Following on from the Interflora vs Marks & Spencer case another retailer is upset about AdWords trademark bidding. Handbag retailer Louis Vuitton has lost a court battle with Google in Europes highest court despite initially winning a case in the French courts.
Advocate-General Poiares Maduro said in his legal opinion to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that “Google has not committed a trademark infringement by allowing advertisers to select keywords corresponding to trademarks.â€
He said that Google’s sponsored links did establish a link between keywords and the advertised sites selling products identical or similar to those covered by the trademarks.
“However, such a link also does not constitute a trademark infringement. In effect, the mere display of relevant sites in response to keywords is not enough to establish a risk of confusion on the part of consumers as to the origin of goods or services,†he said.
“Internet users are aware that not only the site of the trademark owner will appear as a result of a search in Google’s search engine and sometimes they may not even be looking for that site.â€
The thorny issue of brand bidding isn’t going to go away soon and it will be interesting to see how the Interflora case pans out.
Following on from my presentation at Think Visibility a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d do a write-up of my slides because lets face it, the content network doesn’t get enough love. If you came to see me on the day (hello!) this might be a bit of a recap – I did miss a couple of things out of my talk however that I’ll include below.
My first couple of slides are about who I am and what I do. I’m a big believer in having a brand identity and using it wherever possible, which is why my slides all mirror the strong design of my personal website, Piggynap.com. It’s also important for everyone to know that I work at Branded3 – at Branded3 I get to do awesome stuff like talk at conferences, write on Blogstorm and work on some really cool clients.
My work work, and personal projects cover SEO, Adwords, Blogging, Linkbuilding and Blogger Relations. I don’t think these should be split up into different jobs – I think by doing several, you get a really good overview of a client and there’s always crossover. In this write-up we’ll see how Adwords can actually help your SEO and linkbuilding strategy.
What Is The Content Network?
Skipping to the main bit of my presentation (round about Slide 9), we can see what the content network actually is.
In short, the content network is any website that shows Google ads.
So, if you’re logged into Googlemail and you see some text ads, you know you’re on the content network. If you’re on a blog showing text ads, you’re on the content network. If you have a blog opted into adsense, you’re part of the content network.
It’s a bit crazy the sort of sites that actually show Google ads. The Telegraph do for example, so they’re part of the content network. I bet you wouldn’t normally associate The Telegraph with adsense but there you go.
The final category I wanted to point out is parked domains. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone – how many times have you stumbled across a parked domain full of text ads? It’s pretty annoying, but what is surprising is that (in my personal experience), parked domains actually convert quite well. I always assumed people click onto a parked domain and click straight off again, but my adventures in the content network suggest a good number click through adverts and buy stuff instead.
Why could this be? Well, a lot of parked domains are exact-match, or themed to a particular niche. Frustratingly for SEOs they also often rank. If your ad is well-matched to a particular domain and the traffic converts, should you be worried it’s a parked domain? I don’t think so.
Why Should You Use The Content Network?
The content network always used to be crap. When I first started using Adwords two years ago the bidding and reporting was awful. I used to spend loads of money with no return whatsoever and abandon campaigns in disgust. Not any more! Google have changed and improved the content network management tools almost beyond recognition. Managing a content network campaign is now really similar to managing a search network campaign – it’s not scary any more.
You can use CPC bidding, you can track your conversions, you can see where your ads have shown, you’ll find less competition than on the search network, and you’ll find it cheaper than the search network. These are just some of the reasons you should be using the content network.
Campaign Structure
Creating your content network campaigns is a little different to the search network, but once you’ve got it right the rest will fall into place.
Basically, you want 2 main campaigns and 1 optional campaign:
1) Auto Campaign
In your first campaign, use Automatic Placements. This lets Google decide where to show your ads, so you have the whole content network at your disposal and let Google do all the hard work.
Keyword Theming
Google decides where to show your ad based on keywords you choose. Just like you add keywords to a search campaign ad group, you add keywords to a content network campaign ad group. Instead of the keywords triggering your ad however, they help Google decide what sort of website to show your ad on.
You need to choose your keywords based on ‘theme’. Use a small group (5-6) keywords, and make sure they’re similar, e.g.
‘cat clothes’
‘cat clothing’
‘clothing for cats’
‘clothes for my cat’
‘buy clothes for my cat’
Google will look for pages in its network that match this theme, and show your ad on them.
Reporting
Once your campaign has been running for a week or so, you can start using your reporting tools. All you need for this is the ‘networks’ tab – all your reports are in here. If you choose ‘see URL list’ you can see the exact URL your advert was shown on.
Here you need to exclude domains or URLs that don’t convert. You also need to make a note of domains and URLs that convert really well, as this brings us to our second campaign….
2) Top Converting Sites
Create a new campaign, but this time select Managed Placements instead of Automatic Placements. Take all your top-converting domains and URLs, and create a new ad group for each one. You already know these sites perform well, so you can invest a bit more budget and effort in them. You might want to write an advert just for that website, or even create a special landing page for traffic from that domain.
Be Sneaky
What’s even better, if you know that traffic from a website converts, why not contact that website direct? You could set up some new advertising, submit some editorial content or get some other form of sweet deal. Use your SEO imagination!
