Workbook am

AdWords™ Seminar For Success

Supported by

MORNING TRACK WORKBOOK

Anastasia Holdren
stasia@sitening.com
http://sitening.com

Table of Contents
Introduction to Online Advertising & Google AdWords

• Types of Online Advertising
• Basics of Pay-Per-Click Advertising
• Introduction to AdWords
‣ Features
‣ Beneﬁts
‣ Basic Terminology

Account Navigation

• Creating an Account
• Proper Account Structure
• Understanding Campaign, Ad Group, and Keyword Statistics
• Edit Campaign Settings
• Edit CPCs
• Account Tools

Billing & Reports

• Report Center
• Billing Summary Page
• Billing Cycle

Beginning Optimization

• Choosing Keywords
• Creating Compelling Ad Text
• Language & Regional Targeting Options

AdWords™ Seminar for Success - Copyright 2007, Sitening LLC Page 2 of 68

Introduction to Online Advertising
& Google AdWords™

Why advertise online? Because online spending is on the rise. In 2006 U.S. retail
eCommerce sales will reach an estimated $108.5 billion.

Source: www.eMarketer.com


Online Retailers Should:
• Create compelling websites that make it easy for consumers to ﬁnd, learn about
and purchase products and services

• Create targeted online advertising campaigns to help consumers ﬁnd, learn
about and purchase products and services

• Optimize websites for search engine visibility

Types of Online Advertising

• Graphical Banner Ads/Video/Flash Ads (Rich Media)
• Text ads
• Pop Ups
• Paid Listings/Inclusion/Directories
• Sponsorships

Banner Ad on www.bostondirtdog.com


Paid Directory Listing on www.botw.org


Sponsorships and Banner Ads on FMI dailyLead. Sign up at www.Smartbrief.com


Text Ads on www.google.com

MY NOTES:


What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)?

What is pay-per-click advertising (PPC)? It’s a pricing model where the advertiser
speciﬁes a rate they are willing to pay when a visitor clicks on an advertisement. This
can include advertising on a search engine website or partner websites. If your ad is
displayed 100 times but clicked on 25, you pay for 25 clicks, at the price you set (or
lower).

Why Do People Like PPC So Much?

Control -over campaign

Feedback on performance

Relevancy - ads are targeted to searcher’s intentions

Measurable Results - you know how many people click on your ad

Other Models:

CPM: Advertiser pays a fee per thousand impressions (ad views) whether it was clicked
on or not.

Flat Fee: Fee for running an online advertisement for a speciﬁc period of time, regard-
less of how many impressions or clicks.

MY NOTES:


Introduction to Google AdWords™
Google AdWords is Google's advertising program. Why does it work so well?

✒ Keyword-Based Advertising

The system matches a visitor’s intentions with advertisements that can be targeted spe-
ciﬁcally to their need.

Examples:

I am hungry for Brazilian food! I search Google.com for: “brazilian restaurant in los an-
geles.” Tonight I will eat at Gaucho’s Village:

I have never seen the Golden Gate Bridge! I search Google for “golden gate bridge
tour.” Maybe I’ll take a Bay Cruise tomorrow:


Wow, I miss Boston. I’ll try to snag some tickets to a Celtics game while I’m in town. I’ll
search Google for tickets.

MY NOTES:


Some Cool Features
The Google Network

The Google Network is made up of thousands of content and search sites displaying
targeted Google ads. These sites include major web portals and search sites, as well as
sites that are enrolled in the Google AdSense program.

Some Search Network Members:

• AOL
• Ask.com
• AT&T Worldnet
• CompuServe
• Shopping.com
• Netscape NetCenter

Some Content Network Members:

• About.com
• Lycos
• InfoSpace
• HowStuffWorks
• Food Network
• NYTimes.com


Search Network

• Ads are shown on the search results pages search sites and shopping com-
parison engines.
• Keyword targeted ads - contextually targeted.
• Text ads only.
• Advertisers cannot use site-targeting to select individual search network sites.
• Formatting can vary slightly from site to site, and will be automatically adjusted.

Content Network
• Contextually targeted - keyword-based advertisement.
• Site targeted - allows advertiser to select website sites on which to run ads. In-
stead of matching keywords to content, it targets a speciﬁc audience. Site target-
ing is priced by CPM, not CPC.
• Image ads are reserved for the content network, and will not appear on search
network sites. They can be contextually or site targeted.
• Text and image ads: Formatting can vary slightly from site to site, and will be
automatically adjusted.
• Smart Pricing - content network ads sometimes return lower conversion rates
than ads on Google.com. Google automatically lowers the cost of content clicks
based on the referring site if data shows that clicks from a particular page are
less likely to convert.

Language Targeting

• Google lets users choose the language in which they want to search. Google will
only display ads that are targeted to the chosen language. We’ll discuss later in
the session.

Location Targeting

• Display ads to targeted areas: countries, regions, cities, customized areas. We’ll
discuss later in the session.


