Google Adwords Writing - Part 4

Google Adwords writing is not difficult but there is a very important secret that many people don't know about. Are you ready for the secret?

Yes, that's right. The ole' A/B split test. What the heck is an A/B split test? It's the secret that will help drive your Google Adwords writing to success!

You might think you have the most perfect ad in mind for Google Adwords. But, the only way to know for sure is to post the ad and see how many clicks it gets. Still, you won't know for sure since you have nothing for comparison. The only real way to know how well your ad performs is to test it against another ad. Makes sense, right?

Well Google allows you to do just that. You can write two different ads for your ad group and have them each display 50% of the time. In a week or two, you'll have enough data to determine which ad brought more people to your landing page. Once you have an ad that is a clear winner, guess what? You dump the loser and write a new ad to try and beat the winner.

You will always test two ads against one another to see which one compels people to click. This is called an A/B split test because you are testing which ad will perform better. The people that fail with Google Adwords are the ones that throw up a single ad and then let it sit there for weeks without testing anything!

Now that you understand the importance of this concept, we can now start to write our two ads for the chosen campaign. Before we start the actual Google Adwords writing part, let's look at each each line of an Adwords ad.

Anatomy of a Google Adword Ad

There are four lines to a Google ad (see figure below.) The first line is the clickable headline and is limited to just 25 characters including spaces. Lines 2 and 3 are description lines that are limited to 35 characters each. These description lines will expand upon the main headline. The last line is the website URL. When you are creating your ads, Google will ask you for a display URL and a destination URL. This allows you to display one web address in the ad but actually direct people to a different URL. Why would you want to do this? We'll get into that in just a minute.

At this point, after researching your keywords, organizing them into possible campaigns and then selecting one to start with, you are finally in a position to start your Google Adwords writing. You will write two separate ads for the same campaign, allowing Google to rotate them randomly so that you can test one against the other to see which has the highest click-through rate.

Before you start writing your ads, it's worth taking some time to study the landing pages of your competition. Remember, the landing page is the web address (otherwise known as the URL) the prospect lands on after clicking an ad. Take a few of your keywords and type them into Google. Read and take some notes on the sponsored ads.

1. Which one draws you in?

2. Are you compelled to click on any of them?

3. Is the message focused?

4. Do you understand what is being communicated?

Click on the sponsored ads (even the bad ones) and evaluate the landing pages. Take some time during this research. You will get a lot of good ideas (and bad ones) by looking at what your competition is putting out. Remember, your ad will probably be listed in this very same group. Will your ad be the one they click on?

Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you look at your competition's landing pages.

1. What is the competition promising?

2. How compelling is the offer on their landing page?

3. Does the landing page match the ad or is there a disconnect between the two?

4. Is there a clear Call-To-Action?

Ok, let's get started with our Google Adwords writing. You are not actually typing these ads into Google just yet. Just use a piece of paper at this point and then we'll actually enter them a bit later.

The first thing you will write is the headline. The goal of the headline is to compel the prospect to read the rest of the ad. I highly recommend you use one of your main keywords in the headline. This will help focus the interest of the prospects that see your ad. In addition, Google will highlight that particular keyword in your ad so that it sticks out for the prospect.

The goal of descriptions lines 2 and 3 is to create a focused promise that compels the interested prospect to click the ad. To paraphrase the Godfather, you have to make them an offer they can't refuse. The best way to do this is to offer a solution tied to your headline.

Here are a few tips for creating your headline/description lines as you work on your Google Adwords writing.

Forget about spending hours and hours trying to craft the perfect headline and description lines. Just take your best shot. Analyze which Adword ads from your competition catches your interest and try to write an ad to beat it.

You really won't know how effective your Google Adwords writing is until you activate the ad and monitor the click-through rate. This is also the reason you must always test two ads simultaneously. You let the readers decide which ad is best. After a week, you can delete the losing ad and write a new one to try to beat the one with the higher click-through rate.

The key to successful Google Adwords writing can be given in just three words.

The last item to concern yourself with is the display and destination URL's. You will notice that Google asks for both of these when entering your ad (see figure below.)

The most important thing is realize here is that the URL that is seen by the reader does not have to be the same URL to which they are directed. However, Google requests that your display URL be an actual URL that is part of your site. So, you can't just start making up URL's that you don't own. That's a big no-no.

You must deliver on your customer's expectations when they click on your display URL. If they are taken to a completely different URL, you may very well lose their trust before they even read the opening sentence of your landing page.

The main purpose of having separate display and destination URL's is to be able to shorten the display URL so that it can better grab the reader's attention.

As an example, a destination URL of www.shoesforsale.com/ladiesshoes/highheels.html is not very elegant. While this may be the URL you want your customers to land, you can simplify the display URL to "www.shoesforsale.com" - short, sweet and easy to read. As you will learn a bit later, you may find that using the display URL "www.ShoesForSale.com" increases the click-through rate. How do you decide when to simplify or capitalize the URL? Easy.

We'll be covering how to test your ads very soon. For now, you should have created two ads that communicate the same message in different ways. These will be the two ads we rotate in our A/B split test. Congratulations, you're now ready to move on to the next part of this article.

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