To run ads on search engines like Google, you place bids for your ad to display in particular search queries. In other words, you compete with other advertisers for a keyword. But did you know that you can also compete against yourself without knowing it? It’s called keyword cannibalization.
Before your ad competes with others in an automated keyword auction, an internal auction between your own keywords/relevant keywords takes place within your Google ads account. Google search needs to know how your ads rank among each other before it can rank them among ads by other businesses targeting the same keyword.
Because we live in an age of infobesity, where everyone overloads the amount of information on the web in an attempt to rank on top, it’s easy to fall victim to keyword cannibalization without realizing it. To help you avoid it, this article will go over what exactly keyword cannibalization is in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, why it’s bad, its 3 different types, and steps you can take to avoid it.
In PPC advertising, keyword cannibalization refers to when you have two or more campaigns targeting the same search query in search results/pages ranking. In other words, you have multiple ads competing for the same keyword or two or more pages. It’s considered “cannibalization” because it’s as if you are taking a “bite” out of your own ad margins and results.
Search engines like Google search/ search engine results page automatically show the ad they deem most relevant based on its ad rank. Typically, ad rank is calculated by multiplying the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid with the ad quality score (ad rank = max CPC bid x quality score). When you have two or more separate ads competing for the same keyword, it splits your results. Your click-through rates (CTRs), links, and content are split across multiple ads.
Of course, it’s only keyword cannibalization if the intent behind the multiple pages/multiple ads is the same—to direct leads to a particular landing page etc. If you run different ads that share a keyword but have different goals, this is not keyword cannibalization (though you might consider consolidating your ad campaign goals).
Keyword cannibalization is nearly always unintentional. Essentially, you’re asking the ad platform’s algorithms to rank your competing ads. Often, one ad has higher ranking signals than another and will win the ad space. However, if there is no clear winner, none of the ads will rank as well as they might have, ruining each other’s ability to perform.
Keyword cannibalization cripples your PPC campaign. As your ads compete for the same keyword, the flow of traffic generated by them is broken. An ad might match for a keyword one week and not another, and you may see dramatic fluctuations in traffic. More importantly, keyword cannibalization leads to rising CPC costs, decreasing conversions, and diminishing page authority. Basically, it causes you to serve worse ads at a higher cost.
There are 3 types of keyword cannibalization in PPC: keyword overlap, geographic overlap, and PPC-SEO overlap. We’ll explain all three in detail so you can understand what you’re up against.
So far, we’ve explained keyword cannibalization in terms of keyword overlap. Keyword overlap refers to when two or more of your ads target the same keyword. In many cases, you may have an ad group targeting multiple keywords/multiple pages, one of which unintentionally overlaps with a keyword in another ad group. Usually, one ad outranks the other and it may not even be the one you most want to show. So make sure you organize your ad groups carefully.
In PPC campaigns, you not only bid on keywords but on geographic areas. And unfortunately, overlapping geographic areas can also cause keyword cannibalization. For example, if one of your ads targets a city and another targets that city’s entire country without excluding the city, you end up with two ads that target keyword for the same city & multiple urls. Or perhaps you run PPC ads for two stores in the same area with overlapping radiuses. In both cases, you unnecessarily pump up the ad auction with your own ads. Plus again, the winning ad may not even be the one you most want to run.
Finally, your PPC traffic can overlap with organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to any visits to your website that you don’t pay for. So if a regular search on Google leads someone to your web page, it’s considered organic traffic. You can increase your organic traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. If you already rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs), spending on PPC ads will have diminishing returns and may even be a waste of money. You’re already ranking in the SERPs, so paying to appear in the promoted results section has diminishing returns. Plus, some users prefer clicking on organic results over sponsored results anyway.
Now that you know the different ways keyword cannibalization can harm your PPC campaign, let’s go over what you can do to avoid it happening to you.
First, you want to extract as much data from your PPC campaign as you can. Run a keyword report to uncover any of the overlaps already discussed. In Google Ads, you can do this by viewing the search terms report. Here, you can review your keywords closely and find out which keywords are driving your ad traffic.
