"I have read its best to set the bid to 30% of the suggested price, are there any additional guidance."

For Google, CTR is king (everyone wins: no clicks = no one gets paid) and because your account history clock is always ticking, you need to get highest CTR as quickly as possible.
So the strategy should [...]

"I notice that some adwords ads have bold words in their headings. How do I achieve that?"
a good question with an easy answer – include your keywords in the headline.
In fact, without overdoing it, it’s very important to include keywords wherever possible and appropriate in your ad.
They are then bolded and invite a higher response [...]

You don’t want Ad Impressions that cost you CTR, money, or both.
A client I ran a recent training course for was concerned that rival Companies in India were searching on his keywords, triggering his ads, diluting his CTR, and maybe costing him ad clicks.
If you’re running ads in the UK, someone overseas can search on [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s rare and exotic!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
You just uploaded new keywords. Often there will be a short delay while Google analyses them
If they are "rare and exotic", Google may pause them before running.
By this, I mean phrase and exact match types with 3, [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s a negative!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
One of your Negative keywords is suppressing it.
You’re using negatives – right?
If you’re using any broad or phrase match keywords in your Campaigns, this is seriously important.
Only exact match keywords are exempt from this.
Negative keywords are a highly [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s Inactive!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
If your keyword Quality Score is Poor, your bid price will be inflated.
Quality Score was introduced to weed out people trying to game the system and building automated, rubbishy websites with no real value.
Google prizes relevance – always, and [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s invisible!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
If your bid price is too low, your AdRank will suffer.
So your ads will languish low down in the list.
No one will see them if they are too low down.
So no one will click and your CTR will suffer.
This [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A.  when it’s a cheap-skate!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
If your daily budget is too low, your ad delivery will be "throttled" to space your ads out evenly during the day for maximum exposure (unless you deliberately set your campaign to "accelerated").
This will be exacerbated if you’ve [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s Politically Incorrect!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
Google’s url policy is now being rigidly enforced.
You have to be using the same root url in your display url as your destination url.
No more redirects
Your ad will be Disapproved if you are trying the old Affiliate method [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s counterfeit!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
You are infringing someone’s Trademark.
You can bid on a Trademarked term, but you can’t have it in your ad without permission.
Your ad will show status Disapproved.
Trademarks are a BIG issue.
But sometimes this will clearly not apply, and you can [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s just going nowhere!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
This time, the Rabbit Hole Goes TOO Deep!
Your ad has a broken url and leads into cyber-infinity.
Google will usually disapprove the ad and email you, but not always.
Sometimes there’s a delay, or you need to check manually.
Also, [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s a "legal alien"!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
Your ad is running overseas and you ran a local search looking for it.
Try this Tip here.

Back to AdWords Support home

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s dead broke!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
Your Daily Budget is all used up and your ads have turned off.
Just wait until tomorrow, or increase your daily budget in the Campaign settings
You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s one of the "Usual Suspects"!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
You just uploaded new keywords. Sometimes there can be a short delay if Google has pulled your keyword or ad for a "random quality check".
This is not visible in any tool they provide.
Often [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. when it’s jet-lagged!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
You’re running your ad which has an account in a different timezone.
Make sure you don’t have a schedule conflict and your ad has not yet "woken up".
You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. When it’s travelling at the speed of light!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
You just uploaded new keywords. Often there will be a short delay while the Google servers catch up.
Just wait a few minutes, or try searching for it again later.
You can always view keyword status [...]

 
Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 
A. When it’s not got Parental Permission!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.
Why Not?
Your account is not yet activated.
Don’t forget to enter your payment details.

Back to AdWords Support home

If you’ve outsourced your AdWords management to an external agency, they should be managing your account proactively and professionally - right?
So they should be running ad split testing to see whenever you get a winning ad, so they can try and improve your ad performance to lower click costs.
Even more important (yes really) than keeping Control [...]

If you’ve outsourced your AdWords management to an external agency, they should be managing your account proactively and professionally - right?
So they should be running ad split testing to see whenever you get a winning ad, so they can try and improve your ad performance.
To be statistically confident of a winning ad, each should have accrued [...]

Yes.
Every individual keyword can have it’s own destination url (landing page) and bid price.
But if you have large quantities of keywords, this can become very labour-intensive to manage.
I recommend a small group of keywords per ad group, and use the ad as the default destination url for the whole group, rather than setting individual keyword [...]