Continue reading »]]>

SEO basics infographic: ranking higher in Organic SERPs

SEO Basics: The one-liner list

• Use 1 <h1></h1> tag per page. ONE! Never two. Never zero. Make it count.
• After <h1> the next header you’ll use will be a <h2> – it makes sense, really.
• After a <h2> there can be either a <h3> if its a subtopic of the <h2> or there will be another <h2> if it’s about a different topic.
• Every page on your website needs an unique <title> tag – It’ll help you rank but mostly its used to display as page title in the SERPs. (I cheated, this points is two lines)
• Every page also needs an unique meta description, meta descriptions are not used for ranking but they are displayed in the SERPs – use a Call to Action to make more people click on your website.
• Write unique content for visitors, not search engines.
• A page of your website talks about one main topic, one only, treat each page as a chapter in a book.
• Images rule: use relevant alt-texts for screen readers and use title texts for mouse-overs – it’ll also help build keyword-relevancy on your page.
• You need inbound links from valuable sites, linkbuilding is the most valuable SEO thing to do after you’ve nailed your content.
• Google hates typing errors, visitors do too, make none.
• Your website needs to be valid (x)html / php / asp / whatever you are using, errors make your page difficult to crawl.
• Link to this page. It’ll help you rank higher. Really. [schwarzenegger] Do it now! [/schwarzenegger].

Download the SEO Basics pdf

Want a local copy of above infographic? Do you hate trees and want to print the basics of SEO-ing your website? Download the .pdf.

Download the SEO basics .pdf

Continue reading »]]>

Murphsy.com was not always an online marketing blog. In fact, it wasn’t a blog at all. A few months ago www.murphsy.com was a mobile phone review site. And I was deeply in love with it. A few brands (including Nokia, HTC and Sony Ericsson – thanks you guys!) sent me review samples. This enabled me to play around with new gadgets, without spending money. The website was well-read. On most days I’d have 250 to 350 visitors. Monthly I’d reach ten thousand eyeballs. It was quite satisfying. One monday a while back I deleted the whole website, this is it’s story:

Act I: The prologue

You might not know it by reading my articles, but I spend a lot of time writing this stuff. A full article typically costs me around 6 to 8 hours to write. If I recall correctly Murphsy.com contained at the end somewhere between 90 and 120 articles. The Waybackmachine from Archive.org shows a first indexation on january 22 2009. In reality I created the site at the 22nd of october in 2008. So in the three years I was building the website I spend at least 540 hours on the content. Ofcourse I also did the design, development and other related stuff. A thousand hours? It might not be too far off.

I hear you asking: what did you get in return? Not much, really. I was spending my spare time investing in a website that really only existed because it could. I loved the website and I got some great feedback on some of my articles. It felt nice to be building something. I was happily spending my time on the site. All was well. Until a new project came along…

Act II: Confrontation

A more commercial friend of mine saw what I was doing with my website and approached me with a proposal: lets build something together. And, being the commercialist, he came with a goal: make some money! We got of to a flying start, with me already having a lot of experience and him streamlining the proces. And soon there were two websites. But still just one me.

I had to chose.

Even after three years Murphsy.com simply wasn’t making any money. I had (have!) a great job, so money wasn’t my priority. But with the new website starting to earn some steady income the comparison was turning very bleak for Murphsy.com. Other than that I was noticing how working together on a project helped me staying focused and added a whole new layer of fun and learning.

But I was still way too attached to the site to let it go. So I invested time in trying to monetize. Which didn’t work out at first. I invested some more time to try to monetize it using different methods. I went affiliate. I went adsense. I went pricecomparison. I tried it all. I spend nearly all my time during half a year on trying to monetize te site. It was solidly refusing to make any money.

Spending all this time on Murphsy.com meant my coop-project wasn’t getting a lot of my attention. The growth started to stagnate. Now I had two websites not going as I wanted. And both not reaching the goals I (we) had in mind. Motivating myself was getting harder. What’s the point in working on websites that are failing you?

