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.

Social Media Marketing: Where are the Measurables?

(From clickz.com:) In its simplest form, SEO (define) is a three-step process: break down crawling barriers to help the engines efficiently index a Web site; craft keyword-targeted content that appeals to search engines and visitors alike; and, most critical, practice link-building for targeted terms and phrases.

Social media optimization, on the other hand, is primarily about knocking down the walls of user-generated content to be a dynamic part of an online community. It's not a simple process and it takes time. Just because a "Digg This" button has been added to a blog or Web site doesn't mean every post or product is compelling enough to be considered socially buzzworthy.

Social media is just another liberating facet of content optimization tactics that can lure in thousands of new visitors and hundreds of inbound links. When it works, it's scalable. But it doesn't always work in a predictable manner.

Read more >>>

On Click Pixel Tracking

(From theGoogleCache.com:) One of the most common methods of tracking conversions and visits is through “Pixel Tracking”. Essentially, a single pixel image is included on a page that, when triggered, gives the user some form of cookie or results in his/her her browser IP / user-agent / etc. stored in a tracking database somewhere.

Well, what if you wanted to use that pixel to track something else? Like a file download, a mouseover, or a click on a particular outbound link? How do you make sure the pixel image gets included and loaded before the redirect takes place without making Timeout assumptions?

Here is some simple scripts to help you accomplish just that…

Javascript in Head

The following code snippet should be placed between the start and close head tags of your page. These functions are responsible for inserting the tracking pixel onto your page and then setting an Interval to check it every 1/5th second to make sure it loads. Once it is loaded, it redirects the individual on to the target URL.

function clktrk(url) {

pxlsrc = "http://your.tracking.pixel.jpg";


window.clkurl = url;

document.getElementById('clkimg').src=pxlsrc;

window.intval=setInterval("isImgComplete()",200);

}




function isImgComplete() {

document.getElementById('working').innerHTML = document.getElementById('working').innerHTML + " .";

var img = document.getElementById('clkimg');


window.timer = window.timer+200;

if(!img.complete) { return false; }

if (typeof img.naturalWidth != "undefined" && img.naturalWidth == 0) { return false; }

else {

window.clearInterval(intval);


location.href=window.clkurl;

}

}

Javascript on Your Links

Instead of a traditional a href=”http://www.yourlink.com”, use the code below…

Your Link

Footer Image

At the bottom of the page, include the following HTML.

<img id='clkimg' height='1' width='1' />