6 Things You Always Wanted To Know About AdWords Match Types (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Even advanced advertisers have questions about the details of keywords and match types. Contributor Matt Lawson of Google provides answers.

 

Broad, modified broad, phrase, exact. Keywords and their match types are a foundational part of AdWords, but there are still some finer points of match type management that remain up for debate even amongst advanced practitioners.
In that spirit, I worked with the product manager for keyword match types in AdWords and got some of your biggest questions answered.
These questions came from conferences, chats with account managers, online forums, and scraps of paper I had on my desk whose origins are lost to the sands of time. They’re basically the questions I’ve heard from the people who seem to know everything there is to know about AdWords.

1. Should I use phrase match, or was that made irrelevant by modified broad match?
Both of these match types are great for multi-word keywords. The difference is all about whether or not the order of those words in your keyword matters.  In most cases, order doesn’t matter, and in those cases you’ll probably be just fine with modified broad.
An example of a rare case where order matters would be someone who advertises a brand of car speakers called RoadThunder. They would definitely want to appear for any searches that include the words “road thunder” in that order. But +road +thunder might serve a different set of users whose searches, boss as they might be, might not be looking for speakers for their car.
You know your keyword set, and you know if there’s potential for ambiguities if the order of words changes. Use phrase if there’s a potential for mixups, but modified broad works if your order isn’t going to change the intent of someone’s search.

2. Are there “noise” words that don’t need to be present in a query for your modified broad match keywords to serve?
In this case people are wondering about words like “of” or “the” that could be seen as optional in a user’s search. If +in is part of your modified broad keyword, does the word “in” need to appear in a user’s query?
Yes. If you use “+” before any words then those words have to be present in the query. We don’t treat any words as optional in modified broad, so avoid putting “+” in front of words that  don’t contribute to or change the meaning of a user’s search.  Save “+” for the terms you really care about.
I know I wasn’t searching for “the hunger games temporary tattoos” leading up to last month’s release (just “hunger games temporary tattoos” while I was in my tent in front of the theater).  So I’d be sure that my keyword was +hunger +games +temporary +tattoo, and I’d be sure that I didn’t include +the in my keyword.  Be careful when you’re building out those modified broad keyword lists.

3. Why can’t I see what’s reflected in the “Other search terms” line item in Search terms reports?
When you’re digging through your search terms report you have no doubt seen the “Other search terms” line at the bottom that aggregates everything else that’s matched to your keywords.

Within the search terms report you’ll only see terms that meet these criteria:

• Searched by people at least 24 hours ago
• Have received clicks in the past 30 days
• Were searched by a significant number of people

That first bullet is often the most important.  When you look at your search terms, plan on excluding today and yesterday from your date range.  If that becomes your standard operating procedure, you’ll see far fewer impressions in that Other search terms row.
Beyond time constraints, if certain terms weren’t searched by a critical mass of people we aren’t going to reveal that query. We protect that information to reduce the probability of sharing any personally identifiable information. You will be able to see high impression/no click queries, but you won’t be able to see low impression/no click queries.
The good news is that if someone clicked your ad, you should be able to see that query (as long as enough time has passed as I mentioned above). The bad news is that you won’t be able to view all of the queries that received an impression.  However, those searches without clicks weren’t repeated with any regularity, and you also weren’t charged for them. You can be confident that the data that appears is the type of stuff that can have a substantial effect on your account.

4. How are close variants handled across different languages (where different articles may change the meaning of a user’s search)?
We have matching behavior that’s tailored to each of the languages we offer within AdWords. This includes monitoring close variations of keywords to do our best to remove any queries that aren’t a good match for the intent of your keywords.  Just because something qualifies as a close variant, like a misspelling or stemming, doesn’t mean that the system is going to treat it like a close variant.  We use a bunch of quality signals to filter out close variants that change the entire meaning of a query – and we do that for all of our languages.
No matter what language you’re targeting, report any bad matches of your keyword to a query to your sales rep (or even drop them in the comments here).  We investigate all of the reported bad matches and fix anything that doesn’t make sense.  Our team works really hard to make sure that close keyword variations are relevant for your business.

