Display Network Best Practices in Google Adwords

Google Display network has millions of partner websites, which include the top news websites, blogs, You Tube and thousands of websites which have millions of daily traffic. So display network gives advertiser opportunity to reach the maximum no. of relevant audience. You can choose the broad reach targeting which will show ads on pages that match your primary targeting method.

Some of the practices which can help you in generating better results for your campaign are:

Create Separate Campaign for Display Network: Always create separate campaign for display network so you can have more control on display network and you can make changes or experiment enough on Google display network (GDN). Also if GDN would not work well then it will not effect the performance of Search Network.

Use all format or sizes of Banner Ads: Banner ads work very well in GDN, a well designed banner ads can incerse the ROI and CTR of campaign. Use all sizes of banner ads so your ad can appear on all types of websites. Try to use different colors, ad texts for your banner ads and keep checking which ad is working better for your campaign.

Create Different Ad Texts for GDN: People have different behavior in search and display network. In search network people are looking for your products and servies but in GDN we are putting our ads in front of them. So ads which are working well for search network doesn't mean they will work for GDN. Be creative in writing ads and think how you can grab the attention of visitor in GDN. A well written ads can improve the CTR of ad group and convey right message to audience.

Select the best Display Network Targeting
Google adwords provide the different tagreting methods to target the audiences. These methods are:

Contextual Targeting:  In this targeting Google evaluate the all of your keywords and show your ads to all those websites have same keywords themes. Choose 5-20 keywords for your ad group and make highy themed ad group for your campaign.

Managed Placement:  In this placement you can select the website where you want to show your ads.You can manually add the websites and bid higher for these selected websites. Managed placement gives you more control where you want to show your ad.

Topics: You can target your ads to all those websites that include content about topics you choose

Interest Categories: You can target audience based on their interest, this is based on the websites user visits on internet.

Remarketing: Remarketing gives you more options to target the audience. In my previous blog post you can know more about Remarketing .

Use Negative Keywords: Negative keywords can prevent to show your ads on all those websites or web pages whose topics are irrelevat. More negative keywords you add, lesser will be chances to show your ad on irrelevant topics.

Site and Topic Exclusion: You can exclude all those websites which are not giving you conversions
or which are not working well for your campaign. You can also exclude the topics for your campaign.

Avoid Dynamic Keyword Insertion:  The main reason for this is no keyword is used to trigger your ads on the Display Network, so keywords insertion will not work properly for GDN.

Call Discrepancy in Adwords

Sometime you see calls data at Call extension and Dimensions are different, or you see adwords show more no. of click to call received data than actual calls. Do you know why is it so?

The reason is, sometime a person might click on the call extension on a mobile device and after clicking on the call extension the person needs to press the call button to give you a call. So sometime what happens is that if a person clicks on call extension and does not give you a call then the only click for the call extension is recorded and it would not be recorded in call metrics under dimension tab.

In order to know how many people clicked on the call extension using mobile devices look the data by "click type". If you check this data with the data in the dimension tab you will see that data will be almost matching.

Access Adwords in your Mobile Phone

In digital marketing last year was the year of mobile and no. of mobile user are growing in exponential rate. Now you can do almost all kind of work on mobile which you used to do in your laptop or desktop. Let me make previous line more specific, now you can manage your Adwords account on mobile which you used to do in your laptop or desktop.

Suppose you are travelling or attending an event or party and suddenly you remember to pause campaign, or to change daily budget of campaign or to pause keywords without any delay. Now you can do all these changes, if you have mobile interface for Android, iPhone, and Palm Pre devices.

You can access your adwords account anywhere at anytime in your cell phone. You can monitor your campaign, make changes and do almost all things which you can do at your desktop. You can access the adwords for mobile by using the http://adwords.google.com/dashboard/Dashboard. If you want to know more, then please watch the video given below.

