Posts Tagged ‘adwords’


Writing titles for AdWords advertisements

July 24th, 2009 by Glenn

When you are running an AdWords campaign you get to display a short ad that is triggered when specific keywords are searched. The amount you bid and the Quality Score assigned to your ad determine where your ad appears and how much you pay for each click.

An AdWords ad has limits on the number of letters you can use for your ad:

  • Title: 25 characters
  • Line 1 and Line 2: 35 characters
  • Display URL: 35 characters

Writing effective copy that fits within the limits is not easy.

There are heaps of expert advisors who will take your money to tell you how to craft a brilliant ad. But then again Google themselves provide five important tips for writing ads:

  • Include a call-to-action.
  • Clearly describe what is unique about your product or service.
  • Place your business name in your ad text.
  • Put your most important keyword in the title.
  • If you sell to a precise location, name the location.

In the course of launching a new campaign, a client asked me why using the keyword in the title was important.

There are several reasons. When someone is searching on red roses, if your ad has red roses in the text, those words will be bolded. And if the keyword happens to be in the title, the keywords are large and bold.

The bolding of the keywords is a big benefit for your ad. If your ad has a bolded title, you are more prominent than your competitor ads that don’t have bolded keywords.

And keep in mind what is being bolded – exactly what the searcher is looking for (which has a pretty good chance of getting their attention).

But using the keyword in the title has other benefits. The ranking of your ad and the price you pay is affected by the Quality Score assigned by Google, and using the keywords in the title may help improve your Quality Score.

The calculation of your Quality Score is pretty complex, but if you want to know the knitty gritty then read these articles:

So there are a few ideas on writing titles for AdWords advertisements. And if you only remember one thing, remember this: if you can, use the keyword in the title of the ad!

permalink | trackback

Posted by Glenn Tags: ,
Posted in Google Adwords | Comments Off


What is a Good Online Conversion Rate?

March 14th, 2008 by Glenn

Tim from Great Ocean Road Torquay sent me a summary today of his online conversion rate.

It may sound obvious, but being able to measure your conversion rate is a critical first step to improving it. So many businesses online don’t know what their conversion rate is yet.

In our discussion, I pointed Tim to this article from eMarketer: Few Convert at Retail E-Commerce Sites

This text that goes with the chart is brief and to the point:

Many shop. Few buy. Online merchants convert an average of 2%-3% of their site visitors into buyers, according to the e-tailing group’s “Sixth Annual Merchant Survey.”

Do you know your conversion rate? Is it better than the average for eCommerce sites?

Overall, I think beating the average is tough.

Tim and I discussed the relative merits of focussing on conversion. I think conversion is very important, but its not the only factor.

Profit. How much profit do you make from each conversion? Time spent increasing the profit from each conversion could benefit you more than increasing the conversion rate.

Product Diversity. If you already have a customer base, can you create additional streams of income? Adding a new income stream may be more effective than increasing the size of an existing one.

Geographic Diversity. Similar to product diversity, can you create a new stream of income by increasing your focus on a particular geography? I can’t fully explain why, but every time we create a more specific country based campaign in Google AdWords, more click throughs appear. So can you create a new income stream from a new country (if your product or service suits that model), or increase it from a small stream to a larger one?

Conversion is important, but it is only a contributor to overall profit.

permalink | trackback

Posted by Glenn Tags: , , ,
Posted in Conversion | Comments Off