Managing Google AdWords Campaigns - Wrong v Right
And what is the top ranking mistake made by folks in Google campaign management? The big culprit is improper organization of their campaign. If ads and keywords are poorly organized you will have inefficient campaigns and higher advertising costs.
When your campaign is organized right you will get the effect you are looking for right off and adjustments and optimization are a snap. This will make all the difference over the long haul.
In your optimum campaign, you would have 1 perfect ad for each keyword that is searched for. With each different keyword you would have a different add. With 2,200 keywords you would then need to write 2,200 ads.
In the real world, that's kind of impractical. So you cluster similar keywords together with a single ad.
Ad groups are the smallest individual units that contain your keywords and your ads together. You can have multiple ad groups in a single campaign. A campaign is just a handy way to organize ad groups, usually according to broad topic.
In a single Google account, you can have as many campaigns as you want. Some of the campaigns in your account may be on a completely different topic, selling completely different services, and sending traffic to a completely different web site.
You may choose any way you want to divvy up your ad campaign. When it comes to creating your ad groups however, you have to do it with care.
A novice creating their campaign might put it together in this manner:
Smith's Telecommunications
Vital Solutions for
Your Every Voice Mail Need
www.smithstelecom.com
This is what their ad looks like, with keywords such as these:
auto attendant
business telephone systems
call management systems
voice mail
voice mail equipment
voice mail service
voice mail systems
At that point the visitors are all sent to the same landing page with various links to pages called 'Services', 'Equipment', 'FAQ', 'About Us', 'Contact Us', and so forth. So what is wrong with that way of managing AdWords?
The first problem is that the keyword list is too varied. Keywords should be divided into AdWord groups with only similar keywords or phrases.
Secondly, the keywords and ads don't match-up because of the problem listed above.
"Smith Telecommunications," or the name of almost any business, is a lousy headline. The clickthrough rate (CTR) is going to be very low, and therefore the bid prices will be higher.
Is this ad selling Smith Telecommunications? Is that what the customer is looking for? Make your ad reflect the needs of the customer.
If a prospective client is looking for 'voicemail systems' he wants to land on a page about voicemail systems. Similarly if someone is looking for 'voicemail equipment' he wants to land on one with info on voicemail equipment. These are separate topics. Prospective clients don't want to hunt all over your page looking for what they want. It is more likely they will leave to go elsewhere.
If you structure your campaigns properly from the beginning, it's a lot easier to make this work. To do this, take all of your different keywords and use Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.info) or Overture (http://inventory.overture.com) to organize them into narrow "silos" of very tightly related terms. They will look like this:
Voice Mail Services (adgroup)
voice mail provider
voice mail service
voice mail service provider
voice mail services
Voice Mail System (adgroup)
voice mail systems
voice mail systems for realtors
telemarketing and voice mail systems
phone systems voice mail
home office voice mail systems
home office telephone voice mail systems
Auto Attendant (adgroup)
answering attendant auto system
auto attendant voice mail services
auto attendant
auto attendant phone system
auto attendant software
auto attendant system
auto attendant voice mail
phone auto attendant
One more thing needs your attention prior to putting together your campaign; Look at your negative keywords. This list of phrases came from 'voice mail software'.
voice mail software
voice mail business software
voice mail software for panasonic
voice mail broadcasting software
voice mail business software
multiple voice mail software
mac voice mail software
multi-line voice mail system software vru
norstar voice mail software
software to record voice mail
free voice mail software
Visitors looking for something free are probably not going to buy from you. Does you company even do voice broadcasting. What about things related to Macintosh computers. These words would comprise your list of negative keywords when you add a minus sign to the front of them. Your list would then appear this way:
voice mail software
voice mail business software
voice mail software for panasonic
voice mail business software
multiple voice mail software
multi-line voice mail system software vru
norstar voice mail software
software to record voice mail
Negative Keywords:
free
mac
macintosh
broadcast
broadcasting
So when you set up your ad campaigns, each one of these keyword lists is going to go into a different group with its own set of ads.
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