Keywords are no longer marked Inactive for Search

Most SEM professionals have been jumping with joy with this new addition from google about keywords no more going inactive for Search. When I was actually trying do some stuff on a few accounts I realized something which is more of a huge drawback rather than an advantage for most professionals. 

Initially what would you do when keywords go inactive for search? Download recent changes on your editor filter keywords by status, increase bids and upload them. Otherwise I would pull a keyword report filter all inactive keywords increase their min CPC and upload them. But now give me a solution??? Activating keywords which are not eligible to appear on the first page is practically impossible in huge accounts. One would have to eternally activate keywords which is not possible. 

One more thing fishy that I noticed, ads for keywords with average positions of 3 and below are not eligible to throw up on page 1 of google. The best part is a few of those keywords did not even have enough competitors. Well seems like Google is trying to get more and more complicated in days to come.

Inside Search With Mr. Google

I always used to wonder how Google used to differentiate between Java – The programming language, Java – The Island in South East Asia, and Java – the coffee bean. It was after a lot of contemplation that I decided to personify Google and all seemed to be clear to me. Google was somebody who understood which ‘Java’ I was talking about, based on the context I was referring to.

Imagine how many such words exist with different meanings, what we call homonyms. Mr. Google knew all homonyms in the English language and not only this, he also understood what ever I said, and even if I misspell something he would come up to me and correct me about what I was asking him. Well how did Mr. Google know ALLLL this? After pondering and reading some stuff that Mr. Google gave me when I asked him, I got my answer.

Mr. Google was a very well read person, he would read, read, read the whole dam day – 24 X 7 and the best part is he never forgets something that he read (I wish I had such a brain). Apart from reading he would go around telling people what they wanted. And I guess he did both simultaneously. I bet Mr. Google had 10 heads like Ravana or might be even more. Who!! Ok! Let us now try and understand how Mr. Google read and how he stored all that data in one of his many heads. For any piece of data that Mr. Google read he would first go about removing all the articles (a, an, the) prepositions (in, on, above), connectors (since, because, while) and other common words. He would only keep the remaining words (those words which were specific to the data). He would then continue to read and whenever he came across similar stuff, he would do some kind of calculations which is a secret and I guess Mr. Google’s son would be the only guy who would get to know of it. These calculations that he performed would give some kind of relevance factor to words. He would do this process for eternity and when ever some body asked him about any thing he would dig into his head and give those pieces of information which have a greater degree of relevance to what the person asked. This degree of relevance is called Latent Semantic Index (LSI).

I got a peep into how Mr. Google went about doing his calculations. However, if you don’t want to get into the math you can jump to the next paragraph. For those who love Math, Let's go on... After removing all the unnecessary words, he developed something called aTerm Document Matrix (TDM). Mr. Google generates his TDM by arranging list of all content words along the vertical axis, and a similar list of all documents along the horizontal axis. These need not be in any particular order, as long as he keeps track of which column and row corresponded to which word and document. He would then go about filling the number of times each word occurred in a document. Since any random document would contain only a tiny subset of content word vocabulary, the matrix is very sparse (that is, it consists almost entirely of zero's). This is how he goes about doing it at the lower level, imagine Mr. Google went about doing this for every Web Page!!! Each of his heads would be assigned a specific task and they would do it meticulously. These matrices would run into many more dimensions. He then went about giving weights to words some were local weights and some were global weights. A word that appears more number of times in a page is given a higher local weight. Global weights are given depending on the school of math Mr. Google’s teachers came from. The Global weight could either be directly or inversely proportional to the local weight. There is one more last step to the weighting process – Normalization, this is a scaling step designed to keep large documents with many keywords from overwhelming smaller documents in the result set. It is similar to handicapping in golf - smaller documents are given more importance, and larger documents are penalized, so that every document has equal significance. These three values multiplied together - local weight, global weight, and normalization factor - determine the actual numerical value that appears in each non-zero position of our term/document matrix. This is followed by running aSingular Value Decomposition (SVD) algorithm, this procedure is like shining a torch over a ball, what would you see? You would see a circle, in effect, we have reduced a 3D object into a 2D object. This is what SVD is about. The SVD algorithm would reduce the matrix into a set of smaller components. The algorithm alters one of these components (this is where the number of dimensions gets reduced), and then recombines them into a matrix of the same shape as the original, so Mr. Google can again use it as a lookup grid. The matrix is an approximation of the term document matrix, and looks much different from the original. This finished matrix is what Mr. Google would use to actually search. Given one or more terms in a search query, Mr. Google would look up the values for each search term/document combination, calculate a cumulative score for every document, and rank the documents by that score, which is a measure of their similarity to the search query. In practice, Mr. Google will probably assign an empirically-determined threshold value to serve as a cutoff between relevant and irrelevant documents, so that the query does not return every document in Mr. Google’s collection. I guess you would have got a peep into a fraction of second of Google’s life.

