What Is Search Terms View?

The AdWords Search Terms View shows us the performance metrics on the Search Terms that matched against our Keywords (more detail on the difference between Search Terms and Keywords is coming up later in this post). Advertisers can use this data to optimize the Keywords and Negatives in their account.

Optimization in this context usually includes adding Keywords (both new Keywords on an any Match Type and existing Keywords but on a new Match Type), and adding Negatives (again, both new Negatives and existing Negatives on a new Match Type).

The data can also be used to help remove Keywords and Negatives, optimize bids and ad copy, and to inform the organization of AdGroups and Campaigns. In this article, we will focus on the two primary optimization tasks: adding Keywords, and adding Negatives.

Why Optimize Keywords? How Often?

Most of our clients are doing this on a weekly basis at least. I consider this activity to be like gardening for PPC; we want to pull out the weeds and make sure we fertilize the pretty flowers, all the while considering the overall organization and appearance of the garden… and the process never ends.

This core and ongoing practice is essential because it helps us continually refine the traffic we are paying for and improve Quality Score, and also because it helps us find new ideas for AdGroups, Ads, and Landing Pages.

Generating The Search Term View

To navigate to the Search Term View, start by logging in to AdWords, then click the Keywords tab, then click on the “See Search Terms…” button and choose either “All.” This will generate a view of the Search Terms triggered by all of the Keywords in our account.

We can optionally narrow the list using the usual navigation with AdWords, and by selecting individual Keywords and choosing “Selected” instead of “All” from the drop-down.

Recommended Keyword Selection

I recommend choosing our AdGroup with the most clicks in the last 30 days (All Campaigns, then AdGroup tab, then sort descending by Clicks), then the Keyword with the most Impressions (Click on the AdGroup with the most clicks, this takes we to the Keywords tab, now sort descending by Impressions).

We will consider other approaches for narrowing down the list later in this post, but this will do for now. Check the box next to the Keyword with the most Impressions, then click the “See Search Terms…” button. When we click the button, it will drop a menu, choose “Selected.” This will take us to Search Terms View.

Getting Back

When in Search Terms view, there is now a link to get us “Back to Keywords.” This is how we return to the Keyword list we were just at. We can also navigate away from Search Term view by any of the other traditional means, such as the tabs or the quick menu on the left.

Columns In Search Terms View

In Search Terms view, the first column will show us the Search Term, and the next column will be the (Search Term) Match Type. The next two columns will be optionally included by AdWords. If your original Keyword tab was at the “All” level or represented more than one Campaign, then the Search Term view will show a Campaign column next. Likewise, if your Keyword tab represented more than one AdGroup, then it will show an AdGroup column.

One thing to note about the Search Term view is that a given Search Term and Match Type may have matched against multiple Keywords. In this report, that Keyword detail will not be shown; Each Search Term and Match Type combination is reported in one row, regardless of how many different Keywords it matched.

For example, if we have the Keyword “bike” in our account on Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match, and many different users searched on “bike”, the report will have one row for the “bike” Search Term, and it will be Exact Match. Behind the scenes, our Keywords may have each gotten credit for some of the traffic on their various Match Types, but this report will not show that.

Search Terms vs. Keywords

Search Terms are what the user typed into Google Search. Keywords are added to our account by us, and Google matches them to Search Terms based on their Match Type. For example, if we have a Keyword “bike” in our account on Broad Match, some Search Terms that might match include: “beach bikes,” “road bikes,” “bicycle,” etc.

Match Type in Search Term View

Match Type in Search Term View is the Match Type that Google used to match the Search Term to a Keyword in our account. This is not necessarily the same as the Match Type of the Keyword in our account. For example, if we have a Broad Match Keyword “bike” in our account, and the Search Term report is showing traffic for “bike”, the Match Type in this report would be Exact Match because the Search Term is an Exact Match with the Keyword.

Customizing Columns

The remaining columns can be customized in the usual way (Click the “Columns” drop-down-button, then choose “Customize Columns.”) See references at the end of this entry for a link to get help customizing columns.

Recommended Columns

My recommendation is to start with the following columns:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Conv. (many-per-click)
• CTR
• Conv. rate (many-per-click)
• Cost
• Total Conv. Value
• Avg. CPC
• Avg. Pos.

In my experience, these columns provide the information I need, in an order that makes sense to me for the task at hand.

Added & Excluded Terms

The Search Term view will also show us which Search Terms already exist as Keywords “Added” or negatives “Excluded” in our account.

Using Added and Excluded Terms in practice

While this feature is helpful, there are some practical limitations to be aware of. It does not tell us if the Keyword is “Added” to the correct AdGroup according to your account’s design structure – we need to check that ourselves.

Another limitation to be aware of is that this feature looks for literal matches. It does not consider coverage provided by the Match Type functionality in AdWords. Meaning, if we have a Phrase Match “bikes” Keyword, while it would cover the Search Term “fast bikes,” it will not be marked as “Added.” We have to check that ourselves.

As a rule of thumb, we want to be pushing mature accounts towards Search Term Reports that show every Search Term is “Added” or “Excluded.” (Note to AdWords: this would be a nice feature improvement.)

Adding Keywords

We can add Keywords directly from the Search Term View. To do so, check the box next to the Search Term(s) we wish to add, and click the “Add as Keyword” button. We will be given an opportunity to set a specific bid and destination URL. The Campaign and Adgroup are indicated as well.

The Keyword field accepts power posting syntax for Broad Match (no punctuation), “Phrase Match”, and [Exact Match] Keywords. For example, to add “fast bikes” on Exact Match, edit the Keyword field to be [fast bikes]. Click “Save” and the Keywords are added to our account immediately.

Adding Keywords in Practice

My recommendation is that we should almost always be adding Keywords on Phrase or Exact Match. This is based on my best-practice recommendation of using Broad Match to help us find additional terms, and assumes this AdGroup already has a Broad Match Keyword (or maybe a select few), that is doing that research for us. If so, then we want to run as much of our traffic as we can through Phrase and Exact Match Keywords.

Adding Negatives

We can add negative Keywords in a similar way. Check the box next to the Search Term(s) we wish to add, then click “Add as negative Keyword.” When adding Negatives, we have the option to add them as Campaign or AdGroup Negatives. Click “Save” and the Keywords are added to our account immediately.

Adding Negatives in Practice

My rule of thumb for Negatives is to always add them on Exact Match, maybe add them on Phrase Match, and to only add them on Broad Match in exceptional cases. With the tools we have available today for Keyword targeting and Search Term reporting, we have the ability to be very targeted with our Negatives. We can add Keywords on Broad Match, then use Negatives on Exact Match or Phrase Match to filter unwanted traffic.

