Search Marketing Blog
Google Contextual Targeting Best Practices
The Google Content Network has become an important part of our daily campaign optimization strategies here at EngineWorks since Google launched their “Placement Performance Reporting”. This new service shows statistics for ads that appear on specific domains or URLs in their content network. Prior to this introduction (approximately a year ago), we had no idea where client ads were shown, whether the sites were contextually targeted to our ads, or how our campaigns were performing on specific Web sites.
When we weren’t able to see which sites were displaying our ads . . . frustration and doubts abounded. Now, we are able to run Placement Performance Reports every week, which provides in-depth information on placement and conversions for all of our ads. This newly acquired information offers a great opportunity for EngineWorks Paid Search Specialists to effectively optimize each campaign, and greatly improve performance. However, it does require a great deal of close monitoring to truly make the best use of the Google Content Network.
Contextual targeting is performed by placing ads on affiliated publishers’ sites within the Google WebSense Program. Google scans pages from the network, looking for content relevant to our keywords, before placing our ads on those pages. But can this technology successfully decipher the meaning of a content network page as intuitively as a human being? Can it truly understand a company’s advertising goals by scanning keywords and ads within ad groups? Of course not. However, it does provide a very good starting point for creating high converting campaigns.
In order for our Content Network campaigns to be successful, and to compensate for the flaws in Google’s contextual targeting, we need to carefully optimize our target keywords, bid pricing, ad copy, and budgets. Here are a few best practices for maximizing your return through contextual targeting campaigns:
- Include in an ad group, not only very specific keywords, but also generic keywords that describe the specific industry or field for each product or service;
- Run separate campaigns on Google content and search, because a keyword may not have equal success in both channels. Also, budgets and bidding can be managed more efficiently when content and search campaigns are running separately;
- Ensure that your ads average positions remain above position three (3), as most sites publish only three Google ads per page;
- Build a comprehensive negative keyword list to exclude unrelated sites;
- Run an Ad Placement Report every week, and exclude sites that are below your CPA goals or not targeted to your product;
- Write ads with enticing call-to-action phrases and appealing promotions.
These best practices I have listed above should contribute to your success in implementing profitable contextually targeted PPC campaigns. Please let me know if you have any more recommendations, experiences, or tips for improving performance through the Google AdWords Content Network. I look forward to your comments.
