Location Targeting in AdWords

Posted by: Joanna Wild On Thursday, August 9th, 2012 - Advertising

| Google

| Marketing

| Mobile

| Pay Per Click

| PPC

| Search Engines

Location targeting is great for improving the relevancy of traffic coming through to your site. It allows you to spend your budget on searchers who are in or looking for information about your location, rather than spreading it across a wider audience which may not be relevant to you. The more relevant the traffic coming through to your site, the higher your conversion rate is likely to be.

Also, if your keywords, ads and site content are more relevant to local searches, not only should your click through rate (CTR) improve, but this all should lead to higher quality scores in your account which can potentially reduce your average cost per click’s (CPC), compared to targeting a broader location.

There are several ways to incorporate location targeting into your AdWords campaigns, this blog will look at the key methods.

Geo Targeting

One of the first steps when setting up new campaigns is to select the area (or areas) you wish your ads to be displayed.

The broadest level of geo-targeting is worldwide

This is great for international companies, however it should be used in conjunction with language targeting; only targeting people using the same language as your website and ads are written in. It is possible to be more selective than worldwide with bulk location targeting, choosing a selection of countries relevant to your organisation from around the world, rather than them all.

While the use of the worldwide and bulk options are great for a quick set up, it may prove limiting if you need to send different messages to different locations. In this case setting up different campaigns for different locations may be a better option.

Choose to target by country, city or even the postcodes of your desired locations

You can also choose the radius option, where you can, as an example, select Glasgow as the central location and target all areas within a 10 mile radius of it.

Refine your geo-targeting further

You can choose to target people who are physically within the location/s you are targeting and those who are searching for information about your chosen location/s but are not physically located there, or you can choose to only target those physically located within your chosen location/s, or only those searching for information on your location/s but are not physically there.

Exclude locations which are irrelevant to you

For example, a private bank may operate internationally, but not be able to take on clients from certain locations due to legal constraints; in this case these locations can be excluded so that ads do not show to people located there. This can also be refined to either exclude only those who are physically located in these places or both those physically located there and those who are searching for information about these places.

Location Extensions

Ad extensions are a great tool for making your ad stand out and increasing CTR. Location extensions allow you to add your business address and phone number to your ads.

Automatic Method

The automatic method is where you upload your Google Places feed and the address is automatically taken from it.

Manual Method

If you do not use Google Places or have multiple locations to add, there is the manual method where you add each address yourself. If you have a lot of business locations to add this could prove a very time consuming task, however AdWords Editor allows you to bulk upload location extensions (click on the extensions tab then the location extensions tab and make multiple changes). You can also upload your Google Places feed via the Editor too (for this you need to be on the campaign tab and then click location extensions near the bottom of the page).

Location extensions appear on desktops with your address below your ad copy with a + which can be clicked on to reveal a map of your location with the address and phone number alongside, as shown below:

 Location Extension Tips

• You are not charged for clicks on the + but you do pay for any links within the ad such as ‘directions’.

• Use of other extensions may limit the amount of times your location extensions are used, as well as other factors such as ad rank. To increase the likelihood of your location extensions appearing, you may also want to consider adding in location specific keywords into your campaigns or put keywords on phrase or broad match to ensure they match to search terms which include your location.

• To increase the relevancy of your ads, you may wish to include your location in your ad copy, for example, a restaurant could add ‘Great View of Richmond Park’ in the description.

• Location extensions are set up at campaign level, however you can edit this at ad level by choosing to always show a particular ad with one location extension. This is handy if you have offers which are specific to one store for example. To do this, go to edit the ad in question and select ‘always show with one address’, you then choose which location extension to use.

Location Insertion

Similar to dynamic keyword insertion, once you have location extensions set up you can use location insertion. You can add a tag (aka a parameter) which looks something like this: {lb.city:Local}, into the ad title, text and display URL. The parameter will then be replaced when appropriate with information which matches the location extension (you can use this to replace the city name, post code or phone number).

Location insertions are matched to either the physical location of the searcher or the location they have shown interest in.

Local Searches and Mobile

As people searching on their mobiles are likely to be on the go at the time, they are more likely to be searching for local information and want to know how to reach you.

Location extensions are eligible to show on mobile devices and can work alongside click to call extensions giving people more options on how to reach you. An example of how the extensions appear on mobiles is below; you will be charged for clicks on ‘get directions’ and on the phone number, as well as the headline as usual.

If you need additional advice on how to effectively optimise your PPC account (for computers, mobile or tablets) feel free to give the Digital Clarity team a call on 0845 388 4071.