For some, Adwords management is something of a mystery.

It seems like there are thousands of companies who offer to “manage your Adwords account” for a fee, but what do they do exactly?

• Is it all hocus pocus?
• Do they actually do anything?
• And is it so complicated only a rocket scientist could understand it?

Aside from a few dubious scamps, most Adwords management companies do make concerted efforts to improve your account.

It’s not hocus pocus and it’s not overly complicated either – at least it’s not when you understand the basic principles.

In a series of upcoming posts, I’m going to show you how to manage an Adwords account with nothing more than Adwords Editor and Excel.

That way, if you do want to hire a professional later on (maybe even me), you’ll know a little bit more about how it all works – and there’s a little less mystery to it.

Today, I’m going to show you how to set up a few filters in Adwords to help you quickly spot problems in your campaigns’.

Let’s go…

If you know at-a-glance which ads and keywords have:

• Impressions but no clicks,
• Clicks but no conversions,
• High costs but no conversions,
• Average position below 7,
• Quality score below 5,

…then you’ll find it much easier to fix these profit stealing problems before you lose too much money.

I’m going to show you how to set these filters up on a keyword level, but you can do the same thing with adgroups, ads and even campaigns if you like.

Log into your Adwords account and select the campaign you want to manage.

Click on the “keywords” tab without selecting an adgroup first. This’ll give you a list of all the keywords in this campaign.

1. To find keywords with impressions but no clicks:

Click “Filter” and select “Create Filter”.

• To find keywords with impressions but no clicks:
• choose “Impressions >= 1”,
• then click “add another”
• and choose “Clicks <= 0” Tick the “save filter” box then click “Apply”
• You now have a list of all keywords with at least one impression, but no clicks. (If you want to raise the bar and show ads with, say, 200 impressions and no clicks replace the number 1 in the impressions filter with 200.)
• To remove the filter, just click on “close”.

2. Finding keywords with clicks but no conversions is very similar.

• Again, get onto the “keywords” tab in your chosen campaign, then click “filter” and “create filter” just as before. This time choose “clicks >= 1”,
• Click “add another”
• Then choose “conversions <= 0”
• Tick the “save filter” box and click “apply”.
• You’ll have a list of keywords with clicks but no conversions.
• Again, to remove the filter, click “close”.

3. Next up is finding keywords with a high cost but no conversions.

• Get onto the “keywords” tab in your chosen campaign, then click “filter” and “create filter” just as before.
• Choose “Cost < £3” (replace £3 with whatever your target cost per conversion is)
• Click “add another”
• Then choose “conversions <= 0”
• Tick the “save filter” box and click “apply”.
• You’ve now got a list of keywords that have cost more than your target cost per conversion, but haven’t generated any conversions.

4. This filter is going to show you all the keywords that aren’t showing on page one.

Well, over position 8 at least. (Sometimes there are 11 ads on the page, but I won’t complicate things here).

• Get onto the “keywords” tab in your chosen campaign, then click “filter” and “create filter” just as before.
• Choose “Avg. position < 8”
• Tick the “save filter” box and click “apply”.
• You’ve now got a list of keywords that have appeared below position 8.

5. The final filter in this post is similar to the previous one – only that we’re checking quality score, not ad position.

Here’s how to do it:

• Get onto the “keywords” tab in your chosen campaign, then click “filter” and “create filter” just as before.
• Choose “Quality score <= 5”
• Tick the “save filter” box and click “apply”.
• You’ve now got a list of keywords that have appeared below position 8.

And because you’ve saved your keyword filters, you can load them up in seconds the next time you’re in your Adwords campaign.

As I mentioned earlier, you can apply similar filters to the ads, adgroups and campaigns tabs as well.

Most Adwords pro’s use similar filters to this in Adwords Editor – but that’s another post for another day.

For now, try the new filters and enjoy the results.

Cheers,

-George

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