CAT | Bing
23
Bing using DMOZ Description
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, Local Search, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Resources
With the launch of Bing, many website owners have discovered that the description of their site is not all it should be.
Whilst, as most site owners understand, the description on Google is taken from the Meta Description tag, Bing has taken the decision to extract the information from their listing in the Open Directory (DMOZ).
In fact, this is not new; MSN Search and Live Search both did this but with the publicity the newly named search engine is receiving along with its growing popularity among users, this issue has gained more focus.
For an example, see Bing’s description of their colossal competitor Google:
To ensure that the description of your site on Bing is how you would like it to read, the following Tag needs to be introduced onto your page:
<META NAME=”msnbot” CONTENT=”NOODP”>
Simply, this tells the MSNBOT not to grab its content from the OPD and select your Meta description instead.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Search Engine Marketing is not a Business Lifesaver
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Articles, Bing, Click Fraud, Google Adwords, Keyword Research, Landing Page Optimisation, Local Search, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Resources, Yahoo Search Marketing
Without doubt, the Internet is a great place to be for anyone looking to sell products or services online.
Buying online is now very firmly in the mainstream and there are many businesses operating profitably online. Some of these have taken care of their own search engine marketing, whilst others have elected to use a specialist agency such as Slipstream.
Whichever direction a business takes, it is vital that they recognise the marketing of their website is just one part of a complex model. With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), you can improve your online visibility in the natural search results and using Pay per Click (PPC), you can complement SEO by having your adverts shown when users perform a search.
Both of these are proven methods to drive more targeted visitors to a site and we at Impact Media have helped many businesses to achieve more from their online marketing. However, Search Engine Marketing is certainly not the ‘be all and end all’ of running a successful business online.
Search Engine Marketing – A Business Lifesaver? Of course, the site itself has to perform well and engage with visitors in a positive fashion. There are many clues Webmasters can get from their log files and other reporting mechanisms. Google Analytics will show a Bounce Rate, this being a percentage of people that exit a site immediately. If your Bounce Rate is high, e.g. over 50%, for a page, then you need to understand why. Some suggestions could be:
1. Your pricing is not competitive (Tip – take a sampling of your products and compare with other online suppliers)
2. Your site design or navigation is poor (Tip – try usertesting.com for independent reviews)
3. Your payment processes are restrictive. (Tip – Provide as many methods as possible and don’t just rely on PayPal or Google Checkout)
Obviously, one of the advantages of the Internet for shoppers is the fact that they can visit a range of suppliers in minutes and carry out their own comparisons very quickly. For this reason, you need to ensure that your site is optimised for making online sales, not just receiving visitors (Tip – buy ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘ by Steve Krug. Also, whilst you’re buying it from Amazon, think about your own purchasing experience and how it compares to your own site)
It is vital that you review your analytics data and overall site performance. Just throwing money at Search Engine Marketing whilst ignoring the type of issues highlighted above is just not very sensible.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Do You Suspect Click Fraud? Here’s a Simple Solution…
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, Click Fraud, FAQ - PPC, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click (PPC), Yahoo Search Marketing
We recently had reason to suspect that one of our client’s Pay per Click campaigns was being targeted by one of their competitors. We suspected that they were clicking the ads to try and use up the daily budget early in the day. The trouble was how to identify who was clicking the Ads.
There are many expensive Click Fraud solutions available but we found a simple and free way of checking who was clicking the ads by using Statcounter.
By putting the Statcounter code on the website pages we were able to easily see the IP addresses of the clickers. This clearly showed that two Competitors were in fact clicking the ads. We then forwarded our findings to Google and hope this will result in a refund for our AdWords client.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Pay Per Click on Bing: Campaign Setup
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, Microsoft, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine News
Now that you have created and activated your Microsoft adCenter Account, I thought I would follow on my previous blog post ‘Pay Per Click on Bing – Account Setup‘, with step-by-step guide on creating a new campaign.
Creating your Pay Per Click Campaign
Log into your newly created Microsoft adCenter Account and click on the Campaigns tab
- You will see the initial campaign which was set up with the account creation within the main screen. To create an additional new campaign, select Create Campaign. The process is similar to the setup of your account, but you can now create a targeted campaign focused on the products or services you are looking to advertise. Once the account has been setup and activated, you have access to the many targeting and keyword tools Microsoft adCenter has to offer.
