PUREDEALER | Automotive Internet Marketing | SEO | PPC | Custom Dealer Websites

10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes

On today’s highly competitive Google AdWords pay per click (PPC) search engine, it is now more important than ever to ensure that your PPC campaigns are optimized to their utmost potential. You should be achieving maximum return on investment (ROI) for the keywords or phrases that are most relevant to your business and are most likely to provide you with targeted traffic to your website. With ever growing cost-per-click (CPC) prices throughout the various PPC search engines it is essential that you avoid certain mistakes that will undoubtedly result in poorly performing PPC campaigns.

The Mistakes to Avoid

• Long list of less than targeted keywords

• Not identifying unique aspects of your product or service

• Lack of keywords in your ad text

• Directing users solely to your home page

• Creation of single Ad Groups

• Utilizing single campaigns

• Using broad match only

• Failure to optimize Ad Serving for your ads

• Not tracking results

• Entering the content network without modifying bids

Long List of Less Than Targeted Keywords

When you first set out to create your AdWords campaign it is of utmost importance that you do not go “keyword crazy”, what this means is that you must not create long lists of irrelevant and generic keywords. For example if you were an automotive dealership then it would not be in your best interest to target the keyword “truck”. The reason being is that the cost per click (CPC) for such a generic keyword would be incredibly high when compared to a more descriptive relevant keyword such as “Chevrolet Silverado Extended Cab”. An example of an irrelevant keyword which would not produce conversions if you strictly conducted automotive sales would be “tail light covers” the phrase may bring visitors to your website but if they do not find what they are looking for when they get there they will be gone just as quickly as they arrived.

Not Identifying Unique Aspects of Your Product or Service

Before implementing your AdWords campaign you must first understand exactly what it is that makes you stand out from your competition. By identifying your unique products or services you will have a lot more clarity on how to rise above your competitors and zone in on the keywords or phrases that are unique to your business. I would recommend that you perform an analysis of your competition, have a look and see what they are doing and which phrases they are using. After conducting a competition analysis and after understanding what makes your products or services unique you will be able to come up with a strategy that will topple your competitors.

Lack of Keywords in Your Ad Text

When creating your descriptive ad copy it is imperative that you find a means to inject your keywords in to your title and description while maintaining the delicate balance of clarity and relevance. Your ad copy should be tailored in such a way that when read by a visitor they know exactly what they are getting in to when they click on your ad, which brings me to my next point.

Directing Users Solely to Your Home Page

Taking the time to decide on which destination URL should be designated to which ad instead of pointing all ads in a campaign to your homepage is an oversight that I come across far too often. When you finish with compiling your list of relevant keywords that describe unique products or services of your business, why on earth would you then send everyone to your homepage and let them navigate through your site in hopes of finding what it is that they are looking for. Instead why not send them straight to the page that contains exactly what was described to them within your ad copy. As an example if you were an automotive dealership and your ad contains the keyword “Chevrolet Silverado” instead of sending them to www.auto-motive-dealership.com send them to www.auto-motive-dealership.com/silverado

Creation of Single Ad Groups

By categorizing ads that are targeting related keywords into a common ad-group will create a much higher level of control that you have over your entire campaign. Let’s say that you were selling marketing Honda Civics. Start by grouping all ads targeted towards Honda Civics into a single Ad Group. You would then create another ad-group which could be targeting trim levels and another containing used Civics and so on. By organizing your ad-group structure in this manner gives you the ability to create in-depth reports on the performance of each ad-group.

Utilizing Single Campaigns

Once you have your Ad Groups sorted out into easy to identify categories you may then move on to the next step of creating relevant campaigns. From the example above you have created Ad Groups containing Honda Civics. Now it is time to create a container for all of the Ad Groups into one campaign entitled “Honda Models”. You would then repeat the process creating Ad Groups for Accords, Pilots, etc (you get the picture) one group for Civics one for Accords etc and then once again you drop them all into a single campaign entitle “Honda Models”. Having highly organized campaigns is the key to determine which ads are creating the optimal conversions.

Using Broad Match Only

When you do not take advantage of the phrase matching options that are available to you chances are you are missing out on potential customers and creating a higher CPC. Broad matches are usually less targeted than exact and phrase matching. Broad matching is the default option your ads will appear for expanded matches such as plurals or relevant keyword variations. When utilizing phrase match your ad will appear for search terms in the order that you specify and sometimes for other terms. Exact matching is by far the most targeted option to use. You will appear for the exact keyword specified. Negative keyword is also a fantastic option to utilize in order to specify which keywords you do not want to appear for.

