Archive for January, 2010

Everyone knows, every AdWords campaign has peaks and troughs. Times like Christmas when sales keep rolling in. And times like New Year when sales are very slow.

You’ve got to wonder, is there anything you could be doing with your AdWords account during the lean times to improve it’s performance in the good times?

Here are 4 tips that will give your AdWords account a much needed work over.

1) Write 10 new ads: Pick your 10 best converting ads and write a better one. Split test each ad and pick the one that performs best.

2) Improve your Quality Score: Take your 10 keywords with the worst Quality Score. Separate each into its own ad group and write an ad that is very specific to that keyword. Link your ad to a landing page that is also very specific to your keyword, wait a couple of weeks and see if your score has improved.

3) Read blog articles: Perform a Google Blog Search using keywords in your niche. Read articles to help you think of new ways people are searching for your products or services.

4) Social media & forums: Search social media sites like Twitter and Face book using your main keywords, and find forums in your industry. See what people are saying and use to give you new ideas for keywords, ad text and features for your website.

As each second passes, you’re wasting time. You need to start thinking out side the box and begin to make powerful changes to your AdWords account today.

Be sure to let us know your success stories and your own tips to give AdWords a make over by posting a comment below.

Have you ever been frustrated by Google telling you that your AdWords landing page is no good? And before long, does your feeling of frustration turns to anger, because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t work out why Google is having such a problem with you?

If you’re like everyone else in this situation, you’ll have already tried contacting the AdWords support team and got nothing back from them other than some very general automated replies that are not really of any use to anybody.

But creating AdWords landing pages that Google will approve of doesn’t have to be difficult.

We have collected here for you some links to articles that will help you create landing pages for AdWords that Google will love!

The 7 Landing Page Mistakes To Avoid

Any one of these 7 common mistakes that we see advertisers make every day are guaranteed to impact your Quality Score, get your ad disapproved or, in extreme circumstances, ensure your site is banned from AdWords altogether.

AdWords Bans: Poor Landing Page Quality Scores ~ PPC Blog

Ensure the landing page and the ad are identical in terms of subject matter. Click-backs can affect your quality score, so make sure you repeat the keyword term high up on the page, in bold, in your copy. This also helps reaffirm to the …

Improving the quality level with multiple landing pages

You can improve your quality score with multiple landing pages that are more targeted to your keywords. In the previous article I looked at how to improve your Google quality score (QS) by creating a mini-site. …

Creating Landing Pages For Google AdWords

In creating a Google AdWords campaign, advertisers typically spend most of their time creating their ads and researching their keywords. There’s often very little or no thought to where the surfer can be sent when the ad does its job …

Don’t miss a word of this if your AdWords ads send people to a blog hosted on a public domain like Blogspot or WordPress. Google have recently made a very important change to the rules concerning the domain name that you display within your ad.

The fact of the matter is that a display domain name like  blogsplot.com/blue-widget that would have recently been perfectly acceptable, now has to include your sub-domain in the ad, for example, adviser.blogspot.com/blue-widget.

Okay, you’re probably thinking, what a pain it’s going to be to check all your ads to make sure the display URL conforms to the new rule. But, if you really think about it, this rule change actually makes good sense.

Imagine, for a moment, how many independent blogs there are on domains like Blogspot and WordPress – thousands right! Isn’t it proper that each should be independently identified rather than lumped together under Google’s good name?

Now keep in mind that this new rule change only applies to public domains like Blogspot and Wordpress. Imagine your ads destination URL was something like, newsletters.adwords-adviser.co.uk/ a  display URL of adwords-adviser.co.uk would still be acceptable. 

How Does This Rule Change Effect You?

If you’re like me and you send visitors to your own hosted blog, then you need not make any changes to your ads. But, if you send visitors to a publicly hosted blog like Blogspot or WordPress, then you’ll need to update all your ads soon.

