10 Tips for Optimising your Google Adwords Campaigns

 

1. Keyword Research is not simple so don’t rush this process. Make sure enough time is taken to research your target market and that your research is done by someone who understands what words clients may be using to search for your product. You can identify opportunities that others are not competing on and get relevant traffic for lower costs. One great tip is look for common misspellings. Negative keywords are also a great way to ensure your ad does not appear for any irrelevant searches. And research does not stop, it should be an ongoing part of account optimization to help you keep on top of new opportunities for keywords.

2. Keep your target audience in mind – make your ads relevant and your choices of keywords relevant to them. Include a message that ‘speaks’ to your ideal clients and ensure it is in their language.

3. Always Test – Keep optimizing your ads. You can run split tests to try different messages to get better click through rates- when one outperforms the other, scrap the worse one and try another version. Keep doing it so that you are constantly improving your ad copy.

4. Keep your campaigns distinct – don’t assume that the Display network and Search network ads have the same performance or bids, keep your campaigns separated and focused by network so you have more control over your bidding strategy. You should also separate by regions, markets and languages where appropriate, or by product and services types, or by all these factors if necessary. This can make your campaigns increasingly complex but highly relevant to your end users.

5. Keep your quality scores high – regular cleaning and maintenance to ensure you improve poor Quality score keywords or remove phrases which you cannot improve on after testing. The way to improve quality scores is to keep focused and relevant within your chosen keywords, ads and landing pages.

6. Adjust your bidding strategy – As you start to enjoy better quality scores, try reducing your bids, or if you find your ad converts better in the 3rd position rather than the 2nd, reduce your bid accordingly. If your ad rank drops too far down and your clicks reduce, increase your bid to raise your position. This part should not be done without taking into account quality score also however as your ad rank is dependent on both your bid and your quality score.

7. Landing Pages – keep them relevant, easy to use and navigate and ensure they have original content on them and are very clear on what you expect the user to do next in order to achieve your desired conversion.

8. Concerned your ads are not showing or competitors clicking on them? Don’t keep searching for them and not clicking on them, you are only hurting your ads performance, use the dedicated Ad Preview tool within the Adwords interface to determine if your ads are showing or not. It is unlikely your competitors have exhausted your budget, as the Google Fraud team is now fairly extensive and up to date with detecting these issues and will credit your account back if they see multiple clicks from the same locations too many times.

9. Most important of all, MEASURE- without conversion tracking and analytics, you cannot prove contribution to the bottom line, and return on investment. In a world where marketing must prove its worth to the board, although paid search is tried and tested, it needs to be well managed to deliver results for your business. Ensure you are on top of reporting and know what you are getting from your budget.

10. Stay Up to Date – the Adwords interface and Analytics are constantly adding new functionality, reporting and features on a regular basis. Ensure you are reading their official blogs and reading the Help sections in order to stay up to date with opportunities to improve your campaigns.

JPP Marketing is a Google Adwords® Certified Partner showing a level of competence and ongoing education officially recognized and verified by Google.
JPP Marketing offers Google Adwords set up, optimisation and ongoing management services as well as search engine optimization (SEO) and  web analytics  for a variety of clients from many sectors including forex, travel and tourism, professional services, legal, education, leisure and retail.