Broad match

Default option:

• blue widget

Phrase match

Surround the keyword in quotes:

• “blue widget”

Exact match

Surround the keyword in square brackets:

• [blue widget]

Negative match

Place a negative character before the keyword:

• -blue widget

Failure To Optimize Ad Serving For Your Ads

When you take advantage of AdWords Ad Serving service basically what you will be doing is showing your most popular ads more often. The AdWords platform will give weight to ads with the highest click through rates (CTRs) and display them more often then keywords with lower (CTRs) within the same ad-group.

Not Tracking Results

In order to have any idea on your AdWords campaign performance you must be able to see the keywords that work as well as those that do not. Google AdWords supplies a vast array of very useful tracking tools. Google has also built in to the user interface Google Analytics which is a marvellous web analytics tool that provides you with in-depth reporting on all aspects of your campaign performance. I can not stress enough the importance of creating goals for your AdWords campaign to measure your success by.

Entering The Content Network Without Modifying Bids

Within the AdWords platform you have recently been given the ability to set different bids for the content network compared to that of the search network. If you do not set different bids on the content network for certain keywords, you will be paying more per click than you should be. After lowering the prices on certain keywords you will notice that the amount of click throughs that you will be attaining will remain the same as they were at the higher bid.

Conclusion

The purpose for this article was to create awareness for common mistakes and to eliminate frustrations that may emerge when managing Google AdWords campaigns. The points mentioned above are compiled from management mistakes that I have stumbled upon time and time again in hopes to assist you in creating a marketing campaign that will generate dramatic increases to the profits of your business. Many automotive pay per click vendors make these exact mistakes, and you could be a victim of poorly spent budget.

One of the newest ways to market a business opportunity, and one of the best of the new business opportunities on the market today is automotive text messaging, mobile or cell phone marketing and SMS texting.

Especially if your audience is ages 18-35 mobile advertising or some sort of mobile promotion product or marketing will get their attention perhaps as much as or more than an Internet campaign. People are using cell phones, blackberries and other smart phone products in ever increasing numbers, and broadcast companies, newspapers and other media are teaming up with them to help promote their own products. Short Messaging Service (SMS) is a great way to bring younger consumers to your firm, either to buy your product or service, or to become part of your business opportunity team.

According to Pyramid Research, the global mobile market has grown to over $667 billion US dollars since 2001. This represents a 15 percent increase in subscribers and an 18 percent increase in revenue. The market, Pyramid suggests, is wide open for those who want to create an alternative wireless offering as a business opportunity. The researchers determined that the increase in national wireless carriers in every country had increased considerably over the past five years, while market search decreased.

Many businesses now offer email delivery to a user’s cell phone. For those who don’t already have this smart phone capability, vendors offer a wide range of inexpensive monthly agreements, and on the minimum number of messages the user would like to receive each month.

Mobile seems to be an excellent opportunity to deliver a business message to a young, or young-at-heart, consumer mark

It is now time to work on link popularity!

Why bother with link popularity? Link popularity is important because every major search engine considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms. You must build links if you want to rank well with the competitive keywords.

If your dealership web pages include all the important criteria, it’s time to focus on your links. You need good inbound links to move your page up the ranking ladder and get new entry points to your site, but how do you get those inbound links in the first place?

Let’s make sure you understand what link popularity is. Link popularity is the measure of inbound links to your web site. Link analysis evaluates which sites are linking to you and the link text itself.

Fortunately for you, there are a lot of ways to improve your link quality and popularity. Here are some ideas to help you set up your own link popularity campaign:

1) Get your site in shape. You must first make sure your site is in shape. Your site should look professional, have good content and be easy to navigate. Validate your HTML code and check your links with a tool like HTML Toolbox. If there are broken pages or links in your site, it is not likely you will get linkbacks.

Directories have gone on record saying they may exclude sites with broken links and page errors. Directories want only professional looking sites in their databases, so proof your site before you start promoting it.

2) Make time for link building. You can’t grow your link popularity overnight. Set aside time every week to work on link building. If you force yourself to spend a couple hours a week on link building, it will become part of your routine. If you don’t make it a priority, it won’t get done.

It will take time for you to notice results, but, over time, those one or two new links start adding up until they are hundreds or even thousands of links.

3) Set realistic goals for yourself. Don’t expect to see instant results. Link building is taxing, frustrating and time-consuming. Convincing another web site to link to you can be very difficult. If you get one good quality link a month, you’re doing good.

Patience is the key to link building. It is important to keep track of who you have asked, since it could be embarrassing to ask a site for a link if they’ve already given you one.

