Webinar Wrap-up, Part #2: Optimizing Keywords in AdWords

In last week's NTEN webinar, AnnMarie and German from our Grants team discussed the heart of AdWords advertising: keywords. We covered basic optimization techniques and why optimization is so crucial to the success of your Grants account. And we shared tips and best practices for creating and maintaining effective keyword lists. The Q&A portion of the session was especially helpful for attendees, who raised tons of great questions.

In thinking about this session, I took away these major points:

• Optimizing is simply modifying your account to improve its performance. Optimizing can take many shapes and can involve just a few minor tweaks or mass changes.
  
• Before optimizing, take some time to define your optimization goals - improving account quality, site traffic, conversions (donations, volunteer sign-ups), account manageability, etc.
  
• Use these best practices to optimize your keywords: steer clear of very general keywords; include negative keywords; avoid duplication of keywords across Ad Groups; and include all variations and common misspellings of your keywords.
• Once you've optimized, you're not entirely done! Be sure to monitor performance after two weeks and refine your campaign based on analysis of what is and isn't working.
  

You can view slides from our webinar here and purchase the recording of the session on NTEN's site. And on Friday, Sept. 26, we'll be discussing ad text and best practices for optimizing ads in your account. Join us from 11am to 12:30pm Pacific if you'd like to learn about this topic in-depth.

To register for or learn more about our webinar series, including the next three sessions, please visit NTEN's site.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team