In my experience, using Broad Match Negatives runs too high of a risk of blocking words unintentionally. For example, if we have a Keyword for “beach bike” on Broad Match, and are matching the Search Term “bike beach” (which, in this example, we do not want), then we can block that by adding “bike beach” as a Negative on Phrase Match. We would not want to add “bike beach” as a Negative on Broad Match because we would most likely end up unintentionally blocking the good searches for “beach bike.”

Pro Tip: If you have a dedicated rep, he can produce a “Negative Blocked Report” – a report showing you the Search Terms that were blocked by your negatives, and the potential traffic you are missing. It is a good idea to review this occasionally to check if you are inadvertently blocking good traffic.

For example, I recently had a situation where we copied an AdGroup and did a find/replace on the keywords, but neglected to review the negatives. The new AdGroup was blocking itself based on the negatives from the original AdGroup.

Download The Search Term View

We can also download the Search Term view; Just click the “Download” button.

Working Online vs. Downloading and Working in Bulk

Once we start working with this report, we may be tempted to start working it in bulk, by downloading it. Once downloaded we could manipulate the report, generate Keywords and Negatives and upload them in bulk via AdWords Editor, for example.

While I am a big fan of doing things in bulk in Excel then uploading them via AdWords Editor, this is one workflow that I prefer to do directly on the website. I find that I am constantly changing my view from one AdGroup to the next, changing the dates, etc., and that the instant gratification of adding Keywords and Negatives in place, instantly, works for me. our mileage may vary, of course.

Choosing Which Keywords To Work With

When choosing which Keywords to work with, there are many different approaches. While getting started, my recommendation would be to start with 30 days, the AdGroup with the most Clicks, then the Keyword with the most Impressions, as recommended above. This is a great bellweather.

If the Search Terms are all over the place here, then we have a lot of opportunity for optimization. Whereas if our biggest term is generating almost all Exact Match and Phrase Match Search Terms, then we are doing a great job keeping our Keyword Targeting tight. I like to work Keyword by Keyword in this way for my most-trafficked Keywords.

We can also work AdGroup by AdGroup, which will pool more data into the report for us to work with, while still keeping the theme tight. I do not usually find it useful to work with this report at the All or Campaign level, because the Keywords tend to be all over the place. One notable exception; It can definitely be useful to work at the All or Campaign level when adding Negatives. You may want to discipline yourself to cycle through all of your AdGroups over time.

Choosing where to go next will really depend on how much data we have in our Account, and how much time we wish to invest. As a rule of thumb, optimize 5-10% of our traffic weekly, and be sure to work through those less-trafficked AdGroups and Keywords over time as well.

Benefits of Optimizing Keywords &Negatives

The benefits of optimizing in this way should include increased traffic (and/or more targeted traffic), improved Quality Score (through improved Keyword and Ad CTR), improved bidding efficiency (we will be able to refine our bids for a tighter subset of traffic), and often improved Conversion Rate (by filtering out unwanted traffic).

We will also find this is a great way to find Keywords we may not already have coverage for, and for getting insight into how our customers search for our products, which can lead us to create new Ads and Landing Pages. Good luck out there.

Resources

• Google AdWords Help on this topic
• Daydreaming About Paid Search: How About Airtight Ad Groups?
• How do I customize the data in my tables and reports?

So what is the solution to effectively grow the market share of these challenger brands while improving their online positioning?

Turning a challenger brand into a market leader requires following a specific five step process. Each step builds on the one before it resulting in a continuous cycle – a cycle of growth and efficiency.

First, let’s review the steps:

1. Conduct a market analysis of your client’s vertical
2. Dig into their competitors using Competitive Intelligence (CI)
3. Audit your client’s program and baseline
4. Create efficiency through optimization
5. Use the room you created to test and drive growth

Rinse and repeat.

By properly leveraging this cycle, you can take a brand that is spending significantly less than their competitors in the market and incrementally increase their market share through growth and efficiency tactics.

This strategy proved highly successful for one of the current US leaders in aesthetic services –  laser hair removal, cellulite reduction. They initially committed to $50,000 in monthly spend at 2,500 leads/month. Due to the straight direct response nature of this vertical, brand growth would be determined by driving efficient leads, bookings, and ultimately patients. That’s a tough job.

In order to do it, efficiency needs to be created first, lowering CPA to make room for testing and growth. After applying the cycle of growth and efficiency over the course of the two-year campaign, their spend rose to $650,000 a month while averaging the same CPA from the day the program started while their volume increased over 11 times. They grew from a challenger brand into the market leader and maintain that position today.

Now that you have an example to reference, let’s go through each step so that you can adhere to the same process to help turn your challenger brand clients into market leaders.

1.  Conduct A Market Analysis Of The Vertical

In order to understand the potential of growth, it’s important to research your client’s vertical. To do this, you’ll want to communicate with agency representatives at Google, Bing and Facebook. They can help you understand the maximum search volume in your client’s market across search, display and social. The total impressions and clicks constitute your target measure, the goal being to efficiently reach 90% impression share.

This data can also be used to determine the maximum spend by multiplying the maximum clicks with the average CPC of a top three position.

2.  Dig Into Competitors Using Competitive intelligence (CI)

Success in the complex PPC marketplace requires a blend of paid search expertise, cost-effective budgeting strategies and the right technologically advanced tools to drive results.

In an earlier article for Search Engine Land, How to Use 3 Competitive Intelligence PPC Tools - leading budgetary, bidding and competition monitoring products were highlighted to give paid search campaigns a competitive edge.

Applications like iSpionage, KeywordSpy and AdBeat can help marketing departments manage keyword costs and click-through rates while identifying efficient strategies the competition is implementing. Utilizing these competitive intelligence tools will maximize campaign effectiveness for your client.

3.  Audit Your Client’s Program & Baseline

It’s critical that you record the current baseline of your client’s program across multiple KPI’s and factors.

These include:

• Bid strategy:  What is the logic behind the determined bids?
• Keyword portfolio:  The number of keywords, match types and search query report
• Campaign structure: What is the geographical and demographical structure of the program? How many ad groups are there? How tightly themed are they?
• Ads: Consider the CTR and conversion rate analysis of existing ads. Are these ads tightly themed with the keywords in the ad group?
• GDN Placements: Evaluate placement reports and plan accordingly
• Landing pages: Are the ads being directed to relevant pages? Should they be optimized?
• Path to conversion: What keywords drive assists?
• Cross-channel attribution: What other channels, traditional and/or digital, are influencing conversions?
• Segmentation: Laptop vs. mobile, day-parting, geographical, demographical – select the setting that’s best for your goals

4.  Create Efficiency Through Optimization

Improvements in efficiency are gained through continuous tracking and optimizing of performance. These are some of the tactics used for improving campaign efficiency.

