The Scourge of Click Fraud

With all the recent attention, and since I promised earlier, I thought it was a good time to get into some of the different types of click fraud that appear on PPC campaigns.

Spikes

One of the most primitive and obvious methods show up as huge spikes in traffic. As long as a campaign is managed in a consistent manner, it will likely develop some predictable patterns. You'll get an idea of how much traffic you've got coming and the trick then is to improve conversions. With a spike, you'll see a huge surge in traffic, generally on a single term and from one provider at a time (e.g.; Google AdWords OR Overture, but not both).

A quick look at some basic traffic logs will show groups of clicks hitting the site, from a single ad, within seconds of each other.

These spikes are easy to point out and with just a little bit of effort, you can compile a report that will usually stand up as sufficient evidence for the engines to thoroughly investigate the account for click fraud.

Topic Spikes

These work much the same way as a normal spike, huge traffic jumps on limited terms. In the case of a Topic Spike though, there is often a news story, Internet rumor, or some other discussion going on that involves your term. Active and aggressive fraudsters will pick up on this and use the timing as an opportunity to assault your campaign. It will be much more difficult to prove the activity wasn't related to the widespread coverage. That's what the villians are counting on.

There are still steps to take in order to protect yourself. Don't run ads on content networks (especially during a news cycle), analyze IPs for patterns. Compare the number of clicks you are recieving to the unique visitors you count on your site.

Perhaps most importantly, don't be afraid to stop running ads until the storm blows over. Be very honest about your goals and your ability to convert. If all the new traffic is coming from casual searchers, are you sure you can turn them into shoppers? If not, don't waste resources on them.

The Slow Bleed

This is the most difficult to stop, and can be infuriating, but it doesn't have to be. A slow bleed occurs over several weeks or even months. Fraudsters, and sometimes competitors, especially on very expensive terms, will slowly click your ad, perhaps only a few times a day, with significant intervals between the clicks, to slowly take money from your account.

You have to realize going in to a campaign that this is a very real possibility. This is just another reason why tracking is so important. You've got to be able to determine, quickly, if you are seeing positive returns on your campaign. And that doesn't have to necessarily mean you are making money at a rate of $5-$1. If you have specific goals in place (sign ups, contact requests, etc.), make sure you are acheiving your marks. If you can't make your goal, you shouldn't have your campaigns running. Re-evaluate and seek help if need be.

Impression Fraud

Impression Fraud doesn't quite fit with click fraud, but it is related. Impression fraud isn't nearly as prevalent as click fraud, and it's not as directly damaging. Impression fraud is done by people with lots of extra time on their hands.

Instead of draining a budget, the goal of impression fraud is to artificially damage the credibility of your ad campaign in the eyes of the engine. The major PPC players put strong weight on the Click Through Rate (CTR) of ads, and when ads are shown often with few (or no) clicks, the engines will disable the ads.

The impression fraudsters will work to have your ad displayed several times in an effort to push the CTR below the acceptable threshold, thus keeping you from ever being seen by legitimate prospects. So far, this can almost be seen as more of a nuisance than anything, but techniques are probably becoming more sophisticated everyday.

Click Fraud: What It Is, How to Fight It

There's a crisis brewing in this industry. Poor click quality has the potential to hit marketers hard and to negatively affect search engines. It manifests itself in many ways, including as network click fraud, competitive click fraud, and mislabeled traffic.

These problems drive down a clickstream's value, forcing marketers (if they act rationally) to lower bids or remove themselves from the market completely. Impression fraud falsely places certain listings higher in engines that count CTR (define) against impressions as part of a ranking algorithm (as with Google's AdWords).

Click fraud hurts everyone except the cheaters, who benefit unfairly. Recent SEMPO research finds 45 percent of surveyed marketers are concerned about click fraud but don't track it. Another 19 percent thinks it's a moderate problem and do track it, and 6 percent feel it's a significant problem and track it. Thirty-one percent either weren't concerned or had never heard of click fraud.

Network Click Fraud

Network click fraud occurs when a syndication partner (a smaller publisher or search engine) that receives and displays paid placement or contextual results from a search network engages in the manufacture, creation, or misrepresentation of clicks delivered to its network partner.

When a network partner manufactures clicks, either through human or robotic means, that traffic is of much lower quality than pure traffic generated through user searches. Adding this useless traffic to the network initially seems to benefit the network owner (often a search engine itself). After all, the network owner shares click revenue with the publisher.

But the network owner must also worry about network quality. Most marketers measure their traffic quality and make campaign mix and bid changes based on empirical conversion or other quality measurement data (whether automatically, manually, or both). As the network's volume of subpar traffic increases for any specific market segment, click prices drop. The remaining publishers in the network are hurt.

To renew deals with quality publishers, a network can't accept members that dilute network click quality. Google CFO George Reyes was probably focused on network-type click fraud when he stated, "I think something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model."

Clearly, Google takes network fraud seriously. A pending lawsuit against Texas-based Auctions Expert International claims it "flagrantly abused [Google's service] by artificially and/or fraudulently generating ad clicks."

If you think a search engine's network has quality problems, regardless of whether it's due to fraud or a poor quality publisher, build a case and show the data to the engine's reps. Or, if you want, send it to me. I can't promise to examine every case, but I'm very interested in supplementing data I have from my clients with results from other marketers.

Competitive Click Fraud

Competitive click fraud is a big problem for smaller businesses, particularly when the service provided is of great value (or great lifetime value), resulting in high CPCs (define). Lawyers, doctors, accountants, IT consultants, and, of course, search engine marketing (SEM)/SEO (define) firms all bid in high CPC marketplaces. The higher the CPC, the greater the effect a competitor can have on a specific budget.

Terms such as "new york lawyer" exceed $10 CPC. If a listing gets a click a day from five people from a competitor in both Google and Overture, you'll pay an extra $1,500 a month each to those search engines. This is a serious additional cost -- with absolutely no benefit.

In our server logs, I've seen entries from competitors came through paid links and returned more than once. Click fraud or natural curiosity from a competitor considering working in our agency program? I'll never know for sure. SEO-related keyword clicks aren't cheap. The business's competitive nature can involve a certain level of personal animosity between players. Competitive click fraud can be tempting. Resist the temptation, and do unto others...

Can you catch competitive click fraud? Perhaps. It depends on the competitor's level of sophistication. IP address lookups are the most common method of identifying click fraud, combined with cookie and session tracking and normalized benchmarking. Yet smaller businesses are likely to use Internet connections that don't directly identify them.

Mislabeled Traffic

Mislabeled traffic is more a network issue. It isn't about malicious activity so much as crossed lines between search and contextual traffic. Visit a news sites and look for text links. Some of those links are reported as search when actually, they're contextual.

What's the difference? Some marketers want to provide a different message to active searchers than to visitors who happen on the ad. Some ads served against some content aren't even contextual. I see many "debt consolidation" and "bankruptcy" ads running on general news pages. Sure, the CPCs and CPM (define) are high for the publisher, but does the marketer get what he pays for?

Impression Fraud

Impression fraud is the newest threat. Google and other engines rely on an AdRank method of determining an ad's relevance. A competitor pauses his campaign while a sudden fraudulent surge in impressions on your keywords occurs. All these impressions occur with zero clicks. AdRanks for competing ads, including yours, drop through the floor. The competitor waits a bit, then swoops in with a normal ad with a high CTR. Your campaign is entrenched with keywords that are disabled or seriously crippled. So, Google makes an ad position decision based on fake data.

In the end, search traffic, and search engine marketers' success, search engines, and the industry as a whole rely on correctly labeled traffic coming from high-quality network partners (or inexpensive, lower-quality networks). All these players have a vested interest in SEM's success, except cheaters. Let's make sure the cheaters don't win in the long term.

How Click Fraud Affects Pay Per Click Advertisers

Recently, an article appeared on CNET stating that Google has filed a lawsuit against a Texas-based company alleging they fraudulently abused the Google PPC system to profit from the advertisers' ad spending.

This is quite interesting, as it proves that click fraud is becoming more of a problem than ever and search engines are finally taking action. As well, there was a case earlier this year where a California man tried to blackmail Google by threatening to release a software program that could cost them millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks unless they paid him $150,000. Fortunately, Google fought back, and the man was indicted. Other than that, this is really the first time that a search engine has taken legal means in order to fight scammers.

Depending on how much you spend on PPC advertising, you may or may not feel the results of such fraud. In some competitive industries, clicks reach a cost of $5 and more. Those particular ads represent the biggest payoff for the perpetrators, so top advertisers definitely feel it when as much as 5% to 15% of their spending goes to waste.

One of the main problems is that Google and other search engines offer revenue-sharing programs, such as AdSense, for publishers who are willing to put Google content ads on their websites. Monitoring thousands and thousands of publishers can be a daunting task, and you can bet that, human nature being what it is, some website owners click on their ads every now and then to boost their revenue. While individually that may not be much money lost, collectively it becomes a huge issue.

Click fraud can also occur in several other ways. Whether it's an automated bot that is programmed to click on your ads, a company employing low-wage workers in India or China to click on ads from home, an organized setup in Omaha, Nebraska complete with rotating IP addresses on all 300 computers in the warehouse, or your own competitor himself trying to deplete your budget, it's getting pretty hard to track and monitor.

