Google Search Network Insights

Google Search Network Insights

Hello, my name is Tyler DeWitt, President of DeWitt’s Media Inc.

I’m going to go over my speaker deck. The main part that I’m going to cover is Google Search Network Insights. I’m not going to cover the entire deck. I actually spoke for DigMarCon, Small Business University, Small Business Expo, and in multiple cities, Los Angeles, Austin, San Diego, San Francisco, and a few others.

So, we’re just going to cover the Google Search Network Insights section.

Separate Display and Search

Anytime you launch a campaign, you want to separate your display from search. Separate display and search. Launch the search network without the display network. And the reason being for is because display converts at a different rate than search and you also want a more granular view on the display and search. You want to have a campaign set up for display and a campaign set up for search. Separate those.

What Is A Google Display Ad?

What is a Google display ad? If you look here at the top right, you’ll see where you can see the Google display ads. I think I got this screenshot from EHow or maybe Healthline.com. I can’t recall the site I got it from. You will see I have a little box there with an arrow pointing into the Google display ad, brand logo there. Those are display ads. They come in all sizes, 300 by 250, 300 x 300, they have multiple sizes.

Launch Search Without Search Partners

Launch search without search partners. That’s another thing that will kill your conversion rates. It is launching search partners with the Google search network. The reason being, search partners convert at a lower rate. Keep search partners off for at least a month. Do not enable until you hit your KPIs. Once you hit your KPIs, you can then test.

Basically, what you want to do is set up your search campaign, run it without search partners, give it a month, two months, three months. If you feel like your campaign is doing pretty well within a month or two, then go in and enable the search partners. Compare that data. The problem today is you can’t really set up a campaign targeting search partners and a campaign targeting Google search network directly.

What Are Search Partner Websites?

Let’s talk about what search partner websites are. You have Lycos, Ask, Dogpile, and Bizrate. These are all more or less third party search engines that are syndicating Google’s results. If you go to Ask.com and type in like dog training, you’re going to see the same results from Google as what you would going to Google directly. The issue with Ask, Lycos, and all these search partner websites is that they convert at a lot lower rate. This could be for a hundred different reasons. I’m pretty confident on why they convert so low is because Ask, Lycos is getting other traffic from all these other sites that are sending into their search engine.

Say someone is out there in LaLa land, looking something up on dog training. Well, they click on an ad that says dog training. Then they get to Ask, it shows a listing of ads for dog training. This user will be navigating for a long time and just out there, kind of scoping things out. Usually, these people don’t really want to buy. We used to call it arbitrate in the old days. What that means is you buy search traffic, or you buy traffic from another site by placing your ads on there, and then you send them to another site in hope that they will click on a new ad. You would then profit off of that. For example, Site A you bought an ad off of it, you were paying like one cent a click. But on Site B, where they take the visitor too, you have more ads on that page, and you are making 10-cents a click. The goal is to buy out Site A for one cent a click, then hopefully they click on Site B at 10-cents a click, if that makes any sense. We used to call that arbitrage.

Quality Traffic

Let’s focus on this area, quality traffic. This is where the money comes from. For Google, this is where all the high intent visitors are. Google sends the highest qualified traffic out there, more than less. People that go to Google tend to find what they are looking for and for the most part, they trust it, especially with all the reviews kicking in and everything else. You definitely want to be in this part.

Your Conversion Goal Settings

Conversion goal settings on your campaign, always make sure that you enable this. You will need it. Set it up. If you are sales, then your goal should be set at sales. If it is lead, it should be set for leads. If it’s for phone calls, then set it up for phone calls. Target the right one. And make sure your conversion goal settings are set up. Believe it or not we’ve had many advertisers that come to us, and their campaign objective is set to sales, leads, phone calls. I ask them, “What is your campaign objective?” “We want sales.” You don’t want phone calls? “Well, we prefer them to order through the website versus them calling in.” If you just want to focus on the sales, the e-commerce sales, whatever it might be, make sure your conversion goal is set up for sales. When you enable the automated bidding through Google, it is factoring up the data based on what your conversion goal settings on. Therefore, it can target the right users at the right time.

