Doing the Unthinkable - Deleting Keywords!
I get this all the time…
“Lawrence, I am getting slapped by Google up the wazzu!”
I ask, “well, how many keywords do you have and what sort of CTRs are they getting?”
“Well, I have 100 keywords inside one adgroup and 72 of them haven’t really gotten any impressions…”
“Well, DELETE THEM then!”
…
And of course, they don’t. I’ll let you in on a lil’ secret, Google hates that. Google hates seeing a bunch of keywords in your campaign that aren’t getting impressions nor clicks. They construe that as irrelevant, and the last thing you want is to come across as irrelevant to Google. That’ll kill your campaign.
The old method of setting up an AdWords campaign which involves throwing mudd against the wall hoping some will stick doesn’t work anymore. Google no longer likes you having hundreds and thousands of keywords in your campaigns in hopes that a few of them will luckily work out for you.
No no… They punish you now. They look at actions like as an affront. They then look at you as a stupid marketer that needs to be slapped - and they are more than happy to do so. So the Google hammer comes down and you all of a sudden see your bids jack up to $5.00 and $10.00. Ouch.
To help avoid this you need to first start by making sure your keywords are relevant to what you are advertising. Take some time an actually THINK about this for a moment. Do some research. Use tools such as WordTracker and SEO Book to help you come up with relevant keywords.
And for the love gawd, be grown up about it and don’t be afraid to clean house once in a while.
A certain keyword hasn’t been generating any impressions for a while now? Get rid of it!
Another keyword gets you load of clicks but no sales? Delete it!
Look, there are two ways to optimize your campaign:
- Add more keywords in search for profitable ones
- Trim away keywords that are NOT performing
This is no AdWords Secret: Do both and you’ll see your campaigns flourish.
Lawrence Talent
Site Targeting Changed to Placement Targeting
Google finally made the change from site targeting to placement targeting. For those of you unfamiliar with what site targeting was in the first place, it is part of Google’s Adsense program but for advertisers (as opposed to bloggers, website owners, etc.) When site targeting was around, it allowed people to run the “content network” aspect of Google but now targeting “sites” per se (as opposed to having Google decide for you based on your keywords and other parameters).
Well, the thing about site targeting is that you were more or less forced to advertise on EVERY page of the site. You can imagine this is not exactly ideal since who in the world would want to appear on say… the “Contact Us” page or even the home[age - you want to be a lot more specific. You can also imagine that this is extra useless if you are opting for the CPM (cost per thousand) model, which is what Google would LOVE for you to do since they get money independent of your good or crappy copywriting skills as they are reflected in your ad writing.
Anyway… their first move to placement targeting is a great one. Now you as the advertiser gets to specify exactly what pages and even what slots of a website you’d like your ad to show. On top of that, Google also allows the CPC (cost per click) model now on content network. This allows you to test your ad copy and your entire advertisement system, jack up your CTR as high as you can, before you switch over to CPM. You’d ultimately want to switch to CPM since you’ll get much more favorable rates there as far as cost per click go.
But this assumes you know what you are doing and has gotten your CTR high to make CPM worthwhile.
Split Testing Like Crazy
Okay… This one reads like a SAT Math Question.
(But don’t worry, it’s not hard.)
Pop quiz hot shot!
Bob and his brother Jerome areco-owners of a retail store specialize in Widget. Just recently, they each came up with a new packaging design for their beloved Widget (in case you didn’t know, packaging has a significant impact on how well a product sells) and both swear by their new designs.
Being the competitive types, Bob and Jerome got into a heated argument about whose design is better and therefore should be used for the packaging of their Widget.
Bob claims that the color he chose is brighter and therefore will attract more attention while Jerome claims that his design is transparent which will attract more interest. It became such a big deal and for days they couldn’t settle it that instead of letting it get in the way of their brotherhood and hurt their relationship, they decided to call upon their mom to decide.
What do you think is the logical choice for her mom to make:
- Bob’s
- Jerome’s
The Answer
If you said a. Bob’s, I hate to tell ya but you are wrong.
And if you said b. Jerome’s, you are also wrong…
See, the answer isn’t that simple. As a matter of fact, the answer isn’t even dependent on Bob, Jerome, OR their mom!
