Community Business College regularly offers businesses classes on how to conduct online marketing, including instruction on using Google to help organizations improve their businesses.
Today, we had a workshop based on Google’s “Hangout”
sessions to help people who want to use Google’s AdWords to their advantage. This
is the first of a 3-part series.
“Take Aways” from Session 1
1. The first, and most important tip, is to make your ads relevant.
Ad Rank – Here Google calculates your maximum cost per click bid and the quality score. It uses this tool to determine which ads appear on its pages and their position on the search results page (this can be critical to getting your ad noticed).
Search Terms Report – This is a keyword resource and can be used for both positive and negative keywords. This report can provide a lot of useful insights into how an ad campaign is running and provide some hints on how to improve a campaign. This reports should be checked often (twice a day is not too much if you’re running a very active campaign).
So the big theme of this workshop is when you’re happy with your AdWords, Google is happy, too.
Despite the fact that they make a little money off of them, Google really does not want its users to be charged for clicks they don’t want. It annoys the users and lessens Google’s credibility, and it really makes AdWords users feel they’re not getting what they pay for. That’s where Google makes the big bucks.
Google has literally written the book (or, rather the
e-Book) on search engine advertising. Using the company’s expertise can help
businesses refine its online presence and get the right people to what they do.
“Take Aways” from Session 1
Here are the best tips from the Google AdWords session:
1. The first, and most important tip, is to make your ads relevant.
Making your ads relevant means
thinking about how people might specifically be searching for your type of
business online. It’s not enough, for example, to just say you want to use the
keyword “flowers” if you’re a florist. Why? Because people searching for the
word “flowers” can be agronomists, horticulturists, silk flower artists, etc. The
goal of good AdWords is to narrow your scope enough to fit your particular clients.
2. Use very specific landing pages to match
your ad.
When people click on your ad, you want to
take them directly to what you’re advertising. Don’t make them work hard to
find something within your web page. An example of this is if you have a large
grocery store and you want to highlight the sale you’re having on breakfast
cereal, the link in your AdWords should not take the user to your main page
where they then have to do a search to find the item they were looking for.
Google spends a lot of time and
money on these tools in order to help businesses learn what is working and how to
adapt to new strategies when necessary. Google tools are bonuses that come with an AdWords account so using these can help you put each advertising dollar
in the right place. Here are a few Google metrics you can use:
Your Quality Score – Google makes an estimate of its expected
click- through rate for your ad based on your ad’s relevance (there’s that term
again), combined with landing page experience.
Ad Rank – Here Google calculates your maximum cost per click bid and the quality score. It uses this tool to determine which ads appear on its pages and their position on the search results page (this can be critical to getting your ad noticed).
Keywords and Negative Keywords – A good campaign needs both of
these to be successful. “Negative Keywords” are words you want Google to
exclude when thinking about showing your ad in response to a user’s search. Add
only negative keywords you think would be an irrelevant result for a user.
Here’s an example: If you own a
high end clothing retailer, you really are not looking for clicks from people
who are looking for discount clothes (remember, negative keywords are not being
mean, they’re actually helpful to everybody – i.e. people who are looking for
one thing don’t want to be bothered by ads for things they don’t want).
And you don’t want someone who
searched for “discount clothes” accidentally clicking your ad and costing you a
click. It doesn’t seem like much but when your campaign is running full blast,
these can add up. Negative keywords can help prevent mistakes like that from
happening.
Search Terms Report – This is a keyword resource and can be used for both positive and negative keywords. This report can provide a lot of useful insights into how an ad campaign is running and provide some hints on how to improve a campaign. This reports should be checked often (twice a day is not too much if you’re running a very active campaign).
4. Basic Google AdWord rules for making the
most of AdWords:
AdWord accounts need at a minimum:
-
At least 2 ad groups
-
At least 5 quality ads keywords for each of your
ad groups
-
At least 5 quality negative keywords for each of
your ad groups
-
Check the search terms report weekly to
understand how your AdWords are working.
So the big theme of this workshop is when you’re happy with your AdWords, Google is happy, too.
Despite the fact that they make a little money off of them, Google really does not want its users to be charged for clicks they don’t want. It annoys the users and lessens Google’s credibility, and it really makes AdWords users feel they’re not getting what they pay for. That’s where Google makes the big bucks.
Want to learn more? Check back here at this blog periodically for
new updates and tips or take one of these online
classes from the Community Business
College online course catalog:
Develop
an Internet marketing plan for your business that incorporates SEO,
advertising, email, social media, and more.
Learn
how to track and generate traffic to your website, create reports, and analyze
data with Google's free, state-of-the-art Web analytics tools.
Learn
proven, step-by-step strategies to achieve higher positions with major search
engines. Discover the industry insider secrets on how search engines crawl the
Web, rank websites, and find previously undiscovered sites. Explore how to
select keywords, how many keywords you’ll need, and which keywords hold the
most potential.
Learn
how to write Web content and produce multimedia elements to make your website
or blog a must-visit site on the Internet.
