Submit your search-marketing strategy for a chance to be a published Clickable Guru!

Search-technology company Clickable has kicked off its latest quest for the next Clickable Search Engine Marketing Guru.  The winner will join Clickable’s elite SEM Guru Team, comprised of some of the world’s top online advertising experts. The Clickable Gurus introduce clarity to the complex landscape of online advertising by offering their expertise to fellow citizens in search forums and other online communities. They keep abreast of industry trends and best practices, and share their insights with Clickable’s own customer community. The Gurus’ expertise and knowledge informs the development of Clickable’s online advertising solutions.

In addition, once each month the Clickable SEM Gurus publish their best tips and insights on the widely-read Official Clickable Blog. In addition, the Gurus’ best writings are featured in the Clickable Guru’s Guide To Better Search Engine Marketing, an ongoing anthology available in both hardcopy and electronic versions. Additionally, the winner gets inside access to Clickable, an exciting and innovative search-technology company. Gurus are compensated for their written contributions.

How To Enter

Submit your best articles for success in search marketing to this forum. We are looking for a unique perspective: From an original spin on search-industry news, to tactics for optimizing campaigns across networks, to tips on building better keyword lists.

Here are examples of past articles from the Clickable Gurus:

•    Simple SEO Best Practices to Boost Your Landing Pages
“The most important factor in your Quality Score is the alignment between your keywords, your ads, and your landing page content”…Read More.

•    Google Loosens Its Ad Copy Trademark Restrictions: Now What?
“By lifting trademark protection of ad copy, Google is making a bold move in its faith in the Quality Score system as an effective means of automating trademark protection”…Read More.

•    How To Run A Local Ad Campaign
“Running a local ad campaign can be an inexpensive way to gain targeted traffic.  The following is a list of tips to help you get the most out of your local ad budget”…Read More.


Eligibility
•    Entries must be your original work, preferably not published yet in any wide-circulation trade publications. The entry may be an existing blog post, article, or presentation.
•    Only entries submitted to this forum will be considered.
•    The suggested length for entries is 400 – 700 words.
•    Entries can include images and screenshots. 

Submission Dates
You may submit entries between Tuesday July 7, and Tuesday, September 1.  The winner will be announced in Clickable’s forums on Wednesday, September 9. 

Judging
The winner will be selected by the Clickable Gurus.  We will base our decision on submissions’ quality and originality.  We will announce the winner in Clickable’s forums and the winning entry will be published in upcoming editions of The Clickable Guru’s Guide To Better Search Engine Marketing.

Disclosure
Clickable does not guarantee that there will be a winner, if qualifying entries are not received.  If a winner is selected they will maintain their status as a Clickable Guru as long as they choose to maintain a professional working relationship with Clickable and remain in good standing professionally. Please email a Clickable Forums moderator with any questions.

Relevance Versus G-Relevance

Relevance is a pivotal, key concept of AdWords, Google's flagship advertising program. The California-based giant emphasizes at various places that its advertising system is designed to ensure positive user experiences by displaying relevant ads to searchers. However, what relevant means has been and continues to be a headache for thousands of advertisers worldwide.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the adjective relevant means "having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand," which might well prove an important but elusive definition for our rather practical purposes. On the other hand, the AdWords Glossary states, "Relevance refers to the usefulness of information to a user (such as an ad, keyword, or landing page)." Could an automated system ever come anywhere close to understanding the psychological notion associated with relevance and usefulness, or is it just walking around in circles with definitions?

Google does not disclose details about precisely how relevance should be interpreted; and one of the first explanatory notes came from AdWordsPro, a manager of the AdWords Team, in the official AdWords forum last year. A member wanted to improve the ad position for his keyword "stuffer," associated with his website featuring stuffers, i.e., field goose decoys made from a taxidermist-preserved skin. AdWordsPro says, "Taking the keyword 'stuffer' as an example, if you search for that word on Google you will see that there are over two million search results returned. Looking at the first 30 or so, it is very clear that the most common usage of the word 'stuffer' is in the context of either a 'sausage stuffer' or a 'stocking stuffer,' neither of which pertain at all to your product. This tells me that if you used the keyword 'stuffer,' your ad would mostly be seen by folks who are NOT looking for what you have. Instead they are looking for something that is 100% unrelated to what you offer."

Based on the above hints we might have the courage to continue like this. If you google the search term "chevron," all the natural listings displayed on your first search results page will be associated with the oil company. However, the dictionary's primary meaning of "chevron" is a badge consisting of stripes meeting at an angle, worn on the sleeve by noncommissioned officers, police officers, etc., as an indication of rank, service, or the like. 
 

Now, if you create a campaign to promote your website that markets such striped badges, you might, of course, want to use the keyword "chevron." Based on the dictionary's meaning, you might set up very tight and relevant adverts and landing pages for this keyword. However, no matter what you do, Google will find your keyword "chevron" irrelevant to your landing page, because of the accrued statistics. In plain English, Google likely will think that users searching for "chevron" are interested in nothing but the energy giant. Chances are that's what historical data indicate.

In a recent ad group level experiment we used two keywords, "company" and "companies." Being a singular and a plural, their close semantic relationship was more than manifest. This is how the system evaluated them.

