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Google AdWords. Love it or hate it, there is no denying the potential marketing power that having an advert placed next to a given search term in the most popular search engine in the world can give you.

I’ve been running several campaigns myself for a few months, and it’s certainly been a learning process (not always positive, sadly). Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up from my recent experiences:

1) The Content Network

Oh bitter disappointment. The first day of my AdWords campaign was a heady mix of excitement and sheer naivety, and when the first day’s results came in – wow. 20,000 views. That means 20,000 people may have seen my advert! Of course, quite a few less than 20,000 people clicked on it. I also have suspicions that the ones who did, did so purely out of spite. I’d advise you make sure that you turn off Content Network ads when you start your campaign. It’s the ads embedded in sites rather than search terms, so you have less control, you don’t get accurate stats from it (you won’t know how they got to that advert, for instance, unlike the Search Engine stats) – and the quality of clicks coming to your site and charging your account will be lower. In my opinion, unless you’re just trying to maximise traffic through any means possible – forget about it.

2) Google’s Approach to Adverts

One thing you need to bear in mind that occurred to me was that Google’s definition of a ‘successful’ Advert will always be biased. Don’t get me wrong, it is worthwhile creating several different adverts, and allowing Google to prefer to display the advert that is performing better than the others. But the criteria for this is based on the success of an advert – i.e., how often the advert yields a click. The click is what gets Google their money – so they will always favour the advert that gets them the largest amount of chargeable clicks. What’s wrong with that, you say? I want clicks! Well, pay attention. You might not want that advert. A few nonchalant clicks here and there and any advert can be the best. So make sure you are willing to spend a bit of time reviewing your campaigns and deciding if you are happy with what Google is doing with it.

3) Daily Budget

This budget is not cast iron. Google’s claim that setting a budget will keep your spend beneath this level is not entirely true. For instance, your daily budget is £100 and you have a maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) of £10. Your daily spend at 3pm is £93. So it’s quite possible that your final daily spend could be £103. I’ve only noticed this a few times and never in a situation involving those figures – and I can’t confirm Google will still serve your Ad for clicks if you were at, say, £99.99! – it’s just a caution worth bearing in mind, particularly if you’re running a high CPC campaign.

4) Cost Per Click (CPC)

Sometimes Google will tell you that you’re not bidding enough for a keyword, so you can increase the quality of your Ad, or increase your bid. This tends to be for keywords with a high level of competition (unless you’re bidding about 10p a click, I’ve noticed that’s not popular even with some search terms nobody is bidding on…!). I’d advise reviewing your Ad first, then considering deleting the keyword altogether. High CPC is for the Big Companies who can Afford To Throw Money At People, and will eat up your budget and your balance in no time. If you’re confident that a click will lead to a sale, then your profits will no doubt outweigh the cost of the click itself; but you need to be certain that you are making enough sales to make a profit in relation to the number of clicks! The same advice applies to raising the CPC to achieve a higher position in Google searches for your Ad. The increase in Ad awareness that you will presumably achieve by being higher in Google may not be worth your while, and you must, again, be sure that you are making an acceptable profit. That said, it is worth taking any keyword suspensions on board and reviewing your Ad. A decent correlation between the keywords you are advertising on and the Ad text helps, as well as a link to a product or search term specific page. This will help improve the quality of your clicks, too, as those clicking on your Ad will be more likely to arrive somewhere relevant to their search and stay on your site.

5) Stick to your Plan, not your Work

It is important to cut anything that isn’t working whenever it doesn’t seem to be working. Deleting an Ad Group or a Campaign in AdWords just turns it off, really – you can ‘undelete’ it at any point. Even if you have spent many, many hours crafting a Campaign, if it isn’t doing what you want it to do, change it or turn it off. Every Campaign should need changes once it is running!

6) Click Through Rate (CTR)

As a surfer, I have always found myself slightly suspicious of the little ads that line my pages of search results, and that’s part of the reason why I wouldn’t be too disappointed if your CTR is very low. After all, people use Search Engines to find something they are looking for, and Google gives that to them with the Search Results. Your Advert, no matter how brilliantly executed, will always be a bit of text, conveniently targeted for placement next to what they’re looking for - it just happens that sometimes someone might be distracted by these Adverts, and will choose yours for investigation instead of a Search Result (or as well as, of course, in these heady modern days of browser tabbing). There is no definitive, ideal CTR (well, 100% I suppose) – as a general rule of thumb, the more competitive your market is, the higher the CPC, and the lower the CTR.

7) Ask for advice!

There are many, many sources of information about AdWords. Google’s Academy is useful for getting used to the system, but if you want proper advice, ask the people who use it. A good place to try is the UK Business Forums – some of the people on there have made their names as AdWords specialists, and their advice is worth listening to.

8 ) AdWords Editor

Okay, I know the article is called ‘7′ AdWords tips, but I’ve recently come across this and thought it worth sharing.

The AdWords editor is available from Google for a free download, and it resolves a couple of the issues I have with AdWords - one of them being how unfriendly I find it to use and look at. I know that looks aren’t everything, but I would forgive the AdWords interface it’s clunky little quirks if it wasn’t so drab and unappealing.

The editor resolves both of these issues. Without having to wait for page refreshes, loading times or getting lost backtracking through my browsing, management of campaigns is easier off the bat. Essentially the editor downloads your AdWords campaign on to your PC, and allows you to manage and edit the campaign locally. You can then upload your changes, or download any that have been made online. Changes are clearly marked and colour coded, and local changes are marked if they are going to cause conflicts.

I also like the options available for reports, and I find creating new adverts or campaigns far easier without having to follow the online wizard. You can jump between campaigns as you edit and create them, pick out all the inactive keywords or adverts - in short, the editor lets me manage everything I want until I am happy with it, and then I can make it live at the push of a button (rather than having to pause campaigns or have them online while they are a work in progress).

So I strongly recommend you download the AdWords editor - just log in to your AdWords account, and download it from the Tools section.

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