Five 5-Minute Checks to Make Your AdWords Campaign More Efficient

AdWords is awesome – it’s easy to use, and it’s great for getting traffic to your site. When was the last time you gave your account a second look to make sure it’s as efficient as possible?

Here are five 5-minutes checks you can do to get on top of spotting errors, addressing inefficiencies, or making things more efficient.

1. Go through the keywords you’ve bought recently and identify at least 10 – 15 negative keywords you should add to your campaign

   No matter how much you try to refine this list from the start, it’s one that needs to be consistently managed. Especially if you use a lot of broad match keywords, you’ll want to go through and see what matches have shown up that are not a fit for you brand.

2. Look at your analytics for whether your paid search landing pages are generating new users

   If your key goal in running Google AdWords is generating new visitors and potential new customers, then double check the landing pages the search traffic is landing on.

   If paid search is the only media you’re paying to run online, you can use the pre-defined “Paid Traffic” segment in Google Analytics.
   

   Otherwise, make a custom segment in Google Analytics for your paid traffic.

   Once you have your segment ready, go to Content > Landing Pages and you can see New Users on each of your landing pages, as well as the percent of traffic those new users represent. If your paid campaigns are showing a significant number of returning users, considering using RLSA to remove return visitors from your AdWords targeting.

3. Go into Your Demographics and Check the Geo Distribution

   While you’ve got your analytics segmented, go ahead and go up to Audience > Geo > Location and take a quick look at the areas your paid search traffic is coming in from. Is it coming in from where you’d expect? Are you not getting any traffic from places you would expect to get some? If you see anomalies like this, check your geo-targeting in AdWords and make sure it’s tight.

4. Consider Adding Your Top 10 Most Clicked Keywords as Exact Match

   If your campaigns have always been based on a broad match keyword set, you might consider testing taking some of your top terms and implementing them in AdWords as exact match types. You’ll want to still have broad match groups to capture all of the long-tail terms.

   In Google’s algorithm for AdWords bidding, Quality Score is an important factor in what you ultimately pay. Frequently, switching to exact match on your top terms will improve the relevance and improve the quality score. Ultimately, this will be decreasing what you need to bid!

5. Check Your Top-Ranked Terms in Webmaster Tools/Search Console Against What You’re Bidding On

   Numerous studies have shown that having both an organic result and a paid result on the same SERP increases the click-through-rate far more than the sum of having either on their individually. I’ve actually seen this happen for clients!

   So go into Webmaster Tools/Search Console, and check which terms you’re ranking the highest for. If you’re not already, consider adding the terms you’re on the first page for to your paid campaigns.

Hopefully, these hints and tips will make your paid search campaigns more effective! There have been times where doing any one of these checks will find 10% or more budget being wasted. Save that money for other investments, and make your paid search more efficient.