Beneﬁts of AdWords

• RELEVANCE - Ads targeted to potential customers, engaging them when they
are actively looking for speciﬁc products or services.

• TARGETING - Ads can be shown to people in the areas you do business. You do
not have to display ads to people who aren't likely to purchase from you.

• CONTROL - You can change your ad campaign anytime, at no cost.

• COST - You control the budget. Set it as high or as low as you want. There is no
minimum advertising spend.

• FLEXIBILITY - Updates are live within 15 minutes. AdWords is available 24
hours a day. Ads start running almost immediately after you activate your account
and provide payment information.

• REACH - AdWords reaches approximately 80 percent of U.S. Internet users and
hundreds of millions more worldwide.

MY NOTES:


Basic Terminology
AdWords - Google’s advertising program.

AdSense - the program publishers use to place Google AdWords ads on their websites
to receive revenue from Google, when visitors click on the ads (or view ads, for site-
targeted ad campaigns).

Ad Position - where your ad appears in relation to other ads on a page. Position #1 is
the ﬁrst ad; there are up to 10 positions available on a Google search result page.

Bid Discounter - Google system of automatically lowering your bid to be one penny
more than the maximum bid of the competitor below you.

Budget Optimizer - a feature that automatically choose your bids to maximize the
number of clicks on your ad within your budget. For keyword campaigns with CPC bid-
ding only.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR): a metric that helps evaluate ads performance.
Relevant ads= more clicks = higher CTR.
AdWords calculates CTR as follows: Ad Clicks/Impressions x 100.

Conversion Rate - the percentage of visitors who take a desired action (buy a product,
sign up for an email list, etc.).

Cost-per-click (CPC): the AdWords pricing model for contextually targeted ads. You
are charged for each click on your ads.

CPM (Cost-Per-Impression): the AdWords pricing model for site targeted ads. You are
charged each time your ad appears on a page, whether a visitor clicks on it or not. You
set the maximum price you want to pay for every thousand impressions.

Display URL: The fourth line of every AdWords text ad. It must be a website, with an
appropriate extension (.com, .net, etc.). A leading http:// and www are not required.
It must indicate the destination URL, but does not need to match the actual the landing
page exactly.

Impression - An advertisement's appearance on an accessed Web page. For example,
if the page you're on shows three ads, that's three impressions.

IP (IP Address) - An identiﬁer for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. The for-
mat of an IP address is a numeric address written as four numbers separated by peri-
ods. Each number ranges from 0 to 255. Google uses IP address to help determine the
location of a computer.


Hits - The retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a Web server. For exam-
ple, when a visitor calls up one Web page with four graphics, that's five hits, one for the
page and four for the graphics. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of
Web traffic.

Inactive Keywords: Poorly performing keywords with a low Quality Score can become
inactive for search. These keywords will stop triggering your ad on Google and the
search network. You can reactivate such keywords by increasing your Quality Score or
raising your maximum cost per click amounts.

Keyword - the terms you specify that can trigger your ad. This can be a single word or a
phrase.

Keyword Matching
- Broad - default setting. Will trigger your ad whenever it appears within a
searcher’s query. It includes variations and synonyms of the keyword.
- Phrase -triggers your ad for any query that includes your keyword or phrase in
the exact sequence and form that you specify. Enclose your keyword(s) in
quotes.
- Exact - the most precise targeting method. Triggers your ad only on a query that
exactly matches the keyword or phrase. Enclose your keywords in square brack-
ets.
- Negative - keywords that prevent your ad from appearing when a search includes
a keyword that isn't relevant to your ad. Add a minus sign (-) before the keyword
or phrase you want restrict.

Landing Page - the page on your website that your advertisement links to.

Minimum bid: The amount assigned to a given keyword in your account based on its
quality (or Quality Score). The minimum bid is usually the least amount you can pay per
click in order for your keyword to show ads.

Page View - A Web page that has been viewed by one visitor. Page views are often
used in online advertising, where advertisers use the number of page views a site re-
ceives to determine where and how to advertise.

Paid Inclusion - A search engine marketing model in which a Web site pays a fee to a
search engine that then guarantees that the Web site will be displayed in the returned
search results for specifically named search terms. Different search engines treat paid
inclusion results differently; some indicate the paid inclusion results as advertisements
while others display them as results alongside non-paid search results.

Position Preference: the ability to specify where you’d prefer your ad to show among
all the AdWords ads on a given page.


Quality Score: Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality of your keyword and
determining your minimum bid. Quality Score is determined by your keyword's click-
through rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, and
other relevancy factors. The higher your Quality Score, the lower your minimum bid and
price you'll pay per click.

Return on Investment (ROI) or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) - an accounting formula
used to obtain an actual or perceived future value of an expense or investment. Your
ROI can be calculated as revenue from sales, minus advertising costs, all divided by the
cost of advertising.

Example:
If your advertising costs for the past week were $500 and you've sold $1,000 worth of
inventory as a result, you have a 100% ROI for the week.

