The Explosive Growth in Digital Marketing
It’s clear that Digital Marketing is growing. You can look up the sea of information in websites like Smart Insights, Digital Marketing Institute or even well established media brands like Forbes or Gartner. However, one clear example is simply looking at two of the biggest companies who earn most of their revenue through digital advertising:
Google Proves Advertising Still Growing Online
“Overall, Alphabet revenue grew 21 percent year over year to $26 billion. Google revenue, specifically, also grew 21 percent to $25.8 billion.” As a result, it had to continue hiring to support it’s constant growth:
Facebook Adds to the Digital Marketing Growth
Over at Facebook, they saw healthy earnings as well. Advertising revenue grew 49% year over year showing how companies are spending close to 50% more year over year.
Basically, based on these two, you can see more are spending online for their marketing initiatives. And these two represent the #2 and #5 largest companies by market capitalization (4th Quarter 2017).
The plethora of activity that occurs online proves how digital marketing has literally exploded:
Training with Online Digital Programs
Many companies are trying to keep up with the demand by supplying the world with more choices in becoming proficient at this constantly growing field. Google, itself has many programs including free digital marketing programs, the Google Analytics Academy, and for developers supporting Google’s products.
Facebook has gotten into the game offering Blueprint and resources for marketers. Blueprint is a training and certification program created by the social media giant to empower students of the program the knowledge of leveraging all the tools on Facebook, but also on Instagram, a division of the behemoth.
It’s broken up into 3:
Udacity’s SEO Offerings
Udacity offers several ways to learn SEO. Their beginning program is for free.
- 1 hour on-demand video
- 3 Articles
- Full lifetime access
- Access on mobile and TV
- Certificate of Completion
Introduction to SEO
How To Do Keyword Research
On Page Optimisation
Off Page Optimisation (Link Building)
Course Recap & Student Bonus!
How Search Works
- To execute a successful SEO strategy, you need to know how search engines work. In this lesson, you’ll learn search engine basics.
Keywords
- SEO needs to align with the keywords that matter most to your target audience. In this lesson, you’ll learn about keywords, how to choose the right ones for your objectives, and how research can help you to identify them.
On-Site SEO: Optimize UX & Design
- Learn how to optimize the UX and design of your site to help search engines find and associate your content with your target keyword list.
(we believe the conversion rate capabilities of a website are so much more important these days)
Off-Site SEO: Link-building
- Inbound links to your content are crucial in determining your search engine ranking for your target keywords. Develop and execute a link building strategy to improve your site’s relevance and ranking.
SEO Audit & Future of SEO
- SEO is an ongoing effort, and it is important to audit your site on a regular basis to ensure optimal visibility. Execute a content and technical SEO audit, and explore tools that can help in this process.
Jobs in SEO
- We describe what it’s like to be a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketer and what skills recruiters look for in the hiring process.
and if you feel like this is too basic, they offer a Digital Marketing Nanodegree program
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TIME
3 Months
Study 10 hrs/week and complete in 3 mo.
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CLASSROOM OPENS
March 19, 2018
Classroom opens in 12 days.
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PREREQUISITES
No Experience Required
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STUDENT RATING
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ESTIMATED SALARY
$53.9k to $119kBased on US job data
The program offers:
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Marketing Fundamentals
In this course, we give you a framework to help you organize and plan your marketing approach. We also introduce you to three companies that are featured throughout the Digital Marketing Nanodegree program as examples of how to apply what you learn in both B2C and B2B contexts.
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Content Strategy
Content is at the core of all marketing activity. In this course you learn how to plan your content marketing, how to develop content that works well for your target audience, and how to measure its impact.
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Social Media Marketing
Social Media is a powerful channel for marketers. In this course, you learn more about the main social media platforms, how to manage your social media presence, and how to create effective content for each platform.
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Social Media Advertising with Facebook
Cutting through the noise in Social Media can be challenging, and often, marketers must use paid social media marketing strategies to amplify their message. In this course, you learn about the opportunities for targeted advertising in social media and how to execute advertising campaigns that resonate with your audience.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines are an essential part of the online experience. Learn how to optimize your search engine presence through on-site and off-site activities, including how to develop your target keyword list, optimize your website UX and design, and execute a link-building campaign
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Search Engine Marketing with Adwords
Optimizing visibility in search engine results is an essential part of Digital Marketing. Reinforcing findability through Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an effective tactic to achieve your marketing objectives. In this course, you learn how to create, execute, and optimize an effective ad campaign using AdWords by Google.
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Display Advertising
Display advertising is a powerful marketing tool, strengthened by new platforms like mobile, new video opportunities, and enhanced targeting. In this course, you learn how display advertising works, how it is bought and sold (including in a programmatic environment), and how to set up a display advertising campaign using Adwords by Google.
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Email Marketing
Email is an effective marketing channel, especially at the conversion and retention stage of the customer journey. In this course, you learn how to create an email marketing strategy, create and execute email campaigns, and measure the results.
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Measure and Optimize with Google Analytics
Actions online can be tracked, and so can the effect of your digital marketing efforts. In this course, you learn how to use Google Analytics to evaluate your audience, measure the success of your acquisition and engagement efforts, evaluate your user’s conversions to your goals, and use those insights to plan and optimize your marketing budgets.
PREPARE TO MARKETHow to Leverage Udacity’s SEO Course for Free
So, how do you save up to $999 (the price of admission for the Digital Marketing program)?
It’s simple.
Ironically, you use what you are learning more about: Google.
We’ve done a lot of the legwork for you above. We basically provided you the curriculum or list of items you need to learn. Beyond that, just google many of the items listed above and learn about them.
Beyond that, what else?
Get involved in online communities related to the subject. There are a ton of facebook. Many are on reddit. Check out many of the SEO questions on Quora. I have and written a ton of them.
There are many other past resources like Google’s now defunct Online Marketing Challenge. (be warned, this may find itself in the Internet graveyard soon).
Google recently ended their Online Marketing Challenge which supplied participants with better knowledge of the field.
Thanks to all of the support from professors and the thousands of ambitious students who have helped businesses and nonprofits in their local communities, the Google Online Marketing Challenge has had 10 years of great impact to celebrate. More than 120,000 students and professors across almost 100 countries have participated in the program, helping over 15,000 businesses and nonprofits grow online. Most importantly, the Challenge has provided a practical hands-on learning opportunity, helping thousands of students around the globe develop practical skills and professional experience, and preparing them for successful careers in this digital world.
Before it becomes another casualty and becomes a resident in the Internet Archive grave, we thought we would save some of the content to help anyone still interested in what it provided in the 10 years it did exist:
3 Resources from their Google Online Marketing Challenge summary:
- Google Digital Garage
- Mobile App Primer (very basic)
- Academy for Ads
- Adwords Certification
What’s changing
As digital evolves, so do our programs, and therefore we will no longer be hosting the annual Google Online Marketing Challenge. That being said, Google remains committed to providing students with opportunities for practical skill development and will continue to support student development through our free digital skills trainings and certification programs:
Digital Workshop
Digital Workshop is Google’s free digital skills program offering individuals online training in anything from search to social and beyond. Completing a course will also earn you an official Google and IAB certificate. It’s already helped 3 million individuals learn new digital skills, and we’re looking forward to welcoming you aboard.
