This is the second part of the Adwords guide for beginners.

Adwords keyword matching options allow you to refine further when your ads are shown by allowing you to choose whether your ads are shown for certain types of searches on your keywords. There are four types of keyword matching options available, these are broad, exact, phrase and negative. Assume your keyphrase is ‘marketing course’.

Broad matching
With broad matching your ad shows when users search on the keywords ‘marketing’ and ‘course’, regardless of other search terms used or of the order in which they are entered. Broad matching is the default, you don’t have to do anything extra to use it.

Exact matching
Exact matching requires you to place square brackets around your keywords, like the following: [marketing course]
Your ad will show when users search only on the phrase ‘marketing course’ and will not show if other words are included or the words are entered in a different order.

Phrase matching
The third matching option is the phrase option, this is similar to exact search in the sense that the keywords must all be present and in the right order however your ad will still show even if other words are present in the search. To use phrase matching you must include your keywords in quotes, for example “marketing course”.

Negative matching is the fourth option available. It allows you to block your ad being shown if a certain word is present in the search query. If your keyword is ‘marketing course’ but your marketing course is to do with offline marketing and not internet marketing then by using negative matching you can choose not to have your ad shown for ‘internet marketing course’ as people searching for this are looking for something different than what you offer. In this case ‘internet’ is your negative keyword. You simply place a dash before your negative keyword to use this option (ie ‘-internet marketing course’). Now if a user searches for ‘marketing course’ on Google your ad will be shown, it will not however be shown when the term ‘internet marketing course’ is entered as the query.

Using exact, phrase or negative keyword matching gives you more control over who sees your ads so you won’t pay for clicks that are unlikely to produce well-targeted results so always try and use these options, doing so could result in lower CPC, higher CTR and higher ROI.

Blocking you ads for certain users
As mentioned earlier Google Adwords allows you to block your ads showing for searches conducted by people from certain countries and people who speak a certain language. There’s no point in letting your ad be seen by people who won’t understand it. Likewise if your product is only sold to a specific country than that country’s residents should be the only people who get to see your ad, as if your company only sells products within America then any other nationals clicking on your ad are simply costing you money for nothing.

Creating your Adwords ad

Knowing which keywords to use and how to format them with keyword matching options alone will not make your Adwords campaign a success, you must of course also write a good ad which generates interest among those who will see it. To do this your ad must use attention grabbing copy such as ‘free’, ‘new’, ’sale’, ‘tips’, ‘limited offer’ and give the advantages of your product at the same time. This however isn’t easy as Google allows you a headline of at most 25 characters including spaces and only two other lines of at most 35 characters including spaces, so stick to the point as room is limited. Sticking to the point means avoiding using words like ‘on’, ‘at’, ‘of’ and ‘an’ unless you really have to.

Your ad should target your keywords, by this I mean it should include them. Always include your exact keywords in the title of the ad as this is proven to boost your click through rate immensely, the reasoning behind this I believe is that when users see the keywords they’ve just searched for in an ad particularly in the title of the ad they immediately associate that ad with a good find and will be more likely to click on it.

After just reading the previous paragraph you may be tempted to simply repeat your keywords somewhere else in the ad in an attempt to raise your CTR, however on Googles editorial guidelines page they state that they will not allow repetition of words or phrases in ads as ads without repetition are clearer. This doesn’t however mean that you can’t use closely related words similar to your keywords which you have used in your ad title, these similar words will help back up the searchers believe that he or she has found a very relevant ad. Avoid what’s known as superlatives, these are phrases such as ‘the best’ and ‘we’re number 1′, these serve no other purpose than to make you appear cheap and tacky, which will turn most potential visitors off.

Apart from letting the searcher know your ad is relevant using your keywords in your ad has another advantage, namely that of making your ad stand out among the other ads also on the page. Your ad stands out as Google will highlight in bold any occurrences of the search terms not just within the main search results but on the page as a whole including within any Adwords ads present.

Try if you can to include a call-to-action phrase. A call-to-action phrase is a phrase that which as the name suggests provokes the reader to do something, in this case click on the ad and go to your site. Unlike a banner type advertisement you can’t use generic call-to-action phrases such as ‘click here’ or ‘visit this site’ as this does nothing to help the searcher make up his or her mind as to click on your ad or not. To quote Google again:

“The limited text space should be used for concise, informative language that sets you apart from your competition.”

