Basic Google Adwords Optimisation
How can you best optimise for your google adwords campaign ? You know, those little ads on the top and right hand side of the organic google search engine results ?.
Well first you need to go back to basics and have a look through the steps that get your ads showing on the SERPs pages and those little things that google looks out for that send your budget throught the roof and other elements that ensure that your click through rate CTR is high - you should get at least 5% CTR
So where to start? Well, it should be back at your keyword research stage. You see if you are bidding on the big volume terms you’ll be paying top dollar. Imagine bidding on the word “business” - thousands of people search for this term each day but who knows what they are really searching for.
When you set up your campaign you’ll want to have a good 50 or search terms - because like the searcher who searches for something very broad, if you have a broad campaign, you won’t know what converts best.
In adwords you can set it for (example “business help”) :
- “broad match” - so any search term that has “business help” in it in any order will return your ad
- “phrase match” - so your ad will be returned if a query has “business help” in that order
- “exact match” - your ad will only be returned for the query “business help”
It’s best to have all 3 types of ads running for every term you are bidding on. This way you capture everything but also google will see that you have done your research.
You need to be tracking everything as well. You really need to know what phrases you are bidding on are converting into (whatever you want to convert) sales.
You should then have a look at the actual ad. Each ad should have the term you are targeting in the ad. This is because of two reasons:
1) people could be searching for something specific and if they search for “business help” and you have an ad for “super consultant” you’ll get less click throughs.
2) the terms in your ad that match the terms of your query will be in bold and thus be highlighted in the results - much like the organic serps.
You need to try several ads out on your keyword list to see what performs best.
When you have good converting keywords take them out for a seperate campaign. Google runs something called the quality score and looks at your landing page against your ad. If you run an ad for “business help” and the page you are sending people to is about “gardening” then you’ll pay a high cost per click because Google thinks - “ah, this has nothing to do with the ad at all” - instead of saying you are not allowed to advertise it simply jacks up the price.
By having a seperate campaign you can also design a seperate landing page for your keywords. You should think about maxmising your best performing campaigns at all times and not just leave them to tick along day by day.
One final tip in this beginners guide to adsense optimisation — it is known that the longer you keep your ads the same the best trust is built into your campaign. So don’t keep changing your ads everyday - keep the campaign running for some time just to see what’s happening. One day does not mean you have success or a disaster.
One more final tip - ensure you put a daily budget on your campaign and your account. If you set something up on a high volume term and leave and forget it you may come in for a very nasty surprise because Google will just keep serving your ad until your budget, or credit card, are maxed out.
