Creating effective adwords campaigns
In addition to search engine optimisation I also manage Adwords campaigns for my customers.
What is Google Adwords?
Adwords is Google’s advertising program. It allows you to create small ads that will be displayed next and above Google’s organic search engine results. Advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad. The cost per click is determined by the keywords popularity and the bid of the advertiser.
Who uses adwords?
Adwords is used by companies and individuals who want to draw attention to their products or services. It is an effective way to draw instant traffic to your website. As every click is measurable you can determine the return on investment for every ad that you pay for. You can track conversions and goals both in Adwords and Analytics for a particular keyword.
Adwords is also an effective way to test the keywords that you are thinking of targeting. As Search Engine Optimisation can be costly and time-consuming, measuring your keywords performance with Adwords can be an effective way to determine the right keywords to target.
Why is a good initial setup so important?
Google assigns a quality score to each ad that is submitted. Your ad will be more effective, placed higher on the list and the cost per ad will be lower if your campaign has been properly setup and gets a high quality score.
When it comes to your ad text, some of the things that have an effect on price and performance are:
- Are the keywords you are targeting included in your ad?
- Does your ad stand out of the crowd?
- Do you have a good and strong call to action?
- Is your destination URL targeted towards your keywords?
One way to test if your ad is effective or the most effective it can be, is to do some split testing. Have several ads show in your ad group and check which one converts better. You could also try out a different format, like an image.
When it comes to your keywords pay attention to the following:
- Make sure to choose specific keyword phrases that match or are similar to your ad and landing pages. Google’s excellent keyword tool can help with that.
- Don’t just target the keywords with the highest searches per month but focus on those that will generate the most conversions.
- Send your customers to the most relevant page with keywords in the url.
Keyword targeting
Google also offers several ways to target your keywords. You are able to control when a user’s search triggers your ad to show. In general, the more targeted your keywords and ads are, the more likely you are to reach potential customers.
These are just some of the options your can apply to your keywords:
- Broad match
- Phrase match
- Exact match
- Negative match
Tracking conversions
The great thing about Google Ads is that you have very sophisticated reporting tools to track the performance of your ads. You can set several goals like: customer filled out customer form, customer subscribed to newsletter, customer visited a certain page etc. If you then set a value to each of these goals or conversion, not only can you track these conversion, you can also measure the cost per conversion.
Are Google Ads worth it?
If you run your Google Ads campaign effectively you should see a good Return on Investment. As you can always adjust underperforming ads or keywords you can tailor your campaign in such a way that it should bring you a healthy return on investment.
Want to know more?
For more info check out our page on Google Adwords management services.
