade or restructuring the account, Yahoo seems quite eager to help at present.

Here’s the email I’m receiving:

Dear Advertiser,

Our records show that you recently upgraded to the new Sponsored Search system. During the upgrade, your account was reorganized to match our new account structure, which we believe provides you with more flexibility to help manage your campaigns.

We know that not every customer is satisfied with the results of their upgrade and would like some help. If that’s you, as a valued customer, we’d like to offer a complimentary, one-time assistance with the restructuring of your upgraded account.*

This offer includes:

• Phone consultation of how you would like to reorganize your account
• Helpful advice on how to best structure your account
• Upload of your restructured account

Once you agree on how you’d like your account restructured, we’ll do the work and then we will upload the information to your account. Please note that your account will be taken offline after the upload, until you review the changes and put your account back online. You will be notified via email to log into your account, review the new structure and set your account status back to “On.” This entire process should be completed within approximately 5 business days after the consultation. However, the process time may vary depending on the complexity of your account.

If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, please contact us at [phone number removed].

Also, make sure to review our Quick Start Guide to get helpful information on the new system. Thank you for your business and we’re committed to helping you be successful.

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo! Search Marketing

by Brad Geddes 

When creating a PPC account The way in which your keywords are organized into Ad Groups (orders for adCenter) is essential to PPC success.

It’s one thing to find 1000-1 million good keywords. It’s another to get clicks on these keywords, and yet another to actually get conversions. The first step to organizing any account is how keywords are bundled into Ad Groups.

My rule of thumb is to write one extremely targeted ad that has one purpose and expresses a single intent (you don’t have to actually use this ad, it’s a keyword exercise). When adding new keywords to an Ad Group, if that ad copy doesn’t accurately reflect the keyword, then the keyword needs to be in a new Ad Group. Often the trick is finding the most targeted ad possible.

For instance, let’s take the proverbial plumber.

If the ad copy was:
Emergency Plumber Service
Call 24/7 for immediate assistance.
We work weekends!

And you had keywords such as:
Denver plumbing
emergency plumbing
24 hour plumbing service
plumbing services
broken pipes
fix shower
overflowing toilet
Saturday plumbing
weekend plumbing
flooded basement

It quickly becomes obvious that the keywords: weekend plumbing, Saturday plumbing, 24 hour plumbing service, emergency plumbing could be described by that ad copy.

So, the next question is, would you rather split up those even further? The ad copy describes both emergency plumbing and weekend plumbing. Maybe a better ad copy would be:

Weekend Plumbing Services
Don’t pay high weekend rates!
We work all day, every day.

In this example, suddenly this ad copy only describes the keywords: weekend plumbing and Saturday plumbing; which makes it a much more targeted ad. (Learn more about title and description writing).

It is better to have 100 Ad Groups with 10 keywords each than 10 Ad Groups with 100 keywords each. When ad copy accurately reflects a keyword, one usually has a higher CTR and can send keywords to more targeted landing pages.

Take a look through your campaigns and think about these questions:

• Do you have generic ads that are trying to describe hundreds of keywords?
• Are your ads extremely targeted towards your keywords?
• Do the ads express a single user intent?
• Do the ads call for a single user action?
• Are you split testing offers?

There are certain elements that high converting landing pages should have and certain rules they should adhere to. Here’s the quick list to follow: 

• Ensure that your landing page and ad seamlessly blend together.
  • If you ‘surprise’ a visitor, then your conversion rate can suffer.

• Forms can be intimidating:
  • Simplify the form process whenever possible.

• Products:
  • Quick click add to cart
  • Easy navigation to related items
  • Easy to find shipping price & deliver time
  • Detailed product info within 1 click

•  Shipping Prices:
  • Allow users to easily determine how much shipping will cost
  • If your ad claims free shipping, make this clear on the website

• Subscriptions / Downloads:
  • Should contain simple form
  • Should not ask for more data than necessary
  • Track form abandonment (and where on the form they are abandoning)

• Personal Information Collection:
  • Users are increasingly concerned about privacy. Easily allow one to view your privacy policy. If you do not need certain information, then do not ask for it.
  • Make sure pages that collect information are secure pages (and that the user knows it)
  • Trust seals (SSL, Better Business Bureau, etc)

If someone is ready and willing to give you their credit card – Make it easy for them!

Being only slightly technical, I like to use code search engines to find examples that are being implemented or help files without the clutter of non-relevant sites.

Here are my favorite code search engines:

http://www.allthecode.com – This one is good for java and some more technical code. It’s not great for finding example code on webpages.

http://www.google.com/codesearch – This is one of my favorites for finding onpage code.

http://www.krugle.com – Allows you to search for code by specific language. Sometimes I don’t find what I’m looking for, especially when it’s onpage.

http://www.koders.com – This one seems to be the most complete as far as finding information. However, sometimes it can be clunky to use as the UI isn’t always intuitive.