Use Search Query Report To Optimize Your PPC Account

Many search engine marketers use search queries reports in order to determine negative keywords. Columnist Matt Umbro, however, claims that such statistics has much more value for promotion.

One of the most frequent questions my clients involved in e-commerce ask me are related to the possibility to gain additional profitable traffic. Naturally, such question may arise at any time of cooperation between the client and the agency, however I would like to pay special attention to the situation, when such issue arises after several month of administration. In other words, the client thrives to keep the growth rate after his or her account is setup and it seems like all issues regarding it are resolved.

Entering new paid search platforms provides for necessary growth, however we’d like to discuss in more detail an inseparable part of any promotion campaign within AdWords and Bing Ads accounts, which is the search query reports (SQR). We all use such analytics, however it is believed that not all advertisers realize its true potential for account growth and promotion.

SQRs are most frequently used to determine negative keywords. It’s always possible to find terms that can be added as new keywords into existing campaigns and ad groups. But the analysis of SQR is primarily used to find phrases and combinations that shall be excluded. However, regardless of either we work under the framework of a dynamic, trading, or Top of Funnel (TOF) campaign, SQRs can be a true gold vein when looking for new customers.

Let’s take a closer look at each campaign type and discuss peculiarities of increasing traffic.

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

DSAs don’t use keywords. Instead, ads are triggered based on the user request related to the topic of your website or to your product. Google insists that this technology ensures optimal connection between queries and taget pages. DSAs often determine a page title, even when it exceeds the predetermined 25-character limit by 10 characters (see the example below).

Dynamic search Listings

Be it for good or for bad, there are a number of uncertainties when working with DSAs. Even when negative keywords are widely used, it’s often that low-frequency requests manage their way around the filter. The idea is to have such a low rate that such low-frequency requests would not lower the overall productivity.

Say you have a rate of $0.3 per click. If you receive only 2 conversions per 100 clicks that would mean that your expenses are $30, or $15 per each conversion. For example, standard text ads cost an average of around $0.7, and they produce 4 conversions per 100 clicks.

Conversion ratio in the second case will be higher. However, the cost of each actual conversion will be higher than in case of the DSA ($70/4 = $17.5). This means that in a short-term perspective we wouldn’t mind to attract some low-frequency traffic, which can help us in the long run.

When we review our analytics on SQRs, we can also find keywords that may lead to forming new campaigns. And it is not too complicated to find possibilities for their implementation. For instance, we may realize that requests for “brown oval low tables” had provided 5% conversion over the past 30 days.

We know that the landing page is relevant to the query, and therefore we shall try to create a new advertising campaign for this topic (or create a new group of ads within an existing campaign). Along with converting DSA requests we can also increase the list of keywords within our new campaign in order to cover more target traffic.

Other requests might lead us to the so-called “grey zone”. For instance, we may find out that the request for “medieval oval low table from Rives” that converted only once over the past 30 days, had spent $1 and resulted in 2 clicks and 3 displays. While our conversion rate is stellar, this request and variations related thereto are so niche, that inclusion of such keywords into a new advertising campaign can lead to low search popularity.

Low-frequency queries

In other words, thriving to make your advertising campaign as targeted as possible might backfire at us in the end. We could exclude the converted request from the DSA campaign to create a new campaign based on it, which might not become as efficient as we had expected. Most converted queries leave no question of their “automation” as part of our new campaign, however, those providing occasional singular conversions would be best kept within the DSA framework.

Trade Campaign

Great deal of what was discussed above is also related to trading ads. There are less irrelevant queries here, however keywords are also missing. Queries that arise in trading advertising campaigns allow advertisers to assess, what is it that buyers are looking fore, and therefore create proper and targeted ads.

At that, adding text into the ad allows advertisers to gain results that are twice as good.

Advertising in trade campaign

Another promotion tool within the trading campaign is the detailed ID-report that can be found in the “Sizes” tab. This analytics shows clicks and conversion metrics for all products specified in ad blocks.

While SQR shows, which queries are being converted, detailed ID-report pinpoints the exact products that visitors have viewed. For example, the phrase “Verilux Lamps” can be a great converter, however it might be the ad that shows the product with the “VD01AA1” ID that is accountable for most of those clicks.

Top Of The Funnel (TOF)

While ads for the top part of the conversion funnel contain keywords, those are notable for their breadth as there are aimed at people that are gaining overall assessment of the market. In other words, we’ll focus on such keywords as “low tables” instead of “oval low tables” or “redwood low tables”.

More specified requests will be used for separate ads with high relevancy. At the same time, such words as “oval” and “redwood” will be considered as negative keywords for the purposes of the TOF.

TOF campaigns are a great source for new keywords. Thanks to the fact that you may find keywords you’ve never thought of before, you’ll be able to create a separate advertising campaign for them.

Let’s say we’ve found new keywords for the theme “farm-style low table”. We may decide to not only create a separate advertising campaign, but also a separate landing page for this topic. And if a seller doesn’t sell such products, we can add the “farm-style” keyword to the list of negatives or consider other options.

Conclusions

Search queries are among the most important aspects of the PPC, however they’re still not fully used to their potential, when one considers account growth and development. Here SQRs simply can’t stop surprising us with their efficiency. Creating new PPC platforms is naturally important to attract new audience. However, one shall not underestimate the capabilities that analytics of SQRs provides for these purposes.