5 Quick Google Ad Optimizations

If you’re looking for quick Google Ad optimizations, you’ve come to the right place!

Google Ads is the premier destination for advertisers online. Millions of dollars are spent on Google every day and it’s estimated that Google Ads generates over 140 billion dollars a year for Alphabet. Google Ads is a staple of the global digital marketing ecosystem and thousands upon thousands of advertisers use this platform to reach their consumers. The reason why is simple. Google Ads offers a cost-effective pricing model, substantial reach and enhanced reporting. If you are a small business owner who is not utilizing Google Ads, we strongly recommend you begin investing in paid search campaigns to grow your business..

However, every pay-per-click marketer knows that managing Google Ads is part science, part art.. The Google Ads pay-per-click marketplace is a dynamic and ever changing environment and even the best campaigns need tweaks to ensure best results. While we wish it was possible to set and forget ad campaigns, there will be times that optimizations are necessary. Enter our recommendations for quick Google Ad fixes!

It’s important to note that these are quick fixes. All of these recommendations are simple and straightforward changes that any pay-per-click marketer worth their salt could implement in an hour or two. They will improve performance on any ad account, but they won’t immediately right the ship if your keyword strategy is off, your budget is too low, or your copy is poorly written. Rather, the below list of optimizations are simple steps for improvement that we recommend you start with. 80% improvement can be seen from 20% of the work, as they say, so we recommend starting with simple fixes before investing more time in substantive and more technically-complex optimizations.

Google Ad Fix 1: Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are phrases that Google will block from your ad campaigns. As a rule, search specialists use the tactic to exclude search terms they don’t want to spend money on. Every keyword you target on Google Ads will inevitably receive clicks from search terms that aren’t relevant. It’s just a part of digital marketing. Think of targeting “cheese” as a search term and receiving clicks from “cheese cake.” The good news is that this waste can be prevented and minimized with the addition of specific negative keywords.

Imagine you are a specialty online cheese shop. You have a “Manchego” ad group with specific keywords centered on this cheese product you offer. When you go and analyze search term reports, you see that this keyword is appearing for a variety of search terms. Let’s say that “what is manchego” and “what is manchego cheese” are two common terms you appear for.

You see, however, that while you receive a lot of clicks from these search terms, you have not received a single purchase from these terms. That’s to be expected; the “what is” search terms signal an interest in learning about manchego cheese, not necessarily an interest in purchasing. In addition to blocking these individual search terms, we’d recommend adding “what is” as a negative keyword. Proactively and strategically using negative keywords allows you to refine your Google Ads campaigns and focus on the terms that are most impactful for your business.

Google Ad Fix 2: Pause Low-Performers

Out of all of the fixes we recommend, this might be the easiest solution. Sometimes, the exclusion of poor performing ads, keywords and ad groups can be all you need to see better results. Let’s say in our cheese shop example, you’ve been running ad campaigns for a quarter and have some data to work with. You see in the Google Ads user interface that your Parmesan, Manchego, and Gorgonzola ad groups are producing a positive return on ad spend and the Specialty Cheeses ad group has produced only one sale, despite taking up 10% of your budget. Pausing Specialty Cheeses is likely a good call to free up budget to go towards more cost-effective ad groups.

The same principle holds true for individual ads and keywords. We recommend ensuring that you have enough data to justify any pause, but sometimes, disinvesting from certain ads, ad groups, and keywords is the right strategy for Google Ads Success.

Google Ads Fix 3: Evaluate Match Types

We like to use a fishing analogy to explain Google Ads to a non-marketing audience. Think of the search terms users type into Google like particular types of fish. The keywords you decide to enable, which will trigger your ads showing for a particular search term, are bait. Some keywords might sound like a good way to catch a certain type of search term, but actually only bring in unwanted search terms. Some align well to a premier type of search term and might not catch many search terms, but catch high-quality clicks.

That’s where match types come in. Match types tell Google Ads how wide a net to cast with any given keyword, to continue the fishing analogy. The three “nets” are board match, phrase match, and exact match and each has a unique advantage and disadvantage.

Let’s say you’re targeting the keyword “marketing agencies in Dallas.” That one keyword could potentially appear for very different search terms, depending on the match type selected. With a broad match type, you would reach Google users researching topics related to “marketing agencies in Dallas.” With a phrase match, your ads would appear for search queries with the same meaning as your specific keywords. An exact match type would only let your ads be triggered by search terms with the exact same meaning as your keyword. So, to recap, a broad match type will reach the widest, but least refined audience, an exact match type will reach the narrowest, but most refined audience, with phrase match being between the two.

