Section 11.2. Optimizing Your Ads

11.2. Optimizing Your Ads

Once you've determined that there are specific Ad Groups that need improvement, either by monitoring CTR statistics or by using the Ads Diagnostic Tool, Google provides a number of tools you can use. It's in your interest to try to improve your targeting, because more focused matching means that the most appropriate prospects see your ads and your CPC goes down. A good place to start honing your keywords is the Keyword Tool .

11.2.1. Keyword Tool

You can open the Keyword Tool in either of two ways:

• With the Content Management tab open, click the Tools link, followed by the Keyword Tool link (when the Keyword Tool opens, it won't have any keywords loaded, as shown in Figure 11-10, making this the best option for figuring out the keywords for a new Ad Group rather than clarifying an existing group).

• With the summary window for an Ad Group open, click the Keyword Tool link (when the Keyword Tool opens in a new window it will be preloaded with the existing keyword for the Ad Group, as shown in Figure 11-11).

Figure 11-10. You can open the Keyword Tool from the Tools window to experiment with keywords generally

Figure 11-11. When you open the Keyword Tool from an existing Ad Group, more specific, similar, and additional keywords to the ones already targeted by the Ad Group are suggested

A goal of keyword optimization is to make sure that your ads will run according to the Ads Diagnostic Tool. For example, consider the ads shown in Figure 11-6 that were not displayed in response to the search query "digital photo blog". It makes sense to use the Keyword Tool to get these ads performing better.

You can run the poorly performing keywords for the ads that failed the Ads Diagnostic Tool through the Keyword Tool, as shown in Figure 11-12, to generate a long list of alternative suggestions.

Figure 11-12. Running failing keywords through the Keyword Tool is the best way to start coming up with better alternatives

While the Keyword Tool comes up with a very extensive list of possibilities, ultimately it is up to an AdWords campaign managerpossibly by dint of trial and errorto come up with high-performing keywords.

Keyword Matching Options

AdWords offers a number of keyword matching options. Understanding these options can help to improve the relevancy of your ad placement, leading to fewer ad impressions but a higher CPC.

The keyword matching options are:

Broad match

This is the default option. When you enter a phrase such as sail boat, ads will appear when a user's query contains sail and boat in any order in any part of a query, possibly along with other terms. In addition, broad-matched ads will also show for expanded matches, which are matches with plural (or singular) and other variant forms of the words in a phrase.

Phrase match

When you enter your keywords in quotesfor example, "sail boat"your ad will appear when a user enters the search phrase in order as it appears within the quotes, but possibly with other words as well, for example, big sail boat.

Exact match

Exact matches are the least flexible kind of keyword matching. The term that users search for must exactly match the phrase you enter in bracketsfor example, [sail boat]in order, without any additional terms. Exact matching is the most targeted option among experienced AdWords managers because users searching for terms that make this kind of narrow match are more likely to be interested exactly in your business's offerings.

Negative keyword match

Negative keywords are added to a search phrase, by adding a minus sign in front of the negative keyword, to make a search more precisely targeted. For example, if you target sail boat -blue, your ad will appear when a user searches for sail boat, but not blue sail boat. Negative keywords are an important mechanism for making targeting more precise.

The problem with the first ad shown as failing the Ad Diagnostics Tool in Figure 11-6 is a broad match with the phrase digital photography. Deleting digital photography and replacing it with exact matches [digital photography tips] and [digital photography techniques] improves the CTR for this ad.

The problem with the second ad shown in Figure 11-6 is the broad match targeting with photo blog and photo blogging. The Keyword Tool makes lots of suggestions, but most of them are not appropriate (for example, erotic photo blog or blogspot). CPC for this ad might be improved by dropping the keywords related to blog and focusing on keywords related to digital photography. However, that would actually diminish the relevancy of the advertisement, which is attempting to drive traffic to a photo blog. The recommendation here is to live with a low CTR and increase the likelihood of ad placement on search results pages by increasing the maximum CPC you are willing to pay.

11.2.2. Estimating Traffic

The Traffic Estimator is best used to get a quick idea of how keywords will perform and how that performance will impact the cost of running an Ad Group, without actually adding the new keyword(s).

To open the Traffic Estimator, with the Content Management tab open, click the Tools link, followed by the Traffic Estimator link. In the Traffic Estimator window, shown in Figure 11-13, enter the keywords you want to investigate, as well as a maximum CPC, language, location targeting method, and countries to target.

Figure 11-13. You can enter the amount you are willing to pay for a click through or let Google suggest a value, and Google will give you a traffic estimate for the keyword

If you don't estimate a maximum CPC in the Traffic Estimator, Google will suggest one for you that will deliver ads in the top (1.0) position 85% of the time. As you can imagine, this is an expensive CPC choice, so to make the best use of the Traffic Estimator you should always enter your own, more realistic, maximum CPC.

Click Continue. The Traffic Estimator results screen, shown in Figure 11-14, gives you an idea of the average position, clicks per day, and cost per day you can expect, given the keywords you entered and the maximum CPC you specified.