Hi folks,

Google have announced that they have reduced the requirements for an AdWords campaign to be eligible to use the wonderful “Conversion Optimizer” tool. AdWords Advertisers previously needed 30 conversions in the last 30 days to qualify to use the tool, the requirement has now been reduced to 15 conversions in the last 30 days to qualify to use the tool.

Why did Google do this?

Google AdWords services “the longtail” of advertisers. What this means is Google’s most important clients are not the advertising world’s big fish such as Coca Cola or American Airlines, but the massive ecosystem of small to medium-sized businesses such as flower delivery companies, insurance brokers, yoga studios. In reducing the requirements to access the AdWords Conversion Optimizer tool Google are better servicing their most important market, the small (to medium) guy!

What does the Conversion Optimizer do?

With the Conversion Optimizer, you bid using a maximum Cost Per Acquisition, which is the most you’re willing to pay for each conversion (such as a purchase, enquiry or signup). Using historical information about your campaign, the Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal equivalent cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it’s eligible to appear. You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your CPA goals and can benefit from improved Return On Investment.

To calculate the optimal equivalent CPC bid, the Conversion Optimizer first calculates a predicted conversion rate for each auction. The Conversion Optimizer takes many factors into account, including your ad’s conversion history, the keyword’s broad match query, the user’s location, and the conversion rates of Google’s search and content partner sites. The feature then generates an ad rank by combining your CPA bid, quality score and predicted conversion rate.

How does the Conversion Optimiser help me?

Simple:

1. Greater control of Return On Investment by enabling you to select your maximum cost per sale/enquiry.
2. More Sales/Enquiries. Double digit growth in conversions is common.
3. Reduced cost. Your cost per conversion will often decrease.
4. More time. Bid management is one of the most time consuming activities within AdWords optimisation. Enabling the conversion optimiser gives you more time to optimise other equally important elements of your campaign such as adtexts & keywords.

Sounds great! Does this mean if I turn on conversion optimiser I wont need to optimise my AdWords campaign anymore?

Conversion Optimiser will have a positive effect on your campaign performance by managing your bids.

It won’t:

• Optimize for Quality Score
• Create and test new Adtexts
• Split test landing pages
• Add new keywords
• Insert negative keywords
• Develop new Adgroups
• Manage your Impression Share
• Identify new markets to target
• Keep an eye on industry trends
• Audit the competitve environment
• + much more

For best results, it is still essential you, or an Adwords Professional, optimises your AdWords campaign on an ongoing basis.

Where can I learn more?

Here’s a great video from Google which explains the Conversion Optimiser Tool. Surf’s Up!

For information on our Google Adwords services click here.

The question I get asked more frequently than any other is “I have a new website, I want to rank well in Google and I have a limited budget. Should I invest in SEO or Pay Per Click advertising?”

This post lays out the differences between the two, factors which help determine which is most suitable for you, and how they can be effectively combined.

The main diferences between PPC and SEO are:

PPC SEO

Ad appears in Sponsored Links Description appears in Natural List

You pay-per-click or site visit Clicks are free, you pay for the SEO activity.

Visibility is instant SEO is medium to long term (3-9 months)

Visibility is guaranteed There are no visibility guarantees

Keywords are unlimited Keywords are limited

Clicks are limited by budget No limitations once you have rank

Market Size as a determining factor

If your target market is small e.g 1,500 searches per month and only would cost €30 to send 2% of this traffic to your site at €1 per click. Then PPC is a pretty effective way for you to tap into this small market and a low monthly outlay.

If your target market is large, lets say you are already spending €8k per month on PPC and you are only getting 50% Impressions Share (50% of the people who search your keywords see your ad due to insufficient budget) then you would probably consider investing in SEO which would move you up the Natural Results in the medium term at a much lower monthly spend. The added bonus is with a good natural rank you are visible for 100% of searches not just what your budget will allow.

PPC as a building block for solid SEO

We recommend using PPC as the starting point to SEO. SEO is a longer term strategy and you can only optimise your site for a limited number of keywords. What can happen is 6 months in you realise that the keywords you have been optimising for are’nt as profitable as you had initially believed. The benefit of a PPC campaign is you can start with 1,000 keywords, and simply see what generates the most conversions (sales, enquiries etc). Armed with this information you can commence your SEO efforts from more solid foundations.

The optimal situation is you have a high rank in both PPC and the Natural List. Studies show that you will benefit from more than double the traffic when you have a double listing because it has quite an impact on the searcher. They are more likely to visit your site, spend more time there and increasingly likely to enquire or purchase there. Our own experience shows this to be true.

For info on our Google Adwords PPC services click here.

For info on our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services click here.