The Optimizer’s Guide to Google AdWords: Copy Testing

For this week I’ve invited Chad Summerhill, a PPC expert, to talk about copy testing. Chad provide a great comment on one of my early posts regarding adgroup triplets.  – @JRachwalski

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Have you ever heard the saying, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”?  This is good advice for a copy testing strategy.

Every time you run a new PPC copy test you are opening yourself up to losing just as much as winning.  It makes good sense to do everything in your power to prepare for a losing test copy and to minimize your risk.

Consider this scenario: you add new test ads to most of the ad-groups in your PPC account, planning on watching the results very carefully.  A week goes by before you check on the progress of your tests only to find many losers.  Well at least you’re always testing.  Right?

Unfortunately, every time you run a test and your test ad doesn’t win, you leave clicks, conversions, and money on the table.  Luckily, there is a great way to help lessen the risks involved in ad testing.

Adding Multiple Copies of the Control to Limit Risk

If your ad-group has enough traffic, using multiple copies of the control ad is a great way to lessen the risks involved in copy testing, especially if you are going up against a strong performing champion ad.

By only using two text ad versions (the control vs. test copy) then you are exposing 50% of your traffic to an untested test copy.  This may not matter if the test ad is, in fact, a winner, but what if it’s a loser?  The cost of missed opportunity could be very high.

If you were to include the champion ad, three exact copies of the champion, and one test ad, now you are limiting your risk to only 20% of your impressions.  You can still find a winner this way, but you are ensuring that a majority of your impressions continue to be of the champion copy.  After all, it probably took lots of hard work to find the current champion.

Perhaps you have been testing a while and the current champion is a superstar.  It may be wise to have four or five copies of the champion ad running against a test ad.  If the challenger performs better than the control, you can start removing the control copies until you have proven that the challenger is a statistically significant winner (Performable calculator) over the original champion.

There is also a free Excel download for determining statistically significant PPC text ad winners that solves for CTR, CVR, or Imp-to-Conv.

Considerations When Using Multiple Controls

There is another added benefit of using multiple controls.  What if the test results of your control copies vary widely from each other?  When running concurrent versions of a control (champion) ad you should expect to see a very similar performance as your test matures.  If not, you may need to investigate further.  Variation in performance could be an indication that there are factors outside or inside your control that are affecting your test.  For instance, maybe you started a landing page test during the middle of an ad test, maybe a holiday, etc.

Also, AdWords doesn’t ensure even and random ad serving.  The best you can get is “Rotate: Show ads more evenly”.



Regardless of whether or not you use multiple copies of your control in your PPC copy tests, you should always watch the results closely.  The sooner you identify a losing text copy the sooner you can turn it off and move on to the next test idea.

Chad Summerhill is author of the blog PPC Prospector, provider of PPC AdWords advice , and In-house PPC Specialist at Moving Solutions, Inc (UPack.com and MoveBuilder.com).

How to Write Know-It-All Headlines

This is the 3rd post in a series on How to Write 7 Types of Catchy Headlines

A “Know-it-all Headline” is best for web and landing pages containing content offering practical tips or advice about some known topic. The know-it-all headline is therefore best-suited for how-to articles and other easily-digestible content that readers can quickly reference. Here are some examples of know-it-all headlines:

• Where to Sell Your iPhone 3G: Gazelle vs. NextWorth
• Social Media Use Cases: Arcade Fire
• How the Old Spice Videos are Being Made

There are several indicator words that often show up in know-it-all headlines:

• How to
• Where
• Examples of
• Use cases
• Studies

When know-it-all headlines do their job, readers should instantly be able to tell if this page contains interesting content. The header describes exactly what is going to be found out by visiting the page. They are often lists or steps that readers can quickly follow along with. Unlike content described by headlines that teach, which digs deeper, know-it-all content is usually quick to read.

If you are having trouble coming up with a concise, specific know-it-all headline, try writing a one sentence summary of your landing page and then removing everything but the nouns. The nouns should indicate what the landing page is trying to convey.

Here is an example of this technique in action. Suppose you’re an ice cream expert in Boston and you want to share your knowledge with the world. Your one-sentence summary might look something like:

“I want to write an article about the best ice cream stores in Boston”

If you remove everything but the nouns, the words that are left are:

• Article
• Stores
• Boston
• Ice cream

An effective headline for this page could be simply:

Where to Find the Best Ice Cream in Boston

It uses the two most important nouns from the sentence summary, as well as an indicator word from the list above, clearly communicating exactly what you will get. But it also communicates the value for the reader…you will find the best ice cream in Boston…something you may not have been able to do before. For anybody who values ice cream and lives in Boston, this headline is a sure winner.

View more examples of effective know-it-all headlines in my piece on how to write different types of headlines.

Ten Easy Ways To Improve Your Landing Page Conversions

We’ve put together a compelling list of ways you can improve your landing pages and conversions. These tips are easy to implement and, more importantly, can start improving your results immediately.

1. Landing page headlines and ad copy should match

Google AdWords determines cost-per-click in part based on the quality of your landing page. You can improve your score, and bring down your cost-per-click, by making sure your landing page’s content aligns with your ad messaging. Not only does this make acquiring leads less expensive, it also improves the effectiveness of your pages: customers who click on your ad will be get information relating directly to what they clicked on. Learn more about landing page quality here.

2. Your headlines must be clear and concise

Your landing page headline is one of the first things a visitor reads. Make it clear what you’re offering in a compelling way. A poorly written headline will bore or confuse your visitors into leaving, while a well-written headline can compel your visitors to take a closer look.

Test Case:

When Carelogger, a Diabetes logbook application, redesigned it’s homepage, it tested two different headlines against each other. The headline “Maintain your optimal health by keeping tabs on your diabetes” converted more than 31% better than an identical page with the headline “Keeping tabs on your diabetes just got a whole lot easier.” A stronger headline that addressed a specific pain point (maintaining optimal health).