Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?-

One of the hottest debates going on in the web marketing sphere right now is the impact of Google’s new AdWords algorithm enforcements and more importantly, how to recover if you saw your minimum bids rise as a result of a low Quality Score determination.

While AdWords are a commonplace form of advertising in most retail markets, there are still online wine retailers who have yet to create AdWords campaigns. Even if you are not ready to invest heavily in marketing, create a simple AdWords campaign advertising your (or your clients) core site features. If you already have an account, continue to read as this is not just for new advertisers.

If the new AdWords bid and scoring changes have taught us anything, it is that Google has more power on our online ad campaigns than we used to think. Some of us even experienced this first hand. However, if done right, Pay Per Click advertising with Google can be the most inexpensive targeted traffic you can receive. And yes, I am aware you can get $.05 clicks from other networks, but do they tap into the large consumer network that Google does?

One factor that determines your Quality Score and minimum bid you must pay for a keyword is your historical Click Through Rate (CTR). If you don’t have an account you will not have a historical CTR. The longer you wait to do this correctly, the more time you are giving your competition to develop positive Google histories, thereby earning lower minimum bids.

Begin with a single campaign that is related to the core of your business (think ‘California Red Wines’ as opossed to ‘Wine’.) Do not pollute your campaign with thousands of themes, ads, and keywords until you establish a credible account with Google. Think long term strategy as oppossed to immediate results. For revitalizing campaigns, use this same method by pausing or deleting previous campaigns and working closely with one single niche.

You will often hear marketers discuss their Landing Page and you should too. The Landing Page is where a visitor will be sent to when they click on your ad and Google evaluates every campaign in relation to their Landing Page. This can be changed and modified for any set of keywords you wish.

So if you have a site with information/products related to ‘California Red Wines’, you should set up a separate campaign with Ads, Keywords and Landing Pages that specifically state ‘California Red Wines’ and so on for other wine categories. A new campaign for each theme of related terms. As your CTR increases with impressions, introduce new campaigns for your other targeted keywords. Many people make the mistake of rushing a new PPC campaign, and after witnessing the aftermath of those who were penalized by Google for poor campaign management, it should make us think twice.

So whether you sell a product, offer a service, or write a blog - learn to effectively manage an AdWords campaign through strategic keyword placement and landing pages that call a customer to action. Step 2 is visitor conversion…

Stay tuned to future releases of WineSEO as we continue to look into evolving web marketing trends for wine marketers!

Did you read that the state of NY provided over $250,000 to local wineries to improve their web presence? We are discussing it in our message boards.

This entry was posted by Mark Spangler on Sunday, December 17th, 2006 at 4:35 pm and is filed under PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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