I've also observed that most search engines are very secretive about their fraud monitoring systems. While the reasoning behind that is clear, it doesn't really tell us exactly how they are battling the problem. This leaves advertisers on their own to try and figure out what's going on. Luckily, there are tools available, such as Who's Clicking Who and Clicklab that track your advertising activity for you and report any suspicion of fraud.

My personal recommendation would be to carefully monitor your own traffic using a third party service. It's an added cost, but if you spend several hundreds per month on PPC advertising, it'll be worth it. If you notice any unusual activity, don't hesitate to contact the search engine, investigate the issue, and request a refund for those clicks. Most of the time, they will be more than happy to comply with your request.

Unfortunately, I expect click fraud to grow and diversify, so it's important that you have the knowledge and tools to protect yourself against it.

What's The Deal With "Other" PPC Search Engines?

As far as most advertisers are concerned, there are really only two pay per click search engines that deserve their attention - Google's AdWords and Overture (owned by Yahoo!). After all, these are the most popular search engines that dominate the industry in terms of traffic, technology, and popularity.

This also means that the competition for a position on these search engines is fierce, which causes bid prices for many keywords to go up, making it too costly for smaller players to get into the game.

Fortunately, another category of PPC search engines, known as 2nd Tier, exists. Don't let the name fool you - many of these search engines process in excess of billions of searches per month and some are actual public companies or wholly owned subsidiaries thereof, such as FindWhat, ePilot, Marchex (owner of GoClick), and several others.

2nd Tier also includes search engines such as SearchFeed, Enhance, Kanoodle, 7Search, PageSeeker, Search123, and so on. While all of them combined represent less user traffic that Google AdWords alone, you will find that you can actually get very decent positions on a lot of them without spending an arm and a leg.

In general, you will find that if it takes you 20 clicks to get 1 sale on Google, it may take you 200 visitors to get 1 sale on a minor search engine. However, since it all comes down to ROI, you might wind up paying the same or even less per sale, as the bids are significantly lower on the 2nd Tier engine where it took 200 clicks to make 1 sale.

There is a lot of controversy going on regarding the actual conversions that 2nd tier search engines bring. A popular rumor is that they work with lower-quality traffic providers. In reality, however, minor search engines actually do work with some pretty great content websites. It just varies from industry to industry. You may find that an advertiser selling web hosting may have miserable results on a specific search engine, while another advertiser selling flowers may get an excellent return on investment.

Of course, it also has a lot to do with your skills as an ad writer. After all, a skillfully crafted title and description can make all the difference between a successful campaign and a dismal failure.

My personal recommendation would be to definitely try as many other search engine ads as you can afford to. With a minimum commitment of just $25-$50 per search engine, you might just find a new, highly cost effective source of traffic that you'd never known about if you haven't tried this out. Secondly, make sure to utilize the Customer Service these search engines offer. Many of them will assign a specific Account Manager to help you get the most out of the campaign. Talk to them and find out what works and what doesn't, instead of guessing yourself.

Are You in for a Safe Landing? - PPC Landing Pages

You've paid for your ticket and your ads are up on Google AdWords and Yahoo's Overture, but have you set up a safe landing for your clients?

Run a test landing. Do a search and find your Pay Per Click (PPC) ad in Yahoo or Google. Click on it. Where does it bring you? Your home page? I hope not. You should create a specific landing page for your PPC ads. A landing page is the page you create to convert your PPC traffic into sales. This page should get your potential customers (that you have already paid for!) to go exactly where you think they want to go.

Here are some tips to create a good landing page:

1) Focus! Focus! Focus!

The landing page should be about your product or service. No links to other sites, no advertisements, no "how do you do". When people arrive at your landing page, they should already be predisposed to buy (since you wrote such an excellent ad to get them here in the first place) and are trying to either: a) Get more information about your product or service b) Find the "Buy now" button Use the search term on the page, because searchers will key into the section of the page with their search term. If the search term is "buy skidoo" then have a button that says "Buy Skidoos Here". Don't distract them - give them what they want.

2) Customize your landing page

Use a different landing page for each group of keyphrases. If you sell seadoos and skidoos, don't use the same landing page for each. Create a new landing page for each product (or each group of products) and send the clients directly to the page they are interested in.

3) Give them information

If they are not yet sold on your product or service, then they are going to be looking for more detailed information when they arrive at your landing page. Give it to them. You have to convince them that you have the perfect product or service to solve their problem. If they run out of information before they make a commitment to buy, then you have lost them. Nobody will spend money until they are convinced that your product or service is the right choice for them. So prove it.

4) Tell the reader what you want them to do

Use calls-to-action. If you want them to buy your product, than tell them often how to do it ("Click here to buy"). If you want them to call you, post the number up with instructions ("Call us now at 1-877-717-3667"). Repeat it throughout the text, then again in big and bold at the end.

5) Use graphics

Use pictures to sell your product or service. Pictures of the product or pictures of satisfied customers sell. Use them - and use them often.

6) Run tests

Set up two landing pages to see which one converts better. Set up two identical ads and send one to each landing page, then compare conversion rates for each page. Figure out why one converts better and try to improve the other one. Then, run more tests until you are completely satisfied with the results.

Set up your landing pages so that your potential customers arrive for a safe landing. If all goes well, they will step out of the plane with their credit cards already in hand - and their money almost in your pocket.

Zen and the Art of PPC � A Five Step Holistic Approach

Over the past few years I�ve modified my approach to Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing in response to the popularity of PPC and all of the great technological advances in Overture and Google AdWords. Despite these changes, there still remain some basic core principals that I always focus on for a successful PPC campaign. By following these five simple steps, you can achieve a well balanced PPC campaign that will hum along for you in no time. The key is to balance all five principles equally, hence the Zen of PPC.

Measurements of Success � What are you aiming for?

At our company, a measurement of success is one of the most important questions we ask our clients. So before you begin a PPC campaign ask yourself (or your client) what are the goals for this campaign? How do you want to measure your success? In 99.99% of the time, this boils down to conversions. A conversion can be in the form of sales, a phone call, registrations, downloads, etc. Unless you are doing a pure branding campaign, conversions really should be your end goal. Note that a conversion is much different than a click.

PPC Life Cycle

Let�s take a quick look at how this works and analyze what is going on in PPC Advertising.

1. Your potential web visitor/client goes to Google, Yahoo, Msn or an affiliate site and types in a keyword phrase, for example �web marketing�.
2. Your ad appears alongside the results.
3. They read your ad and click.
4. They visit your site.
5. They find what they want and pick up the phone, fax, order something online, email you, etc = Conversion!

So if conversions are your end goal, how do you increase the number of conversions in PPC? The five principles for a successful PPC campaign are the same as those described in the PPC lifecycle above. It can be very simple and easy. The trick is to balance all five principles.

Step 1: Keywords

Picking the right keywords is critical to any search engine marketing project whether this is an organic SEO project or PPC. You need to pick out the words that directly apply to your product or service. How do you find these words? To start, use the Google keyword tool and the Overture tool. These tools will tell you what words are popular and what words people are bidding on. There are plenty of keyword resources available on the internet. Among my favorites is wordtracker.com as it will do a lateral search for you and then rank the words by popularity. Try various combinations of adjectives and verb stems i.e. Skateboard supplies, Skateboarding parts, etc. If you are in a specific locale, use your city name or location such as Southern California surf boards or La Jolla oceanfront real estate, etc.

Marketability / Buying Cycle Words

If you are a B2C type of company, you may want to think about categorizing your keywords into different parts of the buying cycle. For example there are purely research oriented words such as �mp3 player review� vs. specific buying words for those ready to purchase such as �ipod mini�. On the most part, research words are less expensive in PPC than buying words, but research words may not convert as quickly to a sale. Depending on your marketing budget you will need to find the optimal ratio to get you the sales as well as the traffic.

Pre-Qualify your visitors.

Keywords are also a great place to limit and pre-qualify your visitors and prevent people from accidentally clicking on your ad. For example if you sell wholesale detergent by the gallons, you�ll want to use words such as �bulk detergent�, �commercial detergent supplier�. The last thing you want is to have to pay for a 1000 people to click on your ad for a single box of Tide.

Step 2: Bidding = Impressions

Straight out of Andrew Goodman�s Google AdWords Handbook: 21 Ways to Maximize Results. When you first start a PPC campaign, don�t be afraid to bid extremely high for the first few days. Bidding equates to ranking and you need to be on the top of the first page to get the exposure and the impressions for your ads. This is extremely important for step 3 - Ad Copy, because there really is no way to test your ad copy unless you have adequate exposure and impressions. The key is to bid high for at least 3 or 4 days, then bring the bids down to a more comfortable level in tune with your marketing budget. A nice trick to try out after you�ve optimized your ad copy is to bid for spot #2 only. There are a lot of theories out there that click happy visitors always click on spot #1 but not spot #2. You could save yourself a lot of money by getting the exposure at position #2.

Bidding Tools

If you are in a highly competitive keyword space such as real estate or B2C, you may want to look at bidding software such as Go Toast, Bid Rank, or PPC Pro to help you adjust your bids throughout the day. In most cases however, you don�t really need these bidding tools. But you should monitor your PPC at least 3-4 times a day for the first month to tweak and optimize your campaign. Day-parting is also something you should look as a bidding strategy depending on your audience demographics. For example, for high school students, you�ll probably want to crank up the bids during the evenings, weekends, and summers when they are out of the classroom.