Google will probably give you a certain amount of slack, so there is no need to panic. But in a week or two you can bet that they will start disapproving ads that don’t comply with this new ruling.

 Resources Used In Writing This Blog

Policy Adjustment For display URLs
The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they’ll land when they click on an ad.

Google Tightening Rules On Adwords Display URLs
If you use Google Adwords as part of your search engine marketing then you may be interested in some small changes that Google has made in relation to the display URLs.

AdWords Display Url Policy Adjustment
In case you missed it, AdWords made a slight policy change on display URLs this week. You have to include the sub-domain now. So if your destination URL is blue.widgets.com, you have to display that, and not use widgets.com.

Split testing has in fact been around much longer than AdWords. Advertisers still use it today when advertising in the printed media. But when used with AdWords, it becomes a much more powerful tool.

It can take months to see results from split testing two ads in the printed media, with AdWords you get results in days (sometimes minutes).

What Is AdWords Split Testing?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could run two ads together and compare their performance. Over time you could pick the ad that performs best and delete the other. You could then repeat the test with another ad and see if that one was any better.

Every time that you succeeded in writing an ad that was better than the last, you’d:)

• increase your click-through-rate (CTR),
• and a higher CTR could improve your Quality Score (QS),
• and a better QS might mean you pay less in bids,
• and a higher CTR definitely means more web site visitors,
• and more visitors means more opportunities to make a sale.

It all makes perfect sense doesn’t it?

The Art Of Split Testing

AdWords split testing is very simple. Instead of creating one ad for each ad group in your campaign, you create two. The first ad is called your “control” and the second your “test”. Let your ads run and monitor the results. 

AdWords Split Testing

Every time someone performs a search that triggers one of your ads, Google rotates your two ads. Over time, one of your two ads will become more successful than the other and AdWords will start to show that ad more often.

If the dominant ad is your test ad, then you’ve improved your ads performance. Delete the control ad and make the test your control. Should the more dominant ad be your control ad then unfortunately, the ads performance hasn’t been improved. You should now delete the test ad and try again.

Whatever the result, don’t split test your AdWords ads just once. Keep on testing, each time writing a better ad, always trying to beat the control ad.

Test every part of your ads, heading, descriptions and the display url, but only make one change at a time. If you make multiple changes then it won’t be clear which changes caused your improvement.

Choosing A Winning Ad

Deciding on a winning ad can be confusing. By default, AdWords will try to decide which of your ads is performing best and show that ad more often. This can lead to one ad getting shown more times than the other.

Ad Rotation Option

If you’d rather make that decision yourself then change the “Ad Delivery” option in each of your campaigns to “Rotate: Show Ads More Evenly”. This option can be found on the “Settings” tab for each of your campaigns.

Monitor your ads daily and when each ad has received at least 30 clicks, you should be able to see a clear winner.

Everyone experiences problems with managing their AdWords account at some time or another. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new user, been using AdWords for sometime or even a seasoned professional, everyone gets stuck, needs a little bit of advice or is simply just looking for an easier way of working.

Now Google launches the AdWords Optimization Center . Many of the top tips and strategies for AdWords gathered together in one place.  But opinions are mixed.

Google Launches AdWords Optimization Center – Search Marketing …

Google has added to their education/assistance information with the launch of an optimization center for AdWords, an area offering tips and strategies for all levels of AdWords’ users. The center has gathered information from numerous …

Image via Wikipedia

The New Year has hardly begun, first week back at our desks and Google is already announcing new AdWords features. This week it’s “click-to-call” that is taking the Mobile Internet by storm.

This new feature places a telephone icon next to your ads when they appear on a mobile phone. Clicking on the icon will automatically place a call to the advertiser where an order can be made or an inquiry answered.

The service is currently only available on phones that have full Internet browser functionality like the iPhone. Costs are the same as those incurred when someone clicks on your ad and visits your web site.

Click-to-Call is a very exciting addition to AdWords. Being so new, it’s too early to judge how successful it will be at improving conversions from AdWords campaigns.

