• Bing / organic

• Bing / referral

Since Bing is a search engine, one would expect all traffic to a website coming from bing.com to funnel directly into Bing / organic, but as of mid-July that’s not the case.

Bing says the Bing.com/referral you see in your analytics dashboard might be related to their HTTPS migration.

Duane Forrester Sr. Product Manager at Bing says, “While this change may impact marketers and webmasters, we believe that providing a more secure search experience for our users is important. With this change, you will still be able to see Bing as the origin (referrer) of the encrypted traffic, though analytics tools you are using to analyze your traffic generally have their own, proprietary way of including this information in their search reports.”

At the end of the day, expect to see drops in Bing.com/organic and a rise in Bing.com/referral as they roll more searchers over encrypted (http://) search.

The post Bing “Referral” vs. Bing “Organic” in Analytics appeared first on Clix.

This lack of attention leads to several gaping holes, causing advertisers to lose money on irrelevant clicks. There are several easy changes that small business owners can make to save money.

Let’s Break It Down:

Campaigns:

Campaign settings are some of the first decisions you make about your AdWords or Bing Ads account.

1. Location: Target your ads only to the locations surrounding your business. It won’t do you any good to pay for traffic in California when your law office operates specifically in Little Rock, Arkansas. Google provides various options for location targeting. You can include locations by city, state, zip code, or radius from an address. There is some debate on the benefits of utilizing excluded location targeting. Personally, I find that a combination of the two is effective.

Note: If you imported your Google Adwords account to Bing Ads, you will need to manually adjust the location settings in that account, as they do not transfer.

2. Language: Unless you speak multiple languages and provide customer service in those languages, select English.

3. Network: I’f you’re not a graphics wiz planning to utilize the Display Network to its fullest potential, stick to the Search Network. If you want to utilize images and focus on branding over clicks, the Display Network may be for you. Whichever you decide to use, make sure that it is a conscious choice that matches your search advertising goals.

4. Additional Settings:

– Ad Schedule:  Whether you operate a 24 hour emergency clinic or a dental office that is only open from 8-5, you can schedule your ads to meet the search needs of your customers. Perhaps you only want to show ads during your office hours when someone is available to answer the phone. Maybe you want to show ads only on the weekends. Whatever your scheduling desire, Google gives you the option to target your ads based on day and time.

Making mistakes in settings is completely normal for new advertisers. Fortunately, the campaign settings are easily editable.

Ad Groups:

One of the most significant issues I encounter with ad groups is the lack of a highly targeted theme. There is no worse feeling than logging into an account with a single ad group.

1. Create Themed Ad Groups:  Your ad group is the place that connects your keywords to your ads. Using a single ad group means that Google can not distinguish which ads are most relevant to your targeted keywords. In this form, any ad in your account is eligible to appear with any keyword.

Suppose you are a law firm with practices in both family and criminal law. If you use only one ad group, you are potentially paying to show ads for a criminal defense lawyer to someone who is searching for a divorce attorney.

Keywords:

1. Avoid Single Keywords: I once hear of an account in which the advertiser was trying to acquire relevant leads for a children’s boutique by targeting the broad match term “kids”.  The mistake here is two-fold. First, “kids” is a decidedly non-specific term. There are thousands and thousands of ways the word “kids” could be incorporated into a search term, and very few of them relate to purchasing quality children’s clothing from a local boutique. Second, using a broad match search term means that the keyword is eligible to appear in a variety of variations of that term. This contributes to a lower quality score and less relevant traffic.

2. Be Specific: As in the example above, non-specific keywords can increase your costs and lower your conversion rates. Long-tail keywords such as “motorcycle accident defense attorney in little rock” or “car accident injury attorney Ft. Smith Arkansas” are more likely to result in clicks than “motorcycle accident” or “accident attorney”. The more specific the search, the more relevant the searcher. Your potential customers should know exactly what you can do for them before clicking on your ad.

This is not what you want your customers to ask.

3: Include Geographic Keywords: If you are marketing to customers in a local area, including location keywords can increase your relevancy to searchers in those areas. For example, searchers may be more likely to click on an ad for the search “restaurants in St. Louis, MO” than “steak restaurants”. This local relevancy increases the odds of conversions for the searchers who select your ads.

4: Negative Keywords: If you’re not adding negative keywords, you should be. Inevitably, searches will slip through the cracks and you will find that your ads are showing for keywords that weren’t exactly what you had in mind. Negative keywords give you the ability to prevent your ads for appearing for these related terms. For example, for a client who is a wedding planner, negative keywords would include wedding-related items such as dress, cake, honeymoon, and more. While these words are all related to the general search topic of weddings, they are not relevant to the wedding planning business.

Bonus: Negative keywords can also prevent you from appearing for searches including your own name (Why pay for a click when they’re already looking for you?) or those of your competitors.

Wrap It Up:

These small adjustments that occur when you are setting up you account can save you money without excessive managent or data analysis. Working with a PPC Agency or Online Marketing Team can help you expand upon these basic principals, as well as break down the data to get the most conversions possible.

The post Ad Words Edits: Save Money By Fixing These Common Mistakes appeared first on Clix.

In the wake of the Google overhaul it’s time to do a little Spring-cleaning of our search engine preferences. The following are the top search engines that are most likely to find what you’re looking for: Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. You might notice that Yahoo doesn’t quite make the cut. Yahoo has become the MySpace of search engines. It worked for a while and built a well-known brand, but it has since been overtaken by bigger, better engines with more flash to attract users.

A quick evaluation of the things that matter to search users reveals which search engines are more likely to continue to experience success and which are not.

What to Evaluate:

Percentage of Ads:

Personally, the number of ads on search pages can turn me off to the content. I want results that deserve to be at the top of the page, not necessarily those that have paid to be there. (+/- 1)

Availability of Related Terms:

Suggestions for related terms are helpful for finding additional content related to a topic. (+/- 1)

Tracked Search:

According to the Pew Internet & American Life survey in February 2012, 65% of those polled would not approve of having their searches tracked and used for personalized results. (+/- 1)

Collected Information:

73% of those surveyed believe that collecting information and using it to generate search results is not acceptable because it may limit results. (+/- 1)

Targeted Ads:

The use of targeted advertising is not okay with 68% of users because it is perceived as an invasion of privacy. (+/- 1)

User Experience:

The over-all usability of a search engine to find results quickly is the most important element to users. (+/- 5)

The Old Names:

Google:

Bing:

Up and Coming:

DuckDuckGo:

Upon evaluating the aspects above, I have decided I’m treating myself to a steak dinner.

Just kidding. Actually, it appears that the more effective search engines are not, in fact, owned by Google. It remains to be seen whether the competitors can over come the incredible branding of the search giant and steal the glory of the most used search engine. The most daunting challenge for Bing, DuckDuckGo, and others will be the simple fact of conversion from a site that has monopolized the industry since 1998.

The post Search Engine Spring Cleaning appeared first on Clix.