Starting June 15th, resellers and information sites in the U.S. will be allowed to use trademarked terms in their ad text under certain conditions. Under the old guidelines only trademark owners and advertisers with explicit approval from the trademark owner have been allowed to use trademarked terms in the headline and description lines.

Here are the new guidelines for using a trademarked term, according to Google:

Under this policy, an advertiser will be allowed to use a trademarked term in the ad text when the ad uses a trademarked term and:

• Does so in a descriptive way, using the generic dictionary definition of the term
• Leads to a reseller or aggregator of that trademarked good or service
• Leads to a seller of components, replacement parts, or compatible products for that trademarked good or service
• Leads to an informational site about that trademarked good or service

Certain cases are specifically not allowed to use trademark terms in the ad text. These cases include:

• Ads or sites that sell or facilitate the sale of counterfeit goods
• Ads or sites that primarily sell or facilitate the sale of competitive goods or services
• Ads or sites focused on criticism about the trademarked good or service
• Unclear ads or sites without substantial information

One other guideline Google mentions is that associated landing pages must sell the goods or services of the trademarked term, and in the case of informational sites they must be non-competitive.

Obviously Google is doing this to bring in even more revenue through Adwords. Being able to use trademarked terms will improve advertiser click-through-rates, and more clicks mean more money for Google. For advertisers it just means we will be able to create more specific and relevant text ads, thus improving quality. I still find the guidelines to be a little grey, especially for informational sites which are “focused on criticism,” so as long as your aren’t “focused” on it I guess you are good to go. Either way I am certain Google will be getting many complaints from trademark owners about sites trying to game the trademark guidelines. Now it’s time to find an account to take advantage of this new policy.

I thought I would never be writing a blog post about PPC keyword research with the amount of posts that I have come across regarding this topic. Usually it is something that I already implement like Google’s Keyword Tool, Search Based Keyword Tool, Trends, Insights, Analytics, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and so on. As you can see there are many ways to do keyword research, and from all different angles. Today I am going to share one of my favorite ways to do both keyword and negative keyword research.

As you may all know within the Google Adwords platform you have the capability for the keyword tool to crawl website content, which will then spit out keywords related to the content of the page. Most people would plug-in the domain for the account they are working on which makes perfect sense, but I have found that majority of the time I get better results using the “descriptive words or phrases” feature.

With that being said I have discovered a great way to make the website content keyword generator to work in your favor.  With any client you are usually going to be able to pick one or two of the most general keywords for that client.  For this example I am going to choose the keyword “auto insurance.”   After you choose a general keyword you will take that word and do a search for it on ask.com.  I know, who would have ever thought ask.com would come into play during the keyword research process.   The thing is when you do a search on Ask, it also gives you a list of related search terms on the right hand side, and no this is not where you will find your keyword gems.  Once you do a search on that keyword you will take the URL of the search result, which in this case was http://www.ask.com/web?qsrc=2417&o=0&l=dir&q=auto+insurance, and paste it into the Adwords Keyword Tool.  Hit generate and just like that you have tons of additional keywords, as well as discovering even more potential negative keywords. You will be surprised at the number of keywords and its variations that it will generate. This tactic also works using an online thesaurus, yes even for a term like “auto insurance,” give it a try and you will see what I am talking about.

Do you need help with your keyword research. Check out our full list of pay per click management services.

The Problems with the current Pay Per Click Management Industry.

The PPC management companies need to start making a change. There is very little relation between amount of spend on a campaign and amount of work needed to run the most efficient and ROI producing search campaign. If this is widely known then why on earth are all of the companies charging this way? Paid search (PPC) adopted the business model from the traditional Ad Agency. Why would we adopt the business model that started 70 years ago? It just makes no sense at all.

The eVisibility difference -

eVisibility has made a bold step to start the migration of how companies pay for PPC Campaign Management. We are now offering flat rate, hourly pricing on all campaigns. Why is this better?

The answer is below:

eVisibility is exposing the Paid Search Industry’s dirty little secret:

Companies who are paid a percentage of ad spend are only motivated to spend as much as possible. They are only motivated to optimize your PPC campaign to the extent that you still spend as much as possible. They let thousands of keywords run and spend millions of dollars with absolutely zero ROI. These poor performing keywords are offset by the 10%-20% of keywords that actually turn a hefty profit. If the compensation structure is flawed, then the whole relationship is flawed. The ideal structure is an agency that is compensated by the hours that they dedicate to your PPC Campaign Management. Their ONE GOAL should be achieving the VERY BEST ROI possible based on your unique business needs. Too many times we have seen clients who came from other Pay Per Click Management Agencies who charge a 15% management fee on a $100K budget, who are throwing $50+K down the drain every month because it would have meant a huge pay cut for the old agency to trim the fat. If you pay a percentage of spend, you are literally paying someone to lie to you.

If we tell you that you can spend more, we are not doing so to get paid more. If we cut your spend in half and provide the same amount of business to you, then we still get paid the same level.

