Archive for July, 2008

Dennis Crane
Jul 17th, 2008

Getting started with Google AdWords safely

This post is a short list of basic rules for those who has recently signed up for Google AdWords account and doesn’t want to waste much money for learning curve.

Please consider the advice below with “for the first time” remark.

Focus on high quality traffic first

  • Turn off Content Network advertising
  • Allow only English language in targeting settings.
  • Allow only USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and other “potentially profitable” countries (Nothing personal, just cold statistics).

Differentiate your ads

  • Divide your keywords into several campaigns and groups by some syntax or semantic attributes. This will allow to create more focused ads for each group.
  • In each group create two different ads with equal rotation probability.
  • Constantly monitor those pairs of ads and replace the “weakest” one (with low CTR and conversion) with a new ad. I.e. test and look for the most effective ads for each group.
  • Test various modifications of ad elements: URL, punctuation, caps, word order, etc. E.g: www.ProductName.com or www.productname.com or productname.com or ProductName.com; website or Web Site or web-site; and so on.
  • Include search keywords in the text of your ads. Google will make them bold in search results and therefore your ad will be more visible among your competitors.

Improve your campaigns

  • Try to increase bids for a couple of the most “profitable” phrases to improve their positions. But be careful and constantly monitor the effectiveness of this approach.
  • Analyze your web logs, look for irrelevant queries and add them to the negative word list not to display your ads for them. Here is another good idea how to build negative word list

Start little and look what happens. Once you feel that you have full control and understanding of how Google AdWords works then you may turn on other countries, languages, campaigns, and ads.

Google AdWords is not a rocket science but it requires your attention and constant control to get maximum ROI out of your budget when you’re getting started.