Under the radar, Google has quietly raised AdWords account limits. Accounts can now get boosted to include up to 500 campaigns and 3 million keywords. Previously accounts were limited to 100 campaigns and 1 million keywords.

If you wanted to expand beyond that, you had to open new accounts. This was a headache because you’d need to work out tracking, billing, and access requirements for the new accounts. That required putting new scripts on your website; handling credit cards or invoicing agreements; and getting together new Google users, possibly implementing a sub-MCC.

In the past it also meant that your additional accounts wouldn’t be linked to a Google Analytics account. Though, nowadays, you can also link multiple AdWords accounts to a single Analytics account.

Making Account Management Easier

While for very large marketing efforts, separation at the account level may make sense, in all likelihood, going through the effort of starting new accounts to accommodate AdWords limits is going to make maintenance, error-checking, and reporting more difficult.

If you’re implementing over 100 campaigns, some of them are probably close copies of one another with different targeting settings. For example, sites for local businesses might be targeting mobile separate from other devices. Or if your business targets multiple locations that perform differently and have different ad requirements, these would also be separated into different campaigns that are similar to each other.

Bulk changes using the AdWords Editor becomes a multi-step operation with multiple campaigns. Even with accounts consolidated under a single MCC, running reports across multiple accounts, implementing changes, or understanding how the targeting might overlap between different campaigns in different accounts becomes a more robust task.

A quick lookup or troubleshooting becomes not so quick anymore. So it’s good that AdWords is making efforts to accommodate larger accounts. (Although with so much duplication within larger accounts, it also is surprising that a better management option hasn’t surfaced that eliminates the need to increase account limits.)

Getting the Maximum Limits

To get the maximum limits for an account that has the default settings, you still have to consult with a Google AdWords Representative, requesting a boost. If you have an account that should be using limits that are this high, you most likely are already in contact Google Reps about other things.

You know that you need a boost if you get account limit errors from AdWords Editor when you try to post new additions. But what this doesn’t tell you is if you’re wasting your time filling your account with clutter or if you’re sincerely in need of more, more, more.

Which accounts should be using the new limits? Whenever you notice performance differences by network or device, it’s always a good idea to separate campaigns out to single out targeting. It’s also a good idea to keep a healthy keyword list, to be sure that all of the relevant queries trigger your ads.

In well-organized ad groups it’s fairly easy to maintain a large number of keywords. But unless you have a million products, or hundreds of business locations, you’re not going to need anywhere near the account limit of keywords and campaigns.

The knee-jerk answer to this is, “Yes, people are looking for everything online.” To an extent this is a pretty fair answer; active consumers are connected to the internet with phones, tablets, computers… and have internet access just about all the time – from their phone, at McDonalds, with portable devices, etc.

Marketing has changed, and is continuing to do so, as more devices gain access to the Internet and more locations become practical places from which to connect. These days, people have a vast amount of information at their fingertips, a number of convenient ways to access it, and search engines act as gateways for finding what they need.

This move has caused a shift in advertising as companies scramble to get to where the people are – the yellow pages has moved online (and to a large extent is integrated into search engines); television shows, music, social activity has moved online.

All of this alters the format of display advertising and creates a struggle for companies to monetize from advertising because traditional methods are not suitable; magazines and newspapers have moved online (to the consternation of publishers because of the general “free-ness” of content on the internet).

Google continues to benefit from all of this, as it fuels the transition and answers people’s queries. If you check Google’s stock, you’ll probably see that a lot of the transition has already happened, as almost all of their revenue comes from advertisements that people click on (online).

But Are People Really Searching for My Business Online?

The easiest way to check whether people are searching for your particular business services or products is to use the Google Keyword Tool. From this tool you can see “Local Monthly Searches” which is how many times people search for a business like yours from the location you have selected (probably the United States if you left the default setting).

If you are logged into a Google account you can even change the columns to see the average cost per click advertisers pay when they bid on the term. Unless your product is very new, or if your product is not particularly well-defined in the market, you will probably see search volume for terms that are specifically for your product.

Search advertising is good at answering existing demand. Even if you have a particular niche that can be covered by a group of salespeople, you might supplement those efforts with search advertising. Answering inquiries for your products when they occur is probably going to work better than an unsolicited contact. Search advertising might also reveal unexpected or peripheral markets where you wouldn’t have a sales team assigned.

