Make sure your year gets off to a great start by doing a quick audit on your search marketing campaigns. Here are a few quick ways to improve the health of any AdWords account:
1. Use separate campaigns to target search, display and mobile ads
When you create a new campaign in AdWords, it will show your ads on the Google Display Network (GDN) by default. While this is a great place to find more customers, you should have separate campaigns for showing your ads on search results pages and on GDN so that you can take advantage of the best practices for each. Also create separate campaigns for ads that appear on mobile phones so you can point users to your mobile landing pages.
2. Ad groups should have multiple ads and under 20 keywords
If you’re frequently editing your account, its structure can get out of shape. Ideally all ad groups will have at least 2 ad text variations and no more than 20 keywords. When you have multiple ad texts, Google can automatically show the best performing one to get you more clicks and conversions so it’s a good idea to always be testing multiple ad variations. If you find an ad group with too many keywords, chances are you can split it into smaller ad groups where you can create ads that are more relevant to their keywords. (more…)