the advanced guide to ppc account optimisation

Table of content03 Introduction

04 Chapter 1 – goals And KPIs

05 Chapter 2 – A/B ads testing

07 Chapter 3 – Bid management

12 Chapter 4 – Search query reports

14 Chapter 5 – Search filters

16 Chapter 6 – Optimising campaign settings

19 Chapter 7 – Account expansion

21 Chapter 8 – Quality score optimisation

29 Chapter 9 – Monthly reporting

31 Chapter 10 – Competitor research

33 Chapter 11 – Analytic's and search funnel reports

36 Chapter 12 – Conversion rate optimisation

About the author

Wesley Parker is the managing director of TopRankdigital. He first started working with PPC when he founded his first business 5 years ago back in 2009. Since then he has sold his first business selling iPhone cases and and is now dedicated to growing other businesses through digital marketing.

Introduction

Account optimisation is fundamental for maximising the return on investment of your PPC Campaigns. If you're serious about growing your profits from PPC then this guide is for you.

We will be covering several topics from A/B testing and pivot tables to dayparting and conversion rate optimisation. All of this will be covered at an advanced level to help squeeze even more out of the best performing campaigns.

Here is just some of what you will learn:

● Learn how to find your optimal ads position and create bidding rules to keep you there.

● Learn advanced tips to maximise your quality score and drive down your costs.

● Learn advanced tips to maximising your conversion rate and lower you cost per conversion.

● Learn strategies that work in the real world, not just theoretically.

http://toprankdigital.co.uk/author/admin/

http://www.toprankdigital.co.uk/

Setting clear goals

Accounts that have clear set goals significantly outperform accounts that don't or accounts where gaols change regularly. Setting goals is fundamental as it allows you to create a bespoke strategy which is in line with your business needs.

Once you have set your goals (e.g. Lower cost per conversion from £7.50 to £4.50) then you will have to choose KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to track your progress. For example if your goal was to lower your cost per conversion you should use the following KPI's:

● Cost per conversion (To measure your overall success).

● Conversion rate (By improving your conversion rate you will lower your cost per conversion).

● Cost per click (By lowering your cost per click you will reduce your cost per conversion).

● Quality score (By improving your quality score you will pay significantly less per click).

Creating an optimisation strategy

You now need to look at the various factors that influence your goal and create a strategy for improving them. I need to stress here you must to focus on the tasks that will make the most significant improvement to your account.

You need to look at each KPI individually and create an actionable list tailored to your goal. For example lets look at lowering your cost per conversion. Here is an actionable list for improving conversion rate (the second KPI).

To improve conversion rate you should:

● Block irrelevant searches with negative keywords.

● Pre-quality prospects with your adverts.

● Improve on-site conversion rates.

● Send prospects to the most relevant landing pages.

● Ensure your deals are better than competitors.

● Appear at the optimal keyword position.

Chapter 1: Goals and KPI

Goals and KPI strategy

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Why you should A/B test your adverts

Testing is a fundamental pillar for campaign optimisation. By running several adverts side by side you can see which adverts perform the best and then run these in your campaigns. This will in turn increase your click through rate and quality score and therefore lower your cost per conversion.

Create new adverts if your ads are not performing

If your adverts are way behind your KPI targets then you should create brand new adverts. By rewriting your complete advert you can achieve significant improvements.

Make minor adjustments to successful adverts

If your adverts are already successful and are only just behind your goals then only make minor adjustments. Even with minor adjustments you can still make significant performance improvements by changing just one or two words.

What to test:

● Different display URL's (remove www).

● Swap the first and second line over.

● Pre-qualify traffic if conversion rate is low.

● Test dynamic keyword insertions.

● Test different calls to actions.

● Test different variations of words.

● Test different landing pages.

● Try adding numbers and statistics.

● Test capitalising the first letter of every word.

● Try adding different ads extensions.

Chapter 2: A/B testing

A/B testing: What to test

How long should you test For?

A/B testing is an ongoing process that needs to be carried out continually. Each one of your ads groups should have at least two adverts in at all time. To ensure that your adverts are being displayed evenly go to campaign settings and select ads rotation > rotate indefinitely.

To decide if you have a clear winner for one of your tests you should use splittester.com. All you have to do is enter the number of clicks and CTR of the two ads you are testing and the tool will calculate the confidence with which one ad is better than the other. Once you have a confidence of 99%, choose the winner and run that advert. However if you don't yet have a confidence of 99% or if there was not a big difference in CTR you should run the test for longer, until you get enough clicks to get a statistically significant result.

Remembering your split tests

To see what you have already split tested simply scroll up and click on “view change history,” and this will show you all the changes that you made to that ad group.

A/B test site links

Split testing ads extensions is something that is generally overlooked, but can make a significant difference to your ROI. You should always keep your site links relevant to your ads copy and link to pages that will be both useful and relevant. Although four site links will be displayed I would recommend adding at least eight to each ads group and testing different pages and link text. Make sure to go to your ads ''extensions tab'' and review your data and only keep the best four performing site links.

Chapter 2: A/B testing

A/B testing introduction

Chapter 3: Bid management

Bid management introduction

Testing different advert positions

Position 1 will get you the most traffic but position 2-4 generally provide the best return on investment. However the way to find the best performing position is by using pivot tables or keyword position data from Google Analytics.

If your adverts are below position optimal you should look to increase your bids and if your adverts are above your optimal position you should decrease your bids. pages 8 and 33 of this guide will show you how to find your optimal position.

How to optimise bidding for your goals

If your cost per conversion is too high you should look to lower your bids and similarly if your cost per conversion is lower than your goal you should look to increase your bids to generate more conversions.

Relocate budget to your best performing ads groups and campaigns

Once you have found out which ads groups and campaigns provide the best return on investment it is a smart idea to start redistributing more of your budget to them.

Bidding method

Manual CPC is generally the best bidding method to use. However once you have occurred 15 conversion you may want to test out CPA bidding. This is where Google will automate your bidding to aim for a set cost per conversion. This is a smart way to keep a tight hold on your budget however you should test it against CPC as it may not yield as higher return on investment.

Pivot table analysis

There are several other uses of pivot tables, such as finding your accounts average quality score and analysing day parting data. There is a full list of 10 great ways to use pivot over at PPC Hero. Here is just a couple have found useful in the past:

Measuring ROAS

Pivot tables are a great way to effectively measure the return on investment of lead generation. By comparing the data for the campaigns and leads on one spreadsheet, with further columns for the number of closed leads and the revenue generated you can quickly calculate the return on investment of your lead generation campaigns.

Search partner performance

Google does not total up the performance of search partners making it difficult to determine if your adverts are profitable or not. By creating a pivot table you will be able to quickly see this data and make a reasoned judgement.


Pivot tables

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Pivot tables and bid management

The number one spot will get you the most traffic but which spot will get you the highest ROAS (return on ads spend)? Pivot tables allow you to identify the most profitable position which you can then optimise your bids to appear for.

Creating a pivot table

If you haven't created a pivot table before, it is a relatively simple process. Here is a step by step video showing you exactly how to create the pivot table which will allow you to identify the most profitable keyword position - http://bit.ly/1jsrqvg. Once you have identified the most profitable position you now need to increase or decrease your bids so your adverts will appear at that position and monitor your cost per conversion to ensure it is decreasing.

http://bit.ly/1jsrqvg

Automated bidding rules

Automated bidding rules allow you to change keywords bids to control the position of your adverts, adjust budgets or schedule budgets for certain days each week, raise keyword bids to ensure they appear on the first page and much more. There are literally hundreds of rules you could create, but here are just a couple of useful rules to get you started.

First page rule

The first page bid rule is useful for keeping your adverts on the first page of google automatically.

● To create this rule go to automate > raise bid to first page CPC.

● Set eligibility to below first page bid.

● Then finally select frequency and set this to weekly.

This rule will then run weekly and raise any keyword bids to the estimated first page bid.

Optimal position rule

The most common rule that I use is the optimal position rule. The optimal position rule raises the bids when your ads appear below your optimal position or decreases the bid if your ads appear above your optimal position. To create this rule select 'change maximum CPC bids'.Then create two rules, one that decreases the bids when you are above your optimal position and one that increases the bids when you are below your optimal position.

● To create this rule set the automatic action to increase bids by 5%.

● Next go to the requirement then select performance > average Position < optimal position.

● Finally set the frequency setting to daily using data from the previous day.

This rule will now run daily and will increase your bids by 5% when your average ads position was below your optimal position on the previous day. Then create a second rule with decreases the bids by 5% when the average position is above optimal.


Automated bidding rules

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Who needs bid management software?

If you are managing a large PPC account with hundreds even thousands of ads groups sprawling across several different platforms then bid management software is for you.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

● Saves you time.

● Calculates optimal position and bids for you.

● Optimise your account for ROAS.

● Works effortlessly for millions of keywords.

Disadvantages:

● Charged as a percentage of ads spend.

● Although companies tell you it will do it does not always pay for itself in net gains.

Buying bid management software

There are dozens of solutions out there for managing bids from providers such as Kensoo, Marin and Aquisitio to name a few.

When choosing bid management software make sure that you look for a tool with great customer service. Many tools claim to be self services and despite what anyone might tell you no platforms are truly self service. Before you purchase a solution ensure that you understand the algorithms and understand how they will improve your campaigns performance. The world of PPC bid management tools is full of hype and jargon, so It is valuable to understand how easy the tool will be to use and how it will boost your profits.


Bid management software

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Adwords scripts

Adwords scripts are an extremely powerful way to automated your bidding and account management. They can interact with external sources, create detailed reports, change bids based on your CRM systems data or even the weather.

How to access scripts

To access scripts all you have to do is go to bulk operations down the left hand side and click scripts. Then to create a scripts simply click 'create and manage scripts'. Writing your own scripts is very complex so I would recommend either using ready made scripts or going to a developer to have one developed to your requirements.

Where to find scripts

The best place to find ready made Adwords scripts is http://www.freeadwordsscripts.com/. However if you need something custom coding then you can go to a script developer and have one made to your specification.