• Time of Day/Day of Week segmentation:  Analyze and then increase or lower your bid based on time of day/week data
• Creative (Ad Copy) testing and tracking: Split test new ads and continually retest to drive the best results
• Separation of search and content network campaigns: This is basic. Still, no campaign should target both Google search and content  – split them out
• Competitive monitoring: Employ technology to make sure you’re alerted when others bid on your brand
• Rule alerts: Setup alerts to email your strategists if thresholds like CPA go up or volume goes down to tend to the situations manually
• Addition of negative keywords: Improves CTR by reducing the appearance of brand damaging terms
• Addition of broad match modifier: Improves CTR and gives you more accurate bidding control
• Run search query reports: You’ll be able to find negatives and new exact matches
• Multivariate Testing(creative and landing page together) : Once a user clicks, it all comes down to the landing page and the path the user goes down. It’s important to leverage technology to test and optimize
• Geographic segmentation: It’s one of the best ways to create efficiency. For example, bids in NYC are higher than mobile bids)

5. Use The Room You Created To Test & Drive Growth

Once efficiencies have been achieved, it is time to grow the overall number of conversions at a favorable return rate.

Extended reach and increased volume are accomplished through the targeted implementation of:

• Keyword expansions: Leverage the search term suggestion tool and competitive intelligence to add new keywords to the mix
• PPC engine expansions (Bing/Yahoo/Facebook): Are you only on Google and Bing? Try new platforms like Facebook and Local Pages
• Content expansion: Test new placements on the content network
• Remarketing: Create remarketing campaigns to bring users back to the site for additional conversions
• Bid elasticity testing (position): Bid-up on those keywords averaging position 5 or higher as well as those with a good CPA or assist count to increase volume.

Regardless of the scale and scope of a client, driving simultaneous growth and efficiency is no easy task. But there’s no question that for challenger brands, it is doubly difficult.

However, digital marketers needn’t look outside the box for a solution to transform challengers into market leaders. Integrating a growth and efficiency cycle into your next PPC campaign will bring your client five steps closer to the pinnacle of market leadership.

Kids with crayons to employees with goals, the “doing more with less” saying has certainly achieved epidemic proportions. No department has able to hide from its grips and CMOs ensure every last penny is squeezed from each marketing initiative.

Yet, savvy marketers still search for additional opportunities. Check out the insights of how mirrored exact and broadmatch PPC campaigns open the gate to truly deliver more without effect to your budget, while also expanding your reach.

In my experience, B2B marketers are often challenged with finding the right audience, choosing the proper message and ensuring they are continually driving new leads to fuel the sales funnel. Using mirrored broad and exact match Google PPC campaigns will solve all of these B2B challenges.

The approach is tiered; it will allow your campaigns to capture conversions at a more effective CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) through the exact match campaigns. Meanwhile, the broadmatch campaigns provide the opportunity to further curate your keyword set.

Check Out This Old Dog’s New Trick

A very successful B2B software services firm was recently faced with the challenge to increase leads, reduce their CPA and maintain the same budget.

Unfortunately, David Copperfield was busy, but in one week’s time, their equally magnificent account team was able to reduce their CPA by 50 percent.

They also saw their lead volume increase by 183 percent, the result of launching mirrored broad and exact match campaigns.

Had the same lead volume been achieved on the old CPA, the marketer would have been required to spend an additional $9,000 that week.

How To Launch Your Mirrored Campaigns

Step 1: Duplicate all your campaigns. Clearly label the duplicate campaigns as broad match to avoid confusion. Be sure to include all adGroups, keywords and negative keywords. Assign the broad match type to all keywords within the broad match campaigns.

Step 2: Change all the keywords in the initial campaign to exact match. The exact match campaigns should serve as your top converters; this action ensures the historical keyword data within Google remains intact. Mirrored campaigns work best after the initial campaign has been running for a period of time allowing for both budget and historical keyword data to build. At least one month of data is suggested.

Step 3: Create a negative exact match keyword in the broad match campaigns, one for every keyword in the exact match campaigns. This will ensure that your exact match keywords ads are triggered only from the exact match campaigns.

Step 4: Increase exact match campaign CPC bids. Depending on how often you are required to optimize bids to maintain your desired position, increase exact match campaign CPCs 50-75 percent more than the broad match campaigns. This will further ensure your exact match keywords serve first.

Step 5: Spread your initial budgets between the two campaigns, apply a higher budget level to the exact match campaign—try a 60/40 split to begin. Once your campaigns have been running for a period, apply budgets to the exact match campaigns, which are one to two times the initial campaign’s budget.

You want to ensure that your exact match campaigns have enough daily funds available to serve an ad each time a query triggers one. If you find your exact match campaigns are reaching their caps, apply additional budget until there is budget to spare. After a few weeks time the exact match campaigns will level out and daily spend will rarely change.

Step 6: Refine and Optimize. While your CPA will decrease and leads will increase as a result of the exact match campaigns, you will want to continually pull search query reports (SQRs) on at least a weekly basis, if not more frequently. You will find that the broad match campaigns will reach their daily spending caps, though not all queries mapped to this campaign are good queries.

The SQR reports will show you which keywords drive clicks and spend but do not result in leads, meaning they should be applied as negative keyword in the broad match campaigns. Keywords that are producing conversions should be added to the exact match campaigns as exact keywords, they should also be added to the broad match campaigns as negative exact match keywords. This again ensures keyword phrases are being triggered from the correct campaign, driving the reduced cost conversions.

Step 7: If you are unsure which campaign is serving for a keyword phrase, test them. Use the Google Keyword Tool while signed into your adwords account. Simply enter one keyword phrase and hit search. Below the search button, Google will identify exactly which campaign would serve an ad for that query.

Step 8: Measure your success. Combine the conversions and spend of each exact match campaign with its broad match counterpart. Review the number of conversions and calculate the CPA. Compare the results witnessed with the broad and exact combined campaigns to that of the original unduplicated campaign to examine the success of this initiative.

Mirrored broad and exact match campaigns are not limited to tough economic times; it’s truly a best practice one should employ at all times. While you go on to recycle your search campaigns to produce additional leads and lower your CPA, I’m going to finish showing my nephew a few new crayon color combos to liven up the refrigerator.

