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Google AdWords Guide:
Novice to Expert to Superhuman
AdWordsCampaign.net
The AdWordsCampaign.net Google AdWords Guide assumes that
you have a basic knowledge of Google AdWords and are able to set up an advertising campaign. You’ll find an enormous amount of useful, practical information about Google AdWords strategy, tactics and tools to out-perform your competitors, explained in the simplest possible
way, that you can apply and use immediately in your campaigns.
Know nothing at all about Google AdWords? Start with A Beginner’s Guide to Google AdWords Campaigns.
Most AdWords campaigns are managed poorly, through either lack of knowledge or an aversion to tedious work. This makes it possible for you to get targeted traffic extremely quickly and easily, using clever strategy together with automated tools.
A primary aim is to reduce your cost per click (CPC). Google will favour you with a low cost per click if you master the concept of relevance. If you don't, your pay-per-click rate will be high, your profits will suffer, your campaigns will probably fail, and your competitors will beat you.
Google is the undisputed leader (by far) among search engines because it provides searchers with results more relevant than those of any other. When a surfer types in a search term, Google's complex algorithm returns pages that match closely the words searched for.
Google applies the same principle to AdWords advertisements. Ads that are more relevant than others are given preferential treatment. Less relevant ads are allowed to compete, but they are penalized by a high cost per click.
Google AdWords employs two distinct modes of measurement of relevance: A. Robot; B. Human.
A. An automated program compares the search term not only to your advertisement text, but also to the keywords in its Ad Group, to the URL of the specified landing page and even to the textual content of the landing page itself, to determine how relevant these components are to each other. If all four are tightly integrated with the search term, you'll pay a very low cost per click -- perhaps only 5 cents -- and still command a high position on Google's first page. Any component that does not match the search term closely causes the CPC to rise, perhaps even by a factor of a hundred!
B. Every time Google displays your ad, it records the fact. This is known as an "impression". If a surfer clicks on the ad, Google records that also, and divides the number of clicks by the number of impressions. The result gives your ad a "click-through" rate (CTR). A similar calculation is made for your keywords that appear in the search term, to give them their own click-through rate. Google AdWords assumes that, if a human clicks on your ad, it is probably relevant to the search term typed in.
As your CTR rises, so do your keywords' Quality Scores, and, as more and more keywords' Quality Scores rise, so does the Quality Score of the entire Ad Group. The higher the Quality Score is, the lower will be the cost per click. Conversely, the fewer clicks your ad gets whenever it's displayed, the lower your Quality Score and the higher your cost per click will be.
How to Increase Relevance of the 4 Components (keywords, ad text, URL, landing page)
If you create a campaign manually (rather than by "brute force" means), use only one keyword phrase per Ad Group, e.g., "adwords guide", and specify exact match initially. Once the Ad Group's Quality Score has increased, expand it to phrase match also, to capture phrases such as "online adwords guide" and "adwords guide for beginners". (To specify broad match, to capture search terms like "adwords online guide" and "guide to adwords", is impractical unless you use "brute force" software.)
Use the precise keyword phrase in the heading of the Ad Variation, and sprinkle the keywords in the two description lines.
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Use the keyword phrase, hyphenated or unhyphenated, in the display URL, e.g., "/adwords-guide" or "/AdWordsGuide". Not only does Google's robot consider it relevant, but humans do, too, and are more likely to click on the ad.
Use the keyword phrase, hyphenated or unhyphenated, in the destination URL of the landing page, e.g., "/adwords-guide.html" or "/AdWordsGuide.htm".
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If possible, register domain names, both hyphenated and unhyphenated, containing the keyword phrase. Use the hyphenated one in the display and destination URLs, and redirect the unhyphenated one to the hyphenated one for other promotion purposes.
Use the keywords in the landing page content as follows:
The precise keyword phrase in the <title> tag;
In the <keywords> and <description> metatags;
The precise keyword phrase in the first <h1> heading tag and variations of it in other <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. tags;
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Sprinkle the keywords liberally but naturally throughout the <body> content, particularly among the first and last 25 words, but do not commit the Google crime of "keyword stuffing", which is penalized.
Ideally, the landing page should relate ONLY to the SPECIFIC product, service or information being offered in the ad, and the objective of the visitor's search term should be IMMEDIATELY OBVIOUS to his eyes as soon as he lands on the page. If your ad sends the visitor to a web site's general home page, or the visitor has to spend time looking for his objective on the landing page, you'll lose him in seconds and your click cost will be wasted. Furthermore, The Google robot will see the landing page as irrelevant, and the keyword's Quality Score will be reduced, thereby increasing its cost per click.
