Adwords Management And Its Importance To You

By Author: John Tang
Total Articles: 512
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The difference between making and losing money in a PPC campaign is all too often directly attributable to a lack of, or even, non-existent Adwords Management.

The key elements of Adwords Management are as follows:

1. Extensive, even exhaustive keyword research - it is absolutely fundamental that you select the best keywords. This doesn't necessarily mean the most popular or the most competitive keywords. It begins by researching for ALL of the possible keywords. Then by researching each one for popularity, competitiveness and cost (top bids). Further keyword filtering to determine the most important, the most targeted of the keywords.

2. Competitive Research - to see which keywords your most direct and best competitors are advertising for. Compare these keywords with the keywords you most wish to be found for.

3. Budget - an absolute must really the first thing you need to do before you really get serious. How much money are you willing to risk each month or each day? What are the sales and profitability goals of the PPC campaign? How much money are you willing to invest and / or risk ...
... to achieve these goals?

4. Keyword Prioritization and Bidding - determine by keyword how much you are willing to allocate per day for each of the keywords you wish to target.

5. Establish a goal for both CTR (click through rate or the % of clicks per impression or ad display) and establish a goal for conversion rate (the percentage of landing page visits that result in a conversion).

6. Determine your average value of a conversion expressed in dollars. This can be done for e-commerce sites by establishing the average sale. If you are generating lead forms, you need to determine your close ratio and apply that to your average sale so that you will have a forecast of the realized value of a conversion.

7. Landing Page Creation - you must establish at least one landing page for each group of related keywords (Adgroup). Develop variations of each landing page and test them often referred to as A/B testing. See which landing page is yielding the highest conversion rate. This is a never-ending process as trends and preferences are continually changing. The performance of all landing pages relating to specific Adwords and Adgroups have to be tracked. When performance fails, it's time to change.

8. Write the Ads - The ads or adtext must be relevant for the keywords searched. The landing page it points to must be relevant to the ad.

9. Tracking Results, Reports and Responding - no one has all of the answers on the first day of the campaign. You must watch your results closely and make changes to optimize CTR and Conversion Rates. Go back to your budget, your targeted CTR and Conversion Rates. The numbers for Cost Per Click (CPC) to daily budget all the way down the line to your closing rate need to be optimized and in line with your budget.

Adwords offers one of the best and most immediate ways to online visibility and potential business. However, you can lose a lot of money without great Adwords Management. From the keyword selection to Adgroups to landing pages, bidding, testing, monitoring and making constant adjustments, Adwords Management is critical towards earning the return on your PPC dollar.