See how we saved over $2,000 per day utilizing only 2 control switches!

Ecometry clients of all sizes have an immense amount of “Power under the hood” of their systems yet very few have the knowledge or expertise to fully tap it. The Ecometry application suite has long been renowned for its ability to allow end user flexibility and business related customization through the use of what Ecometry calls Control Switches. There are over 1400 of these little power switches available in the Ecometry software that provide us, the clients and end users, with the ability to adjust the software functionality to meet our specific business requirements without customizing the software itself or engaging Ecometry or third party consultants to do so.

This is absolutely PRICELESS! I personally learned of the unbelievable impact that these Control Switches can have on the bottom line while serving as a merger and acquisition consultant and Interim COO at a company running Ecometry. It was absolutely critical that I had flexibility in the software as I engineered the integration of an acquired company that offered product categories never before offered, required very different physical storage locations, and added significant volumes of orders to an already stressed operation. Knowing what I needed from the system to be successful in integrating the company but having no practical experience with the Ecometry suite at the time, I turned to our resident expert (Joel Patterson) for assistance.

Joel told me of the Control Switches and we then set out working together to examine and adjust their settings, where appropriate, in order to give us with the ability to alter our processes and improve our efficiencies as we integrated the new company. I simply expressed my desired end result to Joel and he took me to the appropriate Control Switch(es) to assess whether the settings were available to garner the systems functionality to support it.

I would venture to say that 75% of the time or better the settings were available to provide the desired result without having to engage in lengthy and costly customization of the software. That is INCREDIBLE folks!

Ready for the proof in the pudding?

Because of the increase in orders and a lack of inventory we had an extremely large amount of Backorders. Most were multi-line orders that we were filling a single line at a time. You know, multiple packages on multiple days for a single order/customer. Not the most cost effective way of doing business and certainly not the best Customer Service!

I turned to Joel and the “magical” control switches for assistance and was not disappointed.  By changing simple parameters in 2 control switches we were able to:

• Hold multi-line orders for xx number of days to allow for more multiple lines to ship together
• Identify what percentage of the lines on an order needed to be available to ship prior to release
• Reduce our single line backorder shipments from over 400 per day to less than 50 immediately
• Save more than $4 per order in shipping expense
• Save another $3 per order in shipping supplies and labor (order processing and pick/pack/ship)

This is only one example of the many ways that control switches can add to your bottom line. With our collective expertise in Operations and Ecometry Control Switch utilization, we can assist you with improving your efficiencies, reducing your expenses, and increasing PROFITABILITY!

Have questions?

Call or email us today for an initial, no risk, discussion regarding how we can help you “Unleash Your Ecometry Control Switches and Enhance Your Bottom Line”!

It is quite misunderstood, the difference between Software Maintenance fees and getting the Support you might expect in return that is. The fact is that “Maintenance” does bring with it some level of Support but not what most companies think or maybe even expect.

If you are looking to become more knowledgeable of the functions available, need custom reporting, require assistance implementing new releases or upgrades, or desire assistance with harnessing the powerful control switches built into your Ecometry system then do not expect to have that part of your Maintenance fees. Maintenance fees allow for free upgrades as they are available, and support for software malfunctions, which by the way will occur from time to time. I have yet to see any software solution implemented, proprietary or third party that runs perfectly 100% of the time.

Software companies expect that their clients will either have or secure their own “experts” to maximize the ROI from their implementations. They ARE NOT in the business of providing such expertise and quite frankly do not profess to be. While the highly competent folks at Ecometry try and try to explain this throughout the sales and implementation processes as do any other solid software companies, it seems it is almost never understood by us – The Clients. This is precisely why companies who purchase software solutions to drive their businesses are met with extreme frustration and are faced with the often difficult task of determining the best way(s) to get the “expertise” necessary to maximize the returns on their extremely large investments.

Once the realization sets in that Maintenance does not equate to your expected Support, you are left with many difficult questions.

