Google Features – Make more with google services

Google has several features (free features) that are extremely useful in helping anyone optimize their AdWords campaign. Theses features should not be overlooked by anyone and a lot of times other guides recommend you purchase tools that do the exact same thing as Google’s free features.

Reports

I recommend watching the following video by Google that tells you how to create a report in Google AdWords:

Benefits of Google’s Reports

Everyone knows that the more information they know about something, the better. So why wouldn’t anyone want to know as much information about their advertising accounts as possible? This is why you use Google Reports. They will give you all of the information you need to know about your account, and you can even set the report to create itself and email it to you every few days without you having to do anything. Here are a few things you can set your report to do.

• List your most profitable keywords
• Tell you which campaigns are performing the best
• Help you find your quality score
• Inform you of invalid clicks
• Help you find unprofitable keywords in your account
• Compare your traffic/sales/cost reports over any time frame in graph form
• Tell you how many clicks you received
• List the number of sales you received from certain keywords/campaigns/AdGroups

How to Create A Report

Click on the reports tab (Number 10. on the AdWords map on the last few pages of this guide). From there you select “create a report”. You can choose how you want to see the report, which campaigns or add groups you want to view, and then you can view all of the information about the report either in text format, graph format, or both (I would recommend both).

Once you create the report, be prepared to wait a few minutes, the more information your researching the longer it will take to create the report.

There’s no limit of information that a Google report can display. I know this because I actually ran a one year report for all of my Google Accounts, which took about 15-20 minutes to complete, and Google told me my report was over 250 Megabytes in size and it was only available for download.

I recommend watching this video by Google about additional AdWords report features:

Google Conversion Tracking

Tracking Google Sales

Google offers its advertisers a free service which will allow you to actually track the number of sales you receive per keyword for any time period specified. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone, because knowing this information is very valuable. If you know that a certain keyword is generating above average sales, you would want to raise the bid of that keyword so you can receive a higher rank, thus getting more traffic which leads to more sales. I have bids for some keywords where I pay about $0.25 to $0.55 per click. But I don’t lose money on those keywords because they generate above average sales.

Unfortunately, this tool requires two things that keep many people from using it. These two things are that you must own (or have the owners put a Source Code on their webpage for you, many online companies do this) the webpage you want to have conversion tracking on and you must enter the Google Conversion Tracking code into the HTML of your webpage. Some web pages with online affiliates advertise that they have Google Tracking available for all of their affiliates, but I have never tried this so I don’t know how accurate theirs are.

Surprisingly this tool is extremely accurate, especially when compared with other “free” sales tracking tools offered by other search engines. Usually when Google reports a sale, a sale has been made. Again, I would highly recommend this tool for anyone.

For more information about Google’s conversion tracking, I recommend watching the following video from Google.

Cross Channel Tracking

Tracking Other Search Engine Sales Using Google Tracking

Google also offers the same tracking feature for use on other search engines. This is called Cross-Channel Tracking. Basically when you sign up for this Google will give you a small piece of HTML to put on the sales page (also called a Thank You Page), they will also give you a new URL for each keyword you want to add to Cross-Channel Tracking. Once you have the individual URL(s) for your keywords, you will need to go to the other Search Engine and replace that keywords destination URL with the new URL Google gave you.

This is also a very accurate tool, although it is a bit of a pain to do this for in search engines where you have large keyword lists. I would only recommend adding this feature to keywords that you spend a lot of money on.

For more information about Cross-Channel conversion tracking, I recommend watching the following video from Google:

Google Tools

Like many of the other major pay per click search engines, Google offers its advertisers free tools to use. But unlike other pay per click search engines, these tools are very helpful, accurate, and will help you to make more money online. In fact, I prefer Google’s tools to the tools you pay for.

Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

There are two ways you can access Google’s Keyword Tool. The first way is by clicking or using the link below:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The second way is to login to your Google Account. Once inside your Google account you can see this keyword tool inside your individual AdGroups. This keyword tool is excellent to use. Its one of the best keyword tools I have seen, and it is free. I would highly recommend this tool for everyone advertising with Google AdWords.

