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Avoid These Major Google AdWords Mistakes

Written by James Callahan | May 16, 2016 5:00:00 AM

Google AdWords campaigns are a popular and effective way to promote a website. These keywords work to promote the popularity of a website online and increase the traffic to it. Google AdWords are quite effective but they can be expensive for the website owner if mishandled. Thus, when using this form of website promotion, one should manage the AdWords campaign properly so as to get a high return on the investment made.

Many companies use Google AdWords to increase the amount of traffic that flows to their websites. When the effort is managed well, the benefits are profitable. As such, it is important that the companies know how to avoid the common mistakes that turn Google AdWords into an expensive affair. Read on to learn about these mistakes and avoid them when conducting your own campaign.

1. Grouping the Keywords Incorrectly

In Google AdWords, you can come up with promotion campaigns for the keywords in your website. You should create campaign ad groups for each section in your website. For example, you should conduct separate campaigns for the products and the content in your website. This means that there should be an ad group for the products pages and another ad group for the content. These ad groups should contain unique keywords each. Many webmasters mix up all the keywords and sections into one ad group and conduct a campaign with this single ad group. This is a mistake. One should separate the keywords according to their purpose and then place them in separate ad groups. After that, one should conduct campaigns for each one of these ad groups.

2. Not entering the proper keywords correctly

Google AdWords allows webmasters to enter three types of keywords. These types are the broad, exact and phrase match keywords. The broad match keyword works such that your adverts will be shown when this type of keyword is entered in the search bar. It does not matter the order of the keywords in the search bar, the adverts will still show. As long as any one of the broad match keywords is entered in the search bar, the adverts will show up.

A phrase match is different from the broad match keyword. In this type, the keywords have to occur as a complete phrase before the adverts show up. The phrase entered in the search bar has to be exactly the same as the one that you set in the Google AdWords settings. This type of keywords is similar to the exact match keywords. In this type, the keywords have to occur exactly as they look in the AdWords settings. People often make mistakes in setting the types of keywords per ad campaign. The right way of doing this is to use the exact match first and then go on to the others gradually.

3. Avoiding the use of negative keywords

Google AdWords allows you to use negative keywords. These are keywords that you set so that your ads will not emerge when the other words in the phrase match yours. In this way, the negative keywords prevent the phrases or keywords that are not ideal for your products from activating your ads. It is very important to use these negative keywords so as to display the right ads and attract the niche market.

4. Distrusting the numbers

Sometimes, webmasters feel that they love their ad copies and want to use them more. However, the statistics can indicate that the particular ad copy is not as popular with the Internet users. Doing this is a big mistake. Actually, one should always test the ad copy against the current statistics.

5. Underbidding your brand

Many webmasters do not bid on their brand. They think that ranking for their brand is enough and no advertising is required. This is a mistake. It is an error because if you don't bid for your brand, your competitors will bid for it and display their adverts above yours. Your adverts can rank first but your competitors will be displayed right above. Thus, it is important to bid for your brand.

6. Not calculating the Life Time Value (LTV) of your competitors

The LTV of your customers is a very important number to calculate. This is because it helps you to determine how much you can spend on Google AdWords optimization. Ensure that the LTV is more than your acquisition. This way, you are making a profit per acquisition.

7. Not finding out the right position to place an advert

To ensure that you are presenting the best branding, then you should strive to post your ad in the first or second slots. However, if your objective is to get the most results, then slots three to five are ideal and effective. Thus, determine what you want from your ads and slot them properly.

8. Avoiding researching your competition

Many webmasters make the mistake of not striving to discover the ads that their competitors are utilizing. It is very important to know the keywords and positioning that your competitors are using. It is also important to know what their landing webpages look like. Always conduct this research while designing your Google AdWords campaigns.

9. Over-relying on Google AdWords

It is common for webmasters to rely on Google AdWords too much. They expect this strategy to deliver the bulk of their online promotion. They should create a comprehensive online marketing mix. Moreover, one should expect to invest in Google AdWords so as to receive good results.

10. Misdirecting your visitors to the wrong pages

The biggest error that the webmasters make is designing adverts that direct visitors to the wrong pages. They design the ads to drive visitors to the website homepage. It is very important to drive visitors to the pages that they expect to land in. If the ad describes a specific product, it should direct them to the page that contains this product. The page that the visitors land in should be a direct match of the Google AdWords' advert. Author Bio

James Callahan is an experience webmaster at Max Burst, a website design and marketing company. James is a professional in AdWords optimization with more than eight years' experience in the field.