Kick Ass in AdWords with Quality Domains

Many of you who read this blog know that I got my start with online marketing back in 2003 with a focus on affiliate marketing and Google AdWords.

I then started my consulting business AdWords Marketing in 2004 and have been involved in the PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising industry ever since.

One area of setting up a PPC ad campaign that often gets overlooked is the display URL used at the bottom of the ads.

Google allows a maximum of 35 characters including spaces to be used for the display URL so having the most relevant keyword rich domain name
as a huge benefit when it comes to getting a higher click through rate and quality score for your ads.

I have run tens of thousands of ads on AdWords over the past 5 years and without a doubt a campaign that has the most relevant domain name used as its display URL will kick the ass of the same ad doing an A/B Split test where the only thing that is different in the 2 ads running at a 50/50 split is the display URL.

Let me give you an example where the search term is “Factoring Finance”-

Considering Factoring?
New Free Service Finds the
Right Factoring Finance for You!
FactoringFinance.com.au

vs

Considering Factoring?
New Free Service Finds the
Right Factoring Finance for You!
JohnBrownFinance.com.au

Although the only difference is the display URL, it can make a HUGE difference in the click through rate of the ad just because the URL matches the search.
It has been effective for me 9 times out of 10 over the years. Google has made it much harder in recent times to test different URL’s within the same Ad Group
but I can assure you it is very very effective.

This is another reason to have high quality keyword rich domain name that does not get talked about a great deal by domainers, food for thought!!

Here is what Google has to say in its Google AdWords Guidelines -

Display URL must be accurate.

• Your Display URL must accurately reflect the URL of the website that you’re advertising. It should match the domain of your landing page so that users know which site they will be taken to when they click your ad.
• Where you have keyword URLs, these are considered to be your Destination URLs and the Display URL must accurately reflect them.
• The Display URLs within each ad group must have the same domain.
• The Display URL field cannot be used as another line of ad text.
• Your Display URL must include the domain extension, for example: .co.uk, .net or .org.
• If your actual Destination URL link is too long to use as your Display URL, use a shortened version (such as your homepage) that meets the character limit for this field.
  Example:
  Destination URL: http://www.TravellingDog.net/toys.html
  Display URL: www.TravellingDog.net