- Depending on the nature of your business, you may just have one campaign in your account and multiple ad groups promoting your products/services or you could have a number of campaigns each containing multiple ad groups. Your structure is down to you.
- Firstly, give your new campaign a name which will be relevant to the ad groups that will sit within it. If you are a pet shop for example, you may have multiple campaigns, one for each type of animal and within each campaign, you could have a series of ad groups promoting each of the different products you sell to do with the animal
a. Campaign Name – Cats
b. Ad Group 1 – Cat Food
c. Ad Group 2 – Cat Litter
d. Ad Group 3 – Cat Collars
- Select the time zone for your campaign. Microsoft adCenter will display your ads based on the time zone you select. If your company is based in the UK but you sell cat food to customers in the USA, you will need to set you time zone to USA.
- The campaign budget has two different options to choose from. If you have a suitable budget, I would recommend selecting the monthly budget option to be spent across the month
a. Budget per Month – This can be divided across the month or spent until depleted
b. Budget per Day – You will also be asked to provide a maximum monthly budget that you wish not to exceed
- Within this section, depending on the nature of your business, you may wish to set up the targeting for your campaign. The various targeting options available to you are:
a. Location
b. Hour of the day
c. Day of the week
d. Age
e. Gender
- If you know of any campaign level negative keywords at this stage, you can add them now. If you want to wait until later, this is also an option. One of the major differences between Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter is the number of negative keywords you can add to your account. Google AdWords allows you to add 1000’s of negative keywords but within Microsoft adCenter you can only have 1024 characters worth at campaign, ad group and keyword level. Select you negatives carefully!
- Apply your first ad groups settings by giving it a relevant name and a start and end date.
- The next step is to create targeted ad copy for your first ad group. This should be carefully crafted to promote the product(s) or service(s) that you will feature within the group. Think about what keywords you are going to add to the group and incorporate the most appropriate one within the copy.
- Once you have written your first ad hit Save and you then have the option to create another ad for the ad group to allow for split testing or you can choose to continue if you just want the one ad variant.
- Next stage is to select your targeted keywords for your ad group. Remember to keep your keywords within a theme for the ad group to keep the ad variant relevant for as many of the search terms as possible.
a. Ad Group – Cat Food
b. Targeted Keywords
- Tinned Cat Food
- Packet Cat Food
- Fresh Cat Food
- Cheap Cat Food
c. Non Targeted Keywords
- Cat Litter
- Cat Food Recipes
- Now that you are an adCenter member, there is an additional keyword research tool available to you which will search your destination URL for suggested keywords
- Once you have researched all your keywords and inserted them to the box, select Add to Keyword List. Your keywords will now appear within the Keyword List at the bottom of the page, the default match type (unless you have already specified) is broad match. To change this click on the Select Columns drop down and tick all three match types.
- You will now be able to go through and choose the different variations of match type you would like to bid on.
- Next screen is all about your spend and budgets. Here you can update your campaign budget if required and select the default bid price for the ad group. The minimum CPC is £0.05p.
- Select Save and Continue, review your campaign and Submit
Congratulations! You have launched your first Microsoft adCenter campaign.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Age and Gender PPC Targeting on Bing
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, FAQ - PPC, Microsoft, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine News
One of the advantages of Pay Per Click advertising on Bing is the age and gender demographic targeting.
The Microsoft adCenter has collected data overtime from various sources to create this targeting feature estimating the visitor’s gender and age:
- MSN Messenger
- Previous Search Queries
- Market Research
- Customer Service
- Registration Data from Hotmail
The results are obviously not 100% accurate but various studies in China show that the data collection and algorithms guessed the gender correct 80% of the time and the age of the visitor at least 60% of the time.
The Benefits
Gender
Various products and services that you as an advertiser may be offering, could be better suited to the male or female population. Knowing your target visitors gender allows you to target your ad text and landing pages accordingly.
