As we have just spent the day with Google Sydney, I thought we would share Google’s own top 5 tips for improving your Google Adwords performance.

Segment and structure your ad groups

The biggest dictator of the amount you pay for each keyword is the quality score. You quality score is based on the keyword you use, and the landing page it is pointed at. If you segment your ad groups down to the keyword group, you can display ads that closely related to those keywords. This will improve your quality score. As Google pointed out, if you increase your score from 3 to 6, you will half the amount you have to pay to target that keyword.

Target keywords 2 to 4 words in length.

Again, you want to keep your advertising relevant. Targeting general keywords that are only one word will mean you are going to capture all sorts of other searches that are not related to your advertising. Not only will this reduce your CTR (click through) but also it will mean you will get less relevant people going to your site.

Focus on interesting and informative ad creative

Four main tips for great Google Adwords creative:

• Look at what other advertisers are doing
• Make sure your offering is competitive
• Give as much information as you can
• Be as specific as you can

Two things to keep in mind when working with Adwords, you can reduce the amount you pay per click, by increasing the quality score. According to Google, the most important factor in calculating quality score is your click through rate.

Carefully select your target keywords

Keywords that cause your Adwords performance to drop can have a negative affect on your whole adwords account. Google told us during the week that each Adwords account has a quality score. So that means if a few of your ads are poorly performing, you could be paying a lot more for clicks.

Interesting point to note

Adwords tracks your URL from account to account. So if you think of closing a poorly performing account, and using another one with the same target URLs, then Adwords remembers and moves all of your history across, poorly performing quality score and everything.