• What level of expertise do I actually need to get what I expect from the system?
• How much time will be required of such an expert to achieve my goals?
• Do I hire a full time permanent resource with Ecometry experience to be my resident expert?
• Can my in house IT staff be trained to become proficient?
• How do I find experienced Ecometry experts?
• Will I need to retain a recruiter to assist me in finding the right resource?
• What can I expect to have to pay for an Ecometry expert?
• Can I really get an acceptable ROI on paying for this expertise?

These and many more questions must be answered. If you are like most managers or executives in small to mid-sized companies, who have purchased enterprise wide software solutions, you are neither trained nor equipped to answer them on your own. If you make decisions related to answering these questions without the proper knowledge or having first thoroughly defined your needs, you will most likely find yourself with undesired results. Results that could in fact be extremely costly both financially and in operational impact that leaves you farther back than where you started.

You don’t have to go it alone! Talk to us and we can assist you with determining your options. We possess the expertise to know what questions to ask in helping you decide on the best solution(s) for your unique business requirements and maximizing the return on your investment.

Back in the day (you know the early 2000’s) when catalogs were the primary sales driver the standard marketing method was of course RFM (recency, frequency and monetary values) to segment customers by how long ago they purchased + how many times + by great than xx dollar amount.

Well today online sales typically count for more than 60-70% of sales and marketing departments, in Ecometry run companies, want to better target their valuable house files. This of course means that your IT department (really your SQL Data Administrator) has to be able to pull this great info so that testing can be done.

At my last company we were targeting customers who had purchased from a specific category (along with the standard RFM segmentation). In a company with a single division, or one with as many as three, the standard Ecometry Category structure works fine with the Major, Sub Major, Minor and Sub Minor category definitions.

Our company was a bit more complicated than that as we had 14 divisions. This meant that we had to throw the standard Ecometry Category set up out the window. We instead had to create a table to handle segmenting this data. It turned out to be relatively simple, instead of using the Major Category, Sub Major Category, Minor Category and Sub Minor Category, we used the 4 positions together to create a much more robust category structure.

Two of the most successful email campaigns targeted buyers of big blue widgets and bigger green widgets. Marketing wanted to segment customers that ordered from these categories and then create specific emails (based on several other RFM segments) directed to only those buyers. This was so successful that we then began to expand it to other categories (i.e. small purple widgets, tall orange widgets, etc.) in other divisions.

To set this up required a very comprehensive Category structure, the Major Category became the division (Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, etc.).  This was relatively easy to do in Ecometry, the trick became when going to the next level, the Sub Major Category, although it allowed 26 entries, the number of divisions we had made this not work, each division would have anywhere from 9 to 12 Major Categories, so now we are up to 60+ Sub Major Categories, so instead of defining D as Papa Bear and A as Big Blue Widgets in Ecometry, which would tie up A to only be Big Blue Widgets, but by adding DA as Papa Bear Big Blue Widgets were able to use MA as Mama Bear Flip Flops, this allowed us to create the much deeper category structure that we needed.

So to pull the customers that ordered from these categories I simply wrote a SQL Script to pull this information:

–PAPA BEAR BIG BLUE WIDGETS

DROP TABLE TEMP_CATEMAILDA

CREATE TABLE TEMP_CATEMAILDA

(EMAILADD CHAR(47),

FNAME CHAR(16),

CATEGORY CHAR(4))

INSERT INTO TEMP_CATEMAILDA

SELECT SUBSTRING(XREFNO,3,47) AS EMAILADD,FNAME,CATEGORY

FROM ORDERHEADER LEFT OUTER JOIN CUSTXREF ON ORDERHEADER.CUSTEDP=CUSTXREF.CUSTEDP

LEFT OUTER JOIN CUSTOMERS ON ORDERHEADER.CUSTEDP=CUSTOMERS.CUSTEDP

LEFT OUTER JOIN TEMP_ORDERSUBHEAD ON SUBSTRING(ORDERHEADER.FULLORDERNO,1,8)=TEMP_ORDERSUBHEAD.ORDERNO,

ITEMMAST

WHERE ORDERHEADER.ENTRYDATE>=’20100425′

AND CATEGORY LIKE ‘DA% ‘

AND TEMP_ORDERSUBHEAD.EDPNO=ITEMMAST.EDPNO

AND ORDERHEADER.CUSTEDP=CUSTXREF.CUSTEDP

AND SEARCHTYPE =’EM’

