Ex-Googler here to answer your questions...

[Cameraman]

I always said the biggest benefit of Google Ads (the ones that run on Google itself) is that we find out what people are searching for on a whiff of spend, and can dial in the ads, landing page, and offer using this trickle of high search intent visitors. Then turn on the tap by increasing bids and budgets.

I've seen you say this a few times in your videos and the forum. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how.
I need to come up with the initial keywords to advertise. If I don't hit on one that potential customers are searching for then I'm still in the dark about what they are searching for, aren't I?

What am I not understanding?

 

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[Andy Black]

I've seen you say this a few times in your videos and the forum. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how.
I need to come up with the initial keywords to advertise. If I don't hit on one that potential customers are searching for then I'm still in the dark about what they are searching for, aren't I?

What am I not understanding?

Have you read this one? Let me know if that makes sense.

MARKETING - How to get profitable or fail fast with AdWords

(Originally posted on the inside here.) How To Get Profitable Or Fail Fast With AdWords Here's how I often determine whether a project, niche, seed, or keyword has legs, or needs a bullet. Note1: I use blanket bid prices throughout the steps below, meaning the bid price within a campaign for...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[Cameraman]

Have you read this one? Let me know if that makes sense.

MARKETING - How to get profitable or fail fast with AdWords

(Originally posted on the inside here.) How To Get Profitable Or Fail Fast With AdWords Here's how I often determine whether a project, niche, seed, or keyword has legs, or needs a bullet. Note1: I use blanket bid prices throughout the steps below, meaning the bid price within a campaign for...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Thanks Andy. That's very helpful as was the video linked to in the article.

The question that's swimming around in my head now is do I start with a broad search term or something more specific? For example, do I advertise "Learn Photoshop" or "Books to learn Photoshop"? If this were on Amazon I would use the wider term and then refine my search terms based on the Ad's search history and the terms people used to trigger my ad.

With Google, I'm guessing it needs a different approach and the narrower search term like "Books to learn Photoshop" is a better starting point because it has greater buyer intent. With Amazon, people are already searching the site because they want to buy.

Or am I thinking in the wrong way entirely?

 

[Stargazer]

I'm finding it harder and harder to do this with Google Ads.

Google Ads seems to be getting more and more complicated the more "simple" they make it.

Which is why some things are best outsourced to a professional. (Like you and Conor) Especially in a field of constant change.

Dan

 

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[Andy Black]

The question that's swimming around in my head now is do I start with a broad search term or something more specific? For example, do I advertise "Learn Photoshop" or "Books to learn Photoshop"? If this were on Amazon I would use the wider term and then refine my search terms based on the Ad's search history and the terms people used to trigger my ad.

With Google, I'm guessing it needs a different approach and the narrower search term like "Books to learn Photoshop" is a better starting point because it has greater buyer intent. With Amazon, people are already searching the site because they want to buy.

Me personally, I'd start with absolute bulls-eye buyer search terms.

What search term indicates they have their credit card in hand looking to buy your product ... right at this moment? Start there. If you can't sell to those people, then how will you sell to the people who have a cup of coffee in hand and are doing research?

So yeah, I'd start with "photoshop books" related keywords before loading "learn photoshop" related keywords. (Unless there's keywords that indicate people want to photoshop book covers or something ... beware of those types of keywords.)


Get in front of these guys:





EDIT: I just did a video for you @Cameraman

View: https://youtu.be/KIOpiji1xXM

 

[Cameraman]

So yeah, I'd start with "photoshop books" related keywords before loading "learn photoshop" related keywords.

That makes sense and is subtly different to what works better on Amazon initially. I think it all comes down to buyer intent.

I just did a video for you @Cameraman

This is brilliant and extremely helpful. Thank you.

By the way, Lightroom comes up because the correct name for Lightroom is "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC".
People searching for Photoshop Classes are probably searching for in-person classes as they are often older users. It's why most of the searches or on desktop rather than mobile. I guess it helps when setting up Google Ads if you know the target demographic well because you need to make these connections.

