3 Tips To Becoming A Paid Search Superstar

The biggest mistake a Paid Search advertiser can make is rushing to launch a campaign without addressing the fundamentals.   Assessing the three areas outlined below will help you ensure your campaign is poised for success and will secure the best use of your advertising dollars.

To become a Paid Search superstar, always keep these three areas in mind.

1.  Establish Goals for your Paid Search Campaign

Who are you trying to target?  Always remind yourself “who” you are aiming to reach through paid search. 

• When choosing keywords and creating ad text, select terms your audience would search for and create ad text that speaks to their needs. Always be sure the content on your landing page logically aligns with these keywords/ad text to ensure a quality user experience and maximize your ROI.
• Identifying the marketing persona of your audience can help you tackle this process.   

What do you want the visitor to do? Identify what you would like your user to do once they click on your paid search ad. 

• Include this goal as a call to action in your ad text.
• Drive visitors to a landing page that easily leads them toward this goal.   

How will you measure success?  Ensure you have set up a way to measure success before launching your campaign.

• Ensure tracking URLs are set up to analyze Paid Search traffic.
• Ongoing analysis of your campaign metrics will reveal keywords you may want to consider pausing and opportunities to grow.  

2.  Create a Manageable Campaign Structure

Keep It Relevant.  Create tightly themed ad groups with small groups of keywords.  Thumb through each keyword and ensure your ad text is relevant to each keyword contained within each ad group. 

Keep It Simple. You will be managing your campaign on a daily basis.  Ensuring your campaign structure is intuitive and manageable will make monitoring your campaign more effective and will allow you to better identify efficiencies and inefficiencies. 

3.  Verify Your Campaign Settings in Google Adwords

Understand where your ads will be appearing. By default, Google Adwords opts all campaign into the full Google Network.  This network of sites includes Google.com, partner sites such as AOL.com & Ask.com, and Display Network sites. 

• Opting out of the Google Display network is a best practice if you are just getting started.  The Display Network will incur thousands of impressions by displaying your ads across thousands of sites.   If you are working with a constrained budget, the Google Display network can deplete your budget quickly and compromise your visibility on Google.com.  *The Display network can be effective with carefully selected keywords and ad text designed specifically for this type of ad placement.  It is always best to revisit this tactic once you have garnered initial learnings from the Google Search network. 

Review your Location Settings.  By default, Google Adwords will set your campaign live nationally.  If you are a local merchant, if you ship to a specific area, or provide service (only) to a specific geographic location, it is a best practice to customize your Location Targeting in Google Adwords.

Acquaint yourself with all campaign settings.  Google Adwords provides options specific to language targeting, ad scheduling, devices.  As a best practice, always click into the Settings of each campaign to verify your campaign is set up properly.