I think that Google Checkout has some way to go before it is a popular as Paypal.

But regardless if anyone actually uses it as payment option on your eCommerce site or not, the fact remains, that if you are running a Google AdWords campaign, and you link your AdWords and Checkout accounts, then you get a nice shiny Google Checkout badge attached to all your AdWords adverts (on Google search results in the UK if you you signed up for a Google Checkout account in the UK).

Google say that this can increase Click Through Rate by 10%.

This means that you should be able to make 10% more sales without having to pay any extra money for each sale (whether you use CPC bidding or CPA bidding).

But is it true, or are Google exaggerating just a little bit?

Well, I can confirm after trying this out, and with with some fairly large campaigns that CTR has increased by 10.3%!

Also, if you have a Google shopping feed (and you should), then you also get a nifty little Google checkout symbol beside all of your items in the Google Shopping listings, and a ‘Seller Ratings’ link, which has to help at least a little bit as well (unless you have terrible customer service)…

If anyone would any further info on any of these things, then please leave a comment.

Thanks!

Jordan McClements, owner of PPCNI.com, today took the Google AdWords Search Advertising Advanced exam, and scored 98%…

This means (I think) that PPCNI is the first Google AdWords certified partner in Northern Ireland!

(Certified AdWords Partner logo to follow within a few days once Google actually make it available to me)

Update – it has finally arrived!:-

PPCNI is the first company in Northern Ireland to attain Google AdWords Certified Partner status.

So, overall costs for me were  £8.17, which brought in 3 enquiries and one new customer (from Belfast).

My return on investment for these campaigns was 4284%.

The amount of time I spent monitoring and tweaking these campaigns during March was approximately 10 minutes.

That’s a return on my time and money that I’m pretty happy with.

As an aside, I have cut back on my spend in the Republic of Ireland, but only because in my line of business, face to face meetings are usually required…

Looks like it is happening sooner rather than later (at least in the USA anyway)…

Not only do none of these companies realise that no-one in N.Ireland can use their services to switch energy provider*, but some of them specifically geo target “Northern Ireland”!

As an aside, it is nice to see that while I am signed in to my Google account that Google realises that I am ‘Northern Irish’ even though my IP address is English (this is definitely a sign of things to come)…

*(Someone correct me if I’m wrong – but I think you can only switch if you are a business user? – I am not 100% sure as I can find very little about it on the internet)

BUT – what if you don’t take a backup, then increase bids by 20%, upload your changes and then change your mind?

How do you change your bids back to exactly what they were?

Here is a wee spreadsheet I knocked up that does the calculation for you…

precentage-increase-decrease.xls

Please bear in mind that I am very far from being an expert in MS Excel, and while it does work the other way round (getting back to the original bids after decreasing by a percentage) the wording is a bit confusing i.e. a decrease of -25% actually means an increase of 25%.

NB – this spreadsheet can also be used for a multitude of other uses e.g. if you accidentally change all the prices on your eCommerce system by a certain percentage and want to get back to exactly the original prices…

Maybe a similar spreadsheet exists tot his exists elsewhere on the internet, but when I searched on Google I was not able to find one within 15 minutes so I created my own.

If anyone finds this useful, please let me know!

Thanks!

In the real world, you’ll probably have a web site which is fairly new and is not getting a huge amount of traffic yet.

This is where Pay Per Click (PPC) comes in.*

There are 3 major Search Engines in the UK & Ireland.

Google (roughly 90% of the market)
Yahoo (roughly 6% of the market)
Bing  (roughly 4% of the market)

Lets ignore Yahoo and Bing for the time being, and concentrate on…

Google AdWords

In a nutshell, Google AdWords gets you new customers through your web site by targeting people searching for your product or service. It also allows you to easily measure your Return On Investment.

If you have a reasonable level of technical knowledge, and fancy setting up your own Google Adwords campaign – Don’t. Please read (at least twice) – Google AdWords For Dummies by Howie Jacobson.

Then find a free voucher code for your new AdWords account (There are millions of these floating around, and you should be able to find one for at least £50, meaning that your first £50 of clicks are free).

You can do all this yourself, but if you do not have the time or the patience to set up your own Google AdWords campaign, then just pay someone who knows what they are doing…

How do you get the right person to set up your AdWords campaign?

Ask:

• Are you qualified?
• Can you refer me to satisfied clients of yours?

Now, I know I am biased (because I am qualified Google Advertising Professional), and it is true that someone might not be qualified, and still be the most talented Pay Per Click specialist in the entire world – but on balance, I would chose someone with the qualification.

If you get someone who knows what they are doing to handle your campaign, then you can skip the rest of this article!

If you still want to have a bash at it yourself, then….. (After reading ‘AdWords For Dummies’) have a look at the following tools:-

http://www.google.co.uk/adwords/learningcenter/index.html

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

http://www.google.com/analytics/

http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

http://www.google.com/adwords/conversionoptimizer/

https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Then…

Make sure your web site is as good as it can be.  The Website Optimizer link above can help with this.  Simple changes to your web site can increase ‘conversions’ by 100%!

e.g. Make a contact form much more user friendly, and you can get twice as many leads from the same Pay Per Click spend!

Make sure you measure everything!  Set up and *use* Google Analytics on your site (as well as AdWords reporting).

If you have an eCommerce site, make sure your shopping cart passes data to AdWords and Analytics.  This way you will be able to see (almost) exactly what your return on investment is for individual AdWords adverts and keywords, and which traffic sources are worth most to you.

You might find that on average that :-

• A visitor from Bing is worth twice as much to you as one from Google.
• A visitor from Pay Per Click adverts is worth twice as much as one from the natural (free) Search Engine results.
• A visitor who searched for “Yellow Widgets” is worth 70% more than one who searched for “Blue Widgets”.
• Someone from the Republic of Ireland is worth 30% more to you than someone from the UK.

This type of data is invaluable in helping you to increase your profits.  It is also extremely useful to know these things before starting ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ for your web site.

*Even if you are getting a lot of traffic already from other sources, this doesn’t mean that you can’t make more profit by using PPC as well!

For anyone who wants to target Northern Ireland, here is a list of how it may be typed into a search engine:-

http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2009/04/06/get-some-structure-into-your-ppc-life.aspx?s_cid=FY10UK_octstnd_tips