AND ORDERHEADER.DIVISION IN (’01′,’05′)

AND SUBSTRING(ORDERHEADER.FULLORDERNO,1,8)=TEMP_ORDERSUBHEAD.ORDERNO

AND SUBSTRING(ORDERHEADER.FULLORDERNO,1,8)=ORDERNO

AND SUBSTRING(XREFNO,3,47) LIKE ‘%@%.%’

GROUP BY SUBSTRING(XREFNO,3,47),FNAME,CATEGORY

ORDER BY SUBSTRING(XREFNO,3,47),FNAME,CATEGORY

UPDATE TEMP_CATEMAILDA

SET EMAILADD=LOWER(EMAILADD)

So as you can see how even a more complex company hierarchy can still use the basic Ecometry category set up and just tweek it to fit the needs that your marketing department wants to use or to test.

This segmentation appraoch become one of the most powerful marketing tools we had, the options are endless and the ROI was through the roof.

If you any questions on this or want to discuss it in more detail, please feel free to contact me at jpatterson@linkjuiceseo.com.

Offers in Ecometry are used to structure advertising (control pricing) to sell specific products (or product categories and sub-categories) to customers.  But are all Offers created equal?

The answer would be no!

Ecometry gives you the flexibility to set up different types of Offers where your marketing department can promote specific marketing offers to segmented customers (oh and you know how marketing loves to do that).

Here is a brief overview of four strategic Offer types and how they can be used:

One Time Only Offers

This is a new feature available in Ecometry 10.0.4 and the advantage of this type of offer is that it can only be used by each customer just one time. For example it could be used to send an email to your inquires with a special incentive(s) to become a first time buyer – maybe marketing wants to split test free shipping on orders over $xx.xx, or maybe xx% off on orders over $xx.xx.  The marketing possibilities are almost endless.

Customer Type Offers

These offers are created to tie a specific customer type to special pricing for just this selected type of customer. For example you wanted to create a customer type for high value (and volume) buyers who have purchased >x number of times and > $500, by changing their Customer Type and tying them to this Offer you can control their pricing whether they place a phone or online order (although for online customers that would have to be logged in).

Contract Pricing

Although similar to the Customer Type Offer, this one differs in that you do not have to change their Customer Type you just have to maintain their contract pricing in the Open Account/Manage Account setting for each customer. This is a bit more cumbersome to deal with but we have used it in several B2B environments with success.

BOGO Offers

These are also a marketing favorite and can be much more sophisticated than just a vanilla customer offering of “Buy One and Get One just like it for Free”. Instead you can think along the lines of “Buy One Get One Special Pricing”. For example if the customer buys one blue widget at this price they can buy the second one for xx% off or maybe $xx off.

The real advantage here is that you can also tie various items into groups to offer a customized BOGO and not just be tied into a particular product to BOGO.  Think of it more like allowing mixing and matching. For example you could have the standard multi-pricing come into play (buy 4 and get 10% off) but allow them to mix and match four flavors or colors from this group and get the 10% off discount.

Another way to use this is where the lower priced item becomes the “GO” and you can charge full price for the higher priced item “BO”.

These are just a few ways you can utilize 4 of the more powerful Offers types within Ecometry. Marketing will love the flexibility and the offers can almost work for practically anything that they can dream up.

In a future post I will go into tying together the complexity of basic customer RFM with product category purchase history.

Please feel free to contact me jpatterson@linkjuiceseo.com if you have any questions or need help in understanding these offers and how to best create one for your business model.

With the complexity of Ecometry and everything it has to offer do you wish you had access to an in-house Ecometry expert? Do you realize that there are cost effective alternatives?

Here are some common challenges we’ve witnessed firsthand:

• There are over 1,400 control switches in Ecometry – are yours all properly set?
• Do you need custom reports?
• Do you fully understand the various shipping methods (including Best Ship Method)?
• Would you like to implement  SmartPost?
• Does your staff understand how to properly set up items (when to style or when not to)?
• Do they know all about exploding styles?
• Do you know how to exclude a product from sale to a particular state?
• Do you use square inch page analysis?
• Is your purchasing group happy with their current buying reports?
• Is operations happy with your current back order process and “business rules”?
• Do you have the need for additional pay methods (PayPal, Google Checkout)
• And the list goes on and on…

Having an in-house Ecometry Expert would be ideal in a perfect world, but finding one can be either very expensive or near impossible to find.