Step 3: Ad Copy = Click Through Rate

Ok, so you�ve picked the keywords and you have the right bidding to achieve your high levels of impressions. Now you need to write effective ad copy to entice your visitor to click on your ad. You�ll want to write at least 3 or 4 versions of your ad with different titles and ad copy. It has been proven in studies that you will increase your conversions if you include your keyword in the title of the ad and within your ad copy. This is especially important in Google since it automatically bolds the key word text in your ad copy and makes your ad stand out. Use Google AdWords to test your various ads since they have a built in optimizer that will rotate your ads and serve the highest performing ad. (Overture requires a 3 day editorial period so you will not get your results as quickly).

Take a look at Net Words:Creating High-Impact Online Copy by Nick Usborne . This is a great reference that goes over writing effective ad copy specifically for the web.

Differentiate your self.

The key to writing PPC ad copy is to write something that will stick out from your competition. For example, if you are a full service travel agency bidding on the words �Las Vegas hotels� and everyone is writing ads that have the title �Cheap Vegas Hotels� why not try something different like �Vegas Hotel/Air Packages�? Or retype your title as a question such as �Planning a Vegas Bachelor Party?� vs. �Las Vegas Bachelor Party�.

Pre-Qualify your visitors

Just like your keywords, your ad copy is also a great place to pre-qualify your visitor. For example, if you require registration for a free white paper or a web event, mention this in your ad copy. Otherwise a lot of people will click for the white paper and then exit when they are surprised to see the sign up form. If you sell industrial rolls of tape, mention this in your ad copy otherwise someone may click for office supplies of scotch tape. This pre-qualification ad copy may lower your click through rate, but you will be getting higher quality visitors which will help you on the next step for conversions on your landing pages.

Step 4: Landing Page = Conversions

This is an extremely critical step that a lot of PPC users neglect and fail. Think about it, you can have the most successful PPC Campaign at a 99% click-through rate at a cheap bid price of $.05/click, but if your landing page is not designed effectively, looks amateurish, and is difficult to navigate and read, your entire PPC budget is going to be wasted. For the landing page, ask yourself is this what the visitor expects when they click on the ad? Is it easy to recognize what your business does? Would I buy something from this website?

Website Usability

You essentially have 3 seconds to convince your visitor that your website and business is the solution to their problem. Spend some time to have someone review your site for usability. Check out http://www.useit.com/ http://www.sitepoint.com, or http://www.alistapart.com as references or contact website usability companies such as http://www.experient.biz/ for a personal consultation. You don�t need flash and animation to coax your visitor into buying your product, instead focus on simple clean navigation that will allow your visitor to find what they want in the shortest time available.

A-B testing:

As with your ad copy, be sure to have at least 3 or 4 versions of your landing page and test them to see which one produces the highest conversions. You�ll be amazed how small changes can make a large difference. Just changing colors on the page, font sizes, links and navigation, simplifying your sign up form are all things you can experiment with to achieve an optimized landing page for conversions.

Step 5 � Overall website appearance & website tracking

As part of the overall marketing strategy you�ll want to have a nice looking website in addition to an attractive and effective landing page. By having an easy to navigate website you can up-sell your customers on your other products and services.

Website Tracking

According to a recent report by IMedia Connection.com the overall average for conversions across the web is 2 percent. Are you getting these types of conversions? Website tracking is obviously very important to your testing and optimization of your PPC campaign. Begin with the free Google and Overture tracking tools which allow you to track from the click to the conversion. For a more in-depth analysis, I recommend taking a look at a client side tracking tool such as Webside Story�s Hitbox Professional or Hitbox Enterprise. With Hitbox, you can accurately track all of your marketing campaigns with one system � PPC, SEO organic, email campaigns, affiliate marketing campaigns, banner ad media buys, direct mail, etc.

Path to Success

PPC is a whole new type of advertising and to be successful at it you�ll want to be sure to maintain a well-balanced strategy to optimize your campaigns. Remember that each of the five principles affects each of the others. If you choose the right keyword, but don�t bid at the right price or do not have adequately converting ad copy or your landing page doesn�t convert, then your end goal of conversions will not be met. Continue to balance and optimize all five principles and you will be on your way to a well maintained PPC campaign. Please write me directly if you have any questions. I plan to submit follow-up articles that describe in more detail each of the five principles above.

Strategies For Preparing a PPC Keyword List (Part 1)

Words Words Words / Location Location Location

Any successful restaurateur can tell you location is one of the most important factors in achieving a successful business. The location determines the amount of foot traffic that a restaurant will be exposed to. In the same way, the cornerstone of any successful PPC marketing campaign is your list of keywords. Your choice of keywords will determine the quality and quantity of visitors to your ads and website.

Just say NO to client keyword lists.

Oftentimes, during my initial meeting with a new PPC client, I am handed a list of keywords that the client requests to get ranked. They usually go on to explain that they must have keyword XXX because this keyword is the only one capable of driving business, they�ve seen their competitor bidding a lot of money for #1, and they are not interested in spending any of their marketing budget on any other keywords. Unless they are really adamant on handing me this list, I usually politely decline. Why? The problem with accepting a client�s list of keywords is that you are basically limiting yourself to their preconceived notions of what words would drive them traffic.

Derive the keywords from the business model.

My approach is to have a detailed conversation with the client first and try to nail down all of their main products and services that their business has to offer. Once I have a clear understanding of their business, their products and their services I can start to put together a list of words related to their products and service. After I finish my own list, I can compare it to theirs and in most cases my list is much more expansive. Companies who offer both products and services often advertise their products but neglect to market their services. In many cases the PPC keywords associated with products are more often more expensive than words associated with their services, so it is important to always consider services that companies offer in addition to products that they sell.

Sample questions to ask your client (or yourself if you are doing PPC for your own business)

1. What are the core products that you sell?
2. What are the core services that you offer?
3. How do you distinguish your products from your competitors?
4. How do you distinguish your services?
5. What industries are you involved with currently?
6. What industries would you like to get involved with?
7. What marketing material do you have addressing your products and services?
8. How do customers usually find out about your business?

Keywords that a customer would use.

The goal of all PPC campaigns is obviously to drive more customers to a website, so you should try to think from the perspective of the customer. Ask yourself what words a potential customer would type into the search engines. For example, let�s say company A is an industrial manufacturer of stainless steel wastebaskets. If I were a customer, what words would I type into Google, Yahoo or MSN to find this company?

* Stainless steel trash can
* Metal trash can
* Kitchen trash can.

Or if you were a purchasing agent for a large company, you may type in other words such as:

* Commercial trash cans
* Commercial waste containers
* Lobby trash cans
* Public trash containers

Keyword Stemming

Stemming involves the interchanging of singular and plural forms of a keyword or the derivation of a verb from the gerund form (the "-ing" word). For example, if �educate� was part of a keyword phrase, �educated,� �educates,� �education� and �educating� should also be considered

Local Words

If your client�s business depends on a certain location, then by all means try stemming with the location�s name. For example La Jolla surfboards, Southern California surfboards, etc. These words can be what we call the �gold between the cracks.� These could be less expensive PPC words that are high quality, high converting words.

Keyword Software Assistance

After growing your list to about 50 words you can then take advantage of all the wonderful software tools available for generating keywords. I particularly like using the Google keyword tool, Overture and Wordtracker. By using these three keyword tools I go on to expand the list to about 100+ keywords with various combinations.

Conclusion:

Generating your initial keyword list for PPC should be a well-thought out process. It is a critical step in a successful PPC campaign and should not be rushed. Spend time to ask your peers, your friends, etc. about what words they would think about if they were looking for the products and services that you or your client offers. Lastly, resist the temptation to use the software to do all of your work. The more words you have in your initial list, the more you can generate with the software tools.

In my next article, I�ll go in depth on how to organize and categorize your keywords into various market category words and some simple bidding strategies.

The Golden Triangle and the Tarnished Dot

In early March the eye-tracking firm Eyetools announced that it had �uncovered� search�s Golden Triangle. The triangle depicted the results of a study on where searchers� eyes go on a Google results page, and it was not at all a surprise. At least the triangle wasn�t. More interesting to me was a dot, but first we�ll review the triangle.

Eyetools, along with search marketing companies Enquiro and Did-it, gave 50 people a task to do using Google and then tracked their eyes as they took in the results. The study showed that, among the organic listings taking up the left half of the screen, the first three were seen by 100 percent of the people, the fourth by 85 percent, the fifth by 60 percent, the sixth and seventh by 50 percent, the eighth and ninth by 30 percent and the tenth by 20 percent.

Hence the idea of the triangle, registering 100 percent of the eyes across the top of the organic listings from left to right and then declining gradually to 20 percent.

Much was written in the search marketing press about that triangle. But there were no surprises in it. It was a predictable result. Over to the right of the triangle�s top, though, a little dot had a lot to say about pay-per-click (PPC). What I call the tarnished dot showed eye activity for the paid listings, which, for Google�s AdWords, are usually along the right-hand side of the page. Only 50 percent of the eyes landed on the first ad, 40 percent on the second, 30 percent on the third and 20 percent on the fourth. The fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth ads were each seen by 10 percent of the study participants.

Google does sometimes put paid ads above the organic listings, but that prized spot is reserved for ads with the highest rank, which, according to Google, �is determined by various performance factors including: maximum cost-per-click (CPC), clickthrough rate (CTR), and ad text.� In other words, most of us can forget about it. And even those who think they have a shot at it can�t be sure.