Image from Shutterstock, used under license.

It’s true that Google doesn’t strike gold every time it releases something new into the wild (Google Radio Ads, anyone?) but when it comes to tools for optimizing your AdWords campaigns, they normally get things pretty dead-on.

Here are three of my favorite AdWords tools for retailers, along with some hints and tips on how to leverage them for your campaigns.

Conversion Optimizer

Paid search bid tools have been the topic of hot debate over the years. When they first started coming out, they were hailed as the savior of search marketers everywhere, promising to save hours of campaign management time and increase efficiencies many times over.

Later, when Google introduced “Quality Score” into its paid search algorithm – and bidding was no longer just a simple case of getting $0.01 above the next guy – people declared bid tools were dead.  This new “opaque” landscape was too complex for the tools…there were too many variables.

Well, this has proven not to be the case. Paid bid tools like Marin, Kenshoo and DoubleClick are being used to great effect by search marketers around the globe. However, there’s a free bid tool out there that’s also very powerful, and is contained right within the AdWords interface – Conversion Optimizer.

Conversion Optimizer is very easy to use. You simply go into your campaign settings, select edit bidding option, select the radio button next to “Focus on Conversions”, then whether you’d like to use a max CPA or an average CPA (think keyword vs. portfolio bidding here).

Within the UI, you will then notice your bid amount is now at ad group level, not keyword, and it’s your CPA you’re inputting, not your CPC. Once this is done, the system will then start auto-optimizing all ad groups within that campaign to hit that goal.

One thing to keep in mind here is that you must have recorded 15 conversions in that campaign over the last 30 days to be eligible for Conversion Optimizer (that’s the minimum amount of data required to make bidding decisions in the system)

What makes Conversion Optimizer different from other bid tools? Aside from being free? Well, it’s the depth of data available.

In addition to historic CPC, position, cost, orders, revenue and all that other good “surface” data, Conversion Optimizer has access to additional data points like user location, user search history, actual search query used (vs. just the triggering keyword), and whether the search is being done on Google.com or a partner site.

All this data helps the system make more educated decisions, and further reduce that cost per sale.

AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE)

Continuous testing is one of the most important aspects of paid search management. Ad copy, landing pages, bids, budgets, ad positions, match types–you can test almost anything within your campaigns. However, the flipside to this great breadth of testing opportunity is that you can easily find yourself drowning in data and overloaded with variables.

So, with this in mind, how can you keep tests manageable, valid, and really measure the impact your changes are having on your results? The answer is AdWords Campaign Experiments, or “ACE”, as the kids are calling it.

This handy little tool can be used to split test ad copy, landing pages, identify the most profitable positions for keywords, and more.  It does this by splitting the number of impressions and clicks that go through a “Control” group, versus an “Experiment” group. No need for separate ad groups, moving keywords around, or any of the other nonsense.

Initiating an ACE test is actually quite simple. Start by clicking the Settings tab in the desired campaign, scroll down to Advanced settings and click the + Specify experiment settings button to name your experiment.

Then, select the desired traffic split between control and experiment, and set desired start and end dates or start manually.

To add keywords to the experiment, under the Keywords tab click Add Keywords enter keywords as you normally would, though check the Add as experiment only keywords box at the bottom of the page and save.

To adjust bids and compare results, simply click the Segment drop-down and then Experiment.

ACE testing gives marketers the ability to conduct highly valuable, statistically relevant A/B testing with accurate and easily accessible results. Like the Conversion Optimizer, ACE testing is also free and, if you’re lucky, your Google account team will aid you in identifying prime testing candidates.

Use ACE testing to identify the most profitable positions for KW’s, highest converting landing pages, optimal ad copy elements and more.

Google Insights For Search

For forecasting, trend analysis and competitive insights, Google Insights for Search is just a great tool. Its core function is comparing search volume patterns over time. You can compare up to five keywords at a time, and see how their search popularity has trended – all the way back to 2004.

Some key questions Google Insights can help with include:

• Is my offline or online display marketing effective? If searches for your brand terms rise while you’re investing, chances are that marketing campaign is the catalyst. If they don’t, perhaps you need to adjust your strategy.
• Am I making market share gains on my competitors, or am I falling behind? Search volumes are a great way to assess brand demand and popularity. Comparing your own brand search demand to your closest competitors will provide context to results, and alert you to trending competitors in your space.
• How much budget do I need to allocate to my non-brand campaigns during the next quarter? Knowing whether search demand goes up, down or stays consistent in the coming months can be a great budget and forecasting tool. The below graph shows that demand for laptops is highest during back to school and holiday, but that May/June are also key research periods.
• Why are clicks or conversions up/down within a certain category in my AdWords account? This could of course be down to a number of reasons, but if you haven’t changed your site or pricing, then a seasonal or market-wide drop in search demand could be to blame. Our laptops example below shows that search demand for laptop computers is down in 2011 vs. 2009 and 2010, which could explain a decline in recent performance on that group of terms.

Arming yourself with this knowledge will help you not only optimize your campaigns, forecast traffic, sales and spend volumes, but it’ll also be a huge help when you (or your boss!) are looking for answers when a certain category within your AdWords account is trending a certain direction.

If you haven’t tried the above tools, I’d recommend starting now. Once you do, you might just find they become a staple in your campaign management strategy.

If you have the time, budget and manpower to utilize a design team and software that builds a landing page for every paid, organic, social and email marketing keyword or blast you send — Awesome!

The reality is, most of us do have time and budget limitations. Getting permission to spend thousands on software isn’t likely, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on the idea. Think a bit deeper and build your landing pages for multiple purposes.

In the past, we would build a website, and send clicks to the homepage of that site. Then we got smart, and sent those same clicks to more relevant pages on the site. Then Landing Page Optimization was invented and we started hearing we needed a new page for every keyword, and the want vs. budget debate started heating up.

Limited budgets don’t mean you have to completely remove LPO from your marketing vocabulary. Think about it this way: if you can repurpose that page to give you Organic, Paid, Social and Email Marketing traffic and conversions, it makes the time investment a bit more manageable.

Then think about the reality that not every keyword needs a landing page. Many keywords are extremely similar, the same words in different combinations. Take this knowledge and repurpose your landing pages across multiple platforms.

Here are five steps to making sure your landing pages can be repurposed for multiple funnels.

