How to quickly optimize your Google Adwords campaigns

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8 Easy Adwords Optimization-Tips
Tip 1: Look at trends, not time periods
When looking at campaign performance in Google Adwords we usually first look at what happened
yesterday and the previous week. This time frame let’s us know what happened recently and it’s a good
opportunity to check things aren’t going totally wrong. However, the short term view only gives us a snippet
of information, and not a trend.
I would generally define a short term period of up to 30 days. If you are going to look at the short term you
need to compare it to something logical. For example, if you want to analyze yesterdays performance you
could compare it to the day before. You should also compare this day with the same day in the previous
week as different days in the week are likely to follow a similar pattern. Similarly, if you want to look at the
last 30 days or previous month, compare this to what happened this time last year.
If you want to identify a trend you need to look at a longer period of time such as three months. Again, you
need to compare this to the previous three months and this time last year. For trends in seasonality it is
advisable to look at a two year period or compare one year to the previous year.
If a campaign doesn’t have much activity you may have to look at the “all time” period. If you don’t have
mush data make sure you are viewing all your data, including deleted campaigns. To do this select “All”
from the first drop down box, under the campaign, ad group and keyword tab. You never know someone
may have deleted a good performing campaign, ad group or keyword.
Tip 2: Take a more holistic view of your data
As mentioned above it’s important to view your data overtime. However, in the default view you can not
compare your data over time, you just get one figure for that specified date
What we need to do is be able to review the performance of the account, the campaigns and ad groups over
time. To do this we need to go to the dimensions tab – see below.
The objective here is to view the overall performance of the account as a whole, i.e. all the campaigns.
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Click on “All online campaigns” in the top left navigation menu.
Select the “Dimensions” tab.
Click on the “Columns” tab
Next you need select the time period.
Change the timeline by selecting the last three months.
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Select the View tab and change Time to Month as shown below
In the dimensions tab click on the “View Day” drop down box – change to month etc
You should now be only viewing three lines of data, representing 3 months of your account’s performance.
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Tip 3: Dig deep into the detail of your campaigns
If you want to optimize your campaigns you are going to need to change the default columns you see in
Adwords.
Customizing the columns to see the Competitive Metrics allows you to quickly identify problematic
campaigns, ad groups and keywords.
Competitive metrics give an overall view of a campaign’s performance. You can look at competitive metrics
at all levels of the campaign i.e. campaign, ad group or keyword level.
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Click on the Campaigns tab.
Select the Customise columns tab.
Select “Competitive Analytics”
Add Search Impr. Share, Search Lost IS (rank) and Search Lost IS (budget)
(You can look at the display equivalent of these if you are using the content network.)
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Search Impression share: this the impressions that you’ve received on the Search Network divided by the
estimated number of impressions that you were eligible to receive.
Impression share is the percentage of times your ad appeared. The greater the number, the more your ads
were shown.
Note: If your search impression share is low this should start the alarm bells ringing. Check keyword bids,
quality score, budget etc. As well as highlighting problems it can also show you where there might be
potential opportunities to increase your impressions and clicks.
Search Lost impressions share (rank): this refers to the estimated percentage of impressions on the Search
Network that your ads didn’t receive due to a poor Ad Rank.
The emphasis here should be “lost”. Thus, a high rank means that the advert could have been showing many
more times but failed to do so because it did not rank high enough.
Note: Increase the bids on keywords, check to make sure the keywords have not fallen below page one and
check the average position of the keywords. You may also have a high lost IS (rank) because your budget
keeps on running out early or your quality score is preventing many keywords from showing.
Search Lost IS (budget): This the estimated percentage of times that your ad was eligible to show on the
Search Network but didn’t because your budget was too low. This estimate is updated once a day.
Note: If you want to capture more impressions, try raising your budget.
Tip 4: Don’t ignore the warning signs
You need to keep an eye on the automatic warnings Adwords posts at the top of your campaigns. You can
ignore the “Empty ad groups” messages as you are likely to be fully aware of these.
“Negative keywords blocking targeted keywords” – this means that you have negative keywords that are
blocking your ads from being triggered. It is best to create exact negatives at the campaign level to avoid this
issue. For easy editing it’s also recommended that you create negative keyword lists that can be modified in
one place but shared easily across campaigns and accounts.
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keywords “Below first page bid”
As the cost per click for a keyword gradually increases your keywords will be pushed further and further
down the page until they drop off the first page entirely.
To find all keywords that are below the first page click on “Status”. You should now easily see if any
keywords are showing the status “below the first page bid”.
Whilst increasing the CPC of
your keywords double check the quality score to ensure you are not bidding on irrelevant and costly
keywords.
If you have just set some new keywords live go back in a few minutes time to check
that they keywords are not below the first page.
If you are bidding on your brand for the first time Google will often force you to
initially put a ridiculously high bid on your terms. Enter in the high bids and then return to the ad
group after a few minutes and change your bids down to about £0.20 or below. If your quality score
is low this might not be possible.