Useful scripts

Out of stock script (Pauses your advert when items are not longer in stock) - http://bit.ly/1mbxhQn.

Performance summary script (Emails you a summary of your accounts performance) – http://bit.ly/1sVcKFr.

Anomaly spotter (This scripts identify anomalies daily and emails you a list) - http://bit.ly/W4Pt90.

Mobile bid modifier (Calculates and sets mobile bid modifiers for campaigns) – http://bit.ly/1kWMxkz.

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Automated scripts

http://www.freeadwordsscripts.com/

http://bit.ly/W4Pt90

Search query reports

One of the most valuable reports that any marketer can have is search query reports. It allows you to see the searches people typed into Google before they clicked on your adverts. You can then use this data to expand your negative keyword list, find ideas for new keywords and optimise your bids.

Expanding negative keywords

Search query reports highlight searches that are completely irrelevant or have a poor return on investment. By looking through your search query data and comparing the performance of keywords you can create new negative keywords to block irrelevant searches. However because of the nature of how people search on the internet, the vast majority of your search queries will be unique so the best way to analyse them is by theme, as this is much more reliable and will be less time consuming.

For example if you analyse your searches and find that keywords which contain the word cheap convert poorly, but searches that contain the word premium converts well, you should improve the performance of your account by adding cheap as a negative keyword.

You can take this a step further and use this data when split testing your adverts. By replacing the word cheap in your adverts with the word premium it is likely to increase the performance of your adverts.

If you had analysed the searches at a micro level then you might have found it difficult to spot that the keyword cheap might have performed poorly, however by analysing at a macro level you can gain powerful insight.

Theme analysis

If you are not familiar with how to do theme analysis then this 5 part series by Chad Summerhill will give you all the info you need for exporting your data out of Adwords and analysis it - http://bit.ly/1ruXvlB.

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Chapter 4: Search query reports

Expanding negative keywords

Optimising keywords bids

By analysing your search query reports by theme you

can optimise long tail keywords with a small number of

clicks. For example if you have the keyword cheap

motor cars in Devon the chances are because there is

very little search volume that it would get very few clicks

making it hard to optimise. However if you do theme

analysis and see that the word cheap converts very

poorly compared to the word premium then you could

increase the bids for the long tail keywords that include the word premium and lower the bids for keywords

including the word cheap.

Even though your individual keywords may each not

have enough data to justify a reliable or significant bid

change, by using theme analysis you can draw reliable

and significant insights from your search query data at a

macro level, and make powerful changes to your

campaigns at a micro level.

Expanding your long tail converge

Catering for the full range of specific preferences and

search queries can be quite complex when there are

thousands of possible keyword combinations, however

here are two great ways to expand your long tail.

The first method is to use broad match modifier to generate new search query data. You can then analyse your search query reports and add new exact and phrase match keywords, or negative keywords if they are irrelevant.

The second is using the search query data to gradually expand your keyword list. You can find themes and then expand it using the keywords which perform the best, which keeps the size of your campaigns down, making them more manageable.

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Chapter 4: Search query reports

Bid and keyword optimisation

Poor quality score

You can use filters to identify keywords which have a low quality score which will hurt the performance of your campaign. However ROI performance has to come first so keywords with low quality scores should be kept if they are producing a good ROI. You should set up the filter for impressions greater than 2000, quality score less that 5 and CPA > your goal CPA. Once you have a list of keywords run down it pausing all of the keywords dealing with the ones which have the most impressions first. If there are particular words which you think should work then you should keep them for now. You may also want to create a filter to highlight keywords with quality score between 5-7 with more than 2000 impressions, which you should work on to improve your quality score.

Poor Performance

This filter is to allow you to highlight keywords that just do not work in your campaigns. When using this filter you need to be careful as some keywords may have worked in the past and are going though a rough patch, so you should check keywords using multiple time frames. To set up this filter you should set spend as larger that 3x your goal CPA and conversions = 0. Then go down the list and pause all of these keywords provided that are not ones that you identified as going through a rough patch.

Filters are an excellent tool to quickly highlight keywords that need to optimised or removed depending on their performance. You can use filters by going to keywords then going to filter > create filter. Here are two filters which will help you identify poor performing keywords.

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Chapter 5: Search filters

Poor performing keywords

High performance keywords

This filter will show you keywords that have good traffic volumes, convert at below target CPA, and have scope to move up the page and get more daily impressions. To set up this filter you want to set the average position to worse than 3 and then the CPA < your target CPA. Once you have created this list of keywords you want to go down it and increase the bids so they get more impressions as long as they stay below your target CPA.

High performance but too expensive

This filter will allow you to find keywords which are driving conversions however they are costing more than you can really afford. These keywords will be high enough up the page so that you can lower the CPA by lowering the bid and position. Set the CPA > target CPA as we want to identify keywords that are not profitable to you. Then set the average position to greater than 3. Once you have a list of these keywords you need to go down the page and lower the bids. These keywords will still be very valuable to your account as they are high enough up the page so that you can reduce your bids and still get a reasonable amount of traffic.