Adwords Keyboard Shortcuts

Account Navigation Shortcuts

• G then O: Go to All Online Campaigns
• G then C: Go to Campaign Tab
• G then R: Go to Ad Group tab
• G then K: Go to Keyword tab
• G then N: Go to Network tab
• G then S: Go to Settings tab
• G then U: Go to Audience tab
• Ctrl (+) right arrow S: Go to next campaign or ad group in sequence
• Ctrl (+) left arrow S: Go to previous campaign or ad group in sequence

Table Navigation and Shortcuts

• J/K: Next/Previous row in primary data table
• X: Select current row
• E: Edit
• P: Pause
• N: Enable
• D: Delete
• L: Download

Adwords Impression Share Metrics Glossary

Adwords glossary has long list and some of common terms are ctr, cpc, cpm, cpa, ad rank, quality score, conversion rate, impression etc. Still there are few terms or metrics which are used or read by us less often but are important. Impression share metrics is one of them which are ignored by us or we used to check them less often than other metrics. These metrics are:

Impression Share (IS): Impression is when your ad is shown to a user. So impression share is the percentage of impressions your ad received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.

Exact Match IS: The percentage of impressions your ad received for searches that exactly matched your keyword divided by the estimated number of exact match impressions you were eligible to receive. Exact match IS show the report for only search network.

Lost IS (Rank): In simple words, your ad is not shown due to low cpc bid or quality score (Ad Rank= Quality Score x Bid)

Lost IS (budget): Your ads did not stop serving during this time due to your budget maxing out.

So if you want to reach potential customer all the times impression share metric should be close or near to 100% where as Lost IS (Rank) & Lost IS (budget) should be close to zero. Mathematically we can write all these metrics as :
Impression share + Lost IS (budget) + Lost IS (rank) should always = 100%

In order to find these metrics at adwords, you need to go to Dimension tab and then at Column under competitive metrics you can find all these metrics.

A few weeks back Google adwords accounced to show the Impression Share, Exact Match IS and Lost IS (Rank) metrics at ad group level, most probably at end of this month we can see these metrics in our ad groups.

Broad Match Modifier in Google Adwords

If you are mainly using the phrase and exact match keywords in your ad group, broad match modifier can help you to reach all those people who are searching for same kind of keywords phrases you choose for campaign. Modifier broad match show your ad for more relevant searches and has greater reach than phrase and exact match keywords. Broad match modifier helps you to get more relevant clicks and improve the conversion rate of campaign.

By using the modifier broad match your ad can show for keywords phrases which are misspelled, singular/plural, synonyms, abbreviations and acronyms, related searches and stemmings (like "shop" and "shoping").

You can implement the broad match modifier by putting the +sign next to keywords in broad match. For example, for keyword 'school shoes' you can set modifier match as +school +shoes. Make sure there should be no space after + sign, but there should be space in between two keywords.

• Correct: +school +shoes
• Incorrect: + school + shoes
• Incorrect: +school+shoes

If you are using the broad match keywords in your ad groups, Google adwords recommend to keep existing broad match keywords active and add new modifier keywords in campaign. It's not good to change the existing broad match keywords to modifier broad match, because it can cause lower click through rate and conversions.

You can read more about broad match modifier at Google Adwords help support.

How to Link Google Analytics to Google Adwords Account

Google analytics is one of the best tool to analysis and interpret the data of website. You can know how people are behaving in your website, by which source, medium they are coming, what is bounce rate of pages, by which keywords they are coming to your website etc.

You can get the adwords campaign data in your Google analytics account. In google analytics you can analysis the data more deeply. For example, you can know what is the bounce rate of landing pages, average time on site, day parts, how much revenue you generated from adwords camapaigns etc.

Before starting this please make sure both of your Google analytics and adwords account have same Google mail account. If it's different, then you need to make your adwords gmail account as admin user in Google analytics. In order to link Google analytics with Google adwords, you need to follow few steps which are:

1. Sign in into Google Analytics
2. Click on new version on top right of page
3. Click on make this version default

After doing this:
1. Login to Google adwords
2. Click on the Tools and Analysis tab and select the Google analytics.
3. Select I already have a Google Analytics account.
4. Click the gear icon at the top right.

5. Click All Accounts at the top left of the page.

6. Click the account to which you want to link the AdWords account.

7. Click the Data Sources tab.

8. Click the Adwords tab and Click Link Accounts button.

Also check Auto Tagging should be On in your adwords account, For this:

1. Go to My account 
2. Select the Preference and at
3. Tracking keep auto tagging checkbox marked.

Note:  Adwords account can be linked to only one Analytics account and vice versa. You should be admin user of Google analytics account.

