Google Grants Ongoing Management Guide Congratulations on creating your Google Grants account! Weʼre glad to have you as part of the program and we hope that your AdWords campaign will help you find additional support for your non-profit. This guide will provide you with all the information you need to effectively and efficiently manage your Google Grants account.
Table of Contents Chapter One................... How to Use This Guide Chapter Two........................... Account Overview Chapter Three...................... Basic Management Chapter Four............. Intermediate Management Chapter Five.................. Advanced Management Appendix..........................
How to Use This Guide IMPORTANT NOTE: As a Google Grants recipient you are highly encouraged to schedule monthly Keyword Performance reports. Per Google Grants guidelines you are required to log in and manage your account at least once per month. Failure to log in for three consecutive months may result in your account being automatically canceled or paused. This policy is meant to promote your active involvement in your account performance.
Account Overview Learning to navigate your account and understanding the data presented to you are the first steps to effectively managing your account. Your accountʼs tabs Within your account, you have one or more campaigns, and in each campaign you can have multiple ad groups. To make this easy to navigate, your AdWords account has different compartments or ʻtabsʼ: Home: This tab provides you with a high level overview of your account and can be a good place to start.
Reporting: This tab provides additional information and tools for managing your online presence. Within the Reporting tab, you can access the following options: • • • Reports: this option lets you create customized and detailed reports by campaign, keyword, ad text, and other variables. Weʼll cover some recommended reports in the Basic Management section of this guide. Analytics: this option allows you to access your Google Analytics account, if you have one.
Understanding account statistics By now, you may be looking around in your account at all the information available, but having trouble understanding what it all means. Where should you start to make sense of it all? A good place to start is to look at statistics for ʻAll Online Campaigns.ʼ To do so, please click the ʻCampaignsʼ tab and then click the ʻAll Online Campaignsʼ option in the left pane. Set the date range to the time frame of your choice.
Avg. CPC: Although youʼre not charged for any clicks you receive in your Google Grants AdWords account, the ʻAvg. CPCʼ column refers to the average cost-per-click (CPC) of the clicks you receive. As you know, the maximum CPC for your account is automatically set to $1.00, but many of your clicks may actually cost less than this, depending on various factors such as your Quality Score. Cost: The ʻCostʼ column refers to the total dollar amount accrued for clicks on your ad.
Enabling the Quality Score column The ʻQuality Scoreʼ column displays your keywordsʼ Quality Score to help you monitor their performance. This column is not immediately visible by default, but you can make it viewable by following these steps: 1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com 2. Select the Campaigns tab at the top of the page 3. Within the Campaigns tab, select the Keywords tab (located directly above the main graph) 4.
Basic Management: Using Reports In the next few pages, weʼll walk you through how to schedule the Keyword Performance report and how to use this data to refine your keyword list. If you choose to go further in your account management (which we encourage you to do!), read on to learn how to run a Search Query report to expand your keyword list. Lastly, weʼll show you how to run an Ad Text report to review and improve the ads youʼve created.
The Keyword Performance Report While there are several approaches you can take to best manage your account, we ask that you run a Keyword Performance report at least once per month and use the data to modify and enhance your keyword lists as needed. This report will help you understand the effectiveness of your current keywords and ad groups. If youʼre new to your account, you may want to analyze this report each week—or every other week—to get used to working with your keyword list.
Then follow the instructions in the AdWords Help Center entry on scheduling Keyword Performance reports; you can search the AdWords Help Center for this information. When scheduling the report, please note two crucial details: 1. In the ʻAdvanced Settings - Filter Your Resultsʼ section, you'll want to click the check box to ʻInclude keywords with zero impressionsʼ. 2.
How to analyze the data: Once you receive the report, there are several ways to assess the data and use that information to improve the performance of your campaign. 1. Sort by Quality Score To start, letʼs sort the Quality Score column so that it's in descending order. If youʼre viewing your report in the AdWords format, you can do this by clicking on the ʻQuality Scoreʼ header of the column. If you're using the Excel file, you can enable auto-filters and/or whatever filtering option you use most often.
2. Sort by CTR Next, let's sort the CTR column so that it's in descending order. As you may know, CTR refers to the percentage of people who have seen your ad on Google and clicked on it. A high CTR is good, while a low CTR can lead to a poor Quality Score, which can prevent your ads from showing. Many of the changes to improve your CTR will likely lead to positive changes in Quality Score because CTR is an important component of Quality Score.
