When setting up an Adwords campaign there are 3 common mistakes I see with my client’s accounts and they’re easy to fix. Making one or more of these mistakes can mean the difference between success and failure with your Adwords campaign.
The first mistake I see is sending all visitors to the home page of the website. While there are instances when sending an advert link to the home page is appropriate in most instances it is not the most relevant page for the search query. Make sure that you’re sending people to the most relevant page on your website for the keyword they are searching for. Your adverts should be grouped that all the similar keywords are directing traffic to a certain page on your website while another bunch of keywords are referring to another, equally relevant, page on your website. Not only will this improve your quality score with Google, which will lower your cost per click (CPC) but it will also improve your conversion rate as people will land on the most relevant page on your website and not have to hunt around your site for what they are looking for.
The second most common mistake I see with Adwords accounts is when local businesses who have very specific opening hours bid on keywords across 24 hours when they are only open during the working day. For a lot of companies they don’t answer the phone out of hours so sending clicks to a website that can’t then answer incoming queries is a huge waste. A simple answer is to switch your adverts off when your office is closed and only run your adverts when you can maximise the conversion of those incoming phone calls.
The final error I see that can adversely effect an Adwords campaign is under use of all of the Ad Extensions that are available to you as an advertiser. You can get multiple links below your main advert which will not only take up more real estate on the front page of Google but it allows you to take visitors to multiple pages on your site from the same advert which will automatically increase your relevance and conversion rate. These ad extensions are available from the Adwords dashboard and are simple to fill out. Not every extension is useful for every business but most local businesses can benefit from at least 3 of the available ad extensions.
If you simply rectify the 3 mistakes I’ve discussed in this short article I guarantee you will see an improvement in the performance of your Google Adwords campaign and enjoy a better return on your investment from your paid marketing.