48 leads so far this month (5 days) from 94 Google Search clicks.  On average the salespeople sell 25% of the conversions at $350 each making $4,200.  If the customers renew their insurance for 3 more years that totals out to be $12,600.  

Adwords will overspend your account, this script will stop your campaigns when you have reached your daily budget.

function main() {
  
  // GET THE TOTAL SPEND OF THE ACCOUNT
 var costReport = AdWordsApp.report("Select Cost from ACCOUNT_PERFORMANCE_REPORT DURING TODAY");

  var reportRow = costReport.rows().next();
  var totalCost = reportRow["Cost"].replace(',', ''); // Remove thousand separator
  
  // PAUSE THE ACTIVE CAMPAIGNS IF THE BUDGET IS REACHED. REPLACE "XXXX" WITH YOUR BUDGET.
  if (totalCost > 400){
    var campaignIterator = AdWordsApp.campaigns().withCondition("Status = ENABLED").get();

    while (campaignIterator.hasNext()){
      var campaign = campaignIterator.next();
      campaign.pause();
    }
  }
}

Think you are due a refund for bad clicks?  You can fill out this form and Google will look into it.  It takes a few weeks sometimes to get a response.

https://support.google.com/adwords/contact/click_quality

​Question:
What is correct Way of adding Negative Keywords ?

Answer:
There are a number of similarities between how the match types react. As with your positive keywords, you can add negatives as broad, phrase and exact match. While matching behavior is largely similar with your negative types, there are a few key differences.

The biggest difference is that negative broad match won’t exclude queries that are synonyms or close variations of the negative keyword. It will only exclude queries that include all words within a keyword, irrespective of the order in which the words appear.

Read this link for examples and a better understanding:
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836

Also
http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google-keywords-to-the-wise.pdf
​

Question:
​
I am having an issue. I went to "Campaigns -> Networks -> Exclusions -> Manage IP Address exclusions (advanced)", and I entered in my computer's IP Address. I used * in the fourth set of numbers in order to block out the whole area in case my computer changes IP Address. However, immediately after creating that exclusion, I google a keyword and saw my ad.

Why isn't it being blocked? Is my computer changing IP Addresses? If I did this for another IP Address , would it work? Does it take time for the change to take effect?


Answer:

I have performed an experiment myself.

• Excluded my IP as described here: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61493, after I checked it with whatsmyip.org.
• One minute later, the ad was still showing
• 45 minutes later, the ad was no longer showing, on the Search Network (that's where I can test)
• In the Ad Preview, however, the ad is still showing, as it ignores IP exclusion (which means that if you want to spy on your competition, you have to use the tool, not regular searches where they may block your IP).
  ​
  

Question:

Hello  I want to increase traffic on my website.... Can anyone help me????

Why not take a step back and develop some actionable goals for your website and business.

Sure, you can send 1,000,000 visitors to your site, but what have you received in return? Were those people who were interested in what you have to offer or did they accidentally click an ad while playing a game on their phone. Perhaps the better question to ask is, how do I increase sales on my site? - or how do I increase relevant traffic to increase sales? Only you know the answers here.

If you take one of the latter approaches, as previously mentioned there are numerous tools to go about executing your marketing strategies.

Unless you somehow just get paid from visitors, a smart strategy, driven by goals, is the starting point to see any sort of success.

You can also look at Google's SEO Starter guide to get and idea of how to get customers naturally.

Discover 3 types of remarketing tags you can use & how to add it across your entire site. ​

Question:

How can we target specifically Windows vs Linux vs Macintosh? This is a feature, right?

At least I can't imagine that such an extremely important and easy to implement (Browser user agent string.) feature does not exist.

But I found no way or documentation of how to activate it. (I did find how to target desktop vs tablet vs mobile, that's not the issue.)

I hope this isn't a magical crass oversight caused by the general notion that advertised software is to be available cross-platform.

Answer:

​You can indeed target by operating system - although these options are only available for Display and Video campaigns. 

Keep in mind that you can choose to target only Android, iOS, etc but you are limited to mobile operating systems only and cannot choose targeting for Desktop OS.  For more information check out the following article: https://support.google.com/adwords/editor/answer/1211190?hl=en

What you could do is create a smart remarketing list in Analytics based off of operating system and remarket accordingly (although not allowed for RLSA remarketing). 