Ad Rotation Settings

Ad rotation settings, should you turn it off or on? We usually keep them off at first. This depends on if we are AB testing ads. Nowadays, they are using the responsive display ads versus the expanded text ads (“ETA”) and the original ads. They did away with the ETA and now they are using responsive search ads. The reason they’re using responsive search ads for is because a big majority of people were not testing. If I recall right, I think it was like over 70% of brands were not testing like they should. What Google did, they kicked in these responsive search ads (“RSA”). Now, they are requiring everybody to use these ads because you have to insert multiple titles, multiple descriptions. You’re basically forced to enter the titles, three or more titles, three or more descriptions, I can’t recall the exact count off the top of my head. I think it’s three.

But anyways, they’re requiring advertisers to use these ads because they convert better or because they will automatically optimize. People are basically being forced AB tests nowadays. There’s upside to that and downside to that. If you still want to use the original strategy, you still can, and we do. That’s when we set this to do not optimize. We’ll set up two RSAs, and we’ll see which one converts better.

Bid Settings for High ROAS

Use this process. If you’re looking for a high ROAS. Start with manual CPC. Your campaign should always start with manual CPC so Google has some data. Then you can move into enhanced CPC, because Google can make a better decision based off the manual CPC data. Then you can move on to automation if you want. I would wait a good month or so until you switch into fully automation depending on how many products you have, it could be three or four months. But you want to start manual CPC so you can really drive as many clicks as possible and many visitors as possible, even if you’re breaking even or maybe losing a little bit of money.

When you kick that into automation, Google will have all that data for in the previous month or three months, however long, and they’ll be able to make the best decision for all those products or for whatever you are doing. This applies to leads everything. If automation is not working, you can always go back to manual bidding. Some people like manual bidding. If you only have 50 to 100 products, go back to manual bidding. If you want to sit there and manually optimize them, go for it.

Bid Settings for Branding

If your brand is existing, you can set up your bid settings if you are looking to brand your products or services. Use this process to maximize clicks, maximize impressions. That is going to send you as many clicks and impressions as possible. It not really going to be focused on conversion, but it’s more focused on getting exposure to your brand, product, or services, whatever you are offering.

Drop Mobile Bids

This is another key element in the campaigns. Mobile bid should always be set 30 to 50% less than desktop under the device section. The reason you do this is because mobiles convert lower. 10, 15 years ago, everybody used a desktop. We didn’t really have to worry about mobile. In fact, when mobiles started coming out and all this 3G, more and more people started to use mobile phones to search the internet, we used to turn mobile off totally. It just converted awfully low. It was like pointless to have on. That is how bad it was. We just excluded mobile from our campaigns. We always focused on the highest quality of traffic.

A lot of this changed over the years. People are getting comfortable to buy on their mobile, websites are becoming optimized for mobile. 10 to 15 years ago, websites were not optimized for mobile. You’d have to zoom in, zoom out, and try to find your way through. Then usually people would go back to a desktop and make an order after they see your site. A lot has changed.

Nowadays, today, you always want to set mobile maybe 30 to 50% lower. Generally speaking, mobile will convert like 1 to 2% for e-commerce. There is a big gap there. If you are seeing an 8% desktop, you are probably going to see a 4% on mobile. Clearly, you can’t pay as much for your mobile clicks as what you can for your desktop clicks.

Expanded Text Ads Are GONE on June 30^th

This is what I was talking about earlier, expanded text ads are gone on June 30^th. As mentioned, this was a speaking deck that I used to speak with, and I was speaking before June 30^th. I want to cover this.

