Improve Your Ad's Position

With Google AdWords, it's all about results. We've collected these tips to guide you through creating and maintaining an effective keyword-targeted ad campaign with our program.

Show your ads more often

Your daily budget determines how often your ad is shown for your keywords.

To maximize the number of times your ad is shown throughout the day, set your daily budget to the amount we recommend during the campaign creation process.
Click here to learn how to increase your daily budget.

Improve your ad's position

Your keyword-targeted ad's position is determined by your ad's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and Quality Score.

Increasing performance factors such as your maximum CPC and/or Quality Score will improve your ad's position.
Click here to learn how to increase your maximum CPC.
Read "Optimize your content and keyword targeting" below to learn how to improve your campaign's performance.

Optimize ad serving for your ads.

Ads with higher CTRs are more likely to draw relevant clicks and qualified leads.

When there are multiple ads in an Ad Group, our system will favor ads with higher clickthrough rates (CTRs), showing them more often than ads with lower CTRs in the same Ad Group. When you create a campaign, optimization is already selected. You can view or change your settings at the campaign level by doing the following:
- Log in to your AdWords account.
- In the Campaign Summary table, select the checkbox(es) next to the campaign(s) you wish to edit.
- Click Edit Settings in the header row of the table.
- Select the checkbox next to 'Automatically optimize ad serving for my ads' (section 4).
- Click Save Changes at the top or bottom of the page.

Optimize your content and keyword targeting

Target your audience. Create compelling ads. Link to relevant content.

Select keywords and phrases relevant to your product or service

General keywords will generate the most impressions, but will often result in the fewest number of clicks.

You might want to try:

tennis rackets
tennis shoes
tennis ball machines

For help refining your keywords, try our Keyword Tool.

Use keyword variations to reach more prospects

Not everyone will enter the same keyword spellings to search for your type of product or service. You can increase your chances of reaching more prospects by including spelling variations and plurals in your keyword list.

Examples:

tennis racket
tennis rackets
tennis racquet

Change keyword matching options to better target your ads

By specifying the types of keyword matching options that will trigger your ads, you can widen or narrow your focus on prospective customers. Your options are:

Broad match: Simply enter your keyword(s), such as tennis shoes

Your ad will show when users search on the keywords tennis and shoes, in any order, and even if the query includes other terms, such as tennis rackets and shoes. With broad matching, you'll also automatically enjoy expanded matching. This means that Google will analyze your keyword list, ad text, and millions of daily Google search queries, then show your ads for other relevant terms and variations (such as tennis sneakers) even if you didn't include these terms in your keyword list. (You may stop these expanded matches by adding them as negative keywords, or by changing your broad match keywords to exact or phrase matches.)
Phrase match: Include quotes around your keyword: "tennis shoes"

Your ad shows when users search for tennis shoes, in this order, and possibly with other search terms in the query. For example, your ad will show for red tennis shoes but not for shoes for tennis.
Exact match: Include brackets around your keyword: [tennis shoes]

Your ad shows when users search for tennis shoes, in this order, and without any other terms in the query. For example, your ad won't show for the queries red tennis shoes or tennis bags and shoes.
Negative keyword: Include a dash before your keyword: -red

If your keyword phrase is tennis shoes and your negative keyword is -red, your ad will not show if a user searches for red tennis shoes.

(Please note that keyword matching options don't apply to content targeted ads.)

Geo-target

Choose your target languages, countries or, if applicable, cities and regions. Learn how.

Group related keywords together

Organize your campaign by grouping similar keywords and creating a separate Ad Group for each group. This allows you to write more specific ads for those keywords.

Content - What should your ad say?

Include keywords in your ad text or title

If your keywords appear in your ad text, users will be able to immediately recognize that your ad is relevant to their search.
One way to create targeted ads is to create multiple ads within an Ad Group. In each ad, include one or more of the keywords from your keyword list.
Another way to customize your ad text is to create multiple Ad Groups, each with one keyword and one ad that contains that keyword.

Adopt a clear style

Short, non-repetitive sentences work best.
Double-check spelling and grammar.

Test multiple ads per Ad Group

Try different messages, and see what works best.
Our system tracks the CTR for each of your ads, so you can identify and remove ads that perform poorly.

Identify the unique aspects of your product or service

What makes your product or service useful, relevant, better, and different?
Call attention to the unique benefits you offer to set you apart from the competition and to attract more searchers.

Example: "Wholesale prices on brand names"

Use a strong call-to-action

Use a call-to-action to prepare your audience for what you want them to do.
Make sure that this phrase is unique and specific to your business so that it is more informative and compelling and distinguishes you from the competition.

Example: "Register for membership now," "Save on DVDs," "Get cheap stereos," or "Join now for 20% discount."

Links - landing pages & conversion tracking

Link to relevant and informative web pages

Users click on your ad when they are interested in what you offer. Make it easy for them to find out more by sending them to a relevant destination (landing) page.
Make your landing page easy and intuitive for the user to understand.

Example: If your ad offers a free product, link directly to a page that clearly displays that product.

Track your conversions

Conversion tracking is the latest addition to our suite of Google AdWords reporting tools. This feature allows you to track how many ad clicks convert to purchase, sign-ups, page views and leads - for free.

You will get AdWords conversion data right down to the keyword level in your reports and this is information that can help you better measure your return on investment.