Top 3 ways to boost your campaign performance

We get a lot of questions about how to organize campaigns to get the best results. Of course, there's plenty that goes into this secret sauce, but a few things always hold true.

First, grouping your keywords by theme is a good start to any ad group. If you offer a way for people to make donations on your site, for instance, you can create a "Donations" ad group and fill it with keywords that relate specifically to donations, such as "Charitable donations," "Online donations," or "Donate to charity."

When you group your keywords thematically in ad groups, you can then create ad text that relates to those terms. This matching helps your campaigns perform better, because users see ads that relate very closely to their search terms. For example, your "Donations" ad group could have ad text like this:

When people search for "Donate to Charity," they will see your highly relevant ad text and be more likely to click through to your site. Also, when your ad text matches the search query, your headline will be in bold and will stand out to users.

Second, a strong call to action helps drive traffic to your site. Whether you're providing information, recruiting volunteers, or raising funds, tell users what's available on your site by stating it clearly in your ad text. Here's an example:

Finally, users who click on your ad should be taken directly to your site's most relevant page, called a landing page. By grouping your keywords and ad text in themed ad groups, you can choose the most relevant page. Ideally, a user who clicks on an ad promoting "facts online" go directly to the page displaying that information.

Regardless of the tactics you try, check on your campaigns regularly once you've made adjustments. See how your ads' performance changes and whether you can make other changes to further improve it. And if you're curious about what other grant recipients are doing with their accounts, visit the Google Grants Help Group to discuss ad groups and post your own questions or methods for others.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team