Ok much has happened since last I updated, so I’ve decided to finish the remaining ‘adwords mistakes’ in one giant post!
Mistake #5 – Not monitoring bids at the keyword level.
Don’t fall into the trap of just setting bids at the ad group level and forgetting about individual keyword bids – success is in the detail guys, so pay attention to what’s happening in your accounts at the most micro level possible.
I spoke with someone the other week over the phone who couldn’t work out why their average CPC was 2 x what ‘they were bidding’. A few questions back and forth and we realized that while the ad group bid was set at $0.12, the individual CPC’s for keywords were all set at $0.25. Ouch.
Anyway – easy fix, but pays to remember this.
The thing is though that, depending on your ad group structure, setting the bid ‘just’ ad the group level may well mean you’re missing out on opportunity, or paying too much for some phrases, and not enough for others.
To illustrate, you could have an ad group for ‘compare home loans’ and in that group you have the following keyword with 2 match types.
History of this keyword – you already know this terms converts well…
What would happen if the bid was set only at the ad group level? Say at $2.50.
compare home loans
phrase match
conversion rate 18%
compare home loans
exact match
conversion rate 26%
Well chances are you will end up paying either too much for the Phrase match term, or not enough for the exact match term. Eg. The better converting ‘exact match’ phrase should be treated differently than the phrase match variant, simply because it converts better. But if you’re not controlling at this level, then you may be leaving opportunity behind.
Mistake #6 – Not using different keyword ‘Match Types’.
I started going into this above… and while I’ve covered negative keywords in an earlier post, and another great write up can be found over at PPCHero, today I want to go through broad, phrase and exact match in a little more detail.
Broad match, according to a Google rep at SMX Sydney who said ‘Broad Match is your friend’…. I disagree!
Broad match may be Google’s best friend, but it’s not yours. Think of it more as that annoying friend on facebook that always takes things too far and is often inappropriate.. yeah that’s Broad Match!
Reason? Well BM is designed as a ‘catch all’ in the adwords system. You can set one key phrase on broad match and bam – your appearing for all sorts of crazy stuff (hence why negatives are important too!).
Let’s go back to the example above ‘compare home loans’.
If this is set on BM then you could match for things like
- compare home loans
- home loan compare
- loan compare
- compare home loans in melbourne
- do not compare home loans
- compare home loans for dummies
- compare mortgage insurance for home loans
- home loans
- home loans suck
- home loans for dummies
See what I’m getting at – it’s dangerous. Goes to far, and is inappropriate at times
That’s why we have ‘phrase’ and ‘exact’ match.
That same list again using phrase match:
- compare home loans
- compare home loans in melbourne
- do not compare home loans
- compare home loans for dummies
- compare mortgage insurance for home loans
Getting better – phrase match tells google ‘we only want to match in the specified word order.’
The same again with ‘exact match’:
- compare home loans
Simple as that – exact meant ‘exactly as I’ve written it!’
Match types allow more control and flexibility, but… and more importantly, you’d be amazed at how much the intent of a search query changes with just a few words added.
Take the following where it matched on Phrase Match..
- compare home loans in melbourne
- compare mortgage insurance for home loans
If you were on broad or phrase match for ‘compare home loans’ and did not have these terms in another ad group – chances are that they would trigger you generic ‘compare home loans’ ad. However, if you were smart you’d see straight away that these terms should be directed to a specific landing page – one addressing ‘melbourne’ and the other incorporating ‘mortgage insurance information.
Powerful stuff when done well.
Mistake #7 – Not splitting out Campaigns to target Search and Content Network separately.
This was going to be a big rant about not separating out your campaigns between search and content… but you know what, I’ve written about the google content network quite a bit, and this really is the most basic of the basic step.
Simply put, you must always break up your campaigns into one targeting Search / Search Partners and another (potentially) targeting the content Network. Ever have the one campaign targeting both because it just makes things harder for you.
