Have you ever tried to solve a Rubik’s cube? It takes time, patience and a whole bunch of thought….but once you get the hang of it you begin expanding your skills by learning additional ways to solve it. After all, a standard 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube has 43 quintillion possible combinations!
Now what does this have to do with Google Adwords? Well if you’re new to the platform, it can feel as if you are solving a Rubik’s Cube. It’s confusing, looks to have endless possibilities and will make you want to pull your hair out….but as your knowledge of Adwords begins to advance, you’ll start looking for ways to optimize your campaigns based on the skills you’ve learned throughout the process.
BUT…
What features do you incorporate? Ah, the million dollar question. Ultimately it depends on your individual campaign performance and goals. But for us, after a little research and testing we discovered 3 Adwords features that have helped improve our campaigns’ performance and we feel they can help your campaigns too!
Sitelink Ad Extensions
Sitelink Ad Extensions allow links to specific pages on your website to show below text ads. They are effective at improving campaign click-through-rate (CTR) and in turn increasing your conversions! A few things to keep in mind, keep them short and avoid being redundant. If you have already mentioned it in the ad description, refrain from mentioning it again as that space could be better utilized for different information. Recently, Google added the option to add sitelink ad extension descriptions. Take full advantage of this as it gives you two additional, 35 character lines to further explain your product or service.
How?
From the Campaigns tab, click the campaign you’d like to add sitelinks to, click the Ad Extensions tab. In the View drop-down menu, choose Sitelinks Extensions. Click the red + Extension button, then click the + New sitelink button. Fill out the information for your sitelink and click Save. Then, click Save again. Below is what an ad with Sitelink Extensions and descriptions looks like:
Keyword Insertion
This is an advanced feature that updates your ad text to include one of your keywords that matches a customer’s search terms by inserting a special piece of code into your ads. Basically, when a customer uses one of your keywords in their search, Adwords automatically replaces the code with the keyword that triggered your ad. This makes the ad unique to the searcher and thus more relevant.
How?
Keyword Insertion is a pretty lengthy and advanced feature. Instructions on how to set up Keyword Insertion can best be explained here. Below is what Keyword Insertion looks like within the ads manager in Adwords:
Search Network Remarketing
Setting up remarketing campaigns is essential, but creating the right remarketing campaigns is crucial. Most Adwords users are familiar with the standard remarketing feature on the Display Network. But did you know you can also set up remarketing on the Search Network? How do these two differ?
Remarketing ads on the Display Network are liable to show up websites that the user (who landed on your website within a certain timeframe) navigates through. They are typically banner ads that appear at the top, bottom or middle of websites.
Search Network ads on the other hand, work totally different. Say a user searches “guitar lessons”, clicks on your ad midway down the search page, sees that you have an awesome guitar lesson program, but then gets distracted and closes out of your website. A few days later, that same person goes back to Google and searches “guitar lessons” once again. This time, since the user previously landed on your website, your ad is at an advantage on the Search Network. It will appear higher on search results, regardless if competitors outbid you on keywords.
How?
Instructions for setting up a remarketing campaign on the Search Network can be found here. Keep in mind that a Remarketing campaign on the Search Network requires a minimum of 1,000 visitors to your web page.
Conclusion
Adwords is quite confusing at first, but as you gain a greater understanding of the platform begin to look for ways to optimize your campaigns. We’ve given you three, but just as there is 43 quintilian ways to solve the Rubik’s Cube, there are many ways to optimize your campaigns.
If you want to learn more about Pay-Per-Click advertising, check out: Brief: Pay-Per-Click Advertising.