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Chapter 5: Search Filters

High performing keywords

Data analysis

The ''dimensions tab'' allows you to

segment data by hours of the day

and days of the week. The value of

this is it allows you to see which

days of the week and hours of the

day convert best. Armed with this

data you can the use the ''campaign

settings'' to automatically increase

bids at peak conversion times and to

decrease bids at poor conversion

times to maximise your return on

investment. To view this data go to

the ''dimensions tab'' along the top,

select view > time > day of the week.

To ensure that the data is reliable I

would recommend using data from

at least 2-3 months.

Optimisation

You can now use the data to

optimise your campaign settings.

Take a look at the hour of the day

data on the right. Lets say for

example that your goal CPA (cost

per acquisition) is £10. You can

clearly see that hours 0-4 are in

excess of this target and hours 5-24

are below this goal target. Now you

need to go to the settings tab of your

campaign and then select adverts

schedule. You now need to create a

schedule for 0-4 and 4-24 on all

days. You can see that 4-24 is below

goal so create a bid modifier to

increase the bid by 25% and for

hours 0-4 create a bid modifier to

decrease bids by 40% as the CPA is

considerably above goal.

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Chapter 6: Optimising campaign settings

Day parting

Data analysis

This report allows you to see the regions your traffic is

coming from. This is a great way to help understand

differences by area as many people forget that

language and competitors vary widely by region. Using

data from this report you will be able to identify the best

and worst performing areas, which you would not have

not noticed optimising at keyword or campaign level. To

view this data select a campaign and go to the

''dimensions tab'' along the top and select view >

geographic. Once again it is advised to use data from at

least 2-3 months to ensure its reliable.

Optimisation

This data will give you excellent opportunities to create

geo targeted campaigns and create bid modifiers. If you

see that there are regions that are performing

particularly badly then you may want to exclude these

from your targeting regions using the targeting options

in ''campaign settings''.

Another way to improve poorly performing areas is to create a new campaign for that area. You should spend time researching your local competitors to ensure that your offering is better than theirs and also that language of your ads and landing page is the spoken language in that area.


Geographical dimensions

Device optimisation

Google displays your adverts across three different types of devices, mobile, desktop and tablet. Due to the way people browse on different devices and because websites are not always optimised for each device, the CPA will vary across the range of devices. You can see the different CPA for each device by going to the ''settings tab'' and then selecting devices. Make sure you view at least 30 days worth of data so you can make a reliable decision.

On a recent campaign that I ran for a client the CPA on mobile devices was £13.56 and the CPA on desktop was just £7.89 (the goal CPA was £10 for that campaign). As you can see the CPA was too high on mobile devices so we created a bid modifier to reduced the bids on mobile devices by 40%. As desktop and tablet were below target I created a bid modifier to increase the bids by 20% to drive more conversions.

Location optimisation

Similarly to devices, people in different areas do not always convert at the same rate. For example If you were selling a high end product it would do well in areas where people have a high disposable income but not so well in areas where they do not. There is a similar issue due to the variations in language. To view this data go to campaign settings > location. You will see a list of locations, once again make sure that you view it for a considerable amount of time (at least 30 days). Sort your data for cost per conversion from high to low by clicking on the column header. Here you should be using bid modifiers to reduce the bids of areas that are above your goal cost per conversion and bid modifiers to increase the bid in areas were your cost per conversion is below your goal.


Device and location

Introduction

Ongoing account expansion and improving your long tail coverage will improve the overall performance of your account. Here are 11 effective methods to expand your keyword list:

1. Keyword research tools

Keyword research tools are a great way to find new keywords. There are many free and paid tools but the ones that I recommend using are keyword eye (free and paid) Google keyword planner (free) and Wordstream's keyword tool (free).

5. Site search

By going to Google Analytics and looking though your site search results you can see exactly what people are looking for which will give you ideas for new keywords.

4. Organic queries

Due to privacy reasons Google now withholds a lot of the search terms that users search in Analytics and return it as 'not provided'. However Analytics will still show you some of the keywords and Google Webmaster Tools will show you a lot of the others so these are still great places to look for new keyword ideas.

3. Uber Suggest

This is a quick way to see all of the google suggestions. Simply go to http://ubersuggest.org/ and type in your main keywords and it will return all of the Google suggestions for that word.

Chapter 7: Account expansion

Basic keyword research

2. Thesaurus

Although this is a very basic method it is still very effective. A thesaurus will help you find acronyms and variants of keywords. You don't however, need to buy a physical book there are many great online resources such as http://thesaurus.com/.

http://ubersuggest.org/

6. PLA keywords

When you are running product listing adverts you can see which keyword triggered them by going to the ''keyword tab''. This will reveal all the raw search queries that lead traffic to your site.

7. Google trends

This allows you to to compare keyword phrases and see trends in searches. The “related terms” shows keywords that were frequently also searched by those who searched for the keywords you are comparing.

8. Misspellings

SEO Books Keyword Typo Generator is a great way to find low competition miss spellings of your keywords. Just enter a keyword list and the tool will generate a list of common misspellings.

