Google considers invalid click activity as any clicks or impressions that artificially inflates an advertiser’s costs,  or a publisher’s earnings.  Despite Google’s Ad Traffic Quality team monitoring traffic across its ad network in an effort to prevent advertisers from paying for invalid traffic, click fraud remains rampant.

And because 97 percent of Google”s $33 billion in revenue last year came from advertising, they consider protecting against this type of fraud paramount. The company recently launched an in-depth Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center designed for both advertisers and publishers so there is no excuse not to be paying attention.

Five things your team should know about invalid clicks.

1.  Monitoring your ad traffic

If you want a job done right, you should do it yourself. Of course Google is looking out for you, but you obviously have your own best interests at heart. So it only makes sense to keep an eye on it.

Here’s a few quick monitoring tips:

• Segment your ad traffic using channels.
• Be aware of who’s visiting your site, and how.
• Avoid partnering with untrusted / low-quality parties.
• Don’t click on your own ads, even if you think it’s okay to do so.
• Double- and triple-check your implementation.
• Use the authorized sites feature to prevent unauthorized use of your ad code.

2. Beware wary of third-party click tracking methods

Although you’ll want to be proactive monitoring your website and ad traffic, click tracking via third-party software or custom ad implementations can be a risky propositions for you and your busineness for two primary reasons:

• These methods can inadvertently disclose sensitive information about your website to a third-party;
• And can also disrupt Google’s ad delivery or click logging in a way that violates the company’s Terms and Conditions.

And besides, the best click tracking efforts of third-party sources may not even provide you significantly more information than your AdSense or Analytics reports. Work these channels to help gain greater insights into your account.

3. Let Google do some of the work

Google uses real-time detection and filtering systems to examine each click on an AdWords ad. In effect, they look at several sources of data points for each click, including the time of the click,  duplicate clicks, and various other click patterns.

The system uses these factors to analyze, isolate and then  filter out potentially invalid clicks before they ever reach your account. reports.

Once potentially invalid clicks are identified by the systems, a member of Google’s team examines the affected account to learn more about the source of the potentially invalid clicks.

4. Monitor, report and receive

As should already be clear, protecting advertisers’ interests through continued  monitoring  is keyto keep the network a balanced ecosystem where users, publishers, and advertisers can all grow and thrive together.

And once irregularities in this system are discovered and later determined clicks are determined to be fraudulent, Google returns  earnings from disabled AdSense accounts to affected advertisers. If you’re watching your campaigns you should be able to protect yourself from fraud.

5.  It may not be invalid clicks that has your campaign sputtering

A depleted budget early in the day does not necessarily mean something shady is going on with your account. In fact, more often than not there is a legitimate reasons as to why your daily budget gets expended earlier than you expected. Here are a few:

• Your daily budget may not be high enough to accommodate the amount of traffic that your ads receive each day. You may need to Optimize your account, decrease your cost-per-click bid or increase your daily budget.
• Changes in Web content and user behavior may affect the serving of your ad.
• Recent trends, news items, or current events at times dramatically influence the number of impressions and clicks you receive.
• Different times of the day may yield more valuable traffic for your ad.
•  If you recently changed your ad delivery method to ‘Accelerated’, your daily budget may deplete faster than anticipated.

Auditing Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaigns is a simple and measurable way of gaining new clients. It can help demonstrate a high level of expertise to  prospects who may be on the fence about giving you their business, while also providing valuable insights into their current efforts.

So why aren’t you doing it?

When you’re ready to give it a shot, offer complimentary PPC audits to clients who are looking to increase their revenue from Paid Search – segmenting campaign traffic in AdWords is a great place to begin.

Getting Started

Let’s look at data from an audit I performed for a client who runs a successful wholesale ecommerce website (All figures provided are an average of entire campaign performance across a six month period).

AdWords offers a plethora of ways to segment traffic. When performing an audit the most important segments are:

• Top vs. Side (Where ad is displayed on search results page)
• Device  (PC, Mobile, Tablet)
• Network (Either Google’s search or display network)

Follow these steps when auditing a campaign using AdWords segmentation.

Top vs. Side

Segmenting ‘Top versus Side’ will tell you how a campaign is performing when ad impressions are delivered to different locations (the top or side) on a search engine results page (SERP). Typically, campaigns perform best when the majority of ad impressions are triggered on the top of a SERP.