Here's a great article on creating remarketing lists in Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2611404

Google Stat:

When looking for new keywords, remember that long tail can some times be too long. Compared to shorter keywords (those with two to four words), keywords that contain five words or more drive less than half the volume of clicks and impressions on average. It’s a similar story for keyword character length — keywords with 30 or more characters (including spaces) also drive fewer than half the clicks and impressions on average than shorter keywords. Longer keywords take more effort to define and deliver less than half the volume, so spending time on them may not be in your best interest.

Did you know that Ad Extensions can lead to improved conversion and a higher Quality Score?

Ad Extensions make your PPC ads stand out and they also offer users more options, so it’s no surprise that they increase CTRs and interaction with ads. Some examples of extensions are click to call phone numbers in mobile ads, sitelink extensions and offer extensions, which give users printable coupon for offline use. Studies show that things that don’t match stand out to people (like a sweater and a bathing suit, or so my friends keep telling me) so if you’re using Ad Extensions, your ads are more likely to be noticed and clicked on.

Extensions don’t cost anything extra*, and since they traditionally do increase CTRs, it’s possible that Google automatically bumps up your Quality Score when you use them. Google plays it pretty close to the vest about how scores are calculated, so this is speculation based on what they have admitted. However, even if they don’t automatically factor in the use of Ad Extensions, extensions do improve CTR, which means you’re likely to get the score boost either way. 

There are no additional charges for extensions right now, but you’ll still pay for a click if someone uses the click to call feature or clicks on a sitelink instead of the main ad.

1. Have a campaign dedicated for the specific event
Keep your normal campaigns running, or pause them at this time of year, but its a good idea to have a separate campaign. As you’ll be putting a lot of effort in for the season it’s recommend you create this as a separate new campaign. This will allow you to have a specific budget allocated for the period, and will let you use this campaign the next year if it performs well. You'll just have to reactivate the campaign in a year's time.
 ​

2. Use Historical Data
Hopefully, when you’ve run campaigns for seasonal events in the past you’ve recorded every conversion and page view! Go back and review that information. Did you have specific times of day, or areas in the country that converted better than others last year? Why not add in specific location targeting and/or enable ad scheduling, and implement bid adjustments to give those places and times a boost! What did you spend last year, and what was your return? You may want to consider this information when setting this years budget.
 

3. Shopping Campaigns and Mobile Bid Adjustments
The AdWords landscape changes so much in 12 months. Last year you might have ran a successful Search campaign, and maybe even a Display or Remarketing campaign, but this year make sure you are taking advantage of Mobile and Shopping Campaigns. Target those last minute shoppers with mobile campaigns, and get them into your store (think Location Extensions, Location bid Adjustments and Call Extensions). Shopping campaigns are a great way to get your products infront of people who are looking for them with rich appealing images. New to Shopping Campaigns? Get started here.


4. Consider your Budget for this time of year
Short term investment for long term gain? While it may seem crazy to raise your budget above what you normally spend, remember that, if you have put the time into creating a well structured campaign, the return on investment could be great! A smart way to control your budget is to set up an automated rule to increase your budget based on a certain condition, such as daily conversions. If you have a target cost-per-conversion and you see that some campaigns are doing better than expected, you may wish to allocate additional budget to these campaigns. An automated weekly rule could do this for you: for example, you could create a rule that any campaign with over 10 conversions and a cost-per-conversion under $5 should receive an additional budget of 10%. Note that setting a maximum budget is recommended as a precautionary measure. Read more about automated rules and setting them up here.
 

5. Customers might be searching differently, and looking for different results!
Lets say you are a restaurant. On any normal time of year you probably have a campaign that has keywords like ‘fine dining’ or ‘italian restaurant’, which is exactly what your customers are normally looking for. Consider changing your keywords, or creating a new AdGroup/Campaign to target those customers looking for ‘romantic restaurant’ or ‘set dinner for two’ or ‘three course champagne dinner’. An online retailer might normally have keywords that describe their products such as ‘ladies jacket’ or ‘mens watches’, but at this time of year people might be looking for ‘romantic gifts’ or ‘valentines day present ideas for my girlfriend’.

