6 Ways to Reduce Your Adwords Costs while Increasing Sales

Dec 17

6 Ways to Reduce Your Adwords Costs while Increasing Sales

December 17th, 2007· Filed Under: Adwords · Keyword Research

Part 2

4. Find your competitor’s keywords

Some people think this technique is sneaky or unethical. You be the judge.

What I do is visit my competitor’s websites. Then I right-click on the page and choose ‘view source’ from the menu that appears.

Then I find their meta description and keywords. I check to see if I have any of these

keywords in my campaign. If I am missing some words I create a campaign for them.

This technique might seem obvious to those of you who have been using Adwords for a while but I am often surprised to see how many people don’t use this simple method.

5. Use all three Google match types: Broad, Phrase, Exact

Google gives you three different ways to list your keywords: Broad Match, Phrase Match and Exact Match.

When you list a keyword as broad match your ad will show up any time someone types in those words in any order and no matter what other words are typed in as well.

For example, if I am advertising for the keyword ‘ring tones’ using Broad Match then my ad will be triggered when people type in ‘ring tones’ ‘awesome ring tones’ ‘ring awesome tones’ ‘ring tones awesome’ ‘tones ring awesome’ and many other variations as long as the words ‘ring tones’ are somewhere in the search phrase.

The ads can also show up for singular/plural forms ‘ring tone’ and synonyms ‘ringers’.

When you advertise using the same keywords using Phrase Match your ad will only show up if someone types in the phrase ‘ring tones’ with words before the phrase or after the phrase.

‘Awesome ring tones’ or ‘ring tones awesome’ but not ‘ring awesome tones.’

When you use Exact Match your ad will only show up when someone types in the exact terms of your search ‘ring tones’ in the exact order and with no other words. The ad will not show up for ‘awesome ring tones’ or any other variation.

Why is this important?

Because the Exact Match and Phrase Match words often cost less than the Broad Match terms (not always but often). This can lower your ad costs. Also, Exact and Phrase Match both deliver more targeted visitors. The ads may show up less often on these terms but they often have a higher CTR which increases relevance to Google and lowers ad costs even further.

So to increase traffic AND reduce ad costs always use all three match types.

(You can tell Google which you want by leaving your keywords naked ‘ring tones’ without the quotes for Broad Match or “ring tones” with quotes for Phrase Match or [Ring Tones] in brackets for Exact Match.)

6. Use your keywords in your ad

This may seem obvious but if you do a search on Google for almost any term you will find some ads that do not have the keywords in them.

This is a mistake as my testing and the testing of others has found that this often leads to lower click-through-rates which increases your ad costs dramatically.

Plus you are getting fewer visitors to your site.

Put your keywords into the title of your ad whenever possible. And when it is not possible put the keywords into the body of the ad.

More people will click on your ad and Google rewards ads that have your keywords in them by reducing your ad costs.

Did you find these tips helpful? If so please leave a comment below.