I also noticed one of my book titles came up in the suggested keyword search terms in your video. I guess I've been missing a trick by not using Google Ads.

 

[BizyDad]

@Conor Foley ... you've mentioned Auto-Apply Recommendations (AAR). I think these are sneaky by Google. If we ever see any of these turned on we turn them off. I'd rather know what's going on in the account and be in control. I think client's would rather I was doing that too.


In particular you asked if we "streamline" our accounts and mentioned the AAR settings below.

I'm curious what the official Google line is.

• What does "streamlining" an account mean, and why would we want to do it?
• I have my thoughts on making accounts easier to manage and why I'd keep "non-serving keywords". I'm curious what the Google official line is on removing non-serving keywords. Are accounts penalised for having too many keywords?

View attachment 45863

I've wondered this too. Like you I always turn these off. For example one of my favorite techniques is using a phrase match of a term like "Chandler homes for sale" but then negative keywording out the exact match of it. [Chandler homes for sale].

I do this in situations where I'm trying to get the long-tail traffic, but the actual keyword phrase gets most of the clicks, eats up the budget, but doesn't convert as well as the long-tail stuff.

I find myself using this tactic more and more, but Google will always flag it and ask me to remove the negative keyword.

@BizyDad ... Conor is Irish. "This is gas" translates to "This is funny". It took me a while to get it when I first came over to Ireland...

I got it. It took me using Google to find urban dictionary, but I got it. I felt old doing it, but I got it.

Now, I'm sure my coworkers are already tired of me calling things "gas". I just think that using the word gas is gas.

 

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[Luko]

Hey all,

I'm an Ex-Googler who's worked with more than 100 companies both B2B and B2C helping to generate millions in ad revenue.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll see if I can help!

Conor

Hi Conor, i just can't pass on this chance to ask you some questions.

I'm fully into local seo stuff since a few months now. Building lead generation sites to rent to business owners.

Long story short. My sites target a main city, basically an homepage and about 5-10 pages about single services offered. I am investigating about adding more pages for sub-zones. Basically duplicating the pages but with subzones location specific titles, meta description, geotagged images with location coordinates, etc.

Found some "experts" swearing about it being effective for local searches, being proximity based. Of course they also offer a solution to automatize the process in the meantime. And that makes them biased.

So i was wondering how to deal with it. I'm building the sites totally white hat(no pbns, guest posts on super spammed sites, etc..). I am convinced that it can actually be useful for users(they would know instantly that the service offered covers the area they live in, without any more confirmation/clicks needed) and for me as well(i could use the pages as landing pages for specific ppc campaigns for example).

My plan actually is to just go on and test it out with one of my newest sites and see by myself. But any insight from an INSIDERS could help me save so much time testing and re-testing things.

So.. what do you think (or know) about it? Thanks in advance for your precious time. I mean it.

 

[Andy Black]

People searching for Photoshop Classes are probably searching for in-person classes as they are often older users. It's why most of the searches or on desktop rather than mobile.

Maybe, or maybe not. I suspect folks learning or using photoshop do a lot of their searching on a nice computer.

I also noticed one of my book titles came up in the suggested keyword search terms in your video

Whoa!! How cool is that? Folks already know your book and are looking for it.

I normally tell people to bid on their brand name but I assumed folks wouldn't be searching for your book by name or your name. That's an easy campaign to dip your toe with.

 

[Cameraman]

Whoa!! How cool is that? Folks already know your book and are looking for it.

I know - I'm lucky. My name followed by the word "book" seems to get around 90 searches a month in the UK and more in the US. Some of my more popular titles seem to be searched for from what I can see.

I have been meaning to try Google ads for some time but couldn't decide between that or Facebook ads. This has given me a push and I'll opt for Google to test the waters. I also need to clean up my sales page for one of the books to test this with. It would be nice to make some sales whilst testing.

Thank you

 

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[Ing]

Wow , what a thread full of value.

 

[Mister]

Hey @Conor Foley thanks you for sharing your knowledge.

I have a Google Ads account that is suspended. The funny thing is that I have another Google Ads (on the same Google profil) account which I don't use, but that is not suspended. And most likely will work when I use it.