The formula: $1,000 (revenue) minus $500 (ad costs); divided by $500 (ad costs). To
express ROI as a percentage, multiply the result by 100.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) - the Web page that a search engine returns
with the results of its search.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - describes acts associated with researching, sub-
mitting and positioning a Web site within search engines to achieve maximum exposure
of a website.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - the process of increasing the number of visitors
to a website by ranking high in the search engine results pages. The higher a website
ranks, the greater the chance that that site will be visited.

Site Targeted Ads: An alternative to keyword-targeted campaigns, site targeting lets
you choose speciﬁc websites in the Google Network where your ads might run.

MY NOTES:


Account Navigation
Ways to Create an Account:

Starter Edition: Starter Edition is a simpliﬁed version of AdWords to advertise a single
product. Starter Edition provides a one-page signup and a simpliﬁed account. There are
no Ad Groups, image ads, CPC bidding or advanced features. Starter Edition advertis-
ers write their ad text, target locations and keywords and choose monthly budget. The
Google Budget Optimizer is enabled automatically to determine when to show the ads
to earn the most clicks possible within the monthly budget.


Standard Edition: This is the full version of Google AdWords. This account provides
you all the advanced tools and features available.

MY NOTES:


Proper Account Structure

An AdWords account is structured like this:

1. Account - general information about advertiser, billing information

2. Campaigns (up to 25 per account) - set daily budget, target languages and loca-
tions, set distribution preferences

3. Ad Groups (up to 100 per campaign) - sets of ads and keywords

Successful advertisers tend to build many small, highly targeted
Ad Groups around their products, services or keywords.

MY NOTES:


Understanding Campaign,
Ad Group, and Keyword Statistics

Campaign Statistics - All Campaigns

When you ﬁrst login to your AdWords account, you will see a performance summary for
all of your campaigns. Each campaign will be listed, as well as its status (Active,
Paused, Deleted), the current budget, the number of clicks the campaign has received,
the number of impressions, the clickthrough rate, the average cost per click and the to-
tal cost.

You can:

• Specify a timeframe or date range

• View all campaigns, only active campaigns or all but deleted.

• You can make changes to a speciﬁc campaign by checking the box next to its
name and taking the appropriate action (pause, resume, delete, edit settings).


Campaign Statistics - Speciﬁc Campaign

Click on the campaign name you wish to review. You will see an overview of the cam-
paign, including its Ad Groups. For each Ad Group you can see status (Active, Paused,
Deleted), the default bid (maximum cost per click), the number of clicks received, the
number of impressions received, clickthrough rate, the average cost per click, the total
cost, and the average position of the ad on a search results page.

You can:

• Specify a timeframe or date range.

• View all Ad Groups, only active, or all but deleted.

• You can make changes to a speciﬁc Ad Groups by checking the box next to its
name and taking the appropriate action (pause, resume, delete, edit settings).

MY NOTES:


Ad Group Statistics

Click on the Ad Group you wish to review. You will see an overview of the Ad Groups
separated on three tabs. The default tab view is Summary. Click on the tabs at the right
to view Keywords and Ad Variations. The summary page shows the status, current bid,
click received, impressions received, average cost per click, total cost and average ad
position. The data is split to show results on Google & the search network (if the search
network is enabled) as well as the content network (if enabled). You can specify a time-
frame or date range.

Summary Page

MY NOTES:


The Keyword tab shows detailed statistics about each keyword in your Ad Group, in-
cluding its status (active or inactive for search), current bid (maximum cost per click),
number of clicks, number of impressions, average cost per click, total cost and average
ad position on a search results page.

Keyword Page

MY NOTES:


The Ad Variations tab shows a breakdown of each ad’s performance. You will see the
ads, their status, the percentage served (compared to other ad variations), number of
clicks, number of impressions, clickthrough rate and cost. The numbers will also be bro-
ken down by the content network and the search network, if opted in.

Ad Variations Page

MY NOTES:


Edit Campaign Settings

You can edit campaign settings by either:

• (For accounts with multiple campaigns) From the main “Campaign Management”
page, selecting the campaign to edit and clicking the “Edit Settings” button.
• From within the campaign statistics page, click on the “Edit Campaign Settings”
link.

You will see the Edit Campaign Settings page:

From here you can:

• Rename your campaign
• View start date
• Set an end date
• Adjust campaign daily budget and ﬁnd recommended budget


• Set a delivery method
• Choose manual bidding or select the Budget Optimizer
• Schedule ads by time of day/day of week

• Specify a position preference
• Specify how your ads should be served (Show better-performing ads more often,
• Opt in or out of Google’s search results pages, search network results pages, con-
tent network, and set separate bids for content network clicks.
• Target audience by language
• Target audience by location

Remember to click “Save Changes” when you have ﬁnished.

MY NOTES:


Edit Cost Per Clicks - Manual Bidding
Advertisers have two budget options for non-site-targeted ads, the Budget Optimizer
(automatically chooses your bids to maximize the number of clicks based on your
budget, using an algorithm) and manual bidding, which allows you to set your own bids.