Primer
Primer is a free mobile app that delivers bite-size marketing lessons that you can do whenever and wherever you have 5 minutes free. It’s a fast, easy way to learn new business and digital marketing skills.
Academy for Ads
Academy for Ads offers on-the-go free education to anyone looking to learn more about Google’s ad products from AdWords Search, Display, to Doubleclick products and beyond.
The course
Introduction To Digital Marketing
The modules in this course provide students with a comprehensive overview of the digital marketing landscape and introduces key concepts and vocabulary that will be covered in subsequent modules.
Digital Marketing Glossary
Never get stuck for words again. This list of regularly used digital marketing words and phrases will act as your jargon busting dictionary.
Digital Marketing Glossary – Googles Online Marketing Challenge
Building your Online Marketing Plan
Learn how to create an online marketing plan to achieve your business goals. Get tips on how to set marketing objectives, write a plan of action, and define a marketing budget.
Adwords Fundamentals Prep Course
This video gives an overview of what you’ll need to know in order to get ready and prepared for your AdWords Fundamentals exam.
AdWords Fundamentals: Exam Study Guide
This study guide is for those who want to prepare for the AdWords Fundamentals exam. It provides information about the basic and intermediate aspects of online advertising and AdWords, including the benefits of online advertising, how to setup and manage an AdWords campaign, and how to measure and optimize your campaign’s performance.
AdWords Fundamentals assessment study guide
About the AdWords Fundamentals assessment
Welcome to the AdWords Fundamentals study guide!
This study guide is for those who want to prepare for the AdWords Fundamentals assessment. It provides information about the basic and intermediate aspects of online advertising and AdWords, including the benefits of online advertising, how to set up and manage an AdWords campaign, and how to measure and optimize your campaign’s performance.
We recommend that you review the materials in this study guide and have on-the-job experience using AdWords to increase your chances of passing the assessment.
What’s included in this study guide?
Once you’ve completed this study guide, you’ll know how AdWords works. You’ll also learn about the following:
- How online advertising and AdWords can help your clients meet their advertising goals.
- Google Search Network and Google Display Network campaign creation and management.
- How to measure ad performance and optimize campaigns.
- Industry best practices and strategies.
Assessment information
You can take the assessment through Academy for Ads, Google’s online training program. In Academy for Ads, you can take the assessment and earn an AdWords certification from any learning path that has “certification” in its title.
- Questions: The assessment is made up of 65 questions
- Time: You’ll have 90 minutes to complete the assessment
- Passing score: You need to get a score of 80% or higher to pass
- Retake period: If you don’t pass the assessment, you can take it again after 1 day
- Available languages: simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese
Grow your business with AdWords
Online advertising lets you target your ads to the type of customers you want, and filter out those you don’t. When you advertise online with AdWords, you can use different targeting methods to reach potential customers right when they’re searching for your products or services.
Reach your marketing goals
Take advantage of different ad formats and features to customize your ads to your different business goals, like adding a clickable “Call” button to your ads to get more phone calls, or using video ads to showcase your brand. Here are some common marketing goals that could work for you:
- Take action on your website
- Visit your store
- Call your business
- Install your app
Target your ads with keywords
When you advertise alongside search results on the Google Search Network, you select keywords to help target your ads to people searching for related terms. You can also choose to show your ads at certain times of day, and specify a location and language.
Get specific about your target audience
When you advertise on websites and mobile apps that show Google ads (called the Google Display Network) and YouTube, you can get even more specific by choosing the age of the people you want to reach, the types of sites they visit, and their areas of interest.
Only pay for results
You decide how much you want to spend, and pay only when someone interacts with your ad, like clicking your text ad or watching your video ad. You base your bids on whatever is best for your business.
Measure your ad’s performance
Quickly track your ad’s effectiveness and easily make changes to improve results.
Advertise across platforms
Connect with customers no matter where they are—on their computers, tablets, mobile phones, even in apps.
See how Rachael’s Kitchen found success with AdWords.
See how other businesses used AdWords to find new customers.
Sign up for an AdWords account today and follow along with this guide.
Where your ads can appear
When you advertise with AdWords, your ads can appear on different places across the web depending on how you target your ads, to whom you choose to show them, and the types of ads you create.
This article describes where your ads can show and who might see them.
On Google Search and other search sites
Your ad can appear on Google when people look for the product or service you offer. When you create your ad, you’ll choose a set of keywords—the words or phrases that will trigger your ad to show. Then, when people search using the words or phrases you picked, your text ads can appear alongside or above search results.
- Google search sites: Ads can appear above or below search results on Google Search. They can appear beside, above, or below search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps, including the Maps app.
- Google search partners: Ads might appear with search results on websites of Google search partners. For text ads, search partners include hundreds of non-Google websites, as well as Google Video, and other Google sites.
On websites that your customers visit
You can also choose to show your ads to people as they browse the web. Your text, image, and video ads can appear on the Google Display Network.
If you’ve ever seen an AdWords ad on your favorite news site or in your Gmail account, and wondered how it got there, now you know: websites like these are part of the Google Display Network.
Your ads can appear on websites based on the targeting methods you choose. On the Display Network, there are several ways to target your ads:
- Choose keywords and topics related to what your offer
- Choose specific websites or pages
- Choose specific audiences based on their interests, demographics, or whether they’ve visited your website before.
Learn more about where ads might appear on the Display Network.
On different devices
You can show your ads to people as they search or visit websites on the go:
- Your text ads can appear when people search on Google from their mobile devices and tablets.
- Your text, image and video ads can appear on Google Display Network websites when people visit these sites from high-end mobile devices, such as iPhones, Android devices, or tablets.
- Your ads can also appear on mobile apps, which are considered part of our Display Network.
In selected locations or languages
If you have text ads, you can choose to show them to customers in an entire country, a certain geographic location, and even to customers who use names of locations in their searches.
How costs are calculated in AdWords
- AdWords gives you control over your advertising costs.
- There’s no minimum amount that you have to spend (although your Ad Rank must be high enough for your ads to show). Instead, you set an average daily budget and choose how you’ll spend your money.
Control your costs
Now that you understand the basics of how costs work in AdWords, let’s look at the ways you can control your costs:
Note: Video instructions are up-to-date, but don’t show the latest AdWords design.
Your average daily budget is the amount you’re willing to spend each day, on average, for each ad campaign in your account. The size of your budget is entirely up to you and you can edit this amount whenever you like.
Recall that when you set your max CPC bid, the amount you’re charged for a click on your ad in a given auction could be less than your max. This means the amount you pay for a click on your ad – your actual CPC – will likely vary from auction to auction. Even though your actual CPCs may vary, your daily budget puts a limit on how much you can accrue in click costs from day to day.
Your spend may exceed your average daily budget by 2 times. We call this overdelivery. Overdelivery can help make up for days when traffic is slow and your ads don’t get as much exposure. However, in a given billing period, you’re never charged more than the average number of days in a month (30.4) times your daily budget.
