Top 5 Google Adwords Campaign Mistakes

You have heard or maybe experienced the Adwords horror stories. Mistakes can be quite costly with Google Adwords let's take a look at the most common adwords mistakes newbies make and how they can be avoided.

1) Poor landing page

2) Turning on the Content Network

3) Daily budget too high

4) Grouping Keywords

5) bidding too low

Poor Landing Page

A decent landing page is a key factor in sales conversions. There are many different styles of pages, and going into great detail what makes a good landing page would be a full article itself but basically, organized layout, proper use of graphics, getting your message across clearly & no frames are the main components to a quality landing page.

When using Adwords Google really takes the content of your site as a main factor. Whatever keywords you are advertising, you should try to have on your page. Not only will the searcher identify this as relevant information, and Google will reward you with a better quality score which can mean higher rankings, cheaper minimum bids and they can shave the cost of the clicks down from what you have bid. Google rewards relevancy and Adwords is no exception.

Turning on the Content Network

The content network is plagued with click fraud and poor quality traffic. When I started with Adwords I didn't realize this and left the content network on and lost money. That being said, once you have a handle on Adwords you can use the content network just make sure to bid very low. Personally I don't bid over 0.06 cents a click. Some people claim that they profit higher and get better sales conversions from the content network than they do with the
search network. I have never experienced this myself.

Daily Budget Too High

Putting the daily budget up higher than the recommended amount used to be recommended by top marketers to increase traffic. Recently Google has increased the impressions on campaigns that use this technique. The problem is that the increase is on keywords broad match phrases that aren't targeted very well which leads to a huge spike in conversions and a poor CTR. This will hurt your Quality score and can really hinder your campaign's performance. Another reason you want to be careful when raising your daily budget high is sometimes marketers forget that they have done so. They might not check their account for a couple of days and when they do they end up blowing through a lot of money.

Grouping Keywords

When creating your ad groups you want to use similar keywords in each ad group with at least one keyword the same. eg. ad group - electric guitars, keywords:

electric guitars
cheap electric guitars
vintage electric guitars

The root keyword in the above example is electric guitars and this phrase should be in every keyword you would use in this group. The root keyword should also be used in your ad:

Cheap Electric Guitars
Save huge on electric guitars
Huge selection & Free shipping
http://example.com/guitarstore

Grouping your ads properly will help you tailor your ad and landing page to your targeted keywords and will help Google serve your ads on the keywords you want.

Bidding Too Low

Bidding too low can leave you buried at the bottom of the pack getting little exposure. When you do have a visitor interested in your products, they will typically keep searching after they have left your website and compare you to your competitors. If they have forgotten the name of your website (they usually do) They will most likely do another search to find you again, if you are not on the first page they may not dig to the other pages for you even if they found you on the 3rd page originally, they may not be willing to do it again people get tired of comparing prices
and searching after a while and burying yourself may save you money in bids but can also cost you a lot in sales.

This covers some of the major mistakes and I sincerely hope this article saves people from losing money.