Age
You can tailor your ad text and landing pages to suit a targeted age group. The system allows you to place incremental bids on each keyword for each age group which will help to limit the amount you spend each month on less targeted traffic.
The Age Groups
There are five different age groups within the Microsoft adCenter demographic targeting tool:
- 18 – 24
- 25 – 34
- 35 – 49
- 50 – 64
- 65 +
Place your Bids
Within each ad group you start with your base bid and then specify a percentage increase that you are willing to pay for each age or gender group. MSN will then automatically raise your bids to gain higher positions when a person within the selected age or gender group is searching for any of the keywords within the ad group.
The targeting can also be done at campaign level which is extremely useful if your target audience is the same for all products and services that you are promoting via your Pay Per Click campaign.
The thought process behind this tool, is that advertisers would be willing to pay more for a click if the searcher matches their target audience as they should in theory be more likely to convert.
When you apply incremental bids to an age group or gender, your ads will still be shown to all searchers but your bids are increased when the ads are displayed to your target audience.
A Quick Example
To explain how the tool works in a little more detail, I thought an example would help:
My website sells ladies lingerie and the bulk of my sales come from females aged between 25 and 50. The age and gender tool should help me drive more targeted traffic to the site but not exclude the other age groups or male customers.
My ad group base bid is £0.20 and I am willing to pay an extra 15% on top of this price per click for my targeted traffic.
This means that if a female searcher aged between 25 and 50 is searching online using one of my keywords, my bid price would increase to £0.23.
If the searcher was male and clicked on my ad my bid price would remain at £0.20.
How to set incremental bids in Microsoft adCenter
Campaign Level (sourced from Microsoft adCenter Help)
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign column, click the campaign whose targeting you want to change.
- On the Campaign selected page, click Change settings.
- Under Target your customers by location, click Edit.
- Click Demographic.
- For one or more of the gender and age groups, specify an incremental bid (A bid that can increase your ad’s exposure to potential customers who meet specific targeting criteria, such as day of the week, time of day, geographical location, age, or gender. A percentage of your keyword bid, the incremental bid is in addition to your bid on a keyword.) by selecting a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists.
- Click Apply.
- Click Save.
Ad Group Level (Sourced from Microsoft adCenter Help)
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign column, click the campaign that includes the ad group you want to edit.
- In the Ad group column, click the ad group whose targeting you want to change.
- To the right of Ad group name, click Change settings.
- Under Target your customers by location, click Edit.
- Click Demographic.
- Clear the Apply campaign settings check box.
If this box is cleared, no campaign-level age or gender targeting will be applied to this ad group.
If this box is missing, there is no campaign-level age or gender targeting. - For one or more of the gender and age groups, specify an incremental bid (A bid that can increase your ad’s exposure to potential customers who meet specific targeting criteria, such as day of the week, time of day, geographical location, age, or gender. A percentage of your keyword bid, the incremental bid is in addition to your bid on a keyword.) by selecting a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists.
- Click Apply, and then click Save.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Microsoft adCenter Introduces new Ad Preview Tool
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, Microsoft, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine News
Whenever you create a new PPC advertisement there’s a temptation to see how it appears on the search engines. This temptation can grow further if it fails to deliver the expected traffic rates or has an unusually high bounce, thus indicating a potential issue.
The only issue with looking for your advert through the search engine itself is that it can create unnecessary impressions and lower the Click through Rate (CTR), which may in turn adversely affect the campaign. So how can you preview your ads without upsetting the statistics and potentially costing yourself more money? Well, Microsoft Bing have come up with a simple solution.
Microsoft adCenter now has its own Ad Preview Tool, giving you the opportunity to see your adverts away from the search engine and without incurring any data issues.
To find this you simply need to login, then click on the Campaigns tab. Once you’re on the Campaigns page follow the Ad Preview Tool control situated in the top right before filling in your adverts’ key terms in the Keyword box. Finally click on the Preview Ads button and you’ll be taken to a Bing SERPs.
Whilst Google have offered a similar feature for some time within their AdWords software, this is the first time that the Microsoft run equivalent has offered the same service. It will certainly be viewed as a welcome addition by most Bing advertisers and will stop you totting up lots of unnecessary impressions when reviewing your ads.
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