Try targeting your ads only to exact-match keywords/same keywords. Cross-include any exact matches as negative keywords in unrelated ad groups first. And if exact-match keywords generate the traffic you want, leave out broad-match keywords altogether. In other words, make sure traffic generated by broad-match keywords is not already being served by exact-match keywords. Otherwise, you’re paying for two ads to do the job of one. The same goes for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). Add targeted keywords as negatives in DSA campaigns and block any keywords that overlap.
As for PPC-SEO overlap, decide whether you want to rely on organic traffic or not. Experiment with switching off individual keywords. Wait and see how much organic traffic you get for the keyword and compare it to when you had paid traffic. Also check if competitors are targeting your keywords to gain insight on the level of competition in organic traffic, CTR, keywords, search volume, and so forth. This way, you’ll know what you’re up against if you decide to eliminate PPC-SEO overlap by dropping ad spend.
Examine how conversions change week to week and identify trends so you can adjust accordingly. PPC advertising is a matter of trial and error. The faster you learn what works best, the better.
After you’ve diagnosed keyword overlaps, do all that you can to avoid them in the future. Don’t target plurals for keywords and always check keyword spellings. Google will match close variants of keywords, so a plural or a misspelled keyword could easily lead to keyword overlaps. If you have a lot of keywords, try using a tool to identify close variants faster.
Avoid overlaps in geographic targeting by excluding cities from country targets if running ads in both. Check target radiuses as well to ensure there is no overlap. The last thing you want to do is pay twice for the same target area.
Avoid splitting PPC traffic across multiple web pages/multiple pages by maintaining a one-stop authoritative web page that links to other web pages that fall under the same keyword. Try using 301 redirects to link pages of lesser importance to a single definitive version & avoid wrong page also keyword stuffing.
Finally, avoid keyword overlap by concentrating your ad spend on one keyword instead of many. That way, you not only don’t spread your ads too thin but you ensure that they don’t work against each other.
With brands trying to dominate the SERPs, the risk of keyword cannibalization occurs has only increased. So it’s more important than ever to keep a close eye on your PPC campaigns. If you don’t, you could be wasting valuable ad spend and not even realize it. Fixing keyword cannibalization early on will not only lower CPC costs but increase your conversions and ROI.
If you need help auditing or managing your PPC strategy or fix keyword cannibalization, ppc.co can help. Our skilled experts will quickly identify where to optimize and make improvements, so you can start getting the most out of your PPC campaigns. Contact us today to get started managing your PPC campaigns.
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When you want to use paid search marketing platforms, Google Ads often leads the list. Because of its versatility, simplicity, and popularity, it’s obvious why it’s a popular choice. But when you drop all of your PPC advertising money into one marketing strategy, you could lose some leads.
That’s why some businesses explore paid advertising marketing outside of Google, with many turning to Linkedin Ads.
Google Ads and Linkedin Ads are highly efficient ways to market your products and services to businesses and consumers. But each marketing channel has its advantages and disadvantages. Whatever you choose, make sure you discuss the matter with your web development company.
Below is a closer look at each option.
We think it’s reasonable to conclude that Google reaches a vast audience worldwide – its ad reach is a stunning 4 billion people. Google search handles about 70% of desktop searches, and many companies report that they get about 90% of their organic traffic from the search engines. Also, up to 95% of the mobile search market comes from Google.
People use Google’s search a lot, and having the ability to target search terms with specific search ads is a massive benefit of Adwords. People tend to search for very specific things in Google, so if you can customize your Google advertising for your targeted audience, you’ll receive plenty of leads.
So, we can assume that most people’s targeted audience uses Google to some degree. That’s a massive advantage for companies when they want to target an audience.
However, businesses that want to narrow down their search may have issues getting their Google ads settings right with both Google Ads. And if you blunder when segmenting your audiences, your digital ad campaign could suffer.
LinkedIn features a narrower audience – 500 million users – namely businesses and business professionals. But this more limited audience makes it the perfect place for effective B2B marketing. LinkedIn lets marketers serve online ads to decision-makers and vital audience members in several ways.
