The Google Adwords blog put out a new posting today discussing the benefits and the purpose of the new Adwords interface.

Their main objective is to make Google Adwords more “user friendly” and also to make it look and feel a lot like other Google products you may be used to.

Shortcuts are a big feature with the new interface and below are the ones they highlighted:

If you aren’t tracking your Adwords campaign then in my opinion, you are just guessing with what’s working.

Or alternatively, and this is mostly the case with Adwords advertisers, you simply don’t know how to track your campaigns.

Google Analytics is one of the best ways, actually let me correct myself, it is the best way to track your campaings, your ad spend, and the ROI that your Adwords campaign is delivering.

Here’s a great article from the Google Adwords team that discusses this issue in more detail:

Inside AdWords: Analytics and AdWords tips – Part 2 of 4

This is part 2 of 4. I’m about to find part 1, and I will also post part’s 3 and 4 as they come out.

From the Inside AdWords: Analytics and AdWords tips – Part 2 of 4

Here’s a video that shows you how to link your Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts in 60 seconds:

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One of the most amazing features with Google Adwords is their Geo Targeting tool.

With Google Adwords geo targeting, you can select to have your ads show up in specific countries, languages, regions, and even metro city areas.

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Are you ready to discover an incredibly simple, yet amazingly profitable Google Adwords secret?

This is not something that Google wants to you know because it is costing advertisers literally millions of dollars a year – unnecessarily!

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Google is starting to role out their new Google Adwords campaign management interface in beta on a much larger scale.  The program has already been launched throughout the US and the UK.  Below are some highlights of the new interface:

- Performance graphs: Spot trends over time with custom graphs on every campaign management page.

- Insight across ad groups: Focus on the high-impact areas of your account with new roll-up tabs on every page. You can see and edit keywords, placements or ads from all ad groups on a single tab.

- In-line editing: Want to change a keyword or bid? Click on it and make changes in-line instead of loading a separate page.

- Easier content network management: Improve content network performance through a new Networks tab. Look at statistics for the placements where your ads have appeared, and then take action by setting unique bids or excluding placements directly from the report.

Also, below is a great video that discusses the new beta program:

Google Adwords is the most powerful advertising solution on earth. It’s also the easiest and fastest way to get your business in front of someone who is searching for what you offer.

But how do you get those high quality individuals to click on your ads when there are 10 – 12 other ads on the same page to chose from?

The answer is in your ad variations! And below I’m going to show you my tried and true method for getting click thru rates of well over 8% on a daily basis.  Now, if you don’t think 8% is a good number, then consider the average click thru rate in Google Adwords is about 2%.

My ad variation and split testing strategy is what I call “The Three Tier Ad Variation Approach!”  And here’s how it goes:

1)  For each Ad Group, create 3 ad variations. Of course, each one is completely different, yet built around the same theme of your Ad Group.  Be creative here – use your keywords in various way in your titles, and try to be creative in the description lines as well.

2)  Let all 3 ad variations run for a minimum of 2 weeks. This is a critical step because in order to appropriately analyze the performance of your ad variations, you need to have sufficient data to back your reasoning for step #3.

3)  Look at the CTR (Click Thru Rates) of all 3 ad variations and click the blue linked “CTR” so that it sorts your ad variations from the highest percentage to the lowest.  Next you’re going to delete the ad variation with the lowest percentage rate.  Just select that ad and click delete.

4)  Now you’re going to create another ad variation to replace the one your just deleted. But before you do, analyze the two ad variations that got relatively stronger CTR (click thru rates).  Observe their title structures, descriptions, language patterns, etc…  It’s not by accident that after 2 weeks of running, these 2 ad varitions out performed the 3rd.  Now after you’ve analyzed the first 2, re-write your third ad variation with the goal of beating em’ both!

Perry Marshall say’s about ad varitation and writing that you need to “beat the best”.  However, I believe he was suggesting that you only split test 2 ad variations at a time.  I don’t agree with this methodology because there’s just not enough test variables, or testing elements, in place to give you sufficient enough data to make solid decisions.

So that’s it!  Good luck with trying out the The Three Tier Ad Variation Approach, and let me know how it goes for you.

As always, don’t hestitate to contact me with any questions.

When it comes to Google Adwords ranking, costs per click, quality scores, and everything else that’s critically important to your add campaign, the one word that summarizes it all is “RELEVANCY” (visit the link to read Wikipedia’s philosophical expose’ of that term!).

Relevancy, at it’s core and pertaining specifically to your Google Adwords campaign, is the #1 factor in grading the performance of your campaigns.  And when it comes to getting top rankings for your keyword phrases, for less costs per click than any of your competitors, you literally have to take a “surgical” approach to how you set up your Adwords campaigns.

Below is a great video from the Adwords team about how to properly optimize your campaign for the highest relevance scores possible.  If you’re serious about having an Adwords campaign that cannot be beat, and that delivers top rankings for the lowest possible cost per click, then this video is a must see:

Below is video from Google Adwords advertiser education series about Google Adwords content network. Effect use of Google’s content network can dramatically improve your ability to connect to customers who are of the absolute highest quality.

Never before in advertising history have you had the ability to select specific demographic and geographic parameters for ad targeting – and likewise the ability to “de-select” the same.  And taking the targeting powers one step further, with Google Adwords content network, you can ensure that your ads are displayed on the right content pages through the use of “theme keyword” implementation.

The key difference with utilizing keywords for the “search network” versus the “content network” is that the content network utilizes data at the ad group level.  This means, to determine what pages your ads will appear on within the content network, both your keywords and ad variations are analyzed to derive “themes”.  This is different from the search network where you ad display is driven solely by the keywords and their matching structures.

Enjoy the video and best of luck on Google’s content network:

If you aren’t using Google Analytics with your Google Adwords campaign, then you are more than likely leaving a lot of profitability on the table each month.

Effectively using Google Analytics with Google Adwords will allow you to:

• see where your visitors are coming from
• see what keyword phrases are being used to bring in traffic
• identify what ad variations are working best
• and this big one >> track the actual conversions based on conversion goals
• and oh yeah – establish conversion goals!

These are all critical compenants for you to experience the most optimal, most effective, and more profitable Google Adwords campaign.  Proper management, at the Analytics level, will allow your Adwords campaign to achieve a high quality score and quickly outrank competitors while paying less per click than even lower ranking competitors.

Below is a great video from the Google Adwords blog: