Easy AdWords Basics

By Tim Vogel

Getting AdWords right - the easy way.

Are you confused by Google AdWords? Have you tried to set-up a campaign then watched in horror as your daily spend escalates for no appreciable return?

Anyone can get traffic with AdWords, it's getting targeted/paying traffic that counts. Google adwords can be an incredibly powerful advertising tool. Unfortunately, it can also be an incredibly effective way of burning through shed-loads of money for very little in return. Arm yourself with a few simple 'tuning' techniques and you can ensure AdWords will deliver a cost effective supply of targeted traffic to your offering. You can also limit and control your costs and build a sound base from which to tailor a more specialized AdWords campaign.

OK, so here is my 'must have' basic tune-up list for any campaign. First off, break your campaigns down into super-specific adgroups. If, for example, you're a greengrocer your ideal AdWords campaign would have one adgroup for each of the individual products you sell. So, build an adgroup for oranges, then a separate one for apples and then one for pears etc.

Placing all your products in one big adgroup is the single biggest mistake most people make when building their first AdWords campaign. What you're aiming for are neat adgroups specifically targeted to individual products in your range. Once you've set-up your adgroup for 'Oranges' etc. you then need to make sure your chosen keywords are as effective as possible. This means as 'relevant' to your products as possible. The more relevant you make your keywords the more likely it is they will deliver well-targeted 'qualified' customers to your site. So for your 'Oranges' adgroup, stick in keyword phrases and variations pertaining to your oranges.

Now, here you will find the next big problem with AdWords: all the obvious keywords are expensive. So to get round this and stand a chance of delivering better targeted traffic, you need to make your keyword phrases more 'longtail'. ie. more specific. Instead of an obvious high priced keyword phrase such as 'fresh oranges', try something like 'fresh Spanish oranges' or 'fresh oranges UK seller'. You need to put yourself in the mind of your customer. What would your customer tap into Google if they were looking for a specific product?

OK, so you have your adgroups and your very specific keywords, now you need to 'tune' the campaign to get the maximum efficiency from it. You need to write your ads to 'link in' with your specific 'longtail' keyword phrases and the individual products they're optimised for. This means you need to repeat your 'Oranges' Keywords in the title of your ad and in the body. The best way to do this is to use a little 'AdWords' title trick.

Place { then the word 'Keyword',followed by : and your keyword phrase, then close brackets } this will ensure that Google automatically places the relevant keyword phrase in your title depending on what the search criteria are. Our oranges example would look like this:

{keyword: fresh oranges}

Now having optimized your adgroup so well, it would be pretty pointless to just send your prospects to the home page of your site, so make sure you link the ad directly to your 'oranges' page within your site. If you don't have an oranges page, then write one and besure to include all the 'longtail' keyword phrases you used in your ad and keyword selection.

Now you have a really well optimized adgroup within your campaign, carry on in the same way for each of your products and you'll have a very effective well targeted campaign. You also need to tweek a few of the Google settings to make every penny of your ad budget get used in the most effective way.

Make sure you apply these settings to all your campaigns :

1. Turn off content network - or this will drain your budget in no time.

2. Enable 'position preferences' on every keyword and set to max 3, min 7.

3. 'Show ads evenly over time'.

4. Ad scheduling: OFF

5. Ad serving: Rotate.

6. Google search network: on

7. Search network: on.

A little extra advice on keywords: There are many ways you can find the most effective keyword phrases. Keyword research is a whole other topic but as a quick pointer, take a look at your website server stats, what are people actually arriving at your site using? For every keyword phrase you find, try writing an adgroup and website page. Use the free google tools like traffic estimator and the keyword tool. They're not massively accurate but they do help.

Once you're happy with the efficacy of your optimized AdWords campaigns you might consider investing some of your extra profits in a keyword software tool. These keyword and AdWords data analyzers can hugely increase your performance and easily give you access to the best performing keywords and show up any profitable keywords ripe for the taking. A properly 'tuned' AdWords campaign will be your best 'salesman' and save you money.