Managing Google AdWords Campaigns - Wrong v Right
The majority of mistakes made in Google AdWords campaigns are of the common variety. In fact nearly all campaigns can see greater effectiveness with as little as an hours labor. With this small investment of time you can save hundreds and thousands of dollars, by following the guidelines set forth in this article.
Want to know what the number-one mistake people make is in Google AdWords campaign management? Improperly organized campaigns. Badly organized ads and keywords cripple your Google campaigns and cost you a ton of money.
Properly organized campaigns get results from the beginning and are easy to adjust and optimize. Over time this makes a huge difference.
In a utopian world everytime someone typed in a keyword you would have the perfect ad for that keyword. With all those different keywords, you have a unique ad for each one. Say you have two thousand keywords, then you would need to write two thousand ads.
But for the world that we live in that is not practical. The answer is clustering similar keywords with one ad.
Ad groups are the smallest individual units that contain your keywords and your ads together. You can have multiple ad groups in a single campaign. A campaign is just a handy way to organize ad groups, usually according to broad topic.
In a single Google account, you can have as many campaigns as you want. Some of the campaigns in your account may be on a completely different topic, selling completely different services, and sending traffic to a completely different web site.
You may choose any way you want to divvy up your ad campaign. When it comes to creating your ad groups however, you have to do it with care.
Someone starting out might put their campaign together this way:
Smith's Telecommunications
Robust Solutions for
All Your Voice Mail Needs
www.smithtelecoms.com
So goes their ad, and then their keywords looking something like this:
auto attendant
business telephone systems
call management systems
voice mail
voice mail equipment
voice mail service
voice mail systems
When the prospective clients click, they are all directed to the same homepage. This page has a variety of links to pages with titles from Contact Us to Equipment. What is the problem with this type of AdWords management?
The first problem is that the keyword list is too varied. Keywords should be divided into AdWord groups with only similar keywords or phrases.
Number two problem is the keywords and ads don't suit one another. This also stems from the first problem.
Putting your business name in the headline is a major mistake for nearly every business including Smith Telecommunications. This will make your click through rate really low and therefore you will have a very high bid price.
The ad is about Smith Telecommunications, not what the customer really wants. Your ads need to be about your customer, not about yourself!
If a prospective client is looking for 'voicemail systems' he wants to land on a page about voicemail systems. Similarly if someone is looking for 'voicemail equipment' he wants to land on one with info on voicemail equipment. These are separate topics. Prospective clients don't want to hunt all over your page looking for what they want. It is more likely they will leave to go elsewhere.
By creating a specific layout of your keywords and adgroups initially, you will be able to make these adjustments more easily. Using www.wordtracker.info or http://inventory.overture.com, categorize your keywords into neat and closely related adgroups. Something like this:
Voice Mail Services (adgroup)
voice mail provider
voice mail service
voice mail service provider
voice mail services
Voice Mail System (adgroup)
voice mail systems
voice mail systems for realtors
telemarketing and voice mail systems
phone systems voice mail
home office voice mail systems
home office telephone voice mail systems
Auto Attendant (adgroup)
answering attendant auto system
auto attendant voice mail services
auto attendant
auto attendant phone system
auto attendant software
auto attendant system
auto attendant voice mail
phone auto attendant
One more thing needs your attention prior to putting together your campaign; Look at your negative keywords. This list of phrases came from 'voice mail software'.
voice mail software
voice mail business software
voice mail software for panasonic
voice mail broadcasting software
voice mail business software
multiple voice mail software
mac voice mail software
multi-line voice mail system software vru
norstar voice mail software
software to record voice mail
free voice mail software
You really aren't wanting to have visitors looking for free stuff. You also don't have anything to do with voice broadcasting or even Macintosh computers. This is a good start on your negative keyword list. You do this by putting a minus sign in front of each of the words on your negative keyword list. This is how your list will now look:
voice mail software
voice mail business software
voice mail software for panasonic
voice mail business software
multiple voice mail software
multi-line voice mail system software vru
norstar voice mail software
software to record voice mail
Negative Keywords:
free
mac
macintosh
broadcast
broadcasting
When your ad campaign is all set up every one of your mini keyword lists will be in ito own adgroup with it's own set of ads.
Article Source: http://www.search-raven.com
About the Author
Need to optimize or "fix" your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to adwords management company, he's the man!
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by: KirtChristensen
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