5. Did matching behavior change for negative keywords during September’s update to phrase and exact match types?
Nope. A negative keyword doesn’t expand to cover close variations – it only covers that specific term.  This should come in handy in case you run across any close variations that aren’t performing for you.  You can remove the traffic that isn’t proving valuable while still getting good coverage.

6. I know how the system matches different keywords to queries.  But why are there still instances where my less-specific keyword receives impressions on a query, at times even with a lower bid?
Just as a refresher, here’s the way the system prefers to match keywords to search terms:

• Use a keyword that matches the search term exactly
• Use exact match keywords over other match types (if the keywords are otherwise the same)
• Use the keyword that has the highest Ad Rank

The most common reason a less specific keyword would get triggered is when there’s a cheaper keyword that also has a higher Ad Rank.
It may seem like something is going wrong when a phrase match version of the same keyword is receiving impressions when the exact match keyword has a higher bid, but that can happen as a result of the dynamic nature of the auction.
That phrase match keyword could have been matched up with a great ad while the exact match keyword could have been matched to a worse performing ad.  So you’re still going to get the traffic that you want, and you’re actually going to get it at a cheaper price.

Conclusion

I hope you guys learned something new about our beloved keyword match types today. I know that there might be more questions about them, so please ask any questions you may have in the comments section below. If there are enough of them we can do another Q & A post in the future.

5 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Content Marketing

Today, marketers create, launch and leverage content faster than ever but in order to stay at the top of their game they juggle many moving pieces while working to avoid the common pitfalls that plague content creation. We’ve identified 5 common issues that sabotage a content marketer’s efforts to create content that delivers value and supports the reader in their buying lifecycle.
Avoid these to secure your content’s success:

1-    Silos

This saboteur sneaks into an organization silently and can often go unnoticed. Content marketers know the inherent value of creating a content library that appeals to their whole audience. Content created in a silo does not include all your stakeholder perspectives or buying personas, which can mean that you are losing some of your audience. Working with your internal stakeholders to create content that addresses each section your whole, broad audience will result in better ideas, and more variety (avoiding repetitive, bland content).

 2-    Planning Too Far In Advance

Planning can be both your friend and your foe. Don’t let it become the latter– make sure your content calendar is not too concrete. A successful content marketing strategy is flexible enough to respond to current events, but solid enough to reliably integrate into other marketing efforts. This balance is something that will be unique to your organization, but ideally you’d be able to map content around major events and holidays and be able to respond to industry events and news.

3-    Not Budgeting Your Time

Content creation takes time, lots of time. We’re not saying you’re not amazing or efficient, but there are only so many hours in a day. Biting off more than you can chew only means that you’ll have a hard time managing expectations and that you’ll be resetting plenty of deadlines. Choose a realistic timeline and cadence of content that you can produce, and you’ll be happier and more successful in your content creation. 

4-    Not Tying Your Content To Goals

One of the best ways to sabotage your content is to not tie is to your goals. Know why you’re creating content. What are the goals that you’re driving toward? How do you measure your success? Brainstorm, prioritize and create content with an eye toward your goals. Use your content calendar to create a strategic mix that addresses your goals; don’t fill it with fluff.

5-    No Shared Calendar

Just like silos sabotage content success, working without a shared, active calendar will make your content strategy more difficult to execute. Successful Content Marketing is part of an integrated marketing strategy. One of the fastest ways to doom your content marketing and diminish your marketing’s effectiveness is by having multiple calendars in different places. This common communication issue is solved by a centralized calendar, shared by key stakeholders, including major events and milestones. 
I hope these tips help you avoid some of the common pitfalls that you can fall into as a content marketer. I’d love to hear if you’ve encountered or combatted anything not on this list. Share your story in the comments.

Jersey Boys Movie Review

Genre: Musical, Drama.

Director: Clint Eastwood.

Cast: Vincent Piazza, John Lloyd Young, Christopher Walken, Steve Schirripa, Kathrine Narducci etc.

Synopsis:Jersey Boys is a musical biography of the Four Seasons-the rise, the tough times and personal clashes, and the ultimate triumph of a group of friends whose music became symbolic of a generation. Far from a mere tribute concert (though it does include numbers from the popular Four Seasons songbook), Jersey Boys gets to the heart of the relationships at the center of the group-with a special focus on frontman Frankie Valli, the small kid with the big falsetto. In addition to following the quartet's coming of age as performers, the core of the show is how an allegiance to a code of honor learned in the streets of their native New Jersey got them through a multitude of challenges: gambling debts, Mafia threats and family disasters. Jersey Boys is a glimpse at the people behind a sound that has managed to endure for over four decades in the hearts of the public.

