Google AdWords can be a great tool for driving traffic to your site. Make sure you are maximizing your return with these 5 tips.
1) Optimize Your Headline
You get 25 characters for your headline. Make them count. The first thing to do is to make the headline relevant to the keywords your target audience is searching for. The second goal should be to make the user want to click. Remember the primary objective should be to entice the searcher. Repeating a keyword to optimize for Google doesn’t make the user want to click the ad. Use your headline space effectively since it will be the first thing people read.
2) Don’t Link To Your Homepage
You’ve got your keywords mapped out and ads set up appropriately. Now, someone clicks your link and they end up at … your homepage? Why? Unless you are going for a very generic awareness campaign you are wasting clicks. Creating specific pages allow you to maximize the visit. If you are advertising a product, take them to a page about the product, a page where they can purchase the product. Even if you are running an awareness campaign, why not have them like your page on Facebook or signup for a newsletter? Good landing pages will help your ads be more effective.
3) Localize
You have an awesome little wine tasting shop in Fresno, California and everyone raves about the food and the atmosphere. Yet you’re advertising in Shreveport, Louisiana? The odds of someone from Shreveport hopping in their car and coming to the shop for a little wine are highly unlikely. Don’t waste your time or money advertising in places you can’t serve. Your market is Fresno. Stick to it.
4) Use Negative Keywords
As with localizing your ads, using negative keywords will optimize your ads and keep you from wasting money on non-relevant searches. If you have a wine tasting shop you want people to visit, you wouldn’t want searches for “wine online” or “buy wine online”. You would make “online” one of your negative keywords so you don’t come up for those searches. People frequently fail to use negative keywords and this can be a costly mistake.
5) Test Your Ads
Test and test again. Once you have everything set up it doesn’t mean you can kick your feet up and relax. Use the keyword tool and traffic estimator to gauge keywords. Test different ad copy to see if one works better than the other. Add new keywords and monitor old ones. Optimize your landing page. Google Analytics allows you to set up conversions – and you should be using conversions! Testing is the surest way to find out what works best for you.
Do you have any other suggestions for optimizing Google AdWords? Share them with us in the comments.
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