Google AdWords - Tweaking Your Ad Campaign

Whether you sell your own products online, market affiliate products, or are generating network marketing leads or any kind of marketing online, knowing how to use Google AdWords is an important part of your success. Doing well with Google AdWords is a matter of constant tweaking and improvement. Continue to split test and eventually you will win in your market. This article will go over various ways you can tweak your ad campaign.

Every keyword is a market in the world of the internet, search engines, and Google AdWords. Once you have figured out what markets you want to go after based on estimated profitability, volume of searches and competition then it is time to make sure your ad gets shown and then clicked through to your site.

Split Testing

Improving our ad performance requires constant testing to see how our tweaks are doing. You should always have 2 ads running using Google AdWords split testing capability. When specified by you in the ad setup, Google will run 2 ads in rotation so that at the end of the test period you can compare the number of clicks and the CTR (click through rate) achieved by each ad. Once that is done, the ad that didn't do so well is discarded, and a new ad is developed to take its place and again we run a split test.

Ad Groups

In order to focus your campaigns and not dilute them, keep similar keywords, and keyword phrases together in their own ad group. Each ad group should have it own headline which is matched to the keywords. The more closely related the terms are in the ad group, the more successful the ad will be. If you see a particular keyword that has greater hits than the rest in the ad group, take it out and put it in its own ad with its own ad copy relevant to the keyword to improve overall CTR. Make sure that the ads match your keywords. This means that the ad headline and 2 description lines should contain the keyword. If possible, the display URL should also match the keywords. Don't use the company name in the headline as it will only lower your CTR and drive up the bid price for your ad. Correspondingly, the ad should be aimed at your customer and his wants and not about your company. Make sure the destination URL is a call to action page like an opt-in page or a purchasing page. The page should be directly relevant to the ad. Don't leave your visitor wandering around the home page with myriad links where he can get lost. Make sure you use negative keywords to eliminate irrelevant words. For example, if you don't want people looking for freebies to see your ad, you would use the negative keyword "-free".

Match Parameters

In the ad, you can specify how the ad will be matched with the keywords based on what delimiters are placed on the keyword. Playing around with the delimiters in your keywords (the [ ], " ", and -) can uncover some neglected keywords bargains.

Broad matched keywords are where you have not put any delimiters. As long as your keywords show up anywhere and in any order you will come up in the search. This can result in a lot of irrelevant results.

Phrase matches have quotes around the keywords and will show up in a search if the words are in the same order and no words are inserted in between. Essentially you have an exact match for everything between the two quotes but there can be extra words outside what was indicated in the quotes.

Exact matches have square brackets around them and are word for word and the same order as the search terms. No extra words are allowed.

Negative keywords are preceded by a minus sign and will not bring up your ad in a search if that keyword is the search term. This will reduce the number of impressions of your add but this will improve your CTR as you eliminate those impressions that wouldn't have led to a click anyways.

Keywords That Are Not So Obvious

Misspelled words can sometimes be had cheap and have good CTR. Changing the noun or the verb to a different variant can affect hits and CTR. Try also changing the format of names and the hyphenation. Adding city names to the rest of your keywords can uncover un-served or under-served niches with low bid prices.

Description Lines

It is usually better for your benefits be in line 1 and your features in line 2. Line 1 should address the customer's emotional need for the product.

Google Conversion Tracking

Google's conversion tracking tool can tell you how well particular keywords are converting to opt-ins and sales. With the data from this tool you can tell when it makes sense to bid higher on very profitable words, get rid of irrelevant words that are costing you money, know which sites that you advertise on are making money and those that are losing you money, know which ads are converting to actual sales, etc.

Getting the #1 Ad Position

It usually doesn't make sense to bid for the #1 ad position as you will end up paying a lot for your ads and you will get a lower CTR as many of the people who will see your ad will click it on impulse and not necessarily that they were interested in your product. Bid for a lower position. Sometimes not being on the first page can benefit you as people who are digging deeper than page 1 of the search are probably pretty serious about finding what they were looking for. Keep tweaking this until you have the highest profit.

Ad Copy

Make sure that your headline grabs the visitors attention and gives the benefits of the product. Your ad should have your unique selling proposition. Your ad should have an offer that can't be refused, a clear call to action (opt-in, buy, etc,).

I hope you find these tweak tips useful and a good start. Doing well with Google AdWords is quite a bit an art but remember to split test so you can hone your art.

C Doug Mah is an internet network marketing coach whose goal is to teach independent business owners how to use attraction marketing and Web 2.0+ technologies to grow their businesses profitably. Going beyond the old school techniques that are still being taught by some network marketing and MLM organizations, these techniques drive pre-qualified prospects to your business, allowing you to spend more time in business building and training instead of prospecting and recruiting.

If you are interested in learning more about internet marketing and in particular internet network marketing, please go to my blog.