So with that understanding, the eye-tracking study suggests two things about PPC strategy.

The first suggestion, if you�re using Google AdWords, is that you really want to be Number One, as opposed to a traditional PPC strategy of bidding so that you�re number Two or Three.

The reasoning behind aiming for the second or third spot, in addition to avoiding a bidding war, has been this: Surfers might click on the first ad out of curiosity even if they have no real interest in buying the product or service advertised, but clicking on the second or third ad indicates a higher level of commitment. That�s still probably true, and the strategy remains a valid one for PPC programs that put your ad above the organic listings. But for Google, with those ads generally over on the right in that tarnished dot, the first one gets only 50 percent of the eye traffic, and then the percentages decline rapidly.

So if you�ve been following the don�t-aim-for-the-top strategy, you might want to reexamine it for Google AdWords in light of the findings of the eye-tracking study. Unless you�re among the select few getting placed above the organic search results, only half of the people are likely to see your ad if it�s the top one, and you lose a big chunk of the eye traffic as you go to second and third place.

The second thing the study suggests to me is that for most of us there are better buys than Google AdWords.

I recently set up a PPC program for a new client and compared Google AdWords with Overture Precision Match. We�d have to bid almost twice as much for the keyword phrases on Google, and then the listings would be in that not-so-golden dot to the right of the organic listings. On Overture (soon to be renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions), for less money, my client would be above the organic listings on MSN Search, Yahoo Search, All the Web and AltaVista as well as Overture.

MSN and Yahoo, between them, get 48 percent of all the searches done by U.S. searchers, according to SearchEngineWatch.com. So Overture gets my client a likely 100 percent of the eye traffic for what probably amounts to half of the people in the U.S. who are going to search on our keyword phrases. And, as a bonus, we don�t have to chase the top listing. In the Google study, the top three organic listings all got 100 percent of the eye traffic. It�s a fair assumption that the top three paid listings will also get 100 percent or close to 100 percent if they�re above the other listings on the left half of the screen.

Of course, nothing stays constant in this industry. It remains to be seen how the relationships will change after MSN, as announced, develops its own PPC program. But at the moment it seems to me that Overture is the best buy in PPC unless you can count on Google placing you at the top of that Golden Triangle. And very few of us can count on that.

Give Your PPC Ad �Authority� and your CTR will skyrocket

Most folks who professionally manage Pay-Per-Click campaigns know the fundamentals of how to achieve an optimum CTR:

1) Place the keyword(s) in the ad title.
2) If possible, place the keyword(s) again in the body of the ad.
3) Create multiple variations of each ad and rigorously test until you arrive at your optimum ad choice/choices.

But, what if you�ve done that already and your results are still less than they should be? Do you just give up and accept substandard results?

I have a mutual fund PPC client (AdWords only�Contextual Ads Enabled). I keep him at or near �top bidder� status for each of his campaigns. The CTR for keywords in his particular �niche� was excellent, but he also wanted to get PPC traffic from people doing more generalized mutual fund searches. Despite following PPC Best Practices, his more �generalized� campaign CTR was less than I believed it should be.

In our last meeting, he happened to mention that the company got a very positive write-up in Fortune Magazine. A few days later, it dawned on me that �name dropping� the Fortune Article could lead to a much higher CTR series of ads. So, I created some�

The former ads were:

�Keyword� Mutual Fund
Learn More About (Client Name�s)
�Keyword� Mutual Fund
www.clientname.com

The new ads are:

�Keyword� Mutual Fund
(Client Name) � �Keyword� Fund Featured
In February Issue of Fortune Magazine
www.clientname.com

The rise in CTR was immediate and outstanding. Two weeks after the ads launched, I formally presented the results to the client. For the client�s �International Mutual Fund� Campaign, the new ads had a CTR of 1.2% compared to .4% for the old ads. For the client�s �Global Mutual Fund Campaign�, the new ads had a CTR of .4% compared to .1% for the old ads. For the client�s �Environmental Mutual Fund� Campaign, the new ads had a CTR of 3.9% compared to .9% for the old ads. The client was extremely impressed with the exponential increase in traffic�and his CPC even went down slightly during this time period.

The lesson to be learned is this: By legitimately creating a nexus between your company and an industry �authority� (like Fortune) and writing that authority into your PPC ads, you have the potential for a very noticeable CTR increase.

If you professionally manage PPC campaigns, ask your clients about any noticeable recent PR/media attention they might have received. Perhaps, they�ve already made mention of it on their website. Not every bit of PR can turn into a high-performing PPC ad, but if the PR came from a source well known and respected by the client�s prospect base, it behooves you to test a PPC ad based upon that exposure.

If you manage your own campaign, you can establish credibility with your audience by creating ads that legitimately link your business to an industry authority. If 10 firms are trying to sell the same widgets through PPC, prospects are more likely to click on your ad if you mention that your widgets were featured in �Widget Magazine (the Widget Authority Source for the Widget Industry)�. You will distinguish yourself from your competitors and reap the benefits of doing so.

The Number One Rule of Organic Search Marketing

In a previous article, I went over The Number One Rule of Pay-Per-Click and why it's so easy for people to break it. This time around, it's organic search marketing that's in the hot seat. Once again, it's not at all unusual to find businesses eager to break this rule into pieces.

These days, most business owners have at least an inkling of what search engine marketing is all about. They've probably had some experience with the idea of pay-per-click marketing and they may even have a vague idea of how organic search optimization can help their site show up higher in the rankings at various search engines. Ask these folks what the number one rule of organic search marketing is, and you're probably going to hear about how you need to add content, or how links are essential.

They're on the right track, but all the content and link building in the world won't do them a lick of good if they break this rule. So what is the number one rule of organic search marketing?

Speak your customers' language.

It sounds like such a simple concept, right? You'd be surprised how many businesses have a hard time with the idea. Almost anyone that has been in search marketing for any length of time has at least a handful of stories about clients that presented them with enormous lists of keywords during their first meeting. It's usually not long before these lists are chucked out the window. Most business owners are just now starting to understand that it doesn't matter what terms you *think* your customers use to find you, or even what phrases you *want* them to find you with. What matters is what phrases people are searching for.

I had a client once a few years ago that absolutely insisted that I optimize his site for a handful of phrases. I told him that I *could* optimize for those phrases and I could probably even promise him one of the top few spots. Mostly because no one searched for those phrases and there wasn't an ounce of competition for them. Then I pointed out that it wouldn't make sense to put a billboard for his services in Antarctica, because no one that might do business with him was going to see it. Eventually, he got my point and we started working through the list of what *was* being searched for in order to find the phrases that were actually appropriate to his offerings.

In an instance just this past month, I spoke with a client about a few phrases that we'd begun optimizing their site for. The client was concerned about the word choices that we used because it contained the phrase "older women." To his credit, he was concerned that the use of that phrase within the text of the site copy might offend some readers. After all, most women don't wish to be referred to as "older." He wondered if we might be able to find some word choice that was more politically correct. I explained that we could, but that this was the phrase that his target audience was using to describe themselves, thus, it was essential that we work it into the copy.

This problem is especially common in high-tech areas and with consulting firms. Buzzwords abound in the industry and everyone is always trying to make their services sound more impressive than their competitors. Try to remember the last time you visited a consulting site without reading phrases like these:

* actionable business insight
* disparate islands of data
* model-driven composite applications
* organizational boundaries

While copy full of such phrases may sound impressive, it's highly unlikely that it's going to attract any type of organic search engine rankings for anything that people actually search for. If you really want to impress people, dominate the search results by speaking with words that potential clients actually USE.

The Number One Rule of Pay-Per-Click

Chances are high that if you are a search engine marketing professional, you've run into folks that break it. Chances are even higher that if you're a small business owner, you've either already broken it, or are going to break it. What is it? The number one rule of pay-per-click advertising: It's NOT about buying clicks.

I can't count the number of times that I've spoken with clients, potential clients, or folks in discussion forums that are absolutely thrilled with the "success" of their pay-per-click campaigns. "We're getting so much traffic now" they tell me, or "we've doubled traffic and our sales have gone up." They can't get over how successful they've been with their campaigns, especially since they are running them themselves and are new to the idea of search marketing.

Unfortunately, they just don't get it. They don't understand that while they know how to set up a campaign, manage bids, and have even been able to see a rise in sales or leads, they are still breaking the number one rule of pay-per-click. They just don't get that it's not about buying traffic.

It's about buying conversions.

Pay-per-click programs have an almost magical appeal to the average small business owner. They're not complicated like organic search optimization and they aren't expensive like more traditional forms of advertising. The president of a small company can sit at their desk and purchase visitors for what they think is an excellent price. They can increase their traffic, gain more page views and sell more products. This is a good thing.

But, that good thing needs to be better. I'd say no less than 75% of the time that I speak to someone that's running their own pay-per-click campaign they can answer two questions for me almost immediately.

* How many visitors did you buy last month?
* How much did those visitors cost you?

That's an excellent start, but what these business owners really need to be able to answer are questions like these:

* How many clients did you buy last month?
* How much did each client cost you?
* Which keywords buy your best clients?
* Which keywords do you plan to stop bidding on, or drop your bid prices on?