The answer actually depends on their market - and the answer is simply this…
Let their market tell them what works better. Run a split-test where on one shelf the customers will find Widget in bright packaging while on the shelf immediately adjacent they will find Widget in transparent packaging.
And at the end of each day, take heed of which one sells better. And that becomes the answer.
Lesson #1:You let your market decide for you rather than just second guessing. What you might think would sell better may oftentimes turn out to be dead wrong. And when you turn out to be dead wrong, you lose money. Period. |
Split Testing in AdWords
You need to practice this very same concept of split testing in your AdWords campaign. You have to constantly tweak your campaign and let the market tell you which ad performs best, which keywords gets you the more relevant reader, which URL attracts the most active buyers etc.
Split testing in AdWords encompasses many factors on various levels.
And it is most easily done on the ad level - trying it figure out what ad gets you the most relevant click. This is done so through adding more than one ad per ad group and making sure your “Ad Serving” option is set to “Rotate” (found in “Campaign Settings”).
Then going to your ad groups and adding in more than one “Ad Variation” (write another ad).
Lesson #2:Start by split testing your ads, this is often the easiest place to start since AdWords itself offers tracking of your ads’ CTR. Just be sure to change your “Ad Serving” to “Rotate“. |
Some factors you want to split test on the ad level include, but are not limited, to the following:
- Titlecasing (would it improve your CTR if you capitalized all the important words?)
- Adding in symbols such as quotes, ©, …, !, ?, etc.
- Change your punctuation marks (have a comma instead of a dash, etc.)
- Changing your URL (what if you add an extra “/Keyword” to your display URL such as going from www.YourWebsite.com to www.YourWebsite.com/Widget)
- Changing up the theme of your ad (perhaps go from focusing on the pain to focusing on the benefit)
- Change the tone of your ad (be more “in your face” as opposed to being passive)
The list goes on… Once you made your changes, let your ads run side by side for a bit and observe the discrepancies in click thru rates. Dump whichever got the lower CTR over a period of time/number of clicks, take note of it, and make a new split test against the winning ad.
Always try to outdo yourself, this is the secret to getting high conversions - letting the market tell YOU what works.
(Now… if you want to abide by the concept of “standing on the shoulder of giants”, you can get a head-start by checking out 43 PROVEN split-tests with results you can implement right away, click here.)
Lesson #3:Always be split testing and trying to “beat” your best. This is how you get better and become the most efficienty and effective AdWords marketer you can be. You can get a head-start with your split testing by checking out these killer 43 split test results: |
More AdWords Split Tests
Split testing also goes beyond just on the ad level. For example, you can split rest from a settings perspective. These factors include, but are not limited, to the following:
- Geographical location (are the English speak population in Australia as prone to buying your product?)
- Day, night, all day of advertising (should you run your campaign ONLY during the day, night, or run it all day?)
- Weekday/weekend (what about running your ads on the weekdays versus the weekends?)
- Position (would you save money if you opted for going for a lower ranking ad such as at positions 4 through 7 or would it make more sense to be # 1 through 3?)
- Broad, phrase, exact matching, or all three types (which match type of a keyword is profitable?)
- Standard versus accelerated (you have the option of spreading out your ads throughout the day depending on your budget or have them show up as often as possible… which one nets you the most profit?)
- Negative words (what negative words will have a positive impact on your campaign?)
I’ve listed just a few of the split tests you can possibly do to fine tune your campaign and let your market tell you what’s your best marketing piece. These split tests are on more of a campaign level and aren’t as easy to test as testing for the best ad, but they are still well worth testing - you just have to get a bit more creative in setting up the test.
Lesson #4:Split testing goes beyond just the ad level. Look to the campaign level also. |
So when it comes to testing your campaigns and ads, don’t pull a Bob and Jerome…
Leave your mom out of it.
To the Top,
 |
| Lawrence Talent |
How to Organize Your PPC Campaign
Remember when you were a kid and your mom would tell you to organize your desk?
And remember how you thought it was the harshest torture ever and absolutely refused to do it?
You’d kick and whine until you had absolutely no choice (or if you had a mom who gave in way too easily and would end up doing it for you).
Well, it’s time to get over it and start organizing your life again – starting with Google AdWords.
