Today I’d like to talk to you about one of the biggest mistakes people make in search advertising (Google Ads and Bing Ads). It’s to not optimize your Google Ads campaigns frequently. There is no doubt that this type of advertising can have a huge impact on your business goals, but if you want to put all the chances of success on your side and have a good return on investment, you must absolutely take the time to continuously optimize your campaigns. You want to avoid spending your money on poor quality traffic depending on your products and services. If you let your account run independently, this is exactly what will happen. At a few dollars in advertising investment a day, that goes very quickly. You need to make sure that every dollar you invest has the best chance of earning you qualified traffic based on your goals. In this blog post, I’ll give you 10 tips on how to optimize your Google Ads account and get the results that you want.

1. Use manual CPC bid strategy

I strongly recommend that you use the manual CPC bid strategy especially when you start advertising on the search network. This will allow you to keep a tight control on your advertising expenses, but above all, to avoid that the Google algorithm invests excessive amounts in clicks that have no value for your business. With the manual CPC bid strategy, you can set your CPC strategically by ad group or keyword.

2. Adjust your bids by device

You can choose to increase or decrease your CPC based on the devices that users search for with bid adjustments by device (computer, mobile, and tablet). For example, if your products are aimed at an elderly clientele, it might be appropriate to increase your bids on tablets considering that these users are big users of tablets and to decrease those on mobile, since they have fewer chance to convert through this device. In many cases, your campaign statistics will help you make informed decisions about your device optimizations.

3. Optimize your campaigns according to the territory

It is very important to optimize your campaigns according to the territory you serve or according to your advertising budget in order to maximize your impression share. If necessary, you can create different campaigns for different territories and collect data from each territory to then determine which one is most profitable for your business. For example, if you are a small local business, it is useless to cover all Quebec province. You should rather aim to increase the impression share of of your city or region. Think about where your customers are and target your campaigns strategically.

4. Take the time to do your keyword research

This is a step not to be overlooked if you want to improve your chances of success. Think about how people search for your products and services and use the keyword planner tool available in Google Ads to see the relevance of those keywords and get more suggestions. You can also use other tools like Google Analytics or different SEO tools to find keywords that are relevant to your business. Make sure you have very specific keywords in order to get maximum results by paying as little as possible. Review your keyword list on a regular basis to continuously improve your results.

5. Add negative keywords

After creating your keyword list, you need to ask yourself the question: which keywords could come up with my keyword list and are not desirable? For example, if you have a women’s-only clothing store, you’d do well to add the keywords like man and child in negative, to make sure you don’t pay for traffic that has nothing to do with your business. A good habit to have is to analyse your search terms regularly and put in negative any keyword that has no value to your business.

6. Test your ads continuously

This is something that I love to do, since it requires both analysis and creativity. In order to be able to test your ads continuously, I recommend that you run 3 text ads and 2 responsive ads at the same time. After a few days or weeks depending on the size of your account, find out which ads have performed best and for what reason. Then pause your less successful ads and make room for new ads using your creativity.

7. Add ad extensions

I strongly recommend that you add all types of ad extensions that apply to your business to your account. This can have a big impact on your results by increasing your clickthrough rate. Indeed, the fact that your ads take up more space on the search results page naturally leads to a higher click-through rate. Depending on the type of extension that you implement, your extensions can also allow you to avoid paying for clicks of unqualified users or allow users to directly access a specific page that interests them.

8. Insert your keywords in your ads

One way to tell Google’s algorithm that your keywords are relevant and thereby lower your CPC is to insert your keywords in your ads. For example, you can include them in your titles, descriptions, and URLs. This often has the impact of increasing your clickthrough rate, as it allows users to quickly see that your ads match their search very well.

9. Optimize your landing pages

One of the best tips I can give you to optimize your search advertising results is to optimize your landing pages. You need to make sure you have fast landing pages, that have various calls to action and that provide a pleasant experience for your users. In addition, it’s important to link the most relevant landing pages to each of your ads so that the Google’s algorithm works in your favor.

10. Stay on top of what your competitors are doing

My last piece of advice to maximize the return on investment of your Google Ads or Bing Ads campaigns is to analyze what your competitors are doing. This can be easily done from the Ad Preview & Diagnostics tool of Google Ads by entering one of your keywords and one of your search territory. This a simple but relevant practice that will allow you to be inspired by what your competitors are doing well, to notice their errors, but above all to adjust your ads in cases where one of your competitors promotes a more interesting offer than yours.

In conclusion, I hope that my article has helped you to better understand search advertising. Tell me in the comments which optimization you’ll test first, so which one you think will have the most impact on your business. If you have specific questions or want to save time in optimizing your Google Ads campaigns in addition to improve your results, contact me and I will be happy to help you in a personalized way.