What I usually get in response to these questions is a blank stare. That's understandable, as most of the people digging into pay-per-click are experimenting with a new form of marketing and simply don't have the knowledge or training to even know what it is that they don't know. They see their traffic rising and their sales rising and that's enough for them. They know that pay-per-click works, they don't know that it could work better.

Pay-per-click campaigns aren't about buying traffic. (If all you want is traffic, you can pay a college student to sit around and click on your Web site all day.) Pay-per-click campaigns are about buying customers. They are about finding the phrases that deliver buyers to your Web site and knowing how much money you make off of each buyer. Pay-per-click gives advertisers an opportunity to fine tune their marketing dollars so that they are spending their money in a way that delivers the most value.

Think about it this way. Running a pay-per-click campaign without doing any tracking of which phrases convert is like launching ads on television, radio, billboards and the yellow pages all on the same day. Sure, you're probably going to see a rise in sales, but you have no way of knowing which ads caused them. Perhaps 90% of your new sales came from your radio ad and 5% came from TV and billboards. Maybe NO ONE calls as a result of your yellow page ad. Do you want to keep throwing your money at the yellow pages? Do you want to spend the same amount on the TV and billboard ads as you do on the radio? No, you're going to spend your money where it has the most impact.

A good pay-per-click campaign is the same way. Adding thousands of keyword phrases to a campaign and then simply setting back and celebrating because you received more traffic doesn't make any sense. Take the time to find out which visitors are worth the most to you and then make changes to your campaign. Realize that the only number that matters in pay-per-click is your ROI, not your hit counter.

There's an understandable "warm-fuzzy" factor that goes with a small business's first experience with buying visitors through a pay-per-click engine. But most small businesses can't pay the bills with warm-fuzzies. Inevitably, the point comes where the PPC manager starts to tinker with some of the campaigns, or discovers a conversion tracker and a light bulb goes off over their head. This is the point at which a PPC campaign starts to be about selling, and not simply buying.

So, if you are new to the PPC game, or just getting ready to drive in, let me save you, and your PPC manager several months and quite a bit of money. Write this phrase down, tape it to your monitor, and repeat it at least once a day.

Pay-per-click is not about buying visitors, it's about buying customers.

Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the various pay for performance advertising models offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing. In this article, we will look at the remaining pay for performance search engine models on our list, starting with Google AdWords.

Google AdWords�

Similar to Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Google AdWords gives web site owners the ability to promote their site when particular keyword or key phrase searches are conducted at Google and their partner sites.

Your ads usually appear on the right side of results pages in a �call out� box under the heading �Sponsored Links�. Your AdWords text or image ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country.

With Google AdWords' cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. Google adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the lowest possible price. Google Adwords results appear on Google search results pages, Google�s distribution partner sites, Google Gmail, and numerous content sites which are syndicated through the Google Adsense program.

For more information on Google AdWords, Click Here.

Google AdSense�

Google AdSense is a way for webmasters to generate income from their sites by displaying text or image advertisements from companies participating in the Google AdWords program.

You can display targeted advertising for your content pages or you can add a Google search box to your site and show targeted ads on search results pages. When visitors click on these ads, Google pays you a fee. The ads are targeted to the content already on your page so they are not as intrusive to your visitors.

For more information on Google AdSense, Click Here.

LookSmart LookListings�

The LookSmart Directory originally offered a Paid Submission model and then transformed it into a Pay For Performance model, removing their Express Submit directory submission service and receiving a lot of criticism in the process.

To have your site included in LookSmart.com, you must pay a per click fee when visitors click on your listing, similar to the Yahoo! Search Submit Express model. The "relevancy keywords", title and description chosen during the set up of your listing determine when your site appears for searches. There is no free submission option to Looksmart and the only way to get your site into their directory is to either pay for their LookListings or submit your site via the Zeal directory, which is only an option available to non-profit sites.

LookSmart LookListings work like this:

1) Create Your Listing which includes:
- site description & title
- relevancy keywords (for keyword targeted listings)
- directory category

2) Set Your Monthly Budget:
- set your maximum monthly budget
- set your maximum click rates for each URL (for keyword targeted listings)
- your account is debited USD 0.15 per click (for inclusion-targeted listings)
- minimum account deposit totaling your maximum monthly budget
- each campaign has a minimum monthly budget of USD 15

3) Account Management - traffic reporting
- automatic monthly account refills (from your nominated credit card)
- adjust your budget
- update description, title and relevancy keywords
- bids monitored automatically (for keyword targeted listings)

LookListings appear on sites across the LookSmart Network including LookSmart, Lycos, Mamma.com and CNET Search.

For more information on LookSmart LookListings, Click Here.

Other Pay-Per-Click Providers

Apart from the big players, there are a large number of other medium-sized search providers selling pay-per-click search advertising. These include:

* FindWhat
* Enhance (formerly ah-ha)
* Kanoodle
* Espotting
* 7Search
* GoClick
* ePilot.com
* Lycos Insite AdBuyer
* Mirago
* Search123

Of course there are hundreds more PPC engines, many of which can be found via the sites listed in our Further Reading section below.

Don�t be afraid to set-up some test pay per click campaigns to dip your toes into the paid advertising waters. You don�t have to have a large budget to reap rewards, just a willingness to experiment and apply what you learn to improve your campaigns. What you do with all your extra traffic is up to you!

Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines (Part 1)

Pay per click (PPC) advertising via search engines has become extremely popular with businesses of all sizes, due to the booming search market and the massive growth in online sales over the past few years.

According to ComScore Networks online consumer spending for the 2004/5 financial year is expected to top USD 66 billion dollars, up 25% on the previous year. That�s right, 66 BILLION dollars! A large chunk of that expenditure will come from leads generated via pay per click search engines.

If you�ve been thinking about trying out PPC engines but are confused about the different models available and the costs involved, this article will shed some light. I will also explain the newly launched PPC products offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly operating under the Overture brand).

Below is a current list of the most popular pay for performance search engine advertising models:

* Yahoo! Sponsored Search � Pay Per Click
* Yahoo! Content Match � Pay Per Click
* Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search � Pay Per Click
* Yahoo! Search Submit Express - Paid Inclusion
* Yahoo! Search Submit Pro - Hybrid Paid Inclusion / Pay Per Click
* Google AdWords - Pay Per Click
* Google AdSense � Pay Per Click affiliate program
* Looksmart LookListings - Pay Per Click

You will find that some of these will provide better results than others. I�m not going to recommend one over another here because results vary widely and really depend on your site content, your market and your budget. But below is a brief description of each product offering and the minimum cost involved.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search�

Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the new name for what was recently called Overture Precision Match. Sponsored Search prominently displays your business in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties.

With Sponsored Search, you set the price you're willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing.

If you create a keyword campaign and your bid buys their "premium listings" (top 3 positions) for particular keywords or search phrases, your bid buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites (Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace, Excite, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as CNN).

For example, go to AllTheWeb and type in a search for �used cars�. Take note of the top 3 spots. Now go to MSN Search and type in a search for �used cars�. You'll see that the "Sponsored Sites" listings in the green box at the top (and/or the text ads to the right) contain the same top 3 listings from AllTheWeb. The regular MSN directory listings follow underneath the green box. So basically, purchasing PPC listings on Yahoo! can give you top billing on other major search engines too.

For a monthly fee, listings can be automatically monitored using the Yahoo! Search Optimizer to ensure bid amounts are consistent to attain target positions without going over budget. Volume levels are determined by your budget, as you only pay for the traffic delivered.

How much you pay depends on the keyword or phrase you are bidding on and what position you want to purchase. Each account has a USD20 minimum monthly spend and a USD30 non-refundable initial deposit is required to open the account (which is applied to click-throughs). There is a minimum bid requirement of USD 0.10 per click through and you pay the bid price EACH TIME somebody clicks your ad from Yahoo! and their partner listings.

With the large traffic numbers driven to your site via Yahoo! Sponsored Search, the costs of keyword bid campaigns can quickly add up, so I highly recommend deciding on a total budget so that you can develop a cost effective keyword bid allocation and maintenance plan combining both premium (top 3) and other listings.

Yahoo! provides detailed reporting tools to help you track the performance of the PPC campaign and traffic generated. Yahoo! also offers a special Keyword Selector Tool to assist in the selection of your keywords, a View Bids Tool, where you can see the current maximum bids and listings for the top 3 advertisers on any search term, a PPC ROI Calculator and a CPM ROI Calculator.

Yahoo! offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track� or Self Serve, giving you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. With Fast Track�, Yahoo! experts research your website and recommend effective search terms based on the content of your site and Yahoo!'s editorial guidelines. They also create customized ad titles and descriptions based on those search terms. Fast Track� has a one time service fee of USD199, while Self Serve is free.

For more information on Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Click Here.

Yahoo! Content Match�

Content Match works on the same principle Yahoo! Sponsored Search, but offers advertisers access to more targeted customers on a pay-per-click basis by displaying their site listings alongside related articles, product reviews and other information on the Content Match partner network.

This network includes sites like Yahoo!, MSN.com, CNN.com and ESPN.com. Yahoo! Content Match complements Sponsored Search� while offering separate pricing.

Yahoo! Content Match� works like this:

1) When you sign up for Sponsored Search, your Yahoo! account will be set up to automatically receive Content Match traffic, and your listings are automatically re-purposed for Content Match.