We’ll be experimenting with the new tool over the next few weeks and will report back on our findings.

Get the full story from the links below.

Google Set To Launch “Click-to-Call in Ads on Mobile Devices with …

I have received a couple of emails from Google today regarding the launching of the long awaited “Click-to-Call” feature we have been anticipating. At this.

Google Announces New Click to Call Service for Smart Phones …

In an effort to target more mobile users, Google announced to its Adwords advertisers that it is introducing click-to-call this month. They went on to say, “…beginning in January, your location-specific business phone number will …

Google launches click-to-call in UK

Search Engine Watch is reporting that Google has now implemented Click-To-Call features in the UK. A search on the word jet2 at Google.co.uk brings up this …

Google To Offer Click-to-Call Search Ads On iPhone, Android & Palm(seroundtable.com)

This month we reflect on the year just gone by publishing the best posts from the AdWords Adviser blog during 2009.

Enjoy!

Adrian Key
Editor of the AdWords Adviser and owner of Key Searches, making AdWords more profitable for you.

Post of 2009

The New Google AdWords Keyword Selection Tool

Google are now inviting AdWords advertisers to trial their new keyword selection tool. But, is the new tool any good?

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/the-new-google-adwords-keyword-selection-tool

Best of the Rest for 2009

How Does Google’s Product Plus Box Help Advertisers Join More Of The Dots In The Google Empire?

Google’s recent trials with the “Product Plus Box” for AdWords is a prime example of how it’s becoming more and more important for advertisers to establish a presence for themselves in as many different parts of the growing Google empire as possible.

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/how-does-googles-product-plus-box-help-advertisers-join-more-of-the-dots-in-the-google-empire

How To Write Good AdWords Ad Copy

Everyone knows the importance of writing good AdWords ad copy. Simply put, what you say in those four lines of text can make a poor performing keyword into one that has a click-through-rate of 2-3% or more.

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/how-to-write-good-adwords-ad-copy

Google Cracks Down On AdWords Scams: Can You Do Anything About It?

In July we reported on how Google was cracking down on AdWords scams. Hooray – And about time too we all said!! But, imagine experiencing the frustration of having your account banned when you’re actually a legitimate advertiser doing nothing wrong.

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/google-cracks-down-on-adwords-scams-can-you-do-anything-about-it

What Is AdWords Quality Score And Why Is It Important?

If you’re like many Google advertisers, you’ll be very frustrated by your AdWords Quality Score. You’ll be regularly hammering your fist against the table with anger because your score is stuck at 1 or 2 and no matter what you try, you just can’t seem to get it to rise. But what is AdWords Quality Score, why is it important and how is it calculated?

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/what-is-adwords-quality-score-and-why-is-it-important

5 Ways To Increase Your AdWords Click Through Rate

Your AdWords click through rate (ctr) is an important statistic for any advertising campaign. A good ctr will reward you with a higher Quality Score. And the better your Quality Score, the less you’ll pay in bids, saving you money. It may surprise you to know that improving ctr is easy. Yet incredibly, many advertisers don’t pay it much attention.

http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/5-ways-to-increase-your-adwords-click-through-rate

 Every month the AdWords Adviser blog is packed with fantastic tips, advise and news to make AdWords more profitable for you. Subscribe today to ensure you never miss a post.

You don’t realize it yet, but the AdWords Adviser has everything you need to know to make your AdWords advertising more profitable in 2010. This year the blog is going to be bigger and better than ever, with more news, tips, techniques and tools than ever before.

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• How to decide the most profitable position on the results page for each of your ads.
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and there is more …

Would you like to learn the top mistakes that AdWords advertisers make with their landing pages so you could avoid making them in yours?

In the next few weeks, our new ebook will be available that will share with you all the secrets to making the perfect landing page. This ebook will be available soon, exclusively to all AdWords Adviser subscribers.

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