11. Competitor research

Competitor research tools can be invaluable for finding new profitable keywords because they allow you to see which keywords your competitors are bidding on. There are a large range of tools but the one that I recommend is Spyfu (Free and Paid).

9. SEO spider

By using a SEO spidering tool, you can search new landing pages for keywords and it will display the most occurring ones for you to use as keywords in your campaigns. This is a really good technique if you have lots of seasonal landing pages.

Chapter 7: Account expansion

Advanced keyword research

10. Adwords editor

The Adwords editor keyword multiplier allows you to add several list of primary and secondary keywords and create all the variations to create a comprehensive list of keywords.

Why quality score matters

Optimising your quality score is critical to the success of your campaigns so I have made sure that I will cover it in detail. As you can see, quality score is rated on a one to ten scale. With ten being the best and one being the worst. You can see from the graphs from Wordstream that by increasing your quality score can decrease your costs by as much as 50%.

Impressions threshold

If your keywords do not have many impressions,

keyword quality score is based on a kind of ‘industry

average’ quality score that is determined using data

from Google.com, until your keywords achieve a

significant number of impressions within your own

account. After the keyword has reached the impression

threshold, its quality score will reflect its performance in

your account rather than a historical industry average.

Chapter 8: Quality score optimisation

Quality score introduction

● Your keyword's expected click-through rate (CTR):The expected CTR is based in part on the keyword's past CTR, or how often that keyword led to clicks on your ad.

● Your Display URL's past CTR: How often you received clicks with your Display

URL.

● Your account history: The overall CTR of all the ads and keywords in your

account.

● The quality of your landing page: How relevant, transparent and easy-to-

navigate your page is.

● Your keyword/ad relevance:How relevant your keyword is to your ads.

● Your keyword/search relevance: How relevant your keyword is to what a

customer searches for.

● Geographic performance: How successful your a count has been in the

regions that you're targeting.

● Your targeted devices: How well your ads have been performing on different

types of devices, such as desktops/laptops, mobile devices and tablets – you

get different Quality Scores for different types of devices.


What makes up quality score?

Quality score is essentially CTR

Click-through rate is probably the most important factor that influences quality score. If you take a look at the Wordstream graph you can see that there is a strong correlation between quality score and CTR.

You should note however that quality score is standardised by ads position. Ads in higher positions get more exposure and therefore a higher click through rate, which Google expects so bidding higher will not improve your quality score.

You should also note that ads extensions are not included in the quality score calculations. for the same reasons as above.


Quality score and CTR

A/B testing

As we have mentioned before you should always have at least two adverts in each ads group. A few things that you could test that have worked for me in the past to improve my CTR are:

● Including numbers to your adverts.

● Use strong clear call to actions, such as ''buy now''.

● Focus on benefits as opposed to features.

● Look for a gap in the market using competitor research and then use a unique USP.

● Use location specific keywords.

Dynamic keywords

Dynamic keyword insertion allows for keywords that are entered in by the searcher to be dynamically inserted into the ad.

This is beneficial because it creates a more targeted ad and the keywords will be highlighted drawing the viewers eyes. The key is to ensure the campaign remains highly targeted with default text that closely matches the keywords in the adgroup and ads.

Relevance

By bidding on the most relevant keywords and being specific you will increase your CTR as people will be able to find exactly what they are looking for.

Extensions

Although these are not taken into account when calculating quality score they are still vital for improving your account CTR so are worth a mention. You should aim to use the full set of extensions with all of your adverts as they allow you to take up more advertising space and are therefore more likely to get clicked on. A survey by Search engine people showed that sitelinks increased click-through rate by as much as 30%. Research by Reevoo has also shown that merchant review stars increase conversion rates by as much as 4.6% and CTR by as much as 17%.


Maximising CTR

Relevant, useful and original content

You should firstly make sure that your advert keywords and landing pages are very closely aligned. For example if you have an advert for blue socks, it should go to a page on your website specifically for blue socks. You should make sure that you have relevant useful information on your website about your product and you should not use duplicate descriptions or copy. For example if you are advertising blue socks, the keyword blue socks should appear in the title of your page, in the URL structure of the page and should appear in the content of that page. However you do not need to put every keyword in the ads group into the page! You should aim for a maximum of 3-5 keyword phrases per landing page.

Landing page experience

Landing page experience refers to how good Google thinks somebody experience would be when they get to your landing page. Google specifies four ways in which you can improve your landing page experience which are: Provide Relevant useful content, be transparent and trustworthy make your website easy to navigate and make sure your website loads quickly.

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Transparency and trustworthiness

To make your website more transparent and trustworthy you should make sure that it is easy to find your contact details. If you are asking for personal details you should make it clear why you are asking for them and what you are going to do with them, by making your privacy policy prominent. If you have any sponsored links or advertisements you should make sure to distinguish these from the rest of your site content. Finally you should openly share information about your business and clearly state what your business does.

Ease of navigation

You should structure your navigation so people can quickly and easily find what they are looking for. The addition of a search bar on your website will help with this. You should make it quick and easy for people to be able to order your product mentioned in your advert. You should make sure they can easily find information about it by directing them straight to the product page. You should make it easy for them to order your product by adding prominent call to action buttons and then a streamlined cart experience. You should avoid using any sort of pop up as these generally irritate customers and Google specifically states that they will negatively effect your quality score.

