*10 Serious AdWords Beginners Mistakes*

1. Neglecting to Split-Test Your Ads. I’ve gotta say one of the coolest discoveries of my whole life was, in my first week of playing with AdWords 5+ years ago, noticing that “create new ad” link and seeing that I could create a 2nd and 3rd and 4th ad and try different text. Running them simultaneously, then seeing how teeny tiny changes made huge differences. I still get jazzed about this. It’s like practicing psychology without a license.

2. Letting Google Retire Your Ads Without Testing: In Campaign Settings, when you turn “Optimize Ad Serving” OFF, you declare a winner and a loser much faster. Turn that option off if you’re checking in every day.

3. Split Testing for Improved CTR Only: At first, Click Thru Rate is the only thing you can measure. You want it high so you get the most traffic. But eventually what REALLY matters is conversion rate and cost per new customer. Sometimes high CTR ads don’t bring buyers. Conversion is what matters most.

4. Ignoring the Display URL Line in your Ad: If you own http://www.redwagon.com, you should try http://www.RedWagon.com, and http://www.RedWagon.com/RadioFlyer, or http://www.RadioFlyer.RedWagon.com, or RedWagonStore.com. Tiny hinges swing big doors.

5. Creating Ad Groups with Unrelated Keywords: Do not write an ad and dump every keyword under the sun into the ad group. Make tight ad groups based on a narrow set of related keywords matched closely to the ads and the landing page.

6. Muddying Search and Content Results: If you run all three streams of traffic (Google / Search / Content Network) through the same ad group, you lose the ability to distinguish among the very different kinds of traffic. I prefer to separate Google & Search from Content, in different campaigns.

7. Ignoring the 80/20 Principle: The 80/20 Rule says that the vast majority of outputs (impressions, clicks, leads, sales) are caused by a very small minority of inputs (ad groups, ads and keywords.) Spend your time on the vital few instead of the insignificant many.

8. Declaring Split-Test Winners Too Slowly: If you can declare a winner twice as fast, your site improves twice as fast. I recommend combing through your ads as often as you can announce a winner. If you go to http://www.splittester.com you can enter the # of clicks and the CTR of any two ads and it’ll tell you whether the better one is really better, or if it might just be luck.

9. Declaring Split-Test Winners to Quickly: If one ad got 1% and 5 clicks, and the other got 2% and 8 clicks, that’s not enough clicks to know for sure the winner is a sure thing. Again, let http://www.splittester.com decide their fate. Rule of thumb: 20+ clicks on each ad.

10. Ignoring negative keywords: Just about ANY ad group should probably have some negative keywords. It should always be on your checklist. It increases your Click Thru Rate because your ads don’t get shown to people who shouldn’t see them. Less waste.

Users should have the choice of medium in which he or she would like to learn. Some are visual learners others are more auditory. By Google offering several choices, their advertisers can learn more.

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Learn what you need to succeed with AdWords Basics webinars

Hello,

This fall, learn how to improve your advertising performance by attending the new AdWords Basics webinars, free of charge. Led by an AdWords specialist, each live, online seminar will include a presentation plus live Q&A. Whether you want to learn how to get more sales at a lower cost, add display images to your ads, or better set-up your campaigns, there is a webinar for you. Sign up and get the dates.

See a full listing of webinars and register at www.google.com/events/training, or sign-up now by clicking below.

• Get More Sales at a Lower Cost: Basics of Conversion Optimizer – Tues Oct 27th
• Focus on Results: Basics of Tracking Your AdWords Return on Investment – Tues Nov 3rd
• Set Up Your Campaigns for Success: Basics of Account Maintenance and Improvement – Wed Nov 4th
• Beyond Text Advertising: Basics of Display Ad Builder – Tues Nov 10th
• Put Your Website to the Test: Basics of Website Optimizer – Tues Nov 17th

Register today at www.google.com/events/training. You will need your email address and 10 digit AdWords Customer ID to register. Your Customer ID can be found in the upper right corner of your AdWords account when you’re logged in at adwords.google.com

See you in class!

The AdWords Team

You may have noticed over the last year or so, the Google AdWords interface saying by specific keywords your are “Below first page bid estimate.” It will then tell you the predicted maximum cost-per-click bid in order to appear on the first page. As you may know, being on the second page greatly reduces your overall impressions and clicks. If you have several highly competitive keywords not appearing on the first page, you may have a skewed view of the traffic and search volume for some of the most highly-sought after keywords in your industry. If you manage a large account, it can be time consuming to click into every adgroup in order to see the keywords which are “Below first page bid estimate.”

Fortunately, using the AdWords Editor, you can find all keywords which fall under this category in one swoop. You can also quickly adjust your bids to appear on the first page. If you are sure most of your keywords are not not overly expensive, you can make this adjustment on a macro scale. Simply click on the keywords tab, making sure you are on the whole account, then choose “Advanced bid changes.” The third choice from the top says “Raise keyword maximum CPC bids to their first page estimates.”

Craig Danuloff over at ClickEquations.com covers more in-depth how to run adjust First Page Bid Estimates quickly using the provided report.

Example of how View-Through Conversion Reporting Works
Say you are selling organic, healthy dog treats on the Internet and you are measuring conversions on two different actions: newsletter sign-ups and your shopping cart “Thank You” page after a purchase is made. If a user sees your display ad on another site on Google’s Content Network, does not click on the ad, but visits your site within the next 30 days to sign-up to receive your email newsletter and to purchase a couple dozen orders of organic dog treats, you’ll see two View-through conversions reported on your Campaigns tab in AdWords. Read more details on the new report.

Google announced it was buying DoubleClick back in April 2007 for 3.1 billion, and now plans on offering the whole host of sites for more options and higher quality choices for display ad placement using the Content Network.

Google acquired DoubleClick to beef up their display advertising offerings which includes other visual advertising videos, images and interactive ads. Display ads often are more effective for brand awareness, and lift over time, verses direct response text ads. For several industries which have a visual, or image-based product, they can be more effective than text, but often get a lower click-through rate.

DoubleClick was founded in 1996. DoubleClick was taken private in 2005 by Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity for $1.1 billion. The New York Times reports DoubleClicks revenues were about $300 million/year before the acquisition.

The “buyers” in the Ad Exchange are typically ad networks and agency-run networks with their own ad serving and optimization technologies, while the “sellers” are large publishers.

We’re excited about what the launch of the Ad Exchange means for you, our advertisers. Ad Exchange sites will now be available for you to advertise on, as part of the Google Content Network, through your AdWords account. These sites are made available to you when Ad Exchange publishers choose to allow AdWords advertisers to compete for their inventory, and as long as that inventory meets all AdSense policy requirements.

Read the rest of the announcement and how this addition works with Content Network bidding and placement on the Inside AdWords Blog.

Related Articles
Google DoubleClick TechCrunch Article from 2007
Official Google Blog Announcement