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Ads – When using Google AdWords for paid advertising, you are given many different ad options in which to populate with ad copy or a relevant advertorial graphic. Ad format options include: text ads, display ads and video ads.
Ad delivery – In the settings of your Google AdWords campaign, changing the settings of your ad delivery will determine how quickly you want Google to spend your daily ad budget. Dependant on the purpose of your campaign, you can either choose standard delivery so that Google evenly spreads your ad spend throughout the day or choose the accelerated option where Google will spend it as quickly as possible by showing your ads as often as possible until your budget runs out.
Ad group – Each PPC campaign is made up of one or more ad groups. Ad groups enable you to group ads that are all similar to one topic, service or product. Each ad group will have their own set of keywords which the ads in the ad groups will share. For example, rather than having one ad group for pregnancy scans with a large list of keywords it makes more sense to have multiple ad groups for different scan types in a pregnancy scans campaign.
Ad position – Paid search advertising is a great way to increase online visibility, as long as your ads are being seen! Google will give you an average ad position for each keyword in your campaign, anything between positions 1-4 is ideal as these ads will be above the fold. Ad position can be improved by increasing your bid, improving the quality score of your ads and improving the landing page experience of your targeted page.
Ad rank – the components of ad rank include: expected click through rate, ad relevance to the landing page and keywords in the ad group, landing page experience, bid amount, expected impact of ad extensions and other undefined components.
Ad scheduling – Unless you have an unlimited ad spend budget, you may want to schedule your ads to appear during a certain time period each day to conserve budget. With the ad scheduling option you can choose which days and which times of the day your ads will appear, this is great for advertisers who do not open on weekends or do not want to lose potential customers.
Assisted conversions – Attribution is assigning credit to a particular channel for a conversion. In the default Analytics attribution model, all of the value associated with the conversion is assigned to the channel from the last click that generated the revenue. However, there are other attribution models that can help you better understand the value of each of your channels and how they assist conversions, for instance one that started the user on the customer journey which is known as first click interaction.
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Bid – A keyword bid is the amount you are willing to pay for a click; bids will depend on your keyword quality score, historic click through rate, keyword competition and the quality of your landing pages.
Bing ads – Bing ads is an advertising service similar to Google AdWords however your ads will display on Bing and Yahoo. Whilst Bing is lesser used than Google, it will open you up to a wider audience and CPCs are likely to be lower.
Broad match – When creating keyword lists for your ad groups in AdWords, you define the keyword match type. One of these match types is broad match. Broad match allows your ads to appear for similar phrases, singular or plural forms of your keyword, misspellings, synonyms and other loosely related terms. The broad match keyword type will drain your ad budget very quickly if you are not actively managing your PPC campaigns and checking the search term report to check that your ads are not showing for irrelevant search terms.
Broad match modifier – By putting a + sign in front of one or more words in your broad match keyword you change the match type to broad match modifier, you are saying that your ad must only appear if the users search term contains all of the words with a + sign.
Bounce rate – The percentage of users who click through to your site but only view one page is known as your bounce rate. For example, in Google Analytics if your average bounce rate is 80% this means that 80% of users who visit your site left after only viewing the page they entered on! Bounce rate is an incredibly important metric for PPC and SEO. If in Google Analytics you can see that the bounce rate of the Paid Search channel is very high, it is likely that the user didn’t find what they were looking for on your PPC landing page and your ad copy may be misleading.
Budget – During PPC setup, you define a daily ad budget for each of your campaigns which will be the maximum amount you will be charged per day to show your ads until your budget runs out.
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Call extensions – One of the extensions available in AdWords to extend your ads and make them more engaging is a call extension. Call extensions add a telephone number to your ad on desktop and add a ‘Call’ button on mobile so mobile users can call you directly from the search results!
Callout extensions – Callout extensions enable you to add additional snippets of text to your text ads to increase the size and appeal of your paid search listing. Callout extensions are great to your unique selling points such as free next day delivery, 10 year warranty etc
Campaign – An AdWords campaign contains multiple ad groups which contain their own sets of keywords. Most AdWords settings are set at campaign level.
Change history – If your ad performance has drastically changed and you are unsure why or you want to see what changes have been made by an external PPC management company then you can check the Change History in AdWords.
Clicks – When a user clicks on your ad headline or ad extensions, this is counted as a click in your AdWords account. Depending on your pricing model (i.e. whether you’re paying per click or per impression), each click will cost you a specified amount that will be taken from your daily budget.
Click Through Rate (CTR) – The percentage of people who see your ad and click through to your site is your click through rate. A high CTR helps you identify your most successful ad copy and if these clicks aren’t converting you will know that it is something on the page that is preventing them converting rather than the ad itself.
Conversion – Depending on your business goals and how your tracking is set up, a conversion reported in AdWords is when a user completes an action on your website that you deem valuable to your business such as a phone call, contact form completion or download.
Conversion optimiser – If you have little time to manage your PPC campaigns, conversion optimiser is an option you could consider. Conversion optimiser is a bid manipulation tool which will automatically change your bids depending on how valuable Google believes the click to be and how likely the user is to convert. Conversion optimiser is a free tool however you lose all control of bidding as it is does for you!
