3 More PPC Mistakes That Slaughter Your Google Adwords Campaign

"It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile."
~ Garry Marshall

Alternatively, you can learn from others.

Continuing from my previous post on common Google Adwords mistakes beginners often make - today you will learn about three more errors you want to avoid if you are new to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

1. Failing to Setup Conversion Tracking

You cannot improve what you do not measure. While tracking clicks, cost, CTR etc. is important - conversion tracking is the most critical metric, as it measures if you are getting a positive return on your investment or not.

Conversion tracking measures what happens after the click and records whether visitors are taking the desired action on your site whether that be:

• signing up to a newsletter
• filling in a contact form
• purchasing a product

…or whatever you define a conversion to be. How much are these conversions costing you?

Boom - conversion tracking gives you the answer.

The conversion tracking setup guide for Google Adwords can be found here.

2. Poor Grouping Of Keywords In Ad Groups

When you create your ad groups in your Google Adwords campaign, it is a good idea to have nice tight groups of closely related keywords. Why? Because when your keywords are in small groups it makes it easier to have highly relevant ad copy to match them. Relevant ad copy means people are much likely to click your ad. From this the benefits compound and you benefit from:

• Higher click through rate (CTR)
• Improved Quality Score
• Reduced cost per click (CPC)
• Improved Ad Rank
• Reduced cost per conversion due to reduced spend

Poor grouping of keywords in ad groups obviously has the opposite effect to what we are trying to achieve here.

You can do this in a spreadsheet - or there are a couple of free tools you can help you with this like Wordstreams Keyword Grouper or the Google Adwords Editor also has a keyword grouping feature.

3. Not Separating Search & Display Campaign Settings

This mistake I see over and over again. Not separating the search network from the display network. Network settings are where you indicate on what Google mediums you want your ads to appear. Never use the default campaigns setting Google kindly states is 'Recommended for New Advertisers'.

If you have the display network on in the same campaign in search to will destroy the click through rate of your campaign. Make sure they are in separate campaigns if you are going to use both Search and Display.

Avoid (or fix) those mistakes, you are three steps closer to a more profitable Google Adwords campaign. Did I miss something? Have a question relating to Google Adwords mistakes? Drop a comment below.

View Part 3 in the series here.

View other posts in this PPC series:

Part 1 & Part 4