What is the ad strength? When you start creating RSAs, and if you are currently creating them, you are going to be assigned an ad strength. And Google rates your ad by how many headlines and descriptions you have in place. You can have up to 15 headlines and up to 4 descriptions. I want you to keep in mind, just because it says your ad strength is good, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your ad strength is good. Even if it says average, whatever it says, it’s not going to have any effect on how much you will pay on average for your cost per click or whatever it may be.

If your quality scores are low, then yes, that will have a direct impact on your average cost per click. But the reason they are setting up this ad strength up is to get people saying, “My average is good, whatever.” It motivates people into adding more headlines. That way Google has more headlines to test and more descriptions to test. Like I said earlier, that is why they created these RSAs. A big majority of advertisers were not AB testing with the expanding text ads and the original text ads.

Build High Converting RSA Ads

Google rates you ad by how many headlines and descriptions you have in place, as I just mentioned. Keep in mind, your ad strength is saying good, don’t sweat it. If you want to AB test your RSA ads, go for it. Create two RSA ads and if they both say, good, don’t worry about the good. It’s not going to have a direct impact on how much you pay. It’s not a keyword quality score, a landing page quality score.

I mentioned earlier, a landing page and a keyword quality score will have a direct impact on your average CPC.

Keyword Match Setup

You always want to use one to two keywords per ad group using the match types. Basically, for example, Cuisinart Food Processor parts. We have a phrase match in that ad group and an exact match. The exact match keywords convert better than a phrase match. The phrase match tends to convert a little bit lower. We assign the bids according to how they are converting. Phrase match is only converting at 1% per 100-visitors. Then we will set that at like 50-cents (just to use that as an example). An exact match is converting at 2% per 100-visitors, then we will set that up at $1.00 per click.

Keep your ad groups highly relevant too. As you can see on this screenshot, Cuisinart food processor part, Cuisinart DLC-7 parts, Cuisinart DLC-8 parts. In every one of those ad groups, that is the exact keyword that we have.

Setup Category Ad Groups

Here’s another example, test all your categories. For example, Nike shoes, Reebok shoes, New Balance shoes, men’s shoes, women’s shoes. This is another example, a screenshot, of an account, which I can’t go into the advertiser’s name, but I can show the brands. Simms Waders, Redington fly rods, Orvis fly rods, G Loomis fly rods, Scott fly rods. You can see we have an ad group for each category on the site. A lot of times people are so worried about running to Google Shopping Network and targeting Google products directly. But there is high value in setting up brand related categories.

You can set up a category, let’s say you sell Nike shoes. Set up a category page, which you probably have, most people do. Set up a category of Nike shoes. Then set up an ad group. Create a campaign in Google Ads called categories. Under that categories campaign, create ad groups like Nike shoes ad group, Reebok shoes ad group, New Balance shoes ad group, and start creating relevant ad groups. Send that traffic into the most relevant categories. Nike shoes would go to the Nike category. Reebok shoes would go to a Reebok category. You need an individual ad group for every single one of these keywords with a highly relevant ad. Make sure in your ad, you see Nike shoes in the headline description of the ad. That way you are increasing your click through rate (“CTR”).

Google Recommendations

Use good common sense when applying recommendations. A lot of times people will go into Google and start firing away with Google recommendations. They will apply, apply, apply. You don’t have to apply every single recommendation. Use good common sense.

Look at the recommendation and say, “Hey, look, do I need to apply this?” If you are not sure, do not apply it, especially if your account is performing well. And I say this because I have a doctor in Beverly Hills that was providing PPC Consulting Management. She went through there and applied every single recommendation. The account basically was screwed up. We had to reoptimize the whole entire account again. We had to fix, go back through there, and basically re-do everything. You don’t always have to apply Google recommendations.

The reason that Google is showing you these recommendations is just to give you some insight on maybe what needs to be done. Don’t take it literal. Just because Google is recommending it, you don’t always have to apply it. Just like you shouldn’t trust Tesla to drive for you.

