Keyword shortcuts can backfire

Lawrence Jones, December 13th 2007, 11:29AM

I was asked in a focus group recently, whether Google allowed a company to put multiple ads under the same keywords.

I have always been led to believe that Google does not agree with this, on the basis that it is unfair competition. It merely drives up the cost per click for other advertisers and allows them to monopolise the Google results.

I know that from time to time UKFast advertises under the same keyword. However, we do so only when promoting completely different brands. Each brand has a different marketing strategy so it is very unlikely that two UKFast ads are ever seen next to each other.

Whilst doing some research, I chose keywords that related to our industry. The two words being ‘dedicated servers’.

Immediately, I was confronted with a marvellous example of how you can take advantage of the system. The UK arm of a well established hosting company Rackspace, and indeed a competitor of ours, was ranked in spots one, two and three.

I spoke to Google this morning and they confirmed that at first look this is the case. They assured me they are already aware of the situation and it is with their policy team at the moment awaiting a decision.

I was pleasantly surprised that this organisation, who have grown so quickly, remain consumer focused and totally on the ball.

However, in spite of Google frowning on this type of monopolisation or abuse of the system, I imagine it is a very successful method of marketing.

Effective keywords are few and far between so it is easy to envisage the fun you could have if you literally own the keywords. Possessing the top three spots means tripling the volume of leads coming in.

But then on the other hand, I was brought back to Earth when I remembered a conversation I’d had recently. We’d won a piece of business from a company and our contact stated that he felt this cumulative marketing strategy was wholly unnecessary.

He’d needed quotes from three different companies and had to make many extra phone calls to really get a good overview of the industry. This monopolisation of Google top spots had really all been a waste of his time. Because of this, the way he now looked on our competitor was unfavourable.

So personally, my advice to companies wishing to use adwords to the absolute maximum is; ‘work within the rules’. There is no point cheating the system. Eventually you will be found out and it may reflect badly on the way you are perceived both by competitors and potential clients.

Examples of the domain names and their registrant details can be found below.

Domain name:
summit-hosting-guide.co.uk

Registrant:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Trading as:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 28-Mar-2007
Renewal date: 28-Mar-2009
Last updated: 17-Jul-2007

Name servers:
ns.rackspace.com
ns2.rackspace.com

Domain name:
serverandservice.co.uk

Registrant:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Trading as:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 15-Apr-2007
Renewal date: 15-Apr-2009
Last updated: 17-Jul-2007

Name servers:
ns.rackspace.com
ns2.rackspace.com

Tags: google, keyword, marketing, pay per click, ppc
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Northern Rock plummets online

Lawrence Jones, September 19th 2007, 3:26PM

In the last few days we have seen Northern Rock suffer a dramatic loss in consumer confidence and consequently customers. In spite of the Government issuing a guarantee that Northern Rock customers would not loose any money, customers have queued in their thousands to withdraw money from the wavering building society.

Ironically the longest queues were experienced with those trying to log in online.

The biggest area where we see consumers being unforgiving in this instance is when they cannot access the Internet site to view or transfer their money. We are all programmed to expect to access our regular and favourite websites 24 hours a day.

So often I come across clients who spend a fortune on their web site and then underestimate the environment where the site then resides. Ironically, the hosting of the site is probably the most important factor in both winning new business and retaining clients, as it directly affects the customer service your users will experience.

Google keep their cards close to their chest with the rules that may give one company a competitive advantage over another; however one thing that is clear and has been apparent for a few years now is that clients investing in servers that provide a better experience to their customer receive a better ranking from the search engines.

If you are unsure on the importance of a fast site over a well designed but slower site, it is easy to demonstrate. How many times have you come across an ugly text based site that ranks highly on the search engines yet the clever flashy ones selling a similar product appear much lower? It happens all the time. The answer is Google rates sites on the speed they deliver their information.

The Northern Rock’s online calamity is indeed unfortunate. It is always difficult to predict the extremes; however it is possible. In fact it is easier to do now than ever before.

The simple way to do this is create an environment that is scalable. At the same time you need to minimise the risk of downtime and probably the best way to do this is, is with database replication. It may sound complicated, however there are companies who specialise in this type of hosting.

Tick these 2 boxes and you are some way to creating the perfect online environment. Capacity and resilience are key to guaranteeing your customers get the best experience.

So why are Northern Rock customers unhappy, and are they right to be unhappy?

The answer to this is down to the fact that their confidence is dented. It is one thing having to get information second hand via the news or word of mouth. It is another if your site that you rely on disappears. Sadly I think Northern Rock should really have been ready for this sort of potential disaster. I’d imagine they may have felt that having the absolutely massive infrastructure to deal with this unusual problem was unnecessary as the chance of this happening was unlikely.

Worryingly they collapsed with real customers however the biggest threats on the Internet come from Service Denial attacks. These could happen to literally anyone hosting a site and they are very common these days. A service Denial attack is when a computer or multiple computers around the Internet all try and log on to a site at the same time, literally flooding the network, switches and servers. The result is down time.

Most businesses who take hosting very seriously will have this at the top of their agenda when designing their network. If Northern Rock had a scaleable infrastructure they would have dealt with this matter far more effectively.

