The conversion optimiser is a tool available in Google Adwords which uses your conversion tracking data to optimise your placement in every ad auction to get you more 'converting' clicks.

What happens is, instead of putting in a cost per click, you put in a cost per acquisition. This means, how much you are willing to pay for a conversion (e.g. sale or sign up) on your site.

For example, you maximum cost per click, might be $1. If 1 out of 10 clicks to your sites actually converts, this means that your 'cost per acquisition'(CPA) is $10, because it took 10 x $1 clicks for you to get a conversion.

So, what the optimiser does, is reverse engineer this. You say what your ideal cost per acquisition is, then they figure out, using your conversion rate data for each ad group, what your cost per click for each ad group should be.

This is just automating something that is pretty straight forward. If you have a small account, this is something you could do yourself, and that would be better because you have total control. For larger accounts, this might be more dfifficult, depending on whether you have your own software to help you.

Problems

1. One of the limitations to using the Google Adwords optimiser is that you have to have had 300 conversions in your campaign in the last 30 days for it to be enabled, because they need a good sample of data to estimate your conversion rate. This makes sense, but is not convenient for smaller campaigns, with less than 300 conversions per  month.

2. I take anything Google offers with a big cup of salt - as soon as you put a CPA in there, they know how much you want to pay. If you say you are willing to pay up to $20 for a conversion, why would they want to help you get your cost down to $15?

3. Users feedback has shown mixed reviews - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  People have reported increasing CPA.

So, if your account isn't big enough, or you don't want to show Google your cards just yet  - try optimising your account yourself!

Do It Yourself

1. Estimate the CPA you are willing to pay. E.g. $20

2. Check out the conversion rates of your Ad groups (making sure you have had a decent number of conversions, not necessarily 300!). Lets say, 5%


0.05 x $20 = $1.

In this case, your maximum cost per click for that Adgroup should be $1.

This shoudl be monitored closely, because if your conversion rates change, then your costs will change. If you make any changes to your ad group, like new keywords, landing pages or ad content, your conversions are likely to change, and therefore so will your cost per acquisition. If so, your maximum cost per click will need to be recalculated, because it might no longer be appropriate.

Google is reconsidering its censorship of their China results at Google.cn. In mid-December, Google China suffered sophisticated cyber attacks, which resulted in the theft of Google IP and granted limited access to some gmail accounts both in China and internationally. The accounts are all said to be related to human rights activists. They subtly infer that the Chinese Government is behind these attacks.

Google is now going to stop censoring their results, and it is up to the Chinese Government to determine if they can continue operating in China or not.

I am confused though - how does turning off their censorship make them more secure? The two things seem unrelated, one argument is security, one is censorship.

Adobe has publicly stated it has been similarly attacked, but I don't hear them saying they will pull out of China.

Could it be that Google can't handle not being the biggest player in it's field, and that without full power and support of the Government it refuses to play at all?

Google's venture capital arm, Google Ventures, has backed Viglink, an affiliate startup , with an undisclosed amount of funding.(Other investors come from Google's Executive and LinkedIn).

Viglinks aim is spelled out in their home page meta title 'Affiliate Every Link On The Web With Viglink'. Their hook to website owners is "Unlock the power of your site's links and earn extra money from your site automatically, transparently and honestly.".

The idea is that you use a bit of javascript on your site, and then that instantly turns every link on your page into an affiliate link, letting you know if anyone from your site made a purchase on one of your linked sites.

Viglink has become a member of tonnes of affiliate networks across the web so that the commerce sites recognise a Viglink customer when they get one. If someone buys after using one of your links, Viglink will take a commission, but original signup is free, and non-exclusive.

Viglink won't go on those links you are already monetising, but just on those you haven't. For example, if you write a blog post mentioning a commerce site, (one of which you aren't an affiliate), Viglink will automatically add some script so that if anyone who clicks on that links buys on that commerce site, you get paid commission.

