Search engine marketing can be one of the most important marketing strategies you employ. It’s not for everyone, and you might be hesitant to try if your budget is super tight, but it definitely can pay off if you use it right. Google Adwords is one of the best and most popular PPC (pay per click) advertising mediums. If you play your cards right, you can use AdWords to promote your business with minimal cost and maximum response. To get the most out of AdWords, there are some tools you can use.
These are tools that help you improve your quality score, fine-tune your bid, or both. Some of these tools are free, many are inexpensive. But, if used right, all will get you where you want to be – on Google’s top page.
To help you get there, here’s a list of some of the best tools available:
1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner
This is a tool provided for free by Google. It makes your life easier when choosing keywords for a new group of ads, or when revising the keywords you have. It also helps you when you have a keyword that gets great results and you want to find others that will work just as well. This tool works well, especially given that it is free. The main limitation is that it works best with short keyword phrases of one to three keyword phrases.
2. Google Ad Preview Tool
This free tool from google has a very simple but useful function. It lets you see how your ad will appear for a particular keyword. This allows to make sure your ad extensions are showing. It’s a better choice than doing a google search for your keywords because it won’t skew your performance statistics.
3. Trellian Keyword Discovery
Keyword Discovery from Trellian has a huge database of keywords, and it offers both free and paid options for analyzing keywords. There are a number of different tools for understanding what keywords people use to search for your products and services. You’ll also be able to see historical keyword tends, search demographics, and more.
4. AdWords Wrapper
As its name suggests, this is a keyword wrapping tool. It’s pretty straightforward and easy to use. If you enter a list of keywords, it converts them into seven separate lists: Broad; Modified Broad, Phrase, & Exact Match; Broad, Phrase, & Exact Match; Phrase & Exact Match; Modified Broad Match; Phrase Match Only; and Exact Match Only. It also automatically removes duplicates and sorts your keywords in character code order. There’s a Negative Keywords Wrapper as well, which can be used for converting phrases into negative keywords.
5. Dialogtech
This is a call attribution and conversion tool. It can be used for all kinds of marketing platforms, but it really proves its worth with AdWords. It helps you trace calls from your marketing to a closed deal. Dialogtech can also be used to route calls to the best possible person to convert the call to a sale.
6. Google Content Experiments
Content Experiments is good to use in conjunction with AdWords because it allows you to test out different landing pages so you can see the effect that they have on searchers. See experiments in Google Analytics.
7. Internet Marketing Ninjas Search Combination Tool
This is a free tool that generates a list of common keywords that people might use when searching for your website. Basically, you enter a list of terms, and the Search Combination Tool spits out a second list of related terms. This is a quick and easy way to round out your keyword combinations and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.
8. Bing Webmaster Toolbox
Bing has a pretty decent suite of free tools available. And you can use these tools to draw assumptions that can be applied to AdWords. The diagnostic tools are especially useful.
9. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free and easy keyword research tool. Simply input any keyword or combination, and it will generate a huge list of related keywords and phrases. It even creates a word cloud, which makes it easy to visualize the most relevant and most used keywords related to your query.
10. SpyFu
This is a paid tool that gives you the lowdown on how your competitors’ keywords are doing. Plan pricing starts at $49 per month with a basic annual plan, and you get unlimited search results, data exports, and domain overview PDFs, as well as a limited number of sales leads, weekly tracked keyword rankings, and top lists results. Upgrade to a professional plan for more, plus API calls and custom branded reporting.
11. SEMRush
SemRush is one of the best multifunctional tools around for SEO, advertising research, keyword research, and more. It has lots of features that work very well for AdWords. For instance, it helps you compile lists of phrase matches and related keywords, it allows you to research competitors’ successful advertising strategies, and it assists you in localizing your advertising campaign. Pricing starts at $$69.95 per month, but with SemRush’s research and analytics capability, as well as its ease of use, it could definitely be worth it.
And this list only represents the tip of the iceberg when it comes to free and paid tools to use along with AdWords. Pick the right ones, and you give your business a leg up on its competitors, all while saving time and money.