Tip 5: Average position
Just like keywords that have fallen below the first page you need to look at keywords that have dropped
below an average position of three. Check Google Analytics to ensure that position three or higher is the
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optimal position for your keywords. In some campaigns this may not be the case or if you don’t have enough
budget you may wish to stay around position 5 or 6.
In keywords select the “Columns” tab then click on Performance and Avg. Pos. This will now show the
average positions of your keywords.
Tip 6: Quality score
Another reason your ads may not be showing is because they have a low quality score.
“A high Quality Score means that your ads, keywords, and landing page seem to be very relevant to what a
customer is searching for and also relevant to one another. The more relevant your ads and landing pages are
to the user, the higher your Quality Score.”
The main factors that affect quality score are CTR (click through rate), ad relevance and the landing page.
Look for ad groups that have low CTR’s and then compare the keywords with your text ads. Are your
keywords reflected in the ad? Are the ads appealing? Do they appeal to our emotional needs? Is there a clear
call to action?
Add examples
Ad 1: Champion/winner
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{KeyWord:Vivienne Westwood Bags}
Not Just A Bag – Edgy Chic!
Free UK Delivery. Free Returns.
website.com/Vivienne_Westwood
Ad 2:
{KeyWord:Vivienne Westwood Bags}
Get The Latest Fab Bags.
Free UK Delivery. Free Returns
website.com/vivienne-westwood
Ad 3:
Vivienne Westwood Bag
New Vivienne Westwood Handbag.
From Just £336. Free UK Delivery
website.com/vivienne-westwood
Another method of quickly identifying a failing keywords is to look for keywords with high impressions to
clicks (impression ratio). As a rough guide you should look out for keywords that have a click to impression
ration of below 300 : 1000. Anything under this ratio would give you a CTR below 3% which would start to
affect your ads position and cost per click.
If you believe your ads are fine and your keywords are relevant to your ads and landing page it might be a
good idea to get a second opinion from Google.
For example, the keyword “beckett” may be related to kjbeckett.com however in Google the results are all
about the novelist “Samuel Beckett”. As a consequence of this bidding on the term beckets is expensive
because the quality score is very low.
Tip 7: Bounce rate
If your ads and keywords are fine and you still have a low quality score you need to check the quality of
your landing page. First check the URL. Does the page work or is the user ending up on a 404 page? Is the
user being redirected accidently back to the home page or elsewhere? These are very common issues with
ecommerce websites. However, you also have to look at call to actions, overly wording landing pages and
landing pages that just don’t seem to answer the users questions.
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If you have linked Google Analytics and Adwords you can now view Bounce Rate and its related “Page /
visit” metric from within Adwords.
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Click on the keyword tab
Select the Customise columns tab
select “Google Analytics” where you will find the above metrics.
Don’t simply delete keywords that that have a high bounce rate. Some high bounce
rate keywords convert and give a good ROI. It’s always useful to examine your Adword’s keywords
within Google Analytics so you can see which ones are giving you the best ROI.
Tip 8: Search Funnel Metrics
Search funnel metrics help you identify keywords that help an add appear, get clicks and help convert. Some
of these keywords may not appear to do much themselves and in the past you may have turned them off. Not
anymore you won’t.
Assisted clicks - these are the clicks a keyword received prior to a conversion (not including the last click).
Assist impressions – these are the number of times a keyword helped an ad show before a conversion
occurred, but the advert was not clicked on.
Click-assisted conversions – These are the conversions which a keyword contributed one or more assistive
clicks. These clicks don’t include the last click that resulted in the conversion.
Click-assisted conversions – are the total number of conversions a keyword help contribute towards on or
more assisted clicks.
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Note: For all of these Search Funnel metrics you will only see data if there was a conversion on
Google.co.uk within the last 30 days.
First off you can see these metrics at the Campaign, Ad Group, Ad, and Keyword Levels. You cannot, as of
yet, see this data in the dimensions tab.
To view these metrics you can go to any of the above mentioned tabs, I will use Campaign level for my
example:
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Click the “Campaigns” tab in your AdWords account
Click the “Columns” drop down menu and select “Customize Columns”
Click “Search Funnels”
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Click “Add” for each metric column you deem valuable
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How to Use Search Funnel Metrics
While each metric is clearly defined above, or if you hover your cursor over the question mark beside the
column header, you still need to understand how these metrics can help you.
For example you may want to check a keyword that is not producing last click conversions to see if it is
worth keeping. This new metric set can give you an indication of how many assist conversions a keyword
has had thereby indicating the indirect effect a keywords has had on conversions. Keep in mind these
numbers are only for Google Search for 30 days prior to the final conversion.
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In the example below you can see that meals on wheels (match type: broad match modifier) contributed 12
clicks towards other conversions, compared to 22 last click conversions. The fact that this keyword helped
other keywords convert might help to justify a high cost per conversion.
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