Preparing for GAP again

My GAP certification expired last month and I didn't even realize.

Now I will be sitting and going through the Adwords Learning Center all over again but I am glad cause it has been more than 2 years since I actually listened (don't want to read the text version) to all the lessons and there have been so many updates.

While the idea of the exam is painful, I actually think the GAP certification should expire in 1 year and not be valid for 2. This is because Google provides so many new features that there is so much more for an advertiser to know.


Btw do you know what is 'clean sweep'? How about 'smart pricing'? How many types of reports can you have? And how many budgeting options are available?

If you don't know the answers, I suggest you go through the learning center/help center and your account again.


I wish other Search Engines had such a detailed tutorial and also could give certifications to individuals globally.

The battle

SEO and 'Creativity' (of a website in terms of both design and copy), many times seem to be at odds with each other.

Bala's said something a week ago which I thought was very funny -

'Check out my alt tags, they are so beautiful'.


The bottom line is that the way the website gets created will have to be based on the objective of the website. Ideally a good balance between SEO and Aesthetics needs to be created. It is not impossible to write SEO friendly text and make a page crawlable while keeping it attractive enough for visitors to carry out the actions you would want them to. Ignoring one or the other would spell doom if you want a site that gets traffic and also converts.

The middle path...

We are nothing but IPs

- SEO training session

:)

Quality Score myths busted.

• Myth: There is only one QS. Nope. One QS sets minimum bid, a different QS sets rank. There are different QS for search and content.

• Myth: Match type impacts QS. Nope. QS is calculated only from queries which exactly match keyword.

• Myth: QS improves with higher position on the page. Nope. QS is normalized to account for higher CTRs higher on the page.

• Myth: High reported CTR implies high QS. Nope. QS depends on CTR on Google.com alone, whereas reported CTR includes other Google properties.

• Myth: If you restructure your account, you lose QS history. Nope. History of keywords, copy, and destination URLs are maintained, as long as that combination is unchanged. (Even in a different account!) However, if you change either keyword, copy, or landing page, yes, QS may change.

• Myth: Pausing an ad harms QS. Nope.

• Myth: QS only matters on competitive words. Nope. The min bid is set based on QS, not on the number of advertisers in that auction. Even if there's no competition, poor QS could dictate higher CPCs.

• Myth: QS are updated daily. Nope. It depends on volume and statistical significance. High volume terms could have intra-day QS updates, while low volume terms could mean multiple days between recalculations.

• Myth: Any Flash on landing page harms QS. Nope.

• Myth: QS only depends on you. Nope. Some factors involved in setting QS are computed keywords system wide, across the performance of all advertisers.

Source : searchengineland. Full article at - http://searchengineland.com/071016-090124.php

The article itself says that adwords quality score is a big black box. No advertiser could agree more.

It is so annoying to sometime says product names being 'inactive' because Google thinks this keyword is going to perform badly.

The worse kind of inactive keywords are those which go inactive as soon as you add them to your account. I don't think taking global performance of a keyword to determine its relevancy and quality is a good idea.

If Google doesn't want to open up the algo for QS that's alright, what they should ensure though is that advertisers know what they would get heavily penalized for at least.

This didn't happen because of advertising. It happened because of the power of the idea.

- Seth Godin

Clicks from the Content Network

Google has changed it's text ad clickability on the content network. Now someone would have to click on the link instead of clicking anywhere in the text area (just like on Google search). This change was made a few months ago on Google search on ads in the 'Yellow Box' (which was previously the 'Blue Box') - which were basically ads that showed up on the top of organic results.

The good thing about this is that you might not get unnecessary clicks which means that there would be lesser junk clicks and therefore better ROI from the Content network. There might be a slight drop in CTRs as you would get lesser clicks for the same number of impressions.

While I expect not to see too much of a change happening in numbers in the accounts, this is a small, easy change that gives advertisers a little peace of mind.

The content network will still be riddled with click fraud, and that is not going to change as long as you have really small publishers. Luckily google is working toward giving advertisers more flexibility.

Site-targeting updates

Google announced that -

1) Site-targeting is now going to be called placement targeting (as it is much more precise in offering advertisers specific sections in a site and also specific ad spots on a page).
2) Google will now offer CPC bidding option on 'placement targeting' and not just have a CPM model.

Point 2 is great news for advertisers. I assume it has been something that most advertisers have wanted for a long time (after Minimum CPM moved to $0.25 instead of $2 I would assume). A lot of advertisers see potential in site targeting but are hesitant to pay per impression because impressions get generated very fast.

I think most advertisers are going to experiment a lot with CPC option for placement targeting. One thing though that bothers me is that I believe the minimum CPC for placement targeted ads to actually get some impressions will be very high.

What we see usually is that avg CPC on site targeting (back calculation of cost and clicks) is nearly always higher than avg CPC on keyword-content (contextual) targeting. I don't see any reason for this trend to change because competition would be the same and therefore entry level bids would be high.

Let's hope I am wrong and that CPC placement targeting works wonders.

Widgetbox

Came across a site that I feel is brilliant - widgetbox.

It allows you to add widgets on your social networking profiles or blogs. Quite a few interesting widgets out there.