Here's a quick trick that almost nobody uses because it is so little known. If you must include some irrelevant words that would dilute your web page's content in Google's eyes, "character reference" encode them with one of the free conversion tools available on the Web. For example, the words "New York" are utterly irrelevant on this web page; so, they are encoded in its HTML as "New York".
There's no point in advertising anything unless the ad reaches a person who might be interested in it. That sounds obvious, but the number of advertisers who waste money on "catch-all" ads with a "shotgun" approach, hoping for the best, is astonishingly high. If you follow their example, you'll lose a lot of money fast with Google AdWords. The secret of success with Google AdWords, as with any advertising medium, is accurate targeting. With Google AdWords, though, you can home in on your target market with pin-point accuracy.
If you sell a machine with a specific model number, that model number should be your main keyword. If you sell it only in a certain town or county, that town or county should be a keyword in the Ad Group. If it relates to a particular season or festival, that should be a keyword.
Keywords can be combined with each other or with incidental words, such as prepositions like "in", "for", "with", to form 2-word, 3-word or 4-plus-word phrases in various ways and different word orders. Ideally, every conceivable phrase that a surfer might type as a search term would be desirable to have in an Ad Group as an exact match keyword phrase. Then your cost per click for each of those keyword phrases would be minimal. If you're creating your Google AdWords campaign manually, such a task would be totally impractical, of course, if not impossible. For such jobs specialist software that applies "brute force" algorithms is a sound investment. You get what you pay for, and even the high-end software pays for itself, usually many times over.
Negative keywords have a great impact on a targeted AdWords campaign. If you sell software, for example, and don’t just give it away, you do not want your ad to appear when someone types the phrase “free software”. That might trigger an impression of your advertisement unnecessarily, thus affecting your keyword’s and your ad’s click-through rates adversely. Worse still would be if that person were to click on your ad. Yes, it’d help your CTR but you’d pay good money for a non-revenue-earning click. Specify “free” as a negative keyword, to prevent your ad from being displayed. To micro-target your market, your negative keyword list could be surprisingly large.
The same principle applies to the ad text: You don’t want freebie-seekers clicking on your ad unless you’re giving away something for nothing on your landing page. That costs you money. Don’t be afraid to target your potential customers who are prepared to pay for your product or service by making it clear in the ad text that it’s for sale and not free. Stating its price in the ad is the easiest and most succinct way to get that message across.
As well as geographic targeting, you can also make use of demographic tageting to a certain extent. Demographic targeting with Google AdWords, however, requires some judgment on your part. Use the Google AdWords "placement targeting" function (see 'Tactics > Placement Ads') to pick specific web sites that, in your opinion, would be visited by the kind of people you want to see your advertisement. Combine those placements with specific keywords and bids to attain the desired position for your ad on context-relevant pages on those web sites.
Here's a summary of what happens, depending on the Google AdWords settings you choose:
Select 'Search' with keywords in the Ad Group: Your ads can appear on user searches related to your keywords.
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Select 'Search' with no keywords in the Ad Group: Ads in this Ad Group won't appear on search. (Keywords are needed to be matched to user searches.)
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Select 'Relevant pages across the entire network' with keywords in the Ad Group: Your ads can appear on Content Network pages matching your keywords.
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Select 'Relevant pages across the entire network' with no keywords in the Ad Group: Ads in this Ad Group won't appear on the Content Network. (Keywords are needed for your ads to be matched contextually on the Content Network, but if you have also selected Placement targeting in this Ad Group, your ads can appear on any individual placements you selected.)
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Select 'Relevant pages only on the placements I target' with keywords in the Ad Group: Ads can appear only on the placements you choose, and only if the content of those placements matches your keywords. If your chosen placements don't match your keywords, your ad won't show.
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Select 'Relevant pages only on the placements I target' with no keywords in the Ad Group: Ads can appear on any of the placements you choose, regardless of relevance.
Other Google AdWords Strategies
Google AdWords Ad Positioning
Although the profit margin on the product or service offered is a large factor, tests have proved that the first ad position on the first page is, generally, not the most profitable. Yes, it gets the most clicks, but it's often a spontaneous action by the surfer before studying the ad. Sometimes the surfer is merely browsing the subject and is not ready to buy (commonly known as "tyre-kickers").
