Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Managing Bids with Editor

The promise of Editor to save you time and make you money reaches its fulfillment when it comes to bid management. Now, “bid management” may not seem like a very exciting concept, so allow us to phrase it differently:

• Quickly lower bids on all keywords that are losing money.
• Quickly raise bids on all keywords where you can make more money by bidding higher.

Every keyword has a sweet spot bid, an amount that maximizes the amount of profit it will produce. Bids that are too high won't generate enough conversions to pay for the cost of the clicks. Conversely, bids that are too low won't generate enough traffic in the AdWords auction to produce profits. And if you have thousands or tens of thousands of keywords, you need an efficient way to find those keywords and change bids en masse — and Editor is your tool.

Campaign naming conventions

In Chapter 7, we share some best practices for naming your campaigns. Now you'll see exactly how to exploit these conventions to make bid management a snap in Editor.

The main campaign distinctions that AdWords beginners need to deal with include

• Network: Search or Display
• Match Type: Exact, Phrase, or Broad (for Search network campaigns only)
• Location: Country/Region
• Value of a Conversion: In dollars, or whatever currency you use

Of these characteristics, the value of a conversion is the most important for bid management. The other distinctions aren't strictly necessary for the nitty-gritty of bid management, although ...