Summary: For B2B firms that want to reach decision-makers, Linkedin is a terrific advertising platforms. If your B2C company intends to increase its reach, Google Ads could be the best fit.
When you target your audience with Google Ads, you have a few options: location, affinity, technology, buyer behavior, demographics, and interactions with your app or website.
No matter how much you know about your buyer, you may struggle to avoid clicks from worthless leads that cost too much.
In some cases on Google, people may not even know what they’re looking for. You can try to advertise to your desired targeted audience on Google Ads, but it can be challenging to get to the precise people who will most likely buy what you sell.
When people sign up for LinkedIn, they usually provide many details, such as their occupation, title/job title, experience, industry, education, interests, and more. All of this information can be leveraged for great advantage when you start your marketing campaigns.
Also, LinkedIn users can join many groups, start conversations, and obtain followers. The data is priceless when you want to target a specific audience and market to them. LinkedIn also has a Matched Audience that helps advertisers match their email marketing lists and website visitors with users on LinkedIn.
Many marketing experts think that LinkedIn Ads offer more value. LinkedIn has refined targeting, and you can make your product known to them so that you can tell them about something they didn’t know existed.
Summary: For B2B and B2C companies looking for a broad audience, Google Ads has enough targeting features. But for B2B firms that want to target specific groups, LinkedIn Ads has about 100 segmentation methods for micro targeting.
When you want lead generation, Google Ads has a broader reach and is the most effective. First, you can bring in a lot of prospects to your site without breaking the bank. The audience you’re after on Google visits the search giant with the idea to find the best product or service. This makes generating leads easier.
Getting leads from LinkedIn can be more challenging. Users of the platform may sign in to read industry news or talk to group members. No matter how perfect your ad is, viewers may not be in the mood to buy anything.
That said, Linkedin has a way to target ad leads through in-site messaging, which can generate plenty of leads.
When it comes down to dollars and cents, LinkedIn Ads usually are more pricey than Google Ads. As in Google, you can select cost-per-click or cost-per-impression.
LinkedIn also features a cost-per-send for InMail advertising. Typically, you’ll pay about $5 for each click, $6 for 1,000 impressions, and .80 for each send.
With Google Ads, the average CPC is $1. But to leverage that low cost, you need to work on your audience segmentation. If you don’t your ROI may be below what you want.
Summary: Advertising budgets for each platform depends on several factors. On average, Google Ads cost less than LinkedIn Ads. If your B2B company has a tight budget, you may want to focus on a limited variety of LinkedIn ads instead of a broad range of Google Ads.
So should you advertise with Google Ads vs LinkedIn Ads? Yes!
What we mean is, it depends. The correct choice depends on your budget, product or service offered, marketing goals, and target audience. You should not assume that when you need a digital marketing campaign, Google Analytics Adwords is the only choice.
It’s critical to evaluate the market, understand who your buyer is, and make a data-driven decision about the best marketing platform to reach your well-defined goals. One type of company might do better with Google Ads, and another may find LinkedIn Ads preferable.
The great news is you don’t need to choose between the two platforms. Many businesses use both, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and others. If you have the budget, it may pay off to diversify your paid search advertising to get the best ROI.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Digital marketing is a classic marketing strategy that’s commonly used to supplement organic web traffic, but it’s hardly the most straightforward way to increase your site’s audience. In fact, from a technological perspective, it’s a rather fussy practice. That’s why brands that want to include a PPC marketing strategy in their overall strategic decisions need to work with an experienced agency. Agencies facilitate ad distribution, track clicks, and calculate fees – and the best ones can help their clients thrive. Unfortunately, there are a lot of subpar agencies and bad actors out there, and you need to know how to spot them.
So, how do you know if it’s time to fire your PPC agencies? Keep an eye out for these 9 red flags. They could indicate you’re working with the wrong agency and that it’s time to make a move.
Companies leave their PPC agencies behind for all sorts of reasons, but according to a 2015 report by the Society for Digital Agencies (SoDA), the most common reasons include outgrowing the agency’s capabilities, cost overruns, and dissatisfaction with their strategy. These are all valid reasons, and ultimately many of them can be reduced to an agency’s failure to generate any or enough growth. After all, disliking the agency’s strategy isn’t likely to be much of a problem if that strategy is generating major growth. Similarly, a brand is unlikely to view itself as having outgrown the agency is their accounts continue to grow.
