Does landing page quality score bridge the gap between PPC and SEO?

Landing pages are now assessed for relevance so keyword optimisation is important. Pages that have little or no content are penalised and currently this manifests itself by a jump in the minimum bid required to show an ad for that keyword.

So there is now a crossover between SEO and PPC with on page optimisation important for both organic rankings and paid search. It has always made sense though to make the landing page relevant to the keyword and the ad. It’s important from a usability and conversion perspective whether or not it plays a part in the quality score.

The outstanding questions I have relate to whether other SEO factors will also play a part in contributing to the quality score. What about links, anchor text , age of domain, quality of website etc? I’ve no reason to think that these factors are currently taken into account but I don’t actually know for sure or whether there are any plans to include other factors besides on page optimisation.

PPC has always been effective for new websites that don’t have any history so don’t have many links and other trust indicators. It’s also good for one-off promotions and offers that aren’t meant to be a permanent part of other product or service offerings. In these cases you don’t want the page indexed by the search engines at all. PPC also allows testing of short copy versus long copy, navigation and links out versus a stand alone sales letter etc. Having to take into consideration what will be good for a quality score will affect decisions on what works best.

SEO is competitive and web pages can’t be equally relevant as they are listed in an order. Subsequently the algorithm for determining relevance is not trivial. In contrast the “show quality score” column in the adWords report has three values “great”, “ok” and “poor”. Presumably the Google internal scoring is something different but it’s not known whether it’s along these lines or something much more complex in line with the SEO ranking algorithm.

Currently the landing page isn’t part of the quality score that determines ad rank but only the quality score that determines the minimum bid required. Here is the explanation of quality score and landing pages from Google adWords help.

Google seems to be targeting particular types of advertisers and the majority of campaigns aren’t affected. I had a look at the new quality score column when it was first introduced but now have it hidden because I can’t see that it offers any benefit at all. If anyone can point me to some benefits I’m happy to hear them but so long as my ads are running it doesn’t appear to make any actual difference regardless of the score. If it affected ad rank I’d pay a lot more attention obviously.

More information on quality score for both the current situation and likely changes for the future would be nice. However, uncertainty and change are part of the nature of search engine marketing.

So are PPC and SEO coming closer together? Possibly but not to any great extent just yet. I’d welcome any challenges on this though.

E-consultancy have an excellent 12 page report on paid search including the latest statistics (from the UK) and the market trends in paid search. It’s well worth downloading and is free after registering. Thanks to Danny Sullivan for including it in his “day in search” round up post.

Here’s a summary of the market trends that were identified. This was the output from a roundtable which had 5 UK organisations in attendance.

Market Trends

1. Ongoing concern about click fraud
2. Increased sophistication of bid management tools
3. Paid search becoming more like SEO due to the importance of landing pages
4. Increased use of paid search for brand building
5. Marketers more savvy about ROI and starting to exploit longer keyword phrases that are cheaper than generic terms
6. Search is being built into overall marketing plans and there is more recognition of the need for paid search to complement SEO and other marketing channels (online and offline)

Robert Scoble blogs about Google showing fewer ads per page. It’s speculation based on a conversation with a Google employee. He gives a couple of possible examples and mentions Google research that people trust advertising more when there are fewer ads. Li Evans covers the story saying that it’s one that every online marketer should pay attention to as it will affect their budgets.

It’s certainly true that Google doesn’t display all ads. The blurb on the adwords home page says:

“When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results”. (The bold is mine)

The most common reasons why an ad doesn’t show are:

1. The daily budget for the campaign isn’t high enough to cover all possible impressions
2. The quality score is low resulting in the keyword being inactive because the bid is less than the minimum bid required
3. The quality score is low so the ads aren’t showing for broad matches. From Google’s help file: “A keyword’s eligibility for broad match variations is evaluated continuously based on its performance, so if the keyword performs poorly, it will be eligible for fewer variations. Conversely, if it performs well, it will be eligible for more.”

So, in addition to these scenarios, is Google also moving towards limiting the number of ads displayed in total?

In the example Robert Scoble gives, for the search “San Francisco Sushi”, he points to the fact that there are only 5 ads in total and that the Google employee claims there used to be more. Well it may be the case that advertisers have dropped out due to the quality score changes racking up their minimum bids to a level that makes it unprofitable for them to participate. Li Evans appears to be drawing the conclusion that Google is capping the total number of ads with her question “what happens to all those other advertisers that used to be in positions 4 on out to 100 (or however high they go)? “

I can’t see any logical explanation for reducing the total number of ads however maybe there’ll be a reduction in the number of ads per page. Currently up to 11 ads can show on page one, 3 in the blue box and 8 down the right hand side. Maybe some of these ads will get pushed off the first page and on to subsequent pages.

I’m assuming this would result in an increase in keyword costs as (generally) preferred positions are on page one and also above the “fold”. A reduction in the space for paid ads on the first page would increase the value of those spots and drive up the costs for advertisers.

I haven’t seen any changes in campaigns I manage in Australia but it’s interesting speculation nevertheless.

A question that comes up a lot is whether it’s cost effective having your company name and your brand names as keywords in a pay per click campaign. It can seem as though it isn’t necessary especially if your website ranks highly for these keywords in the natural search listings.

