I normally focus on Search Engine Optimization specifically, but from time to time I come into contact with someone that requires an AdWords campaign to be run and because it’s a skill set I have, I oblige. Now, there’s a misconception that AdWords is quite easy and that it’s not nearly as difficult as SEO in the sense that SERP results algorithms change almost daily, but not much happens with AdWords apart from bidding bounces. Well, that’s not quite the case and I’ve got a great example to show you.
When running an AdWords campaign, you’ve got options to use keywords and key phrases in an exact match or broad match (there are three types), in the case of an exact match, if you’re bidding on “green shoes”, your advert will only show when someone searches for “green shoes”, but in a broad match if someone searches for “cheap green shoes”, your advert will stay. Now, I’m a fan of both types of matches and I don’t want to get into why because it’s off topic, but let me just focus on exact matches. When dealing with exact matches, you want to display highly targeted adverts, for example, if someone searches for “green shoes” and your exact matching that phrase and leading a person through to a site with all sorts of shoes, if you aren’t putting a pair of green shoes in front of that person, there’s a chance the person will click back and you’ll have paid for nothing. This isn’t the only problem and here’s a little, hmmm, case study I was looking into:
If I was coming on holiday from the UK and my criteria for accommodation involved wanting a place in clifton that wasn’t too big and that it needs to have a jacuzzi, I would more than likely search for something such as “clifton apartment jacuzzi”. In doing so, I would be presented with an assortment of AdWords adverts as well as organic results, something like this:
The thing to note here is the top AdWords block; this person is broad matching on the term “clifton”, hence their advert showing. Now, there are two things I want to show you here:
- When you click through to the advert, you arrive at the cliftononsea.co.za website in the Clifton section, but there’s absolutely nothing about jacuzzi’s, but instead a list of villas in clifton. So, I’ve found villas in Clifton and will now have to perform a search on the website (which didn’t help, I tried) or click around until I find a place.. what a hassle! So, I click the back button to look at the other results from my initial Google search..
- The first time you perform the search, the AdWords advert does not have the “Block all cliftononsea.co.za/Clifton_ads” in the advert, this appears if you click an AdWords advert, don’t find what you’re looking for and click the back button. So, Google can tell that you’re unhappy with what you saw and let’s you block the website.
So my point here, and to go back to the title of this post, target your AdWords campaigns and avoid getting blocked. The person doing the search marketing for cliftononsea.co.za should rather look at an exact match type or refine the way the broad match is working, and ensure that when a person clicks the advert that they’re presented with what they’re looking for!
I don’t want to go into this too much more, but you know Google+? The Google system that let’s you PLUS a website so that all your connections online can see that you like it? Ah yes, that rings bells doesn’t it? Well, imagine if you blocked an AdWords campaign, surely there’s room for Google to store your dislike? In fact, of course it does, otherwise how will it know not to show you again? So, what does that mean? Well, that means that Google’s got all this information, if would take a tiny bit of code from one of their developers to now block that advert from all your friends too – this isn’t what happens, I tested it, but there’s certainly room for this and the way that Google’s handling PLUS certainly points in this direction. Just some food for thought, perhaps a discussion for another day.
Please feel free to pop me a comment if you’re interested in discussing this further :)
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