Google has improved its Adwords quality score algorithms. Now there won’t be any inactive keywords. However Google will show a message telling advertisers what bid is required to reach the first page of the results.

This may not necessarily be good news. Though the keywords will now be active, the low quality keywords will still not get enough impressions as assumed by many advertisers.

Google will still calculate quality score. According to Google’s official post, these three major improvements will take place:

1. Quality Score will be calculated at the time of each search query,

2. Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’. All keywords will be active and will be evaluated for every relevant query, and

3. “First page bid estimates” will replace “minimum bids”.

It means the problem for small advertisers still remains. How do you get more impressions for the keywords that were previously inactive, but are now active?

Here are some steps that you can take to get the best out of your Google Adwords advertising campaigns:

1. The suggested bid is for the first page. You may not afford this, but see if you can afford to be in the second page. To do this you may need to increase the bids to a point where you feel it should show up at least in the second page.

2. Since all keywords will be active, why not increase the keywords for the campaigns. Research some long tail keywords. Add these long tail keywords in your campaigns.

3. Try to increase the CTR (click through rate) of the ads. This way you will pay less per click and will be able to afford to raise the bids for the most important keywords to be in the first page.

4. Open your ads to target content network of Google. Since all keywords are active, this will help your ads get more exposure on millions of websites that have partnered with Google to display ads. This is popularly known as Adsense. Don’t worry, the click through rate in content network will not effect the quality score of the search network ads.

5. Though landing page quality is evaluated less frequently, it is advisable to improve the landing page quality. Better landing page quality will increase the quality score resulting in more impression for the ads.

It can be achieved through the following:

a) Add relevant and original content

b) Add your business address and contact number

c) Have a good and honest privacy policy in place

d) Provide an easy path for a user to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad

For more information read – Google Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines.

I hope these ideas will help you benefit form the latest improvements of Google Adwords Quality Score and get more traffic for your site for less.

Your views are important for growth of this blog. Please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to read in this blog.

Related Topics:
 
1. Free Tips for Writing Good PPC Ads
2. Why Google AdWords is a Must for Online Advertising
3. Keyword Bidding and Management – How much to bid?

Google had a unique way of calculating quality score keywords. Adwords would NOT display an ad against a keyword if it thought the quality of the keyword was not up to the quality standards of Google results.

In that case the keyword would be marked “Inactive for Search”. However this is changing and in the next few days there won’t be any inactive keywords. Read – Google Adwords quality score improvements.

Once the quality score improvements go live, many keywords will show the advertisers how much they need to bid to get to the first page results.

They will get a message like this for most keywords:

”Active – Bid is below first page bid estimate of $**”

It is up to the advertisers to increase the bids.

So what happens to the inactive keywords?

Though the message will not show, the inactive bids will still get only few impressions or none, because in any case the quality score will be calculated on-the-fly.

The quality score will decide the best keywords/ads to be shown and therefore the inactive bids may not get huge impressions as assumed by many advertisers.

However there are ways to get the maximum impressions out of your Goggle Adwords advertising campaigns.

Google Analytics is a great and free web-analytics software to know how and how many visitors are coming to a website. Well it has many other features too. For more information visit Google Analytics Features page.

Analytics helps to know the keywords that a website visitor typed in the search engines to get to a site. These keywords can be a great resource to know how to get more traffic from the search engines, especially the long tail keywords.

If you are using Google Analytics, you can view the keywords by Login >> Traffic Sources >> Keywords.

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are the keywords that contain three or more than three words. There are exceptions though. For example the keyword “search engine optimization” is NOT a long tail keyword because it is a very popular term. But if the user types “search engine optimization marketing” then it is a long tail keyword.

Long tail keywords differ from industry to industry. Analytics helps to know the long tails because usually these are not very popular terms.

How to research long tail keywords to get better and more visitors?

Long tail keywords account for more than 65% of visitors to a site. In some cases its even more. This shows the importance of long tail keywords. They are a gold mine. Dig more and you get more!

Long tail keywords tell there own story. Study them carefully. If you sell multiple products, you will notice that most visitors coming through long tail keywords are looking for more information on only one or two of your products or service.

What do you understand? It means your site is not properly optimized for the rest of the products.