When I want to Google Ads again, what would be the best thing to do?
(I try to “unlock” that suspended account a few times by writing a statement, but it didn't work)

I see these options currently:
A) Use another Google Ads account on the same Google profile.
B) Create just a new account with a new Google profile (best case with a new leptop)

 

[Conor Foley]

Me personally, I'd start with absolute bulls-eye buyer search terms.

- I call this a long tail keyword strategy. Me personally I like to go down the route of bidding towards the individual value of leads / prospects based on automated bidding to the search term intent, behavioral signals and other intent based signals.
- My goal is to feed my business data back into Google so the systems knows exactly what Top Quality leads look like and can optimise towards these itself. Bidding more to acquire better leads.

What search term indicates they have their credit card in hand looking to buy your product ... right at this moment? Start there. If you can't sell to those people, then how will you sell to the people who have a cup of coffee in hand and are doing research?

So yeah, I'd start with "photoshop books" related keywords before loading "learn photoshop" related keywords. (Unless there's keywords that indicate people want to photoshop book covers or something ... beware of those types of keywords.)

Andy is 100% right this needs to be your solid foundation (Paid Search) to capture all the low hanging fruit.

My strategies / methodologies are better geared to companies look to scale systems, use intelligent automation and integrate

Get in front of these guys:

View attachment 45864



EDIT: I just did a video for you @Cameraman

View: https://youtu.be/KIOpiji1xXM

 

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[Conor Foley]

Wow , what a thread full of value.

Thanks mate!

 

[Conor Foley]

I know - I'm lucky. My name followed by the word "book" seems to get around 90 searches a month in the UK and more in the US. Some of my more popular titles seem to be searched for from what I can see.

I have been meaning to try Google ads for some time but couldn't decide between that or Facebook ads. This has given me a push and I'll opt for Google to test the waters. I also need to clean up my sales page for one of the books to test this with. It would be nice to make some sales whilst testing.

- If I was you, I would first concentrate on Google Ads following Andy's process and capture all the traffic for people searching for your product exactly + Locations.
- Facebook is Social Media Marketing and using creatives like imagery / video to grab attention. Could require a longer setup.

Thank you

 

[Conor Foley]

Maybe, or maybe not. I suspect folks learning or using photoshop do a lot of their searching on a nice computer.


Whoa!! How cool is that? Folks already know your book and are looking for it.

Follow Andy and you can't go too far wrong... This is really valuable advice for you @Cameraman

I normally tell people to bid on their brand name but I assumed folks wouldn't be searching for your book by name or your name. That's an easy campaign to dip your toe with.

Also, I would recommend doing some research into audience profiles you want to target most.
Customer segmentation will allow you to grow gradually and decrease you ad spend.

 

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[Conor Foley]

Adwords was never an area of expertise for me, but it was always something that I had to do one way or another for my businesses. So I would love to hear your opinion on my anecdotal takeaways. Based on your responses so far, I think you will likely balk at my experience.

It seems to me that automatic campaigns were obviously always 100x easier to implement but always did worse than manual campaigns. I admit that maybe I needed to optimize things better, but we could set that aside. I find it difficult to see how they can be helpful in competitive fields for anything but lining googles wallets. I completely understand the idea behind them and that in a vacuum, AI learning could make much better choices based on basically unlimited data. But when things hit the pavement, the reality is that when all competitors have a specific advantage, no one does.

Automated campaigns are only as good as the data your feeding them with...

Pro Tip: Most companies fall short here as they're not willing to integrate their CRM, improve their attribution (Measurement) and use customer lists (1st party) data to optimise.

- Poor quality data / or lacking of data will lead to poor results nearly 100% of the time this is why this is what we as digital marketers do and know inside out.
- IMHO the point here is to increase leads or sales (Conversions) in a manner which Maximizes Revenue to the business at the Lowest Possible Ad spend. That's a formula for growth. Doesn't happen overnight, Rome wasn't built in a day.
- Its more ML than AI which are different but never the less. Each company is different, each individual is different, each customer too and data integrity will vary considerably.

