It is that time of year again – Christmas is fast approaching! So, to get you in the festive spirit, our online marketing team has decided to share their 12 tips for optimising your Google AdWords Pay Per Click campaign:
1 – Budget
Always set your daily budget to an amount that you feel comfortable with. You will often see an alert in your AdWords Account recommending that you increase your budget to receive more impressions and clicks. This is just an advisory and should not be taken as given.
2 – Ad Groups
A campaign can contain up to 100 ad groups, use them! By breaking down your keywords into small, targeted ad groups you will be able to create adverts that closely match the keywords in the group, which should improve your click through rate.
3 – Match Types
AdWords offers you the choice of three match types; Broad, Phrase and Exact. Broad match should be used wisely and must be backed up by hundreds, if not thousands of negative keywords.
- Exact – your ad will only show for the exact search term you are bidding on.
- Phrase – your ad will appear for the term that you are bidding on but the search can contain words before and after.
- Broad – Google will show your ad for the search term that you are bidding on plus any other search query that it deems relevant.
4 – Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are used to help two elements of your AdWords campaign:
- Click through Rate (CTR) – Eliminate irrelevant searches so your ads show to more targeted searchers
- Budget – By stopping your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches you will also stop wasted clicks that will conserve your budget.
5 – Split Testing
Never run just one advert in an ad group. There is always room for improvement so run two or three ads that overtime will indicate the best performer.
6 – Ad Scheduling
Ad Scheduling should be used to tell AdWords when you want your ads to be shown. You can choose specific days of the week and also drill down to actual time periods throughout the day. This is an ideal tool to help conserve your budget and ensure that your ads are only appearing when your key customers would be searching online.
7 – Conversion Tracking
The key performance indicator of the majority of AdWords campaigns is the number of conversions it generates. By inserting a simple piece of code to your converting page, you will be able to see the exact keywords that are fulfilling your goal.
A conversion can be: A purchase, A lead, An email/newsletter signup, A page view, to name a few.
8 – Quality Score
Quality Scores are becoming more important and Google use this score as part of their ad-ranking algorithm, which determines where your ad appears in the results.
9 – The Networks
Google have three networks that your adverts can appear on; Google Network, Search Partners and Content Network. Analyse the results you get from each network, which will indicate whether any of the three are not working for you.
10 – Landing Pages
Drive your visitors to the most relevant landing page based on their search term. If a visitor sees what they want on arrival to your site, they are more likely to buy from you.
11 – Google Analytics
Google AdWords and Google Analytics are like brothers and work extremely well together identifying trends in how your visitors interact with your website.
Use Google Analytics to review:
- Landing page bounce rates
- Unique page views
- Average time spent on site
- Number of pages visited
- Highlight any organic phrases that convert
12 – Google Website Optimiser
If your AdWords campaigns are generating a high CTR but you are just not seeing the conversion level you need, the next thing to look at is the actual landing pages on your website. Google Website Optimiser is a free tool that allows you to run small or large tests on different variations of your web page. The simplest of changes can result in a significant increase in your conversion rate.
If you would like more advice on Professional Google AdWords PPC Management, call our Internet Marketing team on 020 8894 2373 and we can help your campaigns get
