Google Adwords Questions and Answers

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2011-04-22T14:14:00.003Z

We're glad that you found this Google adword hints and tips blog, but please be advised that we have moved to here... New Google Adwords Hints and Tips Blog

Adwords Hints & Tips #9 - Track Your Conversions!

2006-07-02T11:41:00.000Z

Well, you have been using Google Adwords for some time, you're getting plenty of clicks from a large selection of keywords, but how do you know which keywords are the ones that are generating your sales? Does it matter as long as the campaign is paying its way?

What's a Conversion?
A conversion is generally used to describe the moment when a visitor to your website becomes a customer (i.e. when they move from just browsing your site to purchasing something from you), although it can represent the moment where they take any action that you want them to (e.g. completing a survey; asking you for more information etc.).

Why do I need to track them?
If you owned a shop in the high street and got plenty of customers you'd be happy wouldn't you? If you knew what brought most of those customers to your shop in the first place wouldn't that be better still? Then you could shift your marketing budget so that more of it was spent targeting that sort of visitor, which sould greatly improve your return on Marketing spend.
The same logic is true for websites. The website is your shop window. You will (hopefully) get lots of people to come in and look around, but what you really need to know is what type of person is buying from you, where did they come from, how did they find out about you etc.

How can I track conversions through my website?
There are actually lots of ways. Google can give you some code which you plug into your website which will capture information about the visitors who arrive via your Adwords Campaign. You can then go to your campaign page in Google and see which keyword clicks actually resulted in a sale / conversion for you. You can also modify your website yourself to track all incoming visitors, and the keywords they have used to search for you.
Whatever method you use the most important thing is to know which keywords / websites etc delivered the most customers to you. If you use Google Adwords you can remove the keywords that are not generating sales, thereby increasing the amount of your budget which goes to the keywords that do generate sales. Simple really, but it's surprising that many website owners do not do this!

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #8 - Use Negative Keywords

2006-03-16T10:34:00.000Z

Remember to use negative keywords in your Adwords campaigns. Anyone using one of your negative keywords as part of their search criteria will not be shown your advert. This can be useful if, for example, you are targetting the top end of the market for a certain product or service...

Use words like 'cheap' and 'free' as negative keywords to prevent bargain hunters from seeing your advert....

...or words like 'rental' and 'for hire' if you only sell products and don't rent them out.

...or words like 'britney' if you sell African Spears!

Anyway, you get the picture. You might reduce the overall number of clicks that you get by using negative keywords, but the average quality of each visitor should increase (and you'll pay less!).

You can apply negative keywords to specific advert groups within your campaign or to the campaign as a whole.

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #7 - Avoid Advert Copy Changes

2006-02-27T12:14:00.000Z

Be careful when changing advert headlines, text or urls for any Google Adwords adverts that have been running for a while.

Google builds a history for each of your adverts that helps it to best rank your ad in its Sponsored Listings. This history is destroyed whenever you change any part of your advert!

This means that, for example, if you have achieved a consistently high click-thru-rate for an advert which has resulted in Google showing that advert in a higher position than competitor ads, then this will effectively be lost when you change just 1 letter in your advert copy. This could have a serious impact on your campaign - either you'll be relegated to a lower position (reducing your clicks) or you'll pay a higher price for the same position (increasing your costs).

What Can I do?

Once it's done, you can do nothing to resurrect the history. If you plan your changes carefully, though, you can add new adverts rather than change existing ones, so that the negative impact of a change is diminished. Once your new advert is achieving a decent click-thru-rate you can delete the old advert.

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #6 - Seasonality

2005-12-07T17:38:00.000Z

With Christmas fast approaching I thought it would be appropriate to make a few observations on some of the more seasonal implications for an Adwords Campaign.

Firstly, don't forget that a large part of the workforce takes time off over this, and other common holiday periods. So, if your campaign targets this demographic you will need to plan for fewer clicks during such periods.

Of course, many campaigns will see the reverse at this time of year. If your target market are individuals who are looking for gifts then you could expect a bumper load of clicks.

Make sure that if your product or service has a potential seasonal appeal (clothing, for example), you might want to introduce some additional keywords and adverts to point this out to the browsers. So, an advert text which reads 'Order Now, Delivered for Christmas' might just attract the attention of a search engine visitor who has left his / her Christmas shopping a bit late, and may get you a click ahead of a higher placed advert.