Now that you know that which are the products that are not properly optimized for the search engines you can take the following steps:

1. Research why these pages are not optimized. Write good content for these products. Get more inbound links with relevant anchor text to these pages. Do whatever to get these pages up in the ranking.

Or,

2. Concentrate more on the current products that are already optimized for the search engines. Write more content, get inbound links to these pages etc.

How to take this decision? Well it is complex to answer this. Whenever we do business our sole motto is to make more money out of the business.

If the products that are properly optimized are giving you a good return on investment, go for them, else try optimizing the pages for other products.

Long tail keyword also helps in creating cheap pay per click campaigns. Use Google keyword tool to research popular keywords using the long tail keywords. Set up a PPC campaign for these keywords to get more traffic.

You can even create more webpages optimized especially for these popular long tail keywords.

I hope these ideas will help you to get more traffic for your site. You views are important for growth of this blog. Please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to read in this blog.

Related Topics:
 
1. Importance of Website Analytics
2. Free Tips for Writing Good PPC Ads
3. 10 Landing Page Optimization Tips

Headline is the most important part of a landing page of a website. Headlines can have a dramatic effect on sales. So its important to test the headline to the know the best headline for the page. But its hard to test a headline, because most do not know what to test.

In this article I will discuss what type of headlines and sub-headline should you write and test in order to optimize the landing page.

The job of a headline:

Typically headline is the first line that is read by the visitor. If a headline is appealing, the reader is tempted to read further. Else they look elsewhere. So the job of the headline is to bring the reader to read the first paragraph of the page. That’s it. You may think it’s a small job, but actually it’s a very BIG job.

Headlines can be written in two formats. One that asks a question, and second that states or tell something.

Example:

Headline 1. Do You Want to Learn SEO in 24 Hours?

Headline 2. Learn SEO in 24 Hours Flat

As you can see both the headlines convey the same thing except that the first asks a question and the second states a fact.

Now how do you know which one will perform better? Not until you test.

Most of my clients have experienced that the headline that asks a question (Headline 1 types) usually perform better. However this does not mean it can be true in all cases.

Another thing I have experienced is there are certain words that perform well in headlines. Words like Get, Learn, Free, Now, Today, How, Do you, Have You, etc. perform well. When writing headlines you should try to include these words and test.

Sub Headlines:

A sub-headline can also have a dramatic effect on how your headline performs. Actually a sub-headline can add value to the headline.

Lets take an example:

Headline: Do You Want to Learn Website Marketing in 24 Days?
Sub-headline: In just 24 days you will be an Expert in SEO, PPC, Portal advertising and much much more…

… Don’t you think the visitor will read this first paragraph?

Here the headline asks the visitor if they would like to learn web marketing in 24 days. The sub-headline then informs what exactly they get to learn.

The headline by itself may not have generated any interest in the mind of visitor, but after reading the subhead they might be more interested in knowing the offer as it describes what exactly they will learn.

Remember to write headlines that have these elements: Clarity, Relevance, Logic and Credibility.

Clarity:

How clear (in meaning) the headline is. Whatever is the headline, if it can’t convey a clear meaning it won’t be able to perform.

Relevance:

The headline has to be relevant to the Ad that resulted the visitor landing on the page. For example if the Ad said that they will get a free offer, the headline must mention this free offer. If the free offer is not mentioned the visitor will not take the pain to search the copy for the free offer.

Logic:

Any business has to make a logic sense. You cannot say something that the reader finds hard to believe. For example:

Learn SEO in 30 minutes

This headline doesn’t make sense as we all know it’s very hard to learn SEO in half an hour.
 
Credibility:

Credibility is an added advantage. For example if the headline (or subhead) can tell the visitor that the product or service is offered from a very experienced person/company the visitor may believe in the offer.

However for start up business this may be a difficult thing to attain. In this case you may change the headline after sometime in business.

Remember combination of a great headline, subhead and copy can boost your conversion rates. So when you test, try testing all these three very important elements of the landing page.

I hope you found this post helpful. It will be great if you share your experiences with testing headlines. Also I will be glad if you tell what you would like to read on this blog.

Please do leave a comment!

Related topics:

1. Landing Page Optimization Tips
2. Tips for a Good Landing Page Design
3. Improving Conversion Rate of a Website