To set a maximum CPC for an Ad Group, go to the Ad Group Summary page. Click the
“edit” link under Current Bid:

Adjust the maximum bid and save changes:


To set a maximum CPC for individual keywords, go to the Ad Group Keywords page.
Select the keyword(s) you wish to edit and click the “Edit Keyword Settings” button.
Note: you may also edit the entire Ad Group CPC by clicking the “edit” link under Cur-
rent Bid:

Adjust the maximum bids for individual keywords and save changes. You may also as-
sign individual landing pages for each keyword.

MY NOTES:


Account Tools
AdWords has a suite of account management tools. To access all the tools, click on the
“Tools” link under the Campaign Management tab. The tools are grouped by purpose:
optimizing ads, modifying campaigns and analyzing ad performance.

Optimize Your Ads

• Keyword Tool - helps you generate targeted keywords.
• Edit Campaign Negative Keywords - helps you manage negative keywords at
the campaign level. It also includes a “Clean Sweep” tool to remove negative
keywords from the Ad Group level and add them at the campaign level.
• Site Exclusion - allows you to prevent your ads from showing up on speciﬁc
websites in the content network.
• Trafﬁc Estimator - shows how often your ads may appear for certain keywords.


Modify Your Campaign

• Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text - helps you reorganize your campaigns
by copying or moving keywords and ad text to another Ad Group in your account.
• Advanced Search and Editing - helps you locate ad text, keywords, and Max
CPCs across your entire account. You can apply changes to your search results.

Analyze Your Ad Performance

• Ads Diagnostic Tool - if you can't see your ads, use this tool to see if your ad is
currently running. This tool reports whether an ad is appearing on the ﬁrst page
of search results and identiﬁes why a particular ad or group of ads may not be
showing.
• Disapproved Ads - shows you if any of your ads have been disapproved and
why.
• Conversion Tracking - tracking to collect data about sales, leads, and other
user activity resulting from your ads.
• My Change History - browse changes made to the account in the last three
months.

MY NOTES:


Billing & Reports

Report Center
AdWords reports are collections of statistics that help advertisers analyze the perform-
ance of their ad campaigns, identifying trends over time.


Report Center Features

• Reports can be customized with configurable columns and performance filters.
• Reports can run on a regular schedule or on demand.
• Reports can be run hourly to examine performance by time of day.
• Reports can be viewed online or downloaded and opened in Excel.
• Reports can be emailed to you on a regular schedule.
• Advertisers can save report templates, to easily re-run reports with the desired
columns and filtered.
• Last five reports are saved.


Types of Reports
The AdWords Report Center can help you generate reports on speciﬁc areas:

• Keyword Performance: Displays details on selected keywords and organizes
statistics by keyword.

• Ad Performance: Displays statistics by ad, allowing you to compare the per-
formance of different messages. You can select the ad format (Text Ad, Image
Ad, Mobile Text Ad, Local Business Ad)

• URL Performance: Displays statistics and measures the performance of Desti-
nation URLs.

• Ad Group Performance: Organizes statistics for each of your Ad Groups.

• Campaign Performance: Organizes statistics for each of your campaigns.

• Account Performance: Generates statistics for your entire account, or for a por-
tion of your account.

MY NOTES:


To Create a Report
Click on the “Create Report” link under the Reports tab.

Step 1: Report Type

1. Report Type: Select from the list of options.


Step 2: Settings

1. View (Unit of Time): Summary, daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly.

2. Date Range: Select a general date range or data for speciﬁc dates.

3. Campaigns and Ad Groups: Include all campaigns, individual campaigns or Ad
Groups.


Step 3: Advanced Settings (Optional)

1. Add or Remove Columns: Customize data for your report. Click Add or Remove
Columns link to see available data for report type (Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Aver-
age CPC, Cost, Average Position, Campaign, Daily Budget, Campaign Status, Ad
Group, Ad Group Status, Headline, Display URL, etc.).

2. Filters Your Results: Customize your report by filtering up to four data types. To
create report filters, click Display only rows that match specific criteria. Then choose
and customize up to four relevant data types, including Ad Distribution, Status,
Match Type, Site/ Keyword, Average Position, Clicks, Cost, Average CPC, CTR, and
Impressions.


Step 4: Templates, Scheduling and Email

1. Name Your Report: Name your report and check the box to Save this as a report
template if you want to run duplicate reports in the future.

2. Scheduling: If you want to run this report on a regular basis, check the box to
schedule automatic reports and choose a delivery schedule: daily, every Monday
or the ﬁrst day of each month).

3. Email: You can opt for an email notiﬁcation when your report is ready (for multi-
ple email addresses, separate each with a comma). If you want your report at-
tached to the email, check select your preferred report format.

Step 5: Create Report

1. Click the Create Report button; your report will be ready within a few minutes.
You can leave the Reports section and return later to retrieve it.


Billing Summary Page
On the Billing Summary page you'll see your billing history and invoices. Access de-
tailed information about each invoice by clicking the invoice number link.