Layout Your Landing Page

There are quite a few schools of thought about how to frame out a landing page. Some blueprints say a large image and a call to action, some do include text. The best advice I can give here is just to simply start somewhere and test what you’ve done.

A great tool to help you mock up pages as you go, and save layouts you’ve done or want to try, is GoMockingbird.com. I use this to wireframe pages for SEO, PPC, Email Marketing, Facebook inclusion, etc. It’s also a great way to show your design/creative department your vision when it comes to page layout. If you know a UX expert, or have someone on your design staff that “gets it” be sure to use their knowledge and experience.

Target Keywords

This tactic relies upon you having a very solid AdWords campaign. We’re going to use your AdGroup themes to set up your landing pages. AdGroups generally have very similar “like” terms and you’re testing ad copy and calls to action to see what converts best. Export your AdWords keywords and sort by AdGroup. Use this information to decide what landing pages you need to build for each set of terms. You can then use this information to build your Landing Page.

Add Content

After you export your keywords by AdGroup, make a list of the landing page content you need. Each “Group” of keywords needs between 150 and  200 relevant words that are themed around those keywords. Do not stuff each keyword into your content verbatim, use synonyms, write naturally – bold your main idea and don’t be afraid to use bullets to list the benefits of your product(s).

Create Calls to Action

Review your PPC ads and use the best performing ad headline as your call to action: “Book your Getaway Today” or “Limited Time Offer”. You can combine on-page testing via Website Optimizer with some PPC ad rotation testing to find the best combination of call to action and keyword group.

Track It

Sending multiple clicks to the same landing pages can make your tracking a bit tricky, but if you’re careful, you can see each portion of revenue a segment delivers. You can use a few tactics, Google offers different Analytics options and filters to help you out.

The best way, in my opinion, is to using source codes on the links and building custom segments in your Analytics platform. 

Remember, if you want these pages to rank organically as well, you’ll need to fit it into a logical place in your navigation, add content, build internal links and tie its existence in with the rest of your website. These landing pages aren’t meant to be an “add on” with no place to live in the architecture of your site.

Landing pages are designed to convert traffic, but they don’t need to be a one-hit wonder. You can combine Organic, Paid and Email Marketing tactics with your landing pages to get great results on a shoestring budget.

• Ad position is determined by Ad Rank which is calculated as bid x quality score.
• CPC is calculated by dividing the Ad Rank of the next highest advertiser by your quality score (and rounding up to the nearest $.01).

But before fighting for position or even worrying about CPC, each keyword must earn eligibility into the real-time auction that takes place when someone enters a search query that Google deems potentially relevant to your keyword.

There are some interesting dynamics in that part of the process that are worth understanding if you really want to optimize your AdWords account and maximize your results.

In part 1 of this series, we looked at how quality score helps you to focus on resolvable issues in your account, and warn you about keywords where success may be difficult. In this installment we’ll learn more about how quality score effects auction eligibility.

This series is based on material from the new book Quality Score in High Resolution and is a preview of the Quality Score session at the upcoming SMX Advanced in Seattle.

Keyword Magnetism

A lot happens behind the scenes when someone clicks the ‘Search’ button on Google.

In a split-second, AdWords has to decide which keywords from which advertisers should compete for the available PPC slots on the search results page.

Given the massive number of advertisers, volume of keywords, effect of match type, and complexity of the search queries they see, the fact that they can figure it out at all is impressive and that they do it within the milliseconds before the results appear is truly mind-boggling.

Think of keywords as being magnetic. Exact match keywords are specialized magnets that only attract very specific search queries. Phrase and broad match keywords have larger levels of magnetism and therefore attract a wider range of search queries.

The phrase match keyword ‘cheap dog food,’ for example, should be strong enough to attract any search query that includes at least those three words, unless:

• The query is excluded due to a negative keyword
• The search originates in a geography that is outside the defined targets
• The keyword bid is below the minimum required bid
• Some other setting or aspect of performance history blocks the keyword from being eligible

Increasing the bid or quality score for any keyword strengthen its magnetism, extending the range and increasing the quantity of search queries it can attract. If each keyword is surrounded by a moon-like orbit of search queries, as the magnetism gets stronger the keyword is able to reach out to more and more queries.

This is best understood by example:

• For the phrase match keyword ‘cheap dog food’ you have a $1 bid and a quality score of 6.
• Average impressions = 1000/day, average position = 4, average CPC = $0.65
• They keyword is eligible for some potential auctions, but misses eligibility for others.
• Quality score goes up to 7.
• For search queries where ads where already showing, you earn better positions and enjoy lower CPCs.
• This new higher quality score makes the keyword eligible for auctions involving search queries where it was previously ineligible. This happens because each search query has a minimum required bid for any keyword and that minimum is based on your quality score. With a quality score of 6 the minimum bid for a particular search query might have been $1.10 – so the keyword was ruled ineligible. But now that it has a quality score of 7 the minimum bid for the query is only $1.00 so the keyword is entered into the auction.
• This happens for any number of these ‘far away’ search queries, so after entering the auctions it wins positions and ads are shown for some of them. Your total impression volume will rise.
• Since your keyword is just creeping over the bid requirement to become eligible for these auctions, it’s likely that many other advertisers have far higher Ad Ranks for those search queries (each competitor is entering different keywords with different settings, bids, and CTR histories into these auctions) so in many cases you’ll earn relatively low positions on the results pages.
• Lower positioned ads tend to get lower click-through rates.
• And because it’s likely that your ad rank is lower than more competitors, and your quality score for this query (link) might be a bit lower too, you’ll tend to pay higher CPCs on these newly conquered search queries than the existing keyword average.
• The impact of these new search queries for which you gained eligibility by increasing your quality score is a rise in the average position, a decrease in CTR, and a bump up in the average CPC reported for this keyword.
• Including both existing and new search queries where the keyword is now displaying ads, average impressions rise = 1400/day, average position = 5, and average CPC = $0.88

So you earned a better quality score – which was a goal – and in some cases will be rewarded with more traffic but worse performance metrics.

It’s unlikely they would be dramatically worse, but seeing the theory play out in this example helps add dimension to the idea that search queries are more important than keywords and at least for those keywords consuming the largest shares of your budget, or having the highest CPCs, you need to actively monitor the search query reports to manage down to that level.

These results may be unexpected, but it’s impossible to categorically state that they’re undesirable or negative. They’re just a strange byproduct of the math – position and CTR are averages and when you enlarge the circle of search queries those at the outer edges lower these averages while increasing the total search volume.

You can only decide if the overall effect is positive or negative by looking at your average ROI and unit volume as compared to your goals.

