Most Important Questions You Need to Know for the Google AdWords Fundamentals Certification Exam

Accounts

Q: When setting up a Google AdWords Account, why should you choose your currency and time zone carefully?
A: These can not be edited once the account is set up.

Q: Which settings are specified at the Account level in AdWords?
A: Email address, password, and billing information.

Q: What happens to the rest of your Google products if you change your password for AdWords?
A: The new password will be required to log in to all other Google products.

Ads

Q: Your ad includes the phrase, “Your friend has a crush on you. See who!” and it gets disapproved. Why?
A: AdWords policy does not allow ads to simulate email inbox notifications or fake friend/crush requests.

Q: What is the formula for ad rank on the Search Network?
A: Maximum Cost Per Click X Quality Score.

Q: What is the best way to achieve the top position in paid search results?
A: Improve the Quality Score and raise the Cost Per Click.

Q: How should you check to see if your ads are still running on Google?
A: Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool.   Tools -> Ad Preview and Diagnosis

Q: Why should you use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to check if your ads are live and running on Google?
A: By searching for keywords that trigger your ad, you can rack up impressions without clicks, which may lower your Click-Through Rate, which may prevent your ad from appearing as often as it is eligible.

Q: Why should you identify special offers before building an AdWords campaign?
A: In order to create compelling text for your ad creatives.

Q: All other things equal, if your closest competitor’s bid is $0.25, how much will you pay to show your ad in a higher position?
A: $0.26

Q: What is the formula for ranking keyword-targeted ads on the Search Network?
A: Maximum Cost Per Click x Quality Score.

Q: What are some phrases that are not allowed, according to Google Ad Policies?
A: Call To Action phrases like “Click here,” or “See this site.”

Q: True or false. “Click here” can be used in an ad.
A: False. This phrase violates Google’s Ad Policies.

Q: How can you create effective ad text?
A: Best practices include using prices, promotions, and exclusive offers in your ads.

Ad Extensions

Q: How are +1s calculated for your ad and Google+ page when using the social extension on your ads?
A: +1s from your Google+ page show in the count that is visible on your ad.

Q: What can a location extension do?
A: Assist nearby customers in finding or calling your nearest location.

Q: With the sitelinks extension set at both the campaign and Ad Group level, which ones will be displayed?
A: The sitelinks at the Ad Group level will be displayed.

Ad Groups

Q: Why is it a bad idea to duplicate keywords in multiple Ad Groups?
A: Keywords in multiple ad groups compete against each other, and the keyword with the higher performance will trigger the ad in that Ad Group to run.

Q: What is the effect of including both keywords and placements in an Ad Group on the Display Network?
A: Your ads will be restricted to only specific sites that you choose and webpages where the content is relevant to the theme of the keywords.

Q: Why is it important to group similar keywords together in an Ad Group?
A: To ensure that the ads remain relevant to those keywords.

Q: Why is it a good idea to create multiple Ad Groups?
A: You can break up keywords and ads and group them by related themes.

Q: What should Ad Groups be organized around?
A: Common themes.

Q: True or false. Placements can be controlled at the Ad Group level.
A: True.

Q: What impact can poor landing page quality have on an Ad Group?
A: Keywords in the Ad Group may be given a lower Quality Score.

Q: What should you use Ad Groups for?
A: To organize ads by common themes that you want to advertise on.

Bidding

Q: What is the maximum CPC?
A: The highest amount of money an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on their ad.

Q: What does Smart Pricing mean?
A: Google may automatically reduce your CPC bids on pages on the Display Network that are less likely to turn into an actionable business result.

Q: When is Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) bidding not available?
A: If your campaign is opted in to the Search Network.

Q: What is the main goal of automatic Cost Per Click bidding?
A: To generate as many clicks as possible within the advertiser’s target budget.

Q: What is one effect using setting a daily budget lower than the recommended amount?
A: Ads will not show every time that a user searches for the keywords that could trigger the ad.

Q: What is important to keep in mind about manual Cost Per Click bidding?
A: The average profit derived from a paid click.

Q: Which bid methods are used for image ads on the Display Network?
A: CPM or CPC bids.

Q: When a CPM and CPC bid compete against each other, how does Google determine each ad’s position?
A: Google estimates how many clicks the ad might receive in 1000 impressions to get the comparison.