Probably a better question than “Are people searching for my business” would be “is it cost effective and practical for me to target search engine users?”

Is It Cost Effective and Practical for Me to Target Search Engine Users?

If you are just now asking whether people are searching for your business online, you might already be late to the game. But asking whether it makes sense to get involved with paid search/search advertising/AdWords/SEO/social media, is different than asking if people actually search online for your products.

I think I established that they most likely do, and it takes about five minutes to find out. But whether it is cost effective and practical to make an online marketing effort is a completely different topic. Obviously the answer varies by the type of business you have.

Are you a local business that wouldn’t typically advertise? Are you a franchise? Are you thinking of starting an e-commerce site? Is your business international? Is your business a branded household name? Is your business so large that it is more concerned with reputation management than acquiring customers through marketing?

For any business, here are a couple of easier questions to start with:

• Are your competitors advertising on search engines?
• Based on search query data, what kind of market share are you losing by not actively marketing with search engines?

Hopefully you’ve gained a little insight here on how to start thinking about your online marketing efforts.

adCenter had an interesting post in their community blog recently, titled “The High Cost of Low Bids: One of the Biggest Logical Errors PPC Managers Make.” It sort of verifies an old strategy of bid high to start in order to establish a higher quality score. Although the author seems to imply that maintaining a high position will continue to benefit you by raising your quality score.

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Getting ranked well in MSN is relatively easy. The engine still puts heavy weighting on more traditional SEO techniques. It picks up sites quickly and allows new sites to rank with older sites. MSN doesn’t analyze the quality, age, changing nature of links as thoroughly as Google. Getting ranked well in MSN is as easy as:

1. Write title tags with keyphrases.
2. Write meta description tags with keyphrases (and probably meta keyword tags as well. Meta keyword tags are borderline useless in Yahoo! and Google; they are good for misspellings or non-competitive phrases that are related to a site’s content. They may still be given weight in MSN.)
3. Put keyphrases in the body text.
4. Get links from free generic directories with keyphrases in the anchor text.

Step four is really the key for quick MSN rankings. There are hundreds of free directories,and MSN appears to give just as much weight to them as it would to a link from an industry-related site.

I’ve recently been having problems with ad status in AdWords. Typically when you put in a new ad, it goes into “Pending review” status, then shortly after becomes approved. When an ad is pending review, it is displayed on Google, but it is not yet eligible to show up on search partners or the content network. For a regular campaign that is not opted into the Content Network, or is only in the Google Network, I don’t consider it a big deal when an ad is “pending review.” Usually ads move out of this status fairly quickly. But occasionally an ad goes into “under review” status (notice the difference here “under review,” not “pending review”).   I’m not sure what triggers an ad to go into “under review,” but it is much worse than “pending review” and of course “approved.”   When an ad is “under review” it is not eligible to show anywhere.   And an ad can stay “under review” for quite awhile . . . maybe a week. The best way to avoid any of these intermediate ad statuses is to keep already approved ads running and then put in additional ads.   Deleting or pausing the old ads after the new ads have gotten into “approved” status.   Of course this isn’t always possible; you might not have any already existing ads, or you might notice that the old ads are no longer accurate and have to be deleted.

When I was editing my ads in the AdWords Editor, I deleted the old ones because they were for an older product. I wasn’t thinking that the new ads might go into review, and it was actually pretty important that they get approved quickly because they were advertising a new deal that was available only for a limited time. When I posted the ads and noticed they went “under review,” I tried a couple of things to get around it that didn’t work:
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It is getting more difficult to control ad display in Google AdWords because they’re giving the system more liberties. There are a few variations of this – I’m calling them “Ultra Broad Match” because it’s funny:

Automatic geo-targeting parsing of queries.

