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In my previous article we provided a brief introduction to Google AdWords. In this article we will go into AdWords in a little more detail.

First, we start with the concept of quality. Increased quality leads to an increase in customers without an increase in costs. What is the quality of your Google AdWords Copy?

The quality score in Google AdWords is determined by the following factors:

• The current and past click rate on the Ad copy for the keywords you are using for the Ad campaign.
• The quality of the destination page of the Ad copy
• The correlation between the keyword, the ad copy displayed and the search query

Why is quality so important? The display order rank of you google ad is determined by the following formula:

Ad rank = quality x price

If the quality is below average, you will need to spend more on the cost of the ad to increase Ad rank.

How do you go about improving quality?

• Include the keyword in the text of the Ad copy. When the search results are shown, users tend to look for their entered keyword in the results. If they find the keyword in the ad copy, they are more likely to click the ad.
• Differentiate your ad copy from your competitors. Compare your ad copy against the ads from competitors and make an attempt to differentiate the ad copy from your competitors.
• Include action keywords in your ad copy – include keywords that call for action. Call to action keywords produce higher click rates.
• Run A/B testing on the Ad copy. Choose the Ad with the higher click rate.
• Classify the Ad group in detail.Your ad and associated keywords are grouped in an ad group. Normally, each ad group will correspond to a unique customer category. Make sure your keywords and ad copy correspond to your customer category.

How do you go about managing pay per click ads?  Your first step is to come out with a set of keywords you plan to use for your campaign. Selecting the appropriate set of keywords for your ad campaign is a difficult task. I will describe one method to achieve this. You first want to think of personas of your customer. For each persona you will need to think of the intent of a customer with that persona. Then pick keywords to match the persona and intent.

Use the keyword planner tool in AdWords to help you research your keywords. Keyword planner allows you to look to historical search volumes for keywords by location by time frame. If for example, keyword planner tells you that on the average only 50 search queries have been made on a monthly basis for a keyword, then why pick this keyword? Pick high volume keywords.

Keyword match types apply to ads shown on the search network. Ads shown on the display network (banner ads) default to the match type broad match. The different types of match types are broad match, phrase match and exact match.

In broad match, ads show on misspellings, synonyms, related searches and other variations.

Example Keyword: women’s hats

Example search that results in a match to the above keyword: buy ladies hats

In phrase match, ads show on matches on a phrase and close variations of that phrase.

Example Keyword: man’s car

Example search that results in a match: fast man’s car

Finally, in exact match, the keyword and the entered search phrase in the search engine have to match exactly for the ad to show up.

To increase the click thru rate, you could check to see if your ad (primarily the title) contains a keyword from the list of keywords you have picked for your campaign. Users are more likely to click the ad if this is the case.

You must specify the location to target with your ad in Google AdWords. For example, if you are targeting potential customers in Bangkok, Thailand; you will then need to pick this location in AdWords as the city to target.

Finally, below are two general frameworks to use, to help you determine what to focus on when you are optimizing your Ad campaign. Optimizing refers to the fact that you will need to keep modifying certain things, then check the results to see if your adjustments have made a difference in terms of the performance of your ads.