Conversion rate – One of the most important PPC metrics is conversion rate. Conversion rate is the percentage of users who clicked your ad and completed one of your desired actions that you have counted as a conversion in AdWords.
Conversion tracking – If you have designated advertising budget on ad spend and a PPC agency, you want proof that your ads are converting right? Conversion tracking is a snippet of free code that is added to every page of your website that enables you to see in AdWords and Analytics what the user does once they click your ad. This will help you identify which ads are driving conversions and which are wasting budget.
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Display network – If you have a more flexible budget and want a larger outreach, Display network may be a good option for you. Display network enables your display ads to appear on over 2 million sites trusted by Google including Google Finance, Gmail, YouTube and Blogger. You can define your target demographic by gender, age, interests etc so your ads only show to the most relevant users.
Display URL – To give users more information on what they should expect to see when they click your ad, you can create a custom display ad (also known as a vanity URL).
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Enhanced CPC – To get a little help with your bidding strategy, enhanced CPC bidding will automatically increase your bids on clicks Google thinks will likely lead in a conversion.
Exact Match – To ensure your ads only show for the exact keywords you have set or very close variants, you should set your keywords as exact match i.e. [exact match keyword]. Exact match restricts what terms you ads show for and is not a good option for many advertisers, phrase match and broad match modifiers are more effective.
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Final URL – A final URL in AdWords is the landing page you are sending your users to once they click on your ad. Final URLs aren’t shown in your ad and can be customised with tracking parameters so you can further tracking performance in Analytics and other platforms.
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Google AdWords – The advertising platform is which you set up and manage your paid advertising on Google is known as Google AdWords. Google AdWords gives you an insight into how your ads are running and there is always a Google expert on hand via live chat to answer any questions.
Google Analytics – The most used analytics platform in the world is Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you in depth data about your website and further information about your PPC performance.
Google Merchant Center – When setting up a Google Shopping campaign, you have to upload your product listings to the Google Merchant Center in order for your ads to run.
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Impressions – The number of impressions your ads receive are relative to how many times your ads have been shown in the search results. Whilst a large number of impressions is positive, if your CTR is low then this may mean you ads are showing for irrelevant search terms or your ad copy needs tweaking.
Invalid clicks – Google classes clicks made by the advertiser themselves, malicious activity from competitors or robots as invalid clicks. You will not be charged for any invalid clicks as Google filters these out from your total ad spend.
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Keyword – Keywords are terms that are relevant to your business offering which you want your ads to appear for in the search results. Your PPC keywords should be within your ad copy and on your targeted landing page.
Keyword Planner – Whilst there are other keyword research tools, Keyword Planner is the most widely used as it is by Google themselves. Keyword planner gives you accurate keyword forecasts, competition and bid suggestions as well as enabling you to form ad groups of keywords.
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Negative keywords – You can define negative keywords at account, campaign and ad group level to prevent your ads appearing for specific terms or search queries that contain certain words. Common negative keywords include: free, cheap, used, second hand.
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Opportunities – Google have an Opportunities tab which highlights potential areas of improvement such as bid adjustments, daily budget increases and keyword suggestions.
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Phrase match – Phrase match keywords enable your ads to appear for close variants of your phrase match keywords, with additional words before and after. For example, your phrase match keywords is “designer clothes” so it will also appear for “buy designer clothes online” unless ‘buy’ and ‘online’ have been set as negative keywords.
Placement targeting – Advertisers using Display Network can define placement targeting requires such as which sites they do and do not want to appear on.
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Quality score – Quality Score is part of Google’s rating process of the quality and relevance of your keywords and ads. Elements of quality score are: expected click through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.
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Remarketing – Remarketing is the process of reaching out to potential customers who didn’t convert the first time they visited your website via PPC. Remarketing enables you to improve your overall conversion rate, re-engage with missed opportunities, increase your brand awareness in your industry and ensure you targeting your preferred audience.
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Search network – Google Search Network is a group of search-related websites where your ads can appear, most commonly above and below the search results. Google ads used to appear on the right hand side of the search results however this has now been phased out.
Search network with display select – In order to target users who are searching via Google as well as browsing websites, you will need to use search network with display select.
Search terms report – Your search terms report shows you what terms your ads have appeared for. This helps you identify keywords which need to be scaled back from broad match to a match type more restrictive, as well as highlighting terms that should be added to your negative keyword list.
Sitelink extensions – One of the most effective ad extensions available currently in AdWords are sitelink extensions. Sitelink extensions give you the option to add links to further pages on your website, increasing the likelihood that your ad will be clicked.
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Topics – If you have defined campaign topics for your Display campaign, Google will only show your ads on sites that they deem relevant to your chosen topics. However, keywords always have priority so your ads won’t show on webpages that don’t match your keywords even if the webpage is relevant to your chosen topics.
Traffic – Traffic is the number of new and returning visitors that visit your site for each channel such as paid search and organic search listings and how many pages each visitor users. Traffic data can help you determine the performance of your PPC landing pages and see where improvements are necessary.
Is your PPC campaign wasting budget and giving you nothing in return? You may be making these common PPC mistakes!
Don’t have time to manage your PPC campaign by yourself? Get in touch with the In Front team to discuss costings and how we can help turn your PPC campaign around for good.