9 Telltale Signs That Your Google Ads Campaign Can Be Improved

Google Ads can be a great way to increase traffic to your website and generate leads and sales. If you’ve set up your own campaigns, or you’re not sure if your agency is getting you the best return, here are some things that you can check.

#1: Don’t Treat Your Google Ads As Set and Forget

Get a better return from your ad campaign by logging in regularly and making updates.

Understand how your campaign is performing, and if it’s helping you meet your business objective
Pause keywords that have a high conversion cost
Check that high converting keywords aren’t limited by budget
Optimise your ad copy
Check the Search Terms report and add new negative keywords.

If you don’t have the time, skills or resources to effectively monitor and optimise your ads, consider working with a Google Partner agency who can improve your results.

#2: Your Google Ads and Analytics Accounts Aren’t Linked

Although they are both Google products, Ads and Analytics don’t automatically talk to each other. You need to link them so that you get complete information about how your Ads visitors behave once they arrive at your website.

Do the linking within Google Analytics. Go to the Admin cog at the bottom of the left hand column, then select AdWords Linking in the middle column and follow the steps.

#3: You Don’t Have Conversion Tracking set up

Conversion tracking let’s you see how effectively your ad campaign is generating sales or enquiries, and whether they are profitable. It’s critical for understanding the return from your AdWords investment and for gathering data that you can use to improve your campaigns.

Types of conversions that you can track include:

Calls made once people click through to your website
Call made when people click on a ‘Call Extension’ when they see your ad on a mobile device
Online enquiries
eCommerce transactions
Views of a key page.

#4: All Your Keywords Are Broad Match

There are four different match types that you can use for the keywords in your Search campaign.

While broad match has the potential to bring the most clicks through to your website, using other match types like Broad Match Modified, Phrase Match and Exact Match will bring more targeted visitors and can have a lower cost per conversion.

#5: You’re Not Using Negative Keywords (Which Stop Your Ads Showing For Inappropriate Searches).

Negative keywords are critical for making sure that your ads are showing up for the right search terms.

As an example, you could be running ads for the keyword +plumber +south +melbourne, where you want to pay for clicks from people looking for a plumber, but not from people looking for a job as a plumber. So you can add Negative keywords like:

Job
Jobs
Apprentice
Apprenticeship
Employment
Recruiter
Recruitment

Get the idea? I also recommend Google searching for your keywords to get ideas for negative keywords to add based on the search results. Google suggest can also give you ideas.

#6: You Only Have One Version of Your Ad Copy

Search campaigns allow you to add multiple versions of your ad copy, so that you can test which version gets the highest Click Through Rate (which means that more people who see the ad click on it).

Start with a minimum of three versions. Then check your campaign settings so that Ad Rotations is set to: Optimise: Prefer Best Performing Ads.

Try varying the Headline 2 to include a Call To Action such as “Book an Appointment Online” or text that describes the benefits of your product or service such as “Fast Australia Wide Delivery” or “10 Year Warranty”.

Listen to my podcast interview about How to Write Profitable Ads.

#7: You’re Not Using Ad Extensions to make your ad bigger and more prominent.

Ad Extensions appear underneath the main part of the ad, which is made up of the Headlines and Description.

Ad Extensions include:

Sitelinks which are links to different pages of your website
Callouts which are short phrases of up to 25 characters
Call Extension which adds your phone number to the ad
Structured Snippets are a list of details such as services or product types
Location Extensions add your business address from your Google My Business listing.

Read more about how to make your ads stand out with Ad Extensions.

#8: All Your Keywords Are Dumped Together In One Ad Group

People searching in Google want to see relevant search results, including ads, that get them straight to the information they are searching for.

In terms of Google Ads Search campaigns, Google rewards high quality ads that get clicked on frequently and give the searcher the information they want. Over time, if you maintain a high quality score, your ads can achieve a higher ad position and you’ll pay less per click.

Include the main keyword in the ad headline and in the headline of the landing page to add relevance and improve the keyword quality scores.

For example if you’re promoting two different services such as “plumber Melbourne” and “hot water repairs”, don’t jumble them in the same ad group. Instead create two ad groups so that you can use the main keyword in the ad headline, and direct the ads to the landing page that is most relevant to the service.

Read more in this article from WordStream

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/03/06/adwords-account-structure

#9: Your Landing Page Doesn’t Makes It Easy For People To Take Action

It’s the job of the ad to win the click ie to get the person to visit your website. But once they have clicked it’s the job of your landing page to get people to act ie to win the conversion.

Features of a good landing page include:

The text is relevant to what the person searched for, and follows through from the offer in the ad copy
The page includes relevant, useful and original content
Is easy to use on Desktops, Tablets and Mobile Devices
Is fast to load
It’s easy to act, for example there is a prominent button that people can click on, there’s a shopping cart that’s easy to use and/or has a phone number that’s easy to see and is ‘click-to-call’.

Once you have your Search campaigns in tip top shape, also consider adding different types of Ad Campaigns such as Remarketing, Display, Shopping and Video.

Need help getting the best return from your Google Ad campaigns?

We offer a range of services including a one-off health check, training and consulting and fully outsourced Ads management.

Complete our online enquiry form to get a quote

About Melinda
Melinda aka Mel is a Google Partner, Google Ads & Consultant, Speaker and Trainer and co-owner of Click-Winning Content. Mel provides results-driven services to organisations around the world and is committed to never using an acronym without explaining it first. She also likes greyhounds as pets, grand slam tennis, cracked pepper and Melbourne sunsets. Please connect at the links below.

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