Adwords Tactics: Restructure Your Ads Groups Today!

By - Kirt Christensen
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Google's Adwords program is a fantastic resource for generating traffic to your website, high-quality and very targeted to boot, but it does take time to learn the "ins and outs" of the program.

...And that's pretty daunting when it's your own time and money on the line!

So, here's a quick tip from a 10-year veteran of the PPC marketing game, and an easy way to up the ROI you get from Adwords:

An important measure of your Adwords account is how effectively you have your Adgroups arranged.

Don't fall prey to the "rookie" mistake of only creating one or two adgroups per campaign and then stuffing them with hundreds, or thousands, of keywords.

Don't do this, it's begging for trouble!

Trouble in that you'll end up paying way more per click, suffer from lower CTR's due to poor relevance of your ads, and most likely be nailed with poor quality scores.

Always remember, "relevance" is key on Adwords!

And since it's impossible to write ads that are targeted, specific and "relevant" for hundreds of different keywords all in the same adgroup, you need to "break out" keywords into their own adgroups.

For keywords with a lot of clicks, this might mean one keyword (with it's three different match-types) per adgroup, and that's all!

Never have no more than 15 to 21 keywords per adgroup, even for low traffic keywords!

After you spend some time "breaking out" the keywords into fresh adgroups, notice how much easier it is to write extremely focused ads, including the keyword as much as possible in the ads.

Your click-through rates and ROI will increase almost without fail, along with lowering your per click cost!

About The Author
Kirt Christensen delivers highly-profitable pay per click management, tracking over half a million dollars of yearly spending for clients that rave about him! http://www.managemypayperclick.com/

Increase Sales and Make Money Using Google's Adwords

By - Paul Coulter
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Most Internet users use Google and other search engines on a regular basis to find information, products, services and more. Most website owners will find that Google directs 2 to 3 times as much traffic to their website than Yahoo and MSN combined.

Therefore, it may be a good idea to pay Google to send focused traffic to your website. This can be accomplished by registering for Google’s advertising service – Adwords.

You may already be familiar with this service and don’t even know it. Adwords are the paid advertisements that show up on the right side of Google’s search results under "Sponsored Links.". Adwords also appear on many commercial and personal pages as a way for the website owner to make a little money from their website. These advertisements usually carry the caption, “Ads by Goooooogle” at the top. The service is termed a pay-for-click service because Google will charge you each time an Internet User clicks on your advertisement and visits your website.

Adwords is a terrific complement to any existing advertising campaign, but probably should not be used as the sole marketing channel for your website. This program allows you to control your advertising budget by giving you the ability to set the maximum price that you’re willing to pay, per click, and also a maximum allowable daily advertising budget. You choose the keywords that you would like to target, bid on the maximum per click price you’d like to pay, and Google will send focused traffic to your website. According to Google, Adwords text advertisements boast a standard click-through rate four to five times higher than traditional banner ads.

Because you are paying Google per click, you need to ensure that your traffic is highly targeted for your website. It doesn’t make sense to pay a lot of money for a lot of click-troughs and not generate any revenue for your business. It is important that you follow a few guidelines to ensure that you don’t waste your precious advertising dollars:

Choose Specific KeywordsIt is smart to avoid choosing keywords that are too vague or general. To generate highly qualified prospects you have to choose very specific keywords. This way, competition for the keyword will be lower, and it will cost less per click, and you won’t be throwing money away on expensive, unqualified leads. For example, if you only sell Green Widgets, don’t bid on the term “Widgets” it is too broad and you’ll pay for clicks from people searching for “Red Widgets”Use Geographical TargetingIt is smart to start small by limiting your advertisement’s reach to a selected area. This way you can see the effect it will have on sales without spending a lot of money. Later on, you can expand to other regions; go national, or even global. If your business only caters to the local community, then you should only advertise in your city and surrounding localities.

Use Proper Grammar and SpellingThis tip may sound like a no-brainer, but it sometimes goes neglected. Whether they want to admit it or not, a lot of people are terrible spellers and possess poor writing skills. But, a text advertisement that has misspelled words or doesn’t read clearly is not going to get clicked, and it reflects poorly upon your company. Make sure that you check your ads for both spelling and grammar errors. Have a friend, co-worker or employee proof read your ad before submitting it.

