- Use specific keywords: “little black dress” is better for a small business than “dress.” Specific keywords are less competitive and therefore less expensive. Use keywords relevant to your title, description and landing page to be ranked higher.
- Do competitive research. See what keywords your competitors are using by searching on Google and then use Google’s Keyword Planner to see how much they are paying.
- Use Google’s Keyword Planner to search a keyword and it will tell you average monthly searches, level of competition and suggested bid. It will also provide you with suggested keywords related to what you searched. Paying attention to suggested keywords would allow you to discover any good keywords that you may have forgotten.
- Plan your budget. You can set your daily budget or cost per acquisition. Google usually doesn’t let you go above your budget and makes it easy to set your budget how you want it.
- As soon as you activate a campaign, you will be able to see performance data. Even though you did your research ahead of time, research for Google AdWords never ends. You should continue monitoring your ads success day in and day out and you can easily pause campaigns and activate new ones so test out different keywords and ad copy until you find what is right. Continuously monitor impressions, clicks, click through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), cost (how much of your budget you have spent), conversions and conversion ratio. Generally, CTRs between 1% and 4% are normal.
- Use location targeting. If you have a small business target the areas near your business rather than the whole country. You can also use language targeting if that is appropriate for your company.
- Understand the different keyword match types. This will save you from having your ads show up when you don’t want them to and preventing a wasted budget. This is one of the most common mistakes on AdWords. Here are the keyword match types:
- Exact match: [little black dress] shows only that keyword with no variation. If a user misspells the keyword or uses the plural form, your add will not show.
- Phrase match: “little black dress” tells AdWords to show your add when your keyword is included in a search, with words before or after it. If you put two words in quotes your ad will not show when words are between your keywords. Phrase match also does not allow your ad to show if your keyword is spelled wrong.
- Modified broad match: +little +black +dress tells Google to show your ad for the keywords, any misspellings, and in any order with other keywords before, after or in between keywords. You can use + in front of one keyword and not for another in the same ad using another command for the other or no command.
- Broad match: Using no command prompts Google to show your ad for any keyword they consider relevant. Be careful with using broad match as your ad can be displayed for searches unrelated to your ad. Run a Search Query Report to see all of the keywords that displayed your ad to see what irrelevant keywords your ad is showing for. This is helpful for other keyword match types as well, but most important if you are using broad match and not seeing good results.
- Use negative keywords. Placing a minus (-) before a keyword tells Google specifically not to show your ad for any query that word is used in. You should regularly run Search Query Reports to determine what negative keywords you should be using.
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI): this command automatically places the keyword that was searched into the ad to help the ad stand out. To use DKI you have to type your keyword like this: {KeyWord: little black dress}. You can have a word before the DKI such as order, buy, get, want or anything that fits with the inserted keyword. If the search is too big Google will use the default keyword.
- Before you activate a campaign you should categorize your keywords into categories based on who would search for each keyword. You can use the categories buyers, researchers, and browsers and decide who you are targeting based on the purpose of your ad is. If you realize you only want to target buyers who already have their mind made up and are ready to make a purchase then don’t focus your keywords on searches someone doing research or browsing would use. Even if you do not use these categories you should organize your keywords into ad groups and campaigns.
Orion the Huntress 