Simply launching an AdWords campaign is generally fast and easy, but to truly configure your campaign correctly takes time, research, consideration and testing. This post will identify some important areas of ad campaigns that can get overlooked.
Conversions Are a Must
It is crucial that your campaign track conversions. Conversions are key actions that you want your users to take on the site such as a purchase or account registration. Many sites have more than one conversion to track. Make sure you know which conversion goals you want to track and then configure both AdWords and your analytics program to track these conversions. Without tracking conversions you have no way of distinguishing between which keywords are most effective for your campaign and your business. Conversions will also allow you to calculate your ROI.
Break Your Keyword List into Groups
Ad groups are a wonderful tool and should always be used, unless of course you are advertising against only a single keyword. Ad groups allow you to setup specific keyword groups and craft ads that speak specifically to each of those keyword groups. Using ad groups will help ensure that your ads appear perfectly relevant for the keyword search it is served for. This brings us to our next tip...
Include Your Keyword in Your Ad Title and Copy
Once you have your keyword groups populated with keywords, make sure the ads you craft for that group use your primary keyword in the ad copy, and ideally in the ad title. This is one of the oldest and most well known facts about crafting effective web page titles in general, but not always the most obvious and often overlooked. The basic idea here is simple, when an end user types a keyword into the search box they are most likely going to click on a compelling ad that includes those keywords. When it comes to keywords and ad copy the more specific and relevant the better...always!
Common Sense Landing Pages
Make sure each of your ads link to a relevant and appropriate landing page. This is one of the most common ad campaign oversights. I once came across a campaign that was advertising against hundreds of keywords and the site had very specific content for each keyword, but all of the ads linked to the website’s homepage (which was not a relevant destination based on the keyword search or the ad copy). This is a guaranteed bad experience for the user who clicked on your ad and did not get what they were searching for. They will leave your site instantly for not delivering on the promise. Make sure your users arrive on the most relevant landing pages.
Search Network vs. Content Network
Do you want your ads to appear on Google's search engine result pages? Yes. Do you also want your ads to appear on sites running Google AdSense (content network)? Maybe. Some campaigns do find serving their ads on the content network to be successful, but make sure you are tracking conversions so you can calculate your return. Also certain keywords are prone to appear on SPAM sites that make their money through AdSense. Many marketers have become skeptical about the content network because of these SPAM sites and the potential click fraud associated with them. If you are interested in experimenting with the content network make sure you edit your bid price accordingly. For example, for the same keyword you might bid $.90 on the search network, but only $.30 on the content network. There are also advanced content network options such as selecting individual websites that you want your ad to appear on. In this case you may want to increase your bid if you want your ad to appear on a high profile site that is part of the AdSense program. Once again… conversions will ultimately help measure the success the different networks options for your campaign.
Use Google's Tools
Google offers many tools to help run an effective ad campaign. Take advantage of these tools often. Not only will they make your job easier, you will learn a lot in the process. Here is an overview of some of the tools that are essential to setting up and managing your campaign, but this short list is only the tip of the iceberg.
Keyword Tool - This is a no-brainer, but if you have not used the keyword tool to make sure you are covering your keyword base then you might be missing out on some great keyword opportunities.
Campaign Optimizer – This tool will review your campaigns and give you a list of suggested improvements for each ad group including new keywords, bids suggestions and ad variants. In fact this tool will even make the changes for you.
Website Optimizer – The optimizer will help you perform A/B testing or multivariate testing on your website landing pages. This tool will take time to configure as you will need to use Google analytics (if you are not using it already) and you will also need to re-code some of your website's pages. The results will help you craft the most effective landing page for your audience so you can achieve the most conversions possible. As they always say on the web...test, test, test... and then test again!
I plan on posting more search marketing/SEO tips, ideas and musings in blog posts to come.
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