Well, in what way is LSI useful to us - PPC professionals? When our ads appear on the content network it is because of the LSI between the cluster of keywords in the ad group and that of the content on the web page that makes your ad appear. LSI also affects your quality score, the greater the degree of relevance between your ad text, your keyword inventory and the content on your landing page would mean a better Quality Score for your keywords. Put on your thinking hats and see what else LSI could affect. So guys! We have one more thing to keep in mind while we create our accounts, make sure you have High LSI's.

SEO or PPC or SEO & PPC

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Advantages:

Immediate Results : PPC generates traffic almost immediately - not in several months time. This makes it ideal for New sites which will take a while to be listed organically.

Time based promotions : PPC ads are ideal for time dependent activities such as special offers, competitions, or seasonal sales .

Control : PPC can be stopped or started whenever you wish - so you’ve got some control over traffic volume. If you are swamped with orders or enquiries you can turn PPC off until the backlog clears. PPC also provides a great deal of control over other aspects - such as budget, and even the geographical location or time of day your ds aree displayed.

Testing : PPC ads allow you to relatively easily (and cheaply) test the effectiveness of different keyword phrases and landing pages.

Search Engine Unfriendly : PPC ads can be used to promote sites that may not otherwise be found via search engines e.g. new sites, single page sites, or sites that for other reasons may be difficult to rank organically for.

Keyword Range : PPC ads allow you to bid on a large range of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you don’t necessarily want on your web pages.

Disadvantages:

Expense : PPC advertising can become expensive (with little or no return) if the wrong keywords are used, the bid price is not appropriate, or if the campaign is not managed.

Fraud : Click fraud can be an issue - particularly for very competitive areas.
Major PPC provides such as Google Adwords, Yahoo and adCenter are offering much better tools for setting up and managing Adwords campaign,s however they can still be complex to manage effectively - if you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should seriously consider professional campaign management.


Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages:

Cheap : Once established, traffic through organic search engine results is almost free.

Long Term : Once optimised, your website should continue to deliver traffic for the long term.

Cost Management : the number of visitors isn’t based on your budget - your budget doesn’t
need to increase to increase traffic.

Disadvantages:

Up Front overheads : SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.

Long Term results : SEO is not usually a quick fix, results can take weeks or months to be achieved.

Black Hat : be aware of some SEO techniques which are not approved of by Search Engines, these can sometimes have reasonable short term results, but may ultimately have a negative impact on your rankings.

Site redesign : SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.
Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it can cost considerably less in the long term. However, correct use of optimisation techniques is important (sometimes they can backfire).

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation both provide opportunities to promote your site and build traffic. Both can contribute significantly to the success of your online business. If you use both wisely, you should be able to get many new site visitors and customers without spending a fortune.

