A well run AdWords campaign can save you money. Google offer plenty of functions and recommendations to help improve the quality, reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. When we take over a Google AdWords account we often notice the following mistakes:
- The Chosen Targeted Keywords Are Too General
Advertising for broad terms such as ‘car’ or ‘chair’ won’t reach your potential customers, as these terms are highly competitive and also have a high cost per click. Be realistic. Brainstorming and keyword research help to focus on the best keywords. Using the wrong keywords can waste your AdWords budget.
- Using Just One Ad Group For The Whole Campaign
Cramming every keyword into one Ad group is ineffective. Arrange keywords into themes such as different products or services offered to help to match what potential customers are searching for.
- Choosing Irrelevant Landing Pages
Ads that only go to the Homepage might not give the customer what they expect. Landing pages should be relevant to the Ad. Use existing dedicated product or service pages or create relevant pages just for your Ads to land on.
- No Chosen Negative Keywords
Adding Negative Keywords to your campaigns or ad groups stop your ads from showing for irrelevant phrases. Block out search terms that do not relate to your product or service and landing page content.
- Being Oblivious of Quality Score
Quality Score rates the quality of your ad on a scale of 1 to 10 – the higher being the better. A higher quality score helps to lower the cost of Ads and to rank higher on the Google results page. Factors that contribute to Quality Score include:
- Ad Click Through Rate
- The Relevance of Your Keywords
- Landing Page Quality and Relevance
- The Relevance of Your Ad Text
- Not Split Testing Different Ad Content
How do you know if your Ad could be more effective? Creating more than one Ad then testing them against each other lets you know which will get more clicks for your money.
- Poorly Written Ad Content
Poorly written, short Ads can stop people clicking on your ads. Use calls to action and engage your audience with some well-crafted text.
- Not Linking Google AdWords to Google Analytics
Not linking to Google Analytics means you will miss out on helpful statistics. Analysing performance is key to effective AdWords campaigns. Analytics also allows you to do things like conversion tracking, so you can track sales numbers or the number of times someone has enquired about your product or service.
- Using Keyword Planner Bid Suggestions
Google has another useful tool called Keyword Planner. Keyword Planner offers useful data, such as Average Monthly Searches and Competition levels for keywords you may want to use within your AdWords campaign. Keyword Planner can also estimate how many clicks you may receive for bidding a certain amount for a keyword. However, you cannot always rely on what Keyword Planner tells you, as the figures are a general estimate.
- Thinking The Ad Needs To Be At The Top of The Results Page
An Ad doesn’t need to be in the top position. It’s just vanity bidding. If it works for your business and you receive the desired clicks and conversions, then that’s fine. However, for some it might be better being at position 4.0 for 40p per click than to be at the top for £1.40 per click.
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