There are two types of advertiser who would benefit from this pricing model:

Large Budget Accounts ($20,000+) - Just because you have a large budget does not necessarily mean that your campaign is going to take longer to manage Why would you have to pay us more every time you wanted to increase your budget? We feel that maintaining a large campaign should simply be broken down into how many hours we work. You will get exactly what you pay for.

Small Budget Accounts – Being veterans in the search marketing industry, we can tell you that you get what you pay for. If you have a $2,000 a month budget and you are paying an agency 15% of your budget ($300), you are going to get 2-3 hours a month dedicated to your account. With the traditional percentage based model, you will not be treated as an equal to a large account. Take the cost of management versus spend out of the equation. I have seen $2,000 campaigns produce $3000 in revenue and I have seen them produce $50,000 in revenue for a business each month. Ask yourself what the opportunity cost of an improperly managed campaign. Managing your Paid search campaign should not be any different from a pricing standpoint in an SEO campaign.

Unique value in eVisibility Hourly Priced Model:

• Know that when we suggest you spend more, it’s not for our benefit
• Know that we will only spend dollars that make you money, not us
• We will shave all the fat from your account instantly, instead of keeping it there to get paid.
• Rest easy knowing that everything that can be done is being done despite budget size.

At eVisibility we are passionate about results. We see a large hole in logic of the majority of Paid Search Agencies. We would rather provide a benefit to both the advertiser and our business. In paid search the money doesn’t have to be in the medicine, it can be in the cure.

A couple months, ago we decided to implement A/B ad testing for one of our clients for their top four performing ad groups. We would have 2 different ad copies per ad group that were optimized based on conversions. Depending on which of those text ads wasn’t converting in comparison to the other, the lower of the two was replaced. The client would send us new text ads, and sometimes landing pages, to test every two weeks. This would eventually become the flaw of the “top performing” ad groups.

A good two months has gone by since we implemented ad testing. As we expected, the testing hurt their quality score as average cost per click and average position both took a hit. Below is the result of one of the four ad groups that we had implemented for ad testing. The results were quite identical for the other three ad groups.

As you can see from above, at the start of the ad testing implementation, average CPC was at $2.01 and average position was at 7.2. When the first rounds of changes were made, average CPC jumped to $2.03 and Avg. position went to 7.3. As changes were being made to text ads and landing pages every two weeks, you can see that the average CPC and average position were steadily increasing every week. During the last week of text ad testing, average CPC hit a high of $2.37 with an average position of 8.3.

Since we have always been a strong believer that it takes at least two weeks to firmly establish a quality score in Google, these types of results only further solidified those beliefs. Once the client saw the evidence of our analysis, we were able to suggest that text ad and landing page changes be done once a month; this way we can establish a better quality score, lower average CPC, and improve ad positioning. This month I hope to stop the bleeding and get back to the good old days.

Recently Google has increased their already robust Change History Reporting. Previously, the feature let you look back a maximum of 3 months to see what changes had been done and by whom. Now the feature shows changes up to 2 years back, starting January 1, 2006.

What does this mean to advertisers?

1. You can retrace your steps and compare analytical data with the changes you have made in order to determine which were good and bad decisions.
2. If you have an agency, you can easily check what they have been doing over the past 2 years.

Here’s how:

1. Go to the campaign management tab
2. Click on the tools sub tab and find the “my change history” link
3. Select the desired date range to start with
4. Select how far back you would like to look
5. Select which types of changes you would like to view
6. View all the changes that have been made

There are many options to play with here. You can filter the changes to see more specific changes:

1. The changes made by certain people
2. Changes made to a certain area of your account

It’s a great way to learn about your past and keep whoever is handling your account honest.

Steven recently posted about map plus boxes showing in organic Google results from addresses off third-party websites. It shouldn’t be surprising that Google has found yet another place to add the little plus boxes, they’ve been tweaking local business listings since its introduction in 2006.

Paid search local business ads got a little plus box lovin’ (officially) just last year. If you’re running a paid search campaign, you know that real estate on Google is a precious (and valuable!) commodity. So when Google offers to add an extra line (and option to expand a map underneath your ad) for free, why not jump on it?

Local Business Ads in the Search Network

Don’t get local business ads confused with free listings in Google’s Local Business Center. Local business ads are essentially enhanced paid text ads, with keywords lists, ad groups, bids, and the whole schebang. They’re eligible to appear in Google’s Search Network and Google Map local business searches, among other places. We’re just going to focus on what happens in the Search Network, however.

Unlike in Google Maps, where local business ads get precedence over regular text ads, local business ads in the Search Network must compete with regular text ads based on Ad Rank.

When local business ads are triggered in the search network, the business address appears below the text ad. If your local business ad shows up in one of the top paid positions, that’s when the little expander plus box appears.

You don’t get charged for people clicking to expand the box, clicking on the actual map, or clicking to get directions to the business location, which is nice.

The extra attention you put into making local business ad campaigns can pay off if location is important to your business, like a hotel or a restaurant. If you’re in these sorts of industries, you might consider making at least an ad group with location terms, branded terms and a local business ad or two to help searchers easily find you.