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"Shimon Sandler is a search marketing professional. He authors a blog at Shimonsandler.com\nIn this bad economy when many advertisers are slashing their online ad budgets, it behooves us all to review optimization tactics to ensure we make the most of dollars allocated to Search. What do you do when you are handed an AdWords account to takeover? Here's an optimization \"how-to\" primer for the beginner to intermediate Search marketer. Although, even the advanced Search marketer will benefit from reviewing this information.  \nSearch marketing is not set it and forget it. According to industry research, search marketing is the best performing method of online advertising.  But, if you set it and forget it you're basically setting yourself up for an unsuccessful campaign. Below are some easy to follow steps that will ensure that you have optimized your AdWords campaign to squeak out as much performance as possible, while minimizing the amount of any wasteful clicks.\n\n\n\n\nBefore making any changes in your account, it's important that you download the correct reports for a specific Time Period to establish a baseline.  Personally, I like to use the last 90 days of account data. Login to AdWords Report Center, and download a Campaign Report, Adgroup Report, and a Keyword Report.  Sort the data by your specific success metrics (eg: Cost-Per-Conversion, Orders, Position, etc.).\nA step-by-step guide to optimizing a pre-existing AdWords account\n1. Keyword expansion - review the current keyword list\nThe actual keyword searches change from month-to-month, so you'll want to analyze this using keyword software like Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. Add keywords that make sense. Delete the underperforming keywords that are bleeding the account. \nThis exercise is meant to optimize and freshen up the keyword list.  Make sure the keywords are grouped together into tight adgroups. The tighter the better.\n2. Use Keyword Matching options to improve keyword performance\nAre all the keywords using Broad Match? Implementing keyword matching options can improve targeting and overall account performance. Use phrase, exact, and negative matching options.\n3. Write fresh ad copy for entire account\nHow old is the ad copy? Are multiple ads being used? Are multiple landing pages being used? Create at least one fresh ad to be used per ad group to conduct simple A/B split tests. Test different landing pages. Rate your ad compared to whatever your success metric is. Don't just delete an \"underperforming ad based on CTR. Use a deeper metric if possible, like Conversion Rate. Wait until you have a significant amount of data before making the decision to delete an underperforming ad.  \nIn many cases, it makes sense to conduct this type of ad optimization on a monthly basis.  Customize the Display URLs to contain the keyword representative for that ad group (eg: www.mysite.com/keyword).\n4. Daily bid management to maintain \"findability\"\nBut, depending on the campaign objectives, you might not want to sacrifice a higher CPC just to maintain the top three positions in the SERPs. This can be a fine balancing act of maintaining \"findability\" while optimizing the bids for higher conversion rates. Keep the CPCs the same to launch with. After launch conduct daily bid management. Some tactics that can help are to:\n- Pause underperforming keywords that are bleeding the account without converting.- Reduce bids into lower positions for keywords that have a high cost per conversion.\nIn overhauling an account to optimize for ROI, only use the keywords that converted from the previous time period. This is effectively cutting away all the excessive \u201Cno results\u201D keyword spending.\nDon't be over anxious to make changes.  Remember, it\u2019s necessary to use a significant amount of data to make any changes. Typically 50-100 clicks per keyword and/or ad copy, or another metric to watch like a threshold for Cost-Per-Conversion.\n5. Account Structure\nNow, let's look at the Account Structure.  Go back to the AdWords Campaign Summary.  Are there multiple campaigns? Are multiple campaigns really needed or can some of those campaigns be consolidated into one campaign?  Many times I've discovered that people tend to create multiple campaigns when only one or two are necessary.  So, it might be necessary to re-structure the account. \n6. Create Your New Campaign(s)\n\n\n\n\nFinally, it's time to create your new campaign(s). Create a new AdWords campaign using the Google Buildout Spreadsheet (Excel). Upload using AdWords Editor. This new campaign will replace the pre-existing campaign. Directions are very easy to upload the spreadsheet using AdWords Editor."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/12/10/how-to-optimize-google-adwords/>