Also consider your ads! Every-day ads might not cut it in terms of drawing the customers eye at this time of year. Try ads that read “Romantic Setting”, “Now taking Valentine's Day reservations” or “Complimentary champagne with dinner”.


6. Don’t wait until the last minute!
Never leave things to chance. Get that seasonal campaign created, and the ads approved. Have everything ready to go with a future start date in place. Using remarketing for the first time? Don’t wait for the day before launch to place the code on your website, get it on your site in advance. Using Google Analytics or Conversion tracking to measure the results of your campaign? Make sure its set up and recording well in advance. Cross all your “t”s and dot all your “i”’s well in advance to enjoy that special day with your loved one!

Question:

I want to block the search term "South Africa" but not any search term that has more then South Africa .. example South Africa Information/products/trips/flights or anything like that..  

I just don't want me ad to be shown if the user is just searching for "south africa"  but all my keywords contain the words South Africa  

If i add "South Africa" as a negative exact, will it block South Africa Products for example?   

Answer:

Negative exact will only block [South Africa] and nothing else. Negative phrase will block other terms containing "South Africa".

So if you want to block the term [South Africa] and only that term or Search query then add it as a negative exact.

When setting up a new campaign, or reviewing your performance data it’s important to consider how to bid. Whether is manual, automatic, or using one of the many flexible bidding strategies, you should understand how they work, and the impact they’ll have on your performance, and the time it will take to monitor and maintain your campaigns.

You can locate your Campaign Level bidding options in the Settings tab of your Campaign.

First, the basic options:

• Manual bidding: This is the default strategy to let you manage your maximum CPC bids yourself. You can set bids at the ad group level, or for individual keywords.

Launching a new AdWords campaign requires a lot of planning, since selecting the correct campaign settings is crucial to achieving your campaign goals. This article will give you an overview of some of the most important campaign settings that you should check and adjust before activating your new campaign.


The Basics

Campaign Structure

• Select specific keywords for your business and use keyword match types suitable for your budget and business goals.
• Create tightly themed ad groups with these keywords.
• Write compelling ad copy mentioning the best product features, discounts, offers, and calls to action.
• Create multiple ad copies in each ad group (3 ad copies in each ad group is a good start) and test them. Later you can refine your ad message once you determine which type of ad performs best.
• Select the most relevant landing page for each ad.

Campaign Type
You should select a campaign type that is suitable for your marketing goals. The default campaign type is "Search Network with Display Select" with a "Standard" sub type. The Search Network with Display Select campaign type is a good option for beginner advertisers, as this campaign type will help you to target both the Search and Display networks. But as Search network campaigns and Display network campaigns often need different strategies and optimization techniques, you may want to create a separate campaign for each network: one campaign targeting the Search network and another targeting the Display network.

Another setting you should consider is the campaign sub type. The default "Standard" campaign sub type will give you very limited functionality. Selecting the "All Features" campaign sub type will help you access more tools and options to optimize your campaigns, which will tremendously help you increase your campaign profitability in the long run.

Location targeting
Double check the location that you are targeting before launching your campaigns. You should select the specific geographic location where you want to run your ads. You can target a country, areas within a country (state, city, or province), or a specific radius around a location based on the available targeting options in your country.

Advanced Location Targeting
This setting is somewhat hidden in the settings tab, and this setting will be only available in "All Features" campaigns. You can find the advanced location options under "locations" in your campaign's Settings tab:

The default setting is to target "people in, searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location." With this setting, you'll be able to reach people who are likely to be physically located in your targeted areas, as well as those who show interest in your targeted geographic areas (who may be outside your targeted locations).

If you want to limit your ads to exclusively within your targeted location, then you should select the second option, "People in my targeted location."

You can read about all the options here.
​Advanced Settings


Schedule – Start Date, End Date & Ad Scheduling
You can specify a start date and end date for your campaign (You need to set your campaign to "All Features" to access this setting).
This is useful if you want to start your campaign at a later date or you want to end the campaign on a specific date (for example, when a promotion or offer ends).