Google Adwords Remarketing: Get second chance to convert website visitors into customers

Everybody deserve a second chance and in Google adwords remarketing will give you second chance. Remarketing allows you to reach the people who visited your website before and you can match the right visitors with right message. Remarketing gives you opportunity to reach the visitors who

• Didn't converted
• Converted
• Abandoned a shopping cart
• Signed up for an email subscription etc.

We can say remarketing is a tool which can drive ROI for all types of advertisers, whether you are advertising your ads on Search Network or on Display network. In order  to set remarketing for your campaign you need to follow few steps.

• Define your audience tab
• Get code and put that in main targeted pages of your website
• Create an ad group or use the existing one and define the audiences you want to reach

At adwords help support you can read more about how to create remarketing list .

Click on "New Audience". Give name to audience and add optional description. You will see membership of 30 days (cookies duration length), keep it as it is. You need to choose tag this can be

• An existing tag, which is one of your conversion codes
• Or you can define a new tag

Now you can create the custom lists for remarketing.

Custom list allows you to target a specific audience, for example visitors who are not converted, who abandoned shopping cart, people who converted etc. In users included or interested you can use AND (all audiences), OR(one or more audiences) and Not relationship (none of these audiences) to create custom list for each type of audiences. You can read more about how to create custom combination list at adwords help.

Now click on the tag your created for audience and you will get a script which is remarketing script code, you need to put this code on the web pages of your website.You can have one tag for all visitors who converted and all visitors who don't converted.

You can define different audiences for your website but only limitation is that remarketing audience will not become live until there are 500 active cookies. Remarketing is helpful in giving you more conversions beacuse your ads are interacting with some one who had visited your website before. Remarketing works good for all those websites which has good daily traffic, at least 500-600 daily visits. For remarketing you need to set display network along with search network at campaign setting.

How to connect Google+ Business Page in Adwords

A few days back Google+ rolled out the most awaited Google+ Brand page and now you can connect your Google+ page to your Adwords campaigns. With social extension you can see all the recommendation your business received, you can check the +1 you recevied on your ads and search results. You can find the social extentaion at ad extention tab in your Adwords account.

 But first you need to verify the Google+ Business Page. There are few changes you need to make in your website which include the linking your Google+ page to website and vice versa. Second you need to confirm the ownership of website which include the A rel="publisher" link from your website to Google+ page.

 Google strongly recommends to use the Google+ icon on head section of your website. You can get the Google+ icon code from here. After doing this your Google+ business page will get verify and now you can connect it to your adwords account.

Google had found people will make more than 70% purchases decision on the basic of recommendation. At social extension you can see the following statics of your Google+ page:

• Impressions with personal annotations - (impressions where the viewer had a friend or contact who had +1’d your brand.) 
• Impressions with basic annotations - (impressions that included an anonymous count of people who +1’d your brand) 
• Impressions without any social annotations.  

To enable your social extension simple click on the ad extension in your ad and select the social extension and choose the new extention. Then add your Google+ page URL and click save. You can read the entire information about Social Extension and how to use it in adwords at here.

Five Mistakes which Kill Landing Page Conversion Rate

Landing page is page where you want visitors will do your desired action. This can be contact us form filling, news letter subscription or product purchase. Visitors who are looking for product or services related to your business can reach to your landing page through different sources which can be SEO, SEM, SMM etc. We can also say landing pages get the maximum traffic in your website and these pages must have good conversion rate.

In my past post i write about landing page best practices, and how to optimize it in best way. But still we made few commom but serious mistakes which kill the conversion rate of landing page.Some of the most commom mistakes are:

Ignoring Headline Line
Headline is soul of landing page, in 3-5 seconds visitor decide whether he should stay on page or leave. One of the most catching thing in landing page is headline. A well written headline can decrease the bounce rate of landing page and increase the conversion rate. It would be better if you test 2-3 different headlines and check will work better.

