WARNING: If you haven’t got any sales yet, working keywords etc - you should not do the Adwords section. This can be very costly and is a bonus killer technique to push performing keywords up another level. It is unlikely to help poor keywords. Just continue with the Maximum Edge Technique for the next three days: write more good articles with good SEO (titles, keywords); Social Marketing; create authoritative backlinks; keep an eye on your traffic; look at how your conversion engine can be made better.

TDC Day 22: Day 22 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

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1. Today you are going to learn how to manage your Adwords so that your ads are completely optimised. You can quickly burn through money in Adwords so you must make sure that you are only spending money on keywords that are going to deliver you traffic.
2. Obviously, you should keep very tight control on your spending, including your Pay Per Click campaigns.

TDC Day 22a: Manage Your PPC Account (TDC, Video, PDF)

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1. Today you will learn how to “peel and stick” - the idea is start with a bunch of keywords in ad groups (remember one keyword per ad group with three derivations - phrase, broad, exact) - you will look at which ones have good click through rates (the ones that stick) and the ones that don’t (these you peel off - ie delete them).
2. Caro uses the term “body language” instead of “vintage guitars” but you should replace it with your own terms anyway. She also notes she bid a Maximum Cost Per Click (Max CPC) of $0.40 but suggests you don’t need to do the same, especially when you are just testing.
3. Look at the Click Through Rate (CTR) for each of your ad groups. You should have at least 1% CTR and you should really aim for 2% or more:
   1. Low CTR can be improved by improving your ad content so you should still be split testing ad text for the same keyword. If the ad has under 1% CTR, delete it and run another test ad.
   2. Look at keywords, some keywords will perform better than others - delete the keywords that have low CTR.
   3. Also look within the ad group to see if certain keyword derivations (ie phrase, broad, exact match) are performing well or badly. You can delete poorly performing derivations too.
4. Look at your positioning:
   1. You want to be in positions 1-3. There is some evidence that position 2 is the best.
   2. If you are spending a lot of money, not getting great traffic and only a 5-8 position then consider deleting that keyword.
5. Keep a constant eye on your campaigns, peeling and sticking - that is deleting poorly performing ad groups and/or keyword derivations.
6. Caro also introduces the Conversion Tracking tool - you can find it in the Campaign Management tab - it allows you to link tracking on your web page. It’s outside the scope of the 30DC but you can explore it.
7. Remember the aim is to get good CTR. That will depend a lot on the content of your ads. Caro recommends modelling other successful ads (but don’t just copy them). Also you need to experiment with your Max CPC. But this is all trial and error so you need to test and manage vigilantly.
8. Be responsible and careful - this was only a AdWords 101, there’s a lot more to learn but Adwords can be very rewarding if done properly.
9. Also remember that AdWords changes regularly so you need to keep up to date!

Because our Summary was over 25,000 words and was taking forever to load - we’ve split it up and posted them according to the date they were originally allocated to - ie over August 2008 - it’s easiest to access all of them from the Thirty Day Challenge 2008 Summary page.

Note the quick links to the originating Thirty Day Challenge page (TDC), the relevant YouTube video (Video) and the transcript (PDF) for your convenience to help you access the study materials.