What makes this tool so great? This tool uses Google’s Quality Score and displays your best performing keywords based on their Quality Score. Then if you select a certain keyword Google will search for other key phrases that are related to that keyword and then allows you to add them to your campaign. Even if you think there is no possible way that you could be missing a keyword I would still highly recommend that you use this tool. You will be amazed at how many keywords you have overlooked.

This tool also allows you to type in keywords that Google didn’t find on your website. This way you will be able to find thousands of extra relevant keywords that you didn’t even think of.

Have you ever wondered how many advertisers were advertising for a certain key phrase or how many people were searching for a keyword? We all have, but now thanks to Google’s new Keyword Tool we can finally find this valuable information.

Google will display two different types of keyword lists.

1. More Specific Keywords: This list is the list where you will find the largest amount of keywords that are most related to your campaign. You will probably select most if not all of these keywords to add to your AdGroup.
2. Additional Keywords to Consider: This is the list that will contain more broad keywords. I would recommend reading over this keyword list, but you will probably not select as many keywords as you did in the More Specific Keywords list.

Keyword Tool Selection Options

Currently Google offers five different selection options for the keyword tool. These options are all very important to take advantage of because they will give you valuable information which can help you to generate more profit.

You can access the keyword selection options by clicking on the keyword tool button, entering a keyword or phrase (in the examples below I used the keyword “laptop”), and then click on the “Get More Keywords” button.

Keywords Only Selection

This is the default keyword selection. It allows you to:

• View the keywords in alphabetical order
• Add the keyword to your list
• Remove the keyword from the list
• Notifies you if you already have the keyword in the same AdGroup or Campaign.

I would only recommend using the “Keyword Only” selection if you are an absolute beginner and are feeling overwhelmed with the keyword selection process.

Keyword Popularity Selection tool:

Keyword Popularity Selection

This is an extremely helpful keyword selection type. It allows you to see both the Search Popularity and the Advertiser competition of a keyword. This is a great way to see if a keyword will give you large traffic amounts and a good ranking. It’s obvious that the best keywords are high in search volume and low in advertiser competition. I have found several keyword niches with this tool.

The “Keyword Popularity” selection allows you to:

• Do everything the “Keyword Only” option allows
• View the Competition of a keyword
• View the Popularity of a keyword
• Find keyword niches

I would recommend using this option every time you wish to add keywords. It is perfect for beginning and advanced advertisers. Don’t completely disregard a keyword because it has low search volume. Add every keyword you see that is related to the product you are advertising.

Cost and Ad Position Estimates Selection

The Cost and Ad Position Estimates selection gives you a rough estimate of your Average CPC and your Ad Position. Notice I said a rough estimate. Google’s ad cost and position estimates are usually very far from accurate. Look at the above screen shot for an example of what I mean. It would be very difficult to receive a first page ad position for the keyword laptop and notebook, while only paying $0.05 per click.

I would only recommend using this tool to find which keyword will be inactive for search before you add them to your list.

Global Search Volume Trends Selection

The “Global Search Volume Trends” selection is an extremely helpful selection. This tool allows you to view the popularity of a keyword and it shows you when that keyword is searched the most.

Why is this tool so great?

This keyword option allows you to know exactly when a product will sell the best. Look at the screenshot above. According to this data, people are more interested in purchasing laptops online from December to March. This means that I should focus on advertising for laptops more during those months. By giving you this information you can take full advantage of sales trends, by letting you know when and how long to advertise a product at its full potential.

I definitely recommend using this option, especially if you are advertising for seasonal products (sports, clothing, etc.).

Possible Negative Keywords Selection

The “Possible Negative Keywords” selection gives you the option to make the keywords listed a negative keyword match (-keyword). If you don’t know or remember what a negative keyword is, look in the “Keyword Matching Options” section of this guide. I wouldn’t recommend using this tool unless you find a large amount of keywords in the Keyword Tool which are irrelevant to your product. An example of an irrelevant keyword for your product would be if you were advertising for Pepsi Cola and one of your keywords was “cola”. If this was the case then you would not expect many sales from people who searched for Coca-Cola, so to keep your advertisement from being viewed by anyone who was searching for Coca-Cola products, you would add the negative keyword –coca to their keyword list. When you do this your advertisement will show anytime someone searched for Pepsi or Cola, but it will not show if anyone typed the word “cola” into their search phrase.

