Three CPC Hacks for Your Adwords Account

According to DMR, Google Ads in the first position have a 27.7% clickthrough rate on mobile and 19.3% on desktop. Even if your page is not fully SEO optimized, paid search is a very effective tool for boosting your company to the top of the SERP if you are willing to set aside the necessary budget. That being said, Google Adwords is an extremely complicated tool with lots of intricacies. To a beginner, learning Adwords can definitely be a daunting task. This is why we wanted to share some useful tips and tricks to your company get the most out of your Adwords account.

Turn Off Auto Bidding

Setting all of your keywords to an automatic CPC bid strategy is a mistake that many Adwords novices make. Many do not know this but Google has many features built into Adwords that will tell you how much you need to bid for a first page and top page position when using a manual bidding strategy.

While Google will actually tell you the estimated bid for each keyword, these features are not visible from the start. When in your Keywords tab, go under the Columns dropdown menu and enable “Est. Top Page Bid” and “Est. First Page Bid” under the Attributes category. You may want to turn on some of the other columns to help you better track your campaign. With a manual bidding strategy enabled, it will give you an estimated first page bid under the Status column. The newly enabled “Est. Top Page Bid” column will then give you a general idea of how much you’ll need to bid per keyword for the top position on the SERP.

While this information will give you a leg up on those who use manual bidding, keeping up with your bids can be very time consuming. We recommend logging into your Adwords at least once every couple weeks so you can readjust your bids. Some top page bids can also be very expensive depending on your industry. According to SEM Rush, some of the most expensive keywords are for the legal, water damage, insurance and drug/alcohol rehabilitation categories. Always be careful that you are spending your advertising dollars on the keywords that will be most effective for your business.

Adjust Your Match Type

Match types help you use specific keywords to target people who are more likely to buy your product or service. Choosing the correct match type can prevent you from wasting money on clicks who will not buy. Being familiar with all of the different options will help you make a decision which one is best for each keyword.

• Broad Match – This is the match type that all keywords are set to by default. This allows your ad to be seen by variations including misspellings, synonyms, related searches and other relevant variations of your keyword. This is best if you are looking to reach the broadest audience possible.
• Phrase Match – Phrase match is similar to Broad Match but it allows for a slightly more targeted audience. This option does not include synonyms or extra words that are in the middle of your keyword phrase.
• Exact Match – Like its name suggests, this option requires the searched phrase to be almost exactly the same as your keyword. It does account for plural variations but not misspellings.
• Negative Match – If you are looking to completely exclude your ad from searches that are not relevant to your company, you will want to use this option.

Use Keyword Insertion in Your Ads

Keyword Insertion is a feature on Adwords that will replace a specific word in your ad with the keyword that caused the ad to show. This can be a powerful tool to increase your ad’s clickthrough rate. To use this feature, click your desired Ad Group and go to the Ads tab. Mouse over your ad and hit the pencil icon to edit it. When you type a “{“ symbol, a dropdown box should appear with the Keyword Insertion option. Click this and enter the desired keyword that can be swapped out. Also, always be sure to select Title Case since this aligns with Google’s best practices. The first letter of every word in your ad should be ideally capitalized.

While Adwords is incredibly complex, it can be one of the most lucrative online advertising tools your company can use. Does your company need assistance managing their online advertising? Dallas Riffle Media is a full service marketing agency that excels in business development, online optimization and brand storytelling. We are based in Cleveland and service the entirety of the continental United States so do not hesitate to give us a call. You can reach us by phone at (216) 245-0835 or by email at info@dallasrifflemedia.com. For more information about what we can do for your company, visit our website.