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04
Mar
2013

7 Optimization Tips for Adwords Advertisers

SEO Moves - Google Adwords LogoAdwords by Google is a proven way to generate traffic, leads, and sales. It is a tool that some marketers are using on a regular basis to drive business goals. While there are a few using this tool to great effect, several more are striking out and in the process, throwing a lot of money out the window. Having success with Adwords calls for you to take the same approach you take to generating visibility for your organic content — optimize. However, the actual steps to optimization are a bit different in this arena.

1. Learn to Bid and Budget

Understanding how to bid and budget your funds is crucial to Adwords success. Spending $20 a day may appear to be the way to go for cost-conscious advertisers, but a budget that low will also limit your ability to profit. Likewise, bidding low initially can save you some money, but it might not get you very many clicks. While you don’t want to spend beyond the budget, you also don’t want to limit your potential, so learning how to manage your funds in accordance to the ad platform is key.

2. Avoid Bidding Battles

Getting the number on spot in Google’s sponsored results can be a costly endeavor for advertisers who choose to slug it out for popular keywords. Rather than go for the homerun, aim for the base hit that will help you score the number two, or even number three position. The low volume keywords will make for a cheaper investment, that over time, can help you increase your click-through rates and even wrestle that number one spot away from the competition.

3. Insert Keywords in Your Ads

The one similarity between organic and paid search marketing lies in the importance of keywords. In the paid arena, targeting the right keywords is what gets you visibility in the results. While you don’t have to use them in your ad copy, there are benefits to throwing them in there, mainly the indication of relevance. Google displays your keywords in bold text, which not only makes your ad stand out, but lets the user know it’s relevant to their search.

4. Be Daring with Keywords

To say that the competition among Adwords advertisers is fierce would be an understatement. Sometimes, you have to dare to be different, and once again, keywords are the key. By scrolling through your search query report, you can uncover a whole list of negative keywords that if used regularly, can help you save money while increasing click-through rates and improving your ad position in the process.

5. Divide and Conquer

New advertisers often create a single ad, for a single ad group that is loaded with dozens of keywords. While it is certainly possible to garner success with this method, less is usually more. So if you’re a vendor selling cloud computing services, instead of bundling all your keywords into a single ad group, you would create separate groups for keywords such as SaaS”, “PaaS”, “cloud storage”, and so forth. This approach not only makes your campaigns more targeted, but easier to manage and track as well.

6. Play with Multiple Ads

One of the cool things about Adwords is that it lets you create several ads within a single ad group. This is a nice luxury to have for marketers looking to get the most from their efforts.

In the process of running of these multiple ads, you can experiment with a few ideas and get a better feel for what works, and what doesn’t. Google provides a convenient way to simultaneously set up multiple ads, which in turn, offers an effective way to target more keywords, increase impressions, clicks, and improve overall results.

7. Track After-Click Performance

Google gives you access to reports that provide a comprehensive view of ad performance. That’s nice, but if you want to know what happens after the click, you need a fully loaded web analytics solution. Luckily, Google makes it easy to connect Google Analytics to your Adwords account. With Google Analytics, you can find out how long people stay on your site after clicking an ad, what pages they view, and much more. This information is not only vital to measuring campaign performance, but also gaining the insights needed to improve overall marketing results.

Mastering the Adwords advertising platform is a skill that only a select few have developed. You have a lot of tools at your disposal, but what’s in an arsenal if you don’t know how to use it? Add these optimization tips to your strategy, and you’ll be well on your way to seeing big improvements.

Chiko Noguchi is a best practices activist and advocate for a leading provider of event marketing services. She can be found on @email_wiz.