KGen Firefox Extension Shows Pages' Potential Keywords

KGen is an extension for Firefox web browsers that displays the strongest keywords on a particular web page. Words on the page repeated more than once are ranked by "weight" (a user-tunable algorithm based on html tags and page placement), number of repetitions on the page, and "position" (which appears to be how far down in the page's code the keyword appears, relative to other keywords in the list). At present, the tool displays only single-word keywords (not multi-word phrases).

To install, in Firefox go to the KGen Add-on Page and download. After installing and restarting Firefox, to use KGen first browse to a page you want to analyze, then select Sidebar > KGen: Keyword generator from Firefox's "View" menu. The Word List tab shows the keywords with the rankings described above. There is also a Cloud view for a quick graphic representation of the relative strength of the various keywords found. In the Word List view, selected keywords can be copied to your computer's clipboard to paste and use elsewhere.

While the lack of analysis for phrase keywords limits the tool's usefulness, particularly for PPC, I found that useful combinations still suggested themselves by glancing from the top ranked keywords to the actual text of the page under analysis. For SEO purposes, right-clicking on any keyword will open a browser tab suggesting common misspellings and lettter-omissions and -substitutions for the word.

AdWords Quality Score: Don't Just Look at the Number

If you've got some experience managing cost-per-click (Google's term for pay-per-click) advertising using Google AdWords, you surely by now realize the high importance of optimizing for Quality Score. Either that, or you enjoy throwing away your or your clients' money.

According to Google, Quality Score (QS) is "the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.” Those last three elements that I've bolded are under your control, and thus ought to be high on your priority list of what you tweak on a daily basis in your accounts. Why? Because higher QS = lower cpc and better ad position = better ROI for you or your client.

I've recently observed, though, that just watching the QS score number on your keywords can lead to unnecessary frustration. You may be diligently putting into practice those things which should result in a higher QS*, yet not see a higher QS number for some of the related keywords. I've noticed recently, however, that in many cases it appears that Google is indeed giving you a boost reward in such cases even though they did not increase the QS number. In quite a few cases, after QS optimization, I've seen ad position rise (at the same bid level) and/or CPC go down, while the QS remained the same. Another indicator I've observed of post-optimization bump is a sharp drop in minimum first page bid for a highly competitive keyword.

So why didn't the QS go up in these cases? I believe that part of the reason is that QS is a 10 point scale. It's possible that you could be getting real credit from Google for optimization that isn't quite big enough yet to bump you all the way up to the next whole QS point. I suspect that if QS were expressed to one decimal point, you might in such cases see something like QS going from, say, 5.2 to 5.4.

The lesson in this is if you put a good amount of effort into making a relevance flow from keyword to ad to landing page, don't write off your efforts if you see no consequent increase of QS over the next several days. Be patient and wait for data to accumulate. Did the associated ad start to rise up the page at the same bid level? Has the CPC of the keyword been trending downward for the same or increased number of clicks? If yes, then it is likely that you got your reward, even if the QS number doesn't immediately show it.

*The linked post is a bit out of date (was posted when Google QS was "poor - good - great" instead of 1-10), but most of the tips are still relevant.

Classic Misuse of Dynamic Keyword Insertion

From a search on Google for the keyword "ball cancer" (in the Sponsored Results column):

Next time I'm looking to buy cancer balls, I'll know where to go for the best deal!

How does this happen? How could Google be showing me an ad for something so far from what I was searching for (resources about testicular cancer), let alone something this vendor almost certainly does not have for sale? It's not Google's fault, unless you want to blame them for offering a powerful feature that's too easily misused. That feature is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). I won't go into all the details of how it works (but here's a great post about it), but the quick explanation is that DKI allows you to automatically insert into an ad whatever keyword in the list of keywords associated with the ad most closely matches the keyword searched for.

Used in highly-targeted situations, DKI can be a powerful and effective tool for increasing both click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. You are reflecting back to the searcher exactly what she was looking for.

The oddball result that was shown above came up because the advertiser simply created a very generic "one size fits all" ad and then dumped a huge amount of (probably broad match) keywords into it. This is the laziest form of pay-per-click advertising. 

So the Nextag.com example above is funny, but is there any real harm done?

First, I doubt there is any such product as "cancer balls" (at least, I hope not). A click through on the ad takes you to a page of various products that have both "cancer" and "balls" somewhere in their description, but what is the likelihood that any of these are what someone searching for "ball cancer" is looking for?