Having an abundance of high quality data feeding into your account will allow you to move to a revenue based model which Increases Predictability & Maximizes Revenue (not just converisons / just keywords people search for).

I understand that an automatic campaign may be better at making sure only customers that want my type of product see my ad.

Actually it's more the opposite IMHO - Smart Bidding (automated) captures more demand than just people searching for you. What about people who purchased in the past, their friends, their families, their networks. Can we show them ads even when people are just 'info seeking' or browsing the web.

But what about when there are 5 other people selling the same thing running the same campaign?

Like everything in adwords it comes down to variables like the bids, keywords, audience targeting, quality rank and keyword quality score etc...

change your website and product for the better when your finger is on the pulse.

Only so much we can do before we hit a wall.

Obviously having the best converting website/product is what will ultimately provide the advantage then....

Have an SEM optimised website (another rabbit hole), what defines the best converting website/product in your opinion? I think its subjective and needs testing to tell.

That may ultimately even be an ultimate "good" for Google. But not for the business. The adwords marketing itself is now just taken out as a variable you could excel in. On top of that, @Andy Black makes an excellent point that parallels mine. It is much easier to change your website and product for the better when your finger is on the pulse.

Create win-wins in what we did at Google, we are performance based. At least I am if things aren't working well, we test new things or fix what's not working / optimise each campaign and get as granular as we need to.

I really meant it when I said that adwords isn't my expertise and that I may be wrong. So I look forward to you pointing out what I'm missing. I'm just hard pressed to see how the AI can serve multiple competing masters. (IMO...the answer is that it's because we aren't the masters and Google is).

Hey man, we're all learning here - even me I always am. Look we all have our strngths and area's of expertise at the end of the day. I study these models / systems, I test them and I replicate proven processes.

 

[Conor Foley]

Full disclosure... I've just engaged @Conor Foley to look over some of our client accounts.

Bringing in the heavy hitters...

Getting the "Google" take on optimisation is interesting (dare I say depressing?). I'm not going to blindly follow Google best practices, but I think it's good to know how the game-keeper thinks.

There's many different ways to skin a cat... At the end of the day, follow a process, test things out and see what's working. It really depends on what your business model is and what your objectives are.
- Focus on paid search & keyword driven first and maximise your results there than when you want to scale / set up different strategies / sales funnels look at the strategies I talk about.

As much as I can I'll try to "surface" our conversations and have them in this thread so others can benefit.

God mode.

Oh, and I'm secretly helping Conor not be so "Google". My goal is to turn him from the darkside. We'll see how that goes... the force is strong with this one.

Needs some work, but I'm getting there...

 

[Conor Foley]

@Conor Foley ... you've mentioned Auto-Apply Recommendations (AAR). I think these are sneaky by Google. If we ever see any of these turned on we turn them off. I'd rather know what's going on in the account and be in control. I think client's would rather I was doing that too.

Auto-Apply Recommendations (AAR) is my Virtual Assistant so I can focus on the more strategic work like building / implementing roadmaps and optimising larger accounts. The recommendations can be grouped in 2 brackets. 1 = Basic and 2. Advanced. Not all recommendations suit every business, although Google would try and 'personalize' them but as we all know systems do this stuff by default.

Through Change History - I can see AAR changes in real time, monitor them and save myself the time of netting out overlapping keywords / low performing keyword which are draining spend.

In particular you asked if we "streamline" our accounts and mentioned the AAR settings below.

I'm curious what the official Google line is.

• What does "streamlining" an account mean, and why would we want to do it?

Its a buzz word, depends on your lead to sale journey. What does it entail?

• I have my thoughts on making accounts easier to manage and why I'd keep "non-serving keywords". I'm curious what the Google official line is on removing non-serving keywords.

Non-serving keywords = When a keyword hasn't received any traffic in the past year. Why keep this? your not showing any ads for it...

• Are accounts penalised for having too many keywords?