Q: What is Enhanced Cost Per Click?
A: ACPC bidding features to automatically bid more aggressively in auctions more likely to result in conversions. (More then 30%)

Campaigns

Q: What does a “Pending” Campaign in AdWords signify?
A: It is Inactive, but scheduled to begin at a date/time in the future.

Q: What is one main benefit of using Google AdWords?
A: Ads are displayed to users who search for your particular products or services.

Q: With a new campaign, what effect can the AdWords average daily budget have on achieving positive ROI?
A: It can keep costs and exposure limited until profitability is achieved.

Q: What does the Optimize ad rotation setting do?
A: It allows the AdWords system to show the better performing ad more often than lower performing ads.

Q: You have a new product line and want to allocate additional budge to promoting it. What’s the best way to do this?
A: Create a campaign with a separate daily budget to promote just the new product line.

Q: What can the Opportunities tab be used to do?
A: Find keyword, bid, and budget ideas to improve campaign performance.

Q: Why is it important to monitor ad campaign performance?
A: In order to determine if campaigns meet business marketing and conversion goals.

Q: What is one benefit of not using a predetermined budget for AdWords advertising, compared to radio, print, and TV advertising?
A: Online campaigns are highly measurable and may be able to generate an automatic positive ROI. As long as ROI remains positive, it can be strategic to capture all traffic without a predetermined budget.

Q: Which budget delivery method should you use to distribute ads evenly over the course of a day?
A: Standard.

Q: True or False. With the Accelerated delivery method of ads, ads are shown as frequently as possible until the daily budget is spent.
A: True.

Q: With an ad serving option set to Optimize, how will AdWords handle multiple variations of text ads in the same Ad Group?
A: AdWords will try to show the best performing ad more often than lower performing ads.

Click-Through Rate

Q: How does a low CTR on the Display Network affect your Search Network Quality Score?
A: It doesn’t. Your ad performance, including CTR, does not affect your rank for search ads. A low CTR on the Display Network does not affect your Search Network Quality Score.

Q: If you have a keyword with a low CTR, what can you expect?
A: A lower Quality Score on the Search Network.

Q: What is one way you can increase CTRs?
A: Add negative keywords to the ad group to reduce irrelevant impressions.

Conversions

Q: Why does a lower Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) not indicate a higher profit?
A: A lower CPA may be accompanied by lower sales volume, reducing overall profit.

Q: What can you expect if you raise your bids?
A: More conversions and a higher CPA, in general.

Q: What can you expect if you lower your bids?
A: Fewer conversions and a lower CPA, in general.

Display Network

Q: What effect does using managed placements have on your campaign?
A: Your ads will show on webpages, videos, games, RSS feeds, mobile sites, and apps that you have specifically selected.

Q: What does Smart Pricing mean?
A: Google may automatically reduce your CPC bids on pages on the Display Network that are less likely to turn into an actionable business result.

Q: What is the effect of including both keywords and placements in an Ad Group on the Display Network?
A: Your ads will be restricted to only specific sites that you choose and webpages where the content is relevant to the theme of the keywords.

Q: How does adding placements to an Ad Group affect its Quality Score for the Search Network?
A: Placements are used on the Display Network, so they do not affect Quality Score on the Search Network.

Q: Should you use plurals, misspellings, and other variants of words in Ad Groups in the Display Network?
A: Since the Display Network considers broad match only, plurals, misspellings, and other variants are unnecessary.

Q: Which bid methods are used for image ads on the Display Network?
A: CPM or CPC bids.

Q: By including keywords in an Ad Group, how does Google automatically determine where ads on the Display Network might show?
A: Automatic placements would be used to target sites by context whose content shares the same themes as the keywords in the Ad Group.

Q: How do Managed Placements work?
A: Advertisers can manually specify which websites their ads appear on throughout the Display Network.

Q: What is used to determine Quality Score on the Display Network?
A: The quality of the landing page.

Q: How can the Contextual Targeting Tool help you?
A: It can show you potential webpages where your ad can show up based on your keywords.

Keywords

Q: Why is it a bad idea to duplicate keywords in multiple Ad Groups?
A: Keywords in multiple ad groups compete against each other, and the keyword with the higher performance will trigger the ad in that Ad Group to run.

Q: From which AdWords tool can you get ideas for negative keyword and placement exclusions?
A: The placement performance report.

Q: What is keyword contextual targeting?
A: It is when themes of keywords are matched by AdWords to relevant content on various websites that run Google ads.

