It’s OK to Cheat! It’s even Encouraged.
Campaign settings:
- Use descriptive names for campaigns. AdWords accounts grow with time, and instant recognition makes management simpler. The same applies to ad group names.
- Never mix search and content campaigns. Keep them separate. And don’t be tempted to use separate content bids in a combined campaign.
- Ad serving should be set to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly”. Monitor ad performance; don’t let Google do this. Your interests and Google’s are not the same.
- Delivery method should be set to “Choose Standard: Show ads evenly over time”. The “accelerated” option may exhaust your budget when many of your potential customers are sleeping. Don’t lose control.
- Budget: Make Google work hard for your money. Don’t just give it to them. And don’t just increase your budget because Google think you should.
Keywords:
- Spend time finding keywords through keyword research. Google’s keyword tool is useful, a WordTracker account is better still.
- Massive keyword lists are not the best approach. Smaller and more focused is better.
- Negative keywords are very important. If you’re not offering free software, -free, -freeware and related terms are a good idea. As are -hack, -crack, –serial etc.
- Matching options:
• Be extremely careful with broad match because of expanded matching. But don’t be put off; broad match can be useful.
• Don’t use only one matching option. Using all of them shouldn’t work, but it does! - Misspellings can be effective. Regional variations too eg: British / American English.
- Purge keywords that don’t work and expand those that do.
Ad text:
- Be pushy! Calls to action work: Download Now, Try Now, Buy Now etc.
- Use popular keywords within your ad texts.
- Shorter can sometimes be better.
- Punctuation is important.
- The display URL now needs to match the destination URL. An old policy, but with a new drive to enforce it.
- Dynamic keyword insertion. Dynamically inserting a search into the ad is simple, but use with caution – unexpected results may occur!
• {KeyWord:Alternate Text}: Fast Red Cars
• {Keyword:Alternate Text}: Fast red cars
• {keyword:Alternate Text}: fast red cars
Best practices for new ad groups:
- Start small. Once you have data, purge low performers and expand on what works.
- Start with “safer” keywords – using a reasonable number. Less is better.
- Always work in time intervals of seven days.
- Never write just one ad. Use a minimum of four per ad group.
- Allow sufficient time to generate sufficient data. Haste leads to poor ROI.
- Once there is sufficient data, split ad groups into more focused themes based on keywords. Then set up targeted ads for each of the new ad groups.
- Purge whatever doesn’t work and expand on what does.
Best practices for improving an existing ad group:
- Keywords:
• Identify and delete low performers:
- low CTR (high impressions low clicks)
- off-target keywords (common sense)
- zero-impressions over 28 days - Ads:
• Is individual tracking in place for each ad?
• Identify and delete low performers:
- Through CTR
- Through log analysis
- Pause ads for at least seven days before deleting them
Tracking:
- Track everything, but don’t drown in data. Too much tracking leads to paralysis by analysis.
- Use unique tracking URLs for each of your ads. Don’t track by keyword.
- Google’s conversion tracking: easy to implement but can be problematic and inaccurate.
• Conversions will not be tracked in the following scenarios:
- No purchase within 30 days of clicking on your ads
- The person clicking on the ad is not the person who makes the purchase
- Cookies are cleared from the system
- Visitor clicks the ad on one computer but purchases through a different system
Reports and log analysis:
- Make use of the report center within your AdWords account.
- Use your raw web logs. Data inside the AdWords account is one-sided. What happens once someone arrives on your site is vital to the success of your AdWords campaigns.
- Ad Performance report – for seeing patterns and tends. Can be useful when viewed with raw web logs to see how ads perform once the visitor arrives on the site.
- Search Query Performance report – essential for finding new keywords and negative keywords.
- Placement Performance report – vital for seeing how well your ads are performing on the content network.
AdWords Editor:
- Clunky but useful software – great for copying and pasting keywords, ads, ad groups or even campaigns.
- Always work in units of seven days to make sure that all trends are accurately identified.
- Twenty-eight days is a good time period to work with
• Click on the “show stats for” button, then add two days to the dates displayed for “last 30 days” (to make 28 days)
The Golden rules:
- Never allow an AdWords account to run itself.
- Never make too many changes at a time.
- Never let Google control your budget.
- Never let Google decide what’s best for you.
- Always allow time for changes to take effect.
- Always work in time intervals of seven days.
- Always keep control.
- A neglected AdWords account is a dangerous AdWords account.
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