Using Same Website Design
You will advertise only those things which you sell or give services and all these pages are already in your website. So you make little bit changes in that page and start promoting it as landing page, which is not at all good.

A usual website page have less room for experiment and testing, where as a landing page is totally different here we can make test and experiments. It would be better if we use separate page as landing page.

To Long Form Fields & Captcha
An ideal contact us form should have only Name, E mail id, Cell no. and Comment or message fields. Don't ask for unnecessarily information like Last Name, Zip no., Gender, City etc.

Lots of landing page use captcha for avoiding the spam, but studied had been found that using of captcha in landing page decrease the conversion rate. Combination of letters, misreading of letters can take away a potentail lead.

It would be enough if your contact us form field have proper validation, an upcaptcha form can give you few spam leads but it will never lower down your page conversion rate

Asking for too many things
Too many choices are bad, more choices you will decrease the conversion rate of landing page and vice versa. Ask for only one specific thing and action in landing page.

Missing Above the Fold
Studied showed that web users spend 80% of their time above the fold. All the important content of page should come above the fold, as user click on your ads or landing on your page, every useful information should be visible with our scrolling the page.

Adwords Introduced the Dynamic Search Ads

It had been few days, Google introduced the +1 button for display ads. And today Google Adwords introduce the dynamic search ads for local advertiser. A new simple and quick way to target relevant searches with dynamic ads generated right from your website.

Google found that user search behavior changes each day, 16% of searches that occur Google has never seen before. So it's not easy to determine which keywords people are using to search your product and services.

How Dynamic Search Ads work
With Dynamic Search Ads, Google maintain a fresh index of your inventory using Google's organic web crawling technology. In simple way Google automatically will generate the ads copy base on the content of content of web page. Also Google will automatically shows the ads if he think the search term are good to match, even if you are not using those keywords. The quite similar technology Google is using in Adwords Express which is now available in US,UK and Germany.

As per Google Adwords "When a relevant search occurs, we dynamically generate an ad with a headline based on the query, and the text based on your most relevant landing page."

Google found that when ads and landing page exactly give the same information what user is searching for then conversion rate are much higher.

Advertiser will have full control on the ads, he can choose the whole website, or category of website or pages having specific words. Rest of things will work same as in adwords which include the CPC, no. of clicks, conversions etc.

At this time, Dynamic Search Ads are available in all countries and languages as a limited beta.

Should a Landing Page Has Navigation or not

This is topic of debate, should a landing page has navigation or not. You can read different view on this topic. Here's my thoughts on it

A PPC landing page is special designed page cretaed to achieve special goals. I think there is no such rule that a landing page with navigation give more conversion than without navigation and vice versa. It's mainly depend on the what kind of product or services you are promoting through PPC.

For example, if you are selling a product whose cost is more than 1000$ or you want to do on line booking of hotel, you should have navigation in your landing page. There are very few chances that by only seeing the landing page visitor will do the on line booking or give his all details.

If she is really interested, then she wants to know more about your services and will explore more pages of your website. In this case your landing page should have navigation to all relevant pages of your website.

But if you are promoting an event or on line consulting for admission or providing services like internet connection, appointment time for Spa, salon etc. You can use the landing page without navigation.

But again, i will say there is no rule that it will definitely work. All you have to do Test, Test and Test. And try to find out which will work best for your campaign.

PPC Landing Page Best Practices

After setting the PPC campaign (which include the creation of high themed keywords enriched ad groups, ads copies creation, networks setting, landing page selection and all other necessary setting) you are ready to start camapign.

If your main goal to run PPC camapign is lead generation or sign up or purchase completion on landing page, you should have a good landing page. A good landing page can increase the conversion rate and vice versa. But before tracking conversions make sure you inserted conversion tracking code in thank you page.

You optimized the entire campaign in good way but if your landing page is not good, it can spoil your all efforts. But how we can make a good landing page which will improve the conversion rate and help in decreasing the cost per conversion of leads.

Before optimizing the landing page, you should have an idea how vistior see the page. Most of people read the page like they read news paper or magzine. Means they start from left to right, then diagonally go to bottom of page and then back up at top.