If you want to stay alive and be efficient in Google AdWords, organization is a must. And we are here to help you.
Some questions that you may have could be:
- Wouldn’t it take a long time?
- What are the benefits of being organized?
- Why would it matter?
- Better yet, why should I care?
- What’s the alternative? What’s easiest?
These are all valid questions so let’s dive right in.
First, the alternative to organizing is disorganization. How’s that working out for you in life? Not too good, huh? Well, AdWords is no different. =]
Google Keyword Dump
See, what a lot of rookies do is they gather a list of hundreds if not thousands of keywords that are somehow related to your business (or not) and toss them all in one campaign under one AdGroup and under the same generic ad.
This is what we’ll call - “keyword dump” and what Google calls “bugger off”.
As you’ll learn later in the AdWords Seduction Newsletter series, Google will “Google Slap” you to heck and back – which simply means, your campaign will disappear as quickly as it went up.
So aside from avoid getting shut down by Google, other benefits of a well organized campaign include:
- Making it easy to turn off unprofitable keyword sources – which will trim the fat from your advertising and put more money in your pocket.
- Making it easy to track the results of your keywords – which will allow you to break down conversion rates, so you can see exactly how much money each ad and keyword is making you.
- Making it possible for your ads to be more relevant and focused (on the keyword level) - which seduces Google into lowering your cost per click.
Lesson #1:The bottom line is, being organized increases revenue while reducing cost, which means more profits for you. So while organizing your campaigns in tightly grouped AdGroups takes a little extra work, your business checking account will thank you for it. |
Get Organized - How To Lower Ad Cost and Increase Profits
With that said, let’s take a look at how you get organized.
It’s actually very simple really: you segregate your keywords into relevant groups. And each adgroup should be based around one keyword and as soon as one of your keywords deviates from that, create a new adgroup for it.
As we suggested to you in the last newsletter, you start with lateral keywords and think of as many as you can that are relevant to your campaign. These core keywords would form individual adgroups independent of each other.
Then within each adgroup, you would go into more depth coming up with more keywords that are closely related to that original keyword.
For example, let’s say you are creating a campaign for a martial art school and one of your core keyword is “grappling”. You create an adgroup called grappling and add keywords such as “best grappling”, “useful grappling”, “grappling martial art”, etc. Notice that each keyword contains the core keyword.
Let’s also assume that while conjuring keywords for grappling, you get inspired and comes up with the keyword “jiu jitsu” – a popular form of grappling martial art. You would identify this keyword as a separate adgroup of its own despite it’s close relations to “grappling”.
This is because “jiu jitsu” does not contain the core keyword “grappling” in it.
Lesson #2:One option for organization is creating one campaign with multiple ad groups and each adgroup containing a handful of tightly related keywords. |
NOTE: We recommend you having as few keywords per adgroup as possible – to the point of having only one keyword per adgroup or perhaps only the 3 match-types of that same keyword – broad, phrase, and exact match.
Geo-Targeting Your Customers
You can take a step further and organize it on the campaign level.
The only reason I could see you using more than one campaign to have geographically-targeted ads.
Google gives you the capability to limit the geographic are where your ads will be showing. For example, let’s say you manufacture flip-flops and umbrellas. You would prefer to target the Seattle market with the umbrellas and the Los Angeles market with the flip-flops.
Lesson #3:Google allows multiple campaigns - but for simplicity’s sake, keep to one campaign unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise (such as geo-targeting or using the strategy to mentioned below. |
Three Match-Type Based Campaigns
Finally, another powerful way you can organize your campaigns is to have three campaigns with each campaign being dedicated to one form of keyword match-type – broad, phrase, and exact.
And within each campaign you would have multiple adgroups with each adgroup containing only one keyword.
You can also do this via having one campaign with each adgroup dedicated to one keyword but of all three different match types.
Lesson #4:Don’t forget to utilize the different match types Google offers. Whatever option of organization you choose - remember to keep your adgroups tightly correlated and keep the number of keywords per adgroup down. |
However you decided to do it is ultimately up to you – just remember this adage no matter which route you choose: don’t get lazy.
To Your AdWords Domination,
|
| Lawrence Talent |
P.S. When you are ready for the next Google AdWords step, don’t be afraid to step up here: AdWords Secrets!