If a visitor searches a general term and Google pinpoints him/her to a location that is in the target-area of one of your campaigns, the query is sometimes treated just as if it had geographic modifiers attached to it. Likewise, if you are bidding on a term that has geographic modifiers, Google might decide to broad match it to a more general query that does not have modifiers attached. For example, if someone is searching for “plumbers” from an IP address that is located in Detroit by Google’s system, then it might be treated just as if he/she searched “plumbers in detroit.” Likewise, if a person searches for “plumbers in detroit,” he/she might be treated just as if he/she searched for “plumbers” from an IP address located in Detroit. In your account, you can be explicitly bidding on the term “plumbers in detroit” in a nationally targeted campaign, but Google may decide instead to show an ad for the term “plumbers” that is in a campaign targeted to the Detroit area. For an advertiser, this means it is very difficult (if not practically impossible) to keep terms that have geographic modifiers separate from terms that do not have geographic modifiers when setting bids.   This is a problem because you might expect a broad matched keyword phrase like “plumbers in detroit” to have better conversion rates than a broad matched keyword like “plumbers” – even if the more general term is in a locally targeted campaign. I can think of at least four reasons why the geo-modified term should deserve a higher bid for a local business:

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When I’m managing an AdWords account, I can sometimes forget where these ads are going.   A whole lot of AdWords isn’t visible from the user interface.   It’s easy to look at cost per clicks, conversion rates, bids, and ad positions – without really doing a check on the actual substance behind it.   Especially because I’m comfortable with submitting ads and keywords, without having to worry that my ad will actually show on Google and that things will run the way I expect.   But this whole user-interface vacuum, strips away some important performance predictors/indicators:

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Google AdWords offers targeting by country and language. If you have a US-based company, you might want to start new campaigns that target countries outside the US because:

1. It expands your traffic reach (duh).

2. It truly is possible, even easy, to find keywords that cost around $0.10/click for top positions (especially foreign terms).

3. Lots of people outside the US can speak English (maybe another “duh” is in order?).

If your company does business outside the US, or would like to explore doing business outside the US, AdWords is a great platform for getting started.   Here’s how AdWords management with international targeting options works.

Managing AdWords Country Targeting

Country targeting is set in your campaign settings under “Locations.”   For international targeting, the most important factors for deciding if a user fits your targeting criteria are:

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Briefly, What is Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a marketing program that gives advertisers the ability to place ads next to search engine results, and next to content relevant to your products and services on sites partnered with Google.   AdWords offers other advertising opportunities, but primarily this is the focus of the program.

The actual setup of an account entails bidding on keywords, circulating ads for those keywords, and paying an amount less than or equal to the amount of your bid when a visitor clicks on your ad.

Google AdWords Management : How The Costs Stack Up

AdWords management can seem pricey, and it is for local companies.   For small companies unaccustomed to budgeting much at all for advertising, the costs can be impractical.   But for those with high-value leads, with web-users actively searching for their product or service online, they should not be discouraged by the price of managing an account.   Costs associated with pay per click advertising are easy to control, and results are highly traceable. Tracking is such that a company can be highly certain, or 100% certain, that a contract or sale originated from AdWords advertising.   Often one or a few contracts is enough to cover the initial investment associated with experimenting with this type of advertising.   A highly acceptable cost considering the potential growth it can offer.   Large companies also have good incentive to advertise with Google AdWords if:

• They are worried about smaller companies cutting into their profits.

• They market with a heavy emphasis on generating sales and are interested in getting good returns (ROI) on their advertising costs.

• Want to establish a brand presence on the web.   Although a couple lines of text in the typical AdWords ad does not provide much opportunity to communicate your brand message, AdWords does bring visitors to your site where there is plenty of opportunity to provide a full brand experience.

To really see how the costs of AdWords management stack up, you need to start with a value calculation.

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There have been lots of announcements coming from Google lately, as usual.   Incidentally, you can get a ton of good news about Google and Google AdWords, by simply setting up an alert for “google” and “adwords.”   I usually start out my day browsing the latest news about them and Yahoo!, as well as cruising the blogosphere.   Here’re a few Google announcements I’ve encountered over the past week:

1. Google is investing in Pixazza.   This is a startup company that enables web publishers to receive revenue by including advertisements on images in their sites.   Pixazza allows site visitors to see products displayed inside larger images that are available for purchase.   The buzz is this could be an AdSense-for-images type venture.   AdSense has been huge for Google.   This and using links to determine rankings were the two big things Google has come up with that have made the company huge (besides giving the company the name “Google” – so I guess that’s three big things if you want to count that).   It makes sense that they’d continue their quest to make the Internet more of an ad-based medium with images.

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