Writing Ads for PPC

1. If your goals are truly branding and visitors, fine-tune your ad title to include both and leverage the description to add further details.
While it will be more straightforward to craft Overture ad titles that focus on either branding or visitors, it may be the case that your business goals demand that your ads support both goals. This is challenging in 70 characters, but can be done with some creativity. Unless your brand is well established in the market don’t add your company name as it would not make a diiference, infact people might not even click on your ad as your company is not a leading brand in the field. Once you have created an ad title that focuses on both branding and visitors, you should reinforce those goals in the first line of your description. To get a high click through rate and brand your site, the first line of your description should preferably begins with the keyword and includes your web site name, since many search engines highlight search terms on the results page, this technique will highlight the beginning of your description, and chances are that users will start reading. Having your company name close to the keyword increased its visibility, and the proximity of the keyword and your company make users identify the two together, increasing your perceived relevance.

2. Use proper grammar, straightforward language, and proofread!
How you deliver your message can be as important as the message itself. The way your text looks and how it reads will impact the reader's impression of the message and of your company. A sloppy site with small text, typos, and misspellings will make you seem unprofessional; clear and concise writing with proper grammar and spelling, and language that is appropriate to the subject, will deliver your message more effectively and inspire confidence in your audience. Re-read your web content, e-mails, ads and press releases for clarity and consistency, and check for misspellings, typos and misused words.
3. Develop a unique call-to-action that describes the service or product you provide.
Do not use “click here” or “link here,” or other calls-to-action that could apply to any site. Google AdWords will not approve ad listings that do this, and it also wastes your space and would generate clicks that cost you advertising budget and yield less valuable visitors. Instead, craft a specific call-to-action that tells the user what he or she will be doing or getting by following a link. Use more of the keywords you find in your site analysis tools that yield high conversion rates. For example, if you have a web site that lets users search for real estate, do not simply use a link that says “click here to search.” Instead, use your space to say “Find your next home today.”

4. Use standard, concise grammar and style when writing online advertisements.
Regardless of what Pay Per Click engine you use, the space that you have is extremely limited. Moreover, ads must be constructed using proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling, grammar and spacing. Not only will this help ensure that your ad meets your engine's standards, but adhering to standard rules of English will help ensure that your ad appears professional to potential customers. Note that on Google AdWords, ad titles are limited to 25 characters and the two description lines and display URL are limited to 35 characters each. On Overture, which places ads on Yahoo! and other major search engines, the entire ad is limited to 40 characters. Split testing ads like this is imperative. Try two different ads, use web site traffic analysis software and see not only which ad draws more traffic, but which ad draws traffic that will convert.

5. Avoid superlatives, and support your claims.
An extension of the idea that there should be truth in advertising, ad services will be wary of overstatement in your ad titles and text. Avoid the use of terms like “Best” and “Greatest,” and if you can authentically claim to be “Top Rated,” be prepared to provide verification. Finally, if you compare your product or services to those of competitors, support for your claims must be displayed on the landing page of your ad. This consistency is important not only in developing a trusting relationship with your potential client, but in securing the success of your campaign. Track the effectiveness of the ad with web site visitor tracking to make sure you are communicating to your customer base and bringing in qualified buyers.

6. Do not repeat words in a gimmicky way
After log file and web traffic analysis, you will have a terrific list of converting keywords. Be careful how you use them. Since you have extremely limited space in which to define your unique offering and appeal to customers, avoid repeating keywords. In addition to helping you provide as much relevant information as possible, this will also help your ad be accepted by the engines. AdWords and Overture will not approve ads that use what they consider to be “spamming” techniques, including overuse or repetition of words. Don't waste space, time and advertising resources: craft a creative description for your ad that will entice users to click on it.


7. Highlight your unique offering, including your location, if your product or service is specific to a location.
If you are a local business and are looking for clicks-through from potential customers in your target geography, it makes good sense to include your location in your ad text. Also, emphasizing what it is your company does may be more valuable than including your company name, should space be tight.

8. Respect and apply all legal standards.
It should go without saying that your ad text should be your own – do not plagiarize! Moreover, you'll avoid many a headache if you take the time to apply all relevant marks to your copy, including copyright (©), trademark (™), sales mark (S), registered trademark (®), and other annotations as appropriate. Some ad services will provide basic research into complaints and mediation, so avoid legal problems – and protect your own product names and content – by being cognizant of these legal requirements.
9. Identify partnerships and other arrangements.
A not very important one as far as ads are concerned. Ethical business behavior decrees that you must disclose your relationship to other sites or distributors if you are paid to link to them or to promote their products. You can simplify this process by including the term. Insert the word "affiliate" (if you're an affiliate) or "distributor" (if you're a distributor) in your ad text or title. Web metrics are the key to success for affiliate and distributor programs so keep that in mind when you design your campaign.

