Adwords Tip - Importance of Ad and Landing Page Copy

While I'll do a larger more in-depth treatment of Adwords shortly when we finish our own implementation for our Native American jewelry website, I was just reminded of a couple of extremely important factors in achieving Adwords success that I wanted to share with you in its own post.

Many advertisers new to Google Adwords assume that the highest ad placements goes to he who bids the most money (Price Per Click, or PPC). While the amount of your bid certainly impacts your placement, it is not the only thing, and there are a couple of things you can do to have greater success getting cost-efficient traffic out of Adwords. Both of these things impact your AdWords Quality Score which, along with the size of your PPC bid, builds the equation of where your ad will eventually be placed. While there are other things that impact your AdWords Quality Score, let's focus on these two top tips first:

1) Ad Title and Description - While it can be tedious, it is worth the effort to design custom ads for individual keyphrases. Many advertisers think that one ad is right for a whole bucket of related search terms, but this is not true. In our case for advertising for Native American jewelry, we'll create a separate ad for the search term cuff bracelets that reads something like "Cuff Bracelets" for the Ad Title and something like "Authentic Native American cuff bracelets, hand-made with high-quality silver, turquoise and other traditional gemstones" for the Ad Description. Studies have shown that ads with the searched-for keyphrase in the title have a significantly higher Click-Through Rate (CTR). One of the most important factors in building your Adwords Quality Score is your CTR, as Google would rather get $1 PPC with 5 clicks than a $2 PPC with only 2 clicks. Be careful though of "stuffing" the keyphrase too much into the Ad Description as Google does not always appreciate that (Google is very adept at punishing keyword-stuffers, whether we are talking about on-site SEO or via Adwords). So as a basic rule...stick the keyphrase into the Ad Title, but only put it again into the description if it makes sense in an organic fashion.

2) Specific Landing Pages with Original Content - Don't send all your traffic to your home-page, send traffic to specific pages that are connected to the associated keyphrases. The conversion of traffic is much higher if you can immediately get your potential customer to the content they are searching for, and they don't have to navigate through several layers of your site to find it. Google will note if people leave your site soon after arriving, since they haven't found the promised for information/product/service on the first landing page, and Google will downgrade your Quality Score as a result. Google will also note what content you have on your landing page for an ad, and if it is original content related to the keyphrase then Google will upgrade your Quality Score.

These are two basic tips to not only increase both your CTR and conversion from Google, but also to reduce your PPC at the same time as improving your ad position. Try these out, and once you've mastered these, hopefully I'll have a few more tips for you!