Google Adwords Tips 2018
Today we reached out to the SEM community to gather up the best Google Adwords Tips we could get our hands on. 21 top Google Adwords Experts responded with some awesome insights. Check it out:

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1. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Dustin Lawless | Search Marketing Specialist
youtechassociates.com
My best tip for an effective Adwords campaign is to make a negative keywords template. Oftentimes, there are negative keywords right off the bat you can eliminate from your campaign and avoid any wasted spend right from the beginning.
2. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Rachel Betterbid | Digital Marketing Team Lead
www.coalmarch.com
- See what users were actually searching when your ads were triggered (this gives you better insight into user search – what they’re searching for when looking for your solution)
- Use that data to add negative keywords & reduce the number of unqualified clicks (spending less money on unqualified keywords means having more budget to go towards qualified searches)
- Get a better idea of what users are searching and add more keyword variations to bid on (easiest way to discover new keyword opportunities and capture additional search traffic)
- Better understand why certain broad keywords don’t perform well (broad keywords likely pick up on unqualified queries – you can minimize this by adding these keyword variations as negative keywords and possibly put your budget more towards ‘exact’ match keywords which will inherently be more qualified)
3. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Damon Gochneaur | Partner
https://aspiroagency.com
4. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Jonathan Taylor | Senior Manager, Marketing
www.klipfolio.com
5. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Mike Kordvani | SEO Specialist
Fueled
A quote I live by in SEO is “The sum of the long-tail is greater than the sum of the short-tail”. People often make the mistake of targeting the broadest biggest words they can think of, when the secret to success is to gather hundreds of specific queries to target instead. It is more efficient, and more powerful. Especially with an adwords budget.
6. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Mathew Ham | President/Owner
www.ComputerRepairDoctor.com
- Always be A/B Testing ad text – Adwords provides incredibly detailed data on CTR, ad performance, etc. It’s quick and easy to test new ad content and objectively compare the performance to a previous ad set. Every 30 days you should be creating new ad content and running an A/B test against your next best option. Do this for 6 months and your ad performance will increase significantly.
- Use Ad Extensions to the fullest – If you’re not fully utilizing all of Adword’s Ad Extensions, you need to be. It might take a while to setup, but ad extensions are CTR gold. Frankly, it’s becoming a foundational issue these days instead of a competitive advantage. Don’t get left behind, using ALL of Google’s Ad Extensions is a necessity.
- Feature your major keyword in Headline Title – This may be a simpler tip, but it shouldn’t be forgotten. For example, at Computer Repair Doctor, we bid on the keyword iPhone Repair. So our Ad Text headline always includes the phrase iPhone Repair. It’s great for ad relevance, and even more important for CTR. Remember, people aren’t reading your ads in detail, they’re scanning. Including the major keywords in the ad text headlines is important to get noticed and get clicks.
7. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Nick Leffler | Owner
Exprance
8. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
James Harper
www.GoEdison.com
9. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Bradley Shaw | SEO Expert
seoexpertbrad.com
Create “Near Me” Campaigns
10. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Pamela Wagner | Former Googler | Adwords Specialist | CEO
www.ajaladigital.com
Use the ‘enhanced CPC’ feature for bidding when you’re measuring conversions. – Make sure to have remarketing lists set up through Analytics (not AdWords!) as that gives you a much broader range of data. – Set up location specific bid adjustments for the best performing cities in your campaign.
11. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Bryan Clayton | CEO
www.yourgreenpal.com
12. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Anthony Capetola | Marketing Manager
Sales & Orders
Intermediate to Advanced: Hyper-LocalTargeting
Especially for serviced-based industries such as Plumbers orDoctors, a hyper-localized approach to structuring AdWords campaigns is crucialfor minimizing wasted ad spend. Aside from a standard ‘Branding’ campaign, business owners/marketers should considerbuilding two separate primary campaigns for their desired target and keywords.
- GeneralTarget: This campaign should be structured by ad groups according to thespecific keyword variations. For example, a Dermatologist should separatedistinct treatments they offer by ad group such as ‘laser hair removal’ versus ‘acnetreatment.’ This campaign would be used to capture more broad searchqueries and intent.
- Geo-Specific:This campaign will be used to append the ‘hyper-localized’ terms to primarykeywords. The same Dermatologist from above would follow an ad group stylebased on the locale they practice. As an example, the ‘laser hair removal’ ad group would become ‘NYC laser hair removal’ and the keywords themselves would beappended with the term ‘NYC.’ Additionally, this advertiser could createadditional variant ad groups such as ‘Manhattan’ and spell our NYC to ‘New YorkCity.’
To round this strategy out, add broad or phrase matchnegative keywords to the General Targetfor all locations from the Geo-Specific campaign.
This will allow one to better segment and manage keywords,bids, and budgets based on the specificintent of those searching for your service or offering.
13. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Anthony De Guzman | SEO Specialist
anthonydeguzman.com
2) If you have developer experience, you can modify Google’s Link Checker script (found here) to include server error response codes i.e. 500 to pause your ads in case your site or client’s site goes down and resume after. You can also tweak it to pause if your website uses a “site is under maintenance” page.
3) If you’re looking to minimize costs for your account, try to find out which keywords your website is ranking for organically and lowering the max bid until you find a sweet spot of low cost yet high conversions (and low CPA).
14. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Jason Scott | Digital Marketing Specialist
www.archwaycards.co.uk
15. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Chris Casseday | Director of Operations
GNGF
16. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
William Gadea | Creative Director and Founder
idearocketanimation.com
Our business is international, but we hypothesized that there might be a greater comfort factor from some prospects in our home town if they knew we were local. So we created a different campaign that mentioned our locality in the headline, and targeted it geographically: the results were dramatic. Our click-through rate on that campaign is about 15% higher than it used to be for that cohort.
We have also been having a lot of luck with gmail ads that target keywords and competitor terms. It has frankly been the only kind of display ad that gets us the ROI that search advertising does.
17. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Swapnil Bhagwat | Senior Manager – Design & Digital Media
Orchestrate Technologies
One of the effective Adwords strategies is to optimize your keyword list continuously. You can start this with a precise list of 5 – 10 keywords that are highly focused on the offering as well as the demographics of the target audience. Adding them to your campaign as Exact Match keywords will ensure your ads only show up for the most relevant search queries and not any irrelevant variations. Over time, you can optimize them by eliminating the keywords that aren’t getting clicks/conversions. For instance, if “Orthopedic in Seattle” is working, you can add more Exact Match variations by pairing the word “Orthopedic” with zip codes, or landmarks in the city. You can then create a highly focused variation such as ‘Orthopedic near Admiral Theater’ and should be able to garner better conversions.
18. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Chris Gregory | Managing Partner
Dagmar Marketing
We believe that allsuccessful AdWords campaigns share one thing in common: careful segmentationand structure. Proper campaign structure allows for better relevance thatbegins at the keyword level and carries all the way to the landing pages.Google will reward your campaigns with better quality scores and ad position,as well as lower click costs. Here are two tips, one about budget and the otherabout process.
Tip #1, Budget & Consumption: The optimization process isall about conversion production and stretching your budget as far as it willgo. AdWords provides the tools that indicate where your budget works best andwhere it falls short. Explore your impression share lost due to budget and dayparts for peak consumption and conversion data. Don’t stop there, however—digdeeper under device categories and shift your funds to the better-performingdevices and scale back on those that underperform. Digging through the data andcrunching the numbers will have a tremendous effect on your conversionproduction.
Tip #2, Business Processes: Understanding your client’s business processes and day-to-day operations will help guide you in setting up technical features in the AdWords platform. For example, Google provides automation tools that allow you to schedule your call-only ads and call extensions to match the hours that the phone lines are being answered. You’ll extend your budget and increase your conversion production in one easy step..
19. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Ajay Lal | SEM Analyst
Acodez IT Solutions
Here are some tips for effective Adwords strategies – Make sure the ad group, keywords, and ad copies are well structured- Always keep an eye on search term reports and ensure the negative keywords are updated.- Keep an eye on competitors using “search impression share” metrics.
20. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Hugh Barry | Director, Digital Media
Maidpro.com
21. Google Adwords Tips by Google Adwords Expert:
Daniela Arango | SEO and SEM Marketer
Doitwiser.com
Here are some AdWords tips that work for us:
1. It is incredibly important to know how much Google is taking from you when you have ads running. To do so you must divide the cost of each campaign by the Total Conversion Value. This percentage indicates how much a campaign is costing you. This way you can analyze if a certain campaign is really working, needs adjustments or it isn’t worth paying for and should be paused.
2 Filters are very useful, especially when you want to know which keywords, ad groups or campaigns are spending more and are not converting. For example, you can set the time range for the last 4 months, click on Keywords, then click on Search Terms and create a filter for Conversions 20.00-. This way you can see which keywords are costing you more and can be cataloged as Negative Keywords. For us, as an example, it helps to determine which keywords are better for selling certain toner cartridges.
3 Use the Top Movers Report in the dimensions tab to identify the campaigns that change the most in relation to cost, interactions and conversions. You can even automatically compare other metrics like impressions, conversion cost, etc. With this, you can identify which campaigns need to change strategy-wise.
4. Use segmentation as much as you can to increase the possibilities of making a conversion. Keep in mind that not only can you segment when you create a campaign, but you also can use audiences to segment bids (increase or decrease) depending on the hour of the day, week day, the device used, consumer’s country, region, city, and even between your frequent shoppers and new buyers.