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.

Share and Enjoy

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.

Share and Enjoy

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.

Share and Enjoy

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.

Share and Enjoy

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.

Share and Enjoy

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.

Share and Enjoy

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…

Share and Enjoy

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.

Share and Enjoy

In order to exclude specific searches from seeing AdWords ads, negative keywords are required. For example a company selling a Windows email application bidding on the phrase “email software”, might consider using the following negative keywords:

-mac
-apple
-os x
-free
-freeware

A person searching for “email software for mac” or “free email software” wouldn’t see the ads.

However, the content network functions quite differently from the search network; the  main difference being that no search is carried out. Ads are displayed based on Google’s interpretation of your keywords and the page in question.

Let’s revisit the example. A company bids on the phrase “email software” and uses the above negative keywords. Will the ads be displayed on pages that contain the phrases, “email software for mac” or “free email software”?

Maybe.

Here is how Google explain the situation:

“If you add negative keywords to an ad group with placements, your negative keywords will behave as they have in the past for keyword-targeted campaigns on the Content Network. That means your ads will be less likely to appear on placements about the negative topics you’ve entered.

For example, suppose you select five different gardening websites as placements, then add the negative keyword -roses to the ad group. In that case, your ad may appear on any of the five websites, but it will be less likely to appear on pages of those websites that have to do with roses. In this case, your ad may still occasionally appear on placements about roses, depending on other keywords you have chosen for the ad group. Because groups of keywords work together on the Content Network, negative keywords are not as precise there as they are on search.”

Pay careful attention the wording:  “less likely to appear” is more than a little vague, and also means that it is out of your control.

The conclusion? The negative keyword list on a content network campaign appears to be little more than a suggestion.

Share and Enjoy

Warning: this blog post may offend the short-sighted.

Our company has worked with a large number of online businesses over the years. And most understand the basic principles of how Google AdWords works.

We advise most of our AdWords clients to use conversion tracking, as this provides a useful gauge as to how well different parts of the account are working.

Note my wording. AdWords conversion tracking is a gauge; not that different from the RPM gauge on your car dashboard.

When you see that your RPMs are high, you don’t panic or celebrate. You simply factor that in to how and where you’re driving.

When you see that your RPMs are low, you don’t abandon your car, call the breakdown service or experiment with using milk as gasoline.

RPMs are measured on a scale. There’s a reason why your car doesn’t use a simple GOOD or BAD indicator for the purpose.

And like RPMs, conversion tracking data is useful. But it’s far from definitive, and far from accurate.

If the person buying your product is different from the person who clicked your ad, the conversion won’t register.

If the purchase takes place more than 30 days after the ad was clicked, the conversion won’t register.

If the PC used to order your product is a different one, the conversion won’t register.

I’m shocked by how many people I read about who slash their budgets or even close their AdWords accounts when they think it isn’t working for them. And guess which metric they use to reach that conclusion?

I’m shocked by the number of software developers who offer a 30 day trial, then wonder why conversion data doesn’t show up within five days of activating their campaigns.

“Most of our users buy within the first seven days” they say.

But AdWords visitors aren’t most of your users. They’re a new set of different users with different ideas and buying patterns. That’s why you’re using Google AdWords to reach them.

Don’t get me wrong. Questioning your account performance is vital, as is striving to improve ROI and efficiency.

But interpreting conversion data as rock-solid evidence of failure (or success) may be as sensible as cutting-off your head, arms and legs to cure a headache.

Share and Enjoy