Don’t Forget to Test Dynamic Search Ads

I come across so many clients, still today, that are not testing Dynamic Search Ads. We have clients spending $5,000, making $20,000. Some are even spending $10,000 making $40,000+ through Dynamic Search Ads. You need to test Dynamic Search Ads. Just don’t leave it out there in LaLa land and think that it’s not going to work. They will work if you test them, set them up right, more than likely.

The good thing is when you are testing a Dynamic Search Ad, you can set up an ad targeting option where you can target a specific page that has specific keywords. For example, if you want to target a page that has Nike shoes. What you will do is set up a target title for Nike, then in the URL structure it should include Nike. And also, you want to add another option that says, if page content has this following word, out of stock. When you set that up, that targeting options, it will target all your product pages that are Nike related. Just make sure you exclude your categories and collections.

You will see it. You will know what I’m talking about when you get in there to set up a Dynamic Search Ad campaign.

Most Important Landing Page Elements

We got the header, story or copy, social proof, testimonials, reviews, unique selling proposition (“USP”).

You want to make sure that your header is catchy. And this is mainly more focused on forms or people that are interested in generating leads or phone calls. This is important for people selling products to like on a single product page. You want to make sure that you have a catchy header, something that will pull them in, and get them to read your copy. Story or copy, however you have your page set up.

Then social proof would be like endorsements, recommendations, testimonials, video testimonials, written testimonials, third party approval from others. If you are a speaker and you attend the local lodge, whatever it may be, your BBB ratings are A+, put all that stuff on there.

Your unique selling propositions is basically, you know, what makes your product unique? What are the benefits and the features of your product? How is it going to benefit your customer, client, whatever it may be?

You should always AB test those landing pages too. That is another thing that we see people failing at too. They are not AB testing or split testing landing pages.

Othe Landing Page Elements

Layout and design, eye-catching imagery and media, keep it relevant, a strong call to action (“CTA”), story & copy length, short form vs. long form. Let’s go over these.

Layout and design. That is not a huge factor. But there again, people are not going to buy from you if your site looks like a junkyard. There again, it depends on what you are selling.

Eye-catching imagery and media, that could fall in the category of social proof. If you are out there getting pictures with your clients, you got some media, video testimonials, put it on there. Keep it relevant. Everything on the landing page should be relevant. Do not go to LaLa land, try to sell something else that is not even relevant for what they are searching for.

A strong CTA would be like, “Are you looking for Nike shoes?” Usually, a CTA is something that drives into action. A better one would be, “Order now and save 15%.” You can do a quick search on Google to get an idea of CTA phrases you can use.

Story & copy length, now this can be tricky. And this is why you need to split test your landing pages. You can use a long story/short story, long copy/short copy. Sometimes 500-words is good, other times you might want 1,500-words.

Short form vs. long form. I understand that you have to qualify your people. But you also need to keep in mind that the longer you make that form, it drastically has a negative affect on your conversion rates. Try to use a short form if you can, especially if the only thing you need is an email address. You don’t need to ask them 100 other questions.

Bad Landing Page Headers

Learn how I lost weight, learn how I grew muscle, learn how we helped ABC company grow. Those are terrible. Who cares? They’re mediocre at their best.

Here’s an example of great landing page headers. Learn how I lost 12 pounds in under six weeks. Learn how I put on 10 pounds of muscle in under six months. 300% growth for ABC company under one year. The secret sauce to 10X your traffic in one year. Bam, bam, that’s what people want to hear. That’s what they want to know. They want to see those numbers wrapped in there. They want to know the results.

So many people talk about, “Well, I worked with ABC company. I did this with ABC company.” Okay, what was the end result? Did you increase their sales? Did you help them improve their return on investment? Or did you train, like, “Hey, trained this person.” Clearly the person has to be just as motivated too when talking about this. Either way, selling a supplement or whatever it may be, people need to see the results. They want to hear the results. What are typical or average results that people receive from your services/your products or whatever it may be.