Site speed

Google takes your site speed into account when calculating quality score. If it takes too long for the page to load this will negatively effect your quality score. Google suggests that you make sure that your landing page loads quickly on both mobile and desktop devices. They also suggest prioritising content above the page fold to help customer find what they are looking for quickly. A good tool to help check and benchmark website speed is: http://tools.pingdom.com/.

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http://tools.pingdom.com/

Create tightly themed ads groups with relevant keywords

Creating tightly themed ads groups is crucial to success. I usually aim to have 2-5 keywords per ads group maximum, and I will split the best performing keywords into their own separate ads groups. You should also create separate ads groups for misspellings. Below I have created an example to show you how to group your keywords for maximum performance.

Ads Groups 1 Keywords (bad Credit loans)

bad credit loans, bad credit loans UK, bad credit loan, bad credit loan UK

Ads Group 2 Keywords (unsecured bad credits loans)

unsecured bad credit loans, unsecured bad credit loans for tenants, unsecured bad credit loan calculator, unsecured bad credit loans companies

Write adverts that contain keywords

Writing relevant adverts that contain your keywords is the next step. For example ads group 1 should have adverts that contain the theme keyword (bad credit loans). You should aim to put bad credit loans in the headline of your advert, in the copy of your adverts and in the display URL.

Choose the most relevant landing page

Your landing page makes a big influence on your advert relevance. You need to choose the most relevant landing page for your adverts. For example if you have an ad group for ''bad credit loans'' you should then send people to a specific page for bad credit loans.

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Ads relevance

Mono ads groups

Creating separate advert groups for your top performing keywords will increase quality score because the adverts, keywords and landing pages will be very closely aligned. It will also increase your adverts click though rate because there will be several specific long tail highlighted keywords in the adverts which will make you stand out from your competition.

Find your top performing keywords

To find your top performing keywords you first should select a campaign and then go to the keywords tab across the top. Order the keywords so that they are displayed in order of conversions, from high to low, by clicking on the converted clicks column header. Finally go down the page and make a list of the keywords that have converted and have a cost per conversion lower than your goal.

High performance ads groups

The next step is to create new ads groups within the campaigns that you have just filtered. You will be creating a new ads group for every one of your top preforming keywords. The key to success here is to make sure that you include the keyword in the title of your advert, the copy of your advert and the display URL. This will mean that when people search for the keywords, your advert will stand out as there will be several highlighted keywords. However this can be a time consuming process so one of the most effective ways to speed this up is to use Google Adwords Editor to copy and paste ads groups.

Instead of creating brand new adverts, the key is to use the top performing advert from the ads group that the keywords were previously in. Then make small alterations to that to include your long tail keywords.

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Mono ads groups

Reporting

Creating monthly reports allows you to keep track of your optimisation efforts and ensures you keep focused on your goals. With careful of analysis of your reports you can gain insight and make recommendations for improving your account for the next month.

Your monthly reports should show your KPI's (key performance indicators) such as click-through rate, cost per click and cost per conversion. You should dedicate one part of your report to the performance of the whole account for that month and then should have different sections for different campaigns performance such as new campaigns. You need to make sure that somewhere in your report you calculate the return on investment for the month so you can compare it to the previous months.

Reports are useless without meaningful analysis and goal setting. At the end of your reports you should draw insight and write a brief report of what has happened and why it has happened. You then need to create a prioritised plan of action for the following month. At the end of each month you should review your suggestions and in your next report comment upon them.

Tools for generating monthly reports

Creating monthly reports is a time consuming laborious process that should be automated. There are several tools that will create stunning reports and give you the flexibility you need to report on new areas of accounts. The one that I recommend is called Swydo, it is a simple drag and drop reporting tool, that works for both Google and Bing and can incorporate Google Analytics statistics too. The reports look good and are very visual so they can be easily digested. For larger accounts I would suggest using the built in reports that come with bid management software.

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Chapter 9: Auditing and reporting

Monthly reporting

Why you need to audit accounts

Having a fresh pair of eyes look over your account is always a smart idea as they will quickly spot things that you have not picked up on or have overlooked. As an agency we have our accounts independent audited to ensure we are doing a great job for our customers.

Wordstream's performance grader

There are several different options when choosing where to get your PPC audit from. The most cost effective option is Wordstreams Adwords Performance Grader. The tool will give you an overview of your performance in terms of wasted spend (negative keywords), quality score, impression share, click through rate, long tail keywords, ad text, landing pages, mobile targeting and other best practices. It also benchmarks you against other accounts in your vertical allowing you to see how you stack up against your competitors. However, it does not give you the insight you would get if a PPC expert audited your accounts.