For more information about Google’s Keyword Tool, I recommend that you watch the following video from Google.

Google’s Advanced Search and Editing Tool

This is a great tool to use if you want to increase your bids for a large amount of keywords. It is very useful if you want to activate a large amount of inactive keywords by increasing their bid amounts.

How to Activate A Large Amount of Inactive Keywords

Although this feature is no longer available, I have talked with Google and they said they may be adding it again, so I will keep this information below until the next update incase they do add it again.

Click on the “Tools” link (Number 13 on the AdWords map page on the last few pages of this guide) and then click on the link “Advanced Search and Editing”. You will then be taken to a page asking you which tool you want to use. Click on the “Find and Edit Max CPCs” link.

Once you’re on that page, set your settings to the picture below to activate all of your inactive keywords. The only option(s) you should change are the max bid for each inactive keywords and which Campaign/AdGroup you want to change the Max CPC in. In this image I am changing the Max CPC to $0.10 for all of my campaigns and AdGroups to every keyword that is inactive for search. If there is a keyword which needs a Max CPC of $0.15 to become activated, it will remain inactive until you change the bid to $0.15. Don’t forget to click on the blue link next to number 3 (in the picture below) to specify how you want to change your keywords.

If you want to watch a video of how to activate thousands of inactive keywords, then I recommend watching the following video:

Another great feature this tool has is that it can filter out and return only the keywords you want to see or edit. For example if you want to increase the bids of all your keywords that have an average position of 10.0 or higher then you just set Google’s Find & Edit Max CPC Tool to the following picture. Don’t forget to click on the blue link next to number 3 to specify how you want to change your keywords.

Google’s Ad Diagnostics Tool

Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool will tell you which of your Text Ads are showing for a particular search, without you having to type that keyword into Google to see if your advertisement is appearing yourself. It will also tell you why your ads are not running or why they are not on the first page of the search results. I would recommend using this tool until you get your text ads running profitably.

Google also displays this tool next to each keyword in your keyword list. If you look next to your keywords you should see a button that looks like a magnifying glass. If you put your curser over this (you don’t have to click on it). When the curser appears it will tell you how your text advertisements are performing for that keyword. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is 100% accurate.

For more information about Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool, I recommend watching the following video from Google.

Google’s Traffic Estimator Tool

First off, to find the traffic estimator tool click on the Tools link and then click on the link titled “Traffic Estimator”.

The traffic estimator tool does what it says. That is, it tells you how many clicks and impressions you should expect to receive as well as your ad’s position and estimated cost per day.

Although this is a pretty handy tool, I don’t recommend using it a lot. This is mainly because Google’s traffic estimates are far from accurate.

For more information about Google’s Traffic Estimator Tool, I recommend watching the following video from Google.

Google’s Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text Tool

Earlier in this guide I mentioned the importance of grouping your keyword together by theme to help improve the CTR of your Text Ads. Unfortunately, this can be difficult to do especially if your campaigns have thousands of keywords.

Luckily, Google has made it very easy to do with their Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text Tool. With this tool you can search all of your keywords for a specific theme, and then you can move them to a new AdGroup within seconds. Here’s an example: Let’s say you have 10,000 keywords for laptops, but you want to create a new AdGroup specifically for HP laptops so you can include “HP” in your text advertisement to increase your CTR. Well all you have to do is: go to the Move Keywords tool, indicate that you want to move keywords, and then set your settings to this:

Notice that I have told Google to look through every single keyword in my Account and if Google finds a keyword which contains “hp” or “Hewlett Packard”, then move that keyword to the new AdGroup I specify later.

This tool is extremely useful and can literally save hours of work. I would recommend this tool for everyone to use.

Google AdWords Editor Tool

Google offers its advertisers free use of a tool which allows you to download your AdWords account to your computer and manage it without being logged in to Google AdWords.

