AdWords Services – Page 17 – McCord Web Services The Web Authority

November 27, 2017November 24, 2017

AdWords: Understanding the First Page Bid

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AdWords first page bid is determined by your Quality Score. If you have a low Quality Score, your bid to be on the first page of search results will be high.

AdWords makes every effort to force you into good account management techniques. One of its most important measures of account health is the Click Through Rate (CTR) which is Google’s measure of account health. Couple that together with Quality Score (of which CTR is one important factor) and Google determines how much your personal account will pay to show ads on the first page of search results by keyword.

Want your ads to appear above the organic results on the first page? Be prepared to may sometimes as much as 1/3 to 1/2 more of your fist page bid to get above the organic results. And then you can get there, only if your bid and Quality Score are high enough – by Google’s standards.

AdWords will show you in your account the first page bid, bid to appear at the top of the first page and top position bid. This will allow you to identify just where you want your ad to be placed and gives you metrics for improvement of your Quality Score and relevance over time.

More often than you would think, clients will think that they can pay their way to the top of the search results page. Think again! The AdWords Quality Score of each keywords in an account is a unique dollar figure to appear in these important positions. and changes at each and every keyword auction when your ad has the availability to appear.

It is very hard for new accounts to appear at the top of the page in part as their Quality Score starts out by default at a 5 out of 10. This pushes the top of page and above organic results bids high. Typically a keywords with a Quality Score of 10 or 9 will see lower bids for these positions, but the Quality Score is established from account history over time, tied to ad relevance, and the keyword’s CTR.

For new accounts I recommend bidding to page one and then developing account history and make sure to use conversion tracking. Over time, I will start to boost to above the organic results, when financially possible, keywords that convert for an account.

AdWords first page bids are all about account history and Quality Score. If you need an experienced AdWords Manager on your side to position your program for visibility, I encourage you to check out our AdWords Management Services.

November 22, 2017November 17, 2017

The New AdWords Interface – I Hate It!

The new AdWords interface – I have used it long enough to hate it. Hate is a pretty strong word, so maybe really, really dislike it is better.

AdWords flagged my account with a note that early next year it is forcing all clients and account managers into the new interface. Bummer!

Couched as faster and better, the new interface requires you to have a computer screen now wider than 23″ diagonally measured computer screen. My screen is 23 inches across and I still have to scroll to the right to see all my columns even with the left navigation panel shrunk.

Faster, smashter – it is not, I am spending way more time finding things even though I have had training in two seminars and routinely use the interface for accounts.

Have you tried to set up your custom columns yet for Call Rail tracking or other things you thing you want to know about as a conversion, well first you have to dig to find out what Google has categorized that as, is it source, conversion or other? Find that first, and then try to add the column – not intuitive at all. Want to see graphs your way, noooo, you have to now have red and dotted lines with no key as to what is what. Tried to look and compare the last 14 days fast – well you have to set up that date range each time, then you’ll really have to scroll right to see your info.

Clearly I am not happy. I do not see this as a good change. There is one thing I do like, I do feel that the account recommendations are helpful, and I have yet to figure out how to see the bid adjustments yet. I personally find the interface so incredible complex that it will drive more customers to me as they will simply no longer be able to do anything in AdWords themselves.

AdWords, please get more training out for managers and fix this issue of the screen not sizing properly. I do not feel I should have to go with a double monitor spread to use AdWords or use a magnifying glass to read text on the page.

November 6, 2017November 4, 2017

AdWords Manager Tips: Attribution

Today starts my series on AdWords manager tips. With over 10 years of experience in professional management of AdWords account, I wanted to share tips on an often overlooked yet important item in conversion tracking – attribution.

First to see what I am talking,(in the old interface) about go to Tools > Conversions. Click one of the names of the conversions you have set up. Look to the bottom to Attribution Model. If you’ve done nothing it has defaulted to Last Click. Click Edit and change your conversion model to Position Based.

Position Based is my preferred attribution model. Over time you will be able to see keywords in your account that you might have pause that are actually a part of the conversion path.

The first click and last click will be weighted to 40% each and the middle clicks will split the remaining 20%. What happens is important for your keyword monitoring. You will start to see keywords that previously in the last click model may not be driving as many conversions as you had thought.

Your data drives your decisions in AdWords, put your data to work for you by changing your Attribution Model to the right one for you.

To get to the prior interface if AdWords defaults to the new interface, click the three vertical dots next to the gear in the top right and click go to prior version.

There are just some things that are easier to see and faster to do in the old interface.

Need an AdWords manager? Please take a moment to find out more about what we do.

October 30, 2017October 27, 2017

Tips to Being an Effective AdWords Manager

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I’ve been an AdWords manager for over 10 years and love what I do. I have developed a deep background knowledge of how Google serves AdWords from my years of hands on client experience.

It was not until I was training a client’s staff member that I realized, just how much I knew and how complicated AdWords has become.

Here are a few of my top tips to being an effective AdWords manager:

Focus on click through rate, conversion numbers and cost per conversion in all you do. The click through rate as it is Google’s measure of health, conversions as that what the client wants, but cost per conversion as that will keep the client with you.
Encourage the client to spend only what makes sense for them. I make recommendations, but always couch the final budget selection as something they must decide. Whatever the monthly budget is I divide by 30.4 to get the correct daily budget to prevent billing questions at the end of the month.
Test, test, test – AdWords work is about boosting performance constantly. I keep a log book to quickly see what I am testing and have changed for each and every client account. Yes, I can see that in change history, but in my log, I write notes as to why I did something or a time period I am testing.
Don’t be afraid to do experiments or rollback an unsuccessful test. AdWords has a very nice experiment interface. It is well worth the time to learn how to use and understand the data. Not everything can be rolled back with the undo button in change history. Make sure you know what you did to be able to roll back.

If you need staff training, mentoring, or full AdWords set up, I invite you to visit my website to see if I may be the AdWords manager you’ve been looking for.