I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, PPC and SEO need to get along. Why? There are such awesome tools on each side that can benefit the other. Not to mention the wealth of information from one that can feed results in the other. Case and point today is a tool that has not been written about much in the SEO world, but is a substantial part of the new AdWords training.

If it may please the court, I present:

Wonder Wheel

Looks like a mind map doesn’t it? I was introduced to mind maps in my Introduction to Creative Advertising class as a part of my advertising minor at UT Austin. Basically it’s getting every association you have with an idea, thought, or concept out on paper with it’s close associations. This is a tool that just about every level of marketing can benefit from, not just the creative people. There are whole computer programs developed just to aid with mind maps.

Wonder Wheel is a part of Google results. Just go Google something, and look in the left side bar. Under the “Standard View” section (you might need to expand the menu over there), there is an option for “Wonder wheel.” Click it and watch the magic.

The awesome part of Wonder Wheel is that this is a mind map using Google’s “mind.” You want a peek into the big brain that is Google? This is your opportunity. Wonder Wheel returns everything from word ideas to organic and integrated results. You get pictures, shopping, paid ads, and competitors in one fell swoop.

Wonderwheel is great for many things, not just keyword research. So hold onto your pants, here we go.

Brainstorming

The first, and most apparent use is for brainstorming. With any idea, product, or keyword, you can easily see what Google thinks is related. Using the start of one key phrase, this tool can lead to product ideas, marketing angles, and more. Multiple clicks on every spoke will open your eyes to new ideas and possible search intentions.

For example, looking up “cake pans” lead me to square cake pans (not what you normally think about), 3D cake pans, and even “how to make a wedding cake.” Those are all just key phrases during brain storming, but it really is what you do with this information that makes it valuable. In brainstorming, you are just identifying everything possible, the organization comes later.

Competitive Research

The first piece of information to glean from Wonder Wheel is competitive information. Through the tool you can see popular brands of products that users are searching for. It doesn’t stop there though. As you click through Wonder Wheel, the search results change with the phrase you select. This allows you to see and investigate new competitors. The long or mid tail might have completely different competitors, and may include some new up-and-comers (maybe you!) that you need to be aware of for the future.

Site Structure

In PPC, this tool is touted to be best for campaign and ad group organization, specifically getting keywords into themes for the display network. For SEOs, the same concept can be applied site structure and design. If you are having issues wondering how best to set up your site’s architecture that will be easy for Google and the other search engines to understand, this is perfect.

For example, if you have a site about stuffed animals, a quick search using the Wonder Wheel shows that searchers are looking for stuffed cats and dogs, and some competitors include Toys R Us and Build a Bear. From this information, you might structure the site by animal, size, and also by brand.

Keyword Research

Oddly like Brainstorming, yes? Sorta. But keyword research is more focused than brainstorming. Brainstorming is writing down any and everything related to a topic. Keyword research is more focused to specific content. So let’s say that you need to research a new 3D duck cake pan. Just a quick search and click on “Wilton Duck Cake Pan” reveals the many ways that someone might search for a duck cake pan.

• Rubber Duck Cake Pan
• Duck Cake Ideas
• Duck Birthday Cake
• Wilton Duck Baking (don’t use general ‘duck baking’, different intent)

Site Content Development

Writing good content for your site is key to ranking for long tail terms, and Wonder Wheel can help spark ideas. For example, remember in brainstorming when we came across the idea “how to bake a wedding cake” and seeing square wedding pans? How about a “how to bake a square tiered wedding cake.” There are posts on unusual cakes and how to assemble one, but not a start to finish post including pictures. See the draw here?

Affiliate Idea Development

If you are looking to develop a site around your favorite hobby (baking cakes perhaps? going along with my examples), using Wonder Wheel can reveal possible companies to approach for affiliate relationships. In this instance, reselling cake pans through Amazon, Wilton, or Birthday in a Box. This is revealed in the results of keywords but also in the organic results and in the shopping results.

The Distilled Crew in London was busy last week at conferences, A4uexpo and SMX Advanced London to be exact. But the US team was doing the same. I presented at Search Exchange in Charlotte, NC last week. I promised the attendees my slides and a bonus PDF, and so you guys get them too.

This presentation was on PPC Account Reviews and what to look for when things are going wrong. It covers the steps of an account review, the red flags, and suggestions of what to check and test. The bonus is the PDF that gives you a checklist of sorts. I would suggest downloading, printing, and laminating this for any beginning PPC person. I don’t cover everything, that’s impossible, but it should spur some ideas when thingsare going great.

