Gems In The Google SEM Toolbox
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by Josh Dreller
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Already its own specialty of digital marketing and now almost 50% of
all online advertising budgets, paid search has fully grown into its
own channel. A quick bit of research can quickly uncover a multitude
of blogs, books, tools, companies, etc. all focused on the topic and
within this channel, theres even more fragmentation and
specialization. From account creation to conversion optimization, paid
search has a suite of sub-disciplines to master.
Not all search marketers have equal strengths in every area of the
medium. Some SEM pros are great at keyword expansion, managing bids
and rules, or analyzing heavy pivot tables for actionable insights.
Still others find their talents lay in copywriting the three line text
ads. For frequent readers of this column, you know my focus as a paid
search marketer has been on the technology that can affect your
efficiency, accuracy, and optimization success. I believe that those
SEM folks that can fully embrace and leverage the tech of search will
be the ultimate winners for their companies and clients.
There are certainly a bunch of tools on the market, but Google is in
a unique position as the industrys eight hundred pound gorilla to
provide technology solutions which leverage their giant mass of search
data. Certainly Google Analytics, Website Optimizer and Conversion
Optimizer are awesome additions to any SEM pros tool box, but for
todays post, Id like to highlight those free Google tools available
outside of the AdWords platform.
Gems in the Google SEM toolbox
Google External Keyword Tool
<https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal>
(Google Help Center
<http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/topic.py?topic=16278>
) This was literally an industry turning point when it was released
a few years ago. Finally, to be able to get search volume and trends
on keywords! What a concept, right? For years, Google held onto this
data like a leprechaun and his gold. Thankfully, though, they opened
the doors and let us all in. Im still not one hundred percent
confident in this data, but its really the best data we have for
keyword volume&and best of all, its free!
Here are some advanced tips from the Google Help Center:
Find keywords based on your site content. Instead of entering your
own keywords, try using the Website Content option. It lets you enter
the URL of your business website, or of any site related to your
business. The AdWords system will then scan your page and then suggest
relevant keywords. (This feature is available only in some languages.)
Create new, separate ad groups with similar keywords. We recommend
creating several ad groups in each campaign, each with a small,
narrowly-focused set of similar keywords. Use the Keyword Tool to
discover relevant keywords, then divide them into lists of 5 to 20
similar terms. See examples of ad groups promoting a single product or
service and multiple products or services.
Identify negative keywords. The Keyword Tool can show you off-topic
keywords that users may be thinking about. Suppose you sell cut
flowers and you give the Keyword Tool the keyword flowers. It may
suggest the related term gardens, and you may want to add that term
to your ad group as a negative keyword. That will keep your ad from
showing on searches for flower gardens or similar terms. This helps
make sure only interested customers see your ads.
Find synonyms or not. The Use synonyms box in the Descriptive words
or phrases option is always checked by default. (This means it might
suggest bed and breakfast as a synonym for the keyword hotel.) If
you uncheck the box, the tool will suggest only keywords that contain
at least one of the terms that you entered.
Specify a language and location. If youre using the Keyword Tool
while signed in to your account, you may see an option to tailor
results to a particular location and language. If you happen to be
targeting Spanish speakers who live in France, make sure you set the
Keyword Tool to that language and location.
Start broad and then get specific. Try broad terms like flowers in
the Keyword Tool first. Then try specific terms like red roses or
miniature cactus.
Google Search Based Keyword Tool aka the sktool
<http://www.google.com/sktool/#>
(Google Help Center <http://www.google.com/support/sktool/>
) This tool generates keyword and landing page ideas highly
relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you
identify additional advertising opportunities that arent currently
being used in your AdWords campaigns. The tool goes one step further
by tailoring the keywords and other data (such as the amount of
competition for the keyword, the suggested bid, and more) based on
your language or country/territory settings.
Originally, this was an internal tool that the AdWords account team
had for years before releasing to the public. The way it was pitched
to me was that it found organic search terms that were bringing
traffic to your site and compared that list to your AdWords list. Of
course, these terms may not be useful to your paid account, but the
good point here is that the tool matches these organic terms with the
best landing page . The fact that Google endorses those pages may be
a direct correlation to the keyword/landing page Quality Score
criteria as well. If you havent used this tool, I highly suggest you
give it a try.
Google Insights for Search <http://www.google.com/insights/search/#>
(Google Help Center
<http://www.google.com/support/insights/?hl=en-US>
) Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google
web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have
been done for the terms youve entered, relative to the total number
of searches done on Google over time. You can choose to see data for
select Google properties, including Web search, Images, Product
search, and News search (certain properties arent currently available
in all countries/territories).
