When you first set up your adwords campaigns you are either setting yourself up for success or optimizing your campaigns for absolute failure. No one wants to fail, but only a very small percentage of advertisers are actually setting up their campaigns the correct way and optimizing for success. While setting up your campaigns the correct way is not the catchall for Adwords success, (it still requires daily maintenance, split testing and bid management),  it definitely play a huge role in whether your campaigns will succeed or fail.

Google is very judgmental; and rightly so. After all, it is the world’s #1, most trusted Search Engine. What I’m trying to say here is that Google will not reward an Adwords campaign that is set up wrong. As a matter of fact, many times Google actually punishes campaigns that are setup incorrectly. With that in mind, hopefully you understand how important it is to set up your adwords campaigns correctly. When you set up you are either setting up for success or setting up for failure.

Setting up Your Campaigns the Wrong way –
I’m not going to go into to much detail on how to set up your campaigns the wrong way. You probably already know how to do that, but let me tell you a couple things that Google absolutely hates.

Google really hates:
- Irrelevancy
- Keyword Cramming- (this is when you stuff all of your keywords into just one or few
adgroups. Google expects your keywords to be organized into separate adgroups with
your keywords being perfectly relevant to each other.)

You see, Google is all obsessed with “relevancy” and the reason being is because Google wants to provide the most relevant content possible to its users. So, if you cram all of your keywords into just one adgroup, then Google know that there is know way the text ad you have displaying for those keyword can possibly be relevant to each of those keywords. Do you really think that Google is going to display an ad that it thinks might not be relevant to what a searcher is actually searching on? The answer…. Of course, it will, but you will have one heck of a click cost and pretty sorry ad placement! Do you see why keyword cramming does not work? This is why you must be very sure to set up your campaigns the right way in ppc campaign management.

Setting up Your Campaigns the Right way –
Don’t you want to gain favor with the Google Gods? Well here is the way to start. Set up your campaigns right! Begin by carefully organizing all of your keywords into closely knit, relevant adgroups. Divide up your keywords so that each adgroup had a main theme where all of the keywords inside are relevant to each other. This will also force you to write a relevant ad for each of the adgroups you have created. I know, it is a lot of work, but Google will love you for it! If you really want to please Google, try making your campaign super relevant by putting each individual keyword into an adgroup of its own. That technique is a lot more work though, and is better left to us PPC Campaign Management Pros.

Why, you may ask, does all this matter? Maybe your company has an unlimited budget and you think you are going to buy your way to the top ad position in Google. You may say to yourself “If everyone is bidding $10 per keyword, then I am going to bid $20.” Then you wonder why you don’t get the #1 ad position or why (if you DO get the #1 ad position) it doesn’t last very long. Worse yet, what if that high ad position is making you lose money on your overall campaign. If you can’t convert enough clickers into leads or sales, then you may be in for a rude financial awakening.

If you are going to be advertise with Google Adwords over the long run, then you had better learn this fact and learn it quickly. YOU CAN’T BUY GOOGLE. No, Google can’t be “bribed” into giving you a top ad position for too long if your “offering” is not what the searchers are looking for. You see, Google has a responsibility to its searchers to serve up the most pertinent ads that relate to the keywords searched on. Google is behaving this way for selfish reasons and because of those reasons people use Google more than any other search engine in the world.

Sure, they like the fact that you have high bids, but if someone else is bidding lower than you for the same keywords, but their ads are getting more clicks AND the landing page of their website appears to be more what the searcher was looking for, then guess ens up getting top ad positions for less money than you are willing to pay?

You see, it is all about your “offering” and making your offering relevant. So what is my offering you may ask? Your “offering” is what we at Absolutely Dominate call a combination of the keywords you buy, the headline in your ad, the ad copy, the display and destination URLs, and (most importantly) your landing page. As we said earlier, most Adword Pay Per Click management companies are concerned only with the various tactics aimed at helping your ad copy match the keywords that were searched. Those kinds of tactics can only work so well.

If you are struggling with Google Adwords, perhaps you need to back up and consider an overall strategy – not just a loosely defined tactic or two, but a strategy which involves a series of well-thought-out tactics that take into account EVERYTHING you are doing…INCLUDING your website copy.

Oh, maybe your Adword management company doesn’t care about your website, but I can assure you that the searcher looking for a product cares…and because they care, Google cares also. And Google has come up with an excellent strategy to reward those who take the time to care, which translates into a lower cost per click. Do you care now that you know this knowledge may save you money?

Again, even if you have a good ad, you had better make sure your site is relevant to what the searcher is looking for. So how does Google determine the relevancy of your site? One way is the words ON your site. Let’ say you sell widgets. Someone searches in Google for “purple widgets” and your ad comes up. The searcher clicks on your site. Will they see the words “purple widgets” on the page or will they simply see the word “widgets”?

You may say that it doesn’t matter as long as you sell purple widgets somewhere on your site. Wrong! Perhaps you should send them to the purple widget page when they click on your ad and not just send them to the home page. Don’t have a whole page dedicated to purple widgets? Then there is another way using what we call “magic keyword insertion”, where the keywords the user searched for are automatically inserted onto the landing page. Sound too sophisticated? Then perhaps you need some sophisticated help. Will that cost money? Yes, but probably not as much as your are spending now in higher Google Adword costs.

Here’s what they’re not telling you…Ready for this?
Ad Split Testing your ads on a daily basis is the best way to 1) Decrease your click costs, 2) Get your ad shown higher in Google and 3) Get far more traffic from Google. There you have it. What’s the best tool in Adwords Management when it comes to getting lower click costs, getting your ad shown higher in Google and getting far more traffic? Ad Split Testing.

Ad Split testing, obviously, is a very powerful tool in Adwords management. Ad Split Testing is the process of writing multiple ads for each keyword and testing their performance results against each other every day. What this does is help you structure your campaign on very powerful, highly click enticing ads. Since these ads will have a high click-though-rate these ads will actually increase your quality score in Google. Now your ads will get shown even higher and most likely help decrease the amount you have to pay per click.

Obviously Split testing is a very powerful tool in Adwords management but what makes it even more powerful is the fact that no one else is doing it! Most Adwords advertisers don’t even know about split testing and out of those that do only a small percentage actually know how to do it! Out of those who know how to utilize Ad Split Testing, how many do you think are actually doing it? Maybe 1 out of every 20 or so…?

Many Adwords Management companies aren’t telling you about split testing to for several reasons. 1) They just don’t know about split testing. 2) They don’t want to waste their time setting up multiple split tests for multiple clients… Split Testing can be a lot of work! 3) Many Adwords management companies charge their clients on a percentage of what their clients actually spend in Adwords. (Doesn’t sound like much of an incentive to decrease their clients’ click costs, does it?

Whatever you do make sure that when you outsource your Adwords management that the company you outsource to is performing daily split testing for all of your Adwords campaigns. Remember Ad Split Testing is one of the number one ways to decrease click costs, get your ads shown higher in Google and get more traffic.