How do I create an ad group in Google Adwords?

After you have created your campaign, the next step is naming your ad group and creating your first ad for the group. Here is an example of ad we created for booking Las Vegas hotels.
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After you have created your campaign, the next step is naming your ad group and creating your first ad for the group. Here is an example of ad we created for booking Las Vegas hotels.
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1. Insert your display URL. The display URL is what users will see in green font. It’s not where your ad will send them too when it’s clicked. Ideally you should display the domain name with the keyword in it:http://lvhotels.com/Las-Vegas-Hotels and make sure it redirects to the landing page you want. You can also just leave your domain there: http://lvhotels.com for branding purposes.
2. The destination URL is where you will place the landing page URL. The landing page should have a call-to-action like subscribing for a service, subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for an account, etc.
Next is to add keywords to your ad. Google will recommend you a list of keywords for your ad but you should avoid using them since they are not the best keywords to go for. Some of the keywords that were suggested by Google may be overpaid keywords. It is important to do your own keyword research to find the best keywords for your ad.

Some examples of keywords we would use for our Las Vegas Hotels ad would be: book las vegas hotel rooms, las vegas 5 star hotels, las vegas hotels, las vegas hotel rooms, book hotel rooms in las vegas. When adding your keywords you can wrap the keyword with brackets if you want exact match or quotes for phrase match. E.g [las vegas 5 star hotels] or “las vegas 5 star hotels”.

Another way of adding keywords for a business like this would be to set the geo location to Las Vegas and adding keywords like 5 star hotels, hotel rooms, book hotel rooms, etc. so that you only target people in Las Vegas who probably want to book a hotel immediately. This is one way to improve your conversions and also see a higher volume of ad impressions.

You can add additional ad groups to your campaign by going to your campaign and clicking the “+ Ad Group” button. You can also duplicate your ad group, keywords, etc. by copy and paste. This is useful feature for when you want to substitute a keyword like “hotel” with “casino” in another ad group. To duplicate an ad group, go to the ads tab and check mark the ad. Then click on the “Edit” drop down menu and select Copy then select Paste. You can also use Ctrl+c and Ctrl+V.
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How do I keyword research for SEM?

Similar to SEO, we will use the Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool for keyword research in SEM. There are also other tools you can use such as Wordtracker or Wordstream but Adwords Keyword Planner is the de facto standard tool.
https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

You can also access the tool within Adwords by clicking on Tools at the top of the page and selecting Keyword Planner. Once you are on the Keyword Planner tool, select “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas”.
You can get keyword ideas in 3 different ways:
1. By inserting a list of keywords separated by commas (recommended)
2. By adding your landing page or your competitors’ landing page URL
3. By product category

Once you have done one of the above and clicked the “Get Ideas” button, you’re going to want to navigate to the Keyword Ideas tab to view a list of keywords with its avg. monthly searches volume, competition level (low, medium, high), suggested bid and ad impression share. Keep in mind that the avg. monthly searches volume is not the exact figure and the suggested bid is only an estimate. Nonetheless, it’s good to compare keywords by looking at the avg. monthly searches. If you see one keyword that has higher avg. monthly searches than another keyword, it could mean that the keyword is more competitive.
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Comb through the list and copy and paste the keywords that are relevant to your website in an excel sheet. Once you have a comprehensive list of keywords, you can copy and paste it back into the Adwords Keyword Planner to get even more ideas. You can also check mark the keywords you want and download the list by clicking the Download button at the top right of the table. Rinse and repeat until you think you have all the keywords you need.

You can also find related keywords by doing a search of your keyword on Google and getting the keywords from the suggested dropdown.
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For even more keyword ideas, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page after you have searched your keyword. There will be a related searches list above the bottom pagination.
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How can I track my Adwords data in Google Analytics?

You should always link your Google Analytics with Adwords to track where your visitors are clicking, how much time they are on your site, how many conversions you get, which page makes your users leave your website the most, etc. There is an option to do that in Adwords, so don’t forget about linking your Adwords to your Analytics. It is very important to analyze how well your campaigns are working so you can make adjustments to it. You’ll have to use auto-tagging which allows you to import Adwords data into Analytics automatically. You can also manually tag but we recommend auto-tagging for additional details you wouldn’t get from manually tagging. Auto-tagging will allow you to see what happens after a user has clicked your ads. When you enable auto-tagging, a parameter called gclid will be added to your landing page URL like this: www.domain.com/?gclid=548abc.

To enable auto-tagging in Adwords, go to the gears icon and select Account settings. In the preferences tab, you’ll find a Tracking section. Click Edit and checkmark Destination URL Auto-tagging and Save changes.
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Auto-tagging will provide you with these detailed reporting in Google Analytics:
• Campaign
• Source
• Medium
• Content (creative)
• Keyword
• Query Match Type
• Ad Group
• Destination URL
• Ad Format
• Ad Distribution Network
• Placement Domain
• AdWords Customer ID (in case you have multiple accounts for your company)
• Hour of Day
• Placements
• Keyword Positions

If you don’t link your Analytics with Adwords and don’t use auto-tagging, you’ll get (not set) as the # of visitors that came from your campaigns. This does not help you because you’re getting clicks but you don’t know what happens after the click. This makes it impossible to measure your goals.

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What is quality score?

Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. The higher your quality score, the better your Ad Rank (better ad position and lower cost-per-click).
Quality Score is decided from the expected CTR (click-through rate), ad relevance and landing page experience. If your ad is not relevant to the keyword, you will get low CTR and ultimately a bad Quality Score so make sure your ad copy is relevant to your keywords and create good landing pages.

Here are some ways to improve your Quality Score:

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What is the Adwords Editor?

Adwords Editor is a great tool you can use to edit your campaigns quickly in bulk. This tool is a must have. You can download accounts, import and export files to make changes to an account, view statistics for your accounts, copy and move items between ad groups and keep working when you’re offline.

To download the Adwords Editor and to learn more about how to use it, you can visit:
http://www.google.com/intl/en_US/adwordseditor/

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