1. Month: The month of reported activity.
2. Date: The date of payment activity.
3. Activity: Adjustments, charges, or declined payments during the reported month,
and unique invoices for each payment toward your account.
4. Credits: Costs per campaign itemized by the date billed and invoice number. Ad-
justments are also itemized (promotional credits, credits for invalid charges to-
ward your account, and courtesy credits).
5. Charges: Subtotaled charges for the current month.
6. Balance: May be carried forward or outstanding, depending on the last payment
made. The amount shown reﬂects reported costs accrued and may not reﬂect the


most recent clicks or impressions. If the balance is zero, then you have recently
made a payment and additional charges have yet to be reported.

Each invoice has a Payment Received link. Click to view the Payment Details page.

For more details about a speciﬁc payment, click the invoice number that you wish to re-
view (after the Payment Received link)

1. Invoice Details: Invoice/payment date and time, taxes and invoice number.
2. Account Adjustments and Fees: Applicable fees (account activation or re-
activation). Adjustments are also itemized (promotional credits, credits toward
your account, and courtesy credits).
3. Advertising Costs Charged To This Invoice:
• Campaign: campaign for which activity was recorded.
• Date Range
• Billable Activity: Explanation of charges (clicks, impressions, or over-
delivery credit).


• Amount of Activity: The number of clicks or impressions accrued.
• Budget: The daily budget for the delivery period shown.
• Amount: Charges accrued during the delivery period shown. This amount
may also include over-delivery adjustments.
• Total: Subtotals appear per campaign; the ﬁnal line represents total advertis-
ing charges for the invoice.

Click Printable invoice to print an invoice for your records.

Over-Delivery

• Google may allow up to 20 percent more clicks in one day than a daily budget allows.
• They will not charge you more than your daily budget multiplied by the number of
days in that delivery period.
• If over-delivery exceeds speciﬁed budget, the account will receive a credit listed on the
invoice as over-delivery credit.


Credit Card Declines

• Advertisers are notiﬁed via email if a credit card has been declined.
• Detailed information is available on the Payment Declined Details page. It in-
cludes itemized details by invoice, including the date and amount of the at-
tempted charge, and the reason they were unable to process the payment.

If your card is declined, check the following:

• Correct credit card number?
• Correct expiration date? Has that date passed?
• Correct billing address and phone number? Address and phone number listed in
the account should match information associated with credit card.
• Exceeded the credit limit? Your credit card must have enough available credit to
cover your monthly advertising budget.

To process a declined charge and reactivate an account, billing information must be up-
dated, even if the credit card information did not change. Once the payment is proc-
essed the ads will run again.

To avoid interruption of your ad campaign, enter a backup credit card on the Billing
Preferences page. If your primary card is declined your ads won’t stop running.

Pending Charges

• Pending charges are determined by the number of clicks received since last
billed.
• Outstanding balance provides an estimate for upcoming charges. The outstand-
ing balance is updated throughout the day, and includes deductions for over-
delivery credits. This balance may be more than what you are actually charged
for the time period, as additional credits may be applied.
• If you pause or delete campaigns, it is important to note that pending charges will
be charged to at the end of the billing period. AdWords runs on a 30-day billing
cycle, so campaigns may be billed up to one month after pausing or deleting
them.

MY NOTES:


Billing Cycle
• A credit card is charged based on the AdWords billing cycle. The AdWords billing
period is defined by Google and is not the billing period of the credit card.
• When you create and activate an account with a credit or debit card, Google
starts running your ads almost immediately.
• Google charges you every 30 days unless your advertising costs reach a certain
threshold within the 30-day cycle.

How Charges Work:

• Google won't charge you before 30 days unless you accrue $50 worth of clicks or
impressions.
• The first time your account reaches $50 within 30 days, Google will charge you.
• Then, Google will let you accrue $200 worth of clicks before charging you within
the next 30 days.
• If you reach the $200 limit within 30 days, Google will charge you and raise your
credit limit to $350.
• Once you reach the $350 limit, you'll be charged again, and your limit will be
raised to $500, the maximum allowed.
• The amount billed may be in excess of the limit since ads continue to run and
generate charges between the time the billing cycle is triggered and the time the
charge is completed.
• The activation fee, along with any other advertising costs accrued, is charged to
your credit card at the end of your first billing period.

At the end of your billing period, you will be charged for all costs accrued during that cy-
cle.

MY NOTES:


Beginning Optimization
Choosing Keywords
The core component of every AdWords account is the set of keywords used in a cam-
paign. A thoughtful approach to building keywords and their corresponding Ad Groups
can help connect your ad with potential customers. Google rewards better ad cam-
paigns by lowering the cost of ad clicks and upping the ad’s position.

Effective campaigns usually:

• Have targeted Ad Groups with specific sets of keywords for the featured service
or product.
• Use a combination of keyword match types: exact, broad, phrase and negative
matching.
• Avoid single term, broad matched keywords unless the word is relatively specific
(Example: “flower” versus “chrysanthemum”).