Tests show that the further down the page an ad is, or, occasionally, even on the second page, the greater is its conversion rate. The surfer has taken the time to read the ad carefully because he is ready to buy. Furthermore, the clicks are fewer; so, your overall pay-per-click bill is less than for a higher-positioned ad. The downside is that the click-through rate (CTR) of the lower-positioned ads is lower, which affects your Quality Score adversely and raises your cost per click.
A happy medium is to aim for positions 4 to 6 on Google's first page. (You can use the "Show Estimated Ad Position" and "Estimated Avg CPC" columns in the on-line Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine the cost-per-click to bid for each of of your exact match keyword phrases, and then you can set those bids accordingly. These figures can, however, be notoriously inaccurate. Always check your keyword phrases' positions afterwards in the 'Avg Pos' column on the Ad Group's 'Keywords' index tab or by testing with a search on the main keyword phrases.)
"Google Search" ads, "Content Network" ads, "Search Network"/"Search Partners" ads, "Placement" ads
You can specify different maximum bid amounts for these various types of advertising. Because the quality of their traffic tends to be lower, bids for the Content Network ("entire network" option) and Search Network (Search Partners) (see Tactics > Search Network) should be kept lower and be more tightly controlled than those for Google Search traffic and the Content Network ("Placement ads" option). In the early stages of a new Google AdWords campaign, it is advisable to go with only Google Search traffic and switch other options off, to help you to control costs. Once you've discovered the keywords that produce the highest return on investment (ROI), you can enable other options for those keywords to see what results they produce.
If you find that a Google Search traffic campaign is too competitive, don't just abandon Google AdWords altogether; try a Content Network Placement ad (see Tactics > Placement Ads), bidding either CPC or CPM (q.v.).
Testing and Tracking
Ad Variations
Despite what you may think of your copywriting prowess, you will not write the perfect ad at the first attempt. You may need ten attempts before you find the best formula. Although you may hazard a reasonable guess at the advertisement text that would attract visitors, the ONLY way to KNOW what ad text achieves the highest click-through rate (CTR) is split-test two ads simultaneously.
Although changing just a single word can make a difference, do not split-test two ads that resemble each other that closely; Split-test two radically different ads. (Switch off Google's option to show the better-performing ad more often than the other, as that would distort the test results.) After between 20 and 50 clicks it should become apparent which of the two ads is out-performing the other. Then replace the inferior ad with another and split-test again. Repeat this process again and again, each time reducing the textual differences between the two ads until you arrive at the one that performs best of all.
To track the click-through rate (CTR) of your ads, go to your Google AdWords campaign web page, click on the Campaign name; click on the Ad Group name; click the 'Ad Variations' index tab; check the 'CTR' column.
Always keep all the Ad Variations that you create, to check that you don't repeat any inadvertently.
Landing Pages
Split-test your landing pages in a similar way, to discover which style, layout, text, call to action, etc. achieves the highest conversion rate. To track the conversion rates of your web pages for various keywords, go to your Google AdWords campaign web page and click on the 'Conversion Tracking' item on the 'Campaign Management' index tab.
Always save all the landing pages that you create, to check that you don't repeat any inadvertently.
Keywords
After a new campaign has been running for about a month, check the click-through rate (CTR) of all the keyword phrases in each Ad Group on its ‘Keywords’ index tab. Click the ‘CTR’ column header to sort the keyword phrases, mark the checkbox of all keyword phrases with a CTR of less than 0.5% and either ‘Pause’ or ‘Delete’ them. (If you have many keywords, it’d probably be quicker to do this in your specialist AdWords software tool and upload the keyword list to your Google AdWords campaign again.)
0.5% is considered the benchmark of a poorly performing keyword. Such keywords cause your ad to be displayed but, for some reason, the people using the keyword in their search terms don’t connect it mentally with your ad, and don’t click on it. If several keywords have a low click-through rate (CTR), the overall click-through rate (CTR) of your whole Ad Group is reduced and its Quality Score will be affected adversely. Eventually, this Ad Group’s lower Quality Score will also affect the Quality Score of your entire Google AdWords campaign.
This check should be performed weekly thereafter.
If you really want to use those poorly performing keywords, remove them from the Ad Group and create a new Ad Group for them, or even a new campaign, so that they don’t affect your overall Quality Score.
The Bottom Line
Great importance is attached to the click-through rate (CTR), but, to put it in perspective, it is only a means to an end. A high click-through rate (CTR) does not make you a millionaire in itself; It’s revenue that counts. Your revenue is determined by the successful interaction between keywords, Ad Variation and landing page, all three working in harmony together.
