3 Unconventional But Effective AdWords Optimization Secrets
Very often in my line of work I get asked for tips on how to optimize Google AdWords campaigns. I like to give the person asking the question a little scare with my first 3 tips, as these would often run contrary to what many believe to be proper AdWords management.
So basically we all know that to really make the most of your pay per click campaigns you need to be grouping keywords into relevant ad groups, testing ad copy, testing landing pages, making sure everything is relevant, and tracking everything that you do. We can easily find this information online.
Image Source:www.adviceinteractivegroup.com
So let me give you a few search marketing secrets that might sound a little crazy to some of you.
Starts Bids High
Yes, don’t be shy when it comes to setting the maximum cost per click you are willing to pay. The search marketing miser earns meagerly.
This is especially important when you are rolling out with a new campaign and keywords. You want to improve your quality score fast so that you could bring down bids and lower your cost per click (CPC) sooner, and it starts with getting a good click through rate (CTR).
Granting that your keyword or keywords are relevant to the ad, and your ad is well written, then the only way to ensure a good CTR is to get your ad the best visibility. By visibility, I mean making sure your ad is easily seen or noticed by the search engine user. Your ad position is decided by your Ad Rank, the ad with the highest Ad Rank will appear in the first position. Ad Rank is decided by Quality Score and your bid. So if you have a new keyword with no CTR history to it and likely having a low quality score, the best way to get your ad noticed is to bid high and try to get a good position for your ad.
A lot of people are afraid of bidding high, many don’t realize that it is likely they will not be paying exactly what they bid.
Google AdWords’ Discounter automatically reduces your CPC making you pay the lowest possible price for your ad position. So if you find yourself paying a little too high a CPC for your current ad position, try lowering your bid to bring down position by 1 spot and see if you are paying a significantly lower amount for more or less the same visibility. Your CPC is directly affected by the Ad Rank of the ad one spot below you, so you need to play around with your bids to find what max bid gives you the best position at the lowest price.
Start With a Small List of Keywords
By small, I am talking about the number of keywords you have in your ad group or in your overall campaign. While it is indeed sound practice to put together a huge keyword list, it would not be wise to start out with a big list especially if it is a new campaign since QS is affected by your account history, that in turn is a result of the CTR and performance of all keywords and ads in your account.
Rather than having a huge keyword list at the start, begin with a smaller group of very targeted keywords that would likely get good CTRs and then add more keyword groups later on.
One reason a keyword you are bidding on might be getting a very low CTR is the absence of negative keywords. This is especially important if the keyword or phrase you are using also gets searched for in combination with other keywords or modifiers that make it irrelevant to what you are advertising. In that case, your ad still gets triggered, but since the ad is not relevant to the search engine user it does not get attention nor get clicked.
Increase Your Daily Budget as You Increase Keywords
You can’t expect to get the same number of impressions if you keep adding more keywords to your campaigns but do not increase your daily budget. You simply have to increase your daily budget. Unless, you constantly prune your campaigns, and delete keywords that you find are not converting.
Ippn order to be able to identify the keywords that do not convert you would need to use the built in conversion tracking feature in Google AdWords which tells you which keywords brought in visitors that lead to a conversion. You can also use other ppc tracking software that will offer other valuable data, other than which keywords convert.
Some of these programs can tell you what time of day your conversions occur, which enable you to do time scheduling which can also greatly improve your CTR. The more advanced programs can even split test your landing pages and provide visitor engagement data, information that you can use to further develop your landing pages in an effort to improve conversions.
Learn more about the most popular pay per click conversion tracking software available today on http://www.ppc-conversion-tracking.com. You can also download more AdWords optimization strategies from that site, absolutely free.
Pay Per Click Advertising for Beginners
If you would like to learn more about Pay Per Click Advertising and get a grasp on the concept without getting confused, please do continue reading. I will try to explain PPC as simply as I can, laying it out to a grade schooler, and even provide a rather crude image to help… an image looking like it was actually drawn by a grade schooler with a spelling error which was actually not done on purpose. My spelling skills are apparently not as good as my marketing abilities.
There is this interesting story I need to tell about PPC and a newbie’s dilemma, or so I thought at the time.
It was Valentine’s day, February 14, 2007.. a Wednesday and single friends of mine thought of getting together at a local restaurant. As far as I remember the first people to get there were myself and a friend of mine Bing Torre, who is also a colleague in the marketing and events world. Bing then began to tell me about Pay Per Click advertising, how she had to run some ads on Google on a very limited budget for a client. At the time I had very recently crossed over into the online marketing space, leaving behind the marketing/advertising industry that I had been a part of for over 15 years. I was managing PPC accounts that was spending up to $1,000 a day. Yes a DAY!
I then went on to tell her about how AdWords worked, which is pretty much the same way I will describe to you in this post.
Incidentally here is picture taken of some us, the “un-valentiners.”
So about Pay Per Click Advertising.
PPC is simply a method of advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN/Bing, where your ads get shown to people who are looking for what you have to sell. It is targeted advertising in the sense that, you target people who are already looking for what you have to offer them, your ad only appears when specified keywords are being used on the search engine. You make a bid for a certain keyword and when that keyword gets searched, your ad appears.. typically on the upper or right section of the results page, and usually appears boxed.
The bid is an amount you are willing to pay the search engine if your ad gets clicked. For instance if someone searches for Nike running shoes and you are bidding $0.50 on that keyword phrase, your ad will appear only when that phrase is searched for, and you will only get billed 50 cents if your ad gets clicked. Of course when an ad gets clicked the clicker gets sent to a website or webpage which has more information about what you are offering.
So there are 3 key elements that you need to pay attention to.
Keyword or Keywords
- these are words you bid on that will trigger your ads if searched
- your keywords have to be very specific to what you are selling or offering
- group together very similar keywords in a cluster called an Ad Group
- for instance a cluster of related keywords can be… Nike running shoes, Nike running shoes for men, Nike running shoes for women, men’s Nike running shoes, Nike running shoes kids..
The Ad
- this is the text that search engine users read on the search engine results page
- ad text needs to be related to the keywords you are bidding upon
- ad text needs to be very specific to the specific cluster of keywords or Ad Group
- for instance your ad text can say “Nike Running shoes at amazing discounts, Free overnight delivery”
- the ad must tell the visitor what you are selling, and tell them why they should buy from you, as an added motivating reason to get them to click your ad
The Landing Page
- this is the page where a clicker of an ad lands on
- this page should also have exactly what the ad offers, so if your keyword was for Nike running shoes, and your ad text tells the reader that you have Nike running shoes at great discounts and that you deliver overnight for free, then your landing page must have all that information on the page PLUS..
- the landing page makes it easier for the viewer to find more information and to get exactly what they want, for instance the page shows not only Nike running shoes, but the viewer can choose a specific size, color, model, check out reviews from other buyers about the product or about your service, and an easy and secure system to make a purchase
Here is that grader level illustration I told you about… click the image to enlarge.
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