If someone declines, wait and ask again later. Their company may have changed their focus, or there may be someone else reviewing the links. A “no” today doesn’t necessarily mean “never”.

4) Educate your employees about link building. If you’re link building in-house, educate your company’s internal management about the benefits of link building.

Link popularity is unique to the search engine industry. Sit down with your management and explain the concept behind link building. Don’t assume your management knows what it is, because most won’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

Explain link building by describing the relationship of link building and increased revenue, this will usually get management’s attention. You will need management’s support to provide the time and money you need to get into search engines or directories, so their understanding is important.

5) Quality above quantity. Be selective. Search engines use sophisticated rules when judging link importance, and the popularity of the site is also important. One link from CNet is worth far more than a link from a personal web site.

Stay away from link farms, which are sites that exist only to link to other websites. Search engines take a very dim view of link farms. Google has been known to ban sites found using these link farms. Many current “automotive seo experts” are creating their own link farms by registering many seo-related domain names, hosting them at different locations, and using them to link to each other. It may work now, but that is not a long term solution.

Try to stick to sites that are in the same field as your site, but not competing. Links that are in your same field will carry more weight than a link from a quilting site if you are a site for certified Hondas. This does not mean you should always refuse if the site isn’t in your field, just limit the amount of the non related sites that you accept. Links from within your own field are strong endorsements and will go a long way to increasing your link popularity.

6) Get to know the website you are requesting a link to. Establish yourself as a real human first, then when you ask for a link, they are less likely to refuse.

Broadcast emails are a bad idea, sure it is easier, but they are considered spam and will only make the company mad at you. Spam link requests waste everyone’s time and don’t work.

7) Give them your exact HTML link code. When you send them what you want in the link and suggest which page you want it on, it makes their job easier. This also makes sure the right words are used in the link and reduces the burden in setting up the link. Everybody is pressed for time, and, if you make it “drop-in simple”, you will be making it irresistible. The easier it is for them, the more successful you will be in convincing them to use your link.

Get listed on as many directories as you can. This is important if your site is new or you do not have any inbound links. Another reason this is important is that, without inbound links, your site is at a disadvantage with most search engine rankings.

The way to overcome this is to get a few quality links. The way to start is to get listed in as many directories as you can. There are many directories out there, and the more you can get into, the better.

Here are some directories to choose from: Open Directory, Yahoo, DMOZ, LookSmart and Zeal.com, just to name a few.

Most directories worth linking to require you to pay for a listing. Most of the time, it is worth the expense.

9) Be prepared to give something for a link. Try to have something to offer in return for a link. Create a page that allows you to have a place from which you can easily link to them.

You can offer to work a barter arrangement with them. If your site is popular or is within their market, they might consider advertisements in exchange.

10) Consider outsourcing your link popularity work. Link building is a time-consuming part of search engine optimization, so you may find it is not cost effective to do it in-house. This means you might want to hire someone else to do it for you.

Many top SEO firms have turned to outsourcing this function. Outsourcing could be an efficient way for you to get links for your site as long as you use a reputable link building firm.

If you decide to outsource, be sure the firm you hire follows good link building practices. Ask them how they plan to get the job done. Make sure they use a personalized approach, just like you would do if you were doing it yourself. You need to make sure that the method they use would not be considered spam.

If they refuse to discuss their methods with you, then you can assume they use impersonal methods such as widespread e-mail drops or link farms - this is considered spam. They may call it something else, but, if their process involves sending out large numbers of form emails, it’s still spam. If they do it the impersonal way, it will only set you back and injure your company’s professional reputation. Saving time at the expense of hurting your reputation isn’t worth it. Go look for a different company, or develop your links yourself.

Think of link building as an investment in your site.

The link building process needs to be one of your top priorities. Search engines have found link building to be resistant to manipulation, and they use it to measure the importance of a site. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start, the better.

Think of link building as a long-term investment in your site. The time you put in now to improve your linking today will insure a good search engine ranking in the future.

Every time we turn on our television sets or computers, we are barraged with an endless stream of automotive commercials or advertisements from an auto dealership online marketing campaign. What many of us don’t realize is that while they are selling the same product the means in which they do so are completely different. Were you aware that there is a difference between automotive advertising and auto dealers marketing?

The majority of auto dealers make the mistake of confusing the two without even realizing they are doing so. Little do they understand of the complexities involved with auto dealership online marketing versus their advertising. Now, think about all of the many billions of dollars they waste every year in automotive advertising and car dealer internet marketing due to their ignorance. The automotive business accounts for the largest spending on local newspapers and local radio stations, for example.

