AdWords MENA Blog: March 2011

AdWords MENA Blog

AdWords for Beginners - Part 5

Monday, March 28, 2011

As the fifth part in our series for beginners or advertisers that just need some repetition in the basics of AdWords, we’re going to discuss how ad rank and quality score works in the Search network.

How the ads are positioned among the sponsored links and what you can do in order to improve the ad rank, are questions that many of our advertisers ask themselves. A keyword-targeted ad is ranked on a search result page based on the matched keyword’s maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and Quality Score. The quality score is based on the recent performance of the keyword and your ad, how relevant the two are to the search query as well as other relevant factors.

Ad rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

In order to get the best possible ad rank and hence a higher position, it’s important to:

Have relevant keywords and ad text, a strong CTR on Google, and a high CPC bid. You can reach this through ensuring keywords, landing page and ad text all relate.
Make sure your website meets our Landing Page Guidelines, for Quality purposes.
It’s very important for Google to give our users relevant information and give them a positive user experience, and hence we have the Quality Score. That’s why the quality score needs to be high before ad can be ranked in the top position.
Sponsored Links and Natural Search Results work independently of each other. If you would like help with SEO you can use these "Webmaster Guidelines" for future guidance.

Through following the rules of thumb above you shouldn’t only increase your Quality Score, but also get a higher ad rank, but at the same time your costs per click can be lowered. In other words, with higher Quality Score, you can get more advertisements for your already set budget.

We hope that these tips will be useful for you when advertising with AdWords. Don’t forget to visit AdWords Beginner’s Guide in the AdWords Help center for further information and guidance, and watch this free tutorial from the AdWords Online Classroom in order to learn even more about ad rank. Last but not least, remember to keep your eyes open for the next post in this blog series for beginners.

Posted by Omar Abou Selman - Google AdWords MENA
Author: Kristin Sarstedt – the Inside AdWords Team

Google

AdWords for Beginners - Part 4

Monday, March 21, 2011

Previously we’ve been talking about the basics for using keywords, writing ad texts and using language and geographical targeting. As the fourth part of this blog series for beginners or advertisers that just need some repetition in the basics of AdWords, we’re going to focus on using the right bidding and budget.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is the price you’ll pay when a consumer is clicking on your ad. The daily budget is the budget you’re willing to spend per day (per campaign). When it comes to calculating your daily budgets, the rules of thumb below will make this easier for you:

Look at your online marketing budget for one month period, and then divide it by 30 days e.g. 300 GBP/30 days =10 GBP/day. This is an easy way to determine your daily budget, which in this case is 10 GBP/day.
Use the Opportunities Tab to analyze your budget and get bid ideas, e.g. how you can balance costs and traffic.

Some benefits from these suggestions are that you now will have 100% control over your costs since you’ll never spend more than your budget. Since you only pay when someone is clicking on your ads when you’re choosing CPC bidding, you’ll only spend money on the customers that are actually showing an interest for your product/service. Furthermore, you’ll decide how much you want to spend per click, and at the same time we reduce your actual CPC so you pay the lowest possible price for your ad’s position on the page. You can even specify the CPC bid amounts for individual keywords.

We hope that these tips will be useful for you when advertising with AdWords. Don’t forget to visit AdWords Beginner’s Guide in the AdWords Help center for further information and guidance. Last but not least, remember to keep your eyes open for the next post in this blog series for beginners.

Posted by Omar Abou Selman - Google AdWords MENA
Author: Kristin Sarstedt – the Inside AdWords Team

Google

AdWords for Beginners - Part 3

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

As part three in our series for beginners or advertisers that just need some repetition in the basics of AdWords, we’re going to discuss what’s important to think about when it comes to the targeting of the ad.

With the right language - and geographical targeting, you can target your ads on campaign level in order to make sure you’ll reach the customers of relevance to your business. Hence, we have created some rules of thumb that can be good to follow.

We recommend you to only focus on one non-English language per campaign + English. E.g. the language in which the ad is written and that’s spoken in the targeted country, and English due to standard browser settings and that people have a tendency to search with google.com instead of their own country’s’ browser.
Always keep track of your geographical targeting. This is extra important if you’re a company searching for local customers in a specific area.

The benefits you’ll get if you follow the advice above are:

You can only target the relevant areas where you want your ads to be visible
Target your ads globally as well as locally
You can target e.g. English speaking people in Spain
You can choose your own area to target (local business)

We hope that these tips will be useful for you when advertising with AdWords. Don’t forget to visit AdWords Beginner’s Guide in the AdWords Help center for further information and guidance. Last but not least, remember to keep your eyes open for the next post in this blog series for beginners.

Posted by Omar Abou Selman - Google AdWords MENA
Written by Kristin Sarstedt – the Inside AdWords Team

Google

AdWords for Beginners - Part 2

Monday, March 7, 2011

As part two in our series for beginners or advertisers that just need some repetition in the basics of AdWords, we’re going to discuss what’s important to think about when it comes to the ad text.

The ad text is what the customers see among the sponsored links when they’re searching for your product/service. You can see the ad as the bridge between the users’ needs and your product/service. In order to make this bridge as relevant as possible, you can follow the rules of thumb written below.

It’s important that there is a clear connection between ad text, keywords and landing page.

Write the first letter in each word with capitalization to increase visibility.

The usage of relevant keywords and display URL increases the relevance and makes it easier for the user to see where the ad is taking him.

Deeplinking the ad through the Destination URL to the page of the specific product the ad is promoting.

Keyword Insertion increases CTR. However, remember not to use it when the keywords include misspellings.

Use a strong call to action (Buy now) in the ad text and include special offers and price information.

If you follow the advices above you’ll gain several benefits. For example, you’ll be able to show the ads for the right people since the relevant ad text will be visible according to the customers search query. Also, through the ad text you can motivate the customers to take action, and with deeplinking to the right products you’re bringing the customer closer to the buying decision. Hence, all these suggestions should lead to more conversions and more sales.

We hope that these tips will be useful for you when advertising with AdWords. You can find more information regarding how to optimize your ad text here, and don’t forget to visit the AdWords Beginner’s Guide in the AdWords Help center for further information and guidance, as well as our free video tutorial from AdWords Online Classroom. Last but not least, remember to keep your eyes open for the next post in this blog series for beginners.

Posted by Omar Abou Selman - Google AdWords MENA
Written by Kristin Sarstedt – the Inside AdWords Team