How this is useful:

The potential client was managing their pay-per click in house. While they were already profitable, there were many areas that could be improved. The biggest selling point in my audit revolved around the important data gleaned when examining Top vs. Side segmentation of their traffic.  Here is what I found:

• 82% of their sales came when their ads placed on top.
• 77% of their ad impressions came when their ads were on the side.

The fact that 82% of their sales came from just 23% of their impressions offered us ample ammunition to get their business. While there was a multitude of other issues with the campaign, our main selling point was that they were missing out on as much as three times as many sales per month.

The remedy:

Once we took over their campaign, we looked at the estimated top page bids (provided by AdWords) to ensure the majority of their keywords placed on the top of SERP’s.

Device

Segmenting campaign performance by device is an effective way of maximizing a client’s budget. AdWords default campaign setting targets all devices (PC, mobile and tablet). While this is a great way of reaching a broad audience, it’s also a great way of wasting a client’s money.

How this is useful:

Many websites with an elaborate conversion process aren’t suited for tablets and mobile devices where providing information and filling out forms can be cumbersome. The result is generally money being wasted on devices where users simply have a tough time converting.  Additionally, bid amounts vary from device to device due to differences in search volume and competition. As a result, AdWords clients end up spending money on impressions that negatively affect their bottom line and worst of all, their quality score.

• When analyzing six months of data during the audit I noticed that there were just 11 conversions (4.8%) that came from either mobile devices or tablets.
• That 4.8% accounted for 17% of the client’s AdWords spend during that time period.
• As a result they were spending more than three times as much for conversions on devices that weren’t conducive to sales.
• That is 17% of a budget that should be spent on more effective clicks.

The remedy:

There are two ways of fixing this situation.

• The first is to create duplicate campaigns that are targeted specifically by device.This can help preserve budget and may improve quality score based on ctr’s for various devices.
• The second is to only target devices that are effective for a given client, for this client running ads solely on a PC was the best way of going forward.

Network

Google AdWords allows for two main network targeting options, search and display. When performing an audit, the first thing to look for is what networks are being targeted.  If a campaign is targeting both search and display, it’s a massive red flag. It means you’re dealing with a potential client whose AdWords account is being horribly mismanaged. There is a myriad of reasons to separate campaigns by network, but that’s a topic for another day.

Segmenting networks will relay how a campaign is performing on Google search, Google’s search partner sites and Google’s display network.

How this is useful:

Segmenting campaign data based on network will break down how a given campaign is performing on a given network. The aforementioned client was just running campaigns on Google search and Google search partner sites.  The data showed the following:

• 79% of conversions came from Google search.
• 84% of their budget was spent on this 79%.
• 21% of conversions came from Google’s search partner.
• 16% of budget was spent on this 21%.

This data reflects the fact that the client was more profitable on Google’s search partner sites but the majority of sales volume came from Google search.

The remedy:

• There was no remedy needed, had the data reflected money being wasted on Google’s search partners sites, I would have turned off network targeting for search partners and solely targeted Google search.

*Note that running a campaign solely on Google’s search partners is not a current option on the AdWords platform.

David Dweck is a marketing specialist at Blue Fountain Media.  He is an expert in Paid Search Advertising.

In fact, according to Google, 97 percent of company revenue comes from advertising, and a large portion of that from AdWords. For the uninitiated among us: AdWords is Google’s main advertising product offering pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads.

So obviously, Adwords is pretty important and with that in mind search marketing software and services firm Wordstream put together a list of the Top 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google’s Adwards Advertising platform.

If you are thinking of targeting any of these words make sure you’ve got a fat wallet.

Note: Bidding is a dynamic and ongoing process and these numbers are always subject to change. The figures represent what it costs per click. Volume is also taken into consideration in terms of ranking.

1. Insurance ($54)
2. Loans ($44)
3. Mortgage ($47)
4. Attorney ($47)
5. Credit ($36)
6. Lawyer ($42)
7. Donate ($42)
8. Degree ($40)
9. Hosting ($31)
10. Claim ($45)
11. Conference Call ($42)
12. Trading ($33)
13. Software ($35)
14. Recovery ($42)
15. Transfer (credit card industry) ($29)
16. Gas/Electricity ($54)
17. Classes ($35)
18. Rehab ($33
19. Treatment ($37)
20. Cord Blood ($27)

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1. Make changes that matter.

Don’t just look for what is not performing well in your campaign, look for areas that would have a big impact on your ROI if it were working better. See what campaigns and ad groups within each campaign represent the greatest share of your overall paid search budget.

