20 tricks for a perfect SEM campaign in Google Adwords ads

Today we bring this little guide of Google Adwords ads with 20 essential tricks for your SEM (Search engine marketing) campaigns.

Surely you serve to enhance and make the most of your ads. There are many things you can do to lower the price of your clicks (CPC), increase the quality score of pages, visits, and optimize the conversion and CTR.

Following the search engine marketing cycle I would like to share 20 important tips and tricks in Google Adwords ads for your SEM campaigns with Google Adwords.

What is SEM?

First of all, let’s define the term SEM. This acronym, Search Engine Marketing, defines paid advertisements in search engines like Google. It is the most widely used internet online marketing system for PPC (Pay per click) paid Google Adwords ads campaigns.

Google Adwords ads SEM campaigns works differently from other digital marketing campaigns such as Social media marketing.

With Facebook ads, for instance, we can announce and control different user profiles by age, interests, training…

In Google Adwords on the contrary, we will not know what kind of person or group from which we get most of the traffic and conversions.

Why Google Adwords ads?

The answer is almost obvious. 82% of searches online uses Google as the primary search engine. But, are SEM campaigns useful to all businesses?

Well, I would recommend it to all businesses with commercial products or services on their website. These are my tricks used to get the maximum SEM marketing performance.

How to maximize your SEM marketing performance

1. Organize and rename your campaigns and ad groups

Note that each Adwords account allows us to have up to 25 active campaigns at the same time. So try renaming your campaigns in the clearest possible way, this is going to be very useful when optimizing keywords.

2. GEO-targeted campaigns

Google Adwords uses geo-targeting to reach directly to your potential customers. Select only those you want to include in your campaign and exclude the rest. Some products or services give different results in different countries.

Targeting different countries will give you an understanding of which countries your product or service gets the highest conversion rate. Separate your SEM campaigns and set your ad groups based on competitive keywords for specific countries.

This is also useful if the locations are in different time zones and you can orient the schedule for each, to schedule your ads, independently.

3. Create multiple ad groups per campaign

We should note that one of the main factors that will determine our success it the quality of our product or service keywords.

The ads must simply be really relevant for searches that users perform on Google. Use related keywords for each different group, that match the text ads. It will give better results than a single ad group with a long list of keywords unrelated to content, to conquer potential customers.

4. Use the keyword planner

With this tool, you can analyze keywords and get ideas for your ad groups. Enter search terms by which you wish to advertise and get lists of terms that can help you improve your relevance in terms of segmentation. In this tool you can find valuable information such as the approximate number of searches for keywords, bids, offers…

Remember that the more your keywords appear in search engine results for relevant users, the better the clickthrough rate (CTR) of your ads. It will help you get better CPC results at a lower cost.

5. Google Trends to analyze keyword search traffic

Google trends is a useful tool to define keywords and get traffic information of the most trendy keywords. Follow the trends online and keep your content adjust to the most attractive keywords.

6. Add negative keywords

There are certain words that clash directly with your business goals. Keywords from which we will not generate any quality traffic or conversion.

It is important to adjust your keywords to relevant users, and by including negative keywords we exclude all search results that are not relative to our products or services, as you may otherwise find that your ad is being shown for searches that are not related to your business.

7. Delete or pause the keywords with lower CTR

When a particular keyword has a very low CTR, it will affect negatively the quality of your campaigns. So, it will be convenient to delete or pause them. In principle, we would opt to eliminate them, as we do not want certain words affecting our global quality score.

However, some marketers prefer to pause the campaigns for some time since eliminating them also lose the stats and data from these keywords.

8. Help yourself to different match types to choose your keywords

One of the tricks in Google Adwords is to include all the top related keywords in every ad group. This will help generate a greater number of impressions for each ad.

Also, ensure that these impressions are relevant to user searches and get a high click-through rate (CTR). Depending on the goals of our campaigns, higher exposure is preferred.

For a branding campaign, you would have a more targeted exposure if sales of a particular product or service are included. For this, you have different match types available: broad, + modified broad, “phrase”, [exact], or -negative.

9. Multiple ads for each ad group

I recommend using several ads with different texts within each ad group, play with the title and description, include different calls to action, highlighting various offers, and so, check what works best. Just remember to adjust the keywords you have selected for your ad group.

First, because we want to be relevant.

And secondly, because all keywords that match your search will appear in bold which makes it easy for users to identify the keyword of the required search.

10. Use the equitable rotation of ads

After the above advice is implemented, this 10th trick will become a good strategy. In the settings of your SEM campaign, Adwords will allow you to choose the rotation of ads, optimizing your ads to get more clicks, or prioritizing those with better conversion ratios.

Select the best rotation of ads mainly at the start. This way you will know directly, outside of estimates that Google makes, which ads are working at the best offers, and use this data to make decisions.

