This article is a summary of online course by Google The Digital Garage. The subject is improve your search campaign to obtain an effective paid search campaign.

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You might be need an additional information about search engine marketing basics, and you can read here:

Get your business found in the search engine result page with search ads.

Get you business shown in the search engine organic result page with SEO steps.

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Let's start the Search campaign lesson.

A golden formula in search engine marketing is creating ads that help searchers find what they are looking for. They key is relevance.

An overview about ads relevance.

Suppose there is person searches "wedding photography".

There are three advertisers that have the same business.

The first advertiser:
- The headline: wedding photographer, followed by pricing information and selection.

The second advertiser:
- The headline: Candid wedding photoshoot, followed by types of wedding photo packages information.

The third advertiser:
- The headline: Wedding photograph, and the landing page contains selling posters.

Valuation of the advertisers above:

- The first ad is more relevant, because the headline matches the people search and add useful information.

- The second ad is less relevant, because the headline doesn't precisely reflect the search.

- The third ad: The headline is relevant, but the landing page is not relevant. The contain of the landing page is not what the people were searching for.

The summary of ads relevance

Search engine considers the quality score of your ad by relevancy to the people search for.

There are two relevance factors: the headline (copy of ads) and the landing page (the site / page that shown after people click your ads)

The search engine reward the relevant ads with higher position on the search result page (paid section of search result page). In addition to this, you are able to get a lower price with the same ads. Furthermore, your ads can help visitors and meet their expectations.

SEM structure / Search campaign structure

- The first thing is your account.

- Within your account are campaigns.
Campaigns contain daily budget management, targeted area, advertising network you will use, etc.

- In each campaign, there are multiple ad groups.
In each groups, there are keywords you target.

Search campaign structure description and example

Let's say you are photographer. Your specialization are wedding photography, baby photos, and family portraits.

- You have three specialties and separate them to campaigns. So you have three campaigns.

- Within each campaign, you can create ad groups. For examples:
The first campaign is wedding photography. And you have more specific wedding specialties, such as engagement photo, bridal portraits, candid wedding photos.

So, in the first campaign you can create ads group that contains engagement photo, bridal portraits, candid wedding photos.

Finally you have three ads copy and each ads has three different keywords you target.

Making your keywords as effective as possible

Guesswork the keywords by using research tools in Google and Bing.

Keyword research tool provided by Google is named Keyword Planner, and Bing's keyword research
tool can help you find out which keywords are most relevant and will work best for you.

For example: when you type wedding photography in these tool, the research tool will show you other related keyword (related searches). In addition to this, the result will show the number of searches each related keyword, suggested bid prices, and competition level.

Utilizing a negative keywords

One more important information that I must note here is negative keywords.

Sometimes when you conduct keyword research, the result give you relevant keyword to your business, and it results keywords that aren't relevant to your business.

For examples: 

Your specialty is pet photography especially portraits. And you type "pet portraits" on the keyword
research tool.

Beside the results are relevant to your business, there are results aren't relevant to your business, such as: pet portraits pencil, watercolor pet portraits, etc.

In the case of this, you should use negative keyword to prevent your ads from showing when searchers look for the things that aren't relevant to your business.

You can add the negative keyword, for example: -pencil, -pastel, etc.

Using negative keyword is very useful, because preventing your ads from appearing for irrelevant
searches.

By preventing your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches, you can save your money, and only your very prospective customer will see your ads.

Recap of make an effective keywords 

- Keyword research tool can help you find the keywords that are relevant to your business and keywords that aren't relevant to your business.

- You can save your money from the keywords that aren't relevant to your business by using and adding negative keywords in your ads.

Keyword match in search campaign

As the notes before, we know that search engine sometimes show your ads when people search fo the term that slightly different. This can be happened because of the search engine method namely broad matching.

To solve this, you might consider phrase match or exact match.

Phrase match keyword example

Keywords are broad match by default. To change broad match to phrase match, just place quotations
around the key word. For example: "Birmingham wedding photographer".

These quotations tell the Google adwords that ads can't be shown unless the search includes the entire phrase.

So, if people search Birmingham photographer, your ad will not show up, because the word wedding is missing.

If people search the best Birmingham wedding photographer, your ad will show up, because all the phrase is there.

Exact match keyword examples

To get more specific, you can use exact match. The way using exact match is place the square bracket around the keyword. For example: [Birmingham wedding photographer].

If you implement the exact match, you will probably see that your traffic goes down. But traffic quality might improve.

Track and measure your search campaign ads

To measure your ads, you should track the conversions. Conversion means the key actions you want visitor to take.

Conversion examples:

- Press buy button in your page or make a transaction.
- Click a certain link (URL) on your page.
- Subscribe to your list through your contact form on your page.
- Engage to your website, such as: like, comment, share, ask, request, etc.
- Download a material (pdf file, ppt file, etc.)

How to track the conversion?

You can utilize the tool which is provided by search engine. Search engine system allow you to place a small code on certain pages of your website.

These are the sample step to track the conversion:

Suppose you want to track a completed order.

Here are the steps:

- People make a transaction or complete the order means they are on the special page in your website.

In this case the page is order confirmation page or thank-you page (to thank customers once they
confirm the order) . This is the page customers see once they complete the order.

- So, you must put small tracking code on that page (the page that visitors see only after they confirm an order.

- After you install the code on that page, you will see the reports that tell you how many conversion (how many completed order) you got.

- Afterwards, benchmark the number of conversion with your closing target.
If the conversion is more than target, it indicates that your ads campaign (your search engine marketing) are working.