Ultimately, what these different reasons for firing PPC agencies demonstrate is that, any way you slice it, no one wants to work with an agency that isn’t making them money. So, while it might take a little while for your PPC ads to gain traction, if you’re not seeing growth based on the launch of or changes to your PPC campaign, it’s time to move on to a different agency.
While most brands work with a PPC advertising agency to run their campaigns, it’s not only possible but advisable for you to set up your own accounts with the major PPC advertising platforms, which include sites like Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Facebook. Still, if you’re not the most technologically savvy, it can be tempting to let your agency do it for you. Don’t give in to the impulse. Instead, ask them to guide you through it so that you can ensure that you’re the one with owner access rights.
Unless you have the owner access rights to your company’s PPC accounts, you can’t be sure you have unmediated access to your campaign metrics or feel good/ confident that you’ll be able to transfer your accounts to another agency or bring them in-house if needed. In other words, your agency could be misrepresenting best results to you or could refuse to relinquish control if you end your contract. You need to retain those rights and then give your PPC agent the appropriate permissions to manage your campaigns. If they balk at this arrangement, show them the door.
Typically, when you look at your company’s profile on a site like Google AdWords, you’ll see that your PPC agency has set up specific goals to help your business grow. These commonly include such metrics as Cost Per Acquisition, Return On Advertising Spend, and Cost Per Lead, though there are plenty of other valuable metrics that are worth tracking. Such measurements assure you that you’re spending your Digital marketing money in the right place, help you budget for ad spending, and offer insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
Unfortunately, you’ll occasionally encounter PPC advertising agencies that fail to set up these metric reports, and they’re not to be trusted. Even if they claim to be using an in-house system, it’s your right to demand they use the standard reporting system for each PPC platform and to fire them if they refuse to. Dashboard-based metrics exist to provide consistent measurements regarding the success of PPC campaigns ad those are the numbers you want to reference.
In a similar vein, some PPC advertising agencies skip the core metrics noted above in favor of less valuable but more appealing “vanity metrics.” Vanity metrics don’t help your business make money and they offer limited insight into your operations. Examples of vanity metrics include any campaign value based on impressions, engagement metrics that don’t drive conversions, and even many of the behavior-based metrics that used to be considered the gold standard in website evaluation, such as bounce rate or time on site.
Ultimately, vanity metrics don’t serve your company because they can be created artificially. An untrustworthy PPC agency might drive up engagement numbers by sharing a great meme on your brand’s landing pages, which will drive likes and other reactions, but won’t actually funnel clients to your site or create sales. Similarly, you can get a huge number of impressions by getting your PPC new ads onto a very popular site, but if no one is clicking on it, all you’ve got is a tally of how many people visited/ web traffic to someone else’s website.
Having the right metrics is important, but if you’re going to meet your goals then your Good PPC agency needs to be adjusting your account settings regularly to refine your campaigns. At a minimum, that means accessing your account to regularly monitoring and fine-tune the settings at least once a week. Such regular check-ins allow your agency to quickly adjust your social media campaigns based on updates to the search engines algorithm, catch any conversion mistakes that could cost your company money, and even react to competitors campaigns.
Be sure that you not only ask your PPC agency how often they access and update your accounts, but that you’re also checking your accounts regularly for updates. The reality is that, although many companies run PPC campaigns, only 10% of AdWords accounts are updated weekly. If your PPC agency can’t meet that standard, ditch them for one that will stay on top of your campaigns.
Just as your PPC agency needs to be fine tuning your accounts regularly, they should also be reporting back on your campaigns at least monthly. While seeing week-to-week progress would be great, as with many kinds of growth, this can be hard to evaluate. Comprehensive, monthly reports, on the other hand, can help you see what your agency has been doing on your behalf, how your accounts are growing, and allow you to be an active participant in your Digital marketing strategy.
