For those who are familiar with the Google Ads platform, you’ll know it can be very complex and the platform itself contains various variables that all impact performance one way or another. Nobody is perfect and we’re all guilty of human error but making mistakes in your Google Ads management can harm your overall campaign performance. So what are the most common mistakes that occur – are you a victim? Find out by reading below!
Are you implementing negative keywords?
Keywords are the backbone to any Google Ads account; which are ultimately, the words and phrases which we tell Google we would like our ads to show for. But have you considered what you don’t want your ads to show for? This is where your negative keywords come into play. Your negative keywords are the reverse of your standard keywords – highlighting to Google when you don’t want your ads to show.
Now, most Google Ads users are familiar and recognise the importance of adding keywords to their accounts but negative keywords are often forgotten and left behind. Implementing negative keywords in your account regularly is extremely important and should be a crucial part of your account management. Google receives over 63,000 searches per second each day with over 20% of these searches being new. With this in mind, adding negative keywords to your campaign ensures your ads only show when relevant to ensure you’re gaining maximum ROI and not wasting ad spend on irrelevant search terms/phrases.
How are you using your ad groups?
When it comes to ad groups; it’s very easy to add as many keywords to an ad group and allow it to be over-engineered; which will result in your ad group not performing. So what do we mean by ‘over-engineered’? This explains ad groups that contain far too many keywords. It’s only natural to think the more keywords we add to an ad group, the more chance there is of your ads displaying to a user but in fact, you’re probably causing more harm than good.
If your ad groups contain too many keywords, you’re opening up your campaign too broadly and allowing your ads to be shown too much and to the wrong users. This will result in users not clicking on your ads because they won’t be relevant to them OR users clicking on your ads and then bouncing, which is not what we want either. When it comes to ad creation, it becomes extremely difficult to create ads that are relevant to all the keywords contained within your ad group which will reduce your overall quality score. And what happens when your quality score drops? You rank lower on Google! Let’s not let that happen.
Are you using top-performing search terms to your advantage?
It’s very easy to incorporate the keywords into your campaigns that you THINK users are searching for and what you would like your ads to show for, but are you missing some top-performing search terms which could help boost your campaigns?
Looking through the search terms report regularly is crucial – it’s in this report that you will be able to apply both new keywords and negative keywords to your campaign. Look at the search terms which are generating conversions, is there a trend? Are there some recurring key search terms? Use these to your advantage by adding them to your campaign. If there is a specific search term that is appearing often and has a strong conversion rate, you might want to consider adding this as an exact match. Why an exact match? Because you know this exact phrase will convert – eliminating the other irrelevant searches which will come from this keyword. Adding an exact match help your CPA and ultimately allow you to gain a conversion at a much lower cost… more profit for you!
Are you targeting the correct locations?
If you’re running a campaign to advertise your electrician business in Lincoln and you only want to work in a 20-mile radius of your office, make sure you’ve set up your location targeting to target in this radius. Having your ads display in other irrelevant locations will not only cost you a lot of wasteful money, but you’re wasting your marketing efforts which could be more focused on your local area.
In addition to this, there is a very helpful location report within the Google Ads platform which allows you to break down user locations by city. If you were running a campaign that was targeting the whole of the UK, this report will provide you with a good insight into the top-performing cities in the UK which will allow you to adjust your bids accordingly. Why would you want to adjust your bids for specific cities? Well, if you can see from the geographical report that London and Leeds are the two top-performing cities because they both have a good conversion rate and a low CPA – these are two cities you want to try and gain more conversions from. You can adjust your bid adjustments to these cities by increasing the bid by a percentage. On the flip side of this, you can also decrease bids on underperforming cities to prevent further ad spend waste.
So take note, start implementing the above into your ads management and you will notice changes to your performance. Need assistance with your Google Ads management? Speak to our specialist paid search team to see how we can help you get the most from your campaigns!