Some of the best practices for landing page optimization are:

Landing Page Component	Importance in %
Call To Action	26%
Headline	24%
Over All Design	17%
Lead Form	13%

Make Sure Headline is Relevant and Visible
After clicking on you ads, the first thing visitor see in landing page is headline. Make sure your headline should be relevant to your ads copy. In 5 seconds visitors decide whether they want to stay on page or want to leave page. Therefore a well written headline can help you to keep visitor in your page. Try to use good call to action in your headline, mention offers, time period, discounts etc in Headline.

Overall Design
Design a simple, clean and visaul appealing page with good image. Landing pages with lots of images are bad, you can use very few selected images, make sure your content is visbile and easy to read. Headline of page should be visible with key message.

Content on Page
People don't read the page, they actually scan the page. So instead of writing 2-3 pharagraphs, write main points in bullets and highlight them in good way. Marked or Bullet points are easy to read and grab more attention than pharagraphs.

Put Conversion Form on Top of Right
Top right of page is best place for conversion form. Ask information which is absolute necessary, lesser will be fields better will be conversion form.

Important Information above the fold
Keep important information above the fold of page, in first look it should catch eyes of visitors. Make sure your call to action, headline, conversion form and bulleted points should be above the fold.

Minimal Navigation
Minimal navigation on landing page is topic of debate. In my point of view, landing page should have minimum navigation and all efforts of page should convince user to fill the form. You can give the naviagtion to website with company logo on top left of page.

Fast Loading Time
Make sure your landing page should not take more time to load. In general avoid the flashes, animation in landing page or don't put too much java scripts on your page.

PPC Keywords in Landing Page
Make sure your landing page should have all the keywords you used in ads copies and content should be relevant to keywords. If in ads copy you talk about the discount or some offer, it should be clearly visible in landing page.

These are the some of practices which can improve the conversion rate of your landing page. Besides that you can use the Google Website optimizer tool to test different landing pages.

Introducing Google Adwords Express

Online Advertising Make Quick and Easy.

Google introduced the Google Adwords Express, which allows you to create online ads in less than 5 minutes  Google Adwords express helps you to promote business in Google search and maps.

If you are local advertiser or having small business, Google Adwords express is perfect place for advertising.You can find the people locally, who are searching for your product or services.

Your ad will be shown in the Ads section of search results same as Google Adwords ads—and in Google Maps with a distinctive blue pin. Customers can see your ad on laptops and mobile phones.

If you have account in Google Places, Google will manage your campaign automatically. You only need to fill the basic information about your business. You can decide the total monthy budget for your advertising and adwords express will automatically estimates the total no. of clicks for that budget.

You will pay only when someone click on your ads, same as for Google search networks.

Don't miss to watch the wonderful creative video of Google Adwords Express:

Instant Preview For Google Adwords Ads

Few months back Google launched the Google Instant preview for Google search results. And from today onwards you can see the ads preview in Google search. In instant preview you can see how page looks by clicking on the lens button in search results. In my Google Instant preview post you can read more about this.

For example i search for "Cheap air tickets" and preview results looks as. Click for full size image

Google said, instant preview will helps advertiser to get more qualified customer to their web site. Means if after seeing your web page in preview, if some one clicks on your ads, chances to convert that visitor to customer is more than simple visitor.

Now I'm a Google Adwords Qualified Individual

Yesterday i cracked the Google Display Advertising exam and now I'm a Google Adwords Qualified Individual. Last month i cracked the Google Analytcis Qualified Individual test.

In order to become the Google Adwords professional you have to passed the two exams. First one is Google Fundamental Adwords certification and out of Search Advertising, Display Advertising and Reporting & Analysis you have to crack at least one.

For Google Adwords Fundamental exam you must score at least 85% marks. You will get questions between 110-120 and time duration of test is 2 hours. I got 113 questions and manage to got 90% marks. You can get the study material from the Adwords Learning Center and Adwords Online Classroom. Besides this you can watch videos in YouTube at Google business.

It would be better if you have some practical experience of running campaign in Adwords. If you are familiar with adwords glossary and had optimize the adwords campaign it would give you an edge.