Some of the larger businesses in the UK often suffer from wanting to host their main database in their office. This creates a bottle neck in the time of adversity and high bandwidth. The modern approach is to host your company data on the Internet in a purpose built datacentre, protect it as you would if it were in your own office and host it to as near the hub of the Internet as possible.

Do this and you are guaranteed success.

Do you ever see Google fall over? Google is a company who takes its hosting very seriously indeed, and they have got quite an impressive online track record!

If you ever want help on this matter, or if you have questions, drop me a line at UKFast. I love this subject. Clients who take my advice make millions literally. It is the future and it needs to be taken so seriously if you want to be successful as a business person.

For all the Northern Rock customers who have had a bad time, as the press dies down so will the traffic and eventually they will be able to deal with all your traffic again. If you move to another bank sadly you have no guarantee that they’d have been able to deal with a similar problem.

Tags: customer service, google, hosting
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Caching in on Anita Roddick’s good name

Lawrence Jones, September 12th 2007, 3:26PM

Online marketing, where will it stop?

In a desperate race to out do their competing news rivals, the Telegraph and Business Guardian both have added Anita Roddick’s name to their pay per click advertising.

Traffic to the newspaper’s sites is so important; the media giants, who once ignored the Internet and search engines, now pay Google to forward them traffic. With businesses paying a premium to advertise on their sites it is imperative the newspapers grow their online presence. Any type of customer is a potential good customer and so we see topical stories driving the pay per click campaigns.

Personally I don’t view it as a bad thing as I am great believer in freedom of speech and with that surely comes the freedom to publish and freedom to promote. I just find it fascinating that when Googling such an amazing business woman I find newspapers using Google to promote their brand.

Are these the same newspapers who claimed “the Internet is just a flash in the pan and will never affect good old fashioned print?”

You have to hand it to the 2 papers mentioned though as they are the only ones utilising this technique.

On the other hand, if you have stumbled upon this site whilst looking to find out more about the great entrepreneur Dame Anita Roddick, the site you will find the most helpful in my opinion is Wikipedia.org.

Tags: google, keyword, marketing, pay per click, pay per clicks, search engine
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Can enthusiasm dampen results?

Lawrence Jones, July 20th 2007, 3:11PM

How often do you type in your keywords on Google to see where your advert appears? If you are like the rest of us, probably quite often.

Firstly it’s important to weigh up where your advert appears in the rankings. Are you going up are you going down? It is imperative that you measure your results.

However, are you aware that Google calculates the number of times you view the adverts? If you do not click on them, after a relatively short time (undisclosed by Google) your advert disappears!

Don’t worry it is still there for the rest of the world to see, however the search engine recognises that you keep ignoring it, so it serves you something else instead.

Very clever, but how do you check your adverts with out affecting the potency of the campaign?

Simple, go to:
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

This allows you to see all the adverts without any interference. This way you get to see everyone, including competitors etc. At the same time, by not clicking on competitors adverts, they are removed from the list as well, so it is easy to get a false sense of who really is competing in your market place.

You might be asking why does it matter to use the tool, and so what if you can’t see them, as long as your customers do?

Rest assured, Google is calculating the potency of your click-throughs and the volume of adverts that are being shown. Literally every view counts and therefore to guarantee best results, use the tool. In my opinion you should use this for natural SEO too, not just "pay per click".

Please note you can’t click through to the various sites from this page it is merely a read only application.

Tags: adwords, google, keyword, marketing, pay per click, pay per clicks, ppc, search engine, seo
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Click Flawed. Are you wasting money?

Lawrence Jones, November 22nd 2006, 11:01AM

There is no bigger fan of Google than myself, but is Google perfect? I often get asked questions about click fraud and from my close dealings with the Google team, I believe they work extremely hard to ensure click fraud is minimised. Of course you cannot guarantee that small volumes of unnecessary clicks will happen, however this in my opinion is a small price to pay for an overall effective market tool.

I think the problem Google faces is far greater and not too far away either. Over the past few years the people “in the know,” the SEO specialists have been making hay whilst the sun shone. They have been happily picking up a huge amount of new business from what seemed like a limitless pot.

Although this pot is growing each year with the numbers of users embracing the internet, it is not growing in the same proportion to the number of marketers prepared to use the internet to win business and their increasing marketing budgets.

So what happens when the expectations of the marketers bidding for a sector are greater than the volume of available visitors? Obviously the price per click goes up, but then what? In a perfect world if there are no more visitors Google would simply not send you more traffic.

There is a danger that when you use the “broad match” system that you receive visitors that are less potent. In my opinion it is imperative you remain in total control of the type of visitors you get to your site, and therefore recommend using broadmatch with caution.

More visitors does not necessarily bring you more customers. To combat this potential problem if you are using broadmatch, please make sure that you use negative keywords. This does limit the damage.

As someone who regularly stands up and talks to marketers across the country explaining how to create real success using the internet, I regularly sing the praises of Google and explain that they work diligently in their quest to be the best most effective search engine. I explain that Google’s goal is to provide their customers with the most relevant site possible. However be warned, it is very easy to make very expensive mistakes. I come across clients who make them all the time.

Tags: google, pay per click, ppc, seo, seo campaign
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