‘Click here’ or ‘visit this site’ is not informative language, it’s language that simply wastes space and that does nothing to help you, the searcher or indeed Google for that fact. Take Googles advice into mind and

“Use a call-to-action unique to the service or product you provide.”

Examples of unique call-to-actions include: “Join now for 20% discount”, “Register for membership now”, “Download free trial now” and “Order now for free shipping”.

Remember your Adwords ad space consists of just a headline and two lines of text, you need to use this space efficiently to have a chance at success, so to recap I believe the best strategy to use this limited space is to include your exact keywords with or without other words in your headline, give a brief line about your product using words similar to your keywords in the first of the two 35 character lines and use a unique call-to-action phrase in the second.

All that’s left to do as far as creating your ad is concerned is to enter destination and display URL. Not really much I can talk about here, except to point out that your destination URL should be a landing page specific to the product or service dealt with in your ad and not simply your home page. Remember users have clicked on your ad because they’re interested in what the ad offered and not necessary interested in what your company offers as a whole. Landing pages will always convert more clicks to customers than if you had simply linked to your home page.

More Google Adwords tips and tricks

As with any advertising campaign budget management is very important, without it you could quickly find yourself in trouble. In Adwords after you have chosen all your keywords and maximum cost per click amount Google will suggest an amount for you to set your daily budget. This amount is usually about right, and I would suggest sticking with it in most cases, however depending on how deep your companies pockets are, it may be a good idea to raise this suggested amount a little at the start of a new campaign as your ad will be shown much more and you will be better able to view how your ads are performing, then if after analysis of click through rates you decide it would be better to lower your daily budget do so.

Don’t let being in position one dominate your mind when deciding what cost per click to pay for keywords. Doing so may mean your spending more than you really need to, when Google gives you the average position of your ad based on your current cost per click settle for 1,2 or 3 as all these ads will be above the fold (the fold is the point on a page where you have to start using the scroll bar to continue reading).

Remember your position is based on CPC and CTR at all times except the very start of a new ad, so if you use the advice given in this article already you should be able to obtain high click through rates and hence your ad should rise above other peoples ads without you having to spend a cent more than them.

Adgroups
Now onto adgroups, adgroups is a campaign management feature which allows you to group keywords together in order for you to have an ad shown for a number of different keywords rather than the usual one ad for one keyword method. I rarely use adgroups as I find using the one ad for one keyword way produces much better results as ads are highly targeted to the specific search terms used and hence more likely to be clicked on.

Trying to write an ad that can achieve a high CTR for 20 different keywords is impossible. Hence if you do decide to use adgroups in your campaign keep them as small as possible at five or less keywords.

Using adgroups sacrifices the single most effective thing you can do to increase an ads CTR and that’s having your exact keywords in your ads title, remember with adgroups the same ad is shown for all keywords in that group. To use the one ad for one keyword approach you will need to create a new ad for each keyword manually as by default all ads are put into the same adgroup when you sign up.

Adwords should be no different than any other advertising campaign in the sense that you need to track everything and be continuously testing. Adwords will automatically track clicks, impressions and clicks through rates from when your ad goes live until either you or Google pull it. You should constantly analyze these stats for all your ads, discontinue the ones that are performing badly and raise your daily budget for the ones that are doing well so as to multiply your success.

Use of referrer code
You could also as Google suggests attach an identifying parameter by putting ‘?referrer=source’ at the end of your destination URL. Imagine your normal destination URL was http://www.yoursite.com/product simply turn that into http://www.yoursite.com/product?referrer=source. The source would be your keywords to enable you to uniquely identify the ad from which the visitor came. You could then use a web statistics program to determine how many people that bought your product where referred by a particular source / ad.

Testing has been the backbone of many great advertising campaigns on the Internet to date. In Adwords you should test different copy, keywords, CPC and daily budgets on a constant basis in an effort to attain the highest click through rates possible.

Run similar ads together for the same keywords to see what little differences can do to an ads CTR, keep the ads with high CTR’s and pull the ones with low CTR’s, create more and more ads to run against previously successful ones and again drop the ads with lower CTR’s (unless of course the CTR’s of these ads is extremely good too but your others are just better). Don’t forget to test different things on your landing page too, to try and boost your conversion rate.