By Charlie Cummins – bbmm.ie
In the 4th of their 2016 series, the Google Breakfast Briefing presentation today was “AdWords Search Optimization” – getting the best possible returns on your investment in AdWords and increasing its cost efficiency for your business.
The presenter, Kevin O’Mahony, cited three reasons why optimizing your AdWords campaign is important:
- For Coverage: to ensure that your ads reach your customers.
- For Engagement: to make sure your ads are clicked on. CTR is the best measurement of customer engagement – users “vote” with their clicks.
- For Cost: to make certain that you get the most efficient returns and that your CPC is maintained at the lowest possible cost. A point raised in a previous AdWords briefing was re-iterated again today – “16-20% of all new search queries have never been asked before. Customers are fining new terms with which to search and AdWords campaign need t be optimised to match these uniquely new search queries.
CTR Optimisation: Tips highlighted to increase engagement with your AdWords and drive more clicks included make sure your ad content and its landing are relevant to each other. Relevance improves the quality score of an ad, which means Google is most likely to serve your ad (and a better quality score decreases your CPC!). Use no more than 5-15 keywords at most per ad group. Keep keywords tightly themed on your product/service. Use a minimum of 3 text ad per ad group. Use Ad extensions: there are 8 options available (from site links to location to call) and they increase CTR by 10%.
Coverage Optimisation: a number of advanced techniques were outlined as a means of increasing your coverage among potential customers, including Dynamic Search Ads and Remarketing Lists. These can be added to any exiting AdWords campaign.
CPC and managing cost: Google AdWords has a range of automated programs which can control CPC’s and deliver greater efficiency, including Enhanced CPC, Target CPA and “Automated Rules”, which can be used to set conditions under which your budgeted CPC can be increased/decreased based on current on-line activity.
The Google AdWords Help Centre (link: https://support.google.com/adwords/?hl=en) has more information on all of the above. If you’d like to check if some of these tactics may be right for your existing AdWords activity, please contact us at BBMM via email.