  Review: So here's the thing: Saw Jersey Boys tonight. Now I've never been interested in the stage version (I think musicals should have original music) and I didn't really trust in Clint Eastwood directing a musical; in short - I was ready to hate it (I've been called snob and pretentious more than a few times). But let me tell you, I was dead wrong.

It was AWESOME!!! The actors are stellar, the music is fantastic and the film completely engrossing. I had a big goofy smile plastered across my face from beginning to end. The audience clapped twice during the movie (it was that good). It would not be hyperbolic of me to say that this WILL get Oscar nominations. 

I will be seeing this movie again and again when it comes out June 20th. Do yourself a favour and do the same.

Affiliate Marketing – An Efficient Digital Media Channel

Affiliate marketing constitutes an effectual online communication practice which seeks to engage users on third-party sites and generate new leads into a company’s or organization’s website.  Affiliate marketing prompts users to click through referring sites (publishers) to a company’s website to ACT either this means purchase, submit information that allows an interactive relationship (newsletter subscription) or get benefit from special vouchers or offers which can be used in-store.

Part of Online business strategy

In the context of acquisition strategies and tactics, affiliate marketing plays a significant role, yet it should be considered as a part of a holistic strategy approach. The RACE planning framework illustrates key steps on organising effective online business:

REACH: acquisition strategies for brand building tactics (affiliate marketing – SEO – PPC techniques – Online PR – Social Media marketing etc.)

ACT & CONVERT: tactics that lead to measurable actions. (Lead generation techniques – e-commerce management – home page / landing page optimization etc.)

ENGAGE: retention and growth tactics to turn one time visitors into repeaters. (Content marketing actions – newsletters and promotional techniques – mobile marketing – ongoing customer support)

Payments policies

Its profit potential and measurable results has evolved affiliate marketing through the past years into a popular media channel. Affiliate marketing involves commission based payments such as pay per click(payment is related with clicks on the link and it is usually a low paying technique) or pay per action ( payment is related directly and only with actions performed (Cost per Acquisition (CPA) which can be very effective compared to PPC which is used more for traditional online ads.

Generally it is estimated that gradually CPA tends to replace CPM or CPC as the advertiser has increased intervention control over the percentages agreed. “For example, in 2005 manufacturing company Unilevernegotiated CPA deals with online publishers where it paid for every e-mail address captured by a campaign rather than a traditional CPM deal.”

The cost per acquisition can be calculated as follows:

CPA= 100 / conversion rate%  *  CPC

The affiliates or publishers can follow the performance progress by the earnings per click (EPC) which is a metric used to indicate average earning per 100 outbound clicks generated.

It is significant to note that apart commission percentages, there are also network and placement fees along with agency management fees. What matters is to achieve your revenue goals and still retain yourROAS target (return on ad spends). What is more, it is efficient to keep aside a part of your estimated budget for paid placements, further publicity actions and testing.

Models of affiliate marketing

There are several options and models of affiliate marketing such as:

• Aggregators sites (comparison sites)
• Shopping directories
• Review sites
• Loyalty sites: rewards sites
• Voucher or coupon sites
• E-commerce sites
• Personal or blog sites

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Below we list the most important pros and cons of Affiliate Marketing:

Advantages	Disadvantages
Reach new targeted audiences Ease of constant updates Generate new leads Reduce Diversity risk Pay-per-action can be managed effectively	Incremental profit or sales may be limited (You may be cannibalising business you would have achieved anyway) Affiliates may exploit your reputation Not effective control may damage company reputation Program management fees Close and constant updates which requires a close co operation with agency and company

4 Tips in affiliate marketing management

1. Commission management

In affiliate marketing, it is vital that commission is calculated on a level that it motivates affiliates to preferentially support a merchant’s products, while at the same time being cost-effective.

2. Cookie expiry period

Affiliates’ EPC will be also affected by the cookie expiry period agreed on the time between a visitor clicks the affiliate link and the sale is certified to the affiliate.

