AdWords Editor is a powerful campaign management tool, allowing PPC advertisers to quickly and efficiently make large-scale changes to their AdWords campaigns.
One of the great features of AdWords Editor, which is often overlooked, is the comment field, which allows PPC advertisers to enter a custom comment to any keyword, ad message, ad group, or campaign.
Possible uses of the comment field include:
- Tagging highly-relevant keywords, so that they are given more importance during bid optimization
- Tagging more generic keywords, so that they can be monitored more closely
- Labeling different styles of ad text style 1 and style 2, enabling more efficient analysis of ad messages using search filters
- Labeling ad messages for split AB landing page testing, such as landing page 1 and landing page 2
- Keeping test or promo campaigns and ad groups and campaigns separate from more permanent campaigns and ad groups
Lets explore some of these in more detail.
1. Tagging keywords
When carrying out keyword research, it is essential to realize that different keywords naturally exhibit different amounts of qualification. When someone searches for 2 bedroom apartment for sale in Melbourne, they are arguably more likely to want to purchase a Melbourne apartment than someone searching for Melbourne apartment.
By tagging different types of keywords with comments such as relevancy 1/5 or relevancy 4/5, you can quickly and easily see how different types of keywords are performing. You can set up a filter in AdWords Editor to show only keywords where comment equals relevancy 4/5, or download a keyword report and run a PivotTable in Excel to compare different types of keywords:
By tagging up your keywords intelligently, you can quickly and easily see whats working and whats not, and adjust bids and budgets accordingly. In the example above, even though the most relevant keywords (5/5) have a high conversion rate, slightly less relevant keywords (3/5 and 4/5) are more profitable keywords due to less competition and lower CPCs.
2. Tagging ads
Comments in AdWords Editor also become especially powerful for labeling ad messages. Most advertisers choose to test between 2-4 different styles of ad message, so labeling each ad based on their style can make analysis and optimization incredibly efficient:
You can quickly and easily carry out powerful analysis, to determine how each style of ad message is performing. You can then pause poor performers, and draw insights from high performing ad messages for further ad message testing.
In the example above, it is easy to see that although ad style 3 has the lowest CTR, it also exhibits the highest conversion rate, prompting further analysis to find out why.
Similarly, if youre undecided as to whether to take PPC visitors to the homepage or the product page, why not duplicate your ad messages, and label one set of ads as landing page 1, and another set of ads as landing page 2:
You can then quickly and efficiently compare the performance of each landing page style (homepage vs. product page), and make the appropriate adjustments to your campaigns. In the example above, landing page style 2 (taking visitors to the products page) converts better than landing page style 1 (taking visitors to the homepage).
3. Tagging multiple variables
Testing is crucial to Google AdWords success. PPC advertisers should look to test multiple variables at the same time, to enable more informative and insightful analysis and optimization.
Since it is now possible to specify exactly what fields are imported into an AdWords Editor bulk upload, by assigning custom headings to each column, why not create comments in bulk using formulae in Excel? For example, your comments field might look something like:
ad style 1 / landing page style 1
ad style 3 / landing page style 2
You can then download an ad report, create a PivotTable, and determine which combination of ad message style and landing page style yields the best results.
By using comments intelligently, you can quickly and easily see that ad style 1 combined with landing page style 2 performs considerably better than all other combinations.
Conclusion
Be creative with your comments in AdWords Editor. Use them to make notes, tag keywords and ads, and aid with your optimization and analysis. Record whether a keyword or ad message is paused temporality or permanently, and for what reason. Label campaigns and ad groups with information regarding their strategy and objectives. And record important findings about optimum bid levels and desired position preferences in keyword comments.
With so much potential for making use of comments in AdWords Editor, the worst a PPC advertiser can choose to do is have nothing to comment about at all.