Magnetism Control

It is surprising to most people that better quality scores produce these two simultaneous effects:

• Performance improves for search queries that were already matching
• Key metrics will be lower-than-average for many of the newly eligible search queries.

There is no way to get the benefits higher quality scores provide on search queries you’re already winning without at least potentially experiencing the degradation brought about by newly eligible search queries.

All you can do is keep a close eye on your search query reports and when you see new search queries that may be some of the new ‘remote’ queries for which you’ve recently become eligible, either create negative keywords to avoid them or add them as new keywords so you’ll be able to see their quality scores, bid them independently, and track their performance in order to control them more precisely.

It’s important to reiterate that not every new search query you gain eligibility for when quality score increases will bring lower-than-average positions or higher-than-average CTRs. Each query is subject to its own competitive marketplace, CTR history and expectations, and other factors. New queries may be at, above, or below these averages.

For the advanced search manager, or anyone spending huge sums of money on AdWords, this detailed look at one small aspect of ‘how it really works’ clarifies yet again the limitations we face based on a reporting system built around averages.

If we could see the impression counts, quality scores, CTRs, average positions, and CPCs for every search query our keyword interact with, we’d be in a far better position to manage our budgets responsibly and far more profitably.

In the next post in this series, I’ll dig deeper into that theme, and explore more of the ways that a lack of transparency, specifically related to quality score, makes it difficult or impossible to control our own fates and budgets in AdWords.

This score has impact. It determines how often your ads are shown, where they appear, and how much you pay for every click they generate.

The process by which these scores are determined is not clear – all we have is a vague set of explanations we’re asked to accept, and loose set of clues as to the behavior that they suggest in order to earn good or even great scores.

The power and complexity of quality score prompted me to spend a great deal of time over the past few years learning how it really works, determining the specific ways in which it impacts our results, and documenting the strategies and tactics that enable advertisers to better control their own fates and budgets.

Google was kind enough to assist, granting interviews and answering questions by email so many of the inscrutable elements of the system could finally be explained. The result is a book called ‘Quality Score in High Resolution‘, scheduled for first release in June 2011.

For the next few weeks, I’m going to discuss some of my most interesting discoveries and conclusions in a series of posts here on Search Engine Land. At the upcoming SMX Advanced in Seattle, I’ll present the ’5 Biggest Surprises about Quality Score’ at the opening session of the paid search track.

Quality Score Is For Your Own Good

One of the things that struck me as I gathered and organized all the facts (and set aside a lot of myths) about quality score, was that broadly speaking the strategies and tactics that produce the best quality scores also produce the best economic returns. In other words, the steps Google is trying to get you to take to improve quality score really are in your own best interest.

More than anything else, quality score measures click-through rate – we all know that by now. Obviously, a higher CTR means you get more visitors and hopefully more revenue. But aiming to ‘increase CTR’ is a generic goal and one that doesn’t provide specific clues as to how to improve performance. But quality score is not driven by the ‘blended average’ click-through rate metrics that AdWords reports in the AdWords interface.

Instead, it’s determined by a more focused set of CTR measures:

• How each keyword performs with each different text-ad in its ad group,
• How the display URLs that appear in your ad copy perform across all the ads that share them,
• The aggregate and historic CTR performance of all keywords in the account, now and previously,
• How performance varies based on the unique search query matched to the keyword,
• Plus other similarly nuanced measures.

By understanding exactly what Google is measuring, the door opens to taking specific actions that can improve the metrics that really impact quality score. And produce better economic results too. A couple of points to consider:

• Paying attention to keyword and text-ad pairs, instead of thinking of those as two separate elements, forces you to create smaller, more tightly targeted ad groups because otherwise you can’t control which ads are matched to which keywords.
• Paying attention to aggregate and historical performance forces you to accept that a bunch of poor performing keywords in a ‘testing’ ad group can impact the results of your best performing keywords; and the damage done by a poor search manager can linger long after they’re gone.
• Paying attention to display URLs forces you to think about that generally ignored variable, the clues you’re sending to searchers, and the consistency of your visible URL assignments.
• Paying attention to geography forces you to think about the differences in how your product or service offering is being accepted in various parts of the country. If you never get an order from Arkansas, why are your ads showing there?

These are just examples. The point is that quality score, if we know how it really works, gives us a new perspective on the elements of our campaigns and ways we can think about and improve them.

AdWords Is Telling You What Not To Do

I think the biggest gift quality score gives is the idea – if you’re open to it – that you shouldn’t bid on every keyword that you think is somehow relevant to your target market. There are keywords, often many, that make sense to you but that despite your best efforts don’t earn respectable quality scores in your account. (Let’s say anything less 6 is not respectable.)

When this happens, there are three possible explanations:

1. You have more work to do improving the attributes that really matter to quality score. Most people seem to assume this is their only option.
2. AdWords could be making a mistake and assigning an incorrect quality score or applying some bad or mistaken information. That happens, but rarely, and if you can prove it you should take your case to your AdWords representative.
3. The keyword in question just doesn’t work for you, and it should be paused or deleted. Prospects are telling you (it’s their actions that Google is measuring) that for whatever reason the queries being attracted or the ad copy you’ve written or the geographies you’ve targeted are not pleasing them. In effect they’re asking you to stop showing them uninteresting ads, and stop wasting your money – on the keyword as currently configured.

Thinking of it that way, maybe you’ll be inspired to find a better ad group organization and write better ad copy. Maybe you’ll review your search queries and try again with slightly different versions of the keyword with different match types. That can often work wonderfully.

But sometimes the right response is to say ‘thanks for pointing that out’ and turn off the keyword and spend your energy and dollars on the many more productive keywords in your account.

In the next installment, we’ll examine how quality score determines which ad auctions your keywords are eligible to enter, and the unexpected ways that increasing quality score can lower average positions and increase average CPC’s.

Here’s how you do it:  invest your time and money in PPC competitive intelligence and please shhh … don’t tell anyone.

As the auction grows more expensive and more complex, it’s critical to have a view into your client’s competitors paid search program, otherwise you’re fighting blind. The simple truth is, PPC is a competition. You’re competing for the world’s most valuable inventory and for the top positions in an auction that you can’t just win with a wallet, but with skill (i.e. your ability to generate click-thru-rate).

Dozens of factors go into winning of course, and one of the critical factors is knowing your opponents. If you don’t know them, it’s going to be difficult to beat them. Competitive Intelligence tools can help you do that and in this post, I’m going to disclose a few that we use to look at some key metrics and some tips on how to use them.