Independent expert auditing

Unscrambled is an independent expert auditing agency where you can get an account audit by a PPC expert as opposed to an automated tool. Their experts are able to spot more complex problems with your account. Their audits will cover all of the following:

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Chapter 9: Auditing and reporting

Account auditing

Competitor research

When starting a new PPC account or ads groups, competitor research is top of mind. However once the campaigns have been created it is often forgotten, but it is a very important part of account optimisation. By analysing your competition on a monthly basis you can keep track of them and ensure that they are not offering a better benefit than you or are bidding on a group of profitable keywords that you might have missed. Here are three effective tools for spying on your competition:

Auction insights (free)

You can analyse your competition by using auction insights which shows the URL's of all your competitors for a specific search query. By looking at the impression share and average position you can draw insight into which keywords are profitable for your competitors. If you see that there is a competitor at the top of the page with a high impression share, it is very likely that they are keeping that keyword their because it is profitable to them, therefore you may want to focus on this keyword.

You can take this a step further by analysing their landing pages for their high performing keywords. This will give you ideas for improving your own landing pages, and will result in faster improvements.

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Chapter 10: Competitor research

Auction insights

Opportunity tab

The ''opportunity tab'' provides insight on how various metrics compare to your competitors. The tool aggregates performance data from the previous two weeks and compares it to other advertisers in the same vertical. The opportunity tab allows you to compare the number of clicks, impressions, CTR or average positions. You can also filter your data by country to determine geographical differences.

Although the data that this tool provides is vague and does not give you exact access to your competitors strategy, it will give your ideas for areas to focus on and improve.

Spyfu

Spyfu is one of my favourite competitor tools, it provides very specific data for keywords your competition are bidding on and seeing success with. It also provides you with copies of the adverts that they are running so you can gain insight into what works and keep tracks on the benefits your competition offers.

The paid version of this tool give you access to considerably more data including keyword overlap, CPC estimates and other advanced keyword statistics, plus the ability to track your own performance.

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Chapter 10: Competitor research

Opportunity tab and Spyfu

Keyword positions

To view this data, log into your Analytics account and go to acquisition > adwords > keyword positions.

The keyword position report allows you to see how keywords perform at different positions in Google search. This is really valuable information as it allows to to see what positions they convert best at. It is likely that certain positions will lead to higher conversion rates which could be for a number of reasons.

For example if you have keyword like the one above you can clearly see that it converts best at position one so you may want to increase your bids so you appear to position one. However you need to test whether the increase in bid is justified by monitoring the cost per conversion.

Analytics holds valuable data

Google Analytics holds some valuable data that you need to be using for optimising PPC accounts. It allows you to see how long people stayed on your website once they clicked on your advert and gain valuable insight into how people behave and convert.

Link accounts

The first step is to link your Adwords and Analytics accounts. Here is the official Google article showing you step by step how to do this - http://bit.ly/1jFIVbW.

Importing goals

Importing your Analytics goals into Adwords will allow you to track advanced goals such as calls and eCommerce conversions, here is Googles guide for importing goals - http://bit.ly/1nlkyuJ.

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Chapter 11: Analytics and search funnel reports

Keyword position report

http://bit.ly/1jFIVbW

Matched search query report

Matched search query reports allow you to quickly gauge the quality of your traffic and see at keyword level how your Adwords traffic behaves on your website. It gives you the data for bounce rate, pages per session, the average session duration. Plus goal conversion rate and number of goals completed. This is a really good report to look at when deciding whether to add or exclude keywords from your Adwords account. By adding a secondary dimension you can see which keyword it is matched to and which URL the traffic is being sent to. This will help you identify where the landing page or ads are not appropriate and where it should be moved to a different ads group.

You can change your primary dimension to query match type which allows you to see the same data for the three different match types. Knowing what types of keywords lead to the most revenue can help you make decisions about how you bid on keywords, and which match type you use.

Destination URL

This report allows you to see which URL's perform the best and bring in the most traffic and revenue for your business. This is a really good report for identifying poor performing landing pages and identifying what is going wrong.

To make the greatest improvement look at the pages with then most sessions with low conversion rates. Then add a secondary dimension ''ads groups'' or ''keywords'' which will identify which ads groups and keywords are performing badly, if there are any obvious mismatches or anomalies then you should use a new landing page or move the keyword to a more suitable ads groups with an appropriate landing page.

However if it appears that the search term has a relevant landing page and keyword then you can use Analytics to delve deeper to try to understand why people are not converting by looking at how long they stay on your website, the number of pages per visit and other engagement metrics.

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Search query & URL reports

What are search funnel reports?

Search funnel reports are a really useful feature as they allow you to see the buying journey of your customers. Currently, conversions in Adwords are attributed to the last ad someone clicks before making a conversion, masking the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting. Take a look at the buying journey below, the searcher has first found the website by searching Hawaii vacations, they have then visited it again by searching flight to Hawaii and finally flyaway Hawaii. However your reports would not register a conversion for 'Hawaii vacation' which it is actually the first step in driving the conversions.

Optimisation using reports

The average Adwords marketer would see that the word ''Hawaii vacations'' that has no conversions next to it but with several clicks and conclude that it is not profitable, however a smarter marketer would realise that this is actually a profitable keyword and keep it in their campaigns.

