Blog posts tagged google

The top ten common mistakes with Google AdWords campaigns

When training others in setting up their AdWords campaigns, I have noticed that many will have made identical mistakes. My challenge to you is – how many of these errors can be found in YOUR AdWords campaigns?
 
1. Using just one advert to match to lots of unrelated keywords
Here’s an example advert that is suffering from this mistake:
 
Virtual Office
temporary staffing, virtual office
registered office, mail forwarding
www.freelanceofficestaff.co.uk
 
In this example, the advertiser is attempting to use one advert to advertise many of their products and services. To overcome this mistake, set up multiple ad groups, one for each product or service.

2. Sending people to the homepage
A common mistake is to send all visitors direct to the homepage of your website. You have just a few seconds to get and keep someone’s attention on the web! Don’t risk them leaving immediately as they cannot find what they are looking for – send them directly to the page about that particular product or service.

3. Incorrect capitalisation
Capitalise the first letter of each word in your advert (see the example in point 4 below) – this works by making the advert stand out more and increases the likelihood it will get clicked. 

4. Using your company name as the heading for the adverts
This mistake is often replicated by web marketing agencies as well as individual advertisers. Here’s an example:
 
Bristol Party Hire
Bouncy Castles in Bristol
Great Prices From £45
www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk
 
Your advert is NOT about you – it’s about closely matching what the potential visitor is searching for. The advert heading should match the keywords the visitor has used as closely as possible. For example:
 
Bristol Bouncy Castles
Bouncy Castles in Bristol
Great Prices From £45
www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk
 
5. Not tracking the results
Make sure you track your results so you can test which keywords work best to generate leads and / or sales. You can do this by using Google’s conversion tracking (found in the Opportunities tab). 
 
6. Leaving the content network on
The content network is a large number of unrelated websites, all running advertising on their website. Visitors to their websites have the opportunity to click on your ad, costing you money. Turn the content network off to avoid these unnecessary clicks.
 
7. Leaving ads running 24 hours per day
For most products and services, it makes sense to only run adverts at certain times of day. For example, B2B advertisers will benefit from running adverts only during work hours.
 
8. Not using negative keywords
Negative keywords will prevent irrelevant searches. For example, you will probably want to cut out people seeking “free” things. Ideally build a large negative keyword list to save yourself money.
 
9. Failing to use broad, phrase and exact match keywords
These are the three different keyword types which all need to be included in your ad groups to cut down on costs. So make sure you include them all.
 
10. Underutilising the display URL
The display URL can be manipulated to increase Click Through Rate. For example, if advertising bouncy castles – instead of www.bristolpartyhire.co.uk use www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk/BouncyCastles. 
 
Claire Jarrett of MarketingByWeb

• Take advantage of the Marketing Donut Google AdWords offer and articles on how to use them.

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Riding the Google Wave to better business collaboration

We've all played email tennis, either with friends, family or business colleagues. That's fine, if you have the time. If you're working on a proposal document and you're using Word, you can bounce revisions around forever and a day. That's also fine, if you've got the time. Problem is, time is a premium asset these days and if you want to get the most out of your time, you need to save as much of it as possible. And what time you do use, you do so as efficiently as possible — that's where Google's new collaborative communication tool comes in.

Wave is email and revision-aware word processing combined into a real-time web application that allows more than one person to edit the same document at the same time. So imagine starting a new "wave" (which is Google parlance for a new page or document) and then inviting friends to contribute.

Once your colleagues have accepted your invite, you can see them typing in the new wave. Better yet, as you all make additions and changes to each others' copy, you can scrub the revision time line back to a specific point and start again.

The benefits of working with Google Wave are:

• collaborate live with colleagues / clients from anywhere you have an internet connection;
• a complete revision history of all additions and amends throughout the life time of the wave;
• more than one person can edit a wave at the same time;
• you won't have to worry about having the correct version of the software to edit a wave.

Because Wave is free, the only additional time you'll spend will be learning how to use it. And if you can use Word, you can use Wave, too. With all the time you'll save, you could learn to play tennis!

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