Like it or not, broad match is a vital component of Google AdWords management.

The only way to avoid broad match is to play it 100% safe – perhaps by only using exact matched keywords. But 100% safe doesn’t work in advertising, marketing or Google AdWords.

There are, unfortunately, no 100% guarantees, but you can reduce the risks significantly by understanding how broad match works.

The first point is that broad match needs muzzling.

Bid on the broad matched keyword red shoes for example, and your add might be displayed to people searching for buy red shoes, leather shows, redwood, running shoes, avoiding a red face, red paint and more.

The second point is that common-sense is a good starting point, but to use broad match you need to combine the power of the search query report with a good list of negative keywords.

And let’s not forget that keeping on top of this as an ongoing task is critical.

Tame broad match and it will work with you. Allow it to run free and it will wreak havoc.

Mistake #2 looked at why you need more ads, but quality and variety are every bit as important as quantity.

Assuming that you have a healthy number of ads in each ad group, it’s important that each and every one is unique and distinct from each other.

Changing a word here and there won’t have much of an impact, and the only way to truly see what works is to dry different approaches. Different tones, different wording, a different message, different appearances – even different lengths.

Be bold, be different, be distinct.

A significant part of AdWords management involves educated trial and error.

No matter how well you know your product, your markets and Google’s system, there is no way to accurately predict which ads will work and which will fall flat on their faces.

AdWords visitors are probably quite different from your regular visitors – different needs and behavioural patterns, so new strategies may be required.

For all of these reasons, it’s important to try a wide variety of different ad techniques.

I would recommend four ads per ad group as an absolute minimum; but the more different ads you run, the greater the chances of success.

Bonus tip: once you’ve found the ‘right’ ads, don’t make the mistake of then believing that the ad group can be left to run itself. It can’t.

AdWords is complicated enough already. Don’t add to the chaos by using strange abbreviations.

A new campaign named first-cont-01 might make sense next week, but in a year’s time, the person handling your account may be baffled.

There’s a better way.

Clear names make navigation and analysis quicker and easier.

Campaign: discounts US and Canada

Ad group: 20 percent

Use the same tracking in your ads, and it’s child’s play:

http://www.yourdomain.com/index.asp?ref=adwords&campaign=discounts-us-canada&adgroup=20-percent&ad=001

No matter what you use to analyse your server logs, you’ll instantly know where that click came from.

Average position is a reasonably useful indicator within your AdWords account. So how is average position calculated for ads on Google’s Display (content) Network?

Ads aren’t always displayed vertically, so what do the numbers actually mean?

We contacted Google’s support for clarification, and their answer was a little surprising:

“Thank you for your patience in awaiting this email.  I understand you have a question regarding the metric average position on the Display Network. Average position is not used for the Display Network.  When looking at campaigns or statistics for the Display Network, you do not even need to look at that column.  If you want to measure performance or see how you are doing on the Display Network, you should focus on other metrics such as CTR, conversions, average cost, ROI, etc.”

Read that again:

“Average position is not used for the Display Network.  When looking at campaigns or statistics for the Display Network, you do not even need to look at that column.”

“You do not even need to look at that column“?

If there no average position for the display network, why is the figure displayed?

Surely Google have the technical know-how to turn off a column according to its context.

If I was cynical, I might wonder whether the figures were there to encourage raising bids. Luckily for Google, I’m not cynical.

In case you haven’t noticed, Google have recently opened up a somewhat old feature to all AdWords account holders: Ad SiteLinks. In short, it can potentially make your ad stand out from those of your competition.

To use it is rather easy. Go to your campaign settings, and under the ad extensions section you will find an item offering to “Show additional links to my site within my ad“. When you choose to edit, it will display a section for entering link text and a destination URL. This allows you to add additional links to be displayed right under your ad’s text.

Be aware, however, that just because you’ve setup this feature doesn’t mean that it will always show for all your ads. Your ads need to be displayed above the organic results, have very high quality scores, and the URLs need to send traffic to pages which are a part of your main website. Don’t bother setting this up on a campaign which only targets the display network (content network). SiteLinks will only work on Google.com and Google Search partners.

If you have set them up, you might be in for a surprise when it comes to reporting, as Google do not provide any detail or depth to this new feature. Conversion data and a breakdown for which SiteLink people clicked on is absent. You will need to figure that out on your own through log analysis. The stats which they do supply are all grouped together with clicks on your ad’s headline. For example, if you have an ad which the headline was clicked 4 times and 4 SiteLinks which were each clicked once, Google’s reporting for the SiteLinks would show a total of 8 clicks.

More information on ad sitelinks can be found here.

Research by Dan Zarrella suggests that certain words have a greater impact in social media than others.

The Most Facebook-Shareable Words vs. The Least Shareable Words on Facebook.

Not exactly a great surprise, but the research also found that “techie and social-media dork favorite topics like Twitter, Google, and the iPhone aren’t very popular with the mainstream Facebook audience“.

So who are the typical Facebook users?

If you’re thinking about advertising on Facebook (and who isn’t?), then you can take advantage of their advanced demographic and psychographic filters, including location, keywords, relationship status, age, education, gender, languages and more.

On a superficial level, this makes Facebook appear far more enticing for advertisers than Google. Google’s demographic tools are almost non-existent by comparison.

Yet the key issue is that people go to Google to find what they’re looking for. People go to Facebook to see what their friends are doing and engage with them.

For now I’ll continue thinking about advertising on Facebook, while spending actual money on Google AdWords.

There are those who believe that paying for Google AdWords ads will result in their previously invisible website shooting up the ‘regular’ rankings.

Sadly that simply isn’t the case. AdWords ads are completely separate from the organic listings.

However there is a very real possibility that ads may impact the CTR of organic listings, or, for that matter, vice-versa.

An article on search engine land details an experiment carried out by David Roth, whereby he attempted to prove that AdWords ads boost clicks to your organic listings:

“So in our case I ran around the building, loudly declaring victory. I mean, what could be better than buying paid search traffic knowing that you’re driving more clicks to your organic listings? Believe me, I’m not saying that it will turn out this way in every case. I’m just here to share my story with you, and mine happens to have a very, very happy ending.”

I’m not certain of his statistical accuracy, as I think far more data is required. But it’s certainly food for thought.

After all, the more we dominate Google’s results, the more clicks we’re guaranteed to generate. Simple really.

Google are in the process of changing their AdWords certification program – and quite rightly so.

The old exam was initially quite difficult, but over the years became little more than a memory test. And this affects the very status of the Qualified AdWords Professional.

Our company has been approached on a number of occasions by Qualified Professionals looking for work. Surprisingly, some of them showed an astonishing lack of understanding of how AdWords works, and more importantly were completely lacking in the skills required to create, manage and optimise keyword lists, ads, ad groups and campaigns.

The new certification exam is a lot more detailed, in-depth and difficult.

Congratulations to Aaron who has already qualified, and has also earned our company the new status of Google AdWords Certified Partner.

My turn next for the exam…

Google have released a list of the top 1,000 websites as measured by Ad Planner.

The list categorises each website, and also includes unique visitors, reach, page views and whether or not they have advertising.

Interestingly Google are also allowing advertisers to specify that they only want their content network ads to show up on the sites in this list.

More interestingly still are the names in the list. At least seven out of the top twenty sites will probably be unknown to most people, but at the very least should provide insight and opportunity to squeeze that little bit more out of Google AdWords.