Understanding the reports

By going to tools > conversions > search funnel reports you will see 7 different reports to choose from. The path length is a good report to see how many clicks it takes to complete a conversions. However the most important report is the first click analysis report which shows the keyword which triggered the first visit. These keyword may appear to be performing badly but you should not pause these as they contributing towards conversions.

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Search funnel reports

The moral of this example is to be as relevant as possible and use mid to long tail keywords, as these will appear to consumers late in the buying cyle who are more likely to convert. You should also add negative keywords to block irrelevant searches as these will have a low conversion rate.

Optimal keyword position

Conversion rate varies widely between positions. For example positions 3-7 usually convert better than 1-3 as people are later in the buying cycle. To find your optimal position use the keyword position report in Google Analytics or using pivot tables.

Landing page relevance

By sending people to the most relevant page on your website you will increase your conversion rate as visitors will not have to search around for what they are looking for. For example if you are using the keyword men’s red socks. Then you should send them to the page specifically for men’s red socks.

Introduction

Conversion rate optimisation is a process for increasing the proportion of people who complete your goal on your website. By increasing this proportion you lower your cost per conversion making your account more profitable. There are several ways of increasing your conversion rate. The first is to make sure that your adverts only appear for the most relevant searches. The second is to make sure that you are driving the traffic to the most relevant landing page, thirdly appearing in the highest converting ads position and finally to optimise your landing pages for conversions.

Keyword relevance

By making sure that you only appear for the most relevant keyword you will increase your conversion rate. The more specific your keyword the higher your conversion rate. For example I owned a company selling iPhones cases and the keyword iphone cases converted at just 1.72% however the keyword black para blaze iphone 4 case converted at around 25%.

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Chapter 12: Conversion rate optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation

Live chat scripts

By looking through your live chat scripts you can identify common questions and challenges that customers are having with your website. Create a spreadsheet with all of the different objections and tally up how many each has, then address the most occurring ones first.

User testing

User testing is a process whereby you pay people to complete a goal on your website and give you feedback on your website and how easy it was to complete the goal. This highlights problems that you would not see as you are used to navigating through your website and know where everything is. http://www.usertesting.com/ Is a great websites for finding user testers and I would suggest that you user test every time you make a substantial change to your website.

Introduction

Clicks are worthless without conversions so optimising your landing pages is critical to a successful Adwords campaign. I appreciate this is an Adwords optimisation guide so I will keep it brief and to the point.

The process revolves around creating split tests, similar to A/B testing on Adwords, where you will run a test and then select a winner. The first step is to decide what you want to test. The best way to do this is by gather qualitative and quantitative data to come to a reasoned conclusion. By guessing what to test you will get no where fast, however by being smart, gathering data and then making bold reasoned changes you will start seeing big increases in conversion rate.

The first step is to find out where your website is leaking customers. The way to do this is by using these following tools.

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landing page optimisation

http://www.usertesting.com/

Exit surveys

Exit surveys help you ask questions to people who are about to leave your website to determine the reason why they are about to leave. The tool that we have found to be the best for this is called Quarloo. It allows you to determine determine pain points, confusion and

uncover hidden objections.

Analytics and mouse tracking

By using Google Analytics you can see which areas of your website are leaking the most conversions and focus on these first. You should look at the whole sales cycle including your up sells, cross sells and email marketing so that you can maximise the customers lifetime value.

Customer surveys

Customers surveys help you to find out why people decided not to complete a conversion. Make sure that you ask open ended questions and never use multiple choice. To improve your chances of success make sure you create a great covering email and offer an incentive to get people to complete your survey. Great questions to ask to find out why people are not converting are:

● What made you sign-up/buy our product?

● Which doubts and hesitations did you have before completing the purchase?

● What’s the one thing that nearly stopped you from buying from us?

● Which questions did you have, but couldn’t find answers to on the website?

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landing page optimisation

Split testing landing pages

Now you have gathered data and started to see themes in common objections you need to create a hypothesis to test. For example If people are unsure if they can return clothes to your store if they do not fit, then your hypothesis to test might be. By making your returns policy more prominent on key pages this will improve your conversion rate.

Tracking your tests

Keeping track of your tests is really very simple and can be done using Google Analytics. Simply go to the behaviour tab down the left hand site and then select experiments. Click the ''create a experiment button'' in the top left hand corner. Then follow the process through and add the code to the pages you wish to test. Now wait 14-30 days depending on your traffic level, revisit the experiments tab and choose a winner from the data.

Conversion rate optimisation resources

I could easily write a 200 page guide on conversion rate optimisation, best practices and testing. Here I have just brushed over the surface to gave you a basic outline, however if you would like to read more here are some great resources for learning about conversion rate optimisation:

● Conversion XL blog

● Neil Patel's definitive guide to conversion optimisation

● Kiss Metrics blog

● Unbounce blog

● Conversion Rate Experts blog

● TopRankdigital blog

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Testing and resources

Checklist

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the advanced guide to ppc account optimisation

Business

kpis05 chapter

lower cost

search filters16 chapter

account expansion21

onsite conversion rates

monthly reporting31

bid management12 chapter

search query reports14