Going from Good to Great: PPC Best Practices

Why settle for anything less than the best?

Advertisers in the pay-per-click (PPC) sphere understand that what works today may not work tomorrow, as growing competition forces change, whether you are ready or not.

If you want to stay on top, you’ll need to devise a solid PPC strategy and adhere to Google Ads best practices. A lax approach to either won’t get you far at all.

So, what are some paid search PPC best practices?

10 Google Ads PPC Best Practices for 2022

When it comes to account optimization, it never hurts to know what you’re doing. You can do a lot of damage with a few wrong moves in Google Ads.

Here are ten PPC best practice tips to take your advertising game to the next level this year.

1.  Stay Current on Program Updates

There were a lot of big changes in Google Ads this year, and the platform continues to evolve all the time. It’s a smart move to review the new features and keep your ear to the ground for new PPC best practices. This will maintain a cutting-edge strategy.

2.  Enable Conversion Tracking

After a user interacts with your ad you need to be able to see what happens next. Did they sign up for your emails? Did they download your app or make a purchase?

Evergreen PPC best practice is to ensure conversion tracking is enabled in your campaign settings to get all the insights you need.

3.  Stay Active on Your Account

It should be no surprise that the most active accounts are the most likely ones to enjoy success. If you aren’t spending much time in the back-end of your campaigns, analyzing results and optimizing various aspects of your ads, then you won’t see much return.

Here are some key PPC best practices you should be doing regularly:

• Compare Spending Vs. Conversions – If you are overspending, reduce your keyword bids or budget.
• Adjust keyword bids – Reduce bids on keywords that aren’t converting, or are converting in low positions. Pause keywords with low clickthrough rate (CTR).
• Add negative keywords – Identify irrelevant search terms that are attracting unqualified traffic.
• Assess ad performance – pause any underperforming ads and split-test new ads.
• Evaluate targeting – Consider new ways of targeting by device, network, location, and language about once a month.

4.  Remember Your Goals when Devising Your Ad Structure

An important early step in any paid advertising campaign is goal setting.

Every aspect of your ad should work towards achieving your goal, and so your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads should all interlink in a logical structure that has your goal in mind.

5.  Organize your Ad Groups to comply with PPC best practices

Effective Ad Groups can be the difference between your site receiving a ton of traffic and cheap new leads or it being a digital ghost town that costs you a fortune.

Here are some PPC best practices to keep your Ad Groups on track:

• Maintain a similar ad structure – Create 3 or more ads for each ad group, and ensure at least one of your keywords is in the headline of each one.
• Bundle related ads – If you have several ads that share related keywords, it’s best to keep them together in one group. This way, these ads will be displayed to users searching for similar things.
• Choose a narrow theme – Pick a theme for each ad group and then create ads around that theme, using keywords related to the theme.
• Organize as you go – Don’t try to reorganize campaigns and ad groups months after creating everything, as the reshuffle could wipe out all your data!
• Use Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAG) – It’s advised to base each ad group on a single root keyword. Google recommends that you use between 15 and 20 keywords for each ad group.
• Be relevant – The keywords should be relevant to the landing page content.

6.  Adopt Ad Extensions

Perhaps you just can’t say enough with your ads. Google now allows for more options than before with Ad extensions, making it possible to include additional information about your business, products, or services to encourage them to take action.

From call buttons to sitelinks, customer reviews to structured snippets, there are plenty of powerful ways of using ad extensions in 2022.

7.  Write Optimized Ad Copy

You can write simple text or you can create truly engaging optimized copy. The latter is the one that will reap rewards.

Great ads hinge on winning copywriting, and you can maximize your return by doing the following:

• Create a killer headline.
• Strive to use the full characters to deliver the biggest impact.
• Include your sitelink at the bottom so it’s clear and easy to find.
• Use a strong call-to-action and a button to encourage visits.
• Drive your content with valuable keywords that are aligned with user intent.

8.  Add Negative Keywords

Many users will use search terms that are vaguely related to what you are offering, and consequently, they may end up clicking your ad. In many cases, these people will never convert, so you’re paying for irrelevant clicks.

By identifying these search terms and adding them to your campaigns as negative keywords, you can filter out these unqualified leads. Over time, this will help refine your traffic to ensure most of it is qualified and likely to convert.

9.  Make Sure Your Landing Page is Relevant to Your Campaign Strategy and Goals

Your ad is just one part of the customer journey. After that, your leads will arrive on a landing page, which ideally should be aligned with the ad. More importantly, the landing page should be relevant to your goals and campaign strategy.

Here is a little PPC best practices checklist to optimize your landing pages:

• It is visually appealing.
• It uses the same keywords as the ad.
• Your CTA is clearly displayed.
• The page design is quick to load and easy to use on all devices, especially mobile.
• Your business contact information and company logo are prominently displayed, as to instill trust.
• You have included the same target keywords in your titles, meta descriptions, and main page content.

10. Don’t Forget About Your Settings

They’re not just for show. After you have your campaign and ad groups configured, jump into your settings to make sure everything is in order:

• Choose the right location and language setting, otherwise, your budget may go to waste – fast!
• Separate campaigns if you have different results on each device.
• Set your budgets for each campaign.

Stay Active to Stay On Top

It may not be the biggest secret in the world, but many people in PPC advertising are still not doing it. If you want to succeed with Google Ads, you must be consistent and disciplined in your approach.

Leave no stone unturned. From your structure to your keywords list, your landing pages to your settings, everything must be configured, monitored, analyzed, and optimized. This is what PPC best practices is all about.

And when you do all that?

Do it again.

Tweak, test, rinse, repeat!

Soon enough, the results will start flowing in.

Do you want to measure if you are following the PPC best practices? Schedule PPCexpo account audit report and evaluate your Google Ads account.