Here are a few optimization tips from my little experience with Adwords.
1. Experiment often – No matter what you think, how sure you are, it is always good to test it out. It’s very quick & easy to experiment with Adwords. You must create multiple ad copies and see which one is working and giving you lower CPC and higher CTR. You can also use Website Optimizer to test multiple landing pages against each other.
2. Top might not be the best! - It might not be a wise strategy to bid for the top 3 positions. You should calculate the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click, and decide the position you want to bid for accordingly. Usually, unless you are very big company, Google has more clicks to offer than you have money. So, you can spend the money bidding for positions 4 to 6 and get more click rather than the expensive top 3 positions. You can always increase your budget and get more clicks as you progress.
3. Niche is great! – Bidding for obvious broad keywords can be an expensive battle to fight. Find niche keywords that are focused on specific subcategories.
4. Find TONS of keywords – Your campaign should have large number of keywords. It is OK if you have too many of them, rather than too little. If you try to build the campaign bottom up, by attacking subcategories, you will find many of them. It is more work agreed, but gives you better overall CPC and coverage. It is a good idea to keep working on the campaign and keep adding more niche keywords.
5. Negative is smart! – Negative keywords is a tool can’t afford to ignore. Out of the 4 keyword matching options, broad matching can be used in conjunction with a few negative keywords in most cases for the desired effect. Thinking about what keywords need to be avoided requires a bit of thought and creativity. You can start with no negative keywords and later on add them looking at the “Search Query Report” of the campaign. Here is a small video from Google help about negative keywords.
6. Landing page is vital – Landing page is crucial for giving you a good relevance score. What applies for SEO, also applies for paid click advertising. A balanced keyword density ensures Google that it is showing relevant ads to its visitors, and so rewards you with a lower minimum bid. So, creating a landing page with nothing but contact details form might prove to be costly. Just like organic search, the relevance of your site’s overall topic also matters a lot in deciding your minimum bid for a keyword. You should try to get a “Great” relevance score for as many of your keywords as possible.
7. What’s your USP? – Creating Google text ads is a great exercise to determine the absolute core of your offerings and reduce clutter. You should try to express your uniqueness and benefits to the customer with some matter of fact details. Just saying that it’s “THE BEST” product or service in the market would surely fail.
8. Choose your customers – It is very essential to think about who should NOT click your ads as well. If you offer a premium product, costlier than market average, it would be prudent to mention words like “luxury” or “premium” as applicable. It is essential to focus on your target market and trying your best to clarify that in your ad copy. It’s also imperative to think about searcher’s intent. Is he a shopper, who definitely wants to buy something? Is he a browser, doing some general reading? Is he a searcher looking for some specific site? Of course, you can’t be absolutely sure, but you can put specific words like “Buy”, “Book” or “Review” as per your content. If you work in specific region, like Delhi NCR, it is good to mention that in the ad copy.
9. Know the seasons – It’ll help a lot if you leverage seasonal demand changes and relevant keywords for that season (say “Diwali”). You can also make creative use of current affairs, and make ad copies for them. Visiting Google Trends should be very helpful to know what keywords are causing buzz in your industry
10. Track the ROI – You must track how your keywords are performing by using Google Analytics or some other web analytics tool. Tracking conversion rates for each campaign / ad group / keyword is absolutely essential. Google Analytics allows you to create up to 5 goals per profile to measure conversions. Here are some tips from Adwords blog about using Google Analytics to track Adwords. You should of course make full use of all the different kinds of reports adwords facilitates.
11. Be worth it – This is the bonus one. It’s a cliche, but I feel it makes a lot of sense…if your product, service or content sucks, no amount of marketing acumen can save it!
Doing press releases about new features is an important part of promoting any online portal, or offline business. Press releases are cost effective, and they can give a great ROI on time and money invested, if done the right way, and of course if you have something worth doing a press release! Keeping a few simple Do’s & Don’ts in mind can give that extra 10% in promoting your purpose better.
) design a cool website useful to a community, that is definitely worth a news. Readers will certainly have a sympathy and interest in how you have been doing!