Finally, if you sell products that will appeal to Christmas shoppers and you have a set budget to spend on your Adword clicks each month, why not try to get your entire months clicks within the first week or two of December? That way you will spend the same as in other months, but will possibly convert a few more sales than usual. To do this, increase your Daily Budget and wait until you have captured the clicks that you want. Then reduce the daily budget again and pause the campaign until next month.

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #5 - Add referrer information to your Adwords URL's

2005-11-06T21:08:00.000Z

When typing your URL (the website address to which you want your advert group clicks to be targetted), try adding a string such as ?source=adwordsxxxx to the end of the URL. 'xxxx' is a string that describes the advert group which is generating the click.

If you check your Web Server Log Files to see how your visitors have interacted with your website, you will clearly be able to differentiate your Google Adwords visitors from the rest, as you will see a record that looks like the following:

195.93.21.34 - - [04/Nov/2005:23:56:10 +0000] "GET /softwaredev.htm?source=adwordssoftware HTTP/1.0" 200 10463 "http://aolsearch.aol.co.uk/web?query=software+oxford&isinit=true&restrict=countryUK&x=39&y=6" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; SV1)"

As you can see, this visitor arrived at the softwaredev.htm page of my website and was tagged with the 'adwordssoftware' string to indicate that they had been sent to my site from my 'software' advert group in my Google Adwords campaign.

If you don't look at your Web Server Log Files directly, but use one of the many Log File Analysis programs currently on the market, you might be able to adjust your Google Adwords URL 'tag' string so that it uses a format that can be readily interpreted by the log analyser program that you are using.

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Why can't I see my Google Ads when I search for my keywords?

2005-10-18T12:51:00.000Z

A client of mine recently asked if I had switched his campaign off. He had searched for a few of his keywords and couldn't see any of his Adwords adverts in the Sponsored Links results area. I often see comments on bulletin boards and other forums along similar lines, so I thought it was worth a mention here.

The reason why ads do not show is most likely to be because Google spreads the delivery of adverts throughout the day at a rate that will best achieve the campaigns daily budget. It doesn't want to blow your entire daily budget within the first hour of the day (although it might do if your click cost is a high proportion of your daily budget!) and so it will stop delivering your adverts if the click rate gets ahead of itself.

As a campaign manager, I quite often manually pause a campaign for similar reasons. I regularly set campaign budgets high so that my adverts get plenty of exposure. When I introduce new advert groups (or adverts or keywords), they are often more successful than I had expected, generating many more clicks than I am targetting. So, short-term, I pause the campaign whilst I adjust it so that it delivers the right blend of quality and quantity for the price agreed with the client.

Adwords Hints & Tips #4 - Reduce Maximum CPC if you regularly reach your daily budget

2005-10-18T12:17:00.000Z

Let's say that you have a 'real' daily budget of £10 for your Google Adwords Campaign. You tell Google that this is the amount that you want to spend, and off it goes. Google will calculate your average cost per click, average daily impressions, and average click-thru-rate, and will then work out how often it needs to show your adverts in order to achieve your £10 daily spend limit. Once it has delivered clicks to the value of £10 it will stop showing your ads for that day - actually this is not strictly the case, as mentioned in our Hints & Tips #1 article, but the effect is the same!

But, what if you regularly achieve your daily budget, and you reach it relatively early each day? This suggests that you could achieve many more clicks if only you were prepared to spend more, right? Well, yes, but...

...if you really cannot increase your daily budget to deliver more of these clicks, then you should consider reducing your maximum cost per click (CPC). This will have the effect of reducing your advert position, and is likely to reduce your click-thru-rate (CTR), but what it will do is deliver you more clicks (overall) for your same budget, as Google will display your adverts for a larger part of the day than it did before.

Of course, all of this assumes that the quality of visitor you get on a lower cost-per-click is the same as those that you got at a higher click cost. This strategy has different results for different types of campaign, so please check that it works for you before committing to it longer term, but it is a useful technique to be aware of!

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #3 - Match Your Keywords to your Advert Headline and Copy

2005-09-23T13:46:00.000Z

Research shows that search engine users are more likely to click on a Sponsored Link if the Advert contains all, or most, of the keywords that they searched for. This is partly because the search terms are highlighted in bold text by Google in the adverts.

This is easier said than done if you have a large variety of possible keywords, but it's still worth the effort to create a large range of adverts (or creatives, as Google call them) to make sure that they are all covered. Better still, split the keywords into seperate advert groups to focus on different keyword ranges. This will then ensure that your keywords get great click-thru-rates (CTR), which should in turn mean a higher placement in the listings for the same (or less) money.