I recommend watching this introduction video by Google about the AdWords Editor Tool:

What does this tool do?

This tool was designed to help AdWords account holders manage their Google accounts and campaigns. Google recommends that this tool will be a good aid for advertisers with large accounts. This tool will allow you to manage your entire account offline, but you must download your account first. Its best features include sorting through keywords, text ads, and accounts with ease, but if you have a large account, be prepared to wait because it can take a while to load.

Should you use this tool?

I used to not recommend using this tool, but Google has changed some account features that make it almost necessary to download and use this tool. The feature that Google removed from managing your account online is the ability to find and edit all of your inactive keywords at once. Luckily AdWords Editor has this feature that allows you to edit your inactive keywords (so you don’t have to go and manually edit each keyword bid one at a time for your inactive keywords).

Here are some problems I found with this tool:

• It’s recommended for large accounts, yet the larger your account the longer it takes to load.
• You can use it offline, but you must be online to download your account and online to upload your account’s changes.
• Its user interface is different from your AdWords account user interface, meaning you will have to take time to learn how to use this tool before it will benefit you.
• It doesn’t do a good job of telling you when your keywords may be inactive for search. In order to get an accurate idea of your inactive or active keywords you either have to login to your AdWords account online, or you have to remove your AdWords account from AdWords Editor and then re-add it again to AdWords Editor.

This tool wasn’t all bad though, here are the good things:

• Can filter through your results to find poor performing keywords, change them, and then upload them to your account.
• You can save your account onto a file on your computer for back-up purposes or you can send it to someone for help or review.

How to Use AdWords Editor

Like I said above, AdWords Editor is now the only way you can edit all of your inactive keywords at once. Trust me, there’s nothing more annoying than having to go change the bid for thousands of keywords one at a time. Here’s what you need to do to get AdWords Editor.

Downloading AdWords Editor

Downloading AdWords Editor is very easy to do, and yes they do have AdWords Editor for both Windows and Mac computers.

To download AdWords Editor click on the link below which will take you to the download page:

http://www.google.com/adwordseditor/

Setting Up AdWords Editor

Setting up Google’s AdWords editor tool is fairly easy to do. Basically it will prompt you for two things.

1. The email address you use to login to your AdWords account.
2. The password you use for your AdWords account.

After you enter this information AdWords Editor will download your account to your computer (be sure you’re on the internet when you do this). Make sure you are not logged into your AdWords account when you are using AdWords Editor (downloading or uploading information), because in my experience this has caused AdWords Editor to do partial downloads and uploads.

Basic Information about AdWords Editor

• AdWords Editor will not change any information in your account (AdWords account) unless you click on the “Post Changes” button.
• You can manage multiple accounts using AdWords editor.
• AdWords Editor uses colors to symbolize AdWords rules. If there’s a red symbol next to the AdGroup, Keyword, Campaign, or Text Ad it means there’s an error with that particular AdGroup, Keyword, Campaign, or Text Ad and it will not upload.

Adjusting the Bids for all the Inactive Keywords in your Account

This is by far the best way to change/edit the status or bid for all of the inactive keywords in your AdGroup, Campaign, or entire account.

Why would you want to do this? Well, chances are that you will see keywords in the inactive for search state and in order to fix this you will need to increase bids, delete them, or re-group them.

For this example I will show you how to edit all the inactive keywords within your entire account. If you want to edit the inactive keywords within a specific AdGroup or campaign simply click on that campaign or AdGroup when choosing what you want to edit.

First off you will need to tell AdWords Editor that you’re going to edit your entire account. To do this login to AdWords Editor and on the left side of AdWords Editor click on the name of your account. This will select your entire account including all keywords, text ads, AdGroups, and campaigns.

Now you will want to tell it that you’re going to edit only the keywords. To do this simply click on the “Keywords” tab in AdWords Editor. Your screen will change and it will display all the keywords within your account.

Next you will need to tell AdWords Editor that you only want to edit the Inactive Keywords within your account. To do this click on the dropdown box titled “View” near the top of AdWords Editor. In this drop down box you will need to select “Create or Set Custom View…”.

