Optimizing Keywords
Use these tools to find new keywords and to identify which keywords to optimize:
- Use the Keyword Tool to brainstorm ideas for keyword lists and find negative keywords while you’re creating a campaign. Once the tool has generated some initial ideas, you can then enter the relevant results back into the tool to generate even more specific keyword ideas. Add relevant keywords to the ad group that focuses on that theme or product. Learn more about the Keyword Planner tool.
- Use keyword diagnosis to see an in-depth view of your keyword’s performance, including its Quality Score on a 1-10 scale. You might want to delete keywords with low Quality Scores and add more keywords that are more like those with higher scores. If you really want to run on those keywords, consider moving them to another ad group and test them with a new ad. If they still don’t perform well after one month, delete them.
- Run a “search terms” report to see all the search queries that have triggered your ads. You can use this report to identify relevant queries driving traffic to your website and add them as new keywords. If you see any irrelevant terms, add them as negative keywords to your ad group or campaign.
- Use the Keyword Planner to find keyword traffic and cost estimates to identify potential keywords. By knowing the estimated traffic for your keywords, you can also set appropriate keyword bids that will maximize your ad’s exposure within the limit of your daily budget.
Optimize keywords for better CTR
If you are CTR-focused, you may want to delete keywords with high impression counts but low numbers of clickthroughs. These keywords may be too general or not relevant enough and are accumulating many impressions but very few clicks. For CTR, it’s also very important to focus on negative keywords to prevent impressions that aren’t likely to lead to a click. Along with negative keywords, consider trying different keyword matching options like phrase match to reduce the number of irrelevant searches.
Optimize keywords for better ROI
The bottom line for any keyword is how much value it generates compared to its cost. To determine the profitability of a keyword, you can track the conversions from that keyword with Google’s free conversion tracking tool. Once you have conversion data, you can identify and delete keywords that accumulate high costs but very few conversions. Once you understand the value of each keyword, you can also increase that keyword’s profitability by adjusting its CPC or CPM bid. For keywords that show a profit, increase the bid to increase exposure and generate more traffic. For keywords that aren’t profitable, decrease the bid to lower your costs.
Try to understand what stage within the buying cycle a user might be in. For instance, users searching with terms like “reviews” or “ratings” are probably still researching the product and might be less likely to make a purchase at that stage. To target serious buyers, you might try using keyword phrases that include conversion-related words like “buy,” “purchase,” or “order,” and use “reviews” as a negative keyword. You can also include specific product names you sell and model numbers. Users searching on highly specific terms know exactly what they are looking for and could be more likely to convert for you.
Use appropriate keyword matching options to control who sees your ads
Experiment with keyword matching options. The four matching options determine which Google searches can trigger your ads to appear, helping you control who sees your ads. With broad match, you’ll typically receive the most number of ad impressions.
Use negative keywords to eliminate unwanted clicks
Negative keywords can help increase your ROI and conversion rates by preventing your ad from showing for searches that include that word or phrase. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your costs, and increase your return on investment.
When constructing a negative keywords list, try to be as exhaustive as possible. However, be careful that none of your negative keywords overlap with your regular keywords, as this will cause your ad not to show for that keyword. For instance, an advertiser for a financial institution that provides loans but does not offer actual rate quotes may want to include ‘rate’ and ‘rates’ as negative keywords. However, if he wanted to include ‘fixed rate mortgage’ in his keyword list, he should not include ‘rate’ among his campaign negative keywords list.
You can use negative keywords for a number of reasons:
- Filter out different products or services: For example, a real estate agent who is focused on selling homes may wish to include not only the negative keywords rent and renting, but also use the Keyword Tool to find ideas for variations such as rents, rental, and rentals to use as additional negative keywords.
- Filter out irrelevant searches: For example, an advertiser may discover that the name of one of his products also happens to be the name of a musical group. In this case, it’s a good idea to include negative keywords such as music, band, concert, ticket, lyric, album, mp3, and the pluralized versions of these words.
- Filter for serious buyers: Advertisers hoping to make sales may want to filter out researchoriented searches by adding negative keywords like review, rate, rating, compare, comparing, comparison, and the pluralized versions of these words.
Use the Edit Campaign Negative Keywords tool to add negative keywords to an entire campaign at once.
Finding Your Ad
Once you’ve created your text ad, you’ll probably be curious to see what it looks like on Google’s search results. Or you might just want proof that it’s actually running. The best ways to do this are by using the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, making sure your ad is enabled, and checking your account statistics.
Check on your ad without affecting its performance
It’s very tempting, but you should resist the urge to search for your own ad on Google.com. Here’s why:
- By performing searches that trigger your ad, you’ll rack up impressions without clicks, which can lower your clickthrough rate and prevent your ad from appearing as often as it should.
- If you repeatedly look for your own ad using Google search but never click on it, you might stop seeing it entirely. That’s because Google’s system stops showing you ads that it thinks you aren’t interested in.
Best ways to check on your ad
Option 1: Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool
See where your ad appears in search results for a particular search query. This is an easy way to check how your ad appears in context, and the tool provides the exact same results as a Google search without accumulating any impressions. Just visit http://www.google.com/AdPreview, or click Ad Preview and Diagnosis in the Tools and Analysis tab at the top of your AdWords account. After you choose the appropriate options at the top, you can see exactly which ads are being triggered by the search term you enter in any location.
Tip
If you’ve targeted your ad to a certain language, location, or device, be sure to specify this information when using the tool. For example, if you’ve targeted your ad to only appear to customers in Los Angeles, you’ll need to enter Los Angeles in the “Location” box.
Option 2: Make sure your ad is enabled
Click your Ads tab and look for a green circle next to your ad. Paused ads will have a “paused” sign next to them. You can change your ad from “Paused” to “Enabled” status by clicking on the paused sign and selecting the green circle from the drop-down.
Option 3: Check your account stats
See if your ads are receiving traffic from customers. Sign in to your AdWords account, and click the Campaigns tab. On each tab, you’ll see statistics that show detailed information about your clicks, impressions, clickthrough rates (CTR), and much more. You can use this information to make sure your ads are actually running and getting traffic.
Tip
If you’ve just created or changed an ad, remember that it needs to be approved per the advertising guidelines before it appears on sites in the Google Network. You can see whether your ad is under review by looking at the “Status” column on the Ads tab of your AdWords account. See more information about the ad approval process.
Option 4: Visit the Keywords tab
Make sure your keywords are triggering ads. Click the speech bubble icon in the “Status” column to get information about whether a keyword is triggering your ads to appear.
Are you still having problems with your ad?
Use the AdWords troubleshooter to find other reasons why your might not be able to see your ad.