Examples and best-practice advice on implementing Google ad extensions
Ad Extensions are additional features that enhance, or extend, your AdWords ads. Options include call extensions - which add a phone number or ‘click-to-call’ button to your ads, sitelinks - which let you add links to other pages within your website, and location extensions – which can include a map marker.
There are various types of Ad Extensions and each has its own advantages, but in general the overall benefits of using Ad Extensions are:
Ad Extensions are free. You only incur a pay per click amount, equivalent to a headline click, if someone engages with your ad.
They make your ads more visible, because they take up more room in the SERPs.
They help improve CTR, because they let you add valuable information about your products and services.
They help improve Ad Rank: Google says “If two competing ads have the same bid and quality, then…
Avoid those common PPC Mistakes to maximise your campaigns
As I work with new clients to improve their PPC campaigns, there are some common mistakes I see again and again. These include both the way the account is set up and the overall strategy of where to focus PPC spend. In this post I'll recommend a number of tools and techniques that can help you avoid these mistakes and so boost campaign ROI in AdWords.
1. Not analysing enough data
One simple mistake that marketers make is that they don't analyse enough data to come to a statistically reliable decision. When you first start out testing and you see that one ad has 15 clicks and one has 12 and come to the conclusion that the one with 15 is better. However here you would not have enough data to make a reliable decision and are at risk of choosing the wrong advert as your winner.
To…
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…
Reviewing your Adwords campaigns to make them more effective
Paid search marketing using AdWords for cost per click (CPC) advertising can be a very effective way to bring targeted customers to your website. By targeting specific keywords, you can capture customers that are in a more advanced stage of the buying cycle and have a need that your product or service can fill.
Without proper management, AdWords can get very expensive and, over time, lose its effect. That’s why you need to do periodic audits of your AdWords program.
Performing a AdWords audit serves a few functions, but the main goal is to maximize the impact of your campaigns and, ultimately, your costs per conversion and return on investment (ROI). A mismanaged campaign can cost you more money than you need to spend and can also result in missed business opportunities. Below are some…
