Google Adwords will be hosting a live training seminar on Wednesday, February 17th at 2PM EST.  This upcoming Google Adwords training session will cover the topic of “Understanding Quality Score”.

The training portion of the class will last from 30-60 minutes and then everyone will take part in a live Question & Answer session.  Google is saying that the Q&A portion is valuable because you might just hear your question asked, and then answered directly from Google!

Understanding Google Adwords Quality Score:

From the Google Adwords webinar page:   “Increase your online profits by tracking and understanding the results from your advertising investment! This webinar will show you how to better convert online clicks into profit for your business using AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics. We will show you how to get started with these tools so you can analyze your return-on-investment, make informed bid decisions, learn where visitors to your website come from and identify areas for improvement. This webinar will be useful to anyone who is advertising using Google AdWords.”

Sign Up Here

Signing up for the training session is free, just click the link above to join the live training session!

Google Adwords is a highly effective form of advertising for both small local clients, and even international corporations.  One of the elements of Google Adwords that makes it so effective is the fact that you can measure, and analyze, just about every detail imaginable.  Conversion tracking is one of the tools that allows you to track the performance of your Google Adwords campaign, and analyze the key factors as what is, and what isn’t, working for your campaign.

When it comes to Google Adwords conversion tracking, there is certainly a wrong way, and a right way, to go about setting it up and analyzing the data.  The most important thing for you to do, when setting up your conversion tracking, is to put some deep thought and insight into what defines a true conversion in your site.

Defining What True Conversion Means On Your Site

How do you define true conversion for your website, you might ask?  The answer is quite simple!  Look at your website – are you selling product, or are you capturing leads?  Are you trying to get your phone to ring, or are you channeling your traffic to another page within your website.  All of these could be defined individually as a successful conversion, depending on your business, and what action you wanted a visitor to take.

So identify that one page within your website, the one page that if someone lands on it, you can definitively say “that would be a true conversion”.  That one page, whatever it may be, needs to be the page that you place your Google Adwords conversion tracking code on.

Once your Google Adwords conversion tracking is in place, and it’s installed on your most optimal page within your website, you can then go about your business of tracking and analyzing what’s going on with your Google Adwords campaign.  This analysis will be 100% more productive, because with conversion code placed on your most optimal page, you can track not only Google Adwords traffic, but also traffic from all other resources on the web as well.  You’ll also be able to tell where traffic is coming from – whether it’s from Google search, your Adwords campaign, or some other source.  You will also be able to determine what keyword phrases people are using in Google to find your page or your website.  All of this data comes together to deliver you highly insightful feedback on the overall performance of your website with Google Adwords.

This might sound a bit extreme, but I’m recommending that if you advertise on Google Adwords, then you should build a campaign for each root keyword phrase.

A root keyword phrase would be defined as a root phrase built around supporting keyword elements.

For example, let’s say you sell gold bracelets.  The phrase “gold bracelets” would be the root keyword phrase, and some supporting words that may be attached could be “gold bracelets with diamonds”, “pendant gold bracelets”, etc…

And for each root keyword phrase, I’m suggesting you build a campaign for only that root.  This will allow you to optimize and track conversions at the root phrase level.  And in turn, allowing you the highest valued data and feedback on the performance and conversions of your targeted keyword phrases.

The system is not yet perfect by any means, but Google is pushing hard to accurately leverage geo targeting for advertisers with the Google Adwords system.

The goal of Google Adwords is to allow individuals to see unique ads displayed on their mobile devices based on their exact location.  For example, if I were in San Francisco and I typed “pizza” into my iPhone, the Adwords system would identify my location and show me pizza parlors in my immediate neighborhood.

Likewise if you were in Orlando, Florida and typed “pizza”, you would get a totally different set of search results.

The system is getting closer to perfection.  And with the onslaught of Android OS driven phones, it’s only a short matter of time before geo-targeting in Google Adwords is a refined, and highly accurate system.

The more accurate the system is at targeting advertisers, the more local advertisers will be encouraged to spend their money on Adwords – it’s a no brainer for Google to get this figured out ASAP!

From Social Media SEO

With the evolution of smartphones, it only makes sense that Google would make it easier for people browsing the web on their phones to connect to businesses.

And that’s exactly what Google is introducing with their new feature called “Click To Call” for Google Adwords advertisers.

Google made the announcement to AdWords advertisers this week that it would display their business phone numbers in ads that show up on some smartphones—and then charge advertisers when users click on the number in order to call them.

SearchEngineLand—which first reported the news—says that Google will charge advertisers the same amount for a call as for a visit to their site (advertisers can opt-out).

On most smartphones, phone numbers typically can be touched (or “clicked”) to initiate a telephone call. This “click to call” scenario already exists for Google organic local listings on smartphones. What Google is saying, simply, is that it will allow phone numbers to display in ads and will charge advertisers when calls are initiated accordingly.

This is a version, effectively, of “pay-per-phone call” but the cost per call is the same as a click — a bargain (generally speaking) for the advertisers to receive a “warm lead.”

The Google Adwords platform is the bread and butter of Google.  If you’ve ever wondered why Google offers everything for free, and how they actually make money, then Google Adwords is your answer.

For those who are just getting started with Google Adwords, you might be please to know that there is now a new “Content Network Getting Started Guide” available.

Although this guide is directly more toward the content network, it is a valuable resource because the content network can, if used properly, connect you to high quality customers very quickly.

The Content Network Getting Started Guide is a resource that is made up of a series of videos, tutorials, and discussions about using Google’s content network.  You will also find a Seminars For Success schedule where you can sign up for live Google Adwords seminars.

I finally had my first experience with exporting and importing a Google Adwords campaign!

The tool of choice of course was the Google Adwords Editor, Google’s free campaign management dashboard.  Adwords Editor is nothing less than an amazing tool for managing large changes across multiple ad groups and even campaigns.

Here’s the quick “how to” for exporting then importing a Google Adwords campaign:

1) Add your Google Adwords campaign to the Adwords Editor tool.  This is done by logging into your campaign through Adwords Editor.

2) Download your entire Adwords campaign into a CSV file.

3) Add a new campaign the same way you did in step one – this is obviously the campaign that you’ll be importing in to.

4) Select “import from CSV”

And that’s it!  I wish it were more complicated than that (not really!), but that’s literally all it took to transport an entire campaign from one account to another.

Adwords 101 – in Google Adwords Seminars for Success series, covers the very basics – and the very foundation – of what drives costs per click, rankings (placement), and competition in the Google ad bidding environment.

And that is QUALITY SCORE!

Basically, this is the heart and sole of your Google Adwords campaign.

Below is a great video overview of Google Adwords quality score:

Here is a great collection of Google Analytics / Google Adwords integration videos from this post.

This series highlights in detail how to integrate your Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts.

Enjoy:

Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find the Best Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Location Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find Poor Performing Campaigns and Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Placement Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Identifying High Spenders
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Conversion Funnels
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Tracking Ecommerce with Google Analytics