Once you’ve identified the most critical areas of your campaign to optimize, start by taking a look at your Quality Score. Improving it will help you reduce your cost-per-click in relation to the position of your ads. This involves looking at each keyword’s CTR, associated ads and taking some of the following steps:

1. Create better targeted ad groups.

Look through your ad groups to find keywords with low Quality Score or low CTR and see what ads are showing up for them. Consider placing these keywords in another ad group with ads that are more relevant. In the case of broad match keywords, use the “See Search Terms” report to find some common queries you are getting clicks for. If some of the keywords that often get clicks are relevant to you, consider using them as a phrase or exact match in the same or new ad group.

Besides using the “See Search Terms” report to better target relevant keywords, use it also add to list of keywords that you do not want to target.

1. Curate your negative keyword lists.

Add negative keywords to your list so that your ads show for more relevant searches. You can find these in the “See Search Terms” report.

1. Use broad match modifiers.

If you have not done so already, add the new broad match modifier to your ad groups. This type of matching is more flexible than phrase and exact match while doing a better job of targeting than broad match. Bid on this match type higher than you would on broad match, and lower than phrase and exact match.

Your CTR does not only rely on your keywords, so it’s important that your ads get users to click.

1. Test your ads.

Look for ways to make your ads stand-out against your competition and test different ideas. Let ads compete against each other and gather sufficient data before eliminating one or more ads. When you come across a test result in one ad group, consider applying what you learned to other ad groups.

Everything I’ve listed so far is primarily meant to increase your CTR. But what about making sure that each click is the best click you can get?

1. Filter out unwanted clicks.

Provide information in your ad copy that will deter your most common unwanted customers. For example, if your services start at $5,000, consider using that in your ad copy. This may go against our strategy of increasing our CTR, but its benefits may outweigh the loss by increasing the value of each click.

1. Use match types to control bids.

Look at broad match keywords that are consuming a lot of your budget, without delivering the goods in the form of conversions. Consider reducing your bids on some of those broader keywords and increase bids on phrase and exact match keywords that are delivering good results.

1. Show ads at the right time.

After doing some preliminary testing by showing ads throughout the day and days of the week, configure your bidding schedule to get your ads more attention when it counts.

I’ve covered most things leading up to the click. Now let’s look at what to do about what visitors see after they click on your ad.

1. Improve device targeting.

Make sure that if you are targeting mobile devices that you are sending traffic to a mobile-friendly page and that this mobile traffic is in a separate campaign from your desktop computer targeting.

1. Conduct landing page optimization.

Work on continually improving the conversion rate of your landing pages. At the end of the day, no matter how cheaply you can generate traffic to your website by improving Quality Score or how well you can filter out unwanted clicks, if your pages are not focused on turning each visitor into a client, then you will always be spinning your tires in the mud. If you need a few tips to get you started, check out 84 Tips For A Killer Landing Page Design.

Below is a demonstration of the effects of conversion optimization on ROI:

In this example, ROI increases by 20% for every 1% increase in conversion rate.

1. Keep your enemies closer, but keep your friends close too.

When you start an SEO campaign, the focus is usually on competitor research: what are your competitors optimizing for, where are they getting links, and how can you do a better job at it than them? But through Google Analytics you can also see what sites you are already getting traffic from. Well, a lot of the time, the users that come in through those referring sites ended up there because of a previous search query. Why is the referrer ranking, and what can you do to get your site on that SERP too?

2.  Exploring site search

A lot of websites have a search bar that allow you to search through the content of the site. This is a nice safety feature, but once a user is on your site, you have control over their experience, so they shouldn’t have to: important information should be accessible through site navigation. Luckily, you can track popular internal search terms with Google Analytics. If a lot of users are searching for the same pieces of content, it’s probably a good idea to investigate how easy it is to navigate to them.

3. Using advanced segments in Google Analytics data

There is a lot of data in Google Analytics, but the default reports are not always easy to sort through. Sometimes you want to look at a the performance of a whole group of keywords, without the distraction of extraneous data; or you want to look at the sources, conversion rates and actions of only the “highly-engaged users” who visit more than three pages. Advanced Segments allow you to view custom sets of data in a single report.

In this example, Google includes a plus-box below a Newegg.com ad, with product images and information pulled from microformatted tables on their product pages:


Much like the Google Checkout badge and the maps plus box, this isn’t something you can just turn on via AdWords; it’s a result of having your ad campaigns set up correctly, and Google crawling your website and determining that they’ll be providing users with a better experience by displaying additional content from your website (either letting users know that you support Google Checkout, or giving a preview of products related to your search).