3) Managed Placements
I’m not a fan of this third campaign, but for the sake of completeness we have to include it just to use the Placement Tool. Google pushes it when you’re setting up a campaign and it actually has potential to be useful. Just like Campaign 2, you want to select Managed Placements when you create this Campaign 3, but this time instead of typing in URLs that you know convert, you can try Google’s shiny Placement Tool.
The Placement Tool is meant to suggest websites on which to show your ads. You can either browse categories, type in keywords that describe your offering, or type in a URL you think is relevant to your campaign. Google gives you back a list of websites you can advertise on.
People tend to use the Placement Tool if they want to keep total control over their campaign. Maybe they already know where they want to advertise – they’ve seen competitor’s ads on a certain website and want to match them. Maybe they just don’t want Google showing their ads willy nilly. In my opinion however, the Placement Tool isn’t that great.
Why Is The Placement Tool Crap?
For one thing, Google gives you no estimate as to the traffic and cost you can expect. All it tells you is the number of impressions your ad may get (with such vague figures as 0 – 10k/day). What bugs me is we don’t even have to bid by CPM (cost per thousand impressions) any more, we can do CPC bidding, so these figures are completely irrelevant.
I think Google does have better data about the websites it suggests. I just think it doesn’t share it yet
Secondly, Google suggests these same placements to lots of people. I’m speaking from personal experience again, but I always find that Placement Tool sites are more expensive and you need a larger budget just to get your ads to show. This isn’t a good thing.
Test, Test, Test
Just like for Campaign 1, you need to use the reporting tools to test sites, test budgets and refine both. If a website isn’t converting don’t be afraid to get rid of it and look for something new. If you do find a really good website, move it over to your Top Converting campaign, or contact the owner directly to set up a different deal.
Notes
When it comes to the content network, you don’t really need to worry about the sort of websites your advert shows on. Whether it’s a parked domain, a blog or one of Google’s own properties, what matters is the traffic it sends. Use conversion tracking, and use the reporting tools regularly – for me the content network is all about numbers. If you find a site that converts well, or converts cheaply, invest more in it. If you find a site that wastes money, get rid of it.
From an SEO point of view, the content network is a goldmine of partnership opportunities. When negotiating an advertising deal or even buying a domain, have you ever had so much info at your fingertips? In fact, if you’re thinking about advertising on a certain website, why not use the content network to test it cheaply first? Like I said, use your imagination
There are two very important things in SEO – links and content. You can never have enough of either. Adding additional content when you already have thousands of product pages might seem like a waste of time so I wanted to show you a good way to evaluate the long tail opportunity in your niche before allocating time & money to content writing.
The best way to look at the long tail is via AdWords because you can broad match and phrase match your target keywords and quickly gain data across the thousands of long tail keywords that trigger your adverts. In the past it’s been quite hard to gain anything useful from this data because Google Analytics only displays the trigger keyword rather than the actual search term. It was possible to install a filter but I doubt many people actually did. Read more →
The latest update has a screenshot which shows M&S are still bidding on the Interflorakeyword – there are no other PPC ads showing for me which indicates nobody else wants to get involved.
Ever since Google launched the AdWords program there has been huge disparity between the amount of money businesses are willing to spend every month on PPC compared to organic SEO. Although quite understandable (every business likes guaranteed ROI) it’s also extremely frustrating because organic search has the potential to send so much more traffic at a much lower cost.
This week it seems like the balance of power might finally be turning away from PPC as data released from both Hitwise & Comscore shows a decline in the number of paid clicks compared to organic clicks. Read more →
Apparently they are the first agency to give the IP rights of PPC keywords to their clients.
VCCP Search, the search arm of Vallance Carruthers Coleman Priest, is offering its clients the opportunity to retain their intellectual property rights.
The agency previously kept the rights of any search keywords it purchased on behalf of the client, but in an effort to retain clients, it is now letting them retain those rights. VCCP Search says it is the first agency to offer such a service.
If VCCP Search are right then this means that no other agencies in the UK are letting their clients see what keywords they are bidding on.
Now I know for a fact that here at Branded3 we’ve been giving clients access to their keywords for years and since VCCP are only starting this on February 19th that would mean we were the first.
However it isn’t fair for me to claim the glory without doing any research, so, if you are a PPC agency and you allow clients access to PPC keywords please leave a comment below and we can see just how many agencies are handing over IP rights.
There are lot’s of different ways to spell Neilson and every time I seem to get it wrong, probably like most of the UK population. Take a look at the results below when I was trying to find Neilson Holidays website.
The frustrating thing about my searches was that Neilson didn’t have one PPC ad showing for these misspellings to direct me to their website. The funny thing is they are bidding on the correct spelling despite ranking number one in the natural search results.
Lesson: Always bid on misspellings of your brand name.
In the first of what might come to be a semi regular feature on Blogstorm I thought it might be interesting to look at the fun tactics people have used to gain a competitive edge in the past.
The first one was something I used to do every day back in the era (2003-2005?) when the Overture system was powering PPC ads on Yahoo. Read more →