Look at the CompetitionNo matter what kind of product or service you are promoting, chances are, someone else is doing something similar using Adwords. Search for the terms you are likely to use in order to size-up the competition. Pay attention to their ad’s wording, titles, or incentives they use. You don’t won’t to make your ad exactly like the competition, but it’s smart to know what their doing to ensure that your advertisement is going to be effective.

Stick to Your BudgetCreate a budget and stick to it. In marketing, there is a saying, “I waste half my advertising dollars, but, the problem is, I don’t know which half”. It’s difficult to know how effective the Adwords program will be if you’re also utilizing other marketing channels (as you should be). When checking out, give your customers the option to let you know how they found your website. If you find Adwords is paying off, then it may be smart to increase your budget. It also may not be very cost efficient to bid for the #1 spot for every keyword. The #2 position may be almost as effective, but cost only half as much.

If your website doesn’t sell or promote anything, then it doesn’t make sense to pay for traffic. If this is the case, Google will actually pay you to display Adwords advertisements on their websites. To find out more information regarding the Adwords program, Visit Google’s Advertising Programs.

About The Author
Paul Coulter owns and operates a full service custom web design company in Windsor, Ontario. Contact Paul by visiting his website at Windsor Web Design

Google Adwords - Manipulating Keywords For Success

By - Halstatt Pires

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As you probably know, Google Adwords is a pay-per-click solution offered by Google. As with other PPCs, you are given the ability to place your small advertisement on various platforms controlled by Google. While the platform provides you with a large audience, you must manipulate your keywords to generate success.

Matching Options

When running an Adwords campaign, you can and should define when your keywords will appear in search results. To do this, you can select matching options for each of your keywords to either reach a broad audience or target a niche.

The Google Adwords platform allows you to select four matching options:

Broad Match

Broad match is the default setting for an Adwords campaign. Broad match means your ad will appear in search results when any combination of the words in your keyword phrase search. Many an advertiser has learned expensive lessons using this setting. Let’s look at an example.

Assume I am selling travel writing diaries and using “travel journals” as my keyword phrase. Any time a person enters any combination of “travel” and “journals” in a search, my ad will appear. The ad will also appear for plurals and relevant variations. While this may sound great at first glance, a broad match setting can result in low quality hits and poor conversion rates. A person searching for travel journal stories is going to see my link. While a decent percentage will click my link, they are far less likely to buy because they are just browsing. Using broad match, my costs go up and my conversions go down.

Broad match isn’t necessarily a bad option. If your product makes a popular Christmas gift, you definitely want to use the broad match option in November and December. You prospective clients will be motivated to buy. Even the “browsing” surfers will convert well.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is a matching option that gives you a bit more control over your ads. Phrase match tells the Adwords platform to only show your ad when a search is conducted for the particular order of your keyword phrase. Using the phrase match option for “travel journals”, my ad would appear when someone search for a phrase with “travel journals” in it, but not “journals travel”. To use phrase match for keyword phrases, you simply place quotation marks around them.

Exact Match

Exact match is…exact match. It is the most targeted option. You should use it only if you want your ad to appear in searches for the exact keyword phrase as written. For instance, if I want my ad to appear in searches for “travel journals” and nothing else, I will use the exact match. To select the exact match option, simply place brackets (“[]”) around the keyword phrase.

Negative Match

No, the negative match option doesn’t involve cussing, insults or adult sites. Instead, it allows you to designate which keyword phrase search results you do not want your ad to appear in. For example, I may not want my travel journal product to appear in search results for “Amazon travel journals”. I would simply list the keyword phrase with a dash (-) in front of it and my ad will not appear. The negative match option is a tremendous option for eliminating junk traffic from your Adwords campaign.

The Google Adwords platform is a tremendous advertising platform. Effectively manipulate your keywords and it can be a highly profitable one as well.

About The Author
Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - a San Diego Internet Marketing Company.

Organize Your Adwords Account to Get More Visitors, Lower Your Cost Per Click and Increase ROI

By - Robert Walter

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This article features techniques that increase your traffic, visibility, CTR, and ROI while lowering your cost per visitor.

Keeping your Adwords account organized is very important. It can make it easy for you to find your Adgroups, keywords and your ads. This can help you save time whenever you need to adjust your bids, ads, or keywords. Being organized can also help you achieve a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) which means getting the searcher clicking on your ad and becoming a prospect.