Example
If the budget for your ad campaign remains at $10 per day throughout an entire month, the maximum amount you would be charged for that campaign for that month is $304 ($10 x 30.4 average days per month). Recall that because of overdelivery, your daily cost might be more or less than your $10 daily budget on days when traffic is higher or slow.
If you use the cost-per-click bidding strategy, you set a maximum CPC bid for your ads. You can always lower your bid amount, but if you do, it might cause your ads to show up in a lower position on the first page of search results, to move from above to below the search results, or to be removed from the first page of search results. In general, a higher maximum CPC bid can allow your ad to show at a higher position on the page.
Tip
Put your bidding on autopilot with automated bidding. Set a daily budget, and AdWords will help adjust your CPC bids to receive the most possible clicks within your budget.
Google uses a measurement called Quality Score as an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Higher Quality Scores typically lead to lower costs and better ad positions.
How can you improve your Quality Score? Make sure that you choose high-quality keywords and create relevant ads. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Choose keywords that are terms or phrases your customers would use to describe your products or services. High-quality, relevant keywords can help you reach the customer you want, when you want.
- Create ads that are relevant to your keywords and what you’re advertising. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.
Example
Let’s say your maximum CPC bid is $2. Meanwhile, your competitor has a maximum CPC bid of $3 but the quality of his ads are below average. Because of the higher quality of your ads, your ad could actually show in a higher spot on the page, even though your bid is lower.
AdWords essential
Relevance: how ad quality affects your costs and performance
Your AdWords account’s billing “Transaction history” page provides easy access to your billing information. View daily advertising costs, payment details, and much more. Learn more about how to access your billing information.
Tip
Try using Keyword Planner, a free AdWords tool, to help guide your decision on which bids and budgets to set. Keyword Planner shows you traffic estimates, like estimated clicks, to help you get an idea of how a keyword list might perform for a given bid and budget. Note that Keyword Planner gives you estimates for the Search Network only.
Choosing a bidding strategy based on your goals
Every time someone searches on Google, AdWords runs an auction to determine which ads will show on the search results page, their rank on the page, and whether any ads will show at all. To place your ads in this auction, you first have to choose how you’d like to bid. Try choosing a bidding strategy based on your goals, like whether you want to focus on getting clicks, impressions, or conversions.
| Focus on clicks on your ads.
This is known as a cost-per-click, or CPC bid. We recommend the CPC bidding method if you want to drive traffic to your website. |
|
| Focus on viewable impressions, or the number of times your ad shows in a viewable place.
This is known as a cost-per-thousand viewable impressions, or vCPM bid. We recommend the vCPM bidding method if you want to increase awareness of your brand. Note that vCPM bidding is available for Display Network campaigns only. |
|
| Focus on conversions, or when people take a specific action on your website after clicking on one of your ads.This is known as a cost-per-acquisition, or CPA bid. We recommend the CPA bidding method for seasoned AdWords advertisers who are interested in conversions, like purchases or signups. |
AdWords essential
The auction: how Google decides which ads to show and their orderThese are the different bidding strategies that you can set. Read the section below to learn more about choosing a bidding strategy.
Choose a bidding strategy
Most people starting out in AdWords use the basic CPC bidding strategy, which means they accrue costs based on the number of clicks they get on their ads.
If you use the CPC bidding strategy, the amount you’re charged per click depends in part on the maximum cost-per-click bid you set in your account, also called “max CPC” bid. This represents the highest amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad (unless you’re setting bid adjustments, or using Enhanced CPC). In fact, the most you’ll pay is what’s minimally required to hold your ad position and any ad formats shown with your ad (including any applicable service fees that may apply to Display Network campaigns). So you’ll often pay less than your maximum bid. The actual amount you pay is called your actual CPC.
Example
Let’s say you’ve set a maximum CPC bid of US$1 for your ads. The most you’ll pay when a customer clicks your ad is $1 (unless you’re using automated bidding).
About Quality Score
So, having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad and landing page are relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.
This article explains how Quality Score works.
Quality Score is based on past performance data
Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of how well a keyword has performed overall in past ad auctions. Based on this data, each of your keywords gets a Quality Score on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest score and 10 is the highest.
Null Quality Scores, designated by “—” in the table, appear when there aren’t enough impressions or clicks to accurately determine a keyword’s Quality Score.
Quality Score status columns
These status columns show you the 4 Quality Score values: Quality Score, Landing page experience, Ad relevance, and Expected clickthrough rate (CTR).
These optional columns can be added in your keyword reports. You’re also able to see these scores in the text that appears when you hover over the keyword status icon speech bubble “(
Historical Quality Score columns
These historical columns let you see past data for all 4 Quality Score columns: Qual. Score (hist.), Landing page exper. (hist.), Ad relevance (hist.), and Exp. CTR (hist.).
Historical columns will reflect the last known score for the reporting period. If you apply the “Day” segment to your keyword reports, AdWords will report daily values that reflect what your score was at the end of each day. Note that historical data won’t be available in these columns for dates earlier than January 22, 2016. However, if you previously used a third party or scripts to download historical Quality Score data, these should remain unaffected and this data will still be available.
Null Quality Scores
New keywords initially get a null Quality Score, designated by “—” in the table. As your ads run, your keywords accumulate performance data and your Quality Score may change. You may see changes in your Quality Score once you’ve had enough impressions.
Occasionally, you may see keywords getting a lot of impressions, but still see a null Quality Score. This could happen when your keywords don’t have enough exact match impressions. Exact match impressions refers to ads showing on searches for terms that are an exact match of your keyword. So if there haven’t been enough times your ad showed for searches that were an exact match of your keywords, you could see a null Quality Score.
Also keep in mind that keywords need recent exact match impressions to maintain a Quality Score. If a keyword doesn’t have enough recent traffic, its Quality Score may also turn back to null.
Different Quality Scores for the same keyword
Sometimes, you may see different Quality Scores for the same keyword across campaigns or ad groups. This is because the three components that make up Quality Score–expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience–depend on the creatives, targeting, landing page, and other factors which can vary between ad groups. So if the ad groups are not exactly the same, the same keyword could have different Quality Scores across ad groups or campaigns.
How it differs from auction-time ad quality
Important: Your Quality Score is not used at auction time to determine Ad Rank.
Ad Rank is calculated in the instant someone does a search that triggers your ad to compete in an auction. For Ad Rank, we take into account real-time signals such as the query and user context (Ex: type of device, language preference, location, time of day, the nature of the search terms, the other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes) to calculate more precise measurements of expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Quality Score, on the other hand, is a more general estimate based on your average past performance. It also differs from Ad Rank in that it’s keyword-based.
A high-quality ad in action
Here’s an example of a good user experience based on an ad that is high quality and relevant. Let’s say that you own a website that specializes in socks, and Sam, a customer, is looking for striped socks. Here’s how your ad (and high Quality Score keywords) connects Sam with what he wants.
- When Sam searches Google for “men’s striped socks,†he sees your ad. (Your ad has “[striped socks]†as a keyword.)