11. Compose the text of your ads so that they are great

The way you write your ads plays a big part in the success of your campaigns. You need to use creativity to get the user’s attention and increase the number of clicks you get. You have a 25 character title, description lines of 70 characters, and 35 characters visible in the URL. Use all this space to include your sales message; be as descriptive as possible, and try to stay relevant to the user’s search. Include calls to action; create a sense of urgency to stand out from the competition. It is a challenge!

12. Take ad scheduling to reduce costs of ads with few conversions

You can decide the days and times when you want your ads to appear. This is one of the most useful steps in strengthening your presence or improving the ad position in preferred times for your business options. This way you will also reduce the cost per conversion in times of low interest.

You’ll find this tool in the settings tab of your Adwords panel. In the ad schedule, you can increase or decrease the percentage, the maximum CPC you are willing to pay, depending on the day or time that your ad is displayed.

13. Use extensions to enrich your ads

Thanks to the extensions, you can provide additional information about your website, company or product. It’s all about increasing relevance!

You can add different extensions that will appear next to ads when Google finds them. This improves the visibility of the ad. Types of extensions:

• Location: You can add the address of your business, or add a pushpin on Google Maps to help users find you and increase the visibility in search results.
• Links: This extension can add different parts of your website, specific landing pages, links to pages with relevant information about your company, membership forms, featured offers, etc.
• Phone: Call extensions to serve on one hand as direct contact information, and it can be used as “call button”, allowing the user to contact you by clicking it, without having to dial.
• Reviews: You can include various sources of reviews that are related to your brand or product on the internet. You enter the source and URL where the review is located, and the system will then attract new customers encouraged by the positive ratings others have given you.

14. Upgrade your conversions. Insert the tracking code on Google Adwords

By tracking conversions on Adwords you are able to analyze what happened when users clicked on your ad and accessed your site.

Conversion tracking is a code snippet that inserts into all your pages. This indicates whether users meet the goals that you have set for your ads: conversions as a sale, filling out a form, viewing a video, downloading a file or application, etc. It will also allow you to calculate the ROI of your advertising campaign.

15. Upgrade your conversions. Link your AdWords account with Google Analytics

An alternative to Adwords conversion tracking is to have all the data on your conversions, measure the ROI of your campaigns, and make decisions for improving targets that will link your account to Google Analytics.

With this web analytics tool, you can measure the performance of the keyword conversions provided to you, the quality of the landing page that users who click on your ad get to, and the journey they take n your website before beginning conversion.

16. Make sure your landing page is related to your ad

This is another one of the factors that influence the relevance of your ad and therefore the level of quality that Google assigns you.

Actually, it is essential to generate a great browsing experience. If users don’t find what you were advertising on your landing page they will abandon the website without producing any useful action.

Try to build a landing page that meets the expectations you’ve generated with your ad. Create specific landing pages for products and offers that you announce.

17. Take care of charging time and other technical details of your landing page

Continuing the last point’s advice, you want your potential customers to be comfortable while browsing your website.

The website has to be easily accessible, clear, and well distributed. The users have to be directed towards meeting your goals.

Implement a responsive design on your website, in order to provide great user experience, regardless of the device that is being used. Make sure the loading time is optimal.

18. Add votes in your control panel columns

As you will see from creating your first SEM campaign with Google Adwords, some of the main tasks will be: analyzing the performance of your ads, keywords and bidding strategies, improving your conversion ratio, and increasing ROI.

The interface of the tool, in the reports section, gives you a lot of valuable information, and also allows you to generate more views that help you in your strategy.

Add or remove columns from the reports, as this will be very useful in your daily work in managing campaigns. Include columns showing competitive data, or information regarding conversions.

19. Make Remarketing lists

Using remarketing, you can reach users who have previously visited your website, by showing relevant ads when they are browsing or performing other related web searches.

When users surf the web you will be added to a remarketing list, which will allow you to reconnect with them.

So you will offer products and personalized offers using content that people have shown an interest in.

If they buy, you can increase your ROI, multiply your conversions, and increase your customer base. Create different remarketing lists personalizing by product type, by potential customers, or by repeating customers.

20. And finally, do not forget, OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE!

Once you’ve created your campaign and your ad group, you have written the most striking texts that include your keywords, you’ve decided your bidding strategy and you’ve set the daily budget, it’s time to receive and analyze performance data.

Then it’s time to OPTIMIZE! Optimize to improve your CTR, optimize to improve the position of your ads, and to get more conversions, optimize to adjust CPC bids, and so on.

Optimize your campaigns in order to make your SEM strategy successful. Strive to get better exposure and higher quality, to help you achieve your business goals.

Have your own tips and tricks for successful SEM campaigns? How do you optimize? Feel free to share your knowledge!