Second, this is a waste of the advertiser's money in so many ways, as well as a complete misunderstanding of the value of pay-per-click advertising. Inevitably the advertiser is paying for a lot of clicks from people who have no possibility of becoming a converted customer. Pay-per-click is one of the most efficient and cost-effective forms of advertising ever invented, but only because it allows you to narrowly target a niche market of people who are already actively looking for what you have to offer. What Nextag.com has done is the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see how much sticks. In the case of both spaghetti and real customers, the answer is: not much.

Last, this kind of advertising can result in a negative backlash against your brand. Consumers will learn quickly that they can't trust your ads to take them to what they actually want.

By the way, if you've spent any amount of time watching pay-per-click ads, you've probably spotted the all-time worst offender of slinging out these kinds of meaningless ads. I won't embarrass them here publicly, but if you're taking aim at a certain big box discount retailer, you probably just hit the _____. ;-)

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For intelligent internet marketing, check out Virante (http://www.virante.com)

Google AdWords: Exact Isn't Always....Well...Exact

If you've been using Google's AdWords and/or Analytics products for any length of time, you must be aware that the numbers don't always add up. In fact, they don't add up at a sometimes alarming frequency. That is to say, the reported numbers either don't match up to what you know must be reality, or they are not consistent. Needless to say, this realization can be a little disconcerting, considering the amount and level of detail Google provides.

I ran across yet another curious example of this the other day. One of the features in the new AdWords interface about which I was most excited was the in-line "see search terms" button in the keywords tab of ad groups. The button pops up a quick report that promises to show you the most frequent search entries that actually resulted in displays of your ads for selected keyword(s) or the entire group. This information was available before, but only by going several keystrokes and screens away into a formal report. The ability to pop this information up while still in my keywords list--and even add any newly-discovered keywords right from the list--seemed to me revolutionary.

My thinking was that this listing would be most valuable in discovering exact match keywords I should be bidding on. For example, let's say I have a phrase match keyword "rugby shirts" that my keywords tab shows as performing at a low but reasonable CTR. The "see search terms" report reveals that this keyword has generated lots of impressions for all kinds of related phrases ("izod rugby shirts," "boy's rugby shirts" etc.). But most interestingly, it seems to reveal that the keyword "rugby shirts" as an exact match (i.e., the person searching entered the words "rugby shirts" and only those words) generates a hugely higher CTR than the average for the phrase keyword over all. It seems to be a no-brainer that I should create an exact match for that keyword, and bid it higher as it is more productive (in terms of CTR, but not actual click-quantity, of course).

This I've been doing for over a month now, but my new-found joy was tarnished a bit recently by a couple of discoveries. First, I noticed that in some cases, the newly-created exact match didn't perform anywhere near as well as might be predicted from the "see search terms" report. I chalked this up to the occasional anomaly, and kept in mind that "past performance does not guarantee future results." But then came the second blow. Yesterday I happened to run the "see search terms" report with one of my recently-created exact matches as the only selection, just out of curiosity. In the ad group keyword list, it showed 2 clicks with 16 impressions (a CTR of 12.50%). But when I went into the "see search terms" report, the exact match row for this keyword showed 2 clicks with 3 impressions, a CTR of 66.67%! Then in the standard "other search terms" row below that, it showed 0 clicks with 13 impressions. Now together those add up to the the 2/16 numbers shown in the ad group keyword list.

OK, but here's the question: Why would the report relegate a significant percentage of the impressions for the exact match to the "other search terms" row? There is no other search term for an exact match. I put that question to an AdWords rep in a chat, and he told me he'd need to talk to someone in "technical" and get back to me. Today he responded. Seems that the report is "unreliable" for exact matches. He assured me that all of the 16 impressions were legitimately for display of the exact match, yet could not explain why the search terms report dumps 13 of them into "other search terms."

This would all be academic, were it not for the discouraging implication: the "see search terms" report can't be relied upon to consistently point out high-performing exact matches. The CTR it reports for exact matches is often (always?) going to be inflated, because a significant number of the impressions have been inexplicably peeled off into the "other search terms" row. I'm still going to use the tool for exact match discovery (many of the ones I have tried have performed very well, if not up to the level of the report), but with a much more jaundiced eye.

The more important--and jarring--lesson is that Google's reports and stats probably have far more squirmy-wormy room in them than those of us who depend upon them to do our jobs well would like to believe.