- Sam clicks the ad and lands right on your website’s “striped men’s socks†page. The page loads quickly and is easy for Sam to use.
- Sam buys several pairs of striped socks.
That’s what we consider a great user experience. Beyond a potentially higher Quality Score in most cases, relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.
About AdWords campaign types
Advertising with AdWords starts with creating a campaign. The type of campaign you choose to create should be based on your advertising goals. For example, if you’d like to show ads on Google.com to get more visitors to your website, you should choose a Search Network campaign.
Each advertising network has different types of campaigns to suit your goals. This article goes through some campaign types.
How different campaign types work
Choose the AdWords experience you’re using. Learn more
As you get started with your campaign setup, you’ll be asked to pick a campaign type and select campaign goals.
The campaign type determines where customers will be able to see your ads, but you make this more specific by targeting your ads. Learn more about targeting your ads.
Campaign types include:
- Search Network campaign
- Display Network campaign
- Shopping campaign
- Video campaign
- Universal App campaign
In the new AdWords experience, we’ve made some changes to campaign types. For example, if you’d like to create a Search Network campaign targeting the Display Network (the equivalent of a “Search Network with Display Select†campaign in the previous AdWords experience), you can select “Search Network†as your campaign type, then opt in to the Display Network in your network settings. Learn more about Search Network campaigns in the new AdWords Experience.
Campaign types are centered around Google’s advertising networks: the Google Search Network, the Google Display Network, and the YouTube Network.
These networks make up all of the places where your ads can appear, including Google sites, websites that show relevant Google ads, and other placements—like mobile apps.
After you select either a Search Network, Display Network, or Video campaign type, you can select a goal for your campaign based on the actions you’d like your customers to take. If you choose to use a goal, you’ll see recommendations for features and settings that can help you meet your campaign’s main advertising objective. Keep in mind that all campaign settings and features will be available to you despite what goal you choose, and you can always make a change to your goal, or choose not to use a goal.
Goals include:
- Sales
- Leads
- Website traffic
- Product and brand consideration
- Brand Awareness and reach
How ad groups work
Group ad groups by similar themes
Many advertisers find it helpful to base their ad groups on the sections or categories that appear on their website. For example, let’s say you sell desserts, beverages, and snacks on your website.
In the table below, each ad group contains a keyword list focusing on a product you’d sell. The keyword list in each ad group tells our system to show ads for these products only on websites related to them.
| Ad group: desserts | Ad group: beverages | Ad group: snacks |
| cupcakes | soda | potato chips |
| pumpkin pies | coffee | pita chips |
| apple pie | iced coffee | beef jerky |
| chocolate cake | iced tea | salted peanuts |
| ice cream | sparkling water | mixed nuts |
| cookies | orange juice | rice crackers |
About keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that are used to match your ads with the terms people are searching for.
Selecting high quality, relevant keywords for your advertising campaign can help you reach the customers you want, when you want.
This article explains how keywords work, where your ads will show, and how much they cost.
How they work
To get your ads to appear when people search for your product or service, the keywords you choose need to match the words or phrases that people search for.
Example
If you sell frisbees, you can add “buy frisbee” as a keyword in your AdWords campaign. When people type “buy frisbee” on Google search, your ad might appear on the search results page. In addition, your ad could also appear on websites about ultimate frisbee.
When a customer searches for a term that matches your keyword, your ad can enter an auction to determine if it will show. Learn more about the ad auction.
The cost for each keyword will be different depending on the quality of your keyword, your competition in the auction, and other factors. Make sure your keywords and landing page are all closely related to the terms that a customer might be searching for or that would appear on websites a customer would visit. To help you understand the quality for your keywords, each keyword has a Quality Score.
This score is based on expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Higher quality ads typically lead to lower costs and better ad positions. Learn how to make sure your ads are relevant.
How to exclude searches
To prevent your ad from showing for particular searches, you can also add negative keywords.
Negative keywords can help you reduce costs by making sure your ad shows just to the audience you want. Learn more about negative keywords.
Example
If you sell dog clothes but your business doesn’t carry any cat clothes, you can add “cat” as a negative keyword to make sure your ad doesn’t appear to people looking for cat clothes., and you can still target searches for “pet clothes.â€
Where your ads appear
You can choose to target your ads to a number of different ad networks. Keywords work a bit differently on each network:
- Google search and search partner sites: When you build your ad groups, you select keywords relevant to the terms people use when they search, so your ads reach customers precisely when they’re looking for what you offer.
- Google Display Network: If you’ve chosen to show ads on Display Network sites, AdWords uses your keywords to place your ads next to content that matches your ads. Google’s technology scans the content and web address of a webpage and automatically displays ads with keywords that closely match the subject or web address of the page. For example, on a webpage that includes brownie recipes, AdWords might show ads about chocolate brownies or delicious dessert recipes. Learn how to choose your keywords for Display Network campaigns.
- Google Play: When promoting your mobile app, pick keywords that are related to the ways people look for apps. Add all of the keywords you imagine people might use. Keep in mind that Google may extend the scope of some of your keyword match types in ways that are specific to apps. For example, adding the word “app” when advertising outside of the Play network.
Tips
- Choose your keywords carefully. Include terms or phrases that your customers would use to describe your products or services. Make sure your keywords directly relate to the theme of your ad and the page you’re directing your customers to. Keywords of two or three words tend to work most effectively.
- Group similar keywords.Try grouping your keywords into themes. These themes can be based on your products, services, or other categories. For example, if you sell rings, you can have a group of keywords for “engagement rings” and another group of keywords for “wedding rings.” Then you can create separate ad groups for these groups of keywords and have specific ads for “engagement rings” and specific ads for “wedding rings.”
- Pick the right number of keywords. Most advertisers find it useful to have somewhere between 5 and 20 keywords per ad group.
About campaign budgets
AdWords lets you set an average daily budget for your campaigns, with the flexibility to change it at any time. Your daily budget is the average amount you’d like to spend each day over the course of the month.
While your spend may vary each day, you won’t pay more than your monthly charging limit, which is the daily budget you set, multiplied by the average number of days in a month. On days when your ads are likely to get you more traffic, you may spend up to 2 times your average daily budget. Those days are balanced by days when your spend is below your daily budget.
If you’re creating a campaign with a specific start and end date, you can also set a total budget for the entire duration of the campaign. Campaign total budgets are currently available for video campaigns only.
This article explains how to decide on your daily budget, when to use a campaign total budget, and how budget changes take effect.
How to decide on a daily budget
With AdWords, you choose a daily budget for each campaign based on your advertising goals and the general amount you’re comfortable spending each day.
Example
Let’s say you normally spend $304 per month on advertising. To figure out your daily budget, you’d divide $304 by 30.4 and would get a daily budget of $10.
Using this example, here’s how you’d figure out your daily budget:
304 / 30.4 = $10 per day (Monthly budget / Average number of days per month = Daily budget)
You can also create shared budgets, which let you allocate budget across multiple campaigns.
When to use a campaign total budget
When you already know how much you’d like to spend on your entire campaign, you can set a campaign total budget. Currently, campaign total budgets are only available for video campaigns with a specific start and end date.
