Google just updated their policy regarding Google AdWords Ad Grants for Nonprofits. It’s a significant change that ultimately will increase the quality of impressions and clicks (overall relevancy in their SERPs). If you manage Ad Grant accounts like I do, this update is important to pay attention to.
Bid Above $2.00
In short, you can now bid above the maximum Cost-Per-Click (CPC) of $2.00. In order to do so, you need to enable “Maximize Conversions” bidding strategy which means you need to make sure you setup conversion tracking — this is just a best practice anyway.
Better Performance Standards, an End to Broad Targeting
The other change to the policy is a big one for your strategy. The policy also states that for performance you must maintain an account Click Through Rate of at least 5%, which means going after those low quality, broad, keywords will likely drop your account into the danger zone.
These are good changes, mostly. It does reduce the ability to run branding campaigns using broad keywords, but it makes up for it with more relevance, and ultimately higher conversion. Like I tell so many clients, and now my high school students (more on that later): Google is in the business of relevancy!
Here’s the official message from Google:
Links from the email:
About the New Character Limits for Expanded Text Ads
Google announced the launch, and eventual changeover, to an Expanded Text Ad format in mid-2016. The Expanded Text Ads gave a boost to the clickable real-estate of the ad, and a longer description for more detail. If you haven’t updated your older ads, you’re missing an opportunity to increase your position and Click Through Rate. Here’s a little more information:
(See below for the character limits list)
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Google offers a $10,000 grant for in-kind advertising for non-profits who meet the eligibility requirements. This a great way to boost your non-profit’s visibility in the community and promote your events, fundraising activities, and volunteer-ship. Here’s what you need to know about the Google Ad Grants.
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Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a simple metric that shows that rate at which an ad impression receives a click. It’s a core measurement in Search Engine Marketing and yet, slightly misunderstood on the surface. Let’s look at this major ad performance metric.
What is Click-Through Rate?
Whenever and however you generate traffic to your app or website — be it through any channel (social, organic, referral, paid, display, email) — your links, banners, or ads will have impressions (views) and clicks. Impressions are the number of times a link or ad was seen, or rather available on the screen to be seen. Clicks are, well, people who clicked the link or ad. Click-Through Rate is the percentage of people who saw the impression and clicked it.
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As of now, Google Adwords contains six different campaign types to select. Choosing a campaign type is your first step in getting ads running, so study up. Each campaign type has secondary features that expand and contract the functionality in the campaign (e.g. Standard, All Features, Mobile app installs, Dynamic Search Ads, Call-only, Marketing Objectives, etc.). Fortunately, those features change on-page, as you select, for easy viewing.
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My favorite super tools for online advertisers, web developers, and SEO mavens.
Sharing is caring, so here are my top five go-to “super tools.” The websites and applications below produce tools that I use regularly for a variety of tasks in online advertising and SEO. I’ve listed them here in order of my usage. All of them are free tools and they serve a variety of purposes. Ready to decrease your workload and work smarter, not harder?
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With over several million advertising accounts on Google Adwords, I’d guess that less than 30-40% of them are run by a professional (Google Partner). Given this, a lot of accounts are probably just kinda running and not measuring or seeing any positive results. With that in mind, here are three simple monthly Google Adwords tips the average account manager can use to optimize their campaign performance.
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