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I’m an SEO being moved to AdWords, advice?
I’m an in-house SEO for a relatively small company. Owner currently runs our AdWords and would like to pass it off to me. I have no idea where to even begin. Any and all advice or resources you could point me to would be greatly appreciated.
I’m nervous but also very excited at the prospect of expanding my digital marketing skillset, thank you :). -
13 Replies
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Is your boss going to train you on it? Sometimes business owners are quite particular about how their ppc campaigns are ran. (I don’t do ppc directly, just account management)
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I was an SEO for three years and now I run my own agency also doing Google Ads. So I’m relatively new to Google Ads, and know how you feel.
You’ll find a lot of things are similar and your general knowledge of keywords, search intent, properly setting up tracking really useful.
Things I’d recommend:
1. Investing in some sort of course to get yourself acquainted with the functions of Google Ads (Isaac rudansky has a great one on Udemy, two years old so the google ads platform has changed but the concepts still work) .
2. Take all the Google ‘recommendations’ within the ads account with a grain of salt, Google wants to spend your clients’ money.
3. Link your Google analytics and google ads together from the get go – a novice mistake, which I made.
4. Join some facebook groups – People will answer your questions extremely quickly.In the end like SEO google ads is all about how much work you put in. In the beginning its gonna be a lot more than it should be, but you’ll work out how to do things more effectively and efficiently.
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Ah yes, what you do has the word ‘search’ in it so you must know the paid side too. Reverse happens to me all the time. I work on the SEM side and everyone thinks I do SEO. Any time I train someone, I have them start with Google Ads Academy. Take the beginner courses and then the test. It’s all free and will teach you the language of Paid search.
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i mean this in the nicest way possible…but what does “being a SEO” exactly mean? In 2021 I can’t imagine there’s more to it than optimizing blog posts and existing content, but beyond that once things are in place what does your day to day look like? Genuinely curious.
I would recommend getting acquainted with the basics of Google Ads, campaign hierarchies, products, features, creative types, bid strategies, conversion types/options and match types.
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Sure you can learn it easily if you have some knowledge in keyword research & basic business understanding.
You can reach me I will help you to set up your google ads- Not for money.
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Pro PPC tips I had to learn the hard way that you can learn from me instead of fucking up some of your first clients:
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* Make sure the campaign starts spending on time.
* Make sure the campaign turns off on time.
* Don’t overspend.
* Don’t underspend.
* Send the reports on time, every time. Automate them.
* Give bad news quickly.
* Don’t listen when Google reps tell you to raise budgets, raise bids, or make campaigns more automated. They’re trying to get more money out of you. Those might be good ideas, but don’t do them because Google reps tell you, have a better reason.​
You’ll figure the rest out, it’s not too hard.
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Google Ads Academy (now in Skillshop [https://skillshop.exceedlms.com/student/catalog/list?category_ids=53-google-ads?use_local=true](https://skillshop.exceedlms.com/student/catalog/list?category_ids=53-google-ads?use_local=true)) is great for introduction. Google Ads has a lot of features you can take advantage of and other courses may dive into that but you may feel overwhelmed quickly. So I would suggest taking Google’s course for now. And you get can get certified (bonus but not required).
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Hi, first of all, take this opportunity. Expand your skillset since you are an SEO guy you have sound knowledge of Keywords, Adwords campaigns are targeted based on keywords so you wouldn’t have a problem with that, All you need is knowledge of setting up a campaign and how to target it to the right audience. To start off with here’s a tutorial I found interesting based on its content:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydgh-7Y6S4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydgh-7Y6S4w)
Hoping it will help you. 🙂
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SEO likes long tail keywords, but Google Ads doesn’t. Basically because of the machine learning involved, focusing on super specific keywords will severely limit your spending power and your performance.
Use your knowledge of search intent to your advantage and use the keyword planner to find the right keywords and monitor search terms frequently. Become a master of negative keywords/exclusions.
