Some Advice and Great Practices for Adwords Newbies

We have spend some time here throwing together a great set of metrics and best practices to follow and look for in Adwords Campaigns.  That will help us keep track and recall all the best practices and also reminds everyone to stick to them.  This is definitely a bit of advice to beginners.
SEM campaigns are usually focused on stats and numbers while managing accounts both large and small.  Every ad group, or keyword usually requires an in-depth search depending on what you are wanting to gain from it, and what your specific goals are for it.  Marketing is statistics when you think about it. So here are some key features to look for in the Adwords world for all you newbies!
Quality Score
Budgets can change depending on goals and finances in the company or project you are working with.  Quality Score is one of the most important metrics that you can use to determine cost per click, and ad position.  Paying attention to this number will keep your budget in good shape.
Quality Score is basically a mix of a few small but important factors.  They would include:
-Click through rate
-Relevance of Keyword to its Adgroup
-Landing Page Quality
-Relevance of Keywords to the Ad Copy
-Overall performance History
-Load Time and other relevancy factors(google’s secret, basically)
Quality Score is not an overnight win, and it takes quite a bit of time, but when you get it right, you will have mastered the art of keeping money in hand for the hard times.
Click Through Rate
Click Through Rate is probably the next thing you want to keep an eye on, after Quality Score.  This will help determine if your ads are targeting the right audience.  Also, it helps in benchmarking which keywords are doing better over time.
If you can do it right, your customers will not run away, but will run towards you, obviously bringing their money to spend.  This also plays into calculating our next topic, Conversion Rate.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate basically means how well your ads and campaigns are reaching the goals you set.  Conversion rate is calculated as total conversions/total viewsx100.  If your conversion rate is only .5%, you will then know to look at the Ad Campaign and adjust to that you are targeting the right audience, and getting the conversions you need to help balance out cost of clicks and make the profit you are looking for.
 
Lastly, I would recommend that as a newbie, you explore EVERYTHING in Adwords, and find out exactly what it has to offer.  It has tons of tools to help you be successful, find out how to use them!