For the more confident amongst you, you could try using Googles keyword substitution. This allows you to create a list of keywords that will trigger your advert, and then create an advert that says something like "Buy your {variable} from us". Google will insert the users search term into your advert in place of {variable} when it is displayed, so that if (say) the user searched for 'Tomatoes', then the advert would say "Buy your Tomatoes from us". It's quite a powerful tool.

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #2 - Increase Max CPC For New Advert Groups

2005-09-14T07:35:00.000Z

Google ranks its Sponsored Search Results according to several factors. One of these factors is Click-thru-Rate (CTR - the percentage of displayed adverts that are actually clicked). So your advert could appear above somebody else's advert, even though they bid a higher maximum Cost-per-Click (CPC). The reasoning behind this is simple - if your advert is getting a lot of clicks, Google will make more money from your advert even if the cost of each click is a bit lower.
For this reason, it is a very good idea to get your advert as high a CTR as possible early on in its life. Google uses historic data to derive the CTR and so the adverts for a new advert group, for instance, will find it difficult to gain a real foothold until they have built up some history. To get some good early exposure for your adverts, and to help them build some useful history for Google to act on, I think it is worth setting the maximum CPC for the group to a high value initially. You can then reduce the maximum CPC (gradually) as the group becomes more established. You may eventually find that you are achieving higher average positions with a much lower average CPC than you were when you started out.

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Adwords Hints & Tips #1 - Increase Your Daily Campaign Budget

2005-09-05T07:57:00.000Z

Google will spread the delivery of your adverts over the entire day based upon your campaign daily budget. Let's look at the implications of this by using an example. Bear in mind this will not work out precisely, it is just intended to show the general effect, and many factors will conspire to make it unpredictable:

Say you have a campaign daily budget of £24, an average cost per click (CPC) of £0.50 and a click-thru-rate (CTR) of 1%.

Your typical spend should therefore be around £1 per hour (daily budget divided by hours in the day).

Therefore, you should get around 2 clicks per hour (hourly spend divided by average CPC).

With a CTR of 1%, Google will then deliver your advert 200 times each hour (clicks per hour divided by click-through-rate).

Now, it may be that your keywords are being searched-for more often than that. If that is the case then you are potentially missing out on some clicks. What's more, your competitors may be getting their ads shown when your are not!

So what are the options available to you if you want your adverts to be displayed more often? Simple, just increase your daily budget! I have found that my costs rarely exceed my daily budget. I might be happy spending £10 per day, but find that if I set my Google Campaign Daily Budget to £10 I never really get £10's worth of clicks. If you have a 'real' daily budget of £10, then why not try increasing the Google Campaign budget to £20 or £30 and pause your campaign once you have reached £10?

Beware! Actually, Google will balance your advert delivery over the entire month according to your daily budget. So, for example, if your daily budget is £10 Google will assume you want to spend £310 in the month (assuming there are 31 days in the month), and will adjust your advert delivery accordingly. This means that you could, in theory, spend more than your daily budget on any particular day, and Google should then adjust your spend for the rest of the month to meet your budget. If Google "accidentally" delivers too many adverts in a month they will never charge you more than your daily budget multiplied by the number of days in the month.

Finally, I have only shown you how to increase your advert exposure in this article. Future articles will show you how to increase the click-thru-rate once your ads are displayed, and how you might get better rankings for adverts without spending more money per click!

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.

Phrase Matching Options and Negative Keywords

2005-08-14T10:38:00.000Z

A network contact of mine recently described the following problem, and asked what I might suggest.....

For his Adwords campaign he chose three keywords (lets say they were "knitted", "jumper" and "cardigan"). He selected phrase matching, where the keywords or keyword phrase is enclosed in quotes and the advert gets displayed if the searcher inputs a phrase that includes the keyword. He had hoped that this meant the ad would appear when someone typed in "knitted jumper" or "knitted cardigan", but what actually happened is that the ad showed up whenever someone searched on a phrase including any one of the search words. So although they got some clicks which were spot on, they also got clicks from people who searched for things like "babies blue lycra cardigan" or "bon jovi knitted T-shirts", which he found annoying.

My response was as follows....

