Have you tried Google Adwords and watched your money go down the drain faster than you ever thought possible? This is the second in three articles about how to make Google Adwords work for you instead of watching your hard earned money go to Google Adwords. Hot Tip # 4 - Edit your campaign with negative keywords Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing up in searches that you don't want such as "free widgets". This helps prevent wasted clicks which tend to do nothing but cost you money. If you only sell red and blue widgets then you should add yellow as a negative keyword. You make a search negative by using the minus sign i.e. "-yellow". Hot Tip # 5 - Go with your gut If you are using a tool such as Google Adwords' Traffic Estimator, realize that it is known for returning less than accurate results for your keyword. Don't let that be your decision maker. Adwords Traffic Estimator is not accurate for narrowly defined keywords phrases or "niche" words. Go with your instincts and try it out. Fortunes have been made by people who are willing to march to a different drummer. Automated systems are helpful but they are far from perfect. Hot Tip # 6 - Run lots of keywords Start out with lots of keyword phrases and monitor them. Not all people think the same so not all people are going to use the same search phrases. This way you will catch people who you normally wouldn't catch. If you find that you are getting few or no clicks, then pare them like you would the branches on a tree. Remember to use the exact keyword matches and negative keywords when doing this. Hot Tip # 7 - Rotate your ads and split test Google lets you have more than one ad for your ad group. It then rotates them and keeps track of which ad gets the higher CTR. Google Adwords will then begin to show that ad more often than the ad with lower CTRs. The best way to do this is to test and run only two ads at a time. This way you can tightly manage your variables. Some tests have shown several hundred percent changes in click through rates just by switching around the first and second lines of an ad. If you start split testing more than two ads at a time, the variables will quickly get out of control. Hot Tip # 8 - Be Darwinian Once you have identified that one version of your ad doesn't work as well as the other version, get rid of it. Now make the stronger ad your baseline and run another ad against it to see which is the stronger. What you are trying to do is improve your ad. What is the correct sample for testing ads? Top experts say that 50 clicks may be enough but 100 clicks is better. A larger sample gives more accuracy. You, of course, know what your budget will allow for. This is a continuous process that will strengthen your CTR rates and gain more customers at a continuing lower cost. |