Q: For a direct response campaign, which keywords should an advertise delete or consider not using at all?
A: Keywords that generate a lot of impressions with very few conversions.

Q: Under the new match type policies, if you use the exact match keyword [red shoe], will your ad appear for plurals and misspellings?
A: Yes. This is a new change in Google AdWords policies.

Q: Does the Display Network take into account match types like phrase and exact match?
A: No, the Display Network uses only broad match.

Q: Why is it important to group similar keywords together in an Ad Group?
A: To ensure that the ads remain relevant to those keywords.

Q: What can you use the Keyword Tool to do?
A: Find new keywords for advertising campaigns.

Q: If you have a keyword with a low CTR, what can you expect?
A: A lower Quality Score on the Search Network.

Q: True or False. Negative keywords can help you refine the targeting of your ads.
A: True.

Q: True or False. Negative keywords can increase the CTR of ads.
A: True.

Q: Even with an unlimited budget and a positive ROI, what can limit the amount of money you can invest in a campaign?
A: The amount of profitable traffic available for the keywords that your campaign is targeting.

Language

Q: How does the AdWords system decide which ad language to target?
A: Language of ads is determined by the language setting of the Google interface the client is using.

Q: If someone in Russia sets their language preference to English, will they see ads targeted to people in Russia? Will their ads be in Russian or in English?
A: They will see ads targeted to people located in Russia with the ads in English.

Q: What language setting should you use to target a Spanish speaker in the United States?
A: Spanish.

Q: True or False. In order to target Spanish speaking users with Spanish language ads in the United States, adjust the language targeting settings.
A: True.

Location

Q: Where can an advertiser change the location targeting of an ad?
A: Location targeting is set at the campaign level.

Q: What is a primary benefit of location targeting?
A: The ability to target combinations of countries, territories, and regions.

Q: True or False. Google can use the IP address of users to target ads based on location.
A: True.

My Client Center(MCC)

Q: What is one benefit of My Client Center?
A: A dashboard that provides summaries of different metrics for all of your clients’ accounts.

Q: What is the primary function of the My Client Center account?
A: An umbrella account for access to individual accounts with a single login.

Q: What is one way to limit a user’s access to only a specific number of accounts in the MCC?
A: Create a new MCC account linked to the original MCC account. Move the specified number of accounts into that MCC and grant the user access to the sub-MCC account.

Mobile Ads

Q: How can you get greater exposure on mobile devices?
A: Enable bid adjustments and bid higher on mobile devices.

Quality Score

Q: How does a low CTR on the Display Network affect your Search Network Quality Score?
A: It doesn’t. Your ad performance, including CTR, does not affect your rank for search ads. A low CTR on the Display Network does not affect your Search Network Quality Score.

Q: What is the formula for ad rank on the Search Network?
A: Maximum Cost Per Click X Quality Score.

Q: What are some recommendations for increasing Quality Score for a keyword?
A: Edit the ad associated with that keyword and direct users to a landing page that is very relevant.

Q: What happens when the Quality Score of a keyword is increased?
A: The ad may earn a higher average position.

Q: When are Quality Score and Ad Rank calculated?
A: Every time someone conducts a search where your ad is eligible to appear.

Q: What does a higher Quality Score typically lead to?
A: Lower costs and higher ad positions.

Q: How often is Quality Score evaluated?
A: Each time someone does a search that triggers your ad.

Q: What is used to determine Quality Score on the Display Network?
A: The quality of the landing page.

Q: How does a low CTR on the Display Network affect your Search Network Quality Score?
A: Ad performance on the Display Network does not affect rank for Search Ads or Search Network Quality Score.

Search Network

Q: What is the best bidding option for clients that want to spend the least amount of time setting and managing individual keyword bids?
A: Automatic Cost Per Click (CPC) Use Automation

Q: What is the formula for ad rank on the Search Network?
A: Maximum Cost Per Click X Quality Score.

Q: How is advertising cost accrued on the Search Network:
A: Costs are accrued when someone clicks on an ad that is displayed on the Search Network.

Q: What is the formula for ranking keyword-targeted ads on the Search Network?
A: Maximum Cost Per Click x Quality Score.

Q: What effect do negative keywords have on Ad Groups in a Search Network campaign?
A: The ad will not show if the negative keyword appears in the user’s search query.

Q: What happens if a Search Network campaign consistently reaches its daily budget?
A: There will be missed potential ad impressions.

Q: True or False. You can pay for specific placement in top ad positions in the Search Network.
A: True.