Google has given the program a clean bill of health (as it should, it is an investor), so webmasters don't need to worry about these 'paid' links being in any violation of Google rules.

The strange thing is though, if Viglink reached its goal of "Affiliate every link on the web", then;

1. If Google continued to follow those links and give them authority, their own algorithm, heavily influenced by linking itself, could be skewed towards commercial linking opportunities (benefiting those site owners who have the most affiliate links to them).Or
2. If they ignore those links, giving them no influence, any site with Viglink on it would never be able to 'recommend' any other site.

So it seems a strange kind of investment to me...unless Google has something up their sleeve regarding reducing the weight of links...

PC Mag has again run an article trying to Trash Talk SEO. The basis of it seems absurd. This is the sub-heading:

Try and find the best cell phone deal on the Internet using a search engine. Every hit is some commercial site trying to sell you something.

Maybe it is just me, but if I was looking to buy a mobile phone, I guess I would be pretty interested in sites trying to sell it to me.

Personally I think the article is just a bit of 'link bait' . Trying to encourage interest by being controversial and hopefully getting inbound links and lots of comments for PC Mag. Seeing as online marketers generally provide a lot of online content through blogs, forums and comments, it seems a pretty good way of getting interest.

But I am not going to add to it, so no links here.

However, there might be a few people out there who take that bit of nonsensical ranting seriously, and if that is you, then please read on...

The principle of SEO is to make your site rank well in a search engine. If you sell 'widgets in Melbourne', then you will want to optimise your site to rank highly for 'widgets  in Melbourne'. If people are searching for widgets in Melbourne and find your site - well that is a good match, wouldn't you say? This is what they were looking for, and they can check out your site and buy or not.

SEO helps businesses improve their profile online and expose themselves to relevant  customers. This doesn't mean that there are no 'spammy' practitioners out there. Of course there are. Just like there are dodgy lawyers, stock brokers, sales people, insurance companies, builders... there are dodgy people in every industry. Just because there are ambulance chasers out there doesn't mean there aren't lawyers who genuinely help people and businesses (did I just shoot myself in the foot?).

So if you have a website, and you want people to visit it, implement some SEO measures. You're not a bad person for doing it, you're just living in the 21st Century.

So you set up a PPC account as best you can, but still you aren't getting the traffic you want. Or maybe you want an extra boost of traffic toward the end of the month. Here is a list of fixes you need to try...

1. Create new Ads: Check your stats - are your ads getting impressions but not clicks? Maybe you aren't writing alluring ads. Create some new text ads, using a different approach to your usual one. Point out what makes you different, offer specials, and include action words. Try a few new and different ads and then keep an eye on them to see which ones work

2. Increase Cost Per Click: I know you don't want to hear this, but if you check your account and your impressions are low, it might be that you aren't bidding competitively enough. Similarly for if your rank is very low, maybe you won't get many clicks. Position 1 isn't necessarily the best, but being at the bottom might restrict your visibility.

3. Increase your Daily Budget: This is the case if you are getting traffic, but maybe you want more. If your campaign is being restricted by budget, Adwords will usually tell you. If you are meeting your daily budget, then it is likely you can spend more and get more clicks.

4. Loosen Match Type: If most of your keywords are exact or phrase match, you could get more impressions and maybe more clicks, by changing your matches from exact to phrase, or phrase to broad. When loosening your account, remember to add negative keywords.

5. Keyword research: Do more keyword research, increase the number of keywords you use. Many people start a PPC campaign and then never do keyword research again. By constantly checking your campaign performance, industry blogs, and the compeitions websites, you could come up with whole new ad groups of keywords to get you traffic.

6. Give the Content network a go - It doesn't work for everyone, and it needs a different set up to the search network, but if you are looking for a new audience and more clicks, shouldn't you give everything a go?

7. Increase your times/locations - when you set up your campaign you choose a geo location and times to show the ads. If you have been restrictive in either of these but are now after more traffic, consider increasing either or both.