10. Remember “truth in advertising.”
It does not matter that “Viagra” is one of the most searched terms on the Internet if you sell baby blankets online. Only use and include keywords that are specifically relevant to the product or services that you are advertising. If you do not, your ad will not be approved, nor will you draw natural traffic if the search engines see you using keywords that are not relevant to your product offering. All web traffic is not good traffic anyway. Don't waste money for all those clicks by users looking for something other that what you have to offer!

Foundations of Keyword Research

It’s no exaggeration to say that good Keyword Research must be at the heart of all of your Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns. If you do not carry out full keyword research before your first internet marketing foray then your campaigns and, more importantly, your profitability will suffer. Without carrying out the research you will not know which keywords to use and which ones to avoid.

Keyword Research is a simple concept, but takes a lot of skill, patience and time to put into practice - partly because the research needs to be repeated to keep up with the market. In this article we are going to concentrate on how you will use the keywords in PPC. SEO Keywords are dealt with in Our Eight Part Guide To SEO.

You will use the keywords that you decide to target throughout the optimization process. You have to choose the keywords your customers are searching on, so that the right customers will be able to find you in the search engines. Remember, that the internet is still a user-defined zone. Your customers will search for your site using the terms which they think relate to your site, and not how you want to brand your site! Use the terms that your customers use, and you’ll be able to show them what they are searching for.

So, how do you find the best terms?

Research, research and research!

Your own business knowledge is the best place to start. You know your business better than anyone else, and so you should be able to come up with a lot of the terms you can use. You should aim at compiling as long a list as possible. No matter how obscure you might think a term is, someone somewhere will search on it. For examples of the incredible breadth of searches carried out every day, have a look at your site’s stats package. If the package is good quality, you should be able to see the full list of keyword searches that led people to your site. I guarantee you there will be some searches there you never dreamt of, and yet the stats show that someone came to your site using precisely these terms.

Next, pick the brains of your friends and family. What keywords would they type into a search engine if they were searching for your product or service? Take the question the other way, and ask them what else your keywords suggest to them. You might find it useful to see what associations other people derive from your keywords.

There are many different tools available online for researching keywords; each of which will give you a different perspective on which words and phrases will work for you. These shows how many searches have been carried out for a particular keyword or key phrase in the previous month. As with your own site’s statistics, you will be amazed at how many users are typing in seemingly obscure keywords. The downside is that this only covers the sites and engines fed data by Yahoo!, which is currently minimal compared with the reach of Google.

Let your competition help you get ideas. Look at the words used by competitive sites in the titles and headings. You can use KEI tools to evaluate the keyword density on these sites and see what words and phrases they are optimized for.

Use as many keyword sources as you can, and combine them all to find the keywords that will bring more business to your site. This master list of keywords will become one of your most valuable assets.

Now you can run your PPC campaigns knowing exactly what key phrases to target to bring higher-converting traffic to your site. Remember to use all of the terms that you have compiled.

That’s not quite the end of the story. Markets change, PPC prices rise and fall, particular phrases gain currency or fade from memory, competitors move into a particular niche or drop out of the PPC battle for a particular keyword.

In light of this, we recommend that you carry out fresh keyword research as frequently as possible. Exactly how frequently you should carry this out depends upon your business and your industry, but for most companies we recommend fresh research once a season to keep abreast of developments in your industry. If you see that new terms have gained in popularity, or if once profitable terms are sending you smaller numbers of visitors, then you can take advantage of the speed and flexibility of internet marketing, and change the spend levels on your PPC campaigns with immediate effect.

