3 Sure Shot Ways to Clean Up Your AdWords Campaigns for High Click Through Rates

Before you can expect great results from an AdWords campaign, you really need to make sure that everything is neatly organized. The cleaner and more relevant your ad groups and campaigns are, the better your CTR will be and your Quality Score will also rise, resulting in lower costs. I see some common mistakes in some of my clients, so I thought it would be a good idea to write an article about what can be done to do some PPC organization.

Create New Ad Groups for Each Product or Service

Relevancy is important within your campaigns, so you’re going to want to break out each product or service you sell into its own ad group. The reason for this is that if you have keywords for multiple products in the same group, it’s going to make your ads very broad.

AdWords ads are at their best when they’re extremely targeted. Here’s an example, if you were selling shoes, you’d want an ad group for loafers, basketball shoes and sandals because if you had all those keywords in the same group your ad would have to read something like “We have all kinds of shoes in stock.” While that may be true, it’s much better for a searcher to create a query for ‘sandals’ and see an ad that says “We’re having a sale on sandals!”

The potential customer at this point already knows that you have exactly what he’s looking for and it’s also going to be good for your quality score; the more your keywords appear in the ad, the better. You might even consider creating ad groups for each brand you sell, especially since branded keywords usually come at lower CPCs than general terms.

For instance, the average cost per click for ‘men’s basketball shoes’ is $1.07 while ‘Nike basketball shoes’ is at $.79. That may not sound like a huge difference but it’s a lower cost keyword you could easily add for more traffic and sales.

Make Sure Your Landing Pages are Relevant

I hate to use the word ‘relevant’ so often, but relevancy is such a big part of AdWords management that I can’t help it. Since you’ve broken up all your products into specific ad groups, doesn’t it make sense that each of those ad groups have their own landing page? Your advertisement for women’s tennis shoes will ideally take the customer straight to the women’s tennis shoes page.

They’ve already expressed interest in buying shoes from your store by clicking on the link so why not send them exactly where they want to go. Customers are much more likely to make a purchase when what they want is presented to them quickly and hassle-free.

You should also periodically test your landing pages to make sure that they work, there’s nothing worse than paying for clicks that are being sent to a 404 error page. That just upsets customers and empties your wallet for no good reason.

Separate Your Display Campaigns from Search Campaigns

When you set up your AdWords campaigns, you’ll be given the option to have your ads appear on the search network, the display network or both. Most people just select both because they don’t really know what that means and the way set up goes, it makes it sound like you’ll get more clicks by using display.

The display network does work for some, but it isn’t for everyone and it really just depends on your product. Let’s say you’re selling eco-friendly furniture, your ads could show up on a green-movement website that literally has nothing to do with furniture.

You might get some clicks but the blog isn’t likely to be read by people who are actively searching for green furniture. It doesn’t hurt to try the display network, of course, but it’s much easier to compare the results when it’s been broken apart from your search campaign.

Could your PPC campaigns use some spring cleaning? Don’t wait until April, make AdWords organization your businesses New Year’s Resolution and celebrate all year with more clicks, sales and happy customers.

Image Credit:Cartmetrix