In Part 1 we covered how to research keywords and split them for use in different ad groups, allowing you to target multiple markets from one set of keywords.

If you followed Part 1 you will now have a set of 10 keywords that you have split into at least 2 separate groups. Here are my examples again:

Dress:
mens hats
mens dress hats
mens fedora hats
mens panama hats
mens brim hats

Casual:
mens straw hats
mens beach hats
mens bucket hats
mens baseball hats
mens trucker hats

Now we need to write the ads for anyone looking for dress hats. If you haven’t already, remember to adapt my examples to your own market and associated keywords.

Writing your first Google Adwords headline

The headline of your Google Adwords ad is the most crucial with regards to the CTR (click through rate) that it will receive. One thing to make note of is that an Adwords ad will always receive a higher click through rate if the headline exactly matches the search term the user has input. Luckily for us Google has something called ‘dynamic keyword insertion’ which we will now use to build our attention grabbing headline.

Headlines are formed like this:

{Keyword:Mens Dress Hats} or
{KeyWord:Mens Dress Hats}

The use of brackets ( { } ) tells Google to use dynamic keyword insertion and will result in a headline made up of the users search terms up to 25 characters long.

Note that the only difference between these 2 examples is the word Keyword. Google recognises the capital W in KeyWord as an instruction to capitalise the whole headline. If the users search term is too long (over 25 characters) the backup headline – the text after the colon ( : ) will be displayed. Always use the most popular search term (from Part 1) for the backup headlines in your two ad groups.

So if the user searches for ‘mens dress hats’ the first example would return a headline of ‘Mens dress hats’ while the second example would result in ‘Mens Dress Hats’.

Writing your ad copy

With an Adwords ad you are allowed 2 lines of 35 characters underneath your headline. A tried and tested method of ad construction is the ‘benefit/features’ method. The ad we will be building here will display benefits of your product or service in the first line and the strongest features of your product or service in the second line. Most users will purchase due to the benefits of a product or service.

So in our example we could have:

{KeyWord:Mens Dress Hats}
Stylish hats to get you noticed
In a range of colours and sizes
www.myhatstore.co.uk

This style of advert will appeal to your users emotions (benefits) and also their sensiblities (features).

Choose your URL

Your URL (uniform resource locator or web address as it is more commonly known) can also be shown in multiple formats. Each format will have quite dramatic effects on the CTR and you should conduct tests (see next section) to see which style works best for your individual ad groups. From my own experience using capitalised words within your URL i.e www.MyHatStore.co.uk will get the best CTR.

Other choices include:

www.myhatstore.co.uk

MyHatStore.co.uk

myhatstore.co.uk

MyHatStore.co.uk/Hats

www.MyHatStore.co.uk/Hats

Test your ads

Use split testing to keep beating your own ad performance. To do this create two ads for your campaign. Make them both identical but alter the first line of the ad so one shows a different benefit. Wait until each ad has received 50 or so clicks and use www.splittester.com to find which ad is performing the best. Keep that ad and replace the poorest performer with one where you have changed both the benefit AND how the URL is displayed.

Keep tweaking the ads in this way by changing the poorest performing ad and split testing until you have got your CTR up to at least 5%.

The smallest changes can make dramatic changes to your CTR and the tips above won’t work for all adverts all of the time. The following are just a few extra methods you can test to increase your CTR:

• remove or place commas between individual elements on your ad text
• use a normal headline within your ad instead of using dynamic keyword insertion
• remove or place full stops at the end of your ad text
• remove or replace hyphens where needed within your ad text
• use capital letters on some or all of the words within your ad text
• register new domain names and use them within your ad

Why Google Adwords?

Well frankly, Google Adwords is by far the most popular form of web-based advertising in the world at present and can promote your products and services to an enormous market if used correctly. Within this 2 part article I will show you:

• How to choose the correct keywords for your campaign
• Headline and copy writing techniques
• How to optimise your chances of conversion with multiple ad campaigns

Keyword research

As with search, Google bases its ad network on keywords, so choosing the right ones is the first and most important step in setting up a successful Adwords campaign. There are various ways to research the keywords you will use within your campaign and the most effective of those are listed below. It is better to start off with a small set of keywords so you can keep tabs on how they perform within your Adwords campaign.

1. Use your head

Write down all the keywords that come into your head when you are thinking about your particular product or service. Put yourself in your customers position and ask yourself what words you would use to find your product or services on Google.

2. Check out the competition

Got to your competitors sites and examine the source code. This will reveal which keywords they have used within their title tag, meta descriptions and keyword tags and H1, H2 tags. Make a note of the words you think might be most effective and again, put yourself in your customers mindset and try and imagine which keywords they would be using to search for your competitors products and services.

3. Use a keyword research tool

There are a plethora of tools built to research effective keywords both web-based and stand-alone programs. I would recommend Google’s own keyword tools, but only as a starting point. If you rely on Googles Keyword Tool alone you may find that you are missing out. Here are a few keyword research tools I tend to use since Overture bit the dust.

Google Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

SEO Tools
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Wordtracker
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Yahoo Search Marketing
https://signup21.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/signupui/signup/loadSignup.do (you don’t need to sign up, just fill in your market location and timezone).

Using Google’s Keyword Tool

For the purposes of this excercise I will use Google’s Keyword Tool and just one keyword ‘mens hats‘.

Input your chosen keywords the keyword tool, one phrase per line, enter the captcha data and hit ‘Get keyword ideas’.

You will now see a list of suggested keywords and data that lets you know how much competition there is for the keyword (i.e how many others use the keyword for their ads), its search volume for the past month and its average search volume. The amount of competition will have a bearing on how much you end up having to bid for a keyword, the more competition the higher the CPC (cost per click). You can filter match variations by using the ‘Match Type’ dropdown on the top right of the list.

You now need to rank the list in order from most popular to least popular. You can do this by searching for the keyword on Google and making note of the amount of Adwords ads that show on the right hand side of the page. If there are more than 2 pages worth of Adwords ads that keyword has a lot of competition so you might want to turn that keyword into a long tail keyword such as ‘mens hats in london‘. (The amount of competition will have a bearing on how much you end up having to bid for a keyword, the more competition, the higher the CPC – cost per click).

Choose the 10 keywords at the top of your list for use on your first Adwords campaign. We will then split your keywords into at least 2 groups based on their context.

Here are the keywords:

mens hats
mens dress hats
mens fedora hats
mens straw hats
mens winter hats
mens bucket hats
means panama hats
mens baseball hats
mens leather hats
mens trucker hats

Here are the separated lists:

Dress:
mens hats
mens dress hats
mens fedora hats
mens panama hats
mens brim hats

Casual:
mens straw hats
mens beach hats
mens bucket hats
mens baseball hats
mens trucker hats

By sorting out the context of keywords we are able to now separate our keywords into 2 groups which will in turn allow us to create 2 different Adwords campaigns. One to target people after casual hats and one for people searching for dress hats.

In the next article we will explore how to write the headline and copy for your Google ads that will generate an optimal click through rate (CTR).

Building Effective Google Adwords Campaigns – Part 2