PLA Optimization?

[AWCthreads]

Anyone familiar with PLA optimization? I see Google's got an hour long video on it.

After watching/reading Google stuff I always walk away feeling like they never give up the gold nugget.

Our feed manager is kicking my cage about PLA's and I'm curious about the optimization end of it. I don't want to lose my shirt.

Anyone have a resource to recommend?

[ritchey]

From what I can tell it's a mess, my take on best practices:

1. You need to use a third party such as Godatafeed to make it work
2. You will need to customize your feed before you load it to Google (outside of Volusion)
3. Data you need to look at is in AdWords and your Google Webmaster area, as well as Godatafeed
4. You will need to stop products that are not economical

[AWCthreads]

Thanks Ray.

Do keywords and more importantly, negative keywords come into play with PLA optimization?

I'm contemplating going with an AdWord company that does PLA feed optimization as well.

My concern is whether or not my feed manager has the "experts" in house I would want to handle optimization properly as would be done on AdWords campaigns.

[jmartyka]

Keywords are NOT used on PLAs. Google determines product to query matches based on product names, descriptions and categories.

Negative Keywords ARE used on PLAs.

You don't have to use a feed service. I do for the convenience, though. I know people that manage PLAs that don't use feed services and they are quite good at it.

There are 2 versions of campaigns in AdWords now. The new Shopping campaign is in beta, but its interesting. The interface is a royal pain, but it does bring product level data into the AdWords interface. There is a LOT of clicking to configure everything. Hoping for a lot of changes in that interface.

Best practices in the current generally available campaigns involve segmenting. The depth of that segmentation is dependent on the site. Some need product level bidding, others are good with category bidding.

[AWCthreads]

Thanks jmartyka. I would think the negative keyword element of PLA optimization would be critical.

Did you get an invite to AdWords beta testing?

When you refer to segmenting are you referring to AdWords or PLA's?

[GentleBath]

AWC you are right on with the Neg KW - when you first submit your feed you can also monitor all the queries that trigger your ads and add any to Neg KW that are are not valuable/appropriate. I tried segmenting my products by product type which is basically my categories. I was able to set different bids for each product type then. Each segment is its own ad group and some even go down to the product level in these ad groups. You can segment both in AdWord and/or by adding additional fields in your feed to segment with. Google has a good description of all of the fields and ways you can segment.

You can also have one promotion for each ad group too plus you can have one ad group/promotion for all products too. I have tried so many different configurations with my PLA but to date it is my worst performing campaign by far. It is very strange that I have a much better conversion rate from my text campaigns but I do. I have great CTR on my PLA campaign but the conversions are so low I finally put my PLA campaign on minimal bids and took the money and put it back in my text campaigns.

Oh, also you can add ad extensions to each ad group too, like your links to products or categories or landing pages with a heading and two lines of text. My link extensions all draw a lot of clicks and have great CTR's so you might want to try some of those as well but again I have a much higher conversion rate with them on my text ads than PLA's. I have not seen the beta myself although I applied for it, I don't know when I will see it.