How to Earn a High Quality Score – Ad groups and Ads (Building your SEM Campaign)

In my previous blog, we briefly discussed keyword selection and goals for your SEM Campaign. Next we’ll be discussing how to group those keywords and make sure we select the right landing pages for each adgroup.

Selecting adgroups can happen before or after the keyword research stage. I choose to create adgroups based on the products/services provided by the client and research keywords after the fact. Adgroup creation can be obvious if the product/service is straight forward and have different specifications.

If our product is a little more abstract, it takes a little more consideration and creativity for creating adgroups.

How would you break those down Chris?

It would take significant time and research to discover what ad groups would be most effective (especially for global SEM campaigns). This is where getting the client involved is a great way to put your heads together and think of creative adgroups and keywords.

Recap

Let's do a quick recap! We know that

• keywords can’t be too broad otherwise we attract unqualified traffic
• keywords can’t be too niche otherwise we attract very little traffic
• use negative keyword selection to filter out unwanted traffic
• ad groups should contain keywords that are all relevant to one another
• creating ad groups can happen before or after keyword research
• be specific in creating adgroups

Advertisments

Once we’ve made sure that our keywords are all relevant to one another and are in a specific ad group that speaks to those keywords, we need to start on advertisements!
No surprise here – Advertisements should contain and be relevant to the keywords within that ad group. For example

Keyword: marketing programs in Ontario
Adgroup: Fanshawe Marketing Program
Advertisement:

Advertisements should also be unique in order to ensure it doesn’t blend in with other advertisements. You can monitor these by Googling the keywords you bided on. For example

Keyword: Marketing Program
Advertisements:

If you start to see a trend of similar advertisements, stand out with a different title, soft offer, or other advert techniques.

Other advert techniques?

There are a few advertising techniques that you can use within the advertisement. These include

• Call to Actions
  • Order Online, Order Today, Call Now, Request a Quote, etc
  • Let’s searches know they can order online, request a quote, etc
• Soft Offers
  • Free Quotes, Free Gifts, Free Consultation, Free Coupons, etc
  • Let’s searches know they receive something of value for entering your site
• Limited Time Offers
  • While Supplies Last, Limited Time Sale, Seasonality Sale
  • Put’s pressure on searches to click and see offer before it expires
• Promotions
  • Free Shipping, Sales, etc
  • Entices searches to click on advertisements in order to save money

Geo-targeting Ads

This is a more intermediate technique that requires immediate attention to beginner ad words users since it could affect their whole campaign in the early stages.

Adwords allows you to target specific geo locations on a per campaign basis. So how does this benefit you? Remember that the more specific campaign and the more relevant to the user who searches it, the better! Certain geographic areas have different political, technological, environmental, and social differences (PEST for all your marketers out there). Tailoring ads to each one of these factors in different geographic locations will speak volumes to relevancy for searchers.

Political
Canada introduced a new renovation tax credit that gives tax refunds for any renovations done to your home. If you were Home Depot or Lowes, you wouldn’t want advertisements discussing home renovation tax credits appearing in the U.S. Therefore, that political difference would prompt for different campaigns to target different geo-targets.

Environmental
California has strict guidelines and regulations for greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat global warming. If you were a car manufacturer and wanted to advertise used cars, you could emphasize that all cars sold meet gas emissions expectations set out by California and the governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Social
Haiti experienced a devastating earth quake this year which was catastrophic. If your company wishes to give to a charitable cause, you can dictate in your ad that a portion of purchases go to the Haiti relief fund. These ads could be targeted at locations that are in close proximity to Haiti or in countries that have covered the earthquake extensively and therefore, increase the sensitivity of the issue.

Technological
Ford and Microsoft partnered to create “Microsoft Sync” for Ford vehicles. If you are a competing car manufacturer that has created something similar, bid on competitors keywords to increase awareness of your product. For example, bid on “Microsoft sync”, “Microsoft and Ford”, etc. Of course you would only bid on these keywords where these models are available geographically.

My next blog will discuss landing pages!!!

Missed a previous post?

SEM Campaign Part 0 - Hurting your Site? (Quality Score)
SEM Campaign Part 1 - Keywords
SEM Campaign Part 2 - You are here
SEM Campaign Part 3 - CTR