3. Content

Managing the design and content which affiliates use to advertise a company constitutes a challenge since content needs to be current in line with different promotions. So this needs to be monitored by the affiliate manager on a constant base. Many merchants now provide live product feeds to affiliate networks in order to keep their promotions and product pricing up-to-date.

4. Select the right channels

It is vital to fulfill the most effective selection upon the affiliate’s partner network and constantly review its progress. A static allocation of your budget can be detrimental. Consumers shop via different channels and change their habits and preferences often.

How to Use Social Media for Crisis Management

Crisis (from the Greek word “krisis” – judgment) is an unstable period that has a starting and ending point followed by conditions of high stress that usually occur along with multiple events and possible risks for the organization`s sustainability or reputation. From communication point of view, a crisis can be described by 3 phases: the pre-crisis, the post crisis and the crisis event itself. In this article, we will explain why social media can serve as useful tools during crisis and we’ll attempt to propose a set of “good practices” of social media usage during that period.

Crisis and Communication Issues

Conventionally, the main problem of most crisis events is the strange behavior of the people involved and the confusion of all internal and external communications. The reason is obvious, people are stressed, journalists are struggling to find and publish information and exclusive news and the management is also receiving tons of messages. All the above can easily be described with one word: chaos.

Social Media is a Changing Environment

Before the introduction of social networks, organizations had the ability to manage the crisis events by having key connections in the media world (journalists). Nevertheless after the introduction of social media things have changed.

Social Media are channels with billions of connected users, who exchange trillions of messages, in a real time communication arena, where a worldwide community interacts in a daily and hourly basis. Communication and socializing were always part of our daily life. Nevertheless nowadays people can contact directly organizations and brands, something that was not possible or easy in the past. If you combine the above with the fact that most social media messages are exchanged in public, you can understand how social media can help or harm brands and organizations in crisis.

Social Media in Crisis

During a crisis, the social media can amplify the communication mainly against the brand or organization. Negative messages coming from unreliable sources can go instantly viral within social networks, generating a harmful publicity and reputation damage. Thus as we described in a previous article about online reputation management, it is important to heavily monitor what users say on social networks and respond. In that previous article we also provided 10 steps that organizations should take at the pre-crisis phase.

Using Social Media during Crisis Event and Post Crisis

Once a reputation management strategy is prepared, it is highly recommended to monitor conversations around your brand, aiming to immediately identify the pre crisis signals. When a crisis event is taking place online the first steps must include:

• Identification of the actual problem and the main source of information
• Request of internal meeting with crucial stakeholders
• Development of the official crisis response
• Rough estimation of the impact of crisis.

There will be cases where the problem can solved locally or even internally but still, it is vital to give reputation monitoring high priority for the next months.

Below we provide 10 good social media practices that can help you during the crisis period:

1. Use Professional Social Media tools

During a crisis event, you need to have all the available tools that can help you monitor the generated chaos. You will need the maximum of each service, so make sure you purchase immediately all the necessary tools that can help you make your job faster and more efficient.

2. Have the content ready

Preparing your responses and all the proper content (images, press release templates, documents with social responsibility actions etc) is a time management practice that will enable you to focus on high priority tasks. Time is crucial during crisis and you can’t afford being slow.

3. Train your social media team

Everyone that is involved in communications inside the organization must know the main position of the company regarding the crisis. Except of the communication team, it is also important to notify the employees who use social media NOT to mention anything about the crisis but instead to forward possible queries to the crisis management team.

4. Be open

Journalists, clients, families, investors, bloggers or simple users will seek information about “what happened”.Don`t hide information; instead share all important data in order to be a reliable and accurate source of news.

5. Use Social Media Ads

Even if social media ads are costly, they can allow you to communicate directly your truth by sending messages to a specific audience.

6. Reputation monitoring

Monitoring what people say about your brand should be added in your daily routine. Search your brand on Google, on forums, on review websites, on blogs and on any online media related to your industry.

7. Find your supporters

Contact your fans and supporters and treat them as special audience. Fans can help you defend your brand!

8. Don`t reply to anonymous offensive users

Some anonymous users will try to be offensive and directly attack to your brand. Keep in mind that those can be competitors or dissatisfied clients. In any case, be kind to them or don`t reply at all. If their messages contain nothing but offensive words, replying is not always worth it.

