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Google Adwords - waste of money? |
| Posted by Andy Smith (andy) on Jan 20 2009 at 12:18 PM |
Google adwords are a great way to get more targeted visitors to your website. You really need to be careful though as you can easily get carried away with the spend and end up making a loss. Google make it dead easy to set up and get going, but it's not so easy to make it a great success. Here are 3 things you need to do right now if you have a campaign running.
1) Measure the conversion rate
A conversion is something the visitor does on your website, having searched for a phrase you are bidding on. It could be placing an order or completing an online enquiry form, or even visiting a certain page. Google provide a tool that lets you track these conversions and work it back to £ per conversion by key phrase. If you are not using this, then you may as well take your cash down to Ladbrokes!
Your conversion rate and cost per conversion will differ depending on your industry and phrases chosen. We have conversion rates as high as 50% and as low as 0.01%. Whether this is good or bad depends on your profit margins and how many times people search for the phrases you bid on.
2) Be ruthless
If key phrases are not converting, don't bid on them! Even if you like being top for 'Widgets' if no one is converting on that phrase, don't bid on it. The money will be better spent on other phrases.
3) Don't let Google optimise your campaign
Google want your money and the more the merrier. They well always suggest that you up your budget and expand your keyword selection.
We run several campaigns for our clients and we restrict ourselves to one client per industry sector so we are not bidding client against client. This is often overlooked when buying into a Google adwords managed campaign. Call us for more details.
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