This is yet another example of the importance of a holistic approach to online marketing; advertising should integrate not only searchability and online reputation, but site architecture as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of how Google uses information like microformats in the SERPS, check out their recent entry on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.)

Alhan and I just got back to the office after three days at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference and Expo. We’ll be writing more about the takeaways from that experience a little later. But first I wanted to point out something I noticed this morning:

One technique to avoid unwanted clicks and the charges associated with them is to write ad copy which will “filter” unqualified users by discouraging them from clicking. Above, on our own AdWords creative, we use the filter “$5K+”, which gives users a clue about the level of our services.

Another New York firm, Avatar, has been doing the same thing (“$20,000 and up”), but now they’ve added a second filter on the same ad: “Currently NOT Hiring”.

When used properly, filters can be effective at reducing your overall pay-per-click cost. However, they can’t be your only strategy for targeting. First of all, they rely on users reading beyond the ad headline, which is sometimes a tall order. Secondly, they can lower your click-through rate, which lowers your AdWords Quality Score, which drives up your minimum cost-per-click. (Basically, if your ad shows a lot but doesn’t get clicked on, Google will see it as a low-quality ad; since they want to provide a quality experience for users, they discourage low-quality ads by making them more expensive.)

One way to reduce the number of unqualified impressions before you start filtering clicks is through negative keywords. If we’re bidding on the keyword phrase “new york web design”, but don’t want users to click our ad searching for “new york web design jobs”, we could just add “jobs” as a negative keyword.

Fortunately, we don’t have that problem; we are hiring.

This is a quick post to exemplify why most methods of marketing, especially online, simply do not match the effectiveness and longevity of search engine optimization (SEO). The important factor to remember is that it is measurable, like pay-per-click advertising and banner ads, but unlike these, the effects of SEO last far beyond the length of the campaign and cost-per-conversion plummets with SEO as time goes by.

Exhibit A:

One of our clients, PriorTax.com, was spending $1.40 per visitor through Google AdWords to bring 13,024 visitors to their website in a period of 30 days.

During the same 30 day period, Blue Fountain Media brought the website 15,382 visitors for $0.43 per visitor through search engine optimization.

These numbers do not speak for themselves; we must consider whether or not these were qualified visitors or not. It is not enough to say that we brought X amount of traffic to a website, if they got zero sales out of it.  PriorTax.com not only had more visitors through SEO than from Google AdWords, but their conversion rate was also higher. Their AdWords conversion rate was 3.38% while their organic results gave them a slight edge at 3.64%.

Conclusion: Not only did SEO bring more visitors at a lower price, but also had a higher conversion rate.

Exhibit B:

R.A.G. New York was able to take advantage of the SEO campaign that Blue Fountain Media performed long after the end of our work. Here are two screenshots from R.A.G. New York’s Analytics showing 1.) overall visitors and 2.) total conversions. Blue Fountain Media provided SEO services between April and September. Since then there has been no work done to promote the website.

It is clearly visible that the fruits of our labor truly paid off after our work was done. R.A.G. was able to take full advantage of the holiday season search frenzy and many of those same visitors came back to the website early this year. Personalized search results had a big role to play here.

It’s amazing how many poorly researched, poorly written, and poorly targeted paid search campaigns I’ve come across on the major search engines without even really looking for them. It’s obvious why Google runs those $25 free AdWords credit promotions for new users; if you don’t know what you’re doing, that money goes pretty quickly.

Whether they’re using Google AdWords, Yahoo! SEM, or Microsoft adCenter, here are some of the dangerous thoughts that seem to go through the minds of PPC users:

1. I know the keywords that best describe my products/services; those are the ones I’ll target.

Standardizing the terms you use to refer to your products and services is part of effective branding. Search, however, is not done on your terms. It’s by definition on the terms of the user. Starbucks doesn’t refuse service to people who come in and order a “large”. Nor should you ignore users just because they don’t use specialized terminology in their search query.

2. I don’t want to leave any users out; I’ll use broad match keywords.

This is the flip-side of the above: While doing broad match for competitive keywords increases your brand’s exposure in theory, it will probably cost you more than it’s worth.
Use common sense. Targeting a broader range of phrase and exact match keywords that are more specific to what you provide will appeal to more qualified users who know they want, and are therefore more likely to convert.

3. My company name is the most important thing; I’ll make that my ad headline.

Search isn’t about you. It’s about whoever entered the search query, and most often, relevancy is what is most important. Anyway, your company name will hopefully show up in the display URL, if you chose your domain name wisely.

