Google is ACE July 19, 2010

Google are Beta testing their latest tool in the US at the moment which allows you to test and measure amends to keyword campaigns and the relative effect of that change in real-time.

AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) will mean we will no longer have to rely on pre and post campaign analysis to measure the effectiveness of optimisation tactics or second guess effects of any external factors e.g. demand for the bid subject.

ACE means you can compare your optimised test campaign directly to your original campaign at the same time otherwise known as A/B testing. This means we will have a clear correlation telling us whether the changes made have had a direct impact.

You can watch the demo video here if you’d like more information.

I can’t wait for this to come to the UK, what a brilliant way of ensuring that we are doing everything we can to optimise a campaign and having sound evidence to back it up.

Thank you Google.

Know your audience, know your keywords. June 15, 2010

Or ‘secret’ words as one particular client of mine likes to call them, but honestly, there’s no black magic or secret formula involved, if you know your audience you should know your keywords.

A Keyword is simply a word that users commonly use when searching on the internet for particular information. If you get into the mindset of your users and understand the keywords they use when searching, then you can increase your keyword density (number of times a keyword is used on your site) to boost your natural rankings within search engines.

This is part of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process which is fundamental to the visibility of your site against competing sites online. By knowing your target audience and optimising for their journey and not yours you will be favoured by the search engines and therefore they will recommend your site above others.

Get the basics right first. Make sure you have correctly identified your target market, understand the language they are using and try where you can to include these keywords in your site. You will of course still have to use the language that you need to sell your product or services so make sure that you don’t lose the relevance to your site along the way. The key is balance.

Get the balance right though and you will generate a higher volume of quality visitors to your site which in turn will help your conversion rates and boost your business.