Today’s 5 Quick Tips are a special treat. They were written by David Szetela of FMB Media and tie in to our radio interview with him being on Friday November 25th, 2016 at http://cranberry.fm/shows/webcology. That was a great interview and with lots of useful information on optimizing your PPC for the holdiays and 2017. Now let’s get to his 5 Quick Tips, things you can do quickly and easily to improve your ROI.
In the course of conducting hundreds of AdWords audits over the years, I’ve seen dozens of the same mistakes made. Many are minor, but cause massive overspending or hinder top performance.
#1 – Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group
One that I see most frequently is: too many keywords per ad group. My rule of thumb: no more than 6-18 keywords per ad group. This ensures that a custom ad can be written highlighting the keywords and matching precisely the search term that triggered the ad. Limit the number of keywords and you’ll see better CTRs, quality scores and conversion rates.
#2 – Too Many Ads Per Ad Group
Most accounts also include too many ads per ad group. It’s good to test multiple ads, but if an ad group contains more than 2 or 3, data needed to judge ad performance will accumulate too slowly. Said another way, running too many ads only ensures that you’re including poorly-performing ads, limiting conversion rates and volumes. Run no more than 2 and you’ll limit the damage while accelerating ad testing.
#3 – Review Your Geo-targeting
Finally, you might be surprised to know that, if your account is set up like most I see, your ads are being displayed waaaay outside the geo-targeted location. The reason: by default, Google is fairly “loose” about geo-targeting, showing ads whenever it might be possible that the person viewing the ad might be interested in your offer.
To see where your ads are being displayed, click on the AdWords Dimensions tabs, and choose user locations. Chances are good you’ll see that, for example, campaigns targeting only the United States are displaying ads in India, Uzbekistan and Uruguay.
Fortunately there’s an easy fix: go to your campaign settings and click on the link called “Location options (advanced)”, Click on the Edit link next to the word Target, and then click on the radio button labeled “People in my targeted location.” Do this for every campaign and you’ll never waste money on poorly targeted clicks!
David Szetela is the owner and CEO of FMB Media. Do you remember Overture and their bid management system? He does. He speaks and writes regularly on paid search and it’s evolution and offers consuylting services to help those in need get their campaigns in order, cut their wasted spends and increase their ROI.