9. The right information at the right time

Even if the official response is an apology or a denial, during crisis it is a good time to remind people the achievements and the social responsibility policy of the organization.

10. Post Crisis

Maintain the reputation monitoring efforts and continue publishing positive information about the organization. For a reasonable period, the communication efforts should have one objective: to disconnect your brand name from the crisis event.

Don’t forget to share this article on twitter if you like it. Sharing is caring! 

The 10 Dos and 10 Don’ts of a Corporate Social Media Strategy

Guides, reports and presentations can be useful tools in order to build an effective social media strategy of highly ROI. But, what if we attempt to extract the essence of the main Do’s and Don’ts that a Social Media Strategist should print and keep in a major place at office?

In this article we describe in detail what you should do and what you should avoid while designing, developing and executing your social media strategy and we provide the top of the mind list of a successful social media strategist:

10 Social Media Do`s

1. Before developing, identify the 4W: WHAT, WHO, WHEN and WHY.
2. Clear out the goal. Either you want to approach a new niche market or you want to attract younger community members, be specific so that your messages are targeted.
3. Be in consistence with the value proposition that your company offers.
4. Carefully check the content before submitting. Always think the instant word of mouth.
5. Build a community instead of audience and trusted relationships instead of campaigns.
6. Offer valuable (and even exclusive) content for the targeted audience.
7. Listen to your audience and respond immediately and wisely. Receive product feedback and integrate into your strategy.
8. Keep a coherence image and attitude in different channels.
9. Measure your achievements. Define goals and Key performance indicators. Make sure you measure and review your strategy based on the results.
10. Be different and unique.

Above all remember that social media is a great channel that can provide you with invaluable feedback. Thus try to ENGAGE and INTERACT with the members of the community!

10 Social Media Dont`s

1. Don`t build it independently of your offline strategy.
2. Don`t advertise, engage your community.
3. Don`t shout, listen to conversations.
4. Don`t execute, interact with the people.
5. Don`t focus on products perception, but on their feelings when they use your products.
6. Don`t create a circle of fans but a circle of trust.
7. Don`t dictate, be democratic and community-oriented.
8. Don`t only ask, reward with gifts and information.
9. Don`t lie, be always authentic and faithful.
10. Don`t create promotion value but added value.

Above all remember that the main target of developing a social media campaign is to generate buzz for your company. Don`t try to sell directly.

If you like the above article, don`t forget to share it on social media! 

High Bounce Rate: What It Means And How To Fix It

A lot of times,  even if you have worked very hard to optimize your website by following best practices, attract the “right” visitors and offer a great experience to your website’s visitors you notice that bounce rate stays very high or has been reduced by 1% or less the last 6 months!

Don’t despair. There are several things you can take into account before you conclude that you must live with a high bounce rate.

Initially, what we need to make clear is that any metric you use in order to gauge your website’s performance must not be analyzed in isolation. When it comes to bounce rate, a 40% bounce rate for example doesn’t mean that you are receiving low quality (irrelevant) traffic or that your visitors doesn’t engage.

Also, without taking into account the average bounce rate performance for your industry, you can’t draw any assumptions in regard to your website’s bounce rate performance. What is considered a low bounce rate in some industries at the same time is a high bounce rate in other industries.

The next step is to find out how your web analytics tracking solution calculates the bounce rate. For example, Google analytics platform can’t track and calculate by default the time you stayed to one page, even if you stayed for hours, if you don’t access a second page and Google analytics script executes again.

A work around so as to fix this phenomenon is to track what Google analytics calls the adjusted bounce rate. In order to track this “modified” bounce rate the only thing you have to do is to add one extra line of code to your website’s Google analytics tracking script. In this way Google analytics will executes an event when a user has spent over a certain amount of time on the page.

Depending on the website under review and niche, the time can range from few seconds to few minutes. You have the ability to decide for yourself the amount of time you consider the user to be sufficiently engaged with your website.

Phone calls & Third party integration systems

Inbound phone calls from users that visited your website looking for your business phone number, can lead to high bounce rates. This is especially true for businesses that rely heavily to phone calls in order to close the sale or qualify the visitor to perform a next step down the sales funnel.