Do you want to pay for head hunters, salary and the relocation for this expertise and is someone even willing to move to your neck of the woods? What if you hire them and they don’t fit your company culture?

Are you on Open systems or on MPE? Is the expertise seamless between the two? By that I mean if you are on Open Systems should you look to hire an Ecometry expert with only MPE experience?

With the power of remote access and the technology for video conferencing it becomes a viable option to consider outsourcing this critically needed expertise.  Some companies may feel that they need to have face to face access with a person that is working for them and if that’s you then great.

Is your IT staff (or person) bogged down doing day-to-day operations and they only utilize their “Ecometry expertise” when something stops working (a job locks up or the shipping station is frozen)?

What about when somebody has a question (how do I…), an Exec needs a custom report, or operations wants to streamline the back order process… how often does this really occur now – hourly, daily, weekly or just occasionally? Would it happen more frequently if you had a cost effective solution? Would that be a bad thing?

What it boils down to is the end result. Are you maximizing your Ecometry system? Could you use an  Ecometry expert (think of this  almost like having instant access to your own Ecometry Wiki)? What if you had somebody who would be able to quickly pull critical data for the executive team while also supporting the end user of Ecometry to make their position more efficient? While being two ends of the spectrum both of these have significant ROI payoffs.

How much time would you need per week from your Ecometry knowledge base? Would it really be 40 hours a week? Or perhaps more like 5-10 hours a week or 15-30 hours per month?

When you have a question you want an answer as soon as possible, are you getting that now?  Are you given all of the necessary steps needed for a potential solution as well as the ramifications that it may have on other aspects of Ecometry and how in turn this might affect other departments?

Are you currently submitting basic questions to Ecometry support instead of reading the available documentation and knowing where to look for critical data? Do you need custom reports (because sometimes the canned reports just aren’t enough)? Or are you under the impression that what you need just can’t be done in Ecometry!?

We have seen multiple small to medium sized organizations struggle with these same issues. It can be very difficult when your IT staff has to wear many hats or they don’t have the critical experience needed to address many of these situations. Sometimes all they need is just a 10 minute training session or a few control switch changes or creating a custom report pulling from multiple tables (in Open Systems) or data sets (in MPE).

Want to improve your Ecometry ROI?

Give me a call or drop me an email, I love to talk about how powerful Ecometry is and how you can unlock its power!

We get questioned all the time about the newest release of Ecometry version 10.0.4; this is the latest release version, however, Ecometry has now also released version 10.1.1.0 Beta. Beginning with Ecometry version 10, Ecometry version numbers have the unified format adopted for all Escalate Retail products.

To better understand what these numbers mean you have to understand the unified Escalate Retail version number formating:

<Version>.<Major>.<Minor>.<Patch>

As is the case with most software releases additional patches to correct some issues also followed: 10.0.4.1 was released around 12/14/2010, 10.0.4.2 around 4/12/2010, 10.0.4.3 around 5/10/2010 and 10.0.4.4 on 6/7/2010.

With the release of Ecometry version 10.0.4 this is considered a bigger than normal version as it is the version with PCI certified PA-DSS compliant payment application.  Starting in July 2010, the PCI console will require retailers to use a PA-DSS compliant payment application.

But you may be asking yourself, well other than the PCI certified PA-DSS compliancy, which in itself is huge, what are some of the other benefits to going to this version?

