Things I have done so far: Broad Match Neg Keywords Keyword in Ad Multiple Ads 4 Adgroups - 1 general group and 4 specific product type groups w/ targetted ads (only well performing keywords get a group) Product Specific Landing Pages Conversion Tracking Things I haven't: Exact Match my Keywords Created individual ads for new Adgroups Analytics - waitlisted ----- My Total CTR from Last Year to Today is 4.6% and my Conv Rate is 1.74%. It generates about 4-6 sales a day from adwords. I don't track ROI because I lose money on each conversion but hoping for repeat business. I am currently thinking of increasing my daily budget but would really like to optimize my campaign better. Any suggestions I should try to improve my campaign?
Create landing pages that are specifically created around that particular set of keywords. For example if you are selling a book on dog training (just examples here) And the particular set of adwords is about training shih-tzu puppies. Then create a taylored page talking about how your product is great for (insert adwords keyword here) etc etc. This can greatly improve your conversion. Just remember if you are doing this and your pages are similar in content. Probably best to add the appropriate tags to stop google and other SE's caching the extra pages as dup content. Brad
Thanks for your advice brad. i have thought about it but i have a ton of products, i would say 700-800 skus so it is hard to create these individualized landing pages. i could probably do it for the major groups as they are somewhat related. However, they are a string of somewhat related products so it would make it a little tough to figure out a good landing page for all of them. I am hoping I can either find, remember or learn a new trick to improve the campaign itself lol. Improving the sites conversions is a lot tougher to deal with and definitely more time consuming. On another note, i subscribe your newsletter and am really impressed with the advice you give. Good Job. Not to mention that your seo elite software rocks, not that i have my own copy yet but have made every company that i have do seo for buy it . looking forward to checking out your new software release and that article site. Keep up the good work!
Always keep working on improving your campaigns but don't neglect the landing page and your site's conversion. The landing page/site is more important than than the ad. A great landing page can convert a visitor from a terrible ad but a great ad typically won't offset a bad landing page.
If you are using a DB, I suggest building a page that forwards based on sku. Also build in fucntionlaity to forward to category pages. Then set your destination URL in Google to send to the forwarding page, then you forwarding page will drop the searcher on the product or category page. Make use of dynamic keyword insert to build your ad titles and copy so your product name appears in the ad. If someone is searching fora blue widget, size 10, you need to drop them on on your Blue Widget size 10 page. Your conversions will skyrocket as opposed to just dropping them on your home page or a gerneral category page.
Have you tried using the following trick for the title of your ads to further increase the CTRs: {KeyWord: Default Ad Title} This will allow your to have the exact phrase that a searcher types in the search engines in the title of your ad bolded, which usually increases CTRs. If the surfer enters a long phrase your default ad title is used. Try this if you haven't. - Gerardas
Yep I do it with most of my ads unless I am writing specific keyword targetted ads. It definitely works well.
Ya I definitely try to drop them on the specific landing page if I can. However, the real problem is that the site is using legacy software from 96' meaning that it is just a shopping cart with all static files. :-(
YOu could build a forwarding page on another hjost using an active language like PHP or ASP. Use that for tracking and then then forward to the actual site.