Q: True or False: You can pay for specific placement in top positions in the natural search results.
A: False.

Q: How can Search Network marketing help you reach your advertising goals?
A: By acquiring potential qualified customers.

Q: What are the minimum requirements to run an ad on the Search Network?
A: Text ad, keyword list, and a default bid.

Q: How often does AdWords run an auction to determine which ads will be shown on the search results page?
A: An auction is run every time a users enters a search query.

Video Ads

Q: You want to pay when a user views your video ad through a cost-per-view advertising model. Which of Google’s services would be most appropriate?
A: True, View video formats would allow this model of payment through YouTube advertising.

Question: What is the formula for calculating cost per customer acquisition?
Answer: Total marketing budget for a specific period divided by the number of new customers for that same period.
Question: What is “cost per customer acquisition”?
Answer: The amount a company pays a customer to try their product
Question: How much a company pay for the given example: Ad displays 20 times, 2 users click the ad, cost per click is 5 cents.
Answer: 10 cents
Question: What is “cost per action”?
Answer: Same as pay per click

Question: What is an “impression”?
Answer: When your ad is displayed on a page online, not necessarily clicked on
Question: What is affiliate marketing?
Answer: When a 3rd party helps market your business, and in turn your pay them a commission based on sales as a result of their efforts
Question: How is the pricing model of a click determined?
Answer: Google sets the price worldwide
Question: How is the “open rate” important?
Answer: it lets the company know how many people bought a product
Question: What is a “value proposition”?
Answer: The pricing of the product
Question: Why would a company possibly want to spend more on PPC early on?
Answer: To drive traffic to their site and increase awareness
Question: What are the four P’s of marketing?
Answer: Product, promotion, procedures, procurement
Question: What is the purpose of a traditional press release?
Answer: It target markets to internet users
Question: What is Actual CPC?
Answer: Actual CPC = (AdRank to beat/QS) + $0.01

Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing Guide for Beginner’s

When I first started out in PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing) I knew little about this industry. I had this rough idea that PPC ads were these little yellow text ads on top of Google’s search results. When I searched for something like “buy MacBook Pro in London” I was immediately shown a few ads which were offering exactly what I was looking for. Another thing I knew is that every time I clicked on an ad Google would make money from it. Actually, a whopping 96% of Google’s revenue came from advertising in 2011.

As I learned more about PPC I saw that there is much more to it than most people think. Paid Search is a very complex area of marketing, which is also quite competitive. Most retail brands already use PPC in one way or the other – either by themselves or through affiliates.

If you have your own website, online shop, plan on starting one, or if you just want to learn the basics of PPC, than the following will be especially interesting for you.

Before starting to set-up your first campaign you have to know a few basics, which will help you to understand how the whole process of creating and managing a PPC account really works.

PPC is Not Just About Google

One thing you need to know first: Google is not the only search engine, which provides PPC advertising services. In fact, every single search engine does it!
Besides Google AdWords, there is Bing (Microsoft) adCenter, Yandex Direct (Russia) and Baidu Paid Search (China) amongst many others.

And it’s Not Just Text Ads in SERPs

Another misconception about PPC is that it only serves ads on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Let’s take Google as an example:

As we all know, Google’s network is huge! Sites like YouTube, Blogger, Google Maps & Google News all belong to Google. This means that your ads can also be served on these sites.

Have you ever seen an ad before a YouTube video or a little text ad on the bottom of it? Or have you seen text ads next to some articles yoy read online? Yep, that’s paid search. You see, it’s also not always text ads. Google AdWords allows advertisers to use (animated) banner ads, text ads and video ads.
Also, Google has an option, which is called “Managed Placements“. This means that if a website joins Google’s advertising network (i.e. The Guardian), advertisers can place their banner ad directly on the website.

This 101 will be mostly about text ads, as this is the most common way of doing PPC.

Benefits of PPC

Why would somebody use PPC advertising? PPC gives you the opportunity to drive traffic to your website extremely fast. Once you create your campaign(s) your ads will start showing within 1-2 days. It gives your brand visibility, increases traffic and, if you have an online business, it can give you a nice revenue bump if you do it right. One of the retail-client accounts I was working on generated nearly 40% of their online revenue through paid search advertising. And that’s quite normal.

Besides everything mentioned above, there is one more benefit, which is, in my opinion, the most important one. PPC advertising gives you total control over your advertising campaigns and lets you track every single cent you have spent and received. This way you can easily calculate the ROI of your advertising and optimize your campaigns for maximum performance.

