5 Common and Costly AdWords Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Google AdWords can be a great way to increase traffic to your website. Particularly if it’s competitive to get your website to appear high up in the organic results.

A lot of business owners set up and run their own AdWords campaigns, which is relatively easy to do.  The hard part is knowing what to do to optimise your Ads to make sure you’re getting the best possible Return On Investment from your AdWords spend.

The unfortunate reality is that getting a few details wrong can cost you a lot of money!

Here are some of the mistakes I see being made way too often, plus info on how you can fix them.

1. Not Linking Your AdWords and Google Analytics Accounts

While Google AdWords gets people to your website, it’s Google Analytics that shows how each visitors behaves once they are there.

—By linking your AdWords and Analytics accounts, you’ll get information like the number of pages viewed and the time spent on your website, broken down to the keyword that the visitor typed into Google before clicking through to your website from your Ad.

—In the long term, having access to this information means that you can pause keywords that bounce (or rework your ads) and keep paying for those where the web traffic performs better.

To link your accounts:

• Use the same email to log in to your AdWords and Analytics account
• Check that you have Administrator level access to your Google Analytics
• In AdWords, go to the Green “Reporting and Tools” tab, pull down to “Google Analytics”
• Click “Admin” on the right hand side of the orange bar
• Select “Data Sources”
• On the AdWords tab, follow the prompts to Link your account.

Watch a video on how to do the linking

2. Targeting the Wrong Location

If you’re a Plumber in Melbourne, you don’t want to be paying for clicks from someone looking for a Plumber in Sydney

So one of the great features of AdWords is the ability to target a specific area.

Target location can be set at the level of Country, State, City, specified radius around an address or a custom area marked on a map.

Setting the target area means that only people in your target location should see your Ad. Therefore you’ll only pay for clicks from people within your target area.

To set your target location:

• Go to the Settings tab
• Under “Locations”, where you see the targeted location, click “edit”
• Either type your target location into the search box and the select the relevant location from the list, or click “Advanced Search” and select a location for “Radius Targeting” by either adding the middle location to the search box or moving the eye dropper to your selected location on the map.

The Radius targeting feature is particularly useful if you are a business that targets clients from your local area. Note though that if you try this strategy, because the number of searches for your keywords in your target area can be relatively low, you might need your ads to show in a high position in order to capture the clicks that are available.

Need help getting your AdWords target location right?

Leave a comment below and we’ll get in contact.

3. Directing Ads to your Home Page

If your ads are directed to your Home Page (which often includes a lot of information), your visitors from AdWords might bounce if they can’t immediately find what they are looking for.

Ideally, direct your Ads to a targeted landing page that:

To get this right you need to do some experimenting.

Move your ads up or down by changing your Maximum CPC Bid (while keeping an eye on your Click Through Rate).

It takes some testing to find the right position for your ads. Ideally find the position where you are paying a lower Cost Per Click than the top spot, but still getting enough clicks per day and the outcomes that you want ie leads and sales.

5. Not Using Conversion Tracking

Not setting up Conversion Tracking means that it is harder to evaluate the return from your AdWords spend.