I recently visited the London office of Google as part of Google Adwords push to connect with agencies with help and support for their clients. It was good to see some of the offices, although I didn’t have time to have a look around the whole space (I’ll be back!).
Sandeep Menon, head of small business marketing, opened the afternoon session with some facts and figures on how the UK is leading the way in the digital economy (£100bn pa over 7% GDP) and #1 country for e-commerce which I didn’t realise. There’s loads on great info for stat junkies over at Connected Kingdom.
I’m not going to delve too deeply here but just wanted to get some topline points across if you are using Adwords.
Relevance was hinted at been the most important factor for landing page quality score when planning your adwords campaigns. This’ll be of no surprise to adwords experts but organising your campaigns into relevant groups as well as naming them correctly is important.
So a campaign should separate out their ads into sections and relevant keywords for each ad group. Seperate and clearly name all campaigns (search, content, mobile)
- For ads on the search network it was suggested there are no more than 5-6 ad groups, between 5-20 keywords including negative keywords and 1-3 text ads.
- For text ad varieties ensure you change all the text, not just the first line and use the keyword insertion tool if you can.
- Don’t duplicate keywords and ad groups.
- Delete or pause what is not working as it affects your overall account performance
Improving CTR
- Raise your bids and look at improving your Quality Score
- Ensure ads have keywords in the headline
- Make sure your landing pages are RELEVANT to the keyword list
Future stuff: Adwords will soon enable you to just target tablets like the iPad, great for getting through to the more affulent. Also mobile ads will enable users to click and download straight from the ad text.
Many businesses have had a nasty taste in the mouth left from Google Adwords, many having had their accounts shut down without warning, or simply struggled with getting a decent CTR (Click through Rate). I can say that these concerns were certainly voiced at the end feedback Q and A session.