Sort and organize those keywords into campaigns. Only break out campaigns if you need to for location targeting or budgeting purposes.
Google Ads is all about controlling the flow of the data that the machine learning is ingesting.
Google Ads is no longer Google AdWords so you have other campaign types besides search. Depending on budget size, goals, and expectations, you may want to test some out. -
Join the /r/PPC slack: https://join.slack.com/t/rppc/shared_invite/zt-m3j9ysds-7~~0dWmVW63UQZQZFC28MA
Get the Brad Geddes book (even though it’s a bit outdated since Google has changed a ton in the past 1-2 years): https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Google-AdWords-Brad-Geddes/dp/111881956X
Take Google recommendations and the Ads Academy courses (which a lot of people here recommended) with a BIG grain of salt. I ignore 90% of the recommendations and haven’t taken the courses in like 3 years.
Your Google reps are sales people, usually via a 3rd party, looking to meet quotas and get you to adopt new features. They are not Ads experts.
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My advice, keep calm and carry on. You have been given this responsibility because they trust you and your abilities, and you should too. Best of luck 🙂
I have limited knowledge on the subject and feel I might guide you in the wrong direction but….
Use your keyword research knowledge into software/tools to look at CPC and density/other factors. I recommend ahrefs. Find the aggregate of the values for the keyword bids to lock down a final value/number that agrees with your company’s monthly budget.
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A lot of great detailed answers for you here. Since it sounds like you’re completely new to this I’ll try to hit the high level items that should be on your list.
Yes, of course learn the PPC platforms – Google/FB/Bing/LinkedIn
Overall concept:
What you did in SEO was to organize content around central keyword themes that directly connected to the INTENT of your target audience. PPC is not all that different in concept but in many ways its so much more direct and easier. Now, you are organizing these keywords into specific campaigns, more detailed sub campaigns (adgroups) and each has a perfect ad and landing page that directly relates to the keyword phrase… The bonus is YOU get to match the ads with the audience you desire, using search terms, demo, geo, and other audience attributes. With SEO, you kind of hope you rank the right page for the right terms and attract the right intent from the right people… There’s a lot of vagaries.* Organize your keywords into campaigns and then into adgroups of like intentions. (shoes/Running Shoes)
* Understand your audience, write ads that matches their intent and lead to a page that fully answers their intent.( Best Running Shoe of 2021)
* Understand the device most used and target accordingly – Shop on your phone.
* Start with Search campaigns, LEARN, then slowly expand into display and remarketing.
* Use day/time schedules to ensure your ads only run when profitable (or your business is available). (Runners are asleep at 2AM, boozers are not)
* Get your arms around negative keywords and negative placements – these are key to refining your campaigns exposure and reduce poor quality clicks. “shoe him away”, “if the shoe fits”,
* Understand how to use URL tracking parameters and definitely put them into play.
[https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6277564?hl=en](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6277564?hl=en)
[https://help.ads.microsoft.com/#apex/ads/en/56799/2-500](https://help.ads.microsoft.com/#apex/ads/en/56799/2-500)
* Analytics:
Yes, set up Google analytics and be sure to setup conversion goals, connect google analytics to your adwords account. Be sure to use notes in your analytics when you make big changes to campaigns. It’ll help you see correllations.
* Use tools like [HotJar.com](https://HotJar.com) to see heatmaps and video sessions of user visits.
* Be prepared to work your campaigns every day for a while until your fully comfortable with cause and effect relationships.
* Above all – Walk to your success! Don’t get eager and push out generic campaigns with high bids….Best of luck
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I lead a rather large online sales team of roughly 100 people. In all honesty: without you knowing it yet – this is great.
SEO is dying. It will never completely die but Google would kill it if it could (which it can‘t because you know – competition, regulations).
That being said: get your hands dirty in SEM, add some paid social skills and top it off with Power BI/Python and you my dear are making bank.
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