Third party integration systems (e.g a booking engines) that are hosted to third party domains can also “inflate” negatively bounce rate numbers and as a result to distort the “true” website’s bounce rate. When a visitor hops from your website to a third party domain name, will be logged from Google analytics as a bounce as long as she doesn’t browse at least two pages to your website. One more possible solution to this issue (if the 3^rd party system supports it) is to implement cross domain tracking between your website and your vendor’s website.

Best practices to reduce bounce rate

If you are using Google analytics platform you can reduce bounce rate even further by implementing event tracking for outgoing links that lead for example to a third party booking engine (if cross domain tracking isn’t supporting it from your vendor) or use virtual pageviews functionality to track inbound phone calls from your mobile optimized website.

In conclusion, define your website’s goals and implement adjusted bounce rate, event tracking, cross domain tracking and virtual pageviews as long as these custom implementations align with your goals. Finally, make sure that you stay focused to the big picture and you analyze bounce rate together with other useful metrics so as to infer website’s true performance.

Website Architecture: Best Practices For SEO

As SEOs, we mostly spend our daily tasks for link building and reports. Finding new link building resources, checking our website’s linking profile regularly for anything unnatural, spying on competitors tactics and strategy, building links, checking if links are published, checking rankings, compiling reports…Is that it? Of course not, SEOs are busy people!
SEOs also perform keyword research, copy writing, on page website optimization, check for indexing/crawling issues and so on. But there is one task that all SEOs should perform from the very beginning of each project and which is strangely somewhat overlooked. And that is, defining good website architecture from an SEO perspective.

What is website architecture?

Website architecture is the approach used to design and plan your website. It is the way we organize content in our website. It consists of two basic components, technology decisions and structural decisions.

Best technology decisions for good website architecture

• Avoid dynamic URLs.Yes, Google can index dynamic URLs pretty well nowadays, but remember the users! Do they really like those lengthy parameters? I certainly don’t!
• Avoid session IDs. If your CMS adds a session ID for each user at the end of the URL then you need to change that as soon as possible! Different URLs pointing to the same content means duplicate content. And we all know what that means.
• Content/links in Java/Javascript/Flash. It is always better to use plain and simple HTML. Some search engines find it difficult to read content in Flash or JavaScript. Let’s make their life easier.
• 302 redirections. Make sure all redirections are 301 and not 302. A 302 redirection may redirect the user to the new page but does not transfer any “link juice” from the old version of the page to the new one. 301 redirection should be your default type of redirection if SEO matters to you.

Best structural decisions for good website architecture

Provide a great user experience. So, you have written this awesome content for your users, wouldn’t you want them to find it quickly while navigating your website? Here are a few tips on how to achieve this:

• Website hierarchy should match the way users search. Start with your home page, and work your way to all the internal pages as you want to make sure that the flow of navigation makes sense and is easy to follow. Create categories and subcategories if necessary. You can use a “card sorting” technique to create your category tree.
• Cross-link relevant content. This way you “cluster” all relevant content, you pass “link juice” to all thematically relevant pages and make your user happy, as he may find easily whatever he has been looking for during his visit in your website.
• Use proper anchor text. Internal linking is pretty powerful, especially if your website has thousands of pages. Take advantage of it and use targeted keywords as anchor text instead of “more”, “click here” and other generic terms. Prepare yourself to train designers as well. Yes, they will be the first to complain.
• Use breadcrumb navigation. My personal favorite. Personally, I find it very convenient when I can navigate a site via its breadcrumbs instead of clicking sidebar menus or large navigation menus. This is where the “use proper anchor text” tip can be applied to. Extra PRO tip: Use proper format to produce rich snippets which affect CTR.
• Minimize link depth. Rule of thumb: No page should be deeper than 3 clicks away from your homepage. Make you site architecture flat. The deeper you “bury” a page, the less “link juice” is passed, the less “link juice passed” to a given page, the more difficult will be for a page to be kept in Google index. As we know, if a page has an amount of “link juice” which is below a certain threshold, then Google is very likely to drop this page from its index (or not index it at all).

In a nutshell

Website architecture has to be taken seriously and should be designed from the very beginning of the project, after keyword research is completed. Design poor website architecture and you will most probably face crawling and indexing issues or non converting pages. Arrange training sessions with your design and development team, follow the above tips and always have the user in mind