Never settle for a company that doesn’t offer substantive reporting. While great reports may offer added insights from your account manager or more labor intensive explanatory work, the majority of PPC reporting is automated – any company that doesn’t provide it is just lazy.
It’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll speak to the same person every time you contact your PPC agency; that doesn’t even happen at your bank or your doctor’s office. That being said, there should be one person who acts as the lead on your account because that allows them to master your brand’s voice, develop a big picture strategy, and generally build up a knowledge base around your brand’s needs and preferences. They might be busy or out of the office occasionally, but anyone whose experienced both approaches – a core account manager and a rotating cast of agents – can tell you that having a point person makes a difference.
If your PPC agency doesn’t have you working with a single, core agent, you may want to ask a few questions to get a better sense of what’s happening. Do they have an unusual in-house strategy, or are they having trouble with employee retention? Do they think it doesn’t make a difference? You can also request that they place you with a single representative, but if that’s not their standard practice already, you’re probably better off going elsewhere. It just doesn’t bode well.
Google AdWords isn’t a new program and there are plenty of other PPC programs out there, but if an agency is committed to this work, then they should have complete Google’s AdWords certification program. You can check on this by asking them to show you their Premier Partner page – it really is that simple. Not having one isn’t necessarily the worst offense a company can commit, but it’s a good indicator that you can do better and should commit your ads spend elsewhere.
Did you pick your PPC agency based on their portfolio of appealing PPC ads/ads or optimized images? That’s a great starting point – it certainly indicates that they can do high-quality work – but it’s not enough if they’re not actually showing you your brand’s own ads before they launch them. Obvious, right? It should be, but many entrepreneurs have been duped by PPC agencies who tell them that their ad is similar to another ad product, which is called ad copy; the client, not wanting to be pushy, walks away with their own notion of their brand’s ad, and meanwhile the agency may not have done any work at all.
Your PPC agency should be giving you the final say on all your paid ads, so if you’ve supposedly got a campaign running and you haven’t seen your ads, ask to see them right away. Odds are good that if your agency isn’t showing you your PPC ads before launching them that they either don’t exist or they’re extremely low quality for online visibility. Great PPC agencies are proud of their work and they want you to see it. Anything less should raise concerns.
Hiring an agency to manage your PPC campaigns will obviously cost more than just the fees for the campaign itself, but the costs involved in running ads with your agency shouldn’t be confusing. That’s because, ultimately, your money should only be going two different places – to the agency and to the ad platform – and everyone at the company should be clear on the split. So, when we say you should be wary about confusing fees, we’re not talking about total cost (that’s a matter for you and your budget), but rather about how the money is split up. For any payment there should be the fee to the agency and the ads spend and it should always be obvious what the division is there.
As popular as PPC marketing is with businesses today, many of the agencies that execute these campaigns don’t do a very good job. They’re wasting your ad spend and your time, and you deserve better. That’s why you should switch to PPC.co’s PPC Management Service.
At PPC.co, we’re committed to ensuring that your ads are reaching the right audience and we know that most agencies just don’t deliver that. Starting from our understanding that website conversions often top out at 2%, we emphasize PPC marketing that pairs first contacts with retargeting efforts to ensure that your brand remains a top-of-mind solution for past visitors. A non-converting visitor is often just someone who hasn’t seen the right content yet, and we want to help you make those connections.
What else makes our PPC Management program stand out? With dual Google Ads and Google Analytics certifications, we have a deep understanding of the systems & AdWords account that get your ads seen and can use tracking data to its fullest potential of web traffic. In fact, that’s why we start every client engagement with a full PPC audit, because even when we’re not leading the campaigns, our skilled professionals can quickly see what’s working and what’s falling short in your current campaigns. From the start, we put our expertise to work for you.
If your PPC agency has exhibited any of the above warning signs, you can’t afford to wait around for progress. It’s time for the protection of business and moves on – to PPC.co. Contact us today to learn more about our PPC Management Services and say goodbye to wasted ad spend and rock bottom conversions. Once you’ve seen the difference a top PPC agency can make in your campaigns, you’ll never believe you let anyone else handle your PPC needs.