Download the PPC Account Review PDF

Google have produced a new metric for judging the effectiveness of content network campaigns – the ‘view-through conversion’. I think that this is an excellent addition to the marketer’s toolkit but it comes with a word or two of warning. The essence of this new metric is that you now get a figure telling you when someone converted, having seen your advert but without clicking on it.


The new addition – View-through conversions

The benefit of this is that you can now judge which websites and pages represent the best value as advertising space for your service or product. If the people, who are eventually converting on your website, are reading the website where your advert is placed then it is a fair bet that the spend will be well used there. They do not need to have clicked on the advert for the branding exercise to have been worthwhile.


A waste of space?

Although this is certainly a useful metric there is still the question of whether the advert actually caused the ultimate result. If the advert is only gaining a very low CTR then perhaps the advert is not actually getting any attention? Was the advert a catalyst for conversion, as one would hope as a branding exercise, or was it merely an irrelevant and unnoticed bystander? Perhaps if we had view-through conversion stats for pages on those websites where the adverts were not seen we would have a better idea of the effectiveness of the branding and could separate correlation from causation.

However it is undoubtedly better than nothing at all and gives an extra level of insight into the content network and, as long as you are aware of the limits of the data, it can help you run more effective campaigns. If you really want to measure your branding’s effectiveness there are other analytics solutions that can help you stay on top of your spend.
Are you using the right metric/tool for the job?

Avinash Kaushik has written a great blog post on ‘Brand Measurement: Analytics & Metrics for Branding Campaigns’. In it he details seven reasons that you might want to employ a branding campaign and how you can get to the relevant analytics data to prove/disprove the effectiveness of the campaign for each different type. Branding works but it is vital to know what you are trying to achieve with it and to measure the outcomes.

When John Wanamaker said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” he hit upon a problem that only now are we beginning to have the chance to correct. There will still be questions about attributing value to the right part of the process but the most wasteful parts of the budget should now be possible to identify and eliminate.

We recently had a spike in traffic for one of our clients that we couldn’t explain. The spike appeared in organic traffic when we excluded their main keyword but we couldn’t find out what the source of this traffic was. As we couldn’t quite get to the bottom of it, we decided that we might as well go to Google and get the benefit of their wisdom on the subject. Although they never did explain our spike it threw up an interesting change in the way that Google treats untagged traffic.

While asking Google about our strange traffic, we mentioned that we suspected that it might be untagged traffic. They countered by ignoring the main question and saying that if it were untagged traffic then it would appear as direct traffic. We had understood that untagged traffic would appear as organic traffic, hence our original theory about the cause of this activity, so this was surprising.

Google then clarified the situation saying that

“untagged PPC traffic will now also be appearing as “Direct”, whereas prior to the changes at the end of March, this traffic would have been considered “Organic”.”

So now we have two questions

1) Why make this change? Personally I would rather that if tagging goes missing that the traffic is still at least reported as being from a search engine rather than direct. 2) Why do we have a big, unexplained spike in organic traffic?

Has anyone else noticed this? If anyone has any answers or theories as to why Google have made this move then we’d love to hear them.

Rand recently wrote his 2007 self a letter and asked me and a bunch of other people to do the same.

I was struck, reading Rand’s letter, by the degree to which his advice to himself is useful and actionable right now (for himself – and, to a lesser degree, for me and others). I am hoping to re-read my advice to myself in that frame of mind afterwards. For now though, I am thinking purely in terms of advice I wish I could have imparted to myself two years ago.

When I read Rand’s invitation to contribute, I initially wasn’t sure what kind of advice I could give. I was bolstered, however, by an experience recently where I met up with a friend just striking out on her own into a new business venture. I realised that I have learnt a lot amount in the 4 years that Distilled has been going (possibly indicating how little I knew to start off with!).

It feels as though there are two main sources of advice from people who have “been there and done that”:

1. there is a natural selection element- simply by still being here, running a business that employs people, I get to impart some bits of advice in the form of “here is what we did – seemed to work for us”
2. more powerfully, there are some areas where you have tried working in more than one mode and discovered that one works significantly better. While this is still biased by our direct experience, it at least represents some element of what you might call ‘experience’ rather than just “well, it worked for us when we did it this way”

Anyway, without further ado, onto the letter.

June 2009

Dear 2007 Will,

I am writing from the future. When you get to this point and look back, you will be astounded by how much some things have changed and and simultaneously amazed by the degree to which some things remain the same.

Be that as it may, I now have a couple more years’ experience and, while I know there is a limited(!!?!) chance of you reading this, if you do, I hope you will have the humility to take the right bits to heart:

1. Embrace “Getting Things Done” more and sooner

I know you have already read the book, but I also know it will be a good 18 months before you realise the true power of “inbox to zero”. Remember that even if you don’t do any more as a result of being better organised (though you will) simply having the right systems in place will free your mind up to work on the right things much more of the time.