Ad scheduling
Based on your or your client’s business requirement you can decide when you want to run your ads. You can specify certain hours and/or days of the week when you want your ads to show. You can schedule to run your ads only on specific days or only on specific business hours in a day.
You can also ad schedule certain ad extensions like call extensions. You can schedule call extensions to show only during your business hours.

Ad Delivery
This is another hidden option in the Settings tab. Earlier we discussed the importance of using multiple ads in each ad group. When you have multiple ads in an ad group, the Ad Rotation Setting will decide which ad is displayed, as well as the frequency with which a particular ad is displayed.

The default setting is "Optimize for clicks." This setting will give preference to ads that are expected to attract more clicks than other ads in the ad group, based on clickthrough rate (CTR). Google will try to show these ads more often than other ads in your ad group to help you gain more clicks.

When you are testing new ads in your new campaign, you should give equal preference to all active ads in your ad group. To achieve this you should select either the "Rotate Evenly" or "Rotate Indefinitely" option under Ad Rotation Settings.

Bids
Automatic bidding may look like a tempting option, but manual CPC bidding will give you more control over your spend. And be aware that enabling Enhanced CPC can increase your max CPC bid by up to 30% when optimizing for conversions.

Ad Extensions
Ad extensions show extra information about your business on your ads, improving your visibility. When two competing ads have the same bid and quality, the ad with the greater expected impact from extensions will generally appear in a higher ad position than the other. Ad extensions are also an excellent way to improve ad clickthrough rates. So use all the relevant ad extensions with you ad.

These extensions in particular can be used with almost any type of businesses:

• Sitelink extensions
• Callout extensions
• Structured snippets
• Call extensions
  ​
  

Negative Keywords - Adding negative keywords will help filter out irrelevant searches and eliminate wasteful spending. You can add generic negative keywords when you launch your campaign--for example, if you are not offering any free services or products you can add the word "free" as a negative keyword.

Tracking Codes & Linking AdWords and Analytics Accounts
Conversion Tracking: Accurately measuring your campaign performance is important for your success. Use AdWords conversion tracking to see how effectively your ad clicks lead to valuable customer activity, such as website purchases, phone calls, app downloads, or newsletter sign-ups. You need to add the conversion tracking code to your "Thank You" page or payment/order confirmation page to track conversions.

Double check the conversion tracking code implementation before starting the campaign. The code should be placed only on the correct pages; otherwise the tracking will not be accurate. For example, if you place the conversion tracking code on your landing page, then every visit to your landing page from the ads will be tracked as conversions.

Remarketing codes: Remarketing is a powerful way to target past website visitors. Add the remarketing code to your site before you launch the campaign and create custom remarketing lists as per your needs.

Google Analytics: Link your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, and create goals and funnels in Analytics. Later you can use Google Analytics data to optimize your campaigns.


Check the Conversion Process
Before enabling your new campaign, check the entire conversion process again. If your campaign goal is lead generation, complete a test conversion by filling out the form. Make sure all the form fields are working and the "Thank You" page is loading correctly after the form submission. And most importantly, make sure you or your client is getting the lead into the inbox!

Question:

If I have an ad group containing one text ad and one image ad - can both ads show at the same time on a site if the "display site" has both text and image ads?

If not, perhaps I can make this happen by separating the text ad and the image ad into separate adgroups (with same keywords)?

Answer:

The answer is "no" for both ideas, I'm afraid.  For any given keyword (Search) or site (Display) only one of your ads will trigger at any time,
Google has very strict policies against even attempting to do this - known as "double serving" - see below:

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=14179​

Question?

broad match terms if I have

google widget 
google widgets
googles widget
googles widgets

Are these terms redundant with broad match? 

Answer:
Broad matches match any word in the keyword and can often match plurals so in essence all those keywords compete with each other.  A search for "widget" could trigger any of those keywords, for example (although it is more likely, I think, to trigger the singular).

Broad matches are really only ever effective when the keyword(s) used are very distinct and, preferably, unique.  For example, broad matches can work well with specific model numbers that can only possibly be one thing (like an HP printer, or a Sony TV), or for other terms that are tightly focused.  

I would strongly suggest you move to phrase or even exact matches as soon as possible, otherwise your ads will be receiving impressions for every search for "google" or "widget", which will be a huge number, giving terrible CTR and very low relevance.

