Google Ads is not the easiest platform to use, especially if you are a beginner. There are plenty of settings and options. And though making mistakes is not a great thing in general, failing to do things right with some of the settings will not cause you major harm, whilst with others can negatively influence your Google Ads performance big time.
Just a quick note before we continue: if you are a bigger fan of Social Media and you are not currently running any Google Ads campaigns, do not worry, next week we will be covering the 5 mistakes that might be harming your Facebook Ads.
Today we are going to give you some ideas of what you might need to check, and improve, in your Google Ads account to see better results as soon as within the next few weeks. So, here are five mistakes that you definitely do not want to make:
1. Packing all your different products and targets into one campaign, or worse, one ad group
Coming up with a good Google Ads account structure is a great part of achieving success in this channel. Do not try to combine everything into one campaign thinking it will be easier to manage it this way. In fact, it will make it more difficult for you to control your budget spend and to make your targeting more precise. The easiest way to decide on the structure of the campaigns is to divide them either by different targets (by country, by language, by a specific profile of the customer), or by products/ services you provide. Make sure that if you put a few different things into the same campaign, those things share the same logic/ budget or, in other words, the same end goal.
2. Not dividing keywords into closely related groups
This is the next step in the process of planning and organising your account. After dividing your products and targets into campaigns and doing a proper keyword research, you’ll most likely end up with a rather large number of keywords and their variations. Just copying all of them into one ad group is one of the most frequent mistakes we see in Google Ads accounts. You want your keywords to be very closely related to each other within one ad group. This way you will be able to write ads that will also be closely related to your keywords, and thus be more relevant for the search queries of users. The quality of your ads and keywords will be higher and this will result in a lower cost-per-click (CPC) – definitely an outcome worth working for.
3. Using only broad match keywords
You really want to explore what different keyword matches mean. Without going into too much detail, you need to know that if you just copy the keywords you like into your campaign, you might end up getting clicks from users that are searching for completely different things, while Google Ads will still match those searches to your keywords. This happens because just copying a keyword into your campaign, means you are choosing a broad match, and thus Google will show your ads not only to users that are using your keyword in their search, but also to the ones searching for ‘misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations’. Very frequently a ‘relevant variation’ of your service or product might be something you do not actually sell or do, which will result in users abandoning your website because they cannot find what they are looking for. You will end up paying for irrelevant clicks. There are quite a few keyword match types in Google Ads but all of them differ in ‘how close’ is what people are entering into Google’s search bar to the keywords that you’ve chosen. Take a better look and do some research on this topic to make sure you are making an educated choice when you decide on your match type – you can, for example, read more about this directly in Google Ads’ support. Just changing that alone can bring you some huge money savings.
4. Not using negative keywords
This one is closely related to the previous point. Sometimes Google matches your ads to searches that are not relevant for you. This is normal, you do not need to turn off the keyword that brought you some irrelevant clicks or immediately change it. There is a way to educate Google on what you really need. Every time you notice an irrelevant search there is the option to add it to your negative keywords. This means that Google will save this search as something you do not want, and thus will never show your ads again to people using that search query. But be careful, match types apply here as well. You don’t want to over-limit your account.
5. Not choosing a landing page wisely
This is the most frequent issue that leads to the “Google Ads is a waste of money” statement. Having a perfectly optimised account is just half of what you need to start making money with the help of Google Ads, rather than just spending it without any result. The second and most important part is your landing page. When a user clicks on your ads, he is expecting to see exactly what he is looking for and in the exact way the ad promised. However, lots of advertisers aim all their ads for their website’s homepage. Guess what? Users land on the page, don’t see the product, service or promotion the ad was talking about immediately on the first screen, close the website, and go back to the search results page.
You need your landing page to match your ads in the most exact way possible. Also, you need to make sure your page displays all the advantages of your product/ service and answers any doubts or questions that may arise. The copy of your PPC landing page should be straightforward, short, and to the point. The design also matters – it should be very easy for the user to get the result he is looking for. Now, when you point all your different ads to the homepage, this level of preciseness is impossible to achieve. You may say you don’t have a good selling page for each of your products but guess what? You need to start creating them. Try to make one page for the most important product and service and invest your time and effort into that page. Then compare the results. We are sure you will want to create more of these pages after that.
Still confused and afraid to start advertising with Google Ads? Or maybe, you have already started but are still not sure whether your campaigns are successful... Check out our article on analysing your Google Ads performance in terms of campaigns’ success for some clarity! Or, alternatively, feel free to reach out and get professional help to create your Google Ads campaigns!
For more information, bespoke strategies and efficient digital marketing solutions, just contact the Clarity’s girls through info@yourdigitalclarity.com or visit our website at yourdigitalclarity.com.