Frustrating!

Act III: Resolution

In a final leap of faith I overhauled the whole styling and layout of Murphsy.com. I spend days redesigning the complete site. Results after two months? Nada. Yet still I couldn’t let it go. As long as the website was online it was going to pull my attention towards it. By this time I knew I should be focussing on our new project. I decided to take a drastic measure. FTP > select ALL > delete, bye!

It was fun while it lasted, but I lost sight of my goals: creating a site which was making money. I couldn’t keep focus with both sites online. The moral of this story? Sometimes you have to kill your darlings to do something better.

Continue reading »]]> This article will teach you how to increase your Adwords ROI in 10 minutes using AdWords Ad scheduling. Ad scheduling or ad planning is the adjusting of your Adwords CPC bids based on day and time of day. For example: I can use AdWords Ad scheduling to increase my max. CPC by +40% on Wednesday between 1 PM and 4 PM. To effectively implement the strategy in this article you need to know how much you can spend per AdWords conversion and still make a profit.

Why should you use AdWords Ad scheduling?

How visitors interact with your website greatly depends on the day of the week and the time of that particular day. For example: Redtshirts.com sells Red T-shirts. They have this unique offer: order before 11 PM and your t-shirt will be delivered the next day. Visitors of Redtshirts.com during worktime are much less likely to actually buy a t-shirt. They are, ofcourse, supposed to be working instead of shopping. However during the evenings the conversion rate on Redtshirts.com is through the roof. Everybody needs a red t-shirt.

A high conversion rate makes for great return on investment on your AdWords campaigns. You’ll need less clicks to make a sale. Redthirts.com knows their conversion rates are highest after 5 PM but before 11 PM (because of their next day delivery). They could, and should, use Ad Scheduling to bid more in this timeframe and optimize their ROI. This is called winning.

How to detemine the best timeframe for Google AdWords?

Google Analytics has a build in report telling us the conversion rate of our website by the hour of the day. This reports helps us determine the best timeframe in which to maximise our AdWords spendings. You can find the report in the new Google Analytics interface under ‘Advertising > Adwords >  Day Parts’.

Google Analytics AdWords conversion rate per hour of day

You’ll notice there are a few timesframes in which your conversion rates either peak or drop. Note the timeframes and determine the cost per conversion for each of them. The best way to calculate the cost per conversion would be using this formula:

Cost per conversion = (100 / conversion rate) * average CPC

If the cost per conversion is too high the timeframe will get a negative bid adjustment. If the cost per conversion is low the timeframe will get a positive bid adjustment. We want more cheap conversions and less expensive ones.

AdWords Ad Scheduling Bid Adjustment

We now know when we should adjust our max CPC. During some timeframes we should increase our CPC bid to generate more sales against attractive cost, during other timeframes we should lessen our max. CPC because we are already paying too much per conversion. But how much should we in-/decrease our CPC bid? Calculate the bid adjustment using the following formula:

Murphsy’s bid adjustment formula™: 100% – ( (current CPA / optimal CPA) * 100)

For example: my CPA between 2 PM and 5 PM is $ 32, my optimal CPA is $ 25. The formula would look like this: 100 – ( ( $ 32 / $ 25 ) * 100 ) = -28%. So between 2 PM and 5 PM I should lower my AdWords CPC by 28%. This is a negative timeframe.

Make an annotation in Google Analytics explaining the currect timeframes and corresponding bid adjustments. Timeframes may change over time. Actually, our adjusted bidding might change conversion rates as well. Taking higher positions could have a slight negative impact on conversion. We should optimize our Ad Scheduling in a few months.

Adwords Ad Scheduling implementation

Step by step Google AdWords Ad Scheduling implementation

• step 1: Determine timeframes – high and low conversion rates
• step 2: Calculate cost cost per conversion per timeframe
• step 3: Determine bid adjustment (increase/decrease bids) per timeframe
• step 4: Activate Google Adwords ad scheduling
• step 5: Profit from better ROI!