1. Ispionage.com

Budget

Here you can see the average monthly spend. Ispionage tends to be on the low side of its estimates when it comes to spend, so be sure to cross-reference with KeywordSpy, which tends to report on the high side. It also shows you seasonality which can allow you / your client know when he should be expecting more competition and potentially higher returns.

Ads

Ispionage will show you competitors’ top ads, for what keyword they display, how long its been up and several other metrics which you can leverage for your client.

Keywords

Besides the basics like CPC, average position, keyword count, etc., one thing I love about Ispionage is that it has a great feature that helps you identify which keywords you and your competitors share.

This can help you in several ways, including the ability to identify what keywords you’re not advertising on that your competitors are, which can spark new growth initiatives to test.

2. KeywordSpy.com

Days Seen and Last/First Seen

Both Isponiage and KeywordSpy both report on this, which is essentially a keyword effectiveness metric. The # of days seen metric indicates that if a competitor is bidding on a keyword for a long time, they are probably driving sales on from that keyword profitably. Last/First Seen is another metric which shows indicates recency.

For example, if an advertiser advertised for a long time on a particular keyword but stopped 6 months ago, it could be an indication the keyword is no longer profitable for your competitor, which could be useful information for your client.

Affiliate Data

While KeywordSpy shares several metrics with Isponiage, it also has a few unique features. One of which is affiliate data, which tells you how competitive and valuable a particular keyword auction is. If a keyword has a lot of affiliates, it’s probably pretty valuable.

To explain further, since affiliates get paid only a margin of a sale, you might surmise that if affiliates are bidding in that auction its because the keyword is effective for them, even at the lower margin. If your client is a direct provider of whatever that product is, their margin is probably higher, which means you can potentially enter that auction with an advantage, i.e. bid higher.

3. Adbeat.com

Google Content Publishers

The main feature of Adbeat is that it helps you see which Google Display Network publishers your competitors are advertising on. This is critical information you can leverage to compete across the network.

Google Content Advertisers

Adbeat also shows you the top advertisers on any Google content publishes such as NYTimes.com in the example above.

Top Ads

Adbeat will also show you the top ads on a publisher based on the first/last seen metric, which you can then share with your client and leverage for their campaign.

In conclusion, these tools are useful only if you know what to look for and more importantly, how to turn that intelligence into action for you client. Hopefully this information will help you drive better results for your clients by shedding light on your competition.

There are a lot of other tools and uses for each so please comment below on how you’ve leveraged competitive intelligence for your clients.

Fast forward to today – and remember the leaps and bounds PPC advertising has taken in just the last 12 months – take a look at Google  AdWord’s “Automated Rules” and prepare to be amazed. This is seriously a feature that can make a 1-woman-show look like a 3-person department, with minimal time, setup and investment.

Think about the implications, especially for small business owners and those with limited time to monitor social media, news, etc – but rely on those same mediums to drive buzz and traffic to their products or services.

Here’s the scenario that comes to mind.

You sell Charlie Sheen T-shirts, but you never know when some diatribe or craziness is going to hit the news, and you don’t want to sit with your finger on the AdWords bid trigger waiting for it. While you don’t necessarily want to bid yourself into top or even first page position if he’s not “in the news” you absolutely do want to be there when he is.

Now, you can automate the whole thing. Set your keywords and daily budgets to increase based on the number of impressions those keywords receive, or the conversion rate of your keywords. On a non-buzz day, those keywords may average 20-30 impressions a day, but on a buzz day, the impressions could skyrocket to 1,000 impressions an hour.

Set your automated bid manager to increase your daily budget and your CPC bid for only Charlie Sheen T-shirt keywords when the impressions go over 100. You can also set specific ad text to show when impressions go over 500 or 1,000 – or whatever number shows a spike in activity for those keyword phrases.

To check out what options you have for automating bids, take a look at each Keyword, Ad Group, or Ad tab, select an AdGroup, Ad, or Keyword(s) and click “Automate”.

Here you can choose the type of bid or visibility automation you’d like to enable, or manage rules you’ve already set up. When you’re first starting down the path, I recommend keeping your first tries pretty simple. Don’t set up complicated rules that might backfire and have you spending hundreds or thousands of dollars as you sleep.

I love the fact that Google will email you whenever an automated function is enacted – helping you keep track of when a higher or lower spending automation will begin or end. This means better accountability to your budget and a “heads-up” that something is happening with your important keyword phrases.

Some other scenarios where Bid Management can be a big time saver:

• Automate your bids to reduce or turn your ads off during hours when you’re not staffed to meet phone demand.
• If you have times of day where everyone is shopping but nobody is converting you can reduce your spend to reduce your expenses during low-conversion times.  Note: this isn’t necessarily recommended, I’d rather you figure out why they aren’t buying and convince them they should.
• If you run advertising on radio or TV, or schedule an email blast – boost your AdWords visibility during and right after the ads have run or the blast has sent. You can even schedule specific ad text to run that corresponds with your ads.
• If people are really buying, set your bids to increase when your conversion rate for a keyword, adgroup or specific ad move above a certain number. You can set a variety of metrics with bid management that help you maximize the times people book without having to personally pull the trigger every time.

As with all marketing tactics, take the time to research and think about what you’re doing. Don’t take the AdWords recommendations as gospel, because what they recommend might not work for your business, budget, niche and time investment.

In this article, let’s tackle the basic block and tackling necessary to get ad testing up and working for you.

What Ad Is Better?

With ads, as with keywords, this is not always black-and-white. There are many metrics we can measure, but which should we focus on? What is better — Higher CTR or higher conversion rate? More Revenue or more margin? Higher QS or lower costs? It is possible to have really high CTR ad that costs you a ton of clicks without making sales, and vice-versa.

No simple answers here – every business is different. Let’s cover some basics and agree on some optimization parameters just so we have something interesting to talk about in the rest of the article.

Let’s consider an ad that reads something like: “Free dvd’s, porn downloads, and Myley Cyrus’ phone number.” You are definitely going to get a lot of clicks! Your widget sales at ACME company might not do so well though.

On the other hand, we could have an ad that reads something like: “Do not click here unless you want to pay $100 for a widget and have your credit card in your hand.”

You can imagine we will not get many clicks relative to the other ad. We would expect a higher conversion rate than normal for those who actually do click-through though. So we’ve got the “free dvd” ad that gets high CTR and low conversion rate, and the “don’t click” ad that gets low CTR and high conversion rates.

A third kind of ad might be the “what is that?” ad. It might read: “We are something-you-didn’t-search-for experts. Great shipping!” and it points to the homepage.