Another version of Broad match - Modified Broad - is starting to impress me, though. It can still pull a fairly wide variety of searches, but sometimes that's what I'm trying to do, and the modification means that wildly inappropriate (for my purposes) searches are much less likely.

A discussion of match types is available here:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175280

Question:

I have a campaign using managed placements successfully showing ads on a number of specific sites and providing a good enough click thru rate. However, all the traffic hitting my landing page are mobile browsers.

I have the campaign settings to display to all devices. If I restrict this to only computers, then I get a hundredth of the number of impressions. The sites I am targeting for my ads are not mobile-specific (I will link them here if that is allowed?). So what is going on? What settings am I missing?
Answer:

There can be a few scenarios as to why this may be happening.  But first lets see if your ads were eligible to be shown more often in those managed places, but for some reason adwords choose to not display the ad.

We will add some "competitive metrics" data into your regular dashboard.
Click on the "campaign" or "ad group" that you contain these managed placements.
Click on "Columns" then "Customize columns" (Should be around the middle of your screen)
Add [Competitive metrics] / [Impr. share]
Add [Competitive metrics] / [Lost IS (rank) ]
Add [Competitive metrics] / [Lost Is (budget) ]
and then save.


You should be seeing a lot of percentage signs under those 3 columns.
If you are showing a low percentage for "Impr. Share" then we need to check why.  Check the Lost Is (rank) and Lost IS (budget) to determine which is the cause.

From experience, my guess is that other advertisers are being displayed ahead of you for non mobile users (Low imr share & high Lost Is (rank).  Some may have opted out of the mobile network, which could explain why most of your traffic is coming from mobile.


​You will need to bring your ad rank up
1. Increase your bid
2. Fine tune your ad text to bring the CTR up
3. target only the most relevant pages / keywords on those sites
4. A combination of all the above.  Increasing your bid will most likely show if the hypothesis is true or not the quickest

Question:

If Im bidding on the term Orthodontist for Chicago... do I want to bid on Chicago orthodontist or
orthodontist ? 

If one or the other why? And should I bid on both? Both are broad match, and both are in the same campaign targeting Chicago. 

Answer:

I would bid for the following. +orthodontist (This will cover all variations, including plurals and prepositions, e.g. to orthodontist, ) AND I will target Chicago by location and by intent : Anyone physically in Chicago searching orthodontist(s), OR outside Chicago searching on Google.com for orthodontist(s) in Chicago, - will get to see the ad.

Targeting by intent is a great tool, that allows advertisers to cut the number of KWs by removing geographic names from the KWs list,- minimizing the KWs list to only the core KWs, without names of surrounding towns. 

From AdWords revised targeting help article

"this means we can show your ads to anyone who shows interest in your targeted location. People can show interest in a location by including the name of the location in their searches,"

Question:

Would it be possible to use only one keyword for an Adgroup?. (Ex: german shepard puppies for sale). I did a search for my related keyword using the traffic estimator, and it was estimated I'd get spot 3, and 2 or so clicks a day. I'm primarily selling/offering high end services, so, I wouldn't need that much traffic.

Answer:

Yes, you don't have to have more than one line of keywords in your ad group.  Note, though, that the keywords in your ad group correspond to search queries depending on your match type.  You'll want to think about what kind of match types you want to use.  In particular, make sure you understand the difference between broad matches and modified broad matches.  See:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100

If you use any match types other than exact matches, check the search queries on a regular basis and make adjustments as needed.  See:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68034

Question:

 I want to keep my PPC landing pages out the organic index but let Adsbot-Google find the page. Will this meta tag work?
<meta content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" name="ROBOTS">

Answer:

I generally use robots.txt files to set up my indexing rules

You can block PPC pages from all indexing while allowing indexing of the rest of your site:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /ppcpages/
Allow:/

And then make an exception for adsbot-google for the same pages/directory

User-agent: Adsbot-Google
Allow: /ppcpages/

You have to make sure you grant access to Adsbot-Google or your ads will not run.

Webmaster Tools is a great place to work on/create a robots.txt file.

I know this doesn't address your question directly but it is an alternative that you can employ to achieve the same result.

Here is more information about using meta tags how you have outlined.