What would your temperament be if one of your direct competitors stood just outside of your office and started promoting their services to people who were coming into your location? I doubt that you would invite them inside for tea and muffins.

That said, how would you feel about competitors who are bidding on the name of your company or your branded keywords in the sponsored results? They may not physically be at your doorstep, but this is worse, as they can man the post 24 x 7 if they so choose.

The fact is that Google AdWords now allows companies to bid on the name and branded keywords of competitors. You can’t actually mention the other company in your ad title or ad copy, but competitors can be visible for searches for your most important keywords.

With this in mind, it’s essential that you devote the resources to both track who (if anyone) is bidding on your branded terms and also devise a strategy to both ensure that you maintain a strong presence on your branded terms and also possibly bid on your competitors. Don’t make the common mistake of complacency. Protect your branded search results by developing branding campaigns so as not be overtaken by your competition.

You may have carefully reviewed your campaigns’ settings when it first launched, but when was the last time you went in and fully optimized your campaigns in order to achieve maximum results? Below is a quick overview of Pay-per-Click campaign (PPC) settings offered by AdWords.

Geo Targeting: In what areas of the world do you want your ads to appear?

Languages: You can select from over forty different languages, which you can simultaneously target. It is important to keep in mind that you will need to translate the ads yourself, as this is not a service that Google provides.

Networks:  You have the ability to have your ads displayed on Google’s search result pages, partner search engines and within Google’s Display Network (publishers who agree to display your ads).

Devices: You can customize what devices you would like your ads displayed on, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. You can even choose specific carriers.

Bidding options: Based on your campaign goals, you can determine which bidding option will get you results. A cost-per-click (CPC) bid is the amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. You can have AdWords manage your bids by choosing automatic bidding, or you can manage the bids manually. In more advanced options, you can also choose to pay per thousand impressions (CPM bidding) or set a cost-per-acquisition bid (CPA). 
 
Budget: The daily budget you choose should be based on the advertising goals you have. Keep in mind, however, that the budget should be the amount you’re comfortable spending on AdWords advertising each day. To help guide your budget choice, AdWords automatically provides a recommended daily budget for each campaign. Note that your daily budget represents your average spend over the month; but actual spend on any given day may vary.

Position preference: This option lets you tell Google where you’d like your ad positioned among all the ads on a given page, but it does not guarantee that your ad will appear in the position you specify. Ranking and relevance rules still apply so if your ad doesn’t qualify for position #1, setting a position preference of 1 will not always position it there.

Delivery method: This setting will affect how quickly your ads are shown (still taking your budget into consideration). You have to determine if it is more beneficial use standard delivery which spreads out your ad impressions across the day to make sure don’t accrue all your clicks early on; or, you can use accelerated delivery to increase the likelihood of spending your full budget each day by showing your ads as quickly as possible.

Ad extensions: A feature that lets you add extra elements to your ads such as the address of your location, extra site or product links, and phone numbers.

Schedule: Set the start and end date for campaigns as well as which days of the week/hours of the day you wish for your ads to be shown.

What worked six months ago, may no longer work for you today. Google AdWords sets defaults, but they may not necessarily work best for your campaigns so it is important to take advantage of each one of their settings in order to control delivery of your ads and best optimize your campaigns.

You can provide deeper, more relevant content to users searching for information by using Google AdWords Sitelinks Extensions within your AdWords ads. Sitelinks Extensions provide up to four extra links to pages within your website versus one link to one landing page from a regular AdWords ad – at the same CPC cost! With these extra links, you can direct searchers to account login pages, special promotions or any of your marketing goals.

Sitelinks are more relevant to users who are searching for information by providing more specific, additional content that is visible to searchers upfront.  The users get to pick which link is most relevant to their search and it steers them to the correct product or service page, thus shortening your conversion funnel.

See the Profound Beauty example below where Sitelinks Extensions are used to direct users straight to products, calls-to-action and special offers from a generic ad.

The URLs can be changed as often as you’d like, so you can coordinate with seasonal promotions and discounts.  You can add up to ten links per ad, but only four will show up per impression.  The links will rotate and are prioritized based on the rank in which they were entered. Even though there are four additional links within your AdWords ad, advertisers pay the same CPC cost as an ad without Sitelinks, regardless of where the user clicks.

Sitelinks improve the value of branded terms and other keywords to boost overall campaign performance.  According to Google, Sitelinks Extensions have increased advertisers’ click through rates (CTR) on average by more than 30%.  Advertisers still need to monitor bounce rates, time spent on site and conversion rates, since data is not available at the individual Sitelink level to gauge performance.

The extra real estate on the search results page, combined with richer content with more options for users can enhance clickthrough and conversion rates at the same price as a regular CPC ad – giving you more bang for your AdWords buck.