4. One of my ads is not performing well; I’ll try out a new one with a different headline, description, display URL, landing page.

No two PPC campagins are the same, so testing out lots of options is fundamental. However if you change everything about every test subject, how are you going to know what’s making a difference?
Instead, test combinations of different elements; that way, the elements that are common across multiple ads serves as a “control” for the experiment.

5. The user knows what they just searched for; why should I repeat it in my ad copy?

Not only does using keywords in the ad copy help reassure users that you’re speaking the same language, this practice also improves quality score in AdWords, which means higher placements and lower cost-per-click.

6. My homepage is the best source of information about my products/services; I want all my traffic going there.

Your home page might be a great resource for learning about your company and the different services you provide, but unless the keyword was your company name, or unless you only do one thing, the user is probably looking for something more specific. Why not give it to them?
Traffic to specialized landing pages is much more likely to convert (obviously other factors, like design, matter here too), and keyword relevancy on the landing page increases quality score, which again means – you guessed it – higher placements with lower cost-per-click.

7. I just need to increase my maximum cost-per-click.

PPC managers and the programs themselves will often recommend that you just need to put more money into your campaigns and it will pay off. This is the simplest way to get more clicks, but it’s also the most expensive and unless you improve other aspects of your campaigns, it will lower your ROI.

8. Once I have my campaigns optimized, I can leave them alone.

Ignoring zeitgeist can be a costly mistake for online businesses. Even the same customers might be using different language to search for the same things two months from now. Any number of political, social, or economic factors, while not affecting your business directly, can have an effect on mindset.
It’s not so important to know the “why” behind searcher behavior, as long as you monitor it and adjust your behavior accordingly.

9. I’m getting “hits”. AdWords is working.

For Google, anyway; they get paid every time you get a click.
The only way to know for sure if your AdWords account is working to its potential if by measuring the rate at which visitors to your site turn into customers or clients. This is your conversion rate, and most major PPC programs give you tools for measuring it. Use them.

10. I only need one campaign, one ad group, one ad.

Amazingly, I still see PPC accounts set up this way. The mindset behind this seems to be that your website and your company are what matters, so you come up with the best possible description of your website that will appeal to the broadest audience possible, and then put it in front of as many people as possible, as often as possible.

In paid search, the most important thing is to match up, in the user’s mind, the user’s lack with a product or service you provide. You have four lines of text to demonstrate this link.

When Google started increasing minimum Adwords bids, the jig was up for Savage. His Adwords placements fell and he got fewer visitors at the same price he used to pay (10 cents according to the Times). The website that was once an “Adsense site of the week,” was disgruntled with the service.  So Savage had his lawyer craft this thick document, which was sent to the Justice Department two weeks ago.

The only thought that came to my mind was “Why isn’t Savage doing SEO?” He was spending upwards of $500,000 on Adwords while making little effort (or so it appears) to have his website come up in the organic search results. With that kind of a budget and especially with the profit he was making, he could have easily spent some money on SEO consulting (or hire an in-house employee) to bring his site up naturally and “beat” Google at its own game.

Of course there would be a lot of SEO work to do. Before even getting into the details, here are five quick no-brainer suggestions for Savage:

Mr. Savage, instead of paying your lawyer or Adwords, do a little SEO to help your reduce your costs. Here is where you can start:

1.) Improve the content of your website. You need to increase your link-worthy content. Find experts to create content that people want to read. Make your website a true online resource with links to sites that only merit your attention.

2.) Fix title tags to make them more descriptive (and keyword rich).

3.) Get rid of your subdomains that are acting as sub-categories in the directory. They aren’t helping with SEO. And if that is not an option, then don’t link to their index pages (/index.php). Use “/” instead.

4.) Clean up the links to nowhere (i.e. http://www.directory.sourcetool.com).

5.) Make effective use of CSS. The entire first paragraph on your homepage is in an H1 tag. Place your main header in an H1 instead.

With SEO, you could start charging for “featured placement” and the free submission area could become more popular as SEO’s get drawn in by your PageRank for their client sites.  And Sourcetool is halfway there already. With years of Adwords analytics, there is already plenty of data to target the right keywords.  And according to SEOMoz’s Page Strength tool you have a strong domain (plenty of inbound links).

You have a directory that is not completely full of spam that now has links to it from various news websites – most importantly The New York Times! What better time to start an SEO campaign?