You’ll have the option to select “Campaign total budget†when you create a new video campaign. Keep in mind that you can’t change the budget type once a campaign is created.
AdWords will try to spend your total budget evenly over the duration of your campaign while taking into account higher and lower traffic days to optimize your campaign’s performance. For example, let’s say your video campaign gets fewer views on Mondays and Tuesdays and more views on weekends. AdWords will optimize performance by spending more on days when your video is likely to get more views, while keeping your overall budget goals on track.
With a campaign total budget, you’ll only be billed up to the amount you enter for a campaign, even if AdWords serves more views or impressions than your budget allows.
How budget changes take effect
When you change your daily campaign budget you’ll see these adjustments immediately in your account. Based on when you edit your budget, the way that your campaign spends your budget can vary. Here’s what happens to your budget based on the time or frequency of your change:
| Mid-day | Campaigns will typically spend around 50% of their budget in the day’s first half and the remainder in the day’s second half. However, if demand for your ads happens to be greatest early in the day, you might spend 70% of your daily budget in the morning.
If you made a budget change around noon, you might spend an additional 50% of your new daily budget in the afternoon, which could result in a total spend for the day which is slightly greater than either of the daily budgets which were in effect that day. This results from the fact that the system is designed to make up for low traffic days by slightly exceeding your daily budget on higher traffic days, as long we never exceed your monthly charging limit. Learn more about Why costs might exceed your average daily budget. If you’ve lowered your daily budget significantly, it’s also possible that your ad distribution will slow significantly for the rest of the day. |
| Multiple times a day | You’ll be charged based on the highest daily budget that you chose for that day. |
| Mid-month | When you change your budget during the month, your spend for the rest of the month won’t exceed your new average daily budget multiplied by the remaining days in the month.
For example, let’s say you have a daily budget of US$5, and as of November 24 you’ve spent US$113. On the same day, you change your daily budget to US$10. The maximum you’ll be charged for the month of November will be: $113 spent so far + ($10/day X 7 days remaining) = $183 |
| Multiple times a month | The same calculation applies as the one for changing your budget mid-month. |
Note
Even if you don’t deliberately change your daily campaign budget, the following actions are considered budget changes (for computing the maximum amount you’ll be charged within a calendar month):
- Changing your campaign end date.
- Changing your delivery mode (standard delivery or accelerated delivery).
- Choosing a different time zone for your AdWords account.
Find out how to select a time zone, and how it affects your budget cycle.
Write successful text ads
To effectively reach potential customers, your text ads should be specific, relevant, attractive, and empowering. This article shares best practices for writing successful text ads and common mistakes to avoid.
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Highlight what makes you unique Free shipping? Dazzling variety? Tell people! Showcase the products, services, or offers that make you competitive. |
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Include prices, promotions, and exclusives People often use Google search to make a decision about something. Give them what they need to decide. If you have a limited-time discount or stock an exclusive product, say so. |
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Empower customers to take action Are you selling something? Tell people what they can buy. Are you offering a service? Tell people how to contact you. Calls to action like purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up, or get a quote make clear what the next steps are. |
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Include at least one of your keywords Keywords in your ad text show your ad’s relevance to what people want. For example, if you’ve included digital cameras as a keyword, your ad headline could be “Buy Digital Cameras.” Learn how to build the best keyword list. |
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Match your ad to your landing page Have a look at the page that you’re linking to from your ad (the landing page), and make sure that the promotions or products in your ad are included there. People might leave your website if they don’t find what they expect. |
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Appeal to customers on mobile People seeing your ads on mobile are more likely to want to know where you are, or to call you. Show your location and phone number with location extensions and call extensions. Also, consider creating ads devoted to people on mobile devices, using the mobile version of your website as a landing page, and offering specials suited to a mobile audience. Keep in mind, your text ads can appear differently on mobile. See how your site scores on mobile speed, and get quick fixes to improve it. Test your site.
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Experiment Create three to four ads for each ad group, and use different messages for each to see which does the best. AdWords rotates ads automatically to show the best-performing ads more often. Learn more about ad rotation. |
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About Keyword Planner in the new AdWords experience
Keyword Planner is now available in the new AdWords experience for select advertisers. Explore the new, streamlined design and take advantage of updated features to search for new keyword ideas and get keyword statistics and forecasts for your Search Network campaigns.
This article explains the benefits of Keyword Planner in the new AdWords experience and defines which features are currently available.
Benefits
- Simpler, more intuitive landing page helps you accomplish tasks quickly.
- Keyword research is easier and still provides the performance you’ve come to expect.
- Updated visualizations help you quickly identify insights.
- It’s easy to switch back to the previous version of Keyword Planner if you need to.
Available features
These are the key features currently available for Keyword Planner in the new AdWords experience. This page will be updated as new features become available.
| Available features |
|---|
| Keyword ideas |
| Historical statistics: Average monthly searches, Competition, Ad Impression share, Organic impression share, Organic average position |
| Keyword forecasts |
| Charts: Search volume trends, Breakdown by platforms, Breakdown by locations |
| Targeting: Locations, Language, Search networks |
| Date range customizer |
| Download plan, suggestions, and stats |
| Historical keyword bid ranges |
Here are the features that aren’t available yet for Keyword Planner in the new AdWords experience. Stay tuned.
| Not yet available |
|---|
| Create a plan with ad groups and keywords |
| Save plans to your account |
| Forecasted bid curves |
What’s new
Metrics: Bid ranges
In the new AdWords experience, “Top of page bid (low)†and “Top of page bid (high)†have replaced the “Suggested bid†metric.
- Top of page bid (low): The lower range bid—an approximation of the 20th percentile—that advertisers have historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid, based on your location and Search Network settings.
- Top of page bid (high): The higher range bid—an approximation of the 80th percentile—that advertisers have historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid, based on your location and Search Network settings.
Bid range statistics are displayed on your “Keyword ideas†page and your “Historical metrics†page. Bid range statistics can help you decide which keywords to use for a new or existing campaign, and what an effective bid could be for those keywords.
Unlike suggested bid, top of page bid (low) and top of page bid (high) take into account the bids that resulted in an ad being shown among the ads at the top of the first page of search results.
Note: Because showing an ad at the top of the first page of results is based on a combination of bid, quality score, and other factors, you can use these metrics to help adjust your bids in relation to your keyword’s quality score. You might not see keyword bid range statistics for keywords that have limited historical bid information, and keep in mind that these metrics show bid information from the last 30 days. We’ll continue to improve this new feature, so stay tuned.
Forecasts: Plan overview
The new “Plan overview†page shows you forecasts for your plan, broken down by top keywords, locations, and devices. The information is displayed in a clear dashboard, and you can change the parameters on each forecast for detailed insights into your plan’s potential success.
At the top of the “Plan overview†page, you’ll also be shown a default bid, which you can change in order to see how your keywords might perform with higher or lower bids. The default bid is based on:
- Your previous plan (if you had one);
- The average maximum cost-per-click (CPC) from your account’s manual CPC ad groups, or;
- The average maximum CPC across all manual bidding ad groups with the same currency.