Listed below are some of the new features and enhancements that are offered:

1. One time only offers.  I can’t tell you how many times over the years that Marketing came to me and ask if this is possible, well now it is.  It allows you to set up an offer that the buyer can only use once, such as special pricing, shipping rates, etc. (for example if marketing wants to offer a first time customer a 10% discount for placing a second order, sometimes referred to as a bounce back offer).
2. Promotional Discounts.  This allows you to create special promotions that can be applied to orders to provide free or flat-rate shipping, special product prices, and/or percent or dollars off the order.
3. Product cost and price maintenance by percent.  Provides the option to maintain vendor costs based on a percentage off or equal to a product’s price and to maintain Offer pricing based on a percentage above, below or equal to the products price.
4. Company and Division sort for GL balancing reports, sales and returns.  Adds the option to sort and subtotal products by company and division combinations (this is significant for mulit division companies).
5. Multiple credit cards allowed for batch entry.
6. Now certified for FedEx Server 7.7

While there are some other enhancements as well as enhancements to purchased modules, I thought that these were the big ones that most users would be interested in.

I’ll provide an overview of what to expect in 10.1.1 in a future post.

It really doesn’t matter what type of your business you’re in establishing trust is paramount to your success. Seth Godin had a blog post on this Benefit of the doubt where he talks about how building up trust allows you some leeway with your customers when things go wrong. And if you’ve been in business for even a short amount of time you know that stuff just happens sometimes that is completely out of your control. Having established a good reputation with your customers will give you the benefit of the doubt.

As an online business if you are focused strictly on cutting costs or rolling out new marketing initiatives but not on establishing a strong customer centric organization you are bond to run into problems. Trust is the fundamental building block of customer service and not just in dealing with an issue after the fact.

Without having established trust…

You emails are spam.

Your marketing efforts are ignored.

Your business partnerships become strained.

Your sales and profits fall.

For an online business this is even more critical as there is no storefront to walk into, no face-to-face interaction. A study by GetElastic.com listed some of these as the top six issues in establishing trust from your customer’s point of view:

• Quality of the product
• Quality and reliability of customer service
• Will the item arrive on time?
• Will the product be as described or shown on the site?
• Is the item true to size?
• What if I need to return the item?

Having a well designed, clean web site with a secure ordering process, links to customer service, clearly stated return and privacy policies and a toll free number that is plastered throughout the site will all go a long way in making customers feel at ease as you establish trust.

We’ve gone so far as listing the CEO’s direct email address and personal cell phone number on our sites.

Adding customer reviews for your products is another way to build trust. It is important here that while you review each review for inappropriate language you don’t filter or throw out reviews because you don’t agree, or they are tearing down your products. Customers expect to see some less than perfect reviews. And if you are knowingly selling crap then hiding reviews isn’t going to save you anyway.

We also like to add some blind surveys to some of our sites so that customers can give feedback completely anonymously. This is another way to gauge “how are we doing” and will also help in improving trust.

Another tack that we’ve used for sites on a shoe string budget is to be sure to take advantage of Google product feeds into Google shopping. Not only do you get sales (well that’s the best part) but you also get another opportunity for an uncensored view of your products, the shipping process and the overall shopping experience. This keeps you on your toes and ultimately improves your opportunities for success.

And as a slight twist to the end of Seth’s piece – if you worked at it could you do a better job of establishing trust and growing your bottom line? After all we know that it is infinitely better business (and less expensive) to keep an existing customer than to find a new one!

Often newbies to SEO will ask us what are the top two of three things that they can do that will make the biggest impact on their SEO efforts? Well of course it isn’t quite so simple. When we are looking at a new client’s website or are revisiting one of our older sites we look first at title tags and then at the anchor text.  Search Engine Optimization is significantly more complicated than that and by only focusing on just a couple of “fixes” will not shoot you to the top of the SERPs for your most valuable keyword phrases but these will certainly having you moving in the right direction..

SEOmoz.org does a yearly survey asking some of the top search optimization experts to rank the most important SEO factors and Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links is considered the most important factor. Unfortunately many site owners who are looking to improve their search rankings don’t even know what anchor text is.  Anchor text is a relatively simple concept to understand.

What is Anchor Text?

The Search engine algorithms are programmed to look for various verb and noun patterns in copy text in order to determine what an individual web page is all about, but programs have been built to scam the robots by turning out tons of raw keyword loaded text. While it may not read well to a human it will be loaded with keywords for the bots. Because of this abuse in the past search engines also look to other sites (which have outbound links pointing to relevant sources of information) to better understand if your website should be trusted as a source of high quality content and to determine what each page on your site is about.

