Google Adwords

“What steps can I take to become more aware of the data collected by Adwords ?”

The first, and most important step you can take, is to register a Webmaster Tools Account with Google. You can register an account below if you do not have one.

Register: Create new Webmaster Tools Account.

The second step, requires you to add a website ( where your Adwords Landing Pages will reside ) to your account, to monitor the data Google has stored about it. This is called the site verification process. Google will ask you to place a new meta tag inside your website home page, document head. Below is an example of what the code would look like, and where to place it.

Copy the line of code Google gives you, and paste it inside the document head of your home page. Save the changes to the page, upload the edited page, and request Google verify your website.

What to expect after registration and site verification

Immediately after you have verified your website, the tools account will show the options and preferences available to help Google understand your website. At first, and probably for at least a week, you will not find any data archived about your website until Google has crawled and indexed it, unless, of course, data already exists for the domain name, in which case Google may display more information sooner than anticipated here.

In the screenshot ( above ), we have 5 catagories visible. They are as follows, from left down to right and up:

• Top Search Queries

  This is valuable information. Not only can you discover how people are finding your website, but where you rank in the search terms used, what page was accessed, and how many clicks your site had. This information should be used to outline a strategy in an Adwords campaign.

• Links to your site

  The links displayed usually do not represent all sites that are linked to yours, and the updating of this information is very slow and unreliable.

• Sitemaps

  Sitemaps in XML format can be uploaded to Google for submission. Sitemaps help Google understand your site better, and can inspire Google to crawl pages it might not be aware of. It's always best to re-submit a sitemap after you've made changes to your website, which point out the dates when the pages have been updated - containing new content to be crawled.

• Keywords

  This is very important information where your Adwords account is concerned. Before running a campaign, it is wise to consult this infomation to examine the relevancy of keywords found on your website. Google ranks the keywords according to frequency and volume, displaying the rank each one has, and on what pages they are found.

• Crawl errors

  These are the errors Google will show if there were problems at any time crawling and indexing your website and its pages. Monitor this information closely.

Google also offers you even more, detailed, information about your site, as well as site preferences, allowing you to alter the way Google crawls and indexes it. At top, and left, of the page, there are four links.

• Site Configuration

  Here, you can change crawler access, remove old URLs, change of address ( moving your site to a new domain ), and change your settings. In the settings menu, you have the ability to exclude visitors by geographic location, if you so chose, choose your preferred domain ( canoical name: www or without ), and determine Google crawl rates.

• Your site on the web

  This is basically a summary of information already linked, displayed for conveinience only.

• Diagnostics

  Find out if your site contains malware, crawl errors, discover the crawl rate ( how often Google has visited your site, on what dates, and how much data was extracted ), and HTML suggestions. HTML suggestions will describe helpful tips and information about pages on your site, often pointing out mistakes, like duplicate or missing title tags and non-indexable content issues.

• Labs

  This is Google's test lab, or where it offers you the use of its Beta software. Here you can learn about page load times ( how fast, average speeds and comparisons ). Fetch as Google-Bot shows you what Google sees when it crawls your pages, providing you with some valuable insight.

I have all of this information but what good is it ?

What you see in your Webmaster Tools Account is a profile of your website, providing a window, looking in, to how Adwords judges your landing pages. This is a portion of the data used in the formula to score your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Because Google does not publish how it establishes quality score its probably safe to assume the data in your tools account is not the whole story, but most of it.

The more you understand about how Google views your website, the more familiar you will become with Adwords, and you'll be churning out quality scores of 7-10 in no time.

What about my poor landing page score ?

Obviously, just knowing this information is not going to change what already is happening. If you have the poor landing page score, you have two options: wait or contact Google Adwords for a manual review. Requesting the manual review can be slow, but the wait for it to change automatically is even slower. However, this information does allow you become more proactive in future campaigns, and by monitoring the data, you'll begin to see a pattern in how long it takes for the Google-Bot to inform the Ads-Bot that changes have been made and it's time to adjust scores.

Overcoming poor quality landing pages, and preventing them from occuring in the future, requires diligence on your part, learning and understanding why the scores occured and what you can do to change, alter and improve the scores. Patience is required because Google operates at a very methodical pace and is slow in updating your site profile.

The longer your website remains in existence, the greater your chances of it becoming more relevent to Google because they do not appreciate fly-by's, get rick quick schemes, or people that are out to cheat the system they've built, instead preferring sites that are in it for the long-haul, dedicated to building unique, efficient and quality websites, the kind people are searching to find.