This ad might perform better than both of the above ads overall, but its notable characteristic is that it is untargeted and points to an untargeted landing page. So what do we optimize for? What is that “overall” metric?

For this article, let’s settle on one. We will use Margin. That is: (Advertising Revenue – Advertising Costs) / Advertising Revenue. At the end of the day, it is often the money in your pocket that matters.

By the way, the same techniques work regardless of what metric you choose to optimize on, but for the sake of clarity, we are going to stick with margin for this article.

AdWords “Optimize” Option

There is a Campaign setting called “Ad Rotation.” It is located near the bottom, in a section called “Advanced Settings,” then “Ad delivery: Ad rotation, frequency capping.” You may need to click “edit” to reveal the options. The options are:

• Optimize for clicks: Show ads expected to provide more clicks
• Optimize for conversions: Show ads expected to provide more conversions
• Rotate: Show ads more evenly

Let’s start with the first option, the default setting. This setting will optimize your ads according to the highest click-through rate. That is a good thing, although it might not necessarily correlate with improving your other metrics.

This option will favor the “free dvd” ad, from above. High CTR (lots of superfluous clicks), and low conversion rate combine to make bad margin. Let’s move past this setting quickly.

This gets us to the second option, the “Optimize for conversions” option. This option might favor the “don’t click” ad, from above. High conversion rate is not necessarily high margin (if we click once and sell once, we have still only sold one widget).

To clarify an important misconception: this option does factor in both CTR and Conversion Rate, which can be approximated with something like CTR * Conversion Rate. It is not the case that it considers Conversion Rate only, regardless of CTR. (Thanks to Jim Prosser at Google for the important clarification.)

We want something that will help us tune and maximize both parameters, as well as driving costs down and revenue up – the sweet spot for margin.

There is one more aspect of both of these optimization settings that is troublesome for our purposes. These settings create a dynamic traffic split to the highest CTR/Conversion-rate ads, thus pulling traffic away from the other ads. That is a good thing if that is what we want, but it makes data collection really challenging for our purposes. We can’t get a fair test if traffic is not split evenly amongst our ads.

For you contrarians out there at this point:  While it is theoretically possible to adjust for the varied traffic, the statistics alone are beyond most advertisers, let alone the traffic requirements, and even then, we are simply unable to control for some of the elements introduced by the optimizations. They favor particular keyword + ad combinations, for example, something we can’t adjust out to get a fair comparison of a challenger ad.

The first two options don’t quite meet our needs, so what’s left?

Now we are at the recommended setting – “Rotate”. This setting will evenly rotate amongst all of our ads. We need that in order to do controlled data collection and testing. This option is like an A/B traffic splitter. It is the random selection control that is the basis for all of those psychology experiments we learned about in school.

This setting will allow us to “challenge” the “champion” ad and get a useful measurement of which is better. First step: switch to Rotate.

Let’s check in. If you are currently scratching your head thinking that Google’s optimization options above must be better, then that’s great. Feel free to use them.

However, if you follow so far and wish to continue, we will continue with the assumption we are optimizing for margin, and we are going to use Rotate to help us get there. Now, let’s get down to some of the dirty mechanics of ad testing based on Rotate.

The Mechanics Of Ad Testing On Rotate

Now that we have Rotate turned on, what next?

At this point, I am going to switch to a style of writing where I simply recommend a course of action which works. There are a lot of options here and we could write a book analyzing the different techniques. But you are reading this online, your time is limited, and I am going to recommend we do it this way.

Add some ads, and tag their URLs with today’s date. I use the format: adid=YYYYMMDD because it is easily sorted and decipherable. Today is April 20th, 2011, so my ads are tagged like this: “http://www.ACME.com?adid=20110420″.

You can leave up your other ads if you wish, or even make copies of them and tag them with today’s date. The point here is, get some ads running with tags on them, and make sure they have enough traffic so we can wrap this up before the cows come home.

After you get enough data, usually a few thousand clicks and tens of conversions for each AdGroup you want to optimize, download an ad report. Include the ad text, the major metrics, and of course the destination URL. Now, add a new calculated column in your spreadsheet of choice and call it margin.

Sort the spreadsheet by margin, descending, and filter for each AdGroup in turn. Each AdGroup might have a clear winner. Sometimes it will be the highest CTR, and sometimes the highest conversion-rate ad, but you may notice it is often a strong combination of both (but not necessarily the strongest of either), that wins. You may have multiple champions that perform similar to each other, and better than all the rest.

You may find that the results are not obvious. You may need to collect more data (leave them running longer) in order to get data you can be confident in.

Once you have enough data that you have ads that win, we begin a new cycle. Pause all the losers, and add some challenger ads tagged with today’s date.

There are many resources online for ideas for how to manipulate creative, and this article is not focused on creative ideas. I will just add the universal suggestion to have a healthy mix of systematic iterative testing and out-of-the-box, try something different testing. Now we have some challengers and the old champion(s).

Now, make copy of the champion(s) and tag them with today’s date. By adding a new copy of the ad, we are accomplishing two goals. First, we are giving the champion a fair shake against the challengers – it is starting as a new ad just like the challengers.

Secondly, we get to benefit from having found a champion – it keeps running. It also allows us to emphasize the amount of traffic going to the champion versions, while still getting even traffic for our test.

With our example, let us imagine we have 1 champion, 1 champion-copy, and 2 challengers. In this scenario, 50% of your traffic still going to a champion, and 75% is involved in a new test.

Likewise, you can make more copies of the champion to send more traffic there, but be careful about hampering your ability to collect enough data to make a timely and valid conclusion about the next champion.

Another brief tip: You may quickly discover that certain ad text formulas work well across numerous AdGroups. For example “Buy our {stuff}” might universally be a better headline than “Info about {stuff}”, assuming that you substitute {stuff} with whatever each AdGroup is targeting. Leverage that.

In my testing, I often add something to the adid tag that indicates what formula I am using.

Continuing the example above, we might have respectively:

• http://www.ACME.com?adid=20110306_buy
• http://www.ACME.com?adid=20110306_info

Here are some related articles you might enjoy:

• The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 1
• CPA Vs. ROI Optimization: What’s The Best Practice?

Finally, here is a quick recap. The optimize options do a decent job of what they do, but the don’t work well with a well oiled ad optimization plan.

Use Rotate, add your ads all on the same day, wait, and then pick your champion(s). Pause the losers, add some challengers and a copy of the champion(s), wash, rinse, and repeat.