Google and the other search engines use this anchor text in their link analysis algorithms to determine web site page quality and relevancy.

Anchor text is the visible text of a link whether internal or external. For example, if I was linking to one of my favorite local search blogs, I might use the bloggers name as the anchor text.

Check out Mike Blumenthal’s blog.

If I wanted to maximize this link to Mike’s blog (as well improve the relevancy for my target audience), I would use a strong keyword phrase as my anchor text, for example:

For more on understanding Google Maps ….

A link to the website CheapPetStore.com with relevant keywords in the anchor text like discount pet supply or cheap pet supplies is more valuable than a link that says click here. Analyzing the words used in the anchor text links, along with which sites link to where, is one of the key metrics the search engines use it determining web site authority.

If you do a search in Google for “Discount Pet Supply”, you’ll see that the words “Pet Supplies” are also bolded in addition to the primary search phrase “Pet Supply”. The search engines understand that these words are interchangeable and mean the same thing, and so Cheap Pet Store is able to rank high for both of these keyword phrases.

What is the Ideal Anchor Text Length?

As shown above you want to use both semantically similar phrases and a fairly wide variety of keyword phrase variations so that your anchor text looks as natural as possible. Some people will try to stuff their anchor text with all of their important keyword phrases like this:

Pet supplies, discount pet meds, dog beds, reptile products, grooming supply

But that is not be a normal link pattern that webmasters or content developers would use. You are much better off using multiple shorter keyword phrase link groups than attempting to jam all of your most important keyword variations in every link. Google has reported that the average search query is four words and we have found that 2-4 word phrases make the most effective anchor text.

How does Anchor Text Benefit Your Search Engine Optimization?

The search engines consider links that appear inline (within a copy block) to be more important than links in columns or in sections of the page reserved for “favorite links” or “interesting links”. Why?  Because if a particular web page is providing lots of relevant information on a subject and is citing other sources (say your website) in the natural flow of the conversation, then the search engines tend to reward those links. Remember that search engines want to optimize the search experience for their users and the greater the focus on a particular subject the more this creates value for their user (and your potential customer).

A solid link building strategy begins with exhaustive keyword analysis and identifying the keywords you want to rank highly on. There are multiple tools you can use for this keyword research. We have two favorites Google’s keyword tool and then the keyword suggestion tool that shows daily searches from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing side-by-side. No one tool is perfect but we feel that these two give us the best information.

Just as you did with your SEO efforts you want to rank for a variety of keyword phrases and link building occurs in multiple ways – internal linking, submitting to relevant directories, or getting links from other sites. Many outside sites will use a portion of your title tag for the anchor text so it is a good idea to have these pages tightly structured to maximize your anchor text and subsequent SEO opportunities.

For other potential link partners you may find that sending them all the code <a href=linkjuiceseo.com/best-keyword>best keyword</a> in order to control the anchor text with the landing page to be the easiest.

Remember as part of a good keyword strategy having all of your anchor text exactly the same for each of your links is not the best approach. Mix it up a little by using singular and plural versions or use a semantic variation. You will be rewarded with more long tail search queries as well as a more diverse keyword profile.

Are there other ways that you use anchor text?

Quality Score Overview

So what is the Adwords Quality Score? According to Google:

“Quality Score for Google and the search network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and the better its ad position.”

As there are a various factors that affect your Google AdWords Quality Score it is critical to your search marketing strategy to understand how Quality Score matters. In simplest terms your Ad Rank (where you ad is positioned) is determined by your maximum CPC bid for each keyword multiplied by that keyword’s Quality Score.

Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

The quality score effects your ad position and your keywords minimum CPC (cost per click). If you have a low enough quality score your ad won’t even be shown. It’s also possible to have a lower CPC than your competitors by having a higher ad rank. So instead of looking to increase your Max CPC, you should first look to lift your quality score.

Every keyword has a quality score associated with it. Keep this in mind as this will affect your ad copy and landing pages (especially if your ad groups have multiple keywords that are not tightly grouped).

Google is continuously looking to improve the user experience by serving the best search results. Quality Score was instituted to weed out weaker advertisers who served advertisements that were irrelevant to the user’s query.