Building a Keyword List:

1. Brainstorm your business. What keywords come to mind immediately?
2. Review your website. Are there additional keywords you can use?
3. Think like a customer. What types of phrases would your potential customers
use?
4. Focus. What differentiates your business?
5. Include plural and singular versions of your keywords.
6. Include common spelling mistakes and variations on your keywords.
7. Include product numbers and codes.
8. Use Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. Find variations of your keyword. Review
their suggestions not only for possible additions, but possible negative keywords
as well.
9. Look at other keyword tools for more ideas. Yahoo! Search Marketing has free a
“Keyword Selector Tool” located at:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. There is a popular
paid service called Wordtracker that can help. Free trials available at:
http://www.wordtracker.com/free-trial.html
10. Be aware of industry buzzwords in the media.
11. Organize, organize, organize!


Keyword Matching Types
Broad - default setting. It is the least targeted option and usually will not convert well
for general, single term keywords. But, it will give your ad the widest reach possible.
Your ad will show up whenever the keywords, in any order, show up within a searcher’s
query. It includes variations and synonyms of the keyword.

Example: milk delivery service

Would show your ad when people searched for:

• milk delivery service
• fresh milk delivery service
• service for milk delivery
• milk delivery service in the boston area
• delivery service for transporting milk cows across country

Phrase -This setting allows you to specify an exact phrase and a word order for your
keywords. The person's query can contain terms on either side of the phrase, but the
phrase itself must be present. To indicate a phrase match, enclose your keywords in
quotes.

Example: “milk delivery service”


• fresh milk delivery service
• fresh milk delivery services

Exact - the most precise targeting method. Triggers your ad only on a query that exactly
matches the keyword or phrase. Enclose your keywords in square brackets.

Example: [milk delivery service]




Negative - keywords that prevent your ad from appearing when a search includes a
keyword that isn't relevant to your ad. Add a minus sign (-) before the keyword or phrase
you want restrict.

Examples: -free, -organic, -cow, -boston

Would NOT show your ad when people searched for:

• free milk delivery service
• organic milk delivery service
• milk cow delivery services

Note on Inactive Keywords

AdWords will analyze the performance of a keyword on Google search to determine its
relevance. If Google determines it does not have a high enough Quality Score and
maximum CPC, it may become “inactive for search.” In this case, you can either raise
your bid, optimize the keyword, ad text, or campaign, or delete the word from your list.


Exercises:
Generate keywords for the following examples. Include as many appropriate
match types as you can.

Scenario One:

You sell a variety of trendy maternity and nursing clothes, custom-made baby slings,
and cool baby clothes. You do not have a physical location; all your products are sold
through your website. Customers are directed to an online form to purchase and submit
size/color speciﬁcations for the baby slings.

KEYWORDS:

Scenario Two:

You own a moving company that specializes in moving pianos and other fragile objects.
You are based in Stoneham, MA (near Boston). You will pick up and deliver pianos any-
where in Massachusetts, and a hundred mile radius around the state (New Hampshire,
New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island. You have a website with information
about your company and a form for customers to ﬁll out to request a quote.

KEYWORDS:


Scenario Three:

Your OWN business. Create a list of keywords that could bring potential customers to
your website.

KEYWORDS:

MY NOTES:


Creating Compelling Ad Text
A typical AdWords ad has the following format:

• Ad title (25 characters maximum, including spaces)
• Two description lines (35 characters maximum each line, including spaces)
• Display URL (name of website, 35 characters maximum, including spaces)

Certain wide characters and double-byte characters will reduce the number of characters permitted per
line.

The Takeaway: You cannot fit your entire sales pitch into 95 characters. Focus on one
special offer, service or product. Include a call to action, and anything that differentiates
you. Poorly performing ads are vague and/or poorly written. Successful ads are well-
written, specific and compelling.

Optimization Tips and Techniques to Try:

• Personalization (targeting ad text to very specific searches).
• Testing ad text variations - slight changes, different calls to action, unique copy.
• Use keywords in title or text (avoid putting your company name in title unless it’s
a big brand).
• Link to the most appropriate landing page - homepage is not always best.
• Include a call to action, such as 'buy', 'order' and 'purchase.’
• Try including the price for a product.
• Obey Google’s editorial guidelines:
https://adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html

About Ad Variations
AdWords offers an optimized ad serving option. Here's how it works: When you have
more than one ad in an Ad Group, ads will show equally. As a particular ad achieves
better CTR, AdWords will automatically show the higher performing ad more frequently.

To activate optimized ad serving:
Login to your account, select the campaign, then click “Edit Campaign Settings.” On this
page, you can select one of two ad serving options. You can select the checkbox next to
Optimize: Show better-performing ads more often to enable your better performing ads
to show more often than ads with lower CTRs. Or, you can select the checkbox next to
Rotate: Show all ads equally to serve each ad evenly regardless of performance.


Exercises:
Generate ad text for the following examples.

