AdWords MENA Blog: Optimization, Part 3

We continue our series of tips on the initial setup and basic optimization of an account. In earlier articles we created an account with effective an structure, ads and keywords, and also fine-tuned the targeting and budget of our campaigns. In this installment we will discuss another two basic settings: Cost Per Click (CPC) bids and Ad Placement, as well as some examples of how these work.
Cost-per-click Bids
In most cases in the AdWords systems, you only pay for your advertising when a visitor clicks on your ad. The type of bid you choose is under "Campaign settings, and can be automatic(the system will change your bid amount to get the greatest number of impressions that your budget will allow) or manual (you set your own bid amount). The main things to keep in mind when optimizing the bidding process are as follows:

The automatic bid setting is ideal for situations where you do not want to spend too much time fine-tuning your campaign. But at the same time you must set an upper cost-per-click limit to avoid any nasty surprises.
Some functions (e.g. planned ad impressions) do not work with automatic bidding.
Are you more interested in impressions of your ad than referrals to your site? If so, for campaigns operating through the Google display network you can choose the option of payment per 1000 impressions.
Have you set up conversion tracking? It is a good idea to try the cost-per-conversion optimizer, or the Conversion Optimizer. Please note that the cost-per-conversion optimizer can be turned on even with automatic bidding. Using conversion data, this tool lets the system manage cost-per-click bids within a 30% range, which often helps reduce the cost-per-conversion.
Track the average position of your ad for each keyword. For some words the position is too low, but is this keyword important for you? You can always increase the individual cost-per-click bid for this keyword, which will see the ad rise in position.
Is a particular keyword more effective than the others (high CTR, conversion rate)? It is worth raising the cost-per-click bid for this word to bring in more visitors. And for less effective words, you can drop the bid amount, or even pause them.
The above advice concerns not just keywords, but also ad placements. Are impressions on a particular website more effective? Add this website manually as a placement.
Although you will always only pay enough to out-perform your competitors (normally less than the maximum cost-per-click that you have set), do not set a very high cost-per-click if you cannot afford it. Competition is often unpredictable, and there may be situations when the real cost turns out to be equal to the maximum, and your budget will run out very quickly.
If you see that there are very few impressions for a particular keyword, perhaps you have set too low a cost-per-click bid. Often the system will alert you that your cost-per-click bid is lower that the estimated cost for first-page display for a specific keyword. This information will be shown under the "Keywords" tab.

Ad Placements
Placement in this context means various platforms where advertising through AdWords can be placed. You can read about ad placements in more detail in the Help Center, but now, as always, we will go through some tactics that we use, and which may be of use to you:

By advertising only in the Google search network, you are losing potential customers who either don't use search engines, or use ones other that Google. By electing to show your ads on both the search and display networks, you will ensure a broader audience (e.g. users of Facebook.com or YouTube.com).
We always create separate campaigns for the search and display networks. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, for our search network campaigns we create keyword lists by trying to guess user search terms as accurately as possible. For the display network, keyword lists are evaluated by the system in tandem with a determination of a particular website's subject area. Usually, ads on the display network are more general than those on the search network. It is also easier to assess the performance of your advertising if the search and display networks are separated for different campaigns, because all parameters can be seen at a glance (CTR, conversions etc.) and they are easier to compare.
If you are prepared to spend a little bit more time on fine-tuning your campaign, or if you want to be sure that your ads are shown only on relevant websites, then it is better to make your ad placements manually. In addition, the placement tool ("Reporting and Tools" tab) will help you pick the right websites.
If you choose a set of ad placements automatically, it is very important to regularly check on which websites your ad has been shown ("Networks" tab of your campaign), and to exclude those sites with either irrelevant content or which give you a low CTR.
Don't be concerned by the fact that CTR is much lower on the display network compared to the search network – this is completely normal. Moreover, CTR on the display network does not affect performance scores on the search network, and vice versa.
If you choose your ad placements manually and at the same time add keywords, your ads will be shown only on those sites and on those webpages that are related to the keywords. Would you like your ad to be shown on all the pages of the websites you have chosen? Then delete all the keywords from your campaign.

We have now finished talking about basic campaign settings. The information in the three articles has helped us produce an effectively constructed account. In the next article we will discuss the best and easiest ways to track the performance of an ad in our campaign.

Written by Aleksei Petrov, AdWords TeamPosted by Omar Selman - Google AdWords MENA

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