Having a top-performing AdWords campaign can feel overwhelming and difficult to achieve. There are so many factors to consider—for example, how do you decide how to allocate your budget when it comes to competitive keywords? A lot of strategy goes in to any PPC campaign, but there are a few tips I can offer to increase your return on ad spend and get you up and running in no time.
1. Separate Your AdWords Search and Display Campaigns
This strategy on its own will already add a significant boost in your account effectiveness.
Run separate Search & Display campaigns:
- "Search" means the word(s) are typed directly into the search query box.
- "Display" means your ad is showing alongside content on the web page(s).
Each network behaves differently and has different definitions of success. More importantly, the quality scores are calculated differently.
2. Use mobile bid modifiers
Mobile bid adjustment (modifiers) is a tactic you can implement quickly and get positive results. Mobile bid adjustment provides you with the opportunity to optimize bids on specific devices that are most profitable for your business. This works best if you have at least 2 to 3 months of data with over 100 conversions – you need enough data to be able to make a strategic bid adjustment decision.
If you notice your site converts better on mobile devices, you want to set aggressive mobile bids ads to ensure your ads are displayed in top positions to potential customs. Furthermore, If your website is not mobile-friendly, you want to, at the very least, lower a number of mobile ads, or turn it off completely. If you've noticed the opposite with visitors converting better on mobile devices, you will want to bid more aggressively for mobile ads.
How to calculate your mobile bid adjustment:
Mobile Bid = mobile conversion rate / desktop conversion Rate – 1
1. From the Campaigns tab, click Segment and choose Device.
2. Choose campaigns with enough data for consistent results (90 days and more than 20 conversions on both Mobile and Computer).
3. Find Computer conversion rate and mobile conversion rate using Estimated Total Conversions column.
4. Divide mobile conversion rate by computer/desktop conversion rate - using the formula below.
Here is an example to demonstrate how the equation looks:
Mobile Conv. Rate = 4.43%
Computer Conv. Rate = 3.96%
(4.43% / 3.96%) -1 = 0.118 = 12%
Use the equation above to calculate how much you should be bidding.
Also, if you want to opt out of showing mobile ads entirely because you've noticed poor performance from mobile devices, the first step is to select a campaign. Open one of your ad groups, and then click on "settings". The third option down the page is Devices, click on this. Then click to change the mobile bid adjustment. Choose from the drop down menu "Decrease by", and enter 100%. This will ensure your ads will not show on mobile devices.
Once you've calculated this number, enter the number into the bid adj. column, click save, and there you have it—you've changed your mobile bid adjustment! A mobile bid adjustment that will either bid more aggressively or decrease bids when device performance is less than par.
3. Direct visitors to relevant landing pages
We all know landing page relevance is important (or at least, I hope so) so this one seems like a no-brainer. Countless AdWords audits have identified that many advertisers still point visitors to a generic Home Page. This strategy will lose potential customers, wasted clicks and increases cost for subsequent clicks.
Simply put, if someone comes to your site, say on the keyword "yellow hats", then you should point them to a product page that offers "yellow hats", or a "yellow hat" category page. The worst thing you could do is send visitors to your home page or general product page and expect visitors to search your site to find a "yellow hat" - just image how can become frustrated when directed to the wrong section of a store.
If your ads are not pointed to relevant product or service pages, money is wasted on clicks, ultimately decreasing landing page relevance and increase bounce rate.It is worth the time to review your keywords, ad groups and landing pages to ensure ads are relevant and useful to potential customers.
According to Google, landing page experience is evaluated on:
- Relevant (determined mostly by the presence of keywords on the page), useful and original content
- Transparency and trustworthiness
- Ease of navigation
- Encouraging visitors to spend time on your site
4. Focus Your Spend on Core Keywords
Focus your budget on your keywords that matter most to your business. There is no point to having thousands of keywords in your account. This not only increases the amount of management time, but it also decreases the amount of the budget that can be allocated to core keywords. Cut out keywords that aren't working on a regular basis.
If you try to spread your budget across multiple keywords, this will undoubtedly lead to tears.
Improving your AdWords campaign is not out of your reach. With the right list of budget priorities, strong landing pages, and an organized strategy, you can see serious improvements.
on
Good tips, I wasn’t aware of mobile bid modifiers and how important they are for the adwords success, I definitely think the best thing you can do is direct users to relevant pages while focusing on the core and most common keywords on the site, that’s what launches you up.
on
Very helpful, thanks for the share Shannon.
on
Hi Shannon,’
This was very helpful, Thanks for the share.