Exploring the interface: Google AdWords Essential Training

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Exploring the interface: Google AdWords Essential Training

- In the previous movie, we looked at setting up our first AdWords account. Now let's get familiar with the overall structure of the AdWords interface. Understanding the basic layout of what you see when you log in to AdWords will help you to manage and optimize your account much more efficiently and set you on the road to pay-per-click success. We're here on the page that we saw when we finished setting up our account before, but I'd like to show you an account that already has some information in it as I think it'll help you wrap your head around how this interface looks once you're already set up. So I'm going to switch over to an account that's already been established, and this is what your Campaigns view will normally look like once you have some information and campaigns set up.

Generally, the interface is divided into four top-level areas, and these menu items here at the top of the screen are Home, Campaigns, which is highlighted in blue because that's the page that we're on, Opportunities, and Tools. I'm going to select Home. This section acts as an account dashboard, giving you the highlights of your account performance with a number of modules that you can move around, customize, and even hide from this view. If you'd like to minimize them, choose the minus icon or minimize icon.

The down arrow will allow you to set Options for each of these views, or if you'd like, you can customize the columns within the view itself, and the X icon will hide it. You'll also notice in the upper right-hand corner there is a bell that has this little exclamation point, and this is giving me account alerts, Any time you see an exclamation point, it means you have unread alerts, and you can select that to view the alerts that are available to you. Now, that doesn't have to happen just on your homepage. You can view those alerts from anywhere within AdWords.

Next, I'll choose Campaigns. The layout of the Campaigns section starts with an account tree in the left-hand sidebar. The tree is designed to give you a quick way to navigate through multiple campaigns and ad groups. Here you can see we've got a few campaigns, and if I select into one, it's going to drill in and show me all of the ad groups that are associated with that particular campaign. You'll also notice that here at the top the screen, I have the breadcrumb labeled "All online campaigns" and then a little arrow and that it indicates that I am already in this campaign, which I've labeled "Search, USA, Property Managers," and so on.

To go back to your All online campaigns, you'll select that breadcrumb from above. Now, one thing you'll notice is that because I selected the campaign in the left-hand menu, it's brought up the ad groups, which means that even though I selected the All online campaigns breadcrumb from above, I'm not seeing all of my campaigns down below, and that's because there's this tabbed subnavigation, and you'll notice that Ad groups is selected here just below the heading "All online campaigns." I can choose the Campaigns tab again and see all of my campaigns that are available to me.

Now, this is important because it helps to understand how Google is thinking as you drill through this. Every time you make a selection, these navigation tabs at the top are going to be specific to that parent selection. So because I'm in All online campaigns, all of the tabs here at the top of the screen are going to give me information specific to all of those online campaigns. So if I select Ad groups, I'm going to see all ad groups associated with all of my campaigns, but if I go back to Campaigns and choose, say, this first campaign here that is blue, when I go into Ad groups, I'm only going to see ad groups that are associated with that particular campaign.

So it's an important distinction as you begin to navigate using these subtabs. Let's focus a little bit more on these tabs so you understand what they're all doing. Now, when I first set up my AdWords account, what I like to do is enable the Graph view. You'll choose the graph icon just here below the Ad extensions tab. This is going to show you a graph of the data particular to this tab that you've selected, so I'm seeing clicks associated with all of my campaigns over time, and you can modify what appears here by changing the graph information.

Now, if I go into Ad groups, I'll see that same graph, but now it's associated to the particular information within this ad group. As you navigate between each of these tabs, you'll notice that for the most part everything looks fairly similar. At the top you have the graph and below you have a table view of the information associated with the tab that you've selected. So we have Campaigns and Ad groups followed by Settings, and these are gonna be settings associated to the particular campaign that you're in or all campaigns if you're in the All online campaigns view.

We have Ads, which will show us all of our individual ads, followed by Keywords, and these are all the keywords that are associated with our account. You have your Audiences view, so if you're doing any particular audience remarketing or targeting, you'll see that here. Next, we have the Ad extensions, and we're going to be talking about these in a later movie, but these are special extensions that you can add onto your campaigns, and then you have the Dimensions tab, which is going to bring in a total aggregate view of all of the dimensions over these online campaigns, either all of the online campaigns because I'm in that view or the dimensions specific to a particular campaign or ad group if I selected it from the menu on the left-hand side.

You can also use the Dimensions tab to see your data by different segments, say, time of day, day of week, geographies, and more. Well, let's look at the next area. This is called Opportunities. I'll select this from the navigation above. It's here that you'll see a list of recommended actions that you can take in your account along with some estimates as to what might happen if you took those actions. Here an opportunity suggested to me is to "Add new keywords to get your ads "in front of more potential customers." Then it suggests that I'll get 7,820 more impressions if I add 107 new keywords to five ad groups, and then I could select here to view those opportunities.

Next up is the Tools area, and here you don't have a main screen, but instead when you select the link, a list of some of the most useful tools that you'll be using as you build and manage your campaigns appears. We'll be looking at a number of these in detail later in the course, but for now just know that it's under this tab that you'll find things like your Conversions tools, Attribution tools, a link to Google Analytics along with the Keyword Planner, which will come in very handy as you begin creating your ad campaigns. Also in the top right, you'll notice this gear icon, and if you select the gear icon, that's how you'll arrive at your Billing, Account Settings, also have an opportunity to Send feedback and look for Help.

As you work more and more on this interface, you'll find that navigating to where you need to be becomes quick and easy. Take time to explore the interface as understanding where to find what you need will help you be more efficient when you're creating, maintaining, and optimizing your campaigns.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/google-adwords-essential-training-2/exploring-the-interface