Let’s return to our cheese shop analogy. Let’s say that the Parmesan ad group is hardly getting any clicks. A good way of combating this would be to utilize more broad match and phrase match keywords, if you’re mostly running exact match keywords. Inversely, if this ad group was wasting budget and clicks on unrelated search terms, you’re probably casting too wide a net and need to focus on phrase and exact match, if you’re running only broad match keywords.

Google Ads Fix 4: Consider The Landing Page

Landing page experience is a key component of quality scores, the measure Google Ads uses to evaluate how relevant your ad is to what the user typed into Google. If your ad takes those who click it to a poorly-correlated landing page, you will be dinged for it by Google.

Now, you don’t need to be egregiously wrong with the landing pages you drive traffic towards to pay a price. If you’re not smart with the landing pages you select for your ad campaigns, you can still suffer a consequence. Let’s again return to our online cheese shop. Let’s say all ads lead towards your homepage. That’s not a bad destination at all! However, remember that, in this fictitious example, you’re running multiple ad groups for specific cheese search terms. Your homepage is a fine landing page, but if a user clicks on an ad promoting “cheddar cheese,” they’re probably expecting to see that product on the landing page they end up on.

With that in mind, consider the results your campaign could see with a few landing pagechanges. We’d recommend choosing cheese-specific landing pages for specific ad groups. Let’s say your web page has a Parmesan subsection, for instance. We’d recommend placing that as your landing page for that specific ad group for best results! Reducing the number of clicks necessary to complete a purchase and aligning ads to the contents of the landing page is a great strategy to increase checkouts and ensure that you are not suffering a relevancy ding from Google.

Google Ads Fix 5: Evaluate Your Strategy & Adjust Bidding

Google Ads allows users to set distinct bidding strategies to help maximize campaign performance. We could spend days discussing the tech and strategies behind each one, but for now, know that each bidding strategy correlates to a goal for that campaign. For instance, a “maximize clicks” bidding strategy tells Google to prioritize clicks on your ads over all other key performance indicators. A “maximize conversions” bidding strategy tells the platform to focus on conversions, like phone calls, check outs, or requests for information, over all other key performance indicators.

Now, it’s imperative that you utilize the right bidding strategy when setting up a Google Ads campaign and that your selected bidding strategy correlates to your wider business objectives. This might sound obvious, but you would be surprised how easy it is to select the wrong bidding strategy if you are unfamiliar with Google Ads. Let’s once again return to our cheese shop. In this instance, conversions, or checkouts from the site’s online store, are probably going to be the most impactful for this business’s bottom line.

However, let’s assume that the cheese shop is new and has very little brand recognition. Because of this,  the shop’s main goal is to get as many eyes on its ads, website, and content as possible, to familiarize the market with the shop’s name and cheese offerings. A slower start to online sales is fine with the cheese shop, since they know that they need the brand recognition to kick off their digital marketing. Given all of that information, a Target Impression Share bidding strategy might actually be best for the cheese shop, since they just want to familiarize their target customers with their wares, even if that means less online sales in the short term. We’d likely recommend quickly copying and relaunching the shop’s campaigns with a Target Impression Share bid strategy.

Maybe you’re focusing on CTR as the main goal for your ad campaigns, but need to report on Return on Ad Spend to show success. Maybe you’re focusing on Return On Ad Spend as a main goal, despite the fact that your product is quite technical and complicated and is often purchased after a long and deliberative sales cycle. Regardless of what your use case is, consider what bidding strategy you’re using in Google Ads and determine if you need to make tweaks to better align with your business needs.

Improve Google Ads With JSL

It’s again worth repeating that these are all quick fixes. These recommendations are simple, easy-to-implement, and don’t require a lot of time. Plus, all of these recommendations will help improve performance. However, if your Google Ads strategy needs more work, none of these corrections will work miracles. That’s not to say that our recommendations aren’t effective; sometimes, more effort and research is needed to achieve better results if you’re in a high-competition market or new to Pay-Per-Click marketing.

That’s where we come in.

JSL Marketing & Web Design is a full-service marketing agency, based out of Dallas, Texas. We’re not only an industry-leader in SEO; we’re your strategic advisor on all things marketing related.

Depending on your unique needs, we can work on improving…

• Ad Messaging
• A/B Testing
• Keyword Research
• Audience Targeting & Observing
• Competitive Marketplace Positioning
• Landing Page Experience
• Ad Group Breakouts
• & More!

Fill Out The Contact Form For A Free Google Ads Audit!