Last week Google changed its algorithm for determining the quality score of landing pages being advertised in its pay-per-click program Adwords. This development had a major impact on the rankings and the cost-per-click price that advertisers are paying. This was done to improve the relevance of its paid search results, attempting to improve the user’s experience.
What is a Google's Quality Score?
Google's quality score is a rating number for how relevant your landing page is related to the keyword you are bidding on. The Quality Score is in place to keep the paid results in Google to be as relevant to the term searched as possible.
How does Google Determine the Quality Score of a Landing Page?
Google's quality score rating is a totally automated system that determines this number. Since there is no human involvement in this score, it is solely established by what Google's bot can read. If you do not have relevant text, H1, Meta tags, keywords, and descriptions on your landing page(s) your quality score has most likely suffered greatly.
Effects of a Low Quality Score
A low quality score will cause 1 of 3 things to happen within your ad campaign on Google.
1. Your ads will be pushed down on the results of the first couple of pages for each respective keyword.
2. You will see a huge spike in your cost-per-click amount (this is because lower rated pages need to spend more money to be listed).
3. Your keywords will become "inactive for search" which means that the combination of your quality score and maximum cost-per-click bid is not a high enough total score to even make paid search results.
How to Improve a Low Quality Score
A low quality score can only be improved by improving the on page relevance of your landing pages to the keywords you are bidding on. I personally would recommend creating at least 1 landing page for each Ad Group within your Adwords campaign. This may take some time, or money, but this action will lower your bidding cost and improve your paid results ranking which can easily save you thousands of dollars annually.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Friday, July 21, 2006
Online Travel Marketing on The Move
SmarterLiving.com's Krista Pappas talks with our news editor about the challenges of the online travel industry, search engines and metrics that matter.
Roger Park: Can you give me an overview of BookingBuddy and your role at the company?
Krista Pappas: BookingBuddy is a part of Smarter Living, Inc., an online travel network which publishes two sites: Booking Buddy and SmarterTravel.com, an online travel magazine. We consider ourselves to be a new breed of travel site that specializes in comprehensiveness, and we help consumers find great deals and easily plan the best itineraries for their travel needs. We currently have more than 130 commercial partners including Kayak, Starwood, United, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hilton and Enterprise, who have chosen to partner with us as an alternative to higher cost channels.
As a senior vice president at Smarter Living, my role includes strategy for our products and the company's commercial relationships.
Park: What is the current state of online travel marketing?
Pappas: Because there has been an increase in the amount of web pages containing some form of user-generated content, it makes what people say about your brand and your product even more important. Marketing extends beyond just advertising online, as consumers are becoming more savvy and less loyal, and the internet allows them to quickly move on to a competitor if their experience with your brand and products does not completely satisfy their needs. Travel marketers need to work very hard to lead the way by finding ways to get people to talk positively about their brand and their product; making it critical that the experiences people have with the brands and products be positive and meet and surpass expectations.
Read the full article
Roger Park: Can you give me an overview of BookingBuddy and your role at the company?
Krista Pappas: BookingBuddy is a part of Smarter Living, Inc., an online travel network which publishes two sites: Booking Buddy and SmarterTravel.com, an online travel magazine. We consider ourselves to be a new breed of travel site that specializes in comprehensiveness, and we help consumers find great deals and easily plan the best itineraries for their travel needs. We currently have more than 130 commercial partners including Kayak, Starwood, United, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hilton and Enterprise, who have chosen to partner with us as an alternative to higher cost channels.
As a senior vice president at Smarter Living, my role includes strategy for our products and the company's commercial relationships.
Park: What is the current state of online travel marketing?
Pappas: Because there has been an increase in the amount of web pages containing some form of user-generated content, it makes what people say about your brand and your product even more important. Marketing extends beyond just advertising online, as consumers are becoming more savvy and less loyal, and the internet allows them to quickly move on to a competitor if their experience with your brand and products does not completely satisfy their needs. Travel marketers need to work very hard to lead the way by finding ways to get people to talk positively about their brand and their product; making it critical that the experiences people have with the brands and products be positive and meet and surpass expectations.
Read the full article
Friday, July 07, 2006
Website Conversion Erosion
Test key pages regularly and conduct competitive analysis to combat declining website conversion rates.
Even the best landing pages and websites can experience an erosion of their conversion rates. Why does this happen? And how can you prevent it?
Nothing remains the same online. You may create a high-converting site or page and then notice over time that conversion rates begin a slow but steady decline.
There are a number of possible explanations. New competitors may have entered the market. Bidding for your PPC keywords may have risen steadily. Marketing support for the new page or site may have declined or lost its impact.
Here is an example of a site we tracked over a period of almost a year and a half. Although the erosion of conversion rates is not even, it is steady.
Read The Rest Of The Article
Even the best landing pages and websites can experience an erosion of their conversion rates. Why does this happen? And how can you prevent it?
Nothing remains the same online. You may create a high-converting site or page and then notice over time that conversion rates begin a slow but steady decline.
There are a number of possible explanations. New competitors may have entered the market. Bidding for your PPC keywords may have risen steadily. Marketing support for the new page or site may have declined or lost its impact.
Here is an example of a site we tracked over a period of almost a year and a half. Although the erosion of conversion rates is not even, it is steady.
Read The Rest Of The Article
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