2. Hire smart people fast(er)

If we could take a joint trip back to 2005, I think this would be the single biggest thing we’d want to say to our 2005 self. You know all that time you spent slogging along with just you and Duncan? Imagine if you could have added some of the smart people you know now to the mix a couple of years sooner. That applies now. It may turn out, in the long-run that the single thing you are best at is delegating to smart people

3. Define your role better

Again, you have read the e-myth by this point, but you have still only paid it lip-service. Think in terms of a business with 15-20 people in it (and the next level on from that) and define the roles you and Duncan will need to fill (and only then work out what hats you are each wearing now). Take ownership and responsibility. Butt out of each other’s space, but ask for help when you need it. [For more on where we are up to with this now, those of you reading this in 2009 can read Duncan's recent post on his job role - it's a while since both founders wrote a post in the same week so I should probably link to it!].

4. Get good at mobile email

You can still upgrade to the 3G iphone later, but first stop being scared that being ‘always connected’ means ‘always doing email’. It means you can do email when you’ve got nothing better to do and have to do email much less when you do have better things to do.

5. Get a great bank manager

You’ll work this one out for yourself, but still, you might as well get going asap. You don’t have to deal with a call centre.

6. Start doing PR

Most of your business over the coming years will come either from existing customers / referrals or from people who “get to know” you and Distilled. This “getting to know” part isn’t actually rocket science – it’s all part of PR in its broadest sense. Raise your profile and seek amplifiers – the mechanisms, individuals and publications that can help you become better known.

7. Related to #6: Write more

Your clients like to read what you write and it both brings in new prospects and helps people get more comfortable with hiring you.

8. Raise your prices

You’re not charging enough. Seriously. (And connected to this, start thinking bigger – you are mainly constrained by your own beliefs).

9. Remember the flywheel

You have no idea what I’m talking about. First read ‘Good to Great’. Then remember the flywheel concept. Pick your battles and then focus on them consistently and repeatedly. Success breeds success so amplify what you can.

10. Sell your flat in late 2007

Trust me.

11. Don’t take all this too seriously and remember to have fun…

Having written that all down, it feels a little tactical. All of the things above will help you, but I think that above all remember the people – someone (I have now forgotten who it was unfortunately) who I thought couldn’t possibly have time for me – not only replied to something I wrote to them, but signed off their email with a genuine “let me know if I can do anything for you”. Try asking people that more often. It can be enlightening.

Love, 2009 Will

We recently noticed that when searching on Yahoo for Distilled a sponsored advert was appearing. The strange thing about this is that we do not run any PPC adverts on Yahoo. We do run some PPC adverts on Google but they are not targeted at branded searches and none of our adverts contain the ad content we can see here. Curious.

Was the ad triggered by an advanced match keyword linking Distilled with reputation management? Possibly, a non-branded search for ‘reputation management does again produce an advert for Distilled.

They also have Distilled sponsored adverts at the bottom of the page at the same time so that is two adverts and no charge.

But why are ads appearing there in the first place?

We thought about how it could be a hangover from the experiment to run Google ads on Yahoo but that wouldn’t explain the new ad content which isn’t anywhere in our AdWords account. Are Yahoo trying to pad out their search offering to make the advertising space look more appealing? Trying to stimulate a herd mentality and give the impression that this is a place worth being seen in?

If someone out there thinks they know why these ads are appearing, perhaps you are the kindly soul trying to drive traffic towards the distilled website, then we’d love to hear your theories (or confessions)!

In amongst all the kerfuffle of the searchology news I’ve noticed something else new being tested on adwords. I’m not sure if this is a permanent change for a select number of sites or if it’s the start of a new change but when I search for ’small dog‘ in the US I see the following adwords result:

Expanding that plusbox shows me this:

Interesting huh! I wonder where Google is pulling those extra products from? They have long descriptions, price tags and nice images. Is this actually something that’s been out for a while and I’ve just not seen it before? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Update: Turns out this isn’t that new after all. It’s a test which has been ongoing for some time. The products are pulled from Google Base apparently. Check out the full Searchengineland story for more info.

Update 2: Thanks to tomsmith1984 who spotted this happening in the UK which I think might be a first: searching for littlewoods shows a plusbox for them in the UK.

We’ve already seen demographic targeting for some time on Google’s content network but now they are taking a step further and offering behaviour-based advertising. By tracking your surfing habits, they will be able to display adverts based on your interests rather than the content of the page that you are reading. This area of advertising has been getting a fair amount of press recently due to Phorm, who have had trouble launching their service due to questions of legality. Opponents have claimed that the analysis of web users’ browsing habits is an invasion of privacy and the Information Commissioner’s Office has backed this up to an extent by declaring that “Phorm would only be legal under UK law if it were an opt-in service”.

