Plus examples of good and poor practice in writing ad copy

Paid search advertising provides an opportunity for almost any business to improve their visibility in the SERPs. But creating an advert and setting it live isn’t enough. As Google continues on its mission to deliver only the highest quality search results, its rules around what adverts are generated and where they appear are ever stricter. It is therefore essential that marketers do all they can to ensure their advert is seen – and that people click on it. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is to write better AdWords ads.

Seven Tips to improve your Adwords campaigns

Here are seven tips particularly relevant in my experience to small and medium businesses (SMEs/SMBs). I've illustrated the tips with examples to show the details you must consider to make your AdWords ads effective.

 Tip 1 - be relevant

This might seem obvious but it’s absolutely vital that…

On 3rd April 2014 Google announced that the clock is ticking until they automatically upgrade all Product Listing Ad campaigns into Google Shopping Campaigns. The timeframe they have outlined is August 2014. Therefore we recommend that you make this switch manually before the end of July as otherwise Google will take the liberty of doing it for you. Shopping campaigns were released in beta mode in October 2013 and then fully in February 2014. There are many aspects to shopping campaigns that are consistent with product listing ads: The ads are matched to user searches based on your product inventory data feed that you send to the Google Merchant Centre rather than being triggered by keywords that the advertiser sets. From a shoppers perspective they look identical - the ads show an image of your product, the product name and price and there is the option to add…

6 Migration musts for advertisers to prepare for the switch

Remember 2012 when Google switched Google Shopping over to paid ads, and merchants on Google had a collective pain attack? It's happening again. Google recently announced they are switching the current version of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) over to the newer Google Shopping Campaigns format. This will happen by August 2014. It's similar to the initial introduction of paid Product Listing Ads from (October 2012), when Google completely changed how Google Product Search functioned, and required merchants to make the switch within a certain timeline (July 2012). This time, to prepare, read the PLA Guide. How is Google changing Google Shopping and how can you get ready? Below are the details of how Google Shopping Campaigns are different from current Product Listing Ads, Google Shopping Campaigns best practices.

Google Shopping Campaigns vs. Current PLAs

Google Shopping Campaigns are at…

Less than 100 days until Google Shopping Campaigns Switch: 6 migration musts for Advertisers

Do you remember 2012 when Google switched Google Shopping over to paid ads, and merchants on Google had a collective pain attack? It's happening again. This month Google announced they are switching the current version of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) over to the newer Google Shopping Campaigns format. Similar to the initial introduction of paid Product Listing Ads from (October 2012) , Google completely changed how Google Product Search functioned, and required merchants to make the switch within a certain timeline (July 2012). This time you can prepare in advance. How is Google changing Google Shopping and how can you get ready? Below are the details of how Google Shopping Campaigns are different from current Product Listing Ads, Google Shopping Campaigns best practices.

Google Shopping Campaigns vs. Current PLAs

Google Shopping Campaigns…

AdWords data to be shown as “Not Provided” in Google Analytics and other analytics systems from 9th April 2014 - 5 things you need to know

Importance (to search marketers): [rating=5]

Recommended link: Google AdWords advisory

This is big news for companies that invest Google AdWords, particularly if it's a big contributor to their business and they mainly use their analytics system for reviewing effectiveness and ROI. It has less impact if you rely on Google AdWords own reports or a third-party system using their API.

1. It brings paid search data in line with natural search data. Google has been removing SEO keyword data for over 2 years. As we show in this post on not provided for SEO. The proportion of keywords marked “not provided” has risen over the past two years, so it’s now typically over 80% of searches.

2. It’s not unexpected - Google needed to make the privacy of search…

8 Tips for passing Google’s AdWords Exams

As Google continues to put a squeeze on traditional SEO techniques with its algorithm updates (more of which are certainly on the way in 2014), there’s been an increasing demand for pay-per-click services from clients who no longer feel they can compete or get the traffic they need in organic search. This means that if you’re a digital marketer with good experience of using AdWords, now is a great time to get yourself accredited under Google’s AdWords certification programme. The programme consists of two exams, which, if passed, enable you to become a certified expert on AdWords PPC advertising. Even if you’re not too bothered about the accreditation, I’d still encourage anyone who uses AdWords regularly to take the exams, that goes for both client-side and agency-side marketers.

What does the Google Adwords Exam cover?

The exams cover all aspects of AdWords, so in the course of revising…

Minimize Waste, Maximize Impact by Optimizing Your Ads on Google Display Network

Google’s ads are shown on more than 2 million publisher websites a day, and that kind of broad reach can carry an incredibly powerful campaign — or send a lot of money to a lot of dead ends and wrong addresses. More than $12 billion of Google’s $43 billion in ad revenue came from Google Network members’ websites in 2013, but not all of this revenue yielded positive outcomes for the businesses that paid for them... A business wastes time and money when an ad campaign fails to yield the desired conversions or actions from its target audience. For instance, if your ads are being shown to people outside of the geographic area you serve, that’s campaign waste. Your business can create an effective and efficient ad campaign by using Google’s tools and taking a few simple steps to avoid campaign waste…

Practical tips to improve AdWords click volume and quality, particularly relevant for B2B and low volume B2C accounts

PPC traffic, in most accounts, have a very uneven distribution between the ad groups. What I find is that usually there are a few ad groups that get lots of traffic and then lots of long tail ad groups that each get a little bit of traffic. This makes ad improvement tricky for the majority of ad groups. In order to improve ads we always run 2 or 3 ads in an ad group to see which one performs best over time and then optimise towards the best performer. So unless the ad groups ads have each had a high number of impressions and clicks then we cannot make a decision on which ad is performing best. Fine for the few high traffic ad groups, but less easy for the majority of the ad groups. This…

New Ad ranking research shows importance of position

You will know that how high up your ad appears on the Google results pages is absolutely critical in determining how successful your advert will be.  According to AccuraCast's recent analysis of close to two million Google ad clicks, the clickthrough rate for adverts in position one averages at 7.11%, whereas those in position nine averaged only 0.55%. Natural search result clickthrough rates also show this dramatic decline with position This shows just how much influence ranking has on your ads success. The graph above highlights the importance of occupying position one, showing a huge drop in CTR for ads in position two, and a gradual decline in CTR through ad positions. An additional benefit of getting an ad in position one can be seen in the image below. Ads get all sorts of additional bells and…

We find that keyword match types are an important aspect of Adwords that there is often confusion about. It is so fundamental that all Adwords customers understand this that I thought I would try and summarise it more clearly than Google do! We also cover the topic in more depth in the Smart Insights 7 Steps guide to improving AdWords ROI that I recently updated.

I will cover these two areas of good practice in this post:

Keyword match typesNegative keyword match types

It is worth doing this because; although negative keywords and standard keywords share the same basic match types (broad, phrase and exact) these terms actually have different meanings and functions with the two types of keywords.

1. Keyword Match Types

Exact Match

The users search term must exactly match a keyword in your account in…