How to search for new keywords
- Sign in to your AdWords account.
- In the upper right corner, click the tool icon
, then under “Planning,” click Keyword Planner.
- Type or paste one or more of the following in the “Find new keywords” search box and press Enter after each one:
- Words or phrases that describe what you’re advertising.
- The URL of a webpage or entire website related to your business.
- Click Get started to get new keyword ideas and historical statistics, like average monthly searches or competition data.
With your results, you can use the “Keyword ideas†page to:
- Add keywords to your plan
- View your keywords by location, language, or network setting
- Filter your results by keyword text, average monthly searches, average low bid, average high bid, competition, organic impression share, ad impression share, or exclude keywords already in your account
- Customize the search volume data of your keyword ideas by modifying the date range
- See visualizations broken down by search volume trends, platforms, and locations
- Download keyword ideas
How to get forecasts and historical statistics for your keywords
- Sign in to your AdWords account.
- In the upper right corner, click the tool icon
- In the “Get metrics and forecasts for your keywords” search box, enter or paste a list of keywords, separated by commas or line breaks.
- Click Get started to see your forecasts.
- To see your historical statistics, like average monthly searches or competition data, click Historical metrics at the top of the page.
With your results, you can use the “Forecasts†page to:
- Get updated keyword forecasts based on a default bid
- Sort your results by clicks, cost, match type, impressions, CTR, or Average CPC
- Customize your forecasts by date range to see how seasonality affects traffic
- Go to “Plan overview†to see forecasts for top keywords, locations, and devices
- Download plan forecasts
With your results, you can use the “Historical metrics†page to:
- Customize your keywords’ historical statistics by date range
- Download historical statistics of the keywords in your plan
What your keyword forecasts mean
Clicks: The number of clicks your ad might receive each day if the keyword were to trigger the ad.
Cost: The average amount you might spend per day for this keyword.
Impressions: How often your ad might show in a day. An impression is counted each time an ad is shown on a search results page.
Clickthrough rate (“CTR”): The ratio of the number of clicks that your ad might receive divided by the number of times your ad might be shown (which we call an impression).
Average cost-per-click (“Avg. CPC”): The average amount you might pay for a click. We automatically adjust the final amount you’re charged for a click, which is known as your actual cost-per-click (actual CPC), so you pay only one cent more than the minimum amount required to keep your ad’s position. Therefore, the displayed amount may be lower than the overall cost forecast range for all keywords, or the CPC bid already in place for your ad group.
What your historical metrics mean
Average monthly searches (“Avg. monthly searches”): The average number of times people have searched for a keyword and its close variants based on the targeting settings and date range you’ve selected. By default, we average the number of searches for the term over a 12-month period.
Top of page bid (low): The lower range bid—an approximation of the 20th percentile—that advertisers have historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid, based on your location and Search Network settings.
Top of page bid (high): The higher range bid—an approximation of the 80th percentile—that advertisers have historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid, based on your location and Search Network settings.
Competition: The number of advertisers that showed on each keyword relative to all keywords across Google. Note that this data is specific to the location and Search Network targeting that you’ve selected. In the “Competition” column, you can see whether the competition for a keyword is low, medium, or high.
Ad impression share: The number of impressions you’ve received divided by the total number of searches for the location and network you’re targeting that matched the keyword exactly in the last calendar month. Keep in mind that the ad impression share column in Keyword Planner is different than the impression share and exact match impression share columns in campaign management. The impression share and exact match impression share columns are based on the number of impressions you were eligible to receive for a keyword. In Keyword Planner, ad impression share is based on the search volume for that exact keyword. When you see a dash (-) in the ad impression share column, that means we don’t have enough data to calculate this number.
Organic impression share (“Organic impr. shareâ€): The percentage of times a listing from your website showed up in web searches for a keyword. This is calculated by dividing the number of web searches that showed a listing from your website by the total number of searches for that keyword idea. To see your organic impression share, link your Search Console account to your AdWords account.
Organic average position (“Organic avg. positionâ€): This shows how listings from your website rank compared to listings from other websites. This is calculated by taking the average top position of your listing (or multiple listings) for each web search for a particular keyword.
Send us feedback
We want to hear about what’s working for you in the new AdWords and what could be improved. To share your thoughts, click the help icon 
About conversion tracking
Conversion tracking is a free tool that shows you what happens after a customer interacts with your ads — whether they purchased a product, signed up for your newsletter, called your business, or downloaded your app. When a customer completes an action that you’ve defined as valuable, these customer actions are called conversions.
This article explains the benefits of conversion tracking, how it works, and our security and privacy standards. For setup instructions, see Set up conversion tracking.
Why use conversion tracking
- See which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns are best at driving valuable customer activity.
- Understand your return on investment (ROI) and make better informed decisions about your ad spend.
- Use Smart Bidding strategies (such as target CPA, enhanced CPC, and target ROAS) that automatically optimize your campaigns according to your business goals.
- See how many customers may be interacting with your ads on one device or browser and converting on another. You can view cross-device, cross-browser, and other conversion data in your “All conversions†reporting column.
How conversion tracking works
Conversion tracking starts with you creating a conversion action in your AdWords account. A conversion action is a specific customer activity that is valuable to your business. You can use conversion tracking to track the following kinds of actions:
- Website actions: Purchases, sign-ups, and other actions that customers complete on your website. Learn more about how AdWords tracks website conversions.
- Phone calls: Calls directly from your ads, calls to a phone number on your website, and clicks on a phone number on your mobile website. Learn more about phone call conversion tracking.
- App installs and in-app actions: Installs of your Android or iOS mobile apps, and purchases or other activity within those apps. Learn more about mobile app conversion tracking.
- Import: Customer activity that begins online but finishes offline, such as when a customer clicks an ad and submits a contact form online, and later signs a contract in your office. Learn more about offline conversion tracking.
The conversion tracking process works a little differently for each conversion source, but for each type besides offline conversions, it tends to fall into one of these categories:
- You add a conversion tracking tag, or code snippet, to your website or mobile app code. When a customer clicks on your ad from Google Search or selected Google Display Network sites, or when they view your video ad, a temporary cookie is placed on their computer or mobile device. When they complete the action you defined, our system recognizes the cookie (through the code snippet you added), and we record a conversion.
- Some kinds of conversion tracking don’t require a tag. For example, to track phone calls from call extensions or call-only ads, you use a Google forwarding number to track when the call came from one of your ads, and to track details like call duration, call start and end time, and caller area code. Also, app downloads and in-app purchases from Google Play will automatically be recorded as conversions, and no tracking code is needed.
Once you’ve set up conversion tracking, you can see data on conversions for your campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords. Viewing this data in your reports can help you understand how your advertising helps you achieve important goals for your business.
Security and privacy for website tracking
Google’s security standards are strict. Only pages containing the Google conversion tag are tracked through this program. We use data encryption and secure servers.
Please ensure you’re providing users with clear and comprehensive information about the data you collect on your websites, and getting consent for that collection where legally required.