Let me begin with going over the formal definitions of each with a quick explanation of how auto dealership marketing and automotive advertising vary from one another:

Automotive Advertising - Different from car dealership internet marketing in that this is usually defined as a paid, public, and non-personal announcement of some type of persuasive message from a particular sponsor, in this case the car dealership. Automotive advertising tends to be a non-personal presentation or promotion of its products to existing and, more importantly, new potential customers.

Auto Dealership Marketing - Any type of effort that involves the systematic planning, implementation and control of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers such as auto dealership online marketing. Auto dealers marketing must be equally advantageous to both parties in regards to the exchange or transfer of products.

As you can see it is easy to confuse advertising as a car dealership internet marketing campaign. The difference can be confusing to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same, so let me break it down a little more for you.

The best way to distinguish the two is to imagine marketing as a pie, inside there is advertising, car dealership internet marketing, market research, auto dealership marketing, media planning, product pricing, distribution, customer support, and sales strategy. Advertising is only one piece of the entire in the marketing strategy as is car dealer internet marketing.

All of these elements not only work independently, such as an auto dealership online marketing campaign, but also together towards a larger and more comprehensive goal. Think of marketing as a process which takes time, often involving many, many hours of research for that marketing plan to be effective. Marketing is everything a business does to assist sales between the business and consumer.

Choosing a reputable SEO Firm can be daunting, with so little knowledge available on what to look for. So the goal of this article is to give you the four key scams to watch out for, when searching for a reputable SEO Firm:SEO WANNA-BE’S

Search engine optimization is one of those unknown fields that has no established standards. Anyone can say they are an SEO or can do SEO work, but that does not mean they have the talent, time or tools to produce any results. There are also programs that claim to help search engine ranking. They do not work either. Period.

An easy way to spot an unknowledgeable SEO or a web designer who poses as an SEO is to ask them if they optimized your site when they designed it. They will answer, “Oh yeah, I optimized it.”

That is equivalent to saying, “Oh yeah, I’ve been working out.” Working out and SEO are never one time events. They are always on-going projects.

SEO SUBMISSION SCAMS

A lot of companies will also call people and tell them that they will submit their sites to 2000 directories, which will build their search engine ranking. It is a form of link campaigning–albeit lopsided and one-dimensional. The problem with these “auto-submissions” is that the directories to which they are submitting have safe-guards in place to reject these kinds of mass submissions. Now, here is the scam: the company has technically done what they promised they would do, SUBMIT your site, even though 99% of those submissions will be rejected and thus be of no use to building a client’s search engine ranking.

SEO KEYWORD SCAMS

Another prevalent scam in the industry is for SEOs to try to gull you into letting them pick the phrases to dominate. For instance, say you are a car dealer and your website is: www. myhondadealer.com

A scam SEO will come to you and say, “We can get you a #1 ranking for ‘Honda Dealer selling used Hondas in small town Nebraska” They can probably do that for you. Unfortunately, none of your potential clients are going to Google and typing in that phrase.

More sophisticated SEOs will come to you and tell you, “I will try to get you the ranking ‘Honda Dealer New Jersey.’” That sounds like a wonderful phrase to dominate, but their data has told them that no legitimate SEOs are going after that phrase; because, again, while it might sound good, very few people are actually typing that in. People may actually ne using either ‘Big City Honda dealer” or ‘Big City, NJ Honda’

What a legitimate SEO will do (like we do here) is to show you the actual data. We will show you the exact numbers of how many people per month are searching for the product or services you offer and what exact keyphrases they are typing in. We won’t go after any of the silly phrases above. We will show you the data AND LET YOU CHOOSE!

BLACK HAT SEO

There are short cuts that can be used to quickly build a ranking. These shortcuts involve “spammy” techniques that are referred to as Black Hat SEO. One of these techniques includes overloading a website with keywords. This works temporarily, but once the Google algorithm figures out what the site is doing, they will banish the site to what is referred to as “the Google sandbox.” This simply means that the site is marked to never be allowed to have a good ranking in the system and you will need to get your shovel out and dig your way out.

SEOs will sometimes do this because it is the easier than doing the work the honest way. In the long run, the hard, honest way is more effective and far more safe, but it does take longer. A few years ago BMW of Germany hired an SEO firm. This SEO firm applied some black hat techniques and Google found out. BMW of Germany was banished by Google and the auto giant spent the next few years and millions of dollars wooing Google to allow them back in to the system. Google finally agreed, but unless you have millions of dollars and the power of a automotive giant, you have to be careful to choose a Reputable automotive SEO Firm.