Basics of Google Adwords – What you need to know before your first campaign

  • Vikas Chawla
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  • Published Date : 8 May , 2014
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  • Updated Date : 24 May , 2021
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    • 2 min read

Google Adwords is a powerful online advertising tool that helps people find a business at the precise moment they are searching for the product/service that the business offers. Every business can use Google Adwords to grow their reach and achieve their business goals which may be to generate leads or enhance sales.

Below you can find a slideshare presentation on the basics of Google Adwords and what one needs to know before starting their first Pay Per Click campaign. This has been made from practical experience of multiple team members at Social Beat (a Google Partner).

Ad Types

Google Adwords offers a whole range of ad types to choose from depending on the objective of the campaign.  Ad types include plain text ads for the search network on desktops & mobile phones, text or image ads for the Google Display Network (GDN), Product-listing ads and Search, display and In-stream video ads on YouTube. Prior to running a campaign, it is important to understand each type and how they function.

Keyword Research

Keyword research forms the basis of an Ad campaign on the search network. The keywords must be specific and include all possibilities and variations keeping in mind the interests of the target audience. A clear understanding of the keyword types – Broad match, modified broad match, phrase match and exact match and using the right mix of them in a campaign is essential to building a successful campaign. It is also important to carry out research for your negative keywords (not sure what negative keywords are? Watch out for our next blog post on the same)

Ad creation

Similar keywords would need to be grouped together to form different Ad groups and then multiple ads would have to be created for each group. For example, for a dental clinic they Ad Groups could be Dentist, Dental Clinic, Dental Care, Orthodontic Treatment etc. These might seem similar from a business perspective, but from a search and Adwords perspective they need to be broken down into separate Ad Groups.

The quality of these ads is of paramount importance as these will attract the user to click on them and get to your website. There are a number of rules to be followed and techniques to be learnt. One interesting technique, which helps make the ad headline appear longer the 25-character limit when the ad is shown, is to add a full-stop at the end of the first line of the description. The ad must always include the key selling points and adding a keyword in the display URL would help enhance quality score.

Quality Score & Ad Rank

Quality score of an ad takes into account the expected Click Through Rate (CTR), Ad relevance and the Landing Page experience. Keywords need to be optimized to enhance Quality Score which will eventually impact the Ad rank (which is the Quality Score multiplied by the CPC bid). A good understanding of ad rank and quality score is essential to running a good campaign.

Once the campaign is up and running, improving it and optimizing it is a continuous process and involves managing bids, refining keywords based on conversions and adapting ads based on their response.

Are you ready to run your first campaign? Have any questions? Feel free to drop them below and we’d be glad to answer them.




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Neha Gupta2016-06-28 < Reply

Hey great writeup! I also wrote on same topic sometime back.

Balini2014-07-09 < Reply

Appreciate the recommendation. Let me try it out.

Ajay Kumar Sahu2014-06-05 < Reply

How can i managed the bid of Google campaign? can u give me some example?

Social Beat2014-06-09 < Reply

Hey Ajay, I think this article on Google Adwords will be helpful in understanding - https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2459326?hl=en . To start with, you should have bids focussed on clicks and then eventually focused on conversions (either online sales or lead generation or any other goal). The bid can start at any value even Rs.1 but your quality score and CTR would indicate whether the bid has to be risen. Hope that helps.

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