Account, campaign, and ad group performance
AdWords is organized into three layers (levels): account, campaigns, and ad groups. By familiarizing yourself with the different levels of your AdWords account, you can easily find the exact performance data you’re looking for.
Keeping the three levels in mind, you can customize your view of your performance data to make it as broad or specific as you want. To help you navigate, the side panel of your AdWords account starts with the broadest level — “All campaigns” — and narrows in focus as it moves downward. After clicking on an individual campaign, you’ll see the ad groups contained in each one.
Your account is associated with a unique email address, password, and billing information. For reporting purposes, though, it’s helpful to think of your account as a collection of campaigns. If you want to see performance data for your entire account, click All campaigns in the side panel of your AdWords account. Totals for all of the rows are listed at the bottom of your statistics table.
Introducing the Report Editor
There’s a new way to visually slice and dice your performance data: the Report Editor. The Report Editor is an analytical tool that allows you to engage with your data through multi-dimensional tables and charts.
- A simple drag-and-drop interface lets you quickly build and manipulate multi-dimensional tables and charts, reducing the need to download your data for deeper analysis.
- Multi-segment analysis lets you slice and dice your data with finer granularity in your tables and charts.
- Custom charts let you quickly visualize the patterns and trends in your data.
- Advanced filtering and sorting allow you to filter on segmented metrics (e.g., mobile clicks) and sort by multiple columns.
Find out how to explore your data with the Report Editor.
See data for your entire account
Here’s how to get a quick overview of your overall AdWords performance:
- Sign in to your AdWords account.
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- Click the Dimensions tab.
- Click the View button to select the time period that you’d like to use to organize your statistics.
- Once your statistics table looks the way you want, just click the download button
to download it as a report.
Tip: Use the campaign type selector
You can use the campaign type selector to switch easily between reporting views by campaign type, like Shopping or Display Network. This option appears as a drop-down menu next to All campaigns in the side navigation menu if you have more than one campaign type in your account. You’ll only be able to select a given campaign type if your account actually contains that type of campaign.
Your campaign data
An individual campaign has its own budget and settings that determine where your ads appear, and is made up of a collection of ad groups. Each of your campaigns is listed in the side panel of your AdWords account, and they also appear when you click the Campaigns tab in the middle of your screen.
Your ad group data
Your ad group contains a set of similar ads and the words and phrases, known as keywords, that you want to trigger your ads to show. When you click on a campaign, AdWords will show you a view of the campaign’s performance broken out by its individual ad groups. You can also see ad group data by clicking the Ad groups tab in the middle of your screen.
Example
Let’s look at how a business might set up its AdWords campaigns and ad groups. The account belongs to a chocolate maker (yum!) who wants to advertise its products to increase online sales.
The owners decide to organize their advertising efforts into two campaigns. One campaign promotes their new line of chocolate bars, and the second promotes their holiday gift boxes. They split each campaign into targeted, relevant ad groups. One of the ad groups for the chocolate bar campaign is dedicated to the company’s popular raspberry bar. Another is dedicated to a caramel bar, and a third to a chocolate bar infused with ginger. Here’s what this account looks like:
| Account: Chocolate Maker |
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| Campaign 1: Chocolate bars |
Campaign 2: Valentine’s Day gift boxes |
| Ad groups: Raspberry bar Caramel bar Ginger bar |
Ad groups: 30% off gift boxes Free shipping on gift boxes Luxury Valentine’s chocolate |
Each ad group can have multiple ads within it. This helps the chocolate maker compare performance for different ad text, for example, and see whether one version resulted in more clicks or sales than another.
Once you’re familiar with the structure of your AdWords account, you can view and customize the data in your statistics table, and download reports to monitor the performance of your campaigns, individual campaigns, and ad groups — as well as your ads and keywords.
Evaluating ad performance on the Search Network
You’ve created your ad, and it’s up and running. Your next step is to find out how it’s performing. Tracking statistics like clicks, impressions, and clickthrough rate is a great way to start. It’s also important to think about what you’re trying to accomplish with your campaign, so you can focus on the statistics that can help you achieve your goals.
If you’re new to tracking your performance, start by clicking the Campaigns tab in your AdWords account. The statistics tables on your Ads and Keywords tabs under the Campaigns tab provide a complete, customizable view of all of your data. You can keep the reporting simple or dig deeper for more detailed insights into the success of your campaigns.
Introducing the Report Editor
There’s a new way to visually slice and dice your performance data: the Report Editor. The Report Editor is an analytical tool that allows you to engage with your data through multi-dimensional tables and charts.
- A simple drag-and-drop interface lets you quickly build and manipulate multi-dimensional tables and charts, reducing the need to download your data for deeper analysis.
- Multi-segment analysis lets you slice and dice your data with finer granularity in your tables and charts.
- Custom charts let you quickly visualize the patterns and trends in your data.
- Advanced filtering and sorting allow you to filter on segmented metrics (e.g., mobile clicks) and sort by multiple columns.
Find out how to explore your data with the Report Editor.
Clicks, impressions, and clickthrough rate
To help you get comfortable tracking data for your ads running on the Search Network, we suggest monitoring the clicks, impressions, and especially the clickthrough rate (CTR) of your ads and keywords. CTR is the percentage of people that clicked on your ad after they saw it. By tracking it, you can make sure that your ads and keywords are attractive to customers. Find these statistics listed in columns in your account’s statistics table. If you don’t see them, click the Columns button and select the ones you’d like to enable.
This video explains the importance of clicks, impressions, and clickthrough rate for measuring success in your Google AdWords account.
You may also want to keep an eye on the following information about your ads and keywords:
- Status: In the “Status” column of the statistics table on your Ads tab, you can see whether each of your ads is running.
- Average position: Look for the “Average position” (Avg. pos.) column in the statistics tables on your account tabs to find out exactly where your ad is appearing on Google’s search results page. Positions one through 10 usually appear on the first page of search results. This is the best way to check on the positions of many ads at once.If you don’t see the column in your statistics table, you can add it by going to your Keywords tab, then clicking the Columns button and choosing “Modify columns” from the drop-down. Click Performance, then add “Avg. pos.”
- Ad variations: If you have more than one ad in an ad group, your ads will be rotated and take turns showing. By comparing the performance of your different ads, you can find out what your customers find the most compelling. For example, see which ad has the highest CTR and improve those ads with the lowest CTR. We suggest testing between two and four ads in an ad group at a time.
- Keyword status: The Status column of the statistics table on your Keywords tab tells you whether each of your keywords is triggering ads to run. Click the speech bubble icon
to read a summary of each keyword’s status. Or, click the Keyword details drop-down button, then select Diagnose keywords to see multiple keyword statuses at once. - Quality Score: This column helps you monitor the Quality Scores of your keywords. The column is disabled by default in new accounts, but you can make it appear in your statistics table by going to your Keywords tab, then clicking the Columns button.
- Search terms: You can see the actual search terms that drove traffic to your ads on your Keywords tab. From the Keyword details drop-down button, in the “Search terms” section, select All to see a list of the searches that triggered your ads. You can use this information to identify which keywords are the most successful and to find new keywords to add to your account. If you see that irrelevant terms are triggering your ad, you can add these as negative keywords to prevent your ad from showing on these terms.