This will open a new window and on this window you should ignore everything except for the check boxes near the bottom. In these check boxes uncheck everything except for “Broad”, “Phrase”, “Exact”, and “Inactive”. Then click on the “Search” button at the bottom of this window.

This will now display all of the inactive keywords within your AdWords account. Usually to make it easier and faster for me I click on the “Min. CPC…” column button (it may not look like a button, but if you click on the text “Min. CPC…” you will see that it is a button) which sorts the keywords by your minimum required cost per click (A.K.A. your Quality Score).

Now to select the keywords you want to edit, click on the first keyword you want to edit and hold the “Shift” key on your keyboard. While you’re still holding the “Shift” key, click on the last keyword you want to edit. This should select all the keywords in between the first and last keyword you selected. To select specific keywords, do the same thing but instead of holding the Shift key hold the “Ctrl” (control) key.

To delete the keywords, click the delete button.

To increase bids for the keywords look towards the bottom of AdWords editor and enter the new bid in the box titled “Maximum CPC Bid” (this may say “” or “”).

To move the keywords to another AdGroup or Campaign click on the “Edit” menu at the very top of AdWords Editor and select “Cut”. The open the AdGroup/Campaign you want to put the keywords, click on the “Keywords” tab, and then go to the “Edit” menu and select “Paste”.

When you’re done and want to post these changes to your AdWords account, click on the “Post Changes” button.

Sorting & Grouping Keywords Using AdWords Editor

Another unique and useful feature that AdWords editor has is that it will sort and group keywords from an AdGroup, Campaign, or your entire account and it will create and insert these keywords into new AdGroups.

Unfortunately, I don’t recommend using this tool 100% of the time because it will simply create massive numbers of AdGroups (it’s not uncommon for it to create an AdGroup for just one keyword). The best time(s) to use this tool is when Google has made some of your keywords inactive for search and you need to regroup them to try to improve your Quality Score.

To use this tool simply select the AdGroup or Campaign you want to regroup the keywords in. Then click on the “Tools” menu and select “Keyword Grouper”. Then click on the “Generate Common Terms” button. Wait for a list of common terms to appear and then click on the “Next” button.

AdWords Editor will now display the new AdGroups in Bold and the keywords within those AdGroups. If you want to copy text advertisements over to the new AdGroups (I recommend doing this), select the AdGroup that contains the Text Ads you want to use and click on the finish button.

Now AdWords Editor will have sorted and grouped all the keywords. Before you can post the changes to your AdWords account you will need to specify a minimum bid for the new AdGroups that were created. To do this click on the “AdGroups” tab and select all of the new AdGroups that were created. Then at the bottom of AdWords Editor enter a new max bid in the text area titled “Maximum CPC Bid”.

When you’re finished click on the “Post Changes” button.

Google Analytics

I recommend watching this introduction video by Google about AdWords Analytics:

Google Analytics is a free service that Google offers that allows website owners to track very detailed visitor information about their website. You can view the Google Analytics section by clicking on the “Analytics” tab near the top of your Google Account.

In order to use Google Analytics, you are required to place a small code on each webpage you wish to be tracked.

This is a great tool to use for optimizing your website. Unfortunately, this tool is only available for website owners.

Analytics has so many features that it’s hard to mention them all. Here are some of the best features (in my opinion):

• Tells the location of your visitors
• What screen resolution, browser, color, and processors your visitors are using
• Number of returning visitors
• Webpages the visitors came from
• Conversion summaries
• Campaign performance
• Cost Per Click Analysis

For more information, you can always visit the Analytics webpage:
http://www.google.com/analytics/.

I recommend watching this video by Google that tells you how to set up your AdWords analytics for your account:

Unfortunately, this tool has not been extremely useful in targeting my accounts. It has only been handy one or two times for optimizing your website. If your website offers products where it would be nice to know locations and other visitor information, then I recommend this tool. I also recommend this tool to the website owners who don’t have tracking information from their web hosts. Otherwise I recommend staying with Google’s current Conversion Tracker tool.

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