Adwords Pay Per Click Survival Tips

Many people that have used pay per click advertising with Google Adwords often describe it as operating in a hostile environment. Even while this search engine giant is making $15 billion dollars a years on their paid search business, there aren’t doing anything that makes it easier for you to work with them.

However, to be fair we must understand that Google has two customer bases to balance, with each of them being unable to exist without the other. On one hand, Google has to please the searches that want good information, quality content, fast answers, relevant search engine and paid search results, and no spam. On the other hand they have the advertisers that want traffic and lots of it for as cheaply as possible. There are a few “bad apples” out there that will try to use underhanded techniques and get rich quick schemes to get ahead. These are the advertisers that Google is really concerned about. The problem is that when Google tries to take measures to protect their searchers and themselves from underhanded advertisers, the well intentioned ones suffer.

Adwords pay per click ads can be a very profitable way to use your advertising budget. In fact, I make a majority of my living doing so. The real key to success with Adwords is to understand the tricks, tips, and rules (sometimes unwritten) that must be used in order to keep Google happy. You will quickly find that if Google is happy, your per click cost goes down and your traffic increases. The added benefit to keeping Google happy will usually result in better profitability for you. Google is the happiest when the ad you place gets a high CTR. The people that click on the ads are happiest when they are satisfied with what they see on your website. This will make the most money for Google and should work the same way for you as well. Google measure how happy a site visitor is by how quickly they leave the site after landing on it.

Here are some tips that can rescue your Adwords campaigns:

Tip #1 Keywords

You probably don’t have nearly enough keywords in your campaign.

Regardless of the market you’re in, you should have no less than 300 to 500 keywords in your campaigns. If you are using less than this, you are undoubtedly leaving profitable keywords on the table.

Make use of a good keyword research tool like Keywordtopia or Wordtracker. These tools are easy to use. Simply plug in most general term, or “root” term, that describes your targeted market or product into the chosen tool. You’ll likely be very surprised by the terms that will be delivered. Many times keywords are uncovered that you would have never considered on your own.

Don’t forget about using the plural versions of your existing keywords.

Look for different combination multipliers like cities and states. For example, rather that using just one keyword like “weight loss center”, use that term along with each state and then with each city.

Spend some time brainstorming with friends or colleagues to come up with additional keyword ideas. In no time at all you’ll have thousands of keywords to use in your pay per click campaign.

Tip #2 Proper Usage of Match Types

There are three match types in Google; broad, phrase, and exact. Check out Google’s

Adword’s help documents for a discussion about how each one works.
Most people who are just starting out with Adwords make this mistake. They only bid on the
broad match. That is, putting the keyword or phrase by itself with no quotes or brackets
around it. In fact, Google has a built in suggestion to start out only using this match type.
That is not always sound advice.

I recommend bidding on all three match types (this also effectively triples your keyword list).
There is almost no way of knowing which match type will be the most effective for you. You
need to try them and track them, then adjust accordingly.

Tip #3 Keyword Grouping

Many advertisers start with just one ad group and stuff hundreds, maybe even thousands of keywords into in. This practice will not make Google happy. They automatically think that there’s no way to write relevant ads for this many keywords and provide relevant landing pages. As a result they Google will give you a low quality score and your clicks become very expensive. You may never even get your ads running using this strategy.

The best way to approach pay per click advertising is to make tightly focused ad groups. The way most advertisers accomplish this is with a theme. Basically, if all the keywords in an ad group can be served by a highly targeted ad and relevant landing page, they are considered to be well grouped. However, I recommend using on ad group for each keyword. Since you are using all three match types, each ad group has just three keywords or key phrases in it. Yes, this can be a lot of work to set up, but there are some good tools to help with the job. In fact, you can use Google’s Adwords Editor which is free.

Tip #4 Targeted Landing Pages

You simply must have targeted landing pages for each of your customers’ “conversations” that
are going on when they sit down to search for something.

If you are advertising for the purpose of capturing leads from people that are trying to sell their home in San Francisco, you should send them to a page that tells them why they should retain you as their listing broker. If you are capturing leads from people that are interested in relocating to London, send them to a landing page that highlights your expertise in handling relocations and helping people purchase homes.

Too many times, advertisers capture totally different kinds of customer leads and send them to their home page. This doesn’t make people happy that click on these ads. They want to continue the conversation they were having and get the solution to their problems and the answers to their questions as quickly as possible. They don’t want to land on a website just to have to navigate around the site looking for what they are after. If they don’t see what they want right away, they will hit the back button. As a result of this, Google becomes unhappy, and penalizes you with higher click costs. You become unhappy because you’ve lost a sale and are paying more for clicks.

Tip #5 Writing your Ads

This topic could warrant an entire article in itself. The most common mistakes you should avoid follow:

You have to try to use the keyword or phrase in the ad. This is why keyword grouping is critical. Google assumes that if you use the term the searches types in, your ad will likely be highly relevant. Your reward for doing this will be lower bid prices.

Don’t continue a thought or sentence from one line to the next. Not many people actually read
the ads…they skim and click when their eyes are attracted to something.

Capitalize the first letter of every word. This is scientifically proven to increase clicks. Why? I
don’t care, and you shouldn’t either…it just works!

Use the display URL effectively, especially if it has the keyword in it. Don’t use
www.wieghtlossclinic.com use WeightLossClinic.com. It should be obvious which one draws
the eye more.

Tip #6 Proper Split Testing

When setting up an ad group, write two different ads. Then monitor them carefully to determine which one performs better. You can increase your clicks by 3 times, maybe more by taking this step. It doesn’t matter what you change about the ads, just make them different and always test and monitor.

When one ad is declared the winner, ditch the ad that under performs and write a new one immediately. Strive to write one that beats the one that was previously declared a winner.

Tip #7 Content Network

I recommend turning the content network off at first, and then taking the terms that have
been profitable for you and starting another campaign that ONLY advertises on the content
network.

If you do both in one campaign, it can be very difficult to effectively track your keywords’ and
ads’ performance, and your return on your advertising investment.

Tip #8 Geographic and Schedule Targeting

If these options make sense for your market, use both.

Using the earlier London real estate example, you would run two separate campaigns in an effort for trying to get area listings. People that are searching for “Sell house London” are not paying attention to geography, and people searching for the more general term “sell house”, targeting only people in London.

Examine all the metrics for using the scheduling feature. There are campaigns, for example,
that are only really profitable on the weekends. If you can determine that, then obviously it
makes sense to only run your ads then.

Tip #9 Conversion tracking

If you do nothing else, you absolutely have to track conversions!

If you don’t know what you’re getting for you’re advertising dollar, how can you make good
decisions?

If you’re selling a product online, the best way to track conversions is to use Google’s own conversion tracking tool. This works extremely well. It’s a simple bit of code that is placed on your sales confirmation page that tells Google that, for this particular keyword or phrase, a sale was
made. Google stores and reports the information so you can go to one place to see exactly
what you spent on keywords, and what your return on that investment was.

Of course, there are a few other ways to do it and it can be more difficult if you’re not actually selling something. Either way, it’s absolutely mandatory. In order to learn more about conversion tracking, do a simple online search.

Tip #10 Bid Adjustments

You have to remember that every keyword is not created equally. You have to examine your spend and your conversions for every keyword and adjust the bid (individually) for each of them.

Bonus Tip – Learn the Adwords editor…and use it.

Learn more about AdWords. Stop by Robert D’Arcy’s site where you can find out all about driving internet traffic with AdWords & other pay per click channels.