Getting the campaign right.

[jackdack]

I've been using adwords for about 3/4 weeks and I'm very impressed with my experiences to date but since I don't really know what I'm doing I sure would appreciate your comments on the following, does it look good/bad/awful/excellent? Having never used adwords before, I'm guessing how to do stuff and I've no idea if it could be better. It's not generating as much traffic as I'd like but I'm on a limited budget. I briefly tried the content network but that seemed to charge like a wounded bull (comparative to keywords) so I stopped.

Single campaign stats summary:
Ad Group Clicks Impr. CTRAvg Position
keywords 528 27,963 1.8% 4.5
comp.names 41 6,008 0.6% 2.0

A few questions
- if using keywords such as hairy dog, should you also use Hairy Dog, HAIRY DOG, "hairy dog" and or other ways of presenting the same words?
- I'm going to add more keywords. Is there any disadvantage of adding more keywords to a single ad group or it best to make multiple ad groups?
- Do the stats above and below look OK?

There are two ad groups, one of which generates most of the traffic using 450 keywords. The other has company names and click through is much lower. Stats below for the adgroup with mixed keywords (with more than 2 clicks over alltime).

Impr. ClicksCTRAvg Position
3552942.60%3.8
1225685.60%2.6
609355.70%2.4
1444281.90%3.7
956232.40%2.6
1282231.80%3.7
424204.70%3.4
1079161.50%3.8
955121.30%4.2
1102121.10%3.8
559112.00%2.6
724101.40%7.7
1400100.70%4.3
329103.00%2.9
38492.30%3.3
15295.90%2.1
31361.90%5.6
35061.70%4.9
29962.00%7.9
54750.90%7.9
17529.40%2.4
73950.70%6.7
6857.40%4.4
31051.60%5.9
22352.20%2
14742.70%4.4
14242.80%4.1
120140.30%7.8
19342.10%3.4
22731.30%9.8
19831.50%6.1
30331.00%8
22131.40%4.1
14432.10%3.5
9922.00%3.4
4724.30%4.7
54420.40%5.4
5523.60%4.1
15213.30%3.4
8522.40%1.5
20521.00%6.1
34120.60%3.1
17221.20%5
3825.30%8.9
7422.70%5.2
16212.50%4.6
11821.70%1.7
14214.30%3.9

Thank you!

[AdWordsAdvisor]

These are fairly broad questions jackdack, which may be why folks are not responding yet.

And, really, "getting it right" has a lot of different definitions. For example, many advertisers feel that CTR, while important, may not be the best measure of success. Instead, they focus on ROI (Return on Investment). And this requires some tracking to determine.

Let me see if I can very briefly answer a few of your questions before a 6:30 meeting. ;)

* In terms of keyword CTR, I'd say average is about 2%. So that'll give you a rough yardstick. Normally, the more targeted your ads/keywords are to each other, the higher your CTR is likely to be - because you will be showing an ad to a searcher who has just searched for what the ad talks about.

* If using keywords such as hairy dog, you would not need to also use Hairy Dog or HAIRY DOG, since the AdWords system will see them all as the same word.

* On the other hand "hairy dog" is seen as a different keywords as detailed here:

Keyword Match Types
[adwords.google.com...]

* More keywords are only an advantage if they are good keywords, and if they are about the same thing as the ad that appears. Otherwise, they are a disadvantage in my opinion.

* Use multiple Ad Groups so that you can collect all keywords about one thing together. Then write a great ad about that same thing.

I am writing this really fast, so please pardon any typos, etc. ;)

Hope that helps!

AWA

[jackdack]

that's great, thanks for the clarification. The main thing I wanted to check was that I don't appear to be doing anything obviously wrong.

About the hairy dog example. Do people use multiple scenarios e.g
hairy dog
"hairy dog"
[hairy dog]
i.e. all three scenario's or just one?

Currently I'm only using broad matches.

Is there detrament to an ad group if some keywords are high CTR and many others are low CTR? ie. should I move low CTR to another ad group. (Point taken about custom ads for each set of keywords).

Much obliged.

Cheers

ps: v.impressed with UI, tools & functionality. Google steaming ahead again...