August 29, 2019

Struggling with an under-performing Google Ads (formerly AdWords) campaign? You’re not alone. As competition and budgets for Google Ads continue to go up, clicks, conversions and click-through-rates are trending down.

I’ve had several clients reach out to over the past 18 months asking what they’re doing wrong and how they can fix it and oftentimes the answer is much more simple than they think. Google is constantly making changes to their Ads platform and sometimes it’s just a matter of keeping up.

Let’s explore a few simple ways you can update your Google Ads for better performance.

1. Be More Specific

The number one mistake most people make with their Google Ads is being wayyyyy to general when it comes to selecting their keywords and Ad Groups. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone in to review a previously setup Ad campaign that only had one Ad Group with over 50 keywords! One of the best ways you can optimize your campaign is to be as specific as possible. Sometimes even creating what are called “Single Keyword Ad Groups” or SKAGs. If you don’t want to go that far though, I do recommend setting up at least 3 Ad Groups and being very specific with which keywords you target within each. I often only select between 10-15 keywords per Ad Group.

2. Create At Least 3 Ads for Each Ad Group

Probably the simplest of our 4 simple updates is to create at least 3 text ads within each of your Ad Groups. This is not only highly recommended by Google as your setting up you’re campaign but also recommended by digital marketers like myself who have found it highly beneficial. In most cases the text ads don’t even have to be that different. Sometimes I’ll just swap Headline 1 for Headline 2 in a different ad to see how it performs. Other times I’ll create a different ad entirely with all new Headlines, Descriptions and Display Paths. The key to this simple update is to keep an eye on which ads are performing best and which aren’t so you can tweak under-performing ads during your campaign.

3. Ensure Selected Keywords Match Ads and On-Site Content

This is probably the least simple of my simple update recommendations only because it takes a bit more work and strategic thinking. How often your ads appear in search and what position they appear in is partially determined by your Quality Score. Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing pages are to a person who sees your ad. That means that you need to be as consistent as possible when it comes to choosing your Google Ads keywords, placing those keywords within the ad Headline and Description and making sure the page of the Final URL also includes those keywords. This comes back around to the idea discussed in recommendation #1 of “Be More Specific”.

4. Utilize Google’s Expanded Text Ads

A little over a year ago, Google expanded the amount of text you can include within a text ad by adding a third Headline and a second Description (get a detailed overview of the changes here). Basically, this added a third 30 character (with spaces) Headline and a second 90 character Description. If you setup your Google Ads campaign prior to August 2018 and haven’t edited it since, chances are you’re missing out on the opportunity to add more valuable information to your ads. Take this opportunity to fill these additional areas with pertinent keywords, your business name, additional “sales” text and more!