You can mix Phrase Match, Broad Match and Exact Match keywords in the same ad group. For instance, you could have a keyword of "knitted jumper" plus one for [knitted jumper] and another for knitted jumper. The former would display your advert whenever a user typed in a search phrase that contained the term knitted jumper - so a search phrase such as 'purchasing a knitted jumper online' would show your advert, whereas it would not get shown for 'buying a jumper that is knitted'. The second keyword [jumper] would only trigger an advert when the user typed in this exact phrase (with no additional words). The final keyword would trigger an advert whenever one or both of the words 'knitted' and 'jumper' were searched for (in any order) - so the phrase 'looking for a knitted cardigan or jumper' would trigger the advert. The options for keyword matching get very complex - my advert groups generally have dozens or even hundreds of keywords.

Do you use negative keywords? If you did, then you might prevent some of the annoying clicks. For example, if you added a keyword such as -baby and another -babies none of your adverts would display if the user typed in the word baby or babies as part of their search phrase. Useful if you don't sell baby clothes. Equally, you could use lycra and tshirt as negative keywords. Just add them to your keyword list.

Find out more about keyword matching options at the Google Help Center

Websites developed using Flash Technology

2005-08-06T12:38:00.000Z

A prospective client of mine commented that he was considering a pay-per-click campaign to promote his website as he had been told that it would be difficult to gain good ranking in the organic search engine listings (SERPS) for his Flash site.

It's true that Flash is not particularly friendly as far as the search engines are concerned. Search engines prefer simple and quick to follow web pages, and not a complex and difficult to navigate web site. If it is important for you to have a Flash website (for example to show off your artistic or design skills), then a pay-per-click (ppc) campaign may be the best way to drive large numbers of visitors to your site. Even then you will need to pay close attention to your site structure. Visitors who click through an advert to arrive at a website will want to see very swift evidence that they have arrived at a relevant site, otherwise they will click away again very quickly. So it is important to land them at a page on your website that gives them the information they are looking for - they may not want to wait for a movie to run, or to try to guess which particular graphic they need to click to take them to the area they need.

If you have to use Flash and still want a crack at reasonable SEO, then make sure you still make good use of the title and meta tags, and try to include as much 'real' text in the website as possible.

Hint: To get a good idea of what a search engine spider will see when it visits your site, try using a Text-mode browser (e.g. Lynx) to view the site or try a search engine simulator!

You may want to consider running an HTML equivalent of your Flash website. You can target your adword clicks to the HTML site whilst giving visitors the option to jump to your flash site once they are there. The HTML site will also be better ranked in the organic search listings as well. The downside is the extra cost of maintaining two sites and keeping them in step, although it does give you the best of both worlds - you can also see which one generates the most interest, the best comments, and of course the most business.

A Word About Click-Fraud

2005-07-07T08:49:00.000Z

Some businesses have been turned-off the idea of having an Internet Pay-per-Click campaign for their products or services because of the risk of Click-Fraud.

What is 'Click-Fraud'?
For those who are unaware, Click Fraud is the term used to describe the process of repeatedly clicking on an advert with the sole intention of increasing the click cost for the advertiser. It is said to be increasing at an alarming rate, and is generally employed either by competitor companies seeking to increase the costs and discourage companies from competing with their own ads, or by affiliate networks (those that show ads on their websites and who then receive a payment for each visitor that clicks through to the advertised website).

How would I know if this was happening to my campaign?
An unusual upward spike in your click-throughs would be a good indication, although this is by no means conclusive - you may well see an unusual increase one of your adverts or advert groups because the adverts suddenly become more relevant to their audience or because the adverts are being shown on new affiliate sites that may be more relevant to your audience.
Some Website owners think that they are being defrauded because they are getting lots of clicks to their sites, but are not converting those visitors into customers. My response to this concern would be to get advertisers to first check that their advert text is relevant to the page of the website that the visitor will land on when they click the advert, and secondly to be sure that the website itself is appealing enough to engage the visitor and to persuade them to do what you would like them to do!