Google is offering users the opportunity to opt out and so avoids this problem but there will still be many people unhappy with the move. Privacy online is a problematic area and Google already has vast quantities of data about our browsing habits. However let’s ignore the legal and ethical questions and talk about this new toy we have to play with and what its benefits are to us, the advertiser.

One of the problems that contextual advertisers have is that people can tend to become ‘snow blind’ to adverts that mirror the content that is being read. If you are reading about socks and then a sock advert comes up then, to an extent, this will not stand out and you will blank it out. With behavioural advertising you would be able to counter this by providing out-of-context adverts that are still relevant to the specific user’s interests. This should then jar with the reading of the page, catching the eye and, because the advert is relevant to their interests, should mean that the user is more likely to click and crucially convert. Potentially this is a powerful tool and could be a big boost to the effectiveness of the content network if used correctly. However it should be noted that this out-of-context effect does not work across all areas equally so there would still need to be a lot of analysis to get the most out of it.

Personally I look forward to testing this out. I think that for certain clients this will prove to be a really useful and productive avenue for advertising with the potential to raise clickthrough and conversion rates significantly. Although it seems like a big step forward in advertising, I think that, with the speed that the space is developing, this will quickly seem mundane and normal as newer and better tools and services create new debates over privacy and the power of the internet giants. For the moment though this is the ‘next big thing’ and it will be fascinating to see how it develops.

I just read a very interesting blog post from the Rimm-Kaufman Group about the changes that Google had made to Broad match keywords and the resulting effects. In the article they point out how the performance of broad match terms has gone down and that they have been noticing some troubling incidences where the broad match ads have been appearing when better and more closely matching keywords (and therefore adverts) have been available.

They believe that this started happening with the change to a ‘1st page bid’ rather than a minimum bid, Google is ignoring/not seeing some of the more exact terms with lower bids and is instead posting the broad match adverts. This idea certainly tallies with what I have been seeing in my analytics; looking at the actual search queries for broad match terms has thrown up example after example where there was a better matching keyword and ad group for the search. The result of this is that we, the advertisers, do not get the most suitable advert appearing for the viewer, Google have less relevant search results and that in turn will make the search less efficient for the consumer. Hopefully with Google now aware of this problem a solution will be forthcoming before too long and broad match will no longer cannibalise other keywords’ traffic. In the meantime it means adding a lot of negative keywords to keep the boundaries up between ad groups. Perhaps we can use this as an opportunity to ask Google for some areas we would like improvements made such as;

• Separate broad and advanced match types where broad match would act more like the old version.
• Allow bidding on the Search Partners network on its own. Although in the UK the Search partners rarely seem to work as well as the main Search network, if given the chance to work on this traffic with independent bids then perhaps more value could be taken from it.
• Ad serving where ‘optimise’ would favour the best converting advert based on statistical significance rather than the best CTR.
• Search Query Reports without ‘other unique queries’.
• More flexible version of the conversion optimiser with more parameters when setting CPA.

In the long term if Google gives us greater control over how and to whom we advertise then adverts will be more relevant to the searches, campaigns will become more profitable, PPC budgets will go up and Google would be the ultimate beneficiary.

I recently installed the new Adwords Editor 7.0 and thought I’d share my thoughts and first experiences of it with you. Although there is plenty to like about the upgrade, there is also one big problem that you need to keep your eye on. First the pros;

First page bid estimates: AdWords Editor now uses first page bid estimates for your keywords. Minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids are no longer used.

Keyword Quality Score: The Keywords tab now displays the Quality Score for your keywords.

Keyword Opportunities locale: Tailor your keyword suggestions to a particular language and location by changing your Keyword Opportunities locale.

Campaign targeting in the data view: You can view your targeting settings in the new ‘Language’ and ‘Location’ columns on the Campaigns tab. These columns are hidden by default, but you can select them with the column chooser.

All of these are useful additions and being able to see quality score and minimum first page bids in particular will be very helpful.

Now the problem, the auto backup does not work! I learned this the hard way – most of my accounts were posted to Adwords so were safe and sound. However I was also working on one new account that had not got to a state where it was ready to be posted. So when I installed the new version of Adwords editor, choosing to backup when prompted, I was surprised to find that the account was now empty. Ok, no problem I thought, I just need to find the backup file and import it. However when I found the file it was empty. I was disappointed to find that all the work had been irretrievably lost (N.B. – this sentence might be laced with understatement).

If you are going to install the update (which I would recommend as the new functions look very useful) just make sure you backup fully and avoid the frustration of seeing hours of hard work evaporate.