Adwords test require speed and accuracy so keep watching no. of questions and clock on top of test page. Study material from Learning center is more than enough and all questions come from there. Read carefully and don't skip anything from Adwords Learning Center.

For second test, I choose to give Display Advertising because it fascinate me more among three options. Questions pattern and time duration for Display Advertising is same as for Fundamental. It consists of the Google Display Network and YouTube advertising questions. You can get study material from Adwords Learning center. For all adwords exams you can get the study material form Adwords Learning Center.

Google Adwords Individual Qualified

Some Tips for Cracking Exams:

. Don't spend more time on a question if you don't know the answer. Mark that question and come later.

. First try to finish the answers of all question, otherwise it can happen you will get out of time.

. Sometime you get continuous tough questions, so don't get puzzel. Just left these question and come back later with cool mind.

. Be cool and don't loose patience.

. Don't give up in between test, Be Positive.

# Google Adwords, What are Embedded Match Keywords ?

In my previous post i discuss about the keywords matching in Adwords. There are four types of keywords match in adwords which includes Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match and Neagtive Match. Besides this you can also use the Embedded keywords match.

Embedded match keywords allow you to prevent the ad from appearing in relation to certain phrase or exact matches.

You can use embedded match keywords if you sell the goods related to a product but not exact that product. Let's take an example suppose you sell the goods related to Spiderman Movies which can be Spiderman mask, Spiderman dress, spiderman accessories etc. But you don't sell the Spiderman Movies or DVDs. Therefore you can use the -[Spiderman Movies] as negative keywords match. By doing so ad can appear for Spiderman Masks but will not appear for Spiderman Movies or DVDs.

Top 5 Tips for Video Ad Creation in Google Adwords

People love to watch video and video ad create great impact on customers mind. Since video is the single source of communication for visitors, your video must be capable to engage the audience. There are few things which you keep in mind for creating video ad

1. Set your goal for video ad, what message you want to give in your ad. Your video ad should be focused and convey specific message to your audience.

2. Deliver your key message in starting of video, studies had shown first 45 seconds of a video are most important. Don't save best for last. In first 45 seconds visitors decide whether they want to stay or play off the video. Also don't make your video to long, 3-4 minutes are best for video ad.

3. Content of the video should be interesting and engaging. Try to make your video entertaining, informational and relevant to your business and services. Your ad should convey direct and specific message to your audience.

4. One of the good feature in video ads is, it allow you to play video with audio. Make sure sound of your ad should match with the message of video, theme of music should be relevant to video. Playback sound of video play a big role in engaging the audience.

5. Last but not least, don't forget to provide next steps for user to take after seeing video, in the end of 5-8 seconds you can give message to make a purchase or sign in website, visiting website etc.

Top reasons, why you are not able to see ads in Google PPC campaign?

Sometimes you find that after optimizing your PPC campaign  and having good ad rank you can't find your ads in Google or search engine networks. There can be some reasons due to which still you can't see your ads, some of the main reasons are

Billing Information
Check you have provide the valid billing information in your account

Ad Approval Status
Google will take some time to approve your ad, each no. of time you modifiy your ad, it has to get approved by Google. Check whether it is in Under Review status or not.

Daily Budget
If you have passed or crossed your daily budget, you will not see your ads. For example if you set the daily budget of 300 $ in a day. And as you crossed the cross the 300$ your ads will stop showing in Google Network.

Geo-Targeting
Geo targeting can be one of the factor, e.g if you have targetd your ad in Australia and you are in India. You can't see your ads in India. You can see it only in Google Australian Domain name.

Ad Scheduling
If you enabled the ad scheduling option in your account then be careful you can see your ad in the given scheduled time and day.

Quality Score in Google Adwords

Quality Score is one of deciding factor in calculating ad rank.  Ad rank is determined by Ad rank= Bid x Quality Score
So more will be QS lesser will be CPC and high will be ad rank. Quality score is determined by following factors:

• Historical CTR of keywords
• Relevance of keywords to ad text . 
• Relevance of keywords to Landing Page 
• Quality of landing page and website 
• Your account history, which will include the CTR of your all keywords and ads .
• CTR of keywords in targeted location and others factors.