It’s always important to keep your own campaign goals in mind when you look at your account statistics. Depending on what you want to achieve, certain statistics will be relevant and helpful to you, while others may not be as useful. Choose a goal from the list below to see more suggestions of what to track:
Use the Segment button to see the data in your campaign segmented by device. This allows you to compare statistics such as clicks, impressions, CTRs, or conversion rates for desktop computers and high-end mobile devices. Segmenting your data can help you identify which campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords are driving the best performance for a particular type of device, especially for campaigns combining desktop computer and mobile devices.
Tip
Here’s some data you might not know about. You can see how your landing pages are performing for your entire account, or specific campaigns and ad groups. Just click the Dimensions tab, then click View, and select “Destination URL” or “final URL” from the drop-down.
Optimizing your campaign for online sales
In this article:
Adjust your bid manually for closer control
With manual CPC bidding, you can fine-tune your maximum CPC bids. If you find that certain keywords are more profitable, you can bid more strategically on those keywords. Here are a couple ways to do so:
- Show your ads on the first page: To increase the chances of your ads showing on the first page, make sure your bids meet or exceed the first page bid estimates. Bidding competitively is an important part of getting your ads to show in the most visible spots.
- Use bid adjustments to increase or decrease your bids: A bid adjustment represents a percentage change in your bids. You can increase or decrease every bid in your campaign to bid more or less across devices, locations, and time of day.
Learn how to edit your bids manually or set bid adjustments.
Choose keywords that reach qualified buyers
Here are some tips for choosing the right keywords to drive more sales:
- Align keywords with your product offerings: Be sure to include your core products as keywords. When your customers are ready to buy, they’ll be searching for a specific product, so things like product names and models can make for high-performing keywords.
- Understand the research and buying process: Try to understand what stage of the buying cycle a user might be in. To target serious buyers, you can try keywords that include words like buy or purchase. If you want to filter out research-oriented searches, you can add negative keywords like review, rating, compare, or comparison.
- Use negative keywords: Negative keywords let you filter out clicks that are less valuable to you. There are two main tools that you can use to find negative keywords—the Keyword Planner and the search terms report. For example, you might discover that the name of one of your products is also the name of a musical group. In this case, you can add negative keywords such as concert, ticket, lyric, album, or mp3.
- Use the right match types: Using broad match (or broad match modifier) allows you to capture a wide range of search queries, while using exact match or phrase match gives you more precise targeting. If you know that a specific query is being used frequently, adding it as an exact- or phrase-matched keyword can help you manage traffic for it.
Learn more about keyword strategies with Keywords to the Wise or watch our video playlist:
Make your ads appeal to potential buyers
A successful ad is relevant and impactful. It delivers the right message at the right moment, motivating your customer to purchase with a strong call-to-action.
Here are some tips for writing effective ad text:
- Set your ad apart from your competition: Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to see which ads are showing for a particular search. Your ad text should quickly convey how your business stands out, so featuring competitive prices and special promotions can be especially effective.
- Highlight the customer benefit: Give customers more incentive to purchase by conveying how they’ll benefit by choosing your business.
- Keep it simple and specific: Focus on 1-2 selling points for stronger impact. If you try to pack too many selling points in your ad text, your message can get lost.
- Use a landing page that drives sales: Your ad should bring people directly to a page where they can buy the specific product you’re advertising. Think of it this way: The connection between your ad and landing page is the bridge between a potential customer and a purchase. The stronger they’re connected, the more likely you are to generate sales.
- Run seasonal ads: Customize your ads to fit the season and the promotion you’re running. Take advantage of seasons (summer, winter, “back to school”) and specific holidays (Valentine’s Day, Halloween, etc.) to promote your products.
- Use title case: Capitalizing the first letter of every word can help boost clickthrough rates.
- Use ad extensions to enhance your ad: Take advantage of ad extensions to show extra information about your business.
Learn more about ad text best practices with Creative That Clicks.
Take the Fundamentals assessment
Congratulations!
You’ve completed the AdWords Fundamentals assessment study guide. Now it’s time to test your knowledge.
About the assessment
The Fundamentals assessment covers basic and intermediate concepts, including best practices of online advertising and AdWords, and best practices for managing and optimizing AdWords campaigns. Here are details about the assessment:
- Questions: The assessment is made up of 65 questions
- Time limit: You’ll have 90 minutes to complete the assessment
- Pass rate: You need to get a score of 80% or higher to pass
- Retake period: If you don’t pass the assessment, you can take it again after 1 day
- Available languages: simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese
Passing the assessment
To become certified, you need to pass the AdWords Fundamentals assessment and one of the additional advertising assessments that are available through Academy for Ads. The additional assessments are Search Advertising, Display Advertising, Mobile Advertising, Video Advertising, and Shopping Advertising.
Once you earn a certification, you’ll be able to highlight your expertise with a personalized certificate that you can print from your Academy for Ads profile.
Ready to take the assessment at Academy for Ads? Click the button below and search for the AdWords Fundamentals learning path with “certification” in the title.
Good luck!
Fundamentals Refresher Guide
This handy resource is a shortened version of the full AdWords Fundamentals Study Guide and can serve as a great refresher before you take the exam or as you are managing your AdWords campaign.
AdWords Fundamentals exam refresher guide
Google Academy for Ads
Academy for Ads provides bite-sized courses to help you learn about Google’s ad products and to give you the skills you need to succeed on the web. Take all the courses, pass the Assessment, and earn an Achievement to display on your profile.
Guide To AdWords Success
A series of guides that will help you learn what you need to know about online marketing, create a campaign that reaches new customers and learn how to track and improve your results.
How to be successful with AdWords
Set yourself up for success right from the start with these step-by-step guides. New to online marketing? Start with our short introductory guide.
Show ads on the Google search results page
To start showing ads, you need to create a campaign in AdWords. This is when you’ll make decisions about things like how much you want to spend and where your ads show.
Follow this guide to get started with creating a winning Search Network campaign, its ad groups, and its text ads.
Calculate your return on investment
To calculate the value of your AdWords campaigns, you need to set up conversion tracking.
A conversion is when a customer clicks your ad and takes a specific action that you deem valuable, such as purchasing your product, filling out a contact form, or making a phone call. Conversion tracking measures these events.
This guide walks you through best practices for calculating your return on investment once you’ve set up conversion tracking. Before you begin, set up conversion tracking.
Building Relevant Ads with Ad Extensions
Using ad extensions is like giving your ad a big sign saying ‘I’m over here’. So, learn how to boost an ad’s visibility and increase clickthrough rates by adding ad extensions.
Building relevant ads with ad extensions
How to Build the Best Keyword List
Building a great keyword list helps you communicate the best message to potential customers. Learn how to say the right thing, at the right time.
How to build the best keyword list
Campaign Settings
Learn how to get your ad seen when and where you want it with Campaign Settings.
3 Steps to Budget Smarts
Learn how to manage and make the most of your budget.