The 4 Secrets of Successful PPC

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns are here to stay. In the last decade, as the internet has become an ever more important part of today's society, online marketing campaigns have become a common way to sell products and services. However, there are four secrets about PPC campaigns that this article will let out of the bag…

1. You don't need to be number one

Sure, you might think you want to see your ad at the top of the Google Search Results Page. It might feel good looking at the google page with your company sitting on top of the tree. But you won't feel as good when you look at the red figures on your bank balance while your more experienced competitors are quite content sitting in lower positions. What they know is that to be successful in pay per click you have to match your bid to your conversion rate and to your site. How much is each visit really worth to you? Remember, this game is about bringing customers to your site, not showing off in search engines.
Anyone can buy the number one slot for a particular keyword in Google, but unless it's making money for you, you don't need to be there.

2. You need to work out a strategy

Not enough businesses devise a PPC strategy before they submit their campaign. The strategy of some companies amounts to little more than bidding more than their competitors and crossing their fingers. This is a recipe for disaster. Before entering the PPC arena, you need to work out how much you are prepared to pay for each visit, set a budget and stick to it.
Don't go into the PPC jungle unprepared. Work out your conversion rates, device a strategy and budget and make sure you spend only what you can afford.

3. You don't have to swamp the market

If you're dipping your toes in the pay per click pool for the first time, then it's OK to start small. Too many companies see the different PPC networks available and decide they need to be in every one of them; not just the big players such as Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing) and Google AdWords but the smaller fish such as Ask, MIVA, Mirago. Too many different campaigns, each of which are run according to different rules, each of which have different allowances and different funding, is too much to juggle for most new advertisers.
Walk before you can run. Run your campaign on one network first to get a feel for it, and when you feel more confident consider branching out.

4. Without a good site, you'll never convert your traffic into sales.

There's only so much that pay per click campaigns can do for you. Ultimately, no matter how wonderful your advert might be, if your site doesn't show your visitors what they want immediately then they're likely to turn around and find another site. If you owned a shop and you had a big poster outside advertising umbrellas then you'd want the umbrellas to be on display, not hidden at the back of the shop. Consumers are even less patient online so it's important to use landing pages to their full potential and give your consumers what they want.
Buying traffic is a matter of finding the right keyword and the right advert at the right price. But unless your site is ready, this traffic isn't going to convert into sales.

Adwords

Adwords is Google’s pay-per-click advertising program whereas Adsense is a publisher program. Google Adwords ads connect you with new customers at the precise moment when they're looking for your products or services. The Google Network reaches more than 80% of Internet users.* (*Media Metrix, December 2003)

With Google Adwords you create your own ads, choose keywords to help us match your ads to your audience and pay only when someone clicks on them. You have complete control of your budget as you only pay when your ad is clicked on and you can set your very own daily limits for what you are willing to pay. There is no minimum budget or locked in time that you have to run your campaign. You choose the keywords you want to target, so you get targeted traffic from your ads - people who are looking for specifically what you have to offer.

There are various tools like keyword builder to help you build Adwords and very user-friendly reports to track the progress of your keywords and improve them to generate desired results over the time. In the end, you get good quality traffic, better sales and positioning in the Internet market.

And above all, Google’s quick, friendly and knowledgeable support is truly one of the best customer support one can find. I know all that sounds pretty similar to other pay-per-click programs, but now let's take a look at the other side i.e. Adsense program.

Adsense Program
Google Adsense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site — or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts — you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

It's also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, As a website operator, you can choose keywords for the Adsense program that are relevant to the content you provide. The keywords will draw in relative advertisements to be displayed on your website, things that your browsers are interested in, which adds value to the information provided to your visitors. When your website visitors click on a Google Ad, you gain revenue from that click. Providing high quality, relative content is key to making money with Adsense.

Now Google has started special Adsense program for its blog http://www.blogger.com..

Adwords and Adsense are win-win propositions for both potential advertisers and website owners. Advertisers get targeted traffic to their websites at minimal costs and website operators make money for having the ads displayed on their websites. Adwords and Adsense are welcomed additions to the world of e-business and internet marketing.