On the results page, youll see:
A graph with the search volume, indicating interest over time (GMT)
for your terms, plotted on a scale from 0 to 100; the totals are
indicated next to bars by the search terms (read more about how we
scale and normalize the data)
A breakdown of how the categories are classified
Lists of the top searches and top rising searches
A world heat map graphically displaying the search volume index with
defined regions, cities, and metros
Keep in mind that Insights for Search uses data aggregated over
millions of users without personally identifiable information, and is
powered by computer algorithms. Additionally, it only shows results
for search terms that receive a significant amount of traffic, and
enforces minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool.
Google Trends <http://www.google.com/trends>
(Google Help Center
<http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html>
) With Google Trends, you can compare the world�s interest in your
favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they�ve
been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how
frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in
which geographic regions people have searched for them most.
Google Trends for Websites (default site is wikipedia.org
<http://trends.google.com/websites?q=wikipedia.org>
) (Google Help Center
<http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/websites/help/index.html#9>
) With Google Trends for Websites, you can get insights into the
traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites.
You can compare data for up to five websites and view related sites
and top searches for each one. When you enter the address of a website
into the search box, Trends for Websites shows you a graph reflecting
the number of daily unique visitors (the number of people who visit a
website) to that website. You can see these numbers on the graph after
youve signed into your Google Account. Under the graph, youll also
see a list of regions where visitors originated from, other websites
that they have also visited, and terms they have also searched for.
Google Ad Preview Tool
<https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool>
(Google Help Center
<https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=46454&hl=en_US>
) The Ad Preview Tool (APT) enables you to view your ads as they
would appear on a regular Google search results page, without accruing
extra impressions for your ad. Im still shocked that the other search
players havent created a feature like Googles APT that allows you to
see your ads even if they appear outside your geo-targeted area.
In the offline world, when a campaign runs in a magazine or
newspaper, those ads are actually cut out and sent to the advertiser
as proof the ads ran. Our agency normally takes screenshots of ads to
send to our clients and sometimes, when we run on Yahoo or MSN outside
of our home base of Chicago, we end up sending an email to everyone in
the agency to see if they have friends or family in those areas that
can trigger our ads and send us screenshots. The problem is, if you
dont use the APT, when you search for your ad multiple times on other
engines, it can affect your ad position by racking up many ad
impressions and lowering your click-through rate (CTR).
Google Traffic Estimator
<https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox>
(Google Help Center
<https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/topic.py?topic=16283&ctx=search&query=traffic%20estimator>
) The Traffic Estimator is designed to give you keyword search
traffic and cost estimates at a glance. (The estimates are for search
on Google and search partner sites only; they dont include estimates
for the number of clicks your ads might receive on placements you
choose or on the rest of the content network.) This was once only
available inside the AdWords platform, but now can be accessed even
without an AdWords account. Its had the reputation as not the most
accurate tool in the world, but it can be quite handy when you need
some quick insight into how much volume and cost would be associated
with a short keyword list.
I found an interesting post by Seer Interactive
<http://www.thinkseer.com/blog/how-accurate-is-google%E2%80%99s-traffic-estimator/2009/03/06/>
in which they tested the accuracy of the Traffic Estimator and found
it actually had some good results.
Google Ad Planner <https://www.google.com/adplanner/>
(Google Help Center <http://www.google.com/support/adplanner/>
) Google Ad Planner is a free media planning tool that can help you
identify websites your audience is likely to visit so you can make
better-informed advertising decisions.
With Google Ad Planner, you can:
Define audiences by demographics and interests.
Search for websites relevant to your audience.
Access aggregated statistics on the number of unique visitors, page
views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.
Create lists of websites where youd like to advertise and store them
in a media plan.
Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan.
For use with Adwords
<http://www.google.com/support/adplanner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96375>
, you can filter the sites you discover with the tool to help uncover
ideas for new Content or Placement targets. As well, the Ad Planner
provides a ton of competitive data. For example, you can reverse
engineer the data to help find ideas for messaging if you know that
the sites in your category are skewed male not female or 18-24 not
34-50.
Google Alerts <http://www.google.com/alerts>
(Google Help Center <http://www.google.com/support/alerts/>
) Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google
results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts News, Web,
Blogs, Comprehensive, Video and Groups. Although Google Alerts
isnt specifically a search marketing tool, I urge all SEMers to setup
alerts for their clients head terms and top branded keywords. Part of
being a great search marketer is understanding your clients business
and industry. Remember, SEM is not in a vacuum. If a new competitor
enters the landscape, you need to know. If new terms are introduced
into the marketplace, youll probably want to add them to your list.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Josh Dreller <http://searchengineland.com/author/josh-dreller/>
is the Vice President of Media Technology for Fuor Digital
<http://www.fuor.net>
, an agency concentrated in the research, planning, buying and
stewardship of digital media marketing campaigns. Josh can be reached
at jdreller@fuor.net <mailto:jdreller@fuor.net>
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