Bloated keyword accounts make things harder to manage and get in the way of attribution. DDA (Data Driven attribution) will allows us to see how likely someone is to become a customer based on their search terms and can attribute more value to your 'long tail keywords' as opposed to generic keywords which are likely info seekers. But who knows you just might influence them... Or give them something to think about...

View attachment 45863

I'll follow up with you offline about the roadmap I follow here

 

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[Conor Foley]

Which is why some things are best outsourced to a professional. (Like you and Conor) Especially in a field of constant change.

Dan

Exactly, thanks @Stargazer!

 

[Conor Foley]

Hi Conor, i just can't pass on this chance to ask you some questions.

I'm fully into local seo stuff since a few months now. Building lead generation sites to rent to business owners.

Long story short. My sites target a main city, basically an homepage and about 5-10 pages about single services offered. I am investigating about adding more pages for sub-zones. Basically duplicating the pages but with subzones location specific titles, meta description, geotagged images with location coordinates, etc.

Found some "experts" swearing about it being effective for local searches, being proximity based. Of course they also offer a solution to automatize the process in the meantime. And that makes them biased.

So i was wondering how to deal with it. I'm building the sites totally white hat(no pbns, guest posts on super spammed sites, etc..). I am convinced that it can actually be useful for users(they would know instantly that the service offered covers the area they live in, without any more confirmation/clicks needed) and for me as well(i could use the pages as landing pages for specific ppc campaigns for example).

My plan actually is to just go on and test it out with one of my newest sites and see by myself. But any insight from an INSIDERS could help me save so much time testing and re-testing things.

So.. what do you think (or know) about it? Thanks in advance for your precious time. I mean it.

IMHO this is developer work, better to speak to someone like Andy or myself. There is certainly a way to build dynamic websites which change based on the location someone searches for but its advanced...

Does that answer your question?

 

[Conor Foley]

I've wondered this too. Like you I always turn these off. For example one of my favorite techniques is using a phrase match of a term like "Chandler homes for sale" but then negative keywording out the exact match of it. [Chandler homes for sale].

Okay now Google uses a Trumping logic so if I have the same keyword w/ different match types. Google only charges for the closest match type so your not bidding twice for the same keyword. I try and not get bogged down on these I take a different approach as I explained above. I follow the customer data and bid on custom audiences - which is more profitable and better for brand building also.

I do this in situations where I'm trying to get the long-tail traffic, but the actual keyword phrase gets most of the clicks, eats up the budget, but doesn't convert as well as the long-tail stuff.

This is part of the job and is why we optimise.

I find myself using this tactic more and more, but Google will always flag it and ask me to remove the negative keyword.

Policy has its way I suppose.

I got it. It took me using Google to find urban dictionary, but I got it. I felt old doing it, but I got it.

Now, I'm sure my coworkers are already tired of me calling things "gas". I just think that using the word gas is gas.

My bad due, come to Ireland we'll teach you real quick

 

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[Luko]

IMHO this is developer work, better to speak to someone like Andy or myself. There is certainly a way to build dynamic websites which change based on the location someone searches for but its advanced...

Does that answer your question?

IMHO this is developer work, better to speak to someone like Andy or myself. There is certainly a way to build dynamic websites which change based on the location someone searches for but its advanced...

Does that answer your question?

My intent was to ask you about SEO/Ranking implications for “duplicate” localized pages (or dynamic). Not about developing work. I definitely haven’t explained myself right. And reading through the topic I see your expertise is more about ads than seo. I guess i have seen what I wanted to see. My bad. Great stuff in this thread anyway, thanks Conor

 

[Conor Foley]

My intent was to ask you about SEO/Ranking implications for “duplicate” localized pages (or dynamic). Not about developing work. I definitely haven’t explained myself right. And reading through the topic I see your expertise is more about ads than seo. I guess i have seen what I wanted to see. My bad. Great stuff in this thread anyway, thanks Conor

This sounds to me like including backlinks is that right? This isn’t an area I specialise in or have much experience. Yeah exactly, I would be interested in learning more out SEO in the future. More than welcome!