Scenario One:

You repair electronics, specializing in XBox repair. You have a shop in San Mateo and
people also ship broken equipment to you from around the west coast. Your website
[www.xbox-repair-shop.com] includes directions to your shop, instructions for shipping
equipment in need of repair, and a popular email newsletter and blog about XBox re-
lated news and information.

AD TEXT:

Scenario Two:

You sell theme party supplies through your website [www.theme-parties-for-you.com].
You offer a wide variety of packages based on holidays, popular children’s characters,
special events, themes (beach party, luau, Texas BBQ) etc. You are trying to push sales
for Oktoberfest party supplies. Your package includes a CD of Oompah music, blue and
white decorations, plastic steins, aprons and suspenders. You offer rush delivery and
your package is priced $35 less than your biggest competitor.

AD TEXT:


Scenario Three:

Your OWN business. Write ad text that could bring potential customers to your website.

AD TEXT:


Optimize By Language and Location

How Does Google Know Where People Are and What Language They Speak?

Google has the ability to figure out – in most cases – where a searcher is geographically
located. They first look at the domain being searched on to figure out what country the
searcher is from (.com for U.S., .es for Spain, etc.)

You can see a list here: http://www.google.com/language_tools


Then they use the computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is assigned by an
Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Thirdly, Google will try to identify a location in the search terms, like “Nashville Realtors.”

For a searcher, Google’s ability to target ads makes the service highly relevant. If you
live in Boston and your back is sore, you might go to Google.com and search for “mas-
sage therapist.” Google has the ability to display ads targeted to your geographic area.
And, if you searched for “massage therapist boston” Google could do the same.

So, in the same way that this ability to deliver relevant ads helps the user, it helps you,
the advertiser. If you have a massage therapy practice in Boston, it does you little good
if your ad is shown to searchers in Honolulu. Google’s ability to target ads on such a
granular level can help your business, particularly if your products and customers have
geographic restrictions. It helps you to reach qualiﬁed prospects without wasting your
money.


Overall, the geographical accuracy is very good. According to Maxmind, an industry-
leading provider of geolocation and online fraud detection tools, their own data can ac-
curately identify a user’s location by IP address 99 percent of the time on a country
level, 85 percent on a state level and 80 percent within a 25 mile radius in the U.S.
[http://www.maxmind.com/app/city]. Google presumably has comparable accuracy be-
cause they have a vested interest in relevant searches. The better the results are, the
more likely searchers will continue to use Google, the more likely advertisers will be
seen (and their ads clicked on).

There are situations when Google may not be able to correctly identify where a user is
located. Reasons include:

• The searcher’s ISP prevents Google from identifying an IP address.
• The IP address doesn't match the location of the searcher. So, a computer lo-
cated in Atlanta might be mistaken for a computer in Destin, Florida.
• And, if Google does not recognize a city or town, you won’t be able to target an
ad there.

Google’s ability to figure out where the people are, and your ability to target your ads
there, makes Google AdWords an extremely powerful advertising tool. You no longer
have to cast as wide a net as possible to communicate with potential customers. In fact,
it can be to your benefit to target the most specific area possible. This lesson will take
you through the steps to create an effective local campaign.

Language Targeting

Use language-specific targeting if your audience speaks a particular languages. Be-
cause people speak many different languages within a location, an effective way to
reach them is to target by language. Visit the Edit Campaign Settings page to target
one, several, or all languages.

MY NOTES:


Setting Up Location Targeting

First Question - What Type of Campaign Is Best for My Business?

Before we create a regionally targeted ad, an important step is to consider who your
customers are and where your products and services are sold. If your business targets
a state or a metro region, you can choose to display ads to these locations only. If your
customer base is even more targeted, say within a certain radius, or in a small geo-
graphic area – for example, a local courier service – then a custom, locally targeted ad
campaign probably makes the most sense for you. And, you may need both local and
national or international campaigns.

How Do I Target My Potential Customers?

AdWords allows you to geographically target your campaign in the following ways:

• By country
• By region/state/city (not available for all countries)
• Radius from single point on a map

Setting Up a Local Campaign by Region/State/City

Let’s use Jason, an organic farmer from Ithaca, New
York as our example. He grows soybeans, which he
makes into fresh tofu and sells at a single local market.
The product is not sold anywhere else or shipped to
other locations. Jason’s fresh tofu is a good ﬁt for a
local ad campaign. Jason would choose to display this
ad to people searching for “fresh organic tofu” within a
50-mile radius of the farmers market.

But, Jason may also sell packets of seeds to a na-
tional market. In this case, he would create a separate,
nationally targeted campaign touting “organic soybean
seeds.”

The following pages show how to setup a local cam-
paign.


How To Do It:

1. Make a New Campaign: From the “Campaign Management” tab, click on the
link: “Create a new campaign: keyword-targeted.”
2. Give it a Name, Identify Your Customers: Name your new campaign and Ad
Group and select your target language(s). At the bottom you’ll see a section ti-
tled: “Target customers by location.” If you’d like to set up a local campaign and
target a city, select the “Regions and cities” option and click “Continue.”