2) When a web user goes to a Yahoo! and views content pages (such as articles), Yahoo! provides one or more relevant ad listings on the same page.

3) Users may also be targeted based on their interests and actions. For example, a user who demonstrates an interest in photography-related topics on one site may be provided with photography-related Content Match listings on that site or on other Content Match publisher sites such as CNN and ESPN.

4) Minimum bids start at USD 0.10, and you pay only when a user clicks on your listing.

5) You can manage and track the performance of your Content Match listings from the "Manage Content Match" pages in your Sponsored Search Account once you have completed the Sponsored Search advertiser sign-up process.

6) Separate campaign management, including bidding, ad listing and tracking, lets you adjust your bids and measure performance independent of Sponsored Search to achieve maximum ROI.

7) You can control your advertising spend across your Content Match campaigns with Yahoo!'s Budgeting feature.

For more information on Yahoo! Content Match, Click Here.

Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search�

Yahoo! also offers a regionally-focused pay-per-click advertising option. Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search� enables both online and offline businesses to potentially increase sales by precisely targeting customers in a specific geographic region.

Local Sponsored Search works best for businesses that are targeting customers in their neighborhood seeking to purchase local products and services via a web site or physical store location.

Local Sponsored Search features a Locator page, which provides prospects with information about your business, including address, phone number, store hours and a map of your location. In addition, if your business has a Web site, your main Web page will be displayed along with the Locator page.

Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search� works like this:

1) You select keywords you wish to bid on that best describe your business, products or services. Write listings and choose a geographic range (0.5 to 100 mile radius around your location) from which you want to draw customers.

2) When a customer interested in your area goes to a search site such as Yahoo! and searches for a product or service you sell, your listing appears.

3) When the customer clicks on your listing, they see your Locator page and a link to your Web site, if you have a site.

4) Just like your Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search� listing, you only pay your bidded amount when a customer clicks on your listing and there is no monthly minimum.

For more information on Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search�, Click Here.

Yahoo Search Submit Express�

Through Search Submit Express you can submit one or more web pages for consideration to appear in the algorithmic search results powered by the Yahoo! search engine. This is what is known in the search industry as a paid inclusion model.

Search Submit Express offers a single point of submission for your web pages into Yahoo!, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and other search portals.

If you have content that has just changed or is updated frequently (such as pricing information or product items), Search Submit Express ensures the most up-to-date content is available to search users by refreshing your URLs every 48 hours.

The program provides detailed reporting and data designed to help you improve your pages, optimize program performance and generate more leads.

Search Submit Express works like this:

1) Submit your URLs for review and pay an annual fee for quality review of your submitted pages. Make sure your pages follow Yahoo�s Quality Guidelines.

2) Once reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are added to a database of sites that powers search results for major web portals such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.

3) Submitted URLs are presented in search results based on relevance to search terms.

4) When a user clicks your Search Submit Express listing in search results, you pay a cost-per-click fee for that lead. You must maintain a positive balance in your account for your pages to remain active in the program.

5) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every 48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content is available to search users.

6) At the end of one year, you can renew your annual subscription or let it lapse.

Submissions to Search Submit Express consist of a review fee and a CPC (Cost per click) component. Billing, reporting and account management for Search Submit Express listings is provided by Yahoo! or one of their reseller partners.

Search Submit Express annual review fees consist of:

Price Structure (effective 30 April 05)

Price per domain (USD):

1st URL $49.00 each

URLs 2-10 $29.00 each

URLs 11-1,000 $10.00 each

In addition to the review fee, there is also a per click fee of either $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the category of the content. The complete list of categories is listed here.

For more information on Search Submit Express, Click Here.

Yahoo Search Submit Pro�

Yahoo! Search Submit Pro is the same paid inclusion program as Search Submit Express, but with more features for larger advertisers. Search Submit Pro is designed for companies wanting to submit Web pages that might otherwise be excluded from algorithmic search results (as long as they still meet Yahoo�s Content Quality Guidelines). Examples include sites that require cookies or session IDs, sites with Flash content and information stored in content management systems, or sites that aren't well crawled because of Web site design.

Search Submit Pro is typically for customers with search marketing budgets of USD 5,000 per month or more, or advertisers who submit more than 1,000 Web pages to the program. A dedicated account manager is available to answer any questions, provide technical support, and help you manage your Search Submit Pro program.

Search Submit Pro lets you create titles and descriptions that are displayed as algorithmic search result listings. The program can automatically generate result listings that best match user queries. You can update the information frequently, independent of changes to your Web site.

Search Submit Pro works like this:

1) You provide an XML feed of your URLs.

2) Once reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are added to a database of sites that powers search results for major web portals such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.

3) When Internet users visit the Search Submit Pro partner sites and enter keyword searches, your listings may appear within the search results based on their relevance to the user's search request.

4) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every 48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content is available to search users.

Pricing for Search Submit Pro is based on cost per click - customers are charged each time a user clicks on one of the customer's search listings. The specific cost is based on the type and category of content provided for inclusion in the algorithmic search results and is obtainable from a Yahoo! Account Manager.

For more information on Search Submit Pro, Click Here.

In Part 2 of this article, we will look at the remaining pay for performance search engine models on our list, starting with Google AdWords.

Yahoo SM vs. Google AdWords

Yahoo has announced its new pay-per-click product: Yahoo Search Marketing (SM). This product was formerly known as Overture, but you may also recognize it as Goto.com, the name it went under prior to 2001. In our experience, advertising with Google AdWords has resulted in higher conversion rates than with Yahoo Search Marketing (SM). However, both programs have advantages and disadvantages. How does Yahoo SM compare with Google's AdWords? Let's start by looking at how they differ (all amounts are in USD).

Bidding

Yahoo SM

* Yahoo places your bid at 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per click, you will only pay $1.96 per click.
* Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
* Yahoo's maximum bid is $999.99
* Yahoo's minimum bid is $0.10

Google AdWords

* Google doesn't tell you how much you will pay per click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per click.
* Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per click.
* An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
* Google's maximum bid is $100.00
* Google's minimum bid is $0.05

Low CT rate dropping

Yahoo SM

* Yahoo will drop your keyphrase if the CT rate is ranked very low for a significant period of time. In actuality, this rarely happens. Your keyphrase has to perform quite dismally for it to get dropped.

Google AdWords

* Google drops keyphrases with POTENTIALLY low CT rates. If Google deems that your keyphrase has done poorly for other customers, then your keyphrase won't even get the chance to make a single (first!) impression. This can be very frustrating when your keyphrases are very relevant, but Google won't even let them see the light of day. The flip side, of course, is that if your keyphrase's CT rate is good, you will get a higher ranking (even if you bid lower than your competition).

Showing ads by country and language

Google AdWords

* Google allows you to choose your country and language by selecting them in a dropdown box. Very simple, very efficient, and very effective.
* The language is based on the language setting of the visitor's computer. For example, if you are targeting Spanish Americans, than you will want to target the Spanish AND English languages because many Spanish Americans use English computers. Just make sure that you choose Spanish-only keyphrases.

Yahoo SM

* Yahoo's system for countries and languages is downright miserable. You have to re-register for every country (and only twenty countries are available).
* Worse, you have to re-submit all your keyphrases and reset all your bids.
* What's more, each country has different criteria for submission. This means you have to rebuild your campaign for the USA, UK, and Australia. Canada is there, but you are not allowed to submit English keyphrases (?!?), only French (FYI: Canada's workforce is 73% English, 22% French). In Switzerland, you can submit in Italian, German and French; there is no language differentiation.
* Notable missing countries: Mexico, China, English Canada (which is grouped with the USA), South Korea, India, Russia...

Reports

Yahoo SM

* Yahoo offers many useful reports. And while you can find just about everything you might need, it's left up to you to figure out which report contains the information you were looking for.

Google AdWords

* Google offers customizable reports. You can ask for anything you want, and you will get it.
* They also offer to email you your customized report on a regular basis.

Keyphrase comparison

I have bid on some keyphrases from February 1st to April 30th, and held them in similar positions during that time. These numbers are for search related impressions only. These campaigns were not involved in content advertising.

"Okeeffe print(s)"
#3 position

Yahoo:
1 click
8 impressions
12.5% CT rate
$0.10 cost per click

Google:
63 clicks
1642 impressions
3.8% CT rate
$0.13 cost per click

"Ansel Adams photo(s)"
#5-6 position

Yahoo:
20 clicks
2401 impressions
0.8% CT rate
$0.05 cost per click

Google:
25 clicks
2529 impressions
1.0% CT rate
$0.06 cost per click

Conversions

Our client February Point counted emails + contact forms as conversions. Here is a comparison from February 1st to April 30th.

"Real estate Bahamas"
#3 position

Yahoo:
1037 clicks
19 879 impressions
5.2% CT rate
$0.34 cost per click
3 conversions
0.30% conversion rate

Google:
1557 clicks
35 348 impressions
4.4% CT rate
$0.45 cost per click
13 conversions
0.84% conversion rate

Clearly then, Google AdWords is a better choice if you are interested in clicks, impressions, and conversions. If you want the lower cost per click for the same position, it would seem that Yahoo is the better choice (though conversions are lower).

Competition

FindWhat is possibly the third biggest pay-per-click (PPC) search engine, although there are a few that might be its equal: Kanoodle, GoClick, 7Search, Search123.

E-spotting is very big in the UK, and competes heavily with Google and Yahoo in the PPC marketplace.