Step 6 would be to evaluate after a month or two and make further adjustments by starting at step 1 again, This is unfortunately not possible in the promised 10 minutes.

Continue reading »]]> Your Adwords campaign was supposed to deliver great results at low cost… But it didn’t really work out that way, did it? In this article you’ll find 8 solid actionable tips to increase your Adwords CTR and ROI. A good Google Adwords campaign really is worthwhile.

1. Increase your Adwords CTR by being relevant

As all seasoned pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers can tell you: relevancy is paramount for getting a healthy click-through-rate (CTR). You’ve probably been told this before.  You might still be wondering HOW to be relevant. You could even be confused by exactly how relevant we want you to be.

Group your keywords per theme, use 10 to 15 keywords at most for one adgroup. Don’t make assumptions. Somone looking for a notebook is not someone looking for a laptop. A good Adgroup might contain ‘red t-shirt’, ‘tshirt red’, ‘red tshirt’ and ‘ordering red t-shirts’. This same group should never contain ‘t-shirt’ or ‘clothing’.

Pretend you’re wanting to order a t-shirt online. Your favorite color is red, you love collars and you’re a size M. Which ad would you click?

I would click c, it show me exactly what I'm looking for. It's clearly the most relevant Ad.

2. Pick your Adwords battles

Return on investment is what makes or breaks your Adwords campaign. The point shouldn’t be ranking #1 on a keyword (unless you’re working on branding, YUCK). Honestly, most of the time I don’t really want that number 1 position.

Cost per conversion formula cpc * ( 100 / conversion rate ) = cost / conversion

The amount of money you have to spend per conversion is simply: CPC * conversion percentage. I pay $ 0.45 per click for ‘red t-shirts’ on position #1. My conversion percentage on ‘red t-shirts’ is 0.43%. This means I need 232 clicks to sell a t-shirt (a red one, yea). At $ 0.45 CPC this is a whooping $ 104,65 per conversion. On position #7 my CPC is just $ 0.07, or $ 16,24 per conversion. I don’t want to be number one.

If I happen to have a 3.12% conversion rate on ‘neon green sneakers’ I’ll take the number one position there, if you don’t mind.

3. Communicate your USP’s

Why should I buy my sexy red collared t-shirt from you and not from competitor X?

Ad a offers me no USP, Ad b offers me one, Ad c has two. Why would I buy at competitor a?

Tell me what you do better than the other 9 advertisers on the page. Are you cheaper? Tell me the price. Are you quicker? Tell me how quick. People don’t like decisions, anything that makes them easier is welcome. Tell me why to buy from you and I just might.

4. Have great landingpages

After a customer clicks on your ad, what happens next? A great landingpage matches expectations. If I click on the now famous ‘red t-shirt’-ad I expect to land on the red t-shirt with a fancy collar procut page. Not on your clothing store homepage. Drop me where I find what I expect to find.

An extension of that: if you mention ‘free shipping’ in your ad it should also be clearly visible on your landingpage. The same can be said for all your USP’s. Match my expectations or I will BOUNCE. Bouncers cost money but don’t do anything (pardon the pun).  Also bounces reduce your conversion percentage which influences your Quality Score and increases your CPC in the long run. Bad.

Which conversion path do you think more people will finish?

5. Make converting easy

Want to raise your conversion percentage? Easy. Make it simple to convert. Make it easy and painless to buy from you. This one goes hand in hand with having great landingpages: if you drop me on a product page I’m closer to an actual conversion than I am on your homepage.

Well there you have it. 5 simple tips on getting a solid CTR and ROI from your adwords campaign. None of this should be hard to implement, it’s all straightforward and manageable stuff. Do it. I think especially tip 2 is one every ppc marketeer should take to heart. You simply shouldn’t want to take position #1 for each keyword. Don’t be afraid to bid low and get some actual value for money.