     Keyword:                 "company"        "companies"      

     Quality Score:             3/10                  7/10

     Relevance:                Poor                 No Problem                

All in all, we have good reasons to believe that it's not dictionary or semantic relevance that matters, it's what we should term G-relevance. The calculations are based on historical Google-wide CTR stats along with similar factors, and not on preliminary mapping of semantic fields. This simplified version of artificial intelligence is a plausible explanation of why we often see different relevance and QS values for semantically highly related keywords. Chances are good that Google has differing stats on those words when associated with adverts and websites similar to the ones we created for the keywords in question.

From time to time, when checking on the quality scores of your keywords, you may find yourself in a situation similar to one of the scenarios described above. You may assume the story is about Google-wide stats. Remember, chances are, it's not worth wondering about it a lot. Instead you're advised to focus your attention on trying to identify new keywords that are equally favored by Google and meeting your requirements.  

Hi Lakatos,

First, we have great respect for your thinking and contributions to Google AdWords Group as well as here. Many thanks for your contributed article. In talking with the team, we really like your expertise and writing, though the above poast is not aligned with the Clickable blog and Clickable Gurus program. May we ask you to resubmit a post? Here are some guidelines:

• 500-700 words maximum
• Address a single, valuable, practical SEM tip, preferably one our Gurus haven't already coverd
• Assume your readers are  SEM managers, both new or experienced, yet equally interested in your practical advice
  
• As you always have, include your intellect and unique perspective
• Of course, we're always positive toward our partners and competitors in the advertising ecoysystem
  

We hope you'll resubmit. Again, our team really likes your thinking!

Warm regards,

Max Kalehoff

VP-Marketing

Clickable

 What Is Your Conversion Value?

The ultimate metric on which to to base decisions regarding the redistribution of your advertising budget is Return-On-Ad-Spend, or ROAS, which necessitates the activation of conversion tracking and the input of conversion values. However, a recent survey by Clickable found that approximately 50% of SMB advertisers were not tracking their conversions. What's even more striking, the lion's share of account holders who did activate conversion tracking set their conversion value to $1 which is the default setting in Google AdWords. Such wrong entries result in the wrong ROAS values which in turn may lead to the wrong decisions and harm your bottom line.  

Below, we would like to illustrate by means of a simple numerical example, the importance of setting the right conversion values versus failing to specify them or posting the wrong ones. Our PPC hero is a plumber who created 2 accounts to market his services. His Google account is geo-targeted at a suburban residential area while his Yahoo account is aimed at a newly built housing estate. A conversion, or order, through the Google account brings him $250 in profits while through Yahoo only $80. These numbers represent his corresponding conversion values. His advertising budget is approximately $100 per week.

The rows in the below table are colored in red, blue or green. The colors symbolize 3 basic scenarios: he initially set the wrong data (red), set no data (blue), or set the right data (green), relative to his corresponding conversion values.

Legend:   the wrong entries, missing entries, the right entries

In the above table, performance numbers are in normal font while input data is in bold and calculated values in italics. The columns are as follows: Account, Clicks, Average CPC, Number of Conversions, Conversion Value, Total Value of Conversions (Number of Conversions * Conversion Value), and ROAS.

Above the partition line (xxx...) are the "past" week's data and beneath it the "next" week's values. The partition line itself symbolizes the process of decision making.

Below the partition line, we entered the right conversion values for each color, so that the profitability of the decision could be measured. "Next" week's data are calculated based on the reasonable working assumption that CTR as well as Conversion Rate remain unchanged and the weekly budget can be depleted.  

RED SCENARIO: The lowest red row is the result of the decision that the advertiser redistributed all its funds to Yahoo since after the first week the red Yahoo ROAS seemed to be the higher one. (0.17)

BLUE SCENARIO: The upper 2 blue rows are incomplete because this is the scenario in which the advertiser did not post his conversion values, as a result of which the Total and ROAS columns could not be calculated. Accordingly, no decision was made after the first week. Hence advertising went on as in the first week, just that we collapsed the 2 accounts into one G+Y row.

GREEN SCENARIO: The lowest green row is a result of the decision that the advertiser redistributed all his funds to Google since after the first week the green Google ROAS was the higher one (35.71).

If the neutral "blue" scenario (G+Y) is taken as the basis for comparison, you may conclude that the wrong "red" decision resulted in a very huge 54% drop in ROAS while the right "green" one in a 19% increase.

Clickable Conversion Tracking (CCT) eliminates the complexity associated with multiple tracking systems and relays performance data continuously to its ActEngine. The ActEngine, in turn, delivers you various recommendations day by day that will assist you in improving your advertising experience and increasing your bottom line stats. There’s no need to care about Gaussian distribution or confidence intervals on your part, the company has integrated and continues to incorporate intelligent features in its recommendation system so that search advertising is kept simple, instant and profitable for clients. That's Clickable's way of driving your business towards success.

However, it's the responsibility of advertisers to ensure that their input data are complete and correct. If you fail to specify your conversion value you will probably miss out on improvements, while entering unrealistic data may lead to conclusions causing huge losses. Well, have you ever thought of setting your conversion value?

Hi Lakatos,

We really appreciate your contribution and the team has reviewed it. Your post makes some great points, however your explanation of some concepts is a little too sophisticated and complex for our typical readers, who expect simple explanations. We have tremendous respect for your expertise, yet the Guru program doesn't seem like the best fit at this time. However, we would like to collaborate with you and tap into your knowledge for other projects within the Clickable community in the future. I hope you will be open.

Regards,

Max Kalehoff

VP, marketing, Clickable