How To Improve Your Google Ads Campaign’s Performance

Google Ads can be extremely effective in targeting new customers, driving traffic to your site, and ultimately, increasing conversions, but, are your Google Ads campaigns running at optimum capacity? In our experience as a Google Ads accredited agency, we often see the same issues holding businesses back in their Google advertising.

Get your match type right

There are three main keyword match types that can be used to either broaden or tighten your campaign’s targeting, they are; broad match, phrase match and exact match. Here’s what each one means:

Broad match

The default match type. A keyword that has been set to broad match will show if the keywords are used in the search, regardless of the order. Whilst this can be useful for building brand awareness, broad match keywords can lead to quickly exhausted budgets as your keywords are seen more frequently, and not always for relevant searches. An example for this is men’s shirts. As a retailer you may specialise in collared and button shirts, however, as ads will show regardless of the order, your ads may be shown for searches such as “men’s football shirts”, which may lead to you spending money for irrelevant traffic to your website.

Phrase match

Phrase match ads show for searches that match a phrase, or are close variations of that phrase. This leads to stronger targeting, and provides more control that may be afforded from solely using broad match. To add a phrase match keyword, simply add “ and ” to either side of your keyword, for example “men’s hats” would show your adverts for searches such as “cool men’s hats” and “buy men’s hats”.

Exact match

Exact match type shows your ad on searches that match the exact term or are close variations of that exact term. This leads to even stronger targeting, however, you may see a drop in the number of clicks and impressions your AdWords campaign receives. . To add an exact match keyword, add [ and ] to either side of your keyword. For example, [men’s hats] will only show for the search term “men’s hats”. This will ensure that you are only showing your advertising to relevant searchers, which whilst it should result in a decrease in traffic, your business may see an increase in engagement from Paid Search.

Make use of negative keywords

Negative keywords let you exclude keywords from your campaigns, so that you can ensure that your advertising is not showing for irrelevant searches. When creating a highly targeted campaign it is just as vital to focus on the keywords you don’t want to show for as well as the ones that you do. Below is a suggested list of negative keywords that you could use within your campaign!

Bargain
Career
Careers
Cheap
Class
Classes
Download
Education
Free
Guide
Hire
Hiring
How To
Information
Job
Jobs
Learn
Photo
Photos
Pics
Picture
Pictures
Student
Tutorial
Vacancy
YouTube

Of course, the above negative keywords will not be relevant for every campaign, however it provides a good indication of what type of keywords you should be looking to add in your negative keyword lists. The key is to ensure that your ads are only being shown to relevant, engaged users.

Quality is key

A key component of your advert’s position in search is the Quality Score. Google uses their quality score as an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. Keywords that possess higher Quality Scores can lead to lower cost per click and a higher avg. ad position – increasing the chance of your ad being clicked. The more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the user, the more likely it is that you’ll see a higher Quality Score.

To increase your Quality Score ensure:

• your campaigns contain multiple, targeted ad groups.
• create adverts that contain your targeted keywords.
• create adverts which are relevant to your audience’s search.
• your landing page is relevant to your targeted keywords.

Create multi-channel campaigns

Some visitors may not convert on their first visit to your website from Google Ads. This could be due to their position in the buying cycle, or due to the nature of the product. As such, it’s important to make sure that your business remains in their brand thinking.

A positive way to achieve this is through remarketing. Remarketing shows ads to people who’ve visited your website. When visitors leave your website without buying a product or enquiring about a service, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads across their different devices. There are many options for remarketing with Google Ads, ensuring that your business can target its audience with the right medium. These include:

• Standard remarketing: This campaign type will show your advertisements to your past visitors as they browse sites and apps on the Google Display Network.
• Search remarketing: Show your advertisements to previous visitors as they carry out follow-up searches within Google after leaving your website.
• Dynamic remarketing: Perfect for e-commerce websites, dynamic remarketing allows you to include products or services that people viewed on your website or app to create personalised ads for each individual previous visitor.

For more information about how you can take your Google Ads performance to the next level, speak to one of our expert consultants regarding our range of PPC management solutions. Get in touch today!