Wait, do not ignore this question as it can make or mar your advertising efforts with Google AdWords.

I know you spend your time and money to make sure that you are able to get the best out of your advertising spends with Google. But practically, it is not all. AdWords is a complex system with a simple interface. It illudes ease but keeps a whole lot of science behind it. Most beginners fail to understand it and as a result end up spending unnecessarily.

You have got to deploy smart efforts- the efforts that help you get the better of AdWords’ automated system. Otherwise, you may end up scratching your head over those poorly performing campaigns.

But, there’s nothing to worry. Let me tell you how you can streamline your AdWords campaigns and can get the best out of it.

You already know the importance of higher quality score, right?

Yes, it improves the average position of your ads, lowers your overall Cost Per Click, and increases the Click Through Rate.

So, what do you do increase quality scores?

Never mind, I will tell you what you should ideally be doing from now on.

For the first thing, generate a report of all keywords from your campaigns. Obviously, it should include your current quality scores of the last 90 days.

Filter out the keywords with higher or lesser scores. Do not exclude keywords even without a single conversion. If you do not have conversion in place, you can compare again CTR and CPC. Analyze 10-15 keywords at a time for better examination. Find out the troubles with keywords for not performing. Analyze their respective bids, average position, and the status.

This analysis will give you an idea of what is working and what is not working for you. You will notice that, in general, ads with higher quality score have higher average position, and lower CPC.

Once you are done with the analysis, you will be clear with your goal. What are you going to aim? Lower CPC/CPA, Moderately Higher Click Rate, Higher Quality Score.

Note: higher CTR does not necessarily guarantee higher conversion rates

If you achieve higher quality score, all other factors will begin to improve gradually. But, yes I assume that there is no problem with your bids, budgets, ad copies, and targeting.

Now let’s get to the real strategy. Make the final selection of your keywords which you must have achieved after analyzing the past 3 months data.

  1. Optimize your landing pages according to the keywords
  2. Take note of navigation ease, page load time, responsiveness, image Alt tags
  3. Optimize ad copies according to the landing pages and your keywords
  4. Change match type from ‘exact’ to ‘phrase’, and ‘phrase’ to ‘broad’
  5. If you are afraid of not-so-profitable-clicks after changing from ‘exact’ to ‘phrase’ or ‘broad’, use proper negative keywords, and ‘broad match modifiers’
  6. Check your negative keywords and make sure there isn’t a conflict
  7. Check your bids, budgets, and targets
  8. Use relevant ‘Ad Extensions’. It dramatically increases the Expected Click Through Rate
  9. If you need to target Trademark words/phrase in your ad copies but can’t add them because of AdWords policy, add them in the Display URL field

Once done, give at least two days to the AdWords system to interact properly with your campaigns. Do not make frequent changes. It needs sometime to respond properly to your changes.

Come back to the campaigns after two days. Go to Keywords tab and check the ‘Ad Auction report’. It will tell you how your ads are performing against your competitors. The next thing – run a Keyword Diagnosis Report to see how are your keywords performing, and if they are not, why not.

Doing all these as a rule actively will make sure that you are spending less and getting more from your AdWords’ campaigns.

Written by Ratan Jha at Linkedin Publisher Network