What can I do if I think it is happening to me?
1. Talk to your Pay-per-Click provider (Google, Overture etc.) and let them know that you suspect fraud. As part of their day-to-day operation they watch for large scale abuses of the system - after all, their business success depends on people being able to trust their advertising systems. They are able to spot unusually high activity coming from certain IP Addresses, Geographical Regions, Affiliate sites etc.
2. It is also worth checking to see whether the high click counts have come from affiliate sites. If they have, then you can stop your pay-per-click campaigns from being made available to affiliates. For those who do not know about the contextual / affiliate network, pay-per-click providers can allow your adverts to be displayed by other websites that are related to your product or service. You will have seen, for example, the 'Ads By Google' text and adverts displayed on sites that you visit. Well, Google will place your adverts on these sites if you ask them to. The website owner will then get paid by Google whenever a visitor clicks on the advert to go through to your site.
3. Check your Web Server Log files (or get your P-P-C Manager to do it for you). There is a lot of information that can be gleened from these logs, including how often the same IP addressee visits your site, what they do while they are there, where they came from etc. This is not conclusive, and can be time consuming, but there are many interesting things you can find out from your server logs anyway!
4. Some providers have tools that can be installed to detect fraud.

Conclusion
Without a doubt, some click-fraud happens. It may or may not happen to your campaign (most likely it does not!), but the bottom line for you must be whether or not your pay-per-click campaign is delivering a sufficient return on the investment you are making. If it is delivering a good return, but you suspect that fraud is taking place, you should probably still leave the campaign running but report it to your p-p-c provider and get it sorted out. If it is not delivering a good enough return, then regardless of whether there is click fraud involved or not, you should be reviewing the campaign!

Can I do this myself?

2005-06-29T12:39:00.000Z

Yes you can, and many people do. It will only cost £5 to set up an account in Google and then you can build and manage your campaigns straight away. Bear in mind, though that it can take many hours to set up a comprehensive campaign, and at least several hours each month to monitor and adjust the adverts, keywords, and click cost, to ensure that they are working optimally for you. As a busy business owner, this is time that would possibly be better spent on other tasks.
If you want to outsource this task, choose a company that listens to your requirements, and makes their charging structure clear for you. Make sure that they regularly report back on what they have done, and what impact this is having on your visitor levels.

Why would I want an Adwords Campaign?

2005-06-23T08:58:00.000Z

You have a website and you will want to encourage as many people as possible to visit it. A subset of these visitors will take a closer look once they are on the site, and a subset of these will then register an interest in your company. It is then up to you to convert that lead into a real customer!

The problem is that unless you tell people that you have a website (and where to find it!) they are not going to know it is there. Your problem, therefore, is to make your website visible to those individuals and companies who are most likely to want your product or service.

Part of this problem is solved by placing keywords within the website text itself, and within the code that makes up your website, to help search engines to find your site. This has no doubt been done for your website as part of its build, but it can take the major search engines many months to find your site if it is relatively new, and to start placing it in relevant search result listings. Even when the search engines finally index it, you may be placed too far down the search listings to be found in many cases – how often have you bothered to click past the first few pages of search results to get what you want?

You therefore need to be able to attract highly relevant visitors from day one!

With Google Adwords you can create a Direct Marketing Campaign to specifically target the products and services that you offer, and then point search engine users at the precise page on your site that offers them what they want. You will create a series of keywords to support each area, and then a number of adverts to "entice" your potential customers to your website. These adverts will be displayed in the Google 'Sponsored Links' area, plus some other Search Engines, when users search on the keywords you have set up. You will then pay Google each time a user clicks on your advert to go through to your website. The maximum amount to pay is set by you, and broadly determines which position your advert gets shown in. There are some exceptions to this, which will be covered on a later post!

Your Google Ads can be shown to the world within a few minutes of being set up!

First Post!

2005-06-21T15:34:00.000Z

Welcome to my Google Adwords Q & A Blog.

This blog is intended primarily for new and inexperienced users of Adwords and other Pay-per-Click web marketing, and will hopefully help small businesses to understand how the process works, what it costs, and what the problems and pitfalls are.

I have been running Pay-per-Click marketing programmes for my own businesses and for several of my clients since the end of 2004.

For several of my own businesses (French Property Website and DMJ Computer Services Ltd) the campaigns have delivered highly relevant web visitors who would not otherwise have found the website, as both of these sites were in their infancy at the end of 2004 - so too early for the search engines to have spidered and indexed them!

The campaigns have been equally successful for my clients.

There are lots of useful resources for PPC Marketers, and I will add them to the blog as it develops.

So - please fire away with your comments. To post comments you will need to be a Blogger.com registered user. This is free, and simple, to do, and you will be prompted to sign-up when you try to post your first comment. As I pick up comments, I will either respond directly to you (if that's what you ask me to do) or I may add a new Post with your Question/Comment as its title so that others can comment on it.