Avinash Kaushik ponders the issue in his blog and comes to the conclusion that it’s better to use pay per click for generic, non-brand names and allocate resources to search engine optimisation to make sure that the website is optimised for the brand names.

He received this comment in agreement “I would fire anyone who would spend my precious SEM money on Brand keyphrases”.

In fact there are some good reasons why you should include brand names in a ppc campaign:

1. If you have a paid listing and a natural listing you occupy more of the real estate on the page. This multiple exposure can have the effect of enhancing the credibility in the minds of the searcher. People are more likely to click the organic listing just because they notice the paid listing.
2. The more spaces on the screen you occupy, the less are occupied by your competitors.
3. You have direct control over the wording of a paid ad so for example can include a strong call to action.
4. It’s not always the case that you show up in the natural listings for your brand names. The natural rankings can fluctuate so by having two shots at it you are covering more options.
5. You can target misspellings and variations of your name in paid search more easily than you can on your website.

Brian Clark has some excellent ideas for writing effective titles in his blog copyblogger. He has recently re-written headlines submitted by his readers along with a rationale for the changes. It’s a good way of demonstrating what works.

At the core of his recommendations is the need to use the title to clearly communicate the value of the content to the reader. There are some tried and tested techniques for this such as:

• “10 ways to ……”,
• “How to (do xyz) and get (some benefit)
• “What you need to know about (xyz)”

If you are optimising a page for the search engines the title is important because having keywords in the page title is one of the most important factors contributing to ranking well for those keywords.

So, should you optimise for the search engines by making sure the title contains keywords, or should you make the title persuasive so that the reader is motivated to click through and read the rest of the post or article?

There’s no reason why you can’t have both of course. A title can be both persuasive and contain keywords. That’s always going to be the best result. I would always make sure that consideration is given to keywords in the title for the following reasons:

1. Using keywords will get more targeted traffic than people clicking a clever headline out of curiosity. Untargeted traffic doesn’t have as much value.

2. If one of the goals is to get your article republished, publishers will search article directories for relevant content using keywords.

3. The titles of most interest to your target audience are the ones that have relevance to them. Keywords are exactly that – words that have relevance for your target audience. If you don’t include the keywords the headline is less likely to stand out when someone scans a page.

A good search marketing provider will:-

1. Have the required mix of skills including literacy, numeracy, creativity and web development know-how
2. Partner with you, communicate regularly and share knowledge freely
3. Demystify the jargon
4. Focus on results not individual stats
5. Keep working at improving the results
6. Keep up to date with latest trends
7. Set realistic expectations
8. Provide good reporting
9. Demonstrate credibility eg adwords qualified, sempo organisation member
10. Have experience and a good reputation

Keyword research is one of the most important parts of a pay per click campaign so how do you go about identifying as many relevant words and phrases as possible? Here are some techniques:

1. Use your existing resources

You know your own business and you will have access to a list of your most relevant keywords. Your brain is a good place to start! Here are some resources that will be useful

• Your website
• Your product brochures, ad creative, email campaigns and any other marketing and sales collateral
• Your knowledge of the business , brainstorm!
• Your network of friends, family and customers , ask them for words and phrases they would use to find your business
• Your website’s log files. See what people search for when they come to your site.

2. Look at your competitors’ websites

Do the same with competitors’ websites. Have a look at the words and phrases they use and extract ones relevant to your business that you haven’t listed yet.

3. Use the Keyword Tools to expand the list

There are a number of free keyword suggestion tools. Put in the phrases you have uncovered so far and see what else comes up that is relevant.

• adWords keyword tool if you have a Google adWords account
• wordtracker
• keyword discovery

4. Include variations of your keywords

Consider the following:

• spelling mistakes
• relevant qualifiers / adjectives (eg cheap car loans)
• geo locations (car loans Sydney etc)
• single and plural versions of each word where it makes sense (eg use hotel and hotels)
• common abbreviations
• variations of verbs (eg learning Spanish and learn spanish
• separated and hyphenated words (eg pay per click and pay-per-click)

5. Maintain a seasonal calendar

One-off or seasonal events relevant to your business can present good opportunities for keywords in the time leading up the event. These keywords can be very cheap, and good for branding opportunities, if there is little competition for them.

6. Use all suitable combinations of words to uncover all phrases

Aaron Wall has an excellent keyword list generator that does this really well.

Search Summit was well worth the trip down to Sydney. The conference was at Luna Park and I also got the opportunity to stay with friends and go out to dinner. I lived in Sydney for 10 years and while I don’t regret moving away from the corporate world it’s good to experience the buzz of the big city once in a while.

Here are my highlights from the conference:

• The networking opportunities , I had many interesting and valuable conversations with smart, friendly people. I met people on the client side, a couple of industry people whose names and faces I recognised, and a few one-man-band type operators similar to myself.
• The industry stream: Three sessions ran concurrently, training, industry and tactics. I attended some part of each stream but found the industry stream particularly motivating and valuable. Andy Beal gave a good run down on how successful he has been building search engine marketing firms, and the steps he took in order to achieve this.
• Google representatives: The question and answer sessions with the people from Google were very valuable.
• Chris Sherman:Gave an excellent keynote speech and had good input at a couple of other sessions I attended.