The ever increasing list of features and changes to Google AdWords doesn’t look like it’ll get shorter anytime soon with the recent release of a “related to” section in the sponsored search results.

When certain broad phrases are used in the search engine, not only do adverts from the websites bidding on those keywords appear, but below them other adverts that Google believes are related to the search are now also being shown:

What does this mean to Pay Per Click advertisers? If you don’t bid on broad match keywords then not much, other than more competitors will now appear within the results. According to Google the adverts are being served on “relevant broad match keywords”, so make use of your negative keywords if you don’t want your ads to show within the “related to” section.

Google has built its success on providing people with relevant results to specific keywords that they search with. While this experiment may at first seem like a ittle change, it's another step away from Google being a search engine and another where it tries to interpret what person really mean. With these new "related to" AdWords enhancements and other recent changes at Google, we are in for an interesting time.

If you run a Pay Per Click account and would like an experienced Pay Per Click consultant to go over these changes with you then call Liberty on 029 2076 6467. 

Howells Solicitors is one of the five largest law firms in Wales, specialising in residential and commercial property conveyancing as well as various legal services for businesses and individuals. The firm approached Liberty at the end of 2009 to discuss how we could help them become a market leader online.

The problem

Howells was not appearing on the first page of the search engines for any of its keywords and was receiving very little website traffic. The number of enquiries being generated by the site was only a couple a month and this needed to improve dramatically.

The solution

We offered an intensive online marketing strategy which included:

- Pay Per Click adverts on Google AdWords
- SEO copywriting, where we re-wrote sections of their site to better incorporate keywords
- Inbound links were built to their site from other legal resources
- Google Local listings were set up for their five offices

The result

Within a few days their site started climbing the search engines and within a month traffic had more than doubled. The website can now be found on the front page of Google for hundreds of local keywords, including “solicitors Cardiff” and “Solicitors South Wales” but also many national terms, such as “commercial lease solicitor” and “lease solicitors”.

These results, along with a controlled Pay Per Click spend have meant that now, six months on, traffic is still rising each month and there are numerous online enquiries each day.

Testimonial

“From working closely with the team at Liberty Marketing, we have found that Search Engine Optimisation is a brilliant tool for increasing our enquiries and a lot more cost effective than previous print campaigns that we have undertaken. We specialise in several legal areas of law and have found that Liberty can deliver enquiries to us through our website in all areas. We also have the ability to target specific areas that we would like to concentrate on with minimum fuss. The website is now a brilliant tool to use to gain business.”

Tristan Lewis, Business Development Manager, Howells Solicitors

It looks like Google has listened to recent feedback that many Pay Per Click account managers, including ourselves, have passed on regarding the quality of broad match in AdWords. For a while now we have been concerned with the way Google uses broad match keywords as many clients have been appearing for totally unrelated terms, due to Google believing the words were related. An example being a Solicitor client of ours bidding on the broad match keywords “immigration lawyer” and appearing for the search query “homeoffice”.

In the interest of only exposing clients to traffic that is relevant, we have started shying away from broad match and sticking more with “phrase” and [exact] match terms. Either that or spend half our time adding in scores of negative keywords. This might not be needed now, as Google has announced the introduction of ‘modified broad match’ on its blog, here.

By placing a + sign in front of the words, you can now tell AdWords to only show your advert for very closely related searches. The blog post states that “close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren't considered close variants”.

This is a big step in the right direction and something we look forward to working with.

A client of ours just received an email with the subject "Google AdWords: Ads stopped running", which looked like it was a warning from Google:

In case the picture is hard to see, the message within the email is:

Hello,

Your Google Adwords Account has stopped running this morning.

Some of the ads have stopped running today (Monday, 12 April 2010).

If you want to get your ad back up and running you need to optimize the campaign to improve the CTR. The link below has some helpful tips, but, in a nutshell, you need to look at your keywords and your ad text. Make sure your keywords are jighly relevant and then make sure that each keyword in the ad group makes sense in terms of the ad text associated with this ad group (usually this means you need to create more ad groups with a smaller number of keywords). Having a tight connection between keywords and ad text helps improve CTR, which should fix your problem. 

Click here to get your ads back up.

Please note: if you do not verify the status of your account and notify us if your ads do not appear online, we cannot help you.

The spelling errors and grammatical issues didn’t really convince us that this was Google and after a few seconds of investigation we were right. When the mouse hovered over the link it tried sending us to adwords.google-rs.com.

