Paid Search for Dummies: Google Ads Search Campaigns Best Practices

Are your Google Ads Search campaigns falling short of your expectations?

Like much else in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, optimization is a vital aspect in Google Ads Search campaigns. If you haven’t defined clear goals, and aren’t tracking performance, you’ll struggle to make any progress.

The mistake many PPC advertisers make is that they think optimization begins after they launch their campaign. What you need to understand is that you apply best practices in Search ads from the moment you are selecting your keywords.

In this article, we’ll take you from the ground up, explaining best practices so you’ll learn how to optimize your Google Ads Search campaigns for better results.

8 Best Practices Google Ads Search Campaigns

Some of the best practices in search ads may seem obvious to seasoned marketers. However, a lot of people in PPC advertising are still failing to cover all the bases. As a result, their campaigns leave a lot on the table.

Here are eight pointers to help you create campaigns that generate a better return on advertising spend (ROAS):

1. Select the Right Keywords

Firstly, let’s look at the keyword selection. Your keyword list is the single most critical element of your PPC campaign. It must contain terms that strike a balance between reach and relevance, ensuring your ads connect with as many qualified prospects as possible. If this balance is off, you’ll either miss out on potential leads or else you’ll have a lot of wasted spend on irrelevant click traffic.

When you’re creating your keyword list, you should use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console. Consider the following when selecting keywords:

• User Intent
• Most searched keywords in the market
• Domain-specific keywords
• The past performance of the chosen keywords
• Competitive analysis

Take your time, and do thorough research before adding terms to your list. Each keyword must generate a decent return on investment (ROI) for your campaign, or else there’s no point in having it.

Learn More: How to do Keyword Research using Free Google Tools

2. Write Effective Ad Copy

Your ad copy may be short, but it has to say a lot. It is the vital first step in the PPC advertising cycle, so it needs to be compelling to elicit clicks. Excellent ad copy will engage users and persuade them to believe that you have the solution they need.

Include the following in your ad text:

• A catchy headline that targets the pain point or problem of your prospects.
• Benefit-driven body text that highlights your solution, and relates to the user’s need and purchasing intent.
• A strong CTA (call-to-action) that encourages people to click on your ad, and continue down your marketing funnel.

With a short word limit, you must be creative with your ad copy. Take the time to optimize it for maximum impact.

3. Personalize Your Ad Copy

In Google Ads, you can personalize your ads, so they align closely with user intent. For example, if you’re advertising in the local area, you can update your ad based on the location of your target users. Alternatively, you can use language that appeals to your target demographic, making offers, and speaking with a tone that is appropriate to their age, gender, or personal interests.

4. Consider the Geographical Areas You Are Targeting

In e-commerce, you may not be too concerned about geographical locations for your business. However, while you can sell internationally, it’s still wise to consider where your audience lives. By doing some research on the countries, cities, and areas your customers are in, you can save your budget from being wasted on showing ads to users in the wrong areas.

Better yet, you can tailor your ad copy and offers to be more relevant. For instance, a clothes company targeting customers in California during the summer may run a swimwear promotion. By comparison, an adventure gear outlet targeting people in Colorado may offer deals on snowboarding equipment.

If you don’t consider where your customers are at that time, you’re effectively throwing your advertising budget down the drain. One of the best practices in Search ads to adopt is making sure you the geographical areas correctly in your campaign.

5. Use Ad Extensions to Increase Visibility

One of the best practices Search ads users can embrace the use of Ad extensions. Many advertisers overlook Ad extensions, despite the many benefits they offer, such as:

• Improved Visibility
• Increased Size
• Improved Ad Rank
• Higher Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
• More reasons to click on the Ad
• Improved ROI
• Improved quality of Ad copy
• Improved Quality Score

To get started, you might consider Automated Ad extensions. These are only shown when Google determines that the extension will have a positive impact on your ad’s performance.

6. Define One Specific Goal for Each of Your Google Ads Search Campaigns

Setting goals for your Google Ads Search campaigns is a crucial step. A clear objective will provide guidance when it comes to making important decisions.

One pitfall to avoid is setting too many goals. Here are a few reasons to get into the practice of setting one goal for each PPC campaign:

• It makes it easier to gauge performance.
• You can focus on the right metrics for your goal.
• It can improve your overall ROI.

7. Track the Right Metrics for Your Goals

As aforementioned, tracking performance is massively important in Google Ads Search campaigns. This all comes down to having clear goals and then knowing which metrics to track for your goals.

Perhaps your campaign is doing well, but there is always room for improvement and budget optimization.

Consider your goal for each campaign, and then select the right metrics to gauge performance continually. For example, if your goal is increasing brand awareness, you should track impressions and click traffic.

Learn More: How to Determine Metrics to Measure for a Successful Ad Campaign

8. Review Your Campaign Performance

With everything else in place, you can run your campaign and collect data. Over time, you’ll gather enough data to deduce valuable insights on your ad performance, your audience, and your offers.

Make data analysis and reporting a staple part of your campaign, so you remain diligent about identifying problems and discovering new opportunities.

Landing Page Optimization

So, with your ads optimized, it’s only a matter of time before you start generating decent click traffic, which means you’ll have more visitors to your landing page.

As you may have guessed, your optimization mission doesn’t end with the ad – your landing pages are just as important. Here are four aspects to think about:

1. Responsiveness of Landing Page

This is the mobile age, so you’d better be sure that you have a mobile-responsive website. Visitors will be on all sorts of devices, from desktop computers to tablets to smartphones. Keep this in mind when designing your landing pages to ensure you offer a great user experience.

2. Maximize Loading speed

Speed is everything online. Consumers have a lot of options online, so if your site is too slow to load, they won’t hang around. If you lose visitors because of a slow website, they may bounce to a competitor – and they may never return!

Cut all irrelevant content from your landing page, ensuring it is lightweight and fast. Doing this will help your conversion rates.

3. Content Relevance

Google wants to deliver the most relevant content to users. Focus on creating more relevant content, as it will benefit your Quality Score. This leads to a bump in your Ad Rank, making your content more visible.

4. Stay Current

Make sure your pages are updated regularly so that they only contain current, reliable information. If you have dated pages with outdated information, it can damage the credibility of your brand.

A Few Words on Testing Your Ads

Optimization and testing go hand-in-hand. When you’ve made the tweaks and updates in your Google Ads Search campaigns, you need to think about how to test and compare results.

Review your ad copy regularly to analyze its performance. Think about how you can change it to generate more clicks, leads, or conversions.

Experimenting with different versions is a good idea, as you can gauge which version is most effective. You can use split-testing to try several versions of your ad at one time, learning more about your audience engagement from the data analytics.

Lastly, pay attention to your competitors. It’s smart to keep tabs on their campaigns, strategies, and the search terms they use, as you may learn a few things that can help you improve ROI in your campaign.

Never Forget Your PPC Goals

It’s easy to lose track of your PPC campaign when you don’t have a goal. You should endeavor to keep your goal front-and-center so that it acts as a guide throughout your Google Ads Search campaigns.

With that, you’ll pick better keywords, write better ad copy, and always be thinking about relevance when making decisions about your campaign. In the long run, this technique is one of the best practices you can adopt for PPC advertising success.