5 common AdWords mistakes

5 common AdWords mistakes:​

1) Use only broad match keywords
2) Putting everything in one ad group
3) Using Content Network and Search Network in one campaign.
4) Using only on ad
5) Put a huge daily limit on your campaign

Content By:Binary Head

 

You know it's usually considered polite to credit the original author if you're going to shamelessly rip off stuff like this.

 

@Eschatonic: Sir,Now its ok for you

 

Yea you should give credit to the original author.
It was an informative post, thank you for sharing it.

 

Having managed many accounts, the top 4 are mistakes I see over and over. I never understand why people use a tool without first understanding it.

1) broad match is the worst you can do. There are others: phrase and exact not to forget negative. Learn what they are, how they work. Bing and others also use the same concept. This alone will save you a large percentage of your spend.

2) if you sell pet collars, don't put cat and dog keywords together in one group. There's a reason groups were invented. I see this one fairly often. Not sure if people don't realize or are just lazy. Being lazy will cost you money in PPC.

3) Again, know and understand the difference. To be fair, the default in Adwords is being opted in to both networks. But many people don't know the difference but also don't seem to go down the list of settings and questioning what each setting is and if opting in or out is in their best interest.

4) Many seem content to write one ad and never changing it. Maybe they just don't know you can create more than one ad. Others create more than one but the ads are all the same except for one change, usually the heading. You must test and here's the opportunity to do so. Take advantage.

5) I don't know why this would be a mistake. You want to target 100% of searches for your keywords as much as possible. No need to go overboard and budgeting $100 when $40 is sufficient but do your research. Most new advertisers however go to the other extreme and budget a ridiculously low amount like $5 when $50 is more in order.

Feel free to use elsewhere and credit to Lucid Web Marketing.

 

I always use specific keywords. It's more expensive, but you have more control on what kind of visitors you get. And what is most important? Much traffic but no customers or less traffic but more customers?

In my opinion: use specific keywords. You can set them by using [keyword]

 

@ I agree Lucid I worked for a huge firm a year back and they were dumping so much money into ad programs. Later I found out the CEO was in charge of it (idiota) and was just burning money because he didn't understand the tool. The guy probably spent thousands on pointless ads that weren't profitable.
-MT

 

1. Setting Initial Bids Too High.
2. Enable Ads On Content Network.
3. Wrong & Untargeted Keywords.
4. Poor Or Non Attractive Ads.
5. Bad Landing Page.

 

Those are all great tips!

 

I agree with your post Lucid - to a large extent. There is no need to spend a big budget on such things. There are other ways to test things out on a small scale first. I recommend spending more when you knowing is clearly producing results. As you said, the key is research and tracking your numbers.

 

thanks people, all shared information are very useful

 

5 seems odd why is a large daily limit a bad thing?

 

I agree about the keywords. I'm starting in on AdWords with a client who wants to be in the "lead" ... we're figuring it out together ... he had 50+ broad keywords and I've got him down to three per ad group and the CTR is rising. We're targeting with multiple ad groups.

I do have a couple questions I'm hoping people here can help me with:

-- In broad match, does the phrase match make any difference? Meaning, using more than one word -- landscape designer -- for an adgroup?

-- Do exact match searches need to be in their own adgroup?

Thanks!

 

I'm not sure I understand your first question; phrase matching is a specific type of matching (which looks "like this"). Are you asking whether multi-word broad match keywords make a difference in comparison to single word keywords?

Exact matches in their own adgroup is a matter of personal preference. I find that exact matches should be the focus of individual adgroups, with maybe a few very similar exact-match keywords grouped together with their attendant phrase/broad matches. The reason for this is that you can more tightly focus your ad copy on the individual keywords.

On the other hand, some people argue that if all your keywords are fairly served by the same ad, then grouping them all together can keep the adgroup's CTR high which I believe has a minor impact on QS. Of course, my response is that the ability to tailor ad copy to a specific keyword or set of related keywords is more effective in general.

 

Never use broad match. It's too broad and your ad will show in places you really didn't want it to.

If you insist, be sure to add a lot of negative keywords to your adgroup, in my experience the negative keyword list would literally be thousands of words, therefore not even worth the effort of going broad in the first place.

Use exact match and phrase match only. They can be in the same adgroup without issue.

You CAN use the content network, (in fact it's very profitable), BUT you have to understand how it works and how to manage those campaigns. (Hint: it's not the same as managing a search network campaign).

Google puts them on by default because Adwords has ONE goal, to get as much money out of you as possible. They're not there to help you, they're there to get you to spend as much money as possible.

Why do you think their help section offers such general advice?

 

Thanks for the quick replies!

Eschatonic -- I used the term phrase incorrectly ... I am curious about broad match searches (the value of which is debatable, I understand) and my question is that if I put two broad keywords into an ad group like say - plumbing - on one line and - contractor - on a second line is that the same as putting - plumbing contractor - on one line?

PPC-Coach -- You are affirming what I feel, too. In phrase match, much like my question above, do the words have to appear in the order in the phrase *without* any words between them? Say, "plumber des moines" will be eligible for a search of "plumber in des moines" and well as "find a des moines plumber"

Your help is greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

For phrase match, anything can be at the beginning or end of the phrase but not in between.

So if you bid on the phrase "yellow birds", then your ad will show for: i hate yellow birds, i love yellow birds, yellow birds are cool.

Your ads won't show for: yellow little birds, yellow and red birds

So even with phrase match, you should really add in a lot of negative keywords to really keep your ads away from terms you don't want them showing for.

 

An ad will only trigger for a single keyword at a time. Having two seperate keywords is not really equivalent to a single keyword containing two words, despite the fact that they'll trigger on the exact same queries. You're vastly better off having multiple-word keywords where possible.

Something else you may not know about, but might be helpful: modified broad matching. By putting + symbols in front of each word in a keyword (+like +this +for +example), you get a broad match which will trigger if and only if every one of the words is present in the search query in any order. It is almost always vastly superior to regular broad matching, and also does away with session-based broad matches (giving you greater control).

 

Keywords is a bit of a misnomer. It should be called keyphrases. The keyword (in one line):

plumbing

would trigger any searches containing that word. What you want is:

plumbing contractor

As mentioned by a few, this is a broad matched keyword and is much less recommended as Google does an "expansion" and your ad may show for all kinds of searches you really don't want to. Best to use the newer modified broad match which would be:

+plumbing +contractor

It is vastly superior as Eschatonic said because it works in exactly the way most people understand broad matching to work. That is, exactly those words must be present in the query, with some variations such as the plural and some synonyms. Note that you can mix/match:

+bulk +lipton +green +tea

would trigger only for exactly those words but:

bulk +lipton +green +tea

the word bulk would be expanded and could trigger on "wholesale lipton green tea".

But broad match, regular or modified, should be as a data gatherer. The more your ads trigger on phrase and exact, the better. Also, the more specific your keyphrase, the better, "plumbing contractor in mycity" for example or "emergency plumbing contractor", if that's the sort of thing you do. The more precise you are, using phrase and exact matches cuts down on negatives.

My philosophy too is to take advantage of the way things work and keep things simple. You don't need to have a bunch of keywords to cover all the different ways people may search such as "find a plumber in des moines" or "des moines plumber". You'd be surprised at the number of variations people use. Use the modified broad match as explained:

+des +moines +plumber

and adjust as necessary if needed. You really shouldn't need too many negatives if you do things right.

 

I won't use modified broad match ever either.

It's still too broad and they are far too liberal with what a match is.

I believe it was invented because people were getting wise to how useless broad match is if you're focused on ctr, which everyone should be.