If you’re selling anything through a webshop and aren’t using Google Adwords yet: you’re doing it wrong.

Continue reading »]]>

Adwords Quality Score Ad Rank calculations

This article explains the Google Adwords Quality Score, also known as QS, which you’ll encounter in the Google Adwords editor and the online Adwords interface. The QS influences the costs and results of your campaign greatly. When working with Google Adwords the Quality Score of your keywords is the most important thing to understand.

After reading this article you will know:

• What the Google Adwords Quality Score is
• How your Quality Score is determined
• How your Quality Score affects your Adwords campaign and spendings

What is Google Adwords Quality Score?

Adwords uses the Quality Score or QS metric to rate and rank your keywords. The QS of a keyword is one of the 4 factors which determines where (if at all) your ad will be shown (position) and how much a click will cost you. The other three factors are: your max. CPC bid, the QS of your competitors and the max. CPC bid of your competitors.

The QS your keywords get is determined by Adwords based on 3 criteria:

• history (click-through-rate / CTR)
• relevancy of your ad
• quality of your landingspage

History is determined by comparing your CTR on a specific postion to the average CTR on that position. Is your ad generating a better CTR than average? You’re building great history. Is your Ad getting a lower CTR? You’re going to be feeling it in your wallet (lower QS means higher costs, we’ll get to that soon).

A QS of 1 is terrible, while a QS of 10 is perfect. QS shouldn’t be treated as a ‘grade’, it can be a good decision to advertise on a keyword you only have a QS of 4 on. You will be paying more per-click than you have to though.

How your QS affects your campaign

Effect of your Adwords QS on your campaign results

Quality Score directly influences your ad position (and thus the amount of traffic you will get) and the CPC. First I’ll explain how your QS affects the position on which your ad will be displayed, this is called Ad Rank.

Quality Score and Ad Rank

The advertisements displayed by the Google Adwords network are ordered by Ad Rank. The ad with the highest Ad Rank gets position one. I’ll explain the formula for calculating an ads Ad Rank (which is based on Quality Score and max. CPC using an example.

Ad Rank formula Ad Rank = QS * max. CPC

example: I target the keyword ‘Seiko vintage watch’ and Adwords gives me an QS on this keyword of 8. I set my max. CPC on € 0.35. My Ad Rank will be 8 * 35 = 280. One of my vintage watch selling competitors also targets ‘Seike vintage watch’ and gets a Quality Score of 7, he decides to set his max. CPC on € 0.41. His Ad Rank will be 7 * 41 = 287. My competitors Ad will be shown in position 1 while I will be in position 2. Increasing my QS to 9 would raise my Ad Rank to 315 and put me in first place, without increasing my bid (green).

I’ve addes ‘someone else’ in the image just to complete our top 3 advertisers. (it’s no good being 2nd if it means being last also)

Quality Score CPC calculations

Quality Score and cost-per-click

Now we’ve figured out how the QS determines where our ads are shown it’s time to explain how your QS also decides how much you’ll pay per click. We’ll use our ‘Seiko vintage watch’ example from above (I love Seiko vintage watches). Lets assume for the first example that I didn’t raise my QS to 9, so I’ll still be in 2nd place with an Ad Rank of 280.

CPC formula (max. CPC of ad below you * QS of ad below you) / your QS

So my actual cost-per-click will be the Ad Rank of the person below me divided by my QS. I’ll update the picture and I’ll add in the CPC calculations in blue.

Effectively this means:

• A higher Google Adwords Quality Score can have your ad placed on a better position
• If your QS is lower than 10 you are paying more than you could be paying
• By increasing your QS you could force your competition to pay more per click

Need to know more about your quality score? Feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments section below or via Twitter. You should also keep an eye on this website, I’m working on an article about raising your Quality Score.