10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes

SiteProNews: May 29, 2006 Feature Article

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10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes
By Tyler Huston (c) 2006

On today's highly competitive Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC)
search engine, it is now more important than ever to ensure that
your PPC campaigns are optimized to their utmost potential.
You should be achieving maximum return on investment (ROI) for
the keywords or phrases that are most relevant to your business
and are most likely to provide you with targeted traffic to your
website. With ever growing cost-per-click (CPC) prices
throughout the various PPC search engines it is essential that
you avoid certain mistakes that will undoubtedly result in
poorly performing PPC campaigns.

The Mistakes to Avoid

Long list of less than targeted keywords
Not identifying unique aspects of your product or service
Lack of keywords in your ad text
Directing users solely to your home page
Creation of single Ad Groups
Utilizing single campaigns
Using broad match only
Failure to optimize Ad Serving for your ads
Not tracking results
Entering the content network without modifying bids

Long List of Less Than Targeted Keywords

When you first set out to create your AdWords campaign it is of
utmost importance that you do not go "keyword crazy". What this
means is that you must not create long lists of irrelevant and
generic keywords. For example, if you were an automotive
dealership then it would not be in your best interest to target
the keyword "truck". The reason being is that the cost-per-click
(CPC) for such a generic keyword would be incredibly high when
compared to a more descriptive relevant keyword such as "T-Z783
Extended Cab". An example of an irrelevant keyword which would
not produce conversions if you strictly conducted automotive
sales would be "tail light covers". The phrase may bring visitors
to your website but, if they do not find what they are looking
for when they get there, they will be gone just as quickly as
they arrived.

Not Identifying Unique Aspects of Your Product or Service

Before implementing your AdWords campaign you must first
understand exactly what it is that makes you stand out from your
competition. By identifying your unique products or services
you will have a lot more clarity on how to rise above your
competitors and zone in on the keywords or phrases that are
unique to your business. I would recommend that you perform an
analysis of your competition, have a look and see what they are
doing and which phrases they are using. After conducting a
competition analysis and after understanding what makes your
products or services unique you will be able to come up with a
strategy that will topple your competitors.

Lack of Keywords in Your Ad Text

When creating your descriptive ad copy it is imperative that you
find a means to inject your keywords into your title and
description while maintaining the delicate balance of clarity
and relevance. Your ad copy should be tailored in such a way
that when read by a visitor they know exactly what they are
getting into when they click on your ad, which brings me to my
next point.

Directing Users Solely to Your Home Page

Not taking the time to decide which destination URL should be
designated to which ad is an oversight that I come across far
too often. When you finish compiling your list of relevant
keywords that describe unique products or services of your
business, why on earth would you then send everyone to your
homepage and let them navigate through your site in hopes of
finding what it is that they are looking for. Instead why not
send them straight to the page that contains exactly what was
described to them within your ad copy. As an example, if you
are an automotive dealership and your ad contains the keyword
"T-Z783 Extended Cab", instead of sending them to
www.auto-motive-dealership.com send them to
www.auto-motive-dealership.com/T-Z783_Extended_Cab.html.

Creation of Single Ad Groups

Categorizing ads that are targeting related keywords into a
common ad-group will allow you to have a much higher level of
control over your entire campaign. Let's say that you run a
sporting goods store, start by grouping all ads targeted towards
hockey skates into a single Ad Group. You would then create
another ad-group which would be targeting hockey sticks and
another containing hockey gloves and so on. Organizing your
ad-group structure in this manner gives you the ability to
create in-depth reports on the performance of each ad-group.

Utilizing Single Campaigns

Once you have your Ad Groups sorted out into easy to identify
categories you may then move on to the next step of creating
relevant campaigns. From the example above you have created Ad
Groups containing separate products of hockey skates, sticks,
gloves etc. Now it is time to create a container for all of the
Ad Groups into one campaign entitled "hockey equipment". You
would then repeat the process creating Ad Groups for tennis, one
group for shoes, one for racquets etc. and then once again you
drop them all into a single campaign entitled "tennis equipment".
Having highly organized campaigns is the key to determining which
ads are creating optimal conversions.

Using Broad Match Only

When you do not take advantage of the phrase matching options
that are available to you, chances are you are missing out on
potential customers and creating a higher CPC. Broad matches are
usually less targeted than exact and phrase matching. Broad
matching is the default option your ads will appear for expanded
matches such as plurals or relevant keyword variations. When
utilizing phrase match your ad will appear for search terms in
the order that you specify and sometimes for other terms. Exact
matching is by far the most targeted option to use. You will
appear for the exact keyword specified. Negative keyword is
also a fantastic option to utilize in order to specify which
keywords you do not want to appear for.

Broad match
Default option:
Blue widget

Phrase match
Surround the keyword in quotes:
"blue widget"

Exact match
Surround the keyword in square brackets:
[blue widget]

Negative match
Place a negative character before the keyword:
-blue widget

Failure To Optimize Ad Serving For Your Ads

When you take advantage of the AdWords Ad Serving service
basically what you will be doing is showing your most popular
ads more often. The AdWords platform will give weight to ads
with the highest click through rates (CTRs) and display them
more often then keywords with lower (CTRs) within the same
ad-group.

Not Tracking Results

In order to have any idea on your AdWords campaign performance
you must be able to see the keywords that work as well as those
that do not. Google AdWords supplies a vast array of very useful
tracking tools. Google has also built into the user interface
Google Analytics which is a marvellous web analytics tool that
provides you with in-depth reporting on all aspects of your
campaign performance. I cannot stress enough the importance of
creating goals for your AdWords campaign to measure your success
by.

Entering The Content Network Without Modifying Bids

Within the AdWords platform you have recently been given the
ability to set different bids for the content network compared
to that of the search network. If you do not set different bids
on the content network for certain keywords, you will be paying
more per click than you should be. After lowering the prices on
certain keywords you will notice that the amount of click
throughs that you will be attaining will remain the same as they
were at the higher bid.

Conclusion

The purpose for this article was to create awareness for common
mistakes and to eliminate frustrations that may emerge when
managing Google AdWords campaigns. The points mentioned above
are compiled from management mistakes that I have stumbled upon
time and time again in hopes to assist you in creating a
marketing campaign that will generate dramatic increases to the
profits of your business.
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Tyler Huston is the founder and CEO of SearchStrategist.com
(http://www.searchstrategist.com), a search marketing firm that
provides professional PPC Management, expert search engine
optimization, SEO press release writing and blog optimization
services. Tyler takes pride in ranking clients from all over the
world at the top of the search engines. He can be reached at
tyler@searchstrategist.com.
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