3. Sort by Impressions Lastly, let's sort the Impression column so that it is in descending order. Impressions refer to the number of times your ad has shown on Google.com. For this metric, let's pay particular attention to the keywords that are receiving very few or zero impressions. When observing these low traffic keywords, look to see what the keywords have in common. Mostly likely, these keywords will be too specific. We can approach this issue from a few angles: o Use a shorter variation of the term.
The Search Query Report Once youʼve used the Keyword Performance report to polish your current keywords, you can consider further refining and expanding your keyword lists. To do so, we recommend you run a Search Query report in your account. The Search Query report shows you the actual search queries that triggered your ads to show. As you may know, your ads might be triggered by expansions and/or variations of the broad-matched keywords in your account.
How to analyze the data You will see the queries sorted by broad, exact, and phrase match options. We suggest you look at the broad and phrase match keyword types to see which search queries triggered your ad to show. Pay particular attention to keywords that have generated a significant number of clicks and a relatively high CTR, as these are terms you may want to expand on. Focus on relevant queries. Start by sorting the queries by clicks.
The Ad Performance Report If you have more than one ad text per ad group (which we highly encourage), itʼs a good idea to analyze the performance of your ads to see which perform best. To gain insight into which of your ads is most compelling and impactful, you can run an Ad Performance report. This report helps you understand the effectiveness of your ads by providing details on the CTR of each ad text.
How to analyze the data Sort ad variation(s) by CTR Examine your ads that have a CTR that is above 1%. How do these ads differ from your ads with CTRs that are lower than 1%? We find that high-performing ads often have the following characteristics: o The ads clearly highlight the goals and mission of a non-profit. o The ads contain call-to-action phrases, like “donate now” or “find volunteer opportunities here.” o The ads include the keywords that trigger them (or are very closely related).
Intermediate Management: Conversion Tracking Googleʼs free Conversion Tracking tool allows advertisers to gain more insight into which ads and keywords are generating the most conversions. This tool will help you to track conversions, and ultimately help you identify how effective your AdWords ads and keywords are. What is a conversion? A conversion is any user behavior on your website that you deem valuable, such as a donation, newsletter signup, download, or lead.
Conversion Tracking Reports Once you have the Conversion Tracking code installed, youʼll be able to see conversion data on the Campaign tab of your account within 48 hours. You can create customized reports featuring conversion data via the Create Report page within the Reports tab. To do so, choose the ʻKeyword Performance Report.
How to analyze conversion tracking data Sort by cost per conversion You can then either view the e-Report or download it to an Excel sheet. Once you have the data, we encourage you to sort the report first by ʻCost per Conversion.ʼ This metric will help you understand the effectiveness of your keywords in driving your desired action.
Sort by conversions You can also use the conversion data to view terms by the number of conversions theyʼve generated. To do so, you can sort the report by the ʻConversionsʼ column to gain insight into which keywords are producing the desired outcome. o Many conversions: Keywords with a significant number of conversions are crucial to the success of your campaigns.
Advanced Management: Analytics Google Analytics is a free tool that shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. With the information gained from using Analytics, you can improve a visitorʼs experience on your site, leading to more donations, volunteers, event attendance, etc. In this guide we will not provide in-depth guidance on this tool. Instead weʼll help you decide if Analytics is right for you.
Appendix Google Grants Guidelines AdWords account restrictions for Grantees When navigating your Google Grants account, note that the AdWords system and interface are designed for our paying advertisers. You may find that some features or advertising opportunities may be restricted within your account.
Daily budget limit Google Grants accounts have a monthly limit of $10,000, which is equivalent to roughly $330 per day max. This means that we will show your ads as much as possible each day, up until your account accrues about $330. Keep in mind that the daily spend limit is an automated cap within the Google Grants system. If you were to set your campaign daily budget above $330, your account will still be limited to $330 in traffic.
Additional Help Making keyword and ad text changes offline Now that your account is active, you should be reviewing account statistics and making edits and additions on a regular basis. Do a Google search for “AdWords Editor” to learn more about how you can make changes to your account while you are offline.