Use a Swipe File

There’s ton of swipe files online. Use swipefile.com or swiped.co for a reference. You can also use your competitors as a reference and change it up.

Both sites have a huge list of landing pages, headers, all kinds of stuff that you can use for a reference. Then you can kind of change it up and put it into your industry. Just be creative.

Landing Page Testing

Always one ad per landing page, collect 300 to 500 clicks, turn off automatic ad rotation, split traffic evenly. You want to make sure that traffic is balancing out because people convert differently at night and day. You don’t want all your traffic accidentally going into one page during the day and a portion going into it at night. You want to make sure that the traffic is being easily spread out.

Once again, turn off the automatic ad rotation. We used to say 10 years ago, 100 clicks, that was good. But to be sure, I would recommend 300 to 500 clicks. Sometimes people convert better on Monday. Other days they might convert higher. The more data you can get, the better. But there again, you just have to kind of use your common sense and look at it.

You want one page per landing page, especially if you are setting up a Google ad, the responsive search ad. Just duplicate them, copy/paste. That’s what we do. We copy the original ad and then we paste it into the new one and see which one performs the best.

Landing Page Quality Scores

Here are some of the factors that determine on your quality score. Click through rate, keyword relevancy, bounce rates, 1 to 2 keyworks per ad group, A/B test ads, A/B test landing page, and landing page speed.

Click through rate stands for CTR. Basically that means the more people that click on your ad per 100 impressions, the better CTR you have. Say for example, 100 people searched for the keyword dog training, five people clicked on your ads, two people clicked on your competitor ads. You have a 5% CTR. Clearly, Google is going to factor this in their landing page quality scores.

Let’s back up here. landing page quality scores, I was looking here at my deck, and I noticed that the keyword quality score is missing.

Anyways, let’s talk about landing page quality score. Because you have landing page quality score, and you have keyword quality score. As you can see right here, we have quality score and landing page experience.

Let’s talk about keyword quality score. As I mentioned earlier, CTR, keyword relevancy is how relevant your keyword is to your ad. And then, your bounce rate that we factored into for landing page quality. If someone goes to your website, they exit, they hit back real fast, and have a really terrible bounce rate, a high bounce rate, exiting your site within one second, that’s not going to help your landing page quality score.

1 to 2 keywords per ad group. This will help boost your landing page experience and your keyword quality score. The more relevant the keyword is to the ad, the more clicks you are going to drive. And also, people are going to stay on your site longer because chances are, that landing page is highly relevant to that ad, or it should be anyway.

Then you have A/B test ads as I mentioned earlier. If you can A/B test the RSA ads, your quality score will increase.

I wouldn’t stress too much about landing page speed. If you go to Google PageSpeed test tool, you will notice that a lot of people, even your competitor’s website in there, it will come up with 100-things that need to be fixed. That is because everyone is using Shopify and WooCommerce. A lot of times they are adding a lot of unnecessary codes. The things that can slow down your landing page are to many WordPress plugins. If you start getting a lot of WordPress plugins, ones that have not been approved and you are just installing them, and they are still active, it will slow your site down.

There again, if you go to Google ads and look on their landing page experience and keyword quality score (it says quality score), you can see on this account, they are all 10 out of 10, above average. That is usually how all the accounts are that we work on. We try to get them to that level anyways.

Key Factors To Remember

Launch search without display network. Use the right conversion goal settings. Use a swipe file as a reference. Test the Dynamic Search Ads. Building out a high converting landing pages for leads. Thrive to have the best quality scores at keyword level. A/B test your ads nonstop and build off successful ones.

Conclusion

And once again, this was my speaking deck that I used for DigMarCon, Small Business Expo, and Small Business University. Eventually I will post the Full Search Engine and Marketing Masterclass in our educational center through our website.

That should be it. Thank you.