Whilst phishing emails like this one certainly aren’t new, they aren’t that common in the Pay Per Click world and this is one to watch out for. This particular client had their account temporarily suspended by Google last week due to “potential unauthorised access to this account”! A coincidence?

2009 was a landmark year for online marketing. The first six months of the year saw online ad spend overtake television to become the UK’s largest advertising sector for the first time. It was predicted that this trend would continue into 2010.

A recent report from the Internet Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre, has found that online ad spend in 2009 went on to surpass predictions, reaching £3.5 billion (a total increase in spend of 4.2% over the year). Online advertising has continued strengthening its position as the largest advertising sector into 2010 and has proven itself not to be just a blip, caused by recession-hit companies looking for cheaper ways to advertise, as was suggested by some academics in 2009.

The report shows that spend on paid search (Pay Per Click advertising) rose by 9.5% to £2.15bn in 2009. One of the consequences of this increase is that businesses using Google AdWords and MSN Adcenter to market a business are now competing against more bidders for advert positions and clicks.

One of the most surprising results from the report was the 140% increase in video advertising. This is partly due to companies using the internet to distribute their television adverts and also due to many hoping that a video released on the internet may go “viral”.

The increase in online advertising is thought to be due to the changing habits of UK citizens. The Internet is increasingly becoming a vital part of 21st century life and people are spending more time surfing. The changes in consumer habits towards mainstream Internet use has resulted in innovative marketing from companies that have had to re-think the way they advertise. As the results of the study show, many companies are completely restructuring their advertising strategies to include far more online advertising and turning their backs on the increasingly expensive, hard to track, traditional means of promotion.

TimberTech Products Ltd, a composite garden decking supplier, approached their new website developer in late 2009, seeking assistance with their Google AdWords campaign.

The Pay Per Click advertising was being managed by another company but TimberTech wanted to improve the return on investment. The website developer brought in Liberty to assist in setting up the campaign.

Within a few hours of the Pay Per Click ads being re-worked, the levels of traffic showed a dramatic improvement. In fact, for the exact same daily spend, traffic was up over 50% and the quality of traffic was noticeable improved.

The changes meant that the number of sales enquiries saw a real jump and Liberty was brought in to help manage the campaigns each month to keep the adverts working as hard as they can.

The business has attributed its impressive recent growth to the Google Adverts and is currently seeing a large uplift in monthly sales!

“We would like to say thanks to the team at Liberty for their advice and assistance. Our website enquiries have grown significantly and we are enjoying more sales than ever before. We are more than happy to recommend them to any business needing Pay Per Click advertising management and SEO advice.”

 - Jason Cole, Managing Director, Timbertech Products Ltd

Outsourced Pay Per Click management from only £99 a month

If you run Pay Per Click advertising or outsource this to another agency then why not speak to Liberty? We can reconfigure your campaigns so that they work a lot harder and manage them each month so that your site enjoys the maximum traffic for the minimum spend.

We have a track record in running hugely successful  Pay Per Click advertising campaigns on the Google AdWords and Microsoft Adcenter systems. With our fees starting at only £99 per month (plus VAT) there really is no need to manage your adverts in-house.

JW Civils, a leading driveway and patio business in Cardiff, came to Liberty in late January looking for someone to set-up and manage Google AdWords pay per click adverts. The company wanted more enquiries for concrete and tarmac driveways throughout South Wales and believed that advertising on Google could be a cost effective way of getting them.

After setting up a few adverts for the company we checked with them and found out that within a fortnight, they’d already won new business in excess of £10,000! What makes this more impressive is the fact that the amount spent on clicks was yet to break £40! In fact, the return on the investment is currently running at 280:1.

The huge return has meant that the business is now looking to advertise more online and try and get their website to rise in the natural rankings of the search engines too. “I am delighted” commented owner, Jason Wilcock.

Competitively priced, professionally managed Pay Per Click advertising

These types of results aren't that rare. Pay per click advertising can bring in instant traffic and enquiries for very little investment, though to generate a ROI as high as this, they should be managed by a company that understands the system.

You can outsourced the hassle of creating and running PPC campaigns from only £99 (+ VAT) a month. Using Liberty Marketing means your account will be run by an experienced online advertiser who holds the Qualified Google Advertising Professional certificate.

Interested in exploring Google AdWords? Then call us on 029 2076 6467 to find out more

Even though the website for My Branded Merchandise was launched only four weeks ago, it has already issued quotes in excess of £130,000 and started making thousands of pounds worth of sales. These figures are amazing when you consider the amount spent on clicks has yet to break the £100 mark!

