expertSEM

This week’s tip is to create unique ad groups for your top keywords. (This may be old news for some of you, but I’m finding it extremely useful with my newest client’s brand term campaign. So I thought it would be at least a good reminder.)

Using separate ad groups, you can immediately find these top keywords within your campaign organization and monitor their bids and position as a first priority. I like to name the ad group with the AdWords keyword exact- or phrase-match punctuation, [Top Brand Terms], for example. Using this punctuation around the name will bring it to the top of the list when Ad Groups are alphabetically sorted. With only one to a few keywords isolated, you may be able to more precisely set your default ad group max CPC, allowing you to see your bid and position for those top terms right upfront. Thus making your PPC management job a lot easier.

You can also test new ad copy on the rest of your keywords without potentially negatively affecting the performance of the top producers. Of course, once you do identify a great ad, you’d then want to move it into that top ad group to hopefully multiply it’s effect.

This technique is best applied to both high-converting and high-volume terms so that the data is not over-segmented for optimization.

Any other oldies but goodies out there? Please leave your ideas in the comments!