Is your web dev team losing your PPC conversions?
Feb 18, 2009 Advertising, Pay Per Click
I was on a conference call today and I had said how many people misunderstand what click fraud actually is, and some mistakenly believe that just because a click doesn’t convert that it has to be click fraud. But in many cases, it had zero to do with the quality of the click, but instead has everything to do with the quality of the landing page.
So when was the last time you took a look at your landing pages, especially if you work in a company where you might handle the PPC but someone else handles actual on-page content and issues? I am willing to bet that many people would probably be surprised to learn that their ROI is so low because what they are presenting their visitors is, well, lacking.
A few days ago, I noticed @rogerdooley who twittered the following:
Clicked on an Infiniti Adwords ad, got a redirect msg telling me the Infiniti site had moved & 2 update my bookmark. Nice.
So, I did what probably a few people did… I went and Googled “Infiniti”. But since I am in Canada, I was geotargeted (and rightly so) to the Canadian Infiniti site. However, what the Canadian Infiniti site was just as bad, if not worse. Consider the fact that Infiniti has just paid for me to go to their website, since I clicked an AdWords ad. It is in their best interest to give me the most bang for their buck, so they can squeeze every bit of ROI out of me as possible. So what do I get instead of the Infiniti homepage? Or even a specific page about Infiniti? I got this:
Um, okay. And that was it, nothing in the background, that was the entire page, Now, I don’t know how much they paid for my click, but this is not the kind of user experience you want to present to your paid visitor. But I am willing to bet that whoever does their PPC ad campaign manager has no idea that this is the page that visitors are getting when they click an AdWords ad. And its probably because the web design team decided they wanted feedback on the site, without thinking about how it could impact other aspects of their online presence and promotion. And obviously the team wasn’t thinking about usability, only how to get as many people to fill out that survey as possible.
Usually, this is the kind of thing you display after someone has visited at least one page (or preferably 5!) on the site – whether I am a paid visitor or not – because you know what this makes most visitors want to do? You got it, click the back button. And I won’t get started about the fact it is a five minute survey… I suspect the % of visitors who actually go to the trouble of filling it out are pretty low.
It is worth noting that they must be tracking the results of their advertising, as the URLs include the ?gclid parameter. But their results must be pretty poor compared to what it was before they started giving everyone the survey page as the initial entry page to the site.
So, I wondered what exactly it was that @rogerdooley saw, because it couldn’t be worse than my user experience.
So here is the ad:
A pretty standard automobile AdWords ad. Nothing fancy, and note the InfinitiUSA.com display URL.
And this is what he got when he clicked:
But at least in his case, the website was showing in the background, albiet quite delayed. Now, this isn’t a very good user experience either, especially for a paid click. But, and here is the kicker, the actual ad clicked was already going to the correct destination URL, InfinitiUSA.com, so it wasn’t a case of a visitor being redirected, everyone was getting it regardless of whether came into the site via an outdated bookmark or not (which is a whole new level of poor usability!)
So, of course, I had to go to the original Infiniti.com site and got the same pop-up, but since they use cookies, I had to use a second browser to see it (the same happened with the Infinity.ca site too). So, since the assumption is that anyone who is working on the Infiniti PPC and web design visits the site frequently, they are probably not aware that the pop-up is hitting every single person who visits the landing page, regardless of their original URL or whether it was an AdWords click or not.
So the moral of the story, make sure you always know what the web dev team is doing on your site that could impact your PPC conversion rates, because that team has certainly dropped down their PPC ROI significantly. Or better yet, have a dedicated landing page that the dev team has strict instuctions to not touch or mess with in any way without clearing it with you first. Because with a little conversation between the two teams (and yes, I know it is often easier said than done, especially if one or both is outsourced), you can prevent this kind of problem from happening.
It also makes the case that you might want to periodically click on your AdWords ad in the serps from a virgin computer that has never visited your website, just so you can see what happens from a user experience standpoint, and make sure there aren’t any of the mistakes plaguing the various Infiniti sites on your own or client sites.
And Infiniti, if you need a new PPC or usability specialist, let me know 
How many baskets are your eggs in? How to go from a single income source to multiple sources
Feb 25, 2008 Advertising, Google, Keywords, Search Engine Optimization
Being a top AdSense expert, I inevitably get many emails from publishers who have gotten their AdSense account suspended and then I get the sob story about how they won’t be able to pay their mortgage, they will have to let all their employees, etc etc. Trust me, I have heard it all! But regardless of their AdSense account being suspended, the real reason of their immediate money issues is the fact that they had all their eggs in one basket… in this case the AdSense basket. The same can go for someone who is working one killer affiliate program that suddenly ceases to exist one day, and is left with no viable alternative option to slip into the deceased affiliate program’s place.
The same applies for those that have their one killer website… their pride and joy, but unfortunately the one that brings in 95% of all their income. If you are old school SEO enough, you will remember that many people found themselves in this position when the now-infamous Florida update hit in November 16th, 2003. When Google updated their algorithm (which wasn’t done in a continuous style back then like it is now) that day, the forums lit up with people whose websites literally stopped getting any Google traffic overnight. And with the huge Google share even back then meant that people who were living the good life with their Google rankings suddenly found themselves scrambling in panic-mode to not only restore their rankings but to also restore the sudden loss of income, whether AdSense, affiliate income, or other.
So if you are one of those who has most of your eggs precariously balanced in a single basket, here is what you can do to diversify a bit so that you won’t have to go into panic-mode when disaster strikes your bottom line, and why you should do it.
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Why you should bid on misspellings of your company name & brand
Jan 15, 2008 Advertising, Branding, Google, Pay Per Click, Yahoo
Not all of us have hit the household status we all wish our company names had. So if you aren’t a Sony or a WalMart, have you ever considered the fact that someone might be trying to find your company or product and either spelling it wrong or searching for a slight variation because the person who recommended you pronounced it incorrectly? And even the best SEO can’t rank your site number one for every single variation of your company name or brand. The last thing you want to do is lose those potential customers to competitors, when they were trying to find your site in the first place.
If you are lucky, Google might direct some of those misspellings to your site via their “Did you mean: ____” hint that it shows above the results when they believe there is a good chance that someone made a typo. But you have to be pretty well known to have Google do that for all your potential misspellings and typos of your company name.
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Best practices for soliciting direct buy advertisers to your website or blog
Jan 9, 2008 Advertising, Blogging, Linking
Sometimes it is nice not to have to rely on Google AdSense or various CPM, CPA or CPC networks to generate revenue for your blog or website. And it is even nicer when you can supplement that income with additional revenue generated from direct buy advertisers, meaning they are advertisers that want to advertise directly on your blog without having to go through a middle man – meaning the advertiser gets more bang for their buck and you get the entire advertiser’s ad spend for your site without having to share it with a third party who takes a cut of your profits.
When you reach a certain level of traffic and repeat visitors, especially if you are well known as an authority in your space, it is often more profitable for you to solicit advertising directly, as opposed to using a third party such as AdSense or a CPM network for your advertising. What is the certain level? It will vary depending on your niche or market area, but if you are one of the top blogs or websites in that area, you can likely command the money to make it worth the effort of doing it.
Many people don’t want to deal with the added workload it takes to sell advertising directly, when they might only make an extra hundred dollars a month, but when you could be bringing in an extra ten, twenty or thirty thousand a month, usually the annoyance of the bit of extra work isn’t as much of a concern.
So now that you’ve decided to make the jump and accept direct buy advertisers, here is how you should do it to ensure that you aren’t leaving any money on the table and are making the process as user friendly for those advertisers as possible.
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