Organize your account by starting with a campaign name relevant to your product or service. If you were selling inkjet cartridges you could use that as the campaign name or the name of your website as the campaign name.

Set up your ad groups so that they are themed. If you were advertising inkjet cartridges and one of the products you are selling is canon inkjet cartridges you could create an adgroup titled “Canon Inkjet Cartridges” and then place relevant keywords in this group.

Ad Group Name: Canon Inkjet Cartridges
Keywords: canon inkjet cartridges, canon ink, canon cartridges, canon inkjet cartridges online

Two reasons for keeping your adgroups organized and themed like this are it is easy to find and adjust the keywords as necessary. It is easy to to put the keyword in the title and body of your ad.

It is important to put the keyword in the title and ad because you will achieve a much higher click through rate (CTR)

Canon Inkjet Cartridges
For huge savings on Canon inkjet
cartridges visit us.
http://yoursite.com

If you used the above ad with the keywords in the example your ad would be relevant to the searchers and the keywords in the ad would appear bold to the searchers catching their eye.

For Example, The searcher types in the search term "canon inkjet cartridges". This is how the ad above would be displayed.

Canon Inkjet Cartridges
For huge savings on Canon inkjet
cartridges visit us.
http://yoursite.com

Let's recap what you just learned. The bold text catches the eye of the searcher. The keyword is relevant to what they are looking for thus increasing the chances of you getting the visitor to your website instead of your competitor getting the visitor.

One thing you need to be careful of however is using a trademarked word in your title, description, or as a keyword. Some companies allow you to do this while other companies don't. When in doubt either don't use the trademarked term or contact the company and ask them for permission.

One other advantage of having themed adgroups is that Google rewards relevancy. This can improve your quality score and actually reduce the cost that you pay for the click. Your Ad’s position will improve. You will get a lower cost per customer acquisition (CPA), a higher clickthrough rate (CTR), more profit and a higher return of investment (ROI).

About The Author
Robert Walter has been marketing online for 5 years. He has successfully marketed products in competitive and niche markets. Find out how you can master Google Adwords http://hot-product-reviews.com

AdWords Campaigns? Avoiding the Mistakes

By - Adriana Iordan
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How to avoid the most common AdWords errors. Some of the most common AdWords campaign mistakes come from superficiality or insufficient knowledge about the targeted market and the way the Web works.

With the emergence of Google's AdWords service, online marketing has changed. It is now possible to target potential customers more accurately than ever, taking into account that Web search is the second most used online application after e-mail.
What is AdWords?

AdWords is Google's tool, meant to help you advertise your business. It can be used to create simple, yet effective ads that will be displayed to people performing online searches for information related to businesses such as yours. Basically, a Google AdWords campaign is one way of doing online keyword-based advertising.

At the core of any pay-per-click campaign lays the commercial links (the ads) associated to keywords, displayed on the right side of the result page when a Google search is performed. What Google offers is actually placing certain Web sites on top of all the results for a specific search (i.e. keywords). Against a fee, naturally. These sites are placed systematically on the right on the right side of the result screen and marked as "commercial links" so that the user is not mislead, since Google's goal is, above all, to maintain the credibility of its search engine.

The AdWords ads are very simple. They come in a verity of formats, amongst which the most common are the text format and the image format. There can also be animated ads, video ads, mobile ads, etc. The text ads usually consist of:

An ad title (up to 25 characters, including spaces): must attract users that may have an interest in your products or services

Two description lines (up to 35 characters each, including spaces): should be clear and compelling enough to convince the user to visit your site

The display URL (up to 35 characters, including spaces): this is where the user will be directed when clicking on the ad.
15 Most Common Errors in an AdWords Campaign

Don't assume that this is an easy task. It's not. Remember that Google is a tough nut to crack, but with the right set of tools and a lot of hard work and dedication, it can be done. Therefore, it is good that before creating a pay per click campaign, you have a clearly established goal. According to this goal, begin creating your AdWords campaign.

As with Search Engine Optimization, AdWords campaign management is a must and must be done properly. There are many aspects that can be overlooked. Some of the most common AdWords campaign mistakes come from superficiality or insufficient knowledge about the targeted market and the way the Web works.