Maximum CPC Bid
Don't be afraid to bid higher than necessary for keywords in a new Google AdWords campaign during the first few days. This will establish your campaign with Google and, as your click-through rate (CTR) rises, your maximum CPC bid amount to achieve the same ad position will fall dramatically. Then you lower your bids and check again the next day. Repeat this process until your bids are minimized. You do this for all the keyword phrases in the Ad Group. If there are too many keywords to deal with manually, invest in specialist software to calculate the bids for you.
CPC or CPM?
Google 'Content Network' advertising (see Tactics > Content Network) gives you the option to specify your keywords' maximum bids as cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) ("M" is the Roman numeral for 1,000, "mille" in Latin). CPM can be useful if the Quality Score is low or the cost per click (CPC) is high. If you opt to pay for impressions rather than for clicks, Google couldn't care less about Quality Score or click-through rate (CTR) or even relevance; You simply pay each time your ad appears. Of course, it's still in your interest to ensure that you follow the advice about relevance already given.
It's your responsibility to track the performance of your CPM ads, because Google doesn't do it for you. Obviously, you won't want to keep paying for ads that don't convert. Moreover, you'll still have to bid high enough to get your ad to be displayed in the desired position within an ad unit on an AdSense publisher's web page, or even at all, and that cost could be quite high on a good-quality, popular web site that you choose for a 'Placement' ad (see Tactics > Placement Ads).
Keywords
Unless you have a six-figure annual budget and would be happy with a mere 10% return on investment (ROI), don't bother bidding for popular 1-word keywords, such as "mortgage". The competition for most single-word keywords is fierce, unless the niche is very esoteric. Moreover, searches on single words are made most frequently by people who are simply not ready to spend their money; they are merely investigating the market, gathering information; in other words, they are "tyre-kickers". 1-word keywords would probably bankrupt you very quickly.
2-word keywords are a better bet, but they can still command a high cost per click in competitive markets, surfers who search on them may still not be ready to buy, although they're getting there.
Keyword phrases of three words and up are known as "long-tail" keywords. (Note that the word "keyword" in pay-per-click advertising can mean a phrase of more than one actual word, e.g., "New York". A "keyword phrase" consists of more than one "keyword".)
3-word keyword phrases have the highest conversion rate, according to tests. People who type three words as a search term have usually done their investigations, know exactly what they want, and are now ready to buy.
4-word keyword phrases fare slightly less well, perhaps because the searcher may indeed be ready to buy, but is comparing prices for a very specific item, or is doing some academic research.
Don’t understimate the power of negative keywords! If you sell tulips, you don’t want your ad to appear when someone searches on the term “grow tulips”. Although they may not click on your ad, it’d be an unnecessary impression, and its click-through rate (CTR) would suffer. Specify “grow” as a negative keyword. (Of course, if your Ad Group contains only exact match keyword phrases, there’s no point in specifying negative keywords.)
Landing Page
Relevance is covered above, and is by far the most important attribute of a landing page. Here is some advice about other ways to encourage Google to enhance your Ad Group's Quality Score.
Google values "real" web sites more highly than mere single-page "mini-sites". The robot checks for links to other web pages, particularly a 'site map' page and 'privacy policy' and 'contact us' pages. A 'terms of use' and an 'about us' page may also help. Hyphenate these page names as the file names, e.g., 'privacy-policy.html'. Place the links to these pages at the very bottom of your landing page, in the footer, using as small a font as a human would consider reasonable. You want to reduce the risk as much as possible that your visitor will click away from your landing page.
Minimize the landing page's load time. It is believed that Google uses this as an element in its Quality Score algorithm. Keep images and JavaScript to a minimum. They weigh the page down. (Google cannot follow JavaScript links anyway.)
How to Attract Visitors
What makes a person click on your ad instead of someone else's? The answer is the same as to the question why a person clicks the 'Buy' button on your sales page: good copywriting. That's a separate subject, but, suffice it to say here that your ad must be not only relevant, but also compelling. Imagine that you are the searcher, looking to buy a product or service like yours. Look at other ads offering something similar. What attracts you to one and not another? Ask your friends and colleagues what they think.
You have only a 25-character headline and two description lines of 35 characters each. Don't squander them on waffling about your company. The consumer couldn't care less about you or your company. The consumer has a problem to be solved, a need to be satisfied, a desire to be fulfilled. So, mention the problem, the need, the desire. And, most important, tell the consumer that the solution, what he needs, what he wants is only a click away. Tell him to "Get Help Now" or to "Find It Here". That's the 'call to action'.
This is the end of the Google AdWords Strategy guide. You're ready for the Google AdWords Tactics. Go there NOW! :)