 

[Two Dog]

Hey all,

I'm an Ex-Googler who's worked with more than 100 companies both B2B and B2C helping to generate millions in ad revenue.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll see if I can help!

Conor

Well, that's a right pithy intro. It almost reads like a headline. LOL. Welcome, Conor.

Question for you: How much has Adwords geo-targeting advanced in the past ten years?

It's been a *long* time since using Adwords, but wondering about PPC vs. social media ads for a new venture. Someone was telling me about Facebook micro-targeting down to individual neighborhoods which would be helpful for selling local services. Ten years ago, I think Adwords local (whatever it was called then) was limited to keywords in a particular area about the size of a town. I don't recall it even being zip code level at the time.

 

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[Two Dog]

I nearly spat my coffee out laughing when you called me old school.

Of course you're old school. Talk about calling the kettle black. Andy Black.

That doesn't even make any sense, but it's still funny.

 

[Andy Black]

Well, that's a right pithy intro. It almost reads like a headline. LOL. Welcome, Conor.

Question for you: How much has Adwords geo-targeting advanced in the past ten years?

It's been a *long* time since using Adwords, but wondering about PPC vs. social media ads for a new venture. Someone was telling me about Facebook micro-targeting down to individual neighborhoods which would be helpful for selling local services. Ten years ago, I think Adwords local (whatever it was called then) was limited to keywords in a particular area about the size of a town. I don't recall it even being zip code level at the time.

We can target zipcodes with Google Ads. The most restrictive setting is people in or regularly in a particular zipcode.

 

[Two Dog]

And this is how we train our future robot overlords...

In the coming apocalypse I'll be the guy off screen shooting laser guns at these automated Google strategies.

Jokes aside, last I tested this we ran into problems. Like giving a discount on one service, and having Google promise that discount in all the ad groups.

I feel like clients pay us to do the thinking, not to click buttons so machines can learn faster how to do the work to replace us...

Anymore it seems like Google just wants to give us the illusion of control.

There's a lot of truth to that. Regardless, the future is constantly arriving and there's zero doubt it's chock full of AI.

I'm old enough to remember the days of coding neural networks and using LISP to develop AI applications. All of those were a complete joke and rightly disappeared into the closet. The first time I recall being genuinely impressed was with a speak recognition system from a big airline that did an exceptional job of understanding what I saying and responding appropriately. Zero training involved by the user. It was amazing. That was maybe 15 years ago.

Since then, AI has exploded exponentially.

Accurate voice recognition, decent enough translations, passive driving, protein folding, medical imaging analysis, chess playing, Go, dancing robots, video analysis, state wide surveillance systems. Just a few of the well established areas where the machine's performance has far surpassed the creators expectations.

Although not a single living person truly understands how it works or can predict what might pop out, they sure do know how to build more of it. Followed by teaching it how to build itself even better from nothing. We're really not that far from Cyberdyne Systems, but there's nothing going to stop it. I've no doubt that the Google Adwords algos will perform spectacularly well while vacuuming the cash out of every linked bank account it can find.

 

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[Two Dog]

We can target zipcodes with Google Ads. The most restrictive is people in or regularly in a particular zipcode.

Huh, that doesn't seem particularly granular. I'd have thought mobile ads would easily track across city blocks, etc.

How does FB accomplish neighborhood targeting? Or is that just a marketing term instead of reality?

 

[Conor Foley]

Huh, that doesn't seem particularly granular. I'd have thought mobile ads would easily track across city blocks, etc.

Maybe that would be too invasive IMHO. I've worked with mostly large advertisers who are at the national, regional and global level spending in the range of hundreds of thousands of € per quarter so granular targeting is less applicable. @Andy Black is very good at this exactly.

How does FB accomplish neighborhood targeting? Or is that just a marketing term instead of reality?

FB uses 3rd party cookies which means better tracking. However, these 'Cookies' are being phased out in the next year by EU, US and other Govt. bodies. So now the game has changed... With the recent iOS 14 update, Apple has blocked FB and Social Media platforms from using 'cookies' or identifiers to track people's browsing sessions. Therefore, FB has lots lots of appeal and ad revenue.