The Adwords Quality Score is based on multiple “dynamic variables.” You need to understand this because similar to Search Engine Optimization, there are no etched in stone rules. Quality Score continually evolves in response to these various factors that it reads in your ad campaign. But now with that being said there are some factors that are weighed more heavily than others.

Quality Score Ranking Factors

While there are hundreds of factors that go into the Quality Score algorithm we believe that these five are the most important.

• Keywords
• Ad copy
• CTR (click thru rate)
• Landing page
• Account Quality Score

Keywords

Certainly the most critical factor of the Adwords Quality Score is that keywords are the foundation of all Google search (organic and sponsored).  Around September of 2008 Google changed the Quality Score keyword designations from “Poor,” “OK,” or “Great” to a more accurate 1-10 (with 10 being the best).

This information allows for improved decisions on what to do with certain keywords, especially underperforming keywords. This detailed information about each search term will also explain why the minimum CPC may be sky high. This is generally one if the first things we look at when looking at a new existing account.

Ad Text

Relevance of ad copy is also a significant issue of Quality Score. The use of the search query keyword within the ad text is a trigger to the relevance of the ad copy.

Google’s primary goal is to give the searcher what they are looking for and a good quality ad eliminates the unsatisfying experience when the user’s expected result from a click doesn’t measure up to the actual result of a click.

Some PPC experts will offer a variety of tactics for dealing with ad text. Some will tout a formula that determines how many keywords should be in the ad copy, including exactly where they should be placed and even advocating the use of special characters. But all that really matters is if the user clicks on your ad.

Of course relevant keywords should be used in the ad text and we have found that when used in the headline this will improve overall CTR.

Click Through Rate

A key point to understand is how Google looks at click thru rate. Google’s algorithms only have total control over what occurs on its own search network so it does not allow the CTR on partner networks or through the content network to weigh heavily on this factor.

Google is also keenly aware that more clicks occur for the ad in the first position than they do for the tenth, so CTR is weighted by ad rank position. This way Google isn’t penalizing advertisers in lower positions for having lower click through rates.

Google does appear to place relevance on a keyword’s all time CTR history within your account and also on the keyword’s most recent history.

Landing Page

Landing page quality was added to the AdWords Quality Score in November 2006. The landing page is where a visitor is goes after clicking on your ad. Remember, Google’s goal is for their searchers to have a good search experience so the relevance of a landing page as well as the usability of the page is important to the overall measurement in determining a good user experience.

Like your ad copy, the landing page should contain the keyword as well as closely related semantic keywords. As a side benefit this will also help improve your organic search engine results for these same keyword or keyword phrases. If your landing pages are constructed with the searcher in mind and contain unique content that helps them find what they are looking for — then you will be in good shape.

Account Quality Score

Here is the easiest way to think about your overall quality score at the account level — if you aggregated all of your keywords, impressions and clicks into a single quality score. This would give you an overall account quality score. Most experts feel that while this may not have as big effect on individual keyword quality score as the first four factors do, it will have some bearing. It is also believed that this plays a role at the campaign and ad group level.

Other Factors

While Google’s AdWords Quality Score algorithm incorporates hundreds of factors some who closely follow Google’s patent applications have found examples of additional factors that may carry some weight. Among these are how many times a user selects a given ad in a given session or the duration of time, from an ad result selection, until the user issues another search query. All of this makes sense given Google’s goal of improving the search experience.

Putting Quality Score in Perspective

If you think of Google as you do your own business this becomes pretty clear. Google treats searchers as their customers and if these customers have a good experience they are more likely to become repeat buyers.

By continuing to refine the Quality Score Google is ensuring that searchers are having a good experience. Instead of making decisions based on gaming Google you should be concentrating on maximizing the user experience, this will improve your quality score as well. So not only is this good from an AdWords quality score standpoint, it is good business for you as ultimately what you are trying to do is make Google searchers your customers.

Understanding the Adwords Quality Score can be frustrating and even a bit overwhelming but once you break this down into smaller more manageable pieces you can chip away at it.