3. Select Your Target Location(s): The next page allows you to select states and/
or cities within states. A quick look at New York shows that Ithaca is not listed.
But, there is a box below that allows you to type in city names. So, type in “Ith-
aca, NY” and click “Continue.”

Google recognized Ithaca, NY and sends you to the next page.


4. Ad Text: The next step is to create your ad text. Because this campaign will be
locally targeted to Ithaca, it should be written differently than a campaign targeted
to a wide area. For example, if you could reasonably assume that most people
living in Ithaca would know where “Jason’s Farmers Market” was, an ad mention-
ing it, targeted to Ithaca, would make sense. However, if the same ad was also
shown to searchers in New York City, most would probably have no idea where
“Jason’s Farmers Market” was located.


5. Choose Your Keywords: Now you can select the keywords you want to associate
with this Ad Group. Remember to keep your keywords as focused as possible.
The more closely they match the product you’re trying to sell, the better return on
your investment.


6. Set Your Budget: The next step asks for your daily budget and your maximum
desired cost per click. Once you’ve entered this information, click “Continue.”


7. Review Selections: You now have an opportunity to review all the information you
entered. You can make any changes from this page or click “Save Campaign” to
save your changes. You can also select “Create Another Ad Group,” which will
allow you to create another group in the same campaign (i.e. the same geo-
graphic targeting).

Congratulations! You created your ﬁrst locally targeted campaign for Ithaca, NY.


Creating a Campaign with a Customized Location – A Radius Around a Single Lo-
cation

Your campaign for Jason’s tofu targets Ithaca, but you realize that some customers are
traveling from areas beyond Ithaca’s city limits, and the campaign may be too narrow.
So, you decide to create a new campaign that displays his ad for fresh tofu to searchers
in a 50-mile radius from the farmers market.

Let’s go through the steps to set up this ad campaign.

2. Create a New Campaign: From the “Campaign Management” tab, click on the
link: “Create a new campaign: keyword-targeted”

3. Give it a Name, Identify Your Customers: Name your new campaign and Ad
Group and select your target language(s). At the bottom you’ll see a section ti-
tled: “Target customers by location.” Select the “Customized” option and click
“Continue.”


3. Select Your Target Location(s): On this page you can target customers in a circu-
lar area around your location. You can do this by:

• Entering a physical address
• Selecting a point on the map

Let’s begin with option A.

Enter a physical address for Jason’s Farmers Market. To preview the map, click on
“Map this location.” If it looks correct, move to step 2, deﬁning the area. Google recom-
mends a minimum area of 20 miles or 35 kilometers. For Jason’s ad, let’s enter a 50-
mile radius. Then click “Map this area” to preview the target area on the map.

If it looks correct, click “Continue.”


Repeat steps 4 through 7 outlined in the last section:

4. Create Ad Text
5. Choose Your Keywords
6. Set Your Budget
7. Review Selections and Save Campaign

Now, let’s back up to step 4 and help Jason target customers in another way. Instead of
entering an address, let’s try option B, selecting a point on a map.

This option allows you to ﬁnd coordinates by using the map. Follow these steps:

• Click and drag the map to your region.
• Use (+) and (-) keys to zoom in or out.
• Center the marker on your location. Your ads will appear in a circular area around
this point.
• Coordinates will appear below automatically.


Once you’ve found your target area on the map, enter the radius in miles or kilometers
where you’d like that ad to appear. Then click “Map this area” to preview.

If it looks correct, click “Continue.” Again, repeat steps 4 through 7:

4. Create Ad Text
6. Set Your Budget

Now, let’s back up to step 4 one last time and create a custom area using the advanced
multi-point option.


Creating a Campaign with a Customized Location – Multi-Point Option

Google AdWords also allows advertisers to specify a non-circular area to target ads.
This option would be useful for Jason if he offers a local delivery service for his fresh
tofu. Using the polygon tool, he could delineate his delivery area and target his ads to
searchers within it.

Let’s set one up.

Look under the map image for the box that says: “Advanced option – Skip to our multi-
point option where you’ll enter a list of coordinates to deﬁne a non-circular area.”


Click on the “multi-point option” link and you will see a similar page:

This page is similar to the last map page, but instead of selecting a single point on the
map, you can pick three or more points to deﬁne a target area of any size and shape.

• Click and drag the map to your region.
• Use (+) and (-) keys to zoom in or out.
• Click map points to outline the local area you want.
• Lines of the polygon cannot cross. Re-click any point to remove it. Click “Clear
polygon” to start over.

If you happen to know your coordinates, you could enter them manually in the box, one
pair per line. Use an asterisk (*) to designate degrees. Most of us will click on the map
and Google will handle the coordinates for us.


Once you have mapped out the area, click “Continue.”

Again, repeat steps 4 through 7:

4. Create Ad Text
6. Set Your Budget

That’s it! You’ve setup your local campaign.


MY NOTES:


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