Among the worst mistakes being made in such cases are:

Bidding too much in order to be placed on the top position
Even if this seems like the best choice, being "Number One" in this case is not necessarily the best. Keep in mind that Web users are accustomed to searching, and they usually don't stop at the first ad. And, since they are first prospecting the market, it is highly possible that you only get an unqualified click. It seems that being no. 3 in paid search is one of the best (i.e. profitable) rank.

No geo-targeting
Try to relate to the potential customers in your area first. They are more likely to take their business to a local company. Add, for example, the name of the town or of the area where your company is in your ad and the effects will be noticeable.

Bidding on broad keywords
Broad keywords are very likely to take your CPC (cost-per-click) to a very high level. Therefore, try to brush the keyword list that you wish to use for your PPC campaign and retain only highly searched-for keywords. Those are worth bidding for.

Boring content
Don't say what others have already said. Be creative. Be fresh.

Non-relevant landing pages
Make sure that when the Web user clicks on the URL in the ad, it will take him/her to a relevant page. You don't want the user to get frustrated by not finding the desired product/service advertised in the ad.

Directing users only to the home page
Unless you have a really cool Web site that will captivate the users and make them browse through it for endless minutes, they will get frustrated if they have to search throughout the site for what the need, starting from your home page. You should send them directly where they will find what was advertised.

No keywords in the ad text
Do insert your keywords in the title and description of the ad. Nevertheless, remember to keep an eye on the clarity and relevance of the ad. The visitors must understand exactly what they will get when clicking on it.

Not tracking the results
You should monitor the keywords that you use in your Google AdWords marketing campaigns. The most at-hand tool is Google Analytics, built into the AdWords interface. You should be able to see and rule out the keywords that are not helping you get the desired ROI (return on investment).

Same bids for the content network
AdWords gives you the possibility to have two separate campaigns, one for the content network, and the other for the search network. You should set different bids for the content network. Otherwise, the CPC will be much higher than anticipated.

Suggesting that what you offer is free
Don't try to lure the visitors with false statements. All you'll get is irrelevant traffic, but no conversion (or not significant enough).

Not identifying the uniqueness of your product/service
Identify what makes you and your product/service unique, what makes you stand out from the large crowd of competitors. Find the keyword(s) that supports this uniqueness.

Failure to create multiple ad groups and ad campaigns
Don't fall into that trap. Unorganized campaigns will fail to produce the expected results. Group all the single ads that target related keywords. If you're advertising more than one product/service, it's best to have the ads grouped by category. Also, don't use just one campaign. Split your ads into separate campaigns. You will be able to see which of them gives you more satisfaction in terms of conversion rate.

Failure to test with more that one ad
Don't limit your advertising campaign to just one ad. It may not contain the best keywords. Create more ads and see which one works best.

Not using targeting options for keywords
Broad matches may or may not improve your conversion rate. But if you use the keyword targeting options, you may notice significant improvements. The targeting options are the square brackets - [blue tulip] - and the quotation marks - "blue tulip". Also, you can use the negative character (minus sign) in order to specify certain keywords for which you don't want your ads to be shown: -tulip. This will also prevent you from paying for such words. A penny saved is a penny earned, they say.

Not using company/brand name keywords
Don't leave out the name of your company or of a brand you've created. You wouldn't want the competition to make profitable use of it, would you?
So, when you plan on creating an AdWords campaign, try to keep an eye on the aspects mentioned above. There is too much at stake to afford bad internet marketing campaigns.

What's In It For You?

To make it short (taking into account that your Google AdWords campaign is a good one): an improved conversion rate. After all, this is what you were aiming for. If you only take a look at the possible AdWords campaign mistakes mentioned above, it is easy to figure out the disastrous consequences of a poorly managed advertising campaign.

Ultimately, it can put you out of business. On the other hand, a well-directed and properly instrumented pay-per-click campaign can go a long way. You gain notoriety and make a profit.

There are so many ways in which you can save money when creating an AdWords campaign. If you manage to avoid the above-mentioned mistakes, you will surely notice an increase in your sales or amount of contracts for your services.

About The Author
Read more free internet marketing articles. http://www.avangate.com/articles/internet-marketing Copyright © 2007, www.avangate.com, all rights reserved. This article was written by Adriana Iordan, Web Marketing Manager at Avangate B.V. Avangate is an eCommerce platform for electronic software distribution incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional software marketing services and sales tools.