sem optimization for ecommerce sites
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Glossary of Terms• PPC – Pay per click, a term used to describe online advertising
methods in which the advertiser is charges only when a user clicks on an ad
• SEM – Search engine marketing, often used synonymously with PPC
• Google AdWords – Google’s online advertising program where you pay only when a user clicks your ad
• Average CPC – average amount you paid per click• PLAs – Product Listing Ads, Google’s paid inclusion shopping feed• Conversion codes – used to track conversions on your website
#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• Tag Your URLs
– AdWords has auto-tagging feature to ensure all URLs have Google Analytics parameters
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#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• Tag Your URLs
– For other advertising platforms, you must manually append the parameters
– Can choose to do so on Google for greater control over parameter values
– Tip: Use Google’s URL builder
http://bit.ly/URL-Builder
#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• What happens if you don’t tag your URLs
correctly?– Other traffic sources get credit for your work!
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Best Practices• Modify your Google Analytics (GA) &
conversion codes to track revenue– Defaults do not contain the necessary lines of
code to pull in your revenue data
#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• Modify your Google Analytics (GA) &
conversion codes to track revenue– Easy fix for conversion codes
#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• Modify your Google Analytics (GA) &
conversion codes to track revenue– Different story for GA– Update profile settings for ecommerce
– Need additional lines of code
#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• Modify your Google Analytics (GA) &
conversion codes to track revenue– Great guide in Analytics Help Center http://
bit.ly/GA-Ecomm– Tip: Additional code tweaks needs for shopping
carts that live on another domain http://bit.ly/CrossDomain
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Best Practices• Why should I do all this?
– Gain insights to performance that you wouldn’t have available
#ecommerceSEM
Best Practices• Why should I do all this?
– AdWords can show you that your brand name is driving the majority of your sales
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Best Practices• Why should I do all this?
– GA can tell you what these customers are buying
Effective Bidding Practices• Use conversion columns in Google to quickly
assess performance & ROI– Total Conv. Value, Value/Click, Value/Cost
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Effective Bidding Practices• Assign unique strategies based on intent of
query– Purchase vs. research
vs
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Effective Bidding Practices• Use a Conversion Assist report to help
calculate the true value of each keyword
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Effective Bidding Practices• Evaluate performance based on first 90-day
of Customer Lifetime Value
• Instead of
Try using
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Effective Ad Copy Practices• Make sure to test different offers
– Tip: Ad copy rotation default setting is to optimize for maximum clicks, this is not your best bet for testing
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Effective Landing Page Strategies• Where should you send your traffic?
– Make sure your site is mobile optimized if you are targeting mobile devices• Product images should be large and clear on a
smaller screen• Add to cart button should be thumb-clickable
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Effective Advertising Features• Test AdWords Remarketing
– Show your ads to audiences who have already visited your site
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Effective Advertising Features• Test AdWords Remarketing
– Target users who abandoned cart or have low retention
– Upsell to users who had previously converted• Only signed up for newsletter? Serve them ads to
buy
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Effective Advertising Features• AdWords Remarketing – New Features
– Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)• Great way to break into competitive high CPC terms
– Dynamic Remarketing• Use your Google Merchant Center account and
dynamic remarketing pixel to target visitors with specific products viewed
– Similar Audiences• One client increased revenue from the Google
Display Network by 31%
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Effective Advertising Features• Test Product Listing Ads (PLAs)
– 8 out of the top 20 AdWords advertisers had more impressions from PLAs than standard text ads (source) *
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Effective Advertising Features• Test Product Listing Ads (PLAs)
– One SEER client saw 33% cheaper CPCs for comparable keywords
– Also had a 11% higher conversion rate
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Effective Advertising Features• Test Product Listing Ads (PLAs)
– Use the optional adwords_grouping and adwords_label columns to control budget allocation and bids
– By pulling regular search query reports (SQR) and adding negatives, optimize your ad groups and eliminate inefficient spend
#ecommerceSEM
Effective Advertising Features• Use Google Ad Extensions & increase your
real estate– Sitelink Extensions– Call Extensions – Location Extensions– Offer Extensions