AdWords Editor Best Practices

Best Practices

Here are ten best practices for using AdWords Editor, followed by a few of users' favorite tips and features. These are merely ideas for making the most of AdWords Editor that you can adapt for your own account. For detailed instructions, visit the AdWords Editor Help Center.

1. Copy or cut and paste between ad groups, campaigns, or across accounts.

You can use the Edit menu commands or the keyboard shortcuts (Control or Command + X, C, and V). For example:

• Copy 6 ads from one ad group to 15 other ad groups.
• Select 10 keywords and copy them into another ad group.
• If you manage multiple accounts, copy campaigns between accounts and customize campaign settings for each account.

2. Make bulk changes to keywords or destination URLs using the Add/Update Multiple tools or Advanced URL Changes. For example:

• Add 100 keywords to one ad group using the Add/Update Multiple Keywords tool under Make Multiple Changes on the Keywords tab.
• Use Advanced URL Changes to edit the destination URLs for 20 ads in 10 different ad groups.

3. If you need to edit your keywords or ads in a spreadsheet, you can then bring those changes back to AdWords Editor. For example:

• Copy the items to edit from the data view and paste them into a spreadsheet. Make your changes, then paste the contents of the spreadsheet directly into the appropriate Add/Update Multiple tool.
• Export your whole account or selected campaigns as a CSV file, make your changes, then import the CSV file back into AdWords Editor.

4. Find duplicate keywords quickly in your account or in selected campaigns and ad groups, then select one of each set of duplicate keywords to delete or edit.

5. Search your account quickly and perform bulk changes on the results of your search. For example:

• Type a keyword into the search box to locate all instances of that keyword in the account, then append text to that keyword or otherwise edit it.

6. Use advanced search to find items that meet the multiple criteria that you specify. Note that you need to download statistics before you can search for performance criteria. For example:

• Filter performance status of keywords (CTR higher than 2%) and increase their bids to improve their position and performance.
• Find all keywords with an average position lower than 1%. Review these keywords and delete them or use Advanced bid changes to increase their bids.
• Find all keywords with 0 clicks. Make a note of keywords that have many impressions but no clicks. These keywords may be less relevant and are therefore lowering your overall CTR. You may wish to use one of the Make Multiple Changes tools on the Negatives tab to add any irrelevant terms as campaign or ad group negative keywords.

7. Once you've specified criteria for an advanced search, save that search to reuse in the future. For example:

• Do a fast sanity check on a daily basis. Run Get recent changes, then use saved searches to view the best or worst performing keywords.

8. Make bulk edits inline. For example:

• Select 3 out of 10 campaigns in one account and change the budgets for all of them at once.

9. Drive more traffic to your site and improve your ROI by using the Keyword Opportunities tool. For example:

• Use the keyword expansion tab to find new keyword ideas based terms that are currently performing well for your account.
• Use the search-based keywords tab to find and add 10 relevant keywords to a new ad group.
• Use the keyword multiplier tab to combine lists of words into new keywords, and the tool will make sure you only add the ones that will bring traffic to your site.

10. Combine AdWords Editor tools with the search query reports available in your AdWords account online. For example:

• Sign in to your AdWords account, then run a search query report for one ad group. Download the report as a CSV file. Take the 5 keywords that have received the most clicks and add them as positive keywords to this ad group.
• Sign in to your AdWords account, then run a search query report for your account. Download the report as a CSV file. Open the spreadsheet, and remove any exact match queries from your list. Then sort by descending CTR. Copy the best performing queries into the Add Multiple Keywords tool in AdWords Editor, either for a new or existing campaign.