In our three-part Paid Search Series, we have shared a variety of tips for winning the search war, including details on both paid search, or PPC, and organic search.
Part one covered some the basics of PPC including keywords, placements, and rankings. Part two detailed the differences between paid and organic search. In our final post, we will be discussing more advanced techniques, including 3 critical components of starting a new campaign: choosing a campaign type, keyword match types, and bids and budgets.
Choosing the Right Campaign Type
The first consideration in any Adwords campaign is to choose the campaign type, which ultimately decides which types of ads you design and where they are seen. When choosing your campaign type, first pick which networks you want to target your ads to.
Search and Display Networks: Your ad will show on the Google search network (Google Search, Shopping, Maps, and search sites that partner with Google) and the Google Display Network (sites and apps that partner with Google as well as Google sites like Gmail, YouTube, etc). This type will allow your ads to reach the widest set of possible customers.
Search Network Only: Your ad will show on the Google search network (Google Search, Shopping, Maps, and search sites that partner with Google)
Display Network Only: Your ad will appear on the Google Display Network (sites and apps that partner with Google as well as Google sites like Gmail, YouTube, etc).
For a full list of available and unavailable features of each campaign type, click here.
Choosing Keywords
In our previous post, we discussed some basic tips for choosing keywords. We will define some more advanced keyword terminology/features below.
You can use match types with your keywords to help control which searches can trigger your ad, ranging from broad to narrow.
- Broad Match: (the default option) your ad may show if a search term contains your keyword terms in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads can also show for close variations of your keywords.
- Broad Match Modifier: by adding a modifier (+), your ads can only show when someone’s search contains those modified terms, or close variations of the modified terms, in any order.
- Phrase Match: your ad can show when someone searches for your exact keyword, or your exact keyword with additional words before or after it. Your ad will also show when someone searches for close variations of that exact keyword, or with additional words before or after it.
- Exact Match: your ads can appear when someone searches for your exact keyword, without any other terms in the search. Your ad will also show when someone searches for close variations of that specific keyword.
- Negative Match: Your ad won’t show if a search term contains the keyword term you define with a minus sign (-) prefix. Negative keywords are an especially useful way to filter out irrelevant traffic and thus prevent unwanted clicks.
Bids and Budgets
For a new campaign, you will need to set up bids and budgets. Budgets are the spending limit for an individual campaign, or the amount you would like to spend per day. On the other hand, your bid is the most you are willing to spend per click. Bids will influence the amount of traffic your ads receive. In general, campaigns with higher bids receive more traffic and vice versa.
There are two basic bidding options (for advanced details, see Determining a bid option based on your goals):
- Manual bidding: This is the default option to let you manage your maximum CPC bids yourself. You can set bids at the ad group level, or for individual keywords.
- Automatic bidding: If you’re new to AdWords (or if you’re busy), we recommend this option. All you have to do is set a daily budget, and the AdWords system manages your bids for you, to bring you the most clicks possible within your budget.
Bids and budgets can be established for a new campaign in the bidding and budget section of your campaign settings.
Tip: If you’re working with a monthly advertising budget, you can estimate your average daily budget by dividing that amount by 30.4 (the average number of days per month).
A lot of elements go into created a successful paid search campaign. Campaign type, keywords, and bids and budgets, while not exhaustive, should help get you started. Be sure to visit the AdWords Help Center for more details.