MSN is getting ready to launch its own PPC engine to compete with Google and Yahoo (MSN currently uses Yahoo SM on its site). No date yet, but watch out for it.

Overall

To sum up, you will definitely have more control over your money with Yahoo's system. It is more open and honest, and you will pay less per click than with Google's system. Google does not tell you why you are paying what you are paying, but it does have the added bonus of rewarding you with rank for a better converting ad.

Of course, Google does get more traffic and it converts better than Yahoo, and in the end, isn't that what we're all looking for? Thus, Google should be the winning choice for anyone that is looking to convert clickers into buyers. Because after all, who doesn't want to increase their sales?

The Simple Pay Per Click Change That Could Earn You More

Are you throwing away easy conversions because of the way you've set up your pay-per-click campaign? Chances are high that if you are a small business owner running the campaign yourself, you are. It's not because you are missing some secret trick, or because you aren't capable of running your own campaign, it's likely because you've simply overlooked something obvious.

Delivering your visitors to the absolute most relevant content will dramatically increase your conversions.

Time and time again, I speak with small business owners that are running their pay-per-click campaigns in-house. Many of these companies are doing a fairly good job of tracking their conversion rates, selecting phrase to bid on and even writing compelling ad copy to help increase their click-thru rates. That said, over half of them would likely see a dramatic increase in their conversions rates if they would take the time to send visitors to something other than the front page of their web site.

For small business owners that have limited budgets for outsourcing organic search marketing, pay-per-click campaigns are an excellent way to target both broad phrases that would be difficult to rank organically for and niche phrases that you may not have the time to create content for. Sometimes however, a small business owner gets frustrated when they see excellent click-thru rates, but dismal conversion rates.

Let's consider that a user has searched on Google for the phrase "Lord of the Rings on DVD." Chances are high that this user is looking to purchase the movie. Now, when you decide what URL you send that visitor to, you could send them to the front page of your site (i.e. www.yourdomain.com) OR, you could send them to the actual page where you can buy The Lord of the Rings.

It's such a simple change, but it could mean the difference between a 2% conversion rate and a 10% conversion rate. Study after study shows that the less clicks you place between your visitor and a purchase, the more likely they are to buy. So why would you make them dig through your site when you could deliver them right to what they are looking for?

I understand that many business owners want to force their users to look at all of their products in the hopes that they will be able to upsell or cross sell their buyers. This is why the milk and bread is in the very back of the grocery store. That makes sense for a retail chain, but remember this; on the web, your biggest competitor is a single click away. You simply cannot play the same games with your customers that you can in a retail outlet. If you force your customer to play hide and seek, they will most likely seek out someone that makes it easier for them.

Don't make your customers work to buy from you. Give them what they want from the moment they enter your site. If you're not already targeting specific landing pages with your pay-per-click campaign, take the time to sit down and point those ads to someplace other than your front page. You might be surprised at the size of next month's profits.

AdWords Offers Demographic Selections

The big news on the pay-per-click front this week was the introduction of demographic targeting for Google AdWords advertisers. Actually dubbed "demographic site selection" by Google, because the feature is limited to the content syndication network, the program offers many of the same demographic categories that MSN's adCenter does, but serves up the offerings in a completely different way.

AdWords' demographic option is designed to let advertisers select specific sites to advertise on based on the demographics of that site. Advertisers will be able to specify a preference in up to three categories. Google will then examine it's database of content partners and will return a list of sites that it feels are most likely to deliver the types of visitors that the advertiser is looking for.

This option is only available when users that geo-target their campaigns to the United States and that set up a new "site targeted campaign" or while managing an existing site targeted campaign. It's also important to note that advertisers will still have the option of making their selections manually, either from a keyword generated list or by selecting sites that pop up in response to the demographic criteria.

The demographic breakdown options are as follows:

Gender:

* male
* female

Age

* 18-24
* 25-34
* 35-44
* 45-54
* 55-64
* 65+

Annual Household Income (USD)

* 0-14,999
* 15,000-24,999
* 25,000-39,999
* 40,000-59,999
* 60,000-74,999
* 75,000-99,999
* 100,000+

AdWords will also be offering more advanced targeting options that break things down by ethnicity as well as by whether readers have children or not.

While the option for more targeting, especially targeting of a demographic variety is going to be very attractive to small business owners that rely on pay per click as a part of their marketing strategy, there's still the question of how accurate the data compiled by Google is going to be. Google states that their data comes from comScore Media Metrix, one of the largest companies around when it comes to providing information about web sites.

The problem here is that a large portion of Google's content syndication network is made up of sites that never even create a blip on the comScore Media Metrix map. In fact, one could argue that many of the smaller sites that are capable of returning an excellent level of qualified click-thrus are likely to fall through the cracks in this type of system. I can almost guarantee that most of my own content sites are not going to be large enough for Google to have any sense of the demographics they attract.

Google is aware of this issue and states on their site:

Please remember that demographic site selection cannot guarantee that your ad will reach only the exact audience you select.

They also point out that because most web sites get a variety of visitors, the demographic targeting should simply be viewed as being a best estimate, not as promised reality.

The interesting thing that I'm noting is that most of the press and blog coverage I've read of this launch are lauding it as a direct frontal assault on MSN's adCenter and claiming that it will once again give Google the lead in terms of advertiser experience.

This puzzles me a bit, for several reasons.

First, MSN's adCenter offers up demographic targeting options for the search related pay-per-click ads. Google's demographic targeting applies only to content syndication. Any advertiser that has run pay-per-click campaigns knows that search related PPC advertising tends to outperform content related PPC by quite a bit.

Second, MSN's adCenter relies on their own internal data and on users being logged in during a search to match the ads up with the preferred demographics. Google will be relying on a third party's estimate of the types of traffic that a web site likely receives. In fact, they won't have ANY data for a large portion of the sites in their content syndication network because those sites will simply be too small to even show up on comScore's map.

While I think Google's latest move represents an important step forward in regards to improving pay per click advertising options, I also have to admit to being a little bit skeptical when I read the glowing praises that talk about what an impact this offering will have on the ROI of AdWords advertisers.

Only time will tell...but my brain just keeps thinking about the Emperors's New Clothes...

Jennifer Laycock

One of the more useful techniques when it comes to pay-per-click campaigns also happens to be one of the more challenging techniques for small business owners to put in place. Dayparting, the practice of adjusting pay-per-click campaigns based on time of day or day of the week, is a highly effective means of controlling PPC costs, but it's also rarely used by small business owners.

Dayparting will be coming into its own as a tool for the masses as MSN's adCenter rolls out with integrated dayparting capabilities, but with adCenter still operating on an invite-only basis, most small business owners are still left dealing with Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing instead. Unfortunately, since Google and Yahoo! do not offer integrated dayparting management, companies that wish to setup automatic dayparting have had to rely on third-party solutions like those offered by Atlas One Point and Clicktracks BidHero. Unfortunately, these types of programs don't come cheap. That means small businesses, looking to stretch every dollar, often find such solutions to be out of reach.

So what's a small business owner to do? There's no doubting the effectiveness of being able to turn your campaigns on and off based on when you get the best return on investment. There's also no doubting the fact that some businesses can afford to increase bids dramatically during certain times of the day. The problem is, few companies have the staffing to handle these types of updates. In fact, for many small business owners, PPC management is just another hat that the company owner has to wear, making it near impossible for them to remember to set their daily updates and changes.

Thus, it's important to be reminded that there's a highly effective "poor man's" version of dayparting. It's called Microsoft Outlook. Yep...it sounds simple, but it works. Simply set up a Microsoft outlook reminder that's set to give you notice whenever you need to turn your campaigns on or off.

If you are tracking your conversions, you should easily be able to find out when the majority of your sales take place. If you are selling to consumers and see high sales rates after work and over the weekends, then set your Outlook reminder to turn your campaigns off in the morning when you start work and to turn them back on before you leave at the end of the day. If you're selling business to business and you see most of your conversions during traditional work hours, then start by setting your campaigns to turn off over the weekend and then consider turning them off in the evenings as well.

Dayparting, when done right, can be highly complicated with ads turning on and off and bids going up and down at all hours of the day. That doesn't mean that it's an all or nothing thing. Even the exclusion of your work hours, or a bid increase during your best hours can make a significant difference in your bottom line. Consider starting off with minor changes using the "poor man's" method and see what type of impact it has. If you see a significant impact, you'll know that it's worth exploring a more expensive solution.

It's important to remember that even the smallest changes can make a big difference in a pay-per-click campaign. Don't let seemingly advanced concepts like dayparting and bid management scare you away from doing anything at all. Coming up with creative ways to apply these types of concepts to your own business can add up to big savings and big profits.

How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords

Like many people who earn their income via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income. One of the affiliate products I promote (Proposal Kit) had been performing particularly well for me recently and I decided to help things along by creating a Google AdWords campaign based around my reviews of the product.

After one month, the campaign was going ok, I was getting a few sales here and there and certainly making a good ROI on the promotion. However, although my Click Through Rate (CTR) was pretty good (1.2%), it was starting to slide backwards and I thought I could do better. As you probably know, your ad position in Google relies heavily on your CTR compared to your competitors, so I was keen to turn things around and keep my high ad positions.