Also, Google is now increasing the amount of advertising on SERPs and decreases the amount of “organic” search results. Google already tested result pages with only 7 natural results, compared to the regular 10.

How to Start

So you are interested in starting a campaign of your own? It’s fairly simple to do if you know how to use a computer and follow the instructions below.

1. Create an AdWords account. Follow these instructions on how to create an AdWords account.
2. Choose the keywords, which you want to trigger your ads. For example: if you sell TVs, you probably want to appear for the search term “buy TV”. This is just one of the thousands (or even millions) of possible keywords.
3. When doing keyword research, check your keywords in the Google Keyword Tool, which will show you the search volume (popularity) of your keywords and other “keyword ideas”. I will describe the process of keyword research later in this post.
4. Determine your audience: know the people you are selling to. This doesn’t mean that you have to shake hands with every single one of them. Know what your target audience is about. Know what they like, what they do, how they behave. Check out the article about How to Define Your Target Audience.

Ad Rank – Who Gets The Top Position?

Back in the days when PPC was just starting out there was only one way to determine which ad will show higher on the page and which won’t show at all: plain auction. The one advertiser who bids higher gets the better position in the SERPs. That was in the past.

But now the situation has changed. Google has a system which helps the search engine to control advertising quality by making it a ranking factor. The formula looks like this: Ad Rank = max. CPC (the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad) multiplied by the so-called “Quality Score”. The higher your Quality Score, the lower will be your CPC. The advertiser with the higher ad rank will get the better position.

Quality Score

Now you should know that Quality Score (from now on “QS”) is a very important factor in your advertising on Google.
QS is some kind of mystery for advertisers. There are a bunch of criteria, which are known for having influence on your QS, but nobody knows the exact factors.
Some factors influencing Quality Score are:

1. The relevance of your landing page to the keyword
2. The relevance of your ad to the keyword
3. The performance of your landing page – a slow-loading website will get a lower QS
4. Your Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
5. Historical performance of your campaigns

Basically, the higher your overall relevance, the higher your Quality Score. For sure, there are way more influencing factors, but these 3 are the most basic ones everybody should know about.

Account Structure

Before creating a new advertising campaign you should first know how you will structure everything. There are a few “layers”, which will make up your account: The actual Account > Campaigns > Ad Groups > Keywords. Meaning that your Keywords are bound to a group of ads. This group of ads is part of a campaign. The campaign will be part of your account. Simple as that.

Choose Your Keywords

Now you should choose a list of keywords, which you want to trigger your adverts. To do that, go to the Keyword Research Tool and enter the keywords you had in mind. This tool will not only help you to estimate how popular the keywords are but it will also give you a list of related keywords or “Keyword Ideas”.

Let’s assume that you choose 10 keywords you want to appear for. For example, you have the keyword “buy TV in London”. But what happens when somebody searches for “buy TV in London online”? This is where so-called “Keyword Match Types” come in.

Keyword Match Types

Let’s take the keyword “buy TV in London” and try to use it with the three different matching options.
There are 3 ways to match your keyword to a search query:

1. Broad Match

This matching option would make your ad show for the query “new TV buy in London online”. This is why this match type is called “Broad”.

2. Phrase Match

This type needs the search query to have the exact same word order as your keyword, but can have additional words in front or behind it. Meaning that your ad would be triggered if somebody would search for “online buy TV in London cheap”.

3. Exact Match

Exact Match is pretty much self-explanatory. Your ad is triggered ONLY if the search query matches your keyword EXACTLY.

A few months ago, Google introduced an option to opt-in for “Near Match”. This option allows Google to trigger your ad if the search query “closely matches” your keyword, is a plural/singular or a common misspelling. So you won’t have to worry about that.

But let’s say that you sell only Samsung TV’s and don’t want to waste your budget for people looking for Panasonic TV’s. Don’t worry, Google has taken care of that, too. AdWords allows you to add “negative keywords”. If your keyword is “buy TV in London” and you add the negative keyword “-Panasonic”, than the search query “buy Panasonic TV in London” won’t trigger your ad. You can add whole lists of negative keywords to your campaigns.

These matching options give you total control over the queries, which trigger your ads. Making sure that you have enough negative keywords will help you to not waste your advertising budget and improve your Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

CTR (%) = Clicks / Impressions.

source