How to Get the Most Out of Google AdWords

If you’re considering creating a PPC campaign on Google and unsure where and how to start, it’s important to know how to get the most from your AdWords account.  In one of our previous PPC-related post, we talked about the most common mistakes people are making and now we are going to look at how to get the very best results from your campaign.

Start Small

Focus on one campaign, lock in a smaller budget and use the tools provided by Google to really learn how the process works. A PPC campaign is like starting a fire, in its early stages it needs lots of attention and nurture and then when the ember sparks, you can take a step back and reap its warm rewards. We want to consider which campaign we should focus on. With a small budget we don’t need to be buying adverts in areas where we already have a top five link already

Keep your bids low

When trying to get maximum value out of a small budget, we shouldn’t be worried about appearing at the top of every search. Being number one in the wrong search will certainly end up with high costing clicks acquiring low value traffic. Being in the top three is valuable, so keep the bids as low as possible and they can be edged up if required

Keep your keywords tightly focused

if we’re bidding on too many keywords, it’s going to be difficult to keep track and we are going to lose relevance to the search query and it’ll increase our costs. Finding niches in our keyword research can be a great way of keeping costs down and getting plenty of clicks.

Schedule your ads

Similar to bidding just on the relevant keywords; it is good practice to run the ads just when it is beneficial to us. For example, if your business is open from 9-5, it may not always be a great idea to be running ads throughout the night

Determine your goals

We need to think about what it is we want the searches to do. Firstly, we want them to click on the ad. But then what do we need them to do? Do we want them to buy? Or fill in a form? Download some content? Whatever it is, we need to understand the value of our goals to help us determine which kind of investment we want to place in paid advertising

Use Geo Targeting

This is going to let us bid only in certain areas, or even increase a bid in a certain area. For example, if we’re a school without boarding opportunities, there isn’t much point in buying adverts to be displayed 300 miles away. We can also increase a bid in a specific location. If we know our London customers spend more money, we can consider bidding an extra 10% on getting the click knowing it can be more valuable

Writing great ad copy

Adwords only show a limited number of ads per page. Make sure your ad sticks out with benefit packed copy. Why should the searcher click on your ad over the competitors? You only have a limited number of characters so make the most of all of them. See our top tips on writing killer ad copy here (link to other blog)

Work towards a great quality score

Your quality score has a large impact on what you pay for each click and where your ads appear in the search result. Having good ad copy is a big part of this because Google wants to ensure that a user’s expectation is met when they land on the website. Find out more about your Quality score here (link to other blog)

Don’t send to the homepage

Usually a homepage is going to be far less specific than the advert someone has just clicked. If the landing page doesn’t message match with the ad, you’ll be throwing money away. Remember, the user has clicked your ad because they feel you can help resolve their query, if you don’t give them the answer on the landing page they will leave and try someone else

Create a Negative Keyword list

Showing up for irrelevant keywords can be costly. For example you sell football boots, you don’t want people coming to you after searching “free football boots” because you aren’t giving anything away for free. They will then bounce right off and this can impact your Quality score.

Following these ten tips above, we should ensure that are costs are kept low and our adverts remain relevant. If the sound of this is daunting and confusing, get in touch with us and we’ll determine how best to help you and your business and provide you a free quote for the work.