This exceptional return on investment has been due to the Pay Per Click advertising campaigns that we set up on the Google Adwords system. We created and now manage a number of targeted adverts that bring in a lot of high quality traffic to the site for a very small investment.

Instant, low-cost, high-quality traffic

Within hours of the site being launched, it started receiving visitors and within a day it started to receive enquiries and requests for quotations.

A few of the enquiries so far have included:

- A central London advertising agency that wanted branded slippers for a client
- A pharmaceutical company that needed branded mugs
- A council that needed their logo on USB memory sticks
- A software company that wanted branded pens to hand out at a conference

My Branded Merchandise is rare in the promotional products industry, as it is a website that can take orders and process payments online. Most competing websites are unable to do this due to the complexities of the order and personalisation process.

Click here to visit the website.

Outsourced Pay Per Click management from only £99 a month

If you are interested in Pay Per Click advertising, then speak to us about setting up and managing campaigns on your behalf. Your account will be run by an experienced online advertiser that holds the Qualified Google Advertising Professional certificate. Our services start at only £99 per month (plus VAT) so there really is no need for you to spend lots of time and energy learning Pay Per Click and running campaigns in-house.

The Lincoln House Hotel is a stylish and well respected bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Cardiff city centre. The management of the hotel approached Liberty Marketing in early 2009 looking to increase the number of enquiries and bookings, which had been falling since the start of the economic downturn. Together we agreed on an online marketing and search engine optimisation strategy which could be rolled out over the course of the year.
 
How did we improve their online marketing?
 
SEO advice & copywriting - The hotel was having a new website designed so we helped by advising on keywords to target and re-wrote elements of their site so that the chosen keywords were used in a stronger way.
 
Pay Per Click advertising - A small Pay Per Click advertising campaign was set up on the Google Adwords system to bring in quick traffic and enquiries at a low cost, while the SEO elements were being worked on.
 
Advertising advice & link building - We started reviewing other websites in the travel and accommodation industry to see which were worth advertising on and which would be useful to seek inbound links from. This was done so that the search engines take the site more seriously as well as to bring in quality traffic.

How has this helped the Lincoln House Hotel?
 
Online marketing has now become a core part of the hotel's marketing strategy. The search engines are paying attention to the site a lot more than before, with Google now showing it on the first page for keywords such as "bed and breakfast Cardiff", which it used to be on the 3rd page for. This has meant that website traffic has been rising month on month and the site now receives a few thousand visitors each month.
 
"We would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at Liberty Marketing Ltd for all the work you have done promoting our web site. During the deepest recession this country has ever had we have had an increase in enquiries and bookings and have maintained our turnover of previous years" - Kathy Howard, Lincoln House Hotel

Small business advertisers are investing more money in online advertising even though overall advertising budgets have been reduced, a recent report has shown.

The latest edition of the Local Commerce Monitor study by The Kelsey Group and ConStat has revealed that while small businesses have spent less overall on advertising than this time last year, they have increased their spending on online/digital advertising in the past year. In fact, for the first time ever, online media has overtaken traditional media in the way that small businesses are choosing to invest their advertising funds.

According to the report, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the US decreased general advertising spending by 23.5% from August 2008 to August 2009. Of the total advertising undertaken by SMBs, online advertising rose from 22% to 36.8% over the same period. Over 300 SMBs were surveyed in total.

The overall reduction in advertising expenditure can easily be attributed to the ongoing economic downturn, with businesses worldwide trying to cut unnecessary costs and limit their spending.

So why the big increase in online marketing?

Apart from the ever-growing popularity of the Internet, particularly in Web 2.0 and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, many avenues of online advertising can be tracked for increased value. For instance, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns can be reviewed and amended according to their level of success, providing the advertiser with more flexibility and assurance in how they spend their budget and how their adverts are seen by their target market. Organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) may be more of a long-term strategy, but it, too, can be monitored in order to analyse its worth and success. In any case, observing prospects and conversions is certainly easier to manage through online advertising than through other mediums, such as print or television advertising.

Incidentally, the report found that in the last twelve months, more SMBs are using PPC and SEO as part of their online marketing campaigns. With the large increase in online advertising spending and with BBC News reporting today that the current recession may finally be coming to a welcome end in the UK, it will be interesting to see the progress and presence of online/digital marketing twelve months from now.