Tips for starting a campaign

Does this plan make sense?

[Comotose]

Hi all.

I'm inexperienced with Adwords so your forebearance appreciated.

I'm considering taking the following approach and I'd like to know if it makes sense:

1. Google Search/Search Network ON
2. Content Search OFF
3. Not using Broad Match keyphrases at all.
4. Separating Phrase Match and Exact Match into separate Ad Groups.
5. If a keyphrase is disabled by Google, I'll remove it to it's own Ad Group (rather than just increase the bid price) and try to get the exact keyphrase into the advert.

Does this rough plan make sense as a first step?

I'm particularly concerned as to whether point #4 is a good or bad idea.

Many thanks in advance for your advice.

[idolw]

why would you want to do #4?
if you want to make your ads do better, it shall not help. AFAIK one bids on certain keyword, not an adgroup

[wheel]

Some of that sounds OK. Why would you want to do #3 though? Broad match is fine for traffic if done properly. At the very least you should be using broad match to get traffic to your logs so you can:
- see what search terms are being used and create specific campaigns for those terms.
- develop your list of negative terms. Which is something you neglected to mention, but should spend some time on. negative terms really help CTR and conversion.

[eWhisper]

While 1 & 2, starting with networks off might be a good idea to start so that you get a baseline, and you can tweak your site until you receive a good conversion percentage - don't forget to test everything else.

There are many advertisers who have better conversions on the search and content networks - not testing them at all would be a mistake.

[idolw]

and what about #4, gurus?

[bigtoga]

RE: #4 - That's up to you and it makes sense to me. You won't get, AFAIK, any better/different reaction from Google either way...

[buckworks]

Give some thought to geo-targeting. Consider setting up separate campaigns for target countries/states rather than just lumping them all into one campaign.

Also, don't always just send visitors to your home page. Be sure you know how to specify different landing pages for different terms within an ad group. The more closely you can match the landing page to the search, the better your clicks will convert.

[Comotose]

Thanks to all for the input. My responses:

> why would you want to do #4? if you want to make your ads
> do better, it shall not help. AFAIK one bids on certain
> keyword, not an adgroup

I realise it won't help with response rates. It's purely a management issue. If it won't hurt then I'd prefer to do it that way. But I'm not yet convinced that it won't hurt. Something is niggling away in the back of my mind about the way Google shows ads. Might either the Phrase Match or the Exact Match group be ignored when Google is deciding whether or not to display one of my ads?

> Why would you want to do #3 though? Broad match is fine
> for traffic if done properly. At the very least you should
> be using broad match to get traffic to your logs...

I figured broad match could result in a lot of click costs without any hope of a conversion, and that phrase and exact would be better targeted. However, I see your point about paying to get research data. I guess I'll have to start putting in a lot of time developing the negatives, which I can see is going to be a long and tiresome task.

[buckworks]

Negative keywords don't need to be a ton of work. You'll want to keep an eye on your logs, as Wheel suggested, but you can also spot terms to block if you spend some time playing with a good keyword suggestion tool.

[eWhisper]

FYI:
Finding Negative Keywords:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[irldonalb]

Dynamic Keyword Insertion