Around this time, I bought Nick Usborne's book Net Words and started to read it, taking notes as I went. I realized that according to Nick's philosophy, my AdWords ads were flat and boring. They were just not appealing enough to entice people to click on them. As Nick explains in his book, "Being blah guarantees you'll never be heard".

So I set about re-writing some of my ad text to speak more directly to my audience and ask them a question that required a response. Below is an example of an ad targeting the search query "business proposal before I changed the text:

Business Proposal Kit
Close the sale with a professional
business proposal template kit.

And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need a business proposal?
Create your own professional
proposal with our template kit.

The aim was to get my average CTR for the entire campaign up to around 2% from the existing 1.2% it was sitting at.

I logged off for the evening and went to bed, not expecting too much. The next morning, I had messages in my email in-box advising me that I had made 3 sales overnight! I was quite excited and logged into AdWords to see how things were going. Sure enough, my clicks were way up and two of the three AdGroups I had edited were showing an average 33% CTR! My overall campaign CTR had risen from 1.2% to 2.4%. I had never experienced CTR that high before. The ad I had changed used to show a 2.5% CTR and after a few days the changed ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.

Taking note of the ads that had attracted the most clicks, I created more around related keywords and phrases, using similar headlines to the ads that were performing the best. This time, I incorporated Nick's advice to use short and punchy copy.

Below is an example of an ad I was using to target the search query "seo contract" before I changed the text:

Sample SEO contract
Proposal Kit provides a perfect SEO
contract template. Read our review.

And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need an SEO contract?
Create yours.
Today.

After another week, my average CTR for the whole campaign jumped from 2.4% to 4% and I had a couple of ads showing 100% CTR! You can imagine how excited I was. Of course the high CTR builds on itself because the higher your CTR, the higher your ad position and the higher your ad position, the more clicks it is likely to attract. So my campaign had jumped from 1.3% in the first month, to 2.4% in the second month and after my fine-tuning, it's now showing a 4% CTR consistently. And the sales? Well I now average at least seven sales per week, up from two per week over the past 6 months and my affiliate commission is at an all time record.

The exercise just goes to show that a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line. So what are you waiting for? Go tweak that copy in your own campaigns...

How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords

Like many people who earn their income via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income. One of the affiliate products I promote (Proposal Kit) had been performing particularly well for me recently and I decided to help things along by creating a Google AdWords campaign based around my reviews of the product.

After one month, the campaign was going ok, I was getting a few sales here and there and certainly making a good ROI on the promotion. However, although my Click Through Rate (CTR) was pretty good (1.2%), it was starting to slide backwards and I thought I could do better. As you probably know, your ad position in Google relies heavily on your CTR compared to your competitors, so I was keen to turn things around and keep my high ad positions.

Around this time, I bought Nick Usborne's book Net Words and started to read it, taking notes as I went. I realized that according to Nick's philosophy, my AdWords ads were flat and boring. They were just not appealing enough to entice people to click on them. As Nick explains in his book, "Being blah guarantees you'll never be heard".

So I set about re-writing some of my ad text to speak more directly to my audience and ask them a question that required a response. Below is an example of an ad targeting the search query "business proposal before I changed the text:

Business Proposal Kit
Close the sale with a professional
business proposal template kit.

And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need a business proposal?
Create your own professional
proposal with our template kit.

The aim was to get my average CTR for the entire campaign up to around 2% from the existing 1.2% it was sitting at.

I logged off for the evening and went to bed, not expecting too much. The next morning, I had messages in my email in-box advising me that I had made 3 sales overnight! I was quite excited and logged into AdWords to see how things were going. Sure enough, my clicks were way up and two of the three AdGroups I had edited were showing an average 33% CTR! My overall campaign CTR had risen from 1.2% to 2.4%. I had never experienced CTR that high before. The ad I had changed used to show a 2.5% CTR and after a few days the changed ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.

Taking note of the ads that had attracted the most clicks, I created more around related keywords and phrases, using similar headlines to the ads that were performing the best. This time, I incorporated Nick's advice to use short and punchy copy.

Below is an example of an ad I was using to target the search query "seo contract" before I changed the text:

Sample SEO contract
Proposal Kit provides a perfect SEO
contract template. Read our review.

And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need an SEO contract?
Create yours.
Today.

After another week, my average CTR for the whole campaign jumped from 2.4% to 4% and I had a couple of ads showing 100% CTR! You can imagine how excited I was. Of course the high CTR builds on itself because the higher your CTR, the higher your ad position and the higher your ad position, the more clicks it is likely to attract. So my campaign had jumped from 1.3% in the first month, to 2.4% in the second month and after my fine-tuning, it's now showing a 4% CTR consistently. And the sales? Well I now average at least seven sales per week, up from two per week over the past 6 months and my affiliate commission is at an all time record.

The exercise just goes to show that a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line. So what are you waiting for? Go tweak that copy in your own campaigns...

Google AdWords Marketing: Exact Match Bidding

Include both broad and exact matches for a primary keyword phrase in your ad group. A primary keyword phrase is a short (usually 1 or 2 keywords) phrase that has a high search volume. Consider this example of the top 10 keyword search counts (data from inventory.overture.com) for the "womens clothing" phrase:

411711 womens clothing
109985 womens clothing shop
17566 plus size womens clothing
12572 womens sports clothing
9042 womens clothing catalog
5992 womens clothing store
5908 tall womens clothing
3906 sexy womens clothing
2945 wholesale womens clothing
2385 womens petite clothing

The keyword phrase "womens clothing" is the primary phrase. Note that if you add up the searches performed for secondary phrases 2-10, combined they don't even equal half the search volume of the primary phrase. Set a higher bid for the exact match on the primary keyword phrase. The exact match gives you greater control over the primary keyword phrase while the broad match draws additional traffic from secondary keyword phrases. Why is this important?

1. The exact phrase is often more valuable than broader phrases.
2. The exact phrase is often more expensive than broader phrases.
3. You can control the position of the ad for the exact search.

Let's look at an example to address these points in detail. We'll use a fictitious ad group with a default bid of 10 cents, populated with these keywords for a company selling clothing for women:

womens clothing
womens clothing shop
womens clothing store
womens clothing catalog

Bidding on the broad phrase "womens clothing" will cause the ad to be seen for broad phrases such as:

wholesale womens clothing
discount womens clothing
tall womens clothing
womens clothing online

If the store has a limited selection of "tall womens clothing" then that phrase is less valuable than the "womens clothing" exact phrase. It would be desirable to pay less for the broader phrases. Note that there will likely be some broader phrases that could be more valuable than the high volume primary phrase, particularly for niche retailers. Those keyword phrases should also be included as both exact and broad matches in the ad group. Since there are hundreds of broad phrases that could trigger this ad, an ideal way to separate the bids is to bid higher for the exact phrase. The ad group could be updated to include this set of keywords:

womens clothing
[womens clothing] ** 0.50
womens clothing shop
womens clothing store
womens clothing catalog

Now, the company's ad will show for both a "tall womens clothing" and a "womens clothing" search, but the company will only pay up to 10 cents for a click on the former and up to 50 cents for a click on the latter. If the company doesn't sell "wholesale womens clothing" then "-wholesale" should be added as a negative keyword.

Other companies will also have figured out that the exact phrase "womens clothing" is more valuable than many of the longer, broader phrases. As evidenced by the high search volume on the "womens clothing" keyword phrase, many shoppers will start their searching with that particular phrase. The company selling womens clothing will want to be visible in those search results. A higher bid will be necessary to maintain the ad's position for this keyword phrase. That's another reason to bid separately on important exact phrases. The person managing the Google advertising account will see this sort of information (this is a fictional example) when logging in to the Google AdWords system and viewing the ad group:
Keyword Status Current Bid Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost Avg. Pos
womens clothing Active $0.10 123 4,321 2.8% $0.08 $9.84 10.2
[womens clothing] Active $0.50 42 1,234 3.4% $0.47 $19.74 3.4
womens clothing shop Active $0.10 11 280 3.9% $0.10 $1.10 8.7
womens clothing store Active $0.10 7 111 6.3% $0.07 $0.49 6.8
womens clothing catalog Active $0.10 3 98 3.1% $0.05 $0.15 4.0

A quick glance at the screen shows them that the ad has an average position of 3.4 for the "womens clothing" exact phrase. If they're not happy with the position, they can increase the bid. For phrases like "womens clothing store" they would have to perform a search on Google to see where the ad stands since that keyword phrase isn't isolated via an exact match. If they changed the bid on the broad match, they'd be changing the ad's position for "chicos womens clothing store" and "womens clothing store in canada" and a huge range of possible broad searches which might not be advantageous. A more realistic ad group keyword list would look something like this:

womens clothing
[womens clothing] ** 0.50
womens clothing shop
[womens clothing shop] ** 0.30
womens clothing store
[womens clothing store] ** 0.30
womens clothing catalog
[womens clothing catalog] ** 0.40
-wholesale

If the impressions are much higher for broad match versus exact match for a particular keyword phrase, use web analytics to see which actual search phrases are being clicked. Then, analyze those keyword phrases to see which phrases are valuable either by tracking the conversions or by guessing what might convert well. The same tactic can be used for keyword phrases deemed less valuable. Set a lower bid for these as exact match. Over time, your ad group's keyword list will grow longer as you separate bids for exact and broad match. Your ad group will become more effective and more profitable. Plus, you'll be able to see at a glance how your important keywords are performing.