As mentioned earlier understanding and mastering your quality score is one of the most important pieces of a strategic search marketing program. It’s also good business — the higher your quality score, the less you pay per click, the higher your ad rank and the better your marketing ROI!

Understanding the three different match types for your PPC campaigns is one of the fundamental skills any good search marketer must be able to master. Use these incorrectly and you will quickly blow your budget, not generate any decent sales volume and have a very unhappy boss to answer to!

The three match types:

• [Exact Match]
• “Phrase Match”
• Broad Match

Each match type is used for a different purpose and knowing how to best leverage each is very powerful. The search marketing arms of the big three each follows a fairly similar approach with Google AdWords and MSN/Bing adCenter using identical match types and terminology while Yahoo! Search is a bit more difficult to get at first. However, once you’ve mastered the individual terminology you’ll be fine.

Exact Match

This terminology is used by Google Adwords and MSN/Bing adCenter. In Yahoo! Search this is referred to as Standard Match. This match type is simple — your keyword or keyword phrase is only shown when the user searches for that specific keyword or phrase in the exact order and without any other terms in the search query.

In Google this is done with brackets [exact match], while in MSN/Bing you choose this as an option.

For example, if your Exact Match keyword phrase is [big red hat] then your ad will only show for that exact phrase with the words in that exact order – big red hat. It will not show for the search query red big hat or buy big red hat.

Advantages – you know exactly what keywords or phrases you are bidding on and your traffic is much more targeted. Conversion rates tend to be higher with exact match and you are able to better control your costs.

Disadvantages – this is the lease flexible of the three match types and you lose any longtail opportunities. This leads to significantly fewer impressions, clicks and may have you missing some tremendous sales opportunities.

Phrase Match

This terminology is used by Google Adwords and MSN/Bing adCenter. Yahoo! Search does not have an equivalent program for this. This match type is very versatile and your ads appear when the keyword or keyword phrase is included in the actual search query (all words must appear in the same order).

In Google this is done with quotation marks “phrase match”. If your Phrase Match keyword phrase is “big red hat” your ad would show in searches that contain additional terms as long as the search contains the exact phrase you targeted. It would show for – big red hat, buy big red hat or big red hat information. But will not show in searches for red big hat or information on red hats.

Advantages – it provides more flexibility than does Exact Match by giving you the opportunity to uncover new keywords or keyword phrases.

Disadvantages – you still lose out on some longtail keyword phrase opportunities when the search queries are not exactly aligned with your keyword phrase order.

Broad Match

This terminology is used by Google and MSN/ Bing. In Yahoo! This is referred to as Advanced Match. In all three search engines this is the default option and your ads will show for all singular, plural variations, and synonyms in any order. Google also states that ads will be returned for “other relevant variations”.

If your Broad Match keyword phrase is “big red hat” your ad may appear for a search query that contained any, some or all these words (’big’, ‘red’ and ‘hat’) in any order and certainly with other terms.

Advantages – this will give you the highest amount of traffic of any the various key match types and also the widest variety of keyword phrases. This can be very powerful when applying a strong negative keyword strategy.

Disadvantages – this tactic can also quickly blow your budget completely out of the water. In addition to out of control spending you tend to have a lower CTR (Click Thru Rates), lower quality scores and you have to be able to utilize advanced search query reports.

Keyword Match Type Strategies

Setting up your account with only phrase and exact matched keywords/ keyword phrases is considered a more pragmatic approach than is setting your ad groups and campaigns to only broad match. In our experience the best long term strategy is a wide net of keywords, utilizing all of the match types and tied into a clearly defined bidding strategy. This approach greatly enhances your traffic, keyword knowledge and ROI.

A key component of a well planned bidding strategy includes higher Max CPC for Exact Match and Phrase Match in order to achieve higher placement. This tactic leads to higher conversion percentages, quality scores and sales as these keyword phrases are highly targeted to your primary buyer profile.

On some of our accounts we have found that an overall strategy of 60% phrase match, 20% exact match and 20% broad match is ideal while on other accounts 50%, 30% and 20% are best. By following these general guidelines you should be able to develop a highly customized program that maximizes traffic, controls overall costs and better targets the campaigns for your unique niche.