Google Ads Dos and Don’ts

Google Ads can be a minefield if you’re unfamiliar with the platform. There’s so many settings and variables to consider when creating and optimising campaigns that you could easily be wasting advertising budget or leaving money on the table!

As we deliver training on setting up and managing Google Ads, we thought it would be beneficial to summarise some of the key dos and don’ts that we cover on our sessions. This should give you some strong foundations to build and scale profitable campaigns if you’re managing your own Google Ads accounts (or thinking about bringing Google Ads management in-house).

DO!

• Plan your campaign before starting the set up process. Think about what you want to achieve (your campaign objective), the keywords you’ll use and the marketing messages for your ad text. There’s nothing worse than sitting, looking at a blank screen and trying to figure out what your advert should say, so be prepared.
• Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find the right keywords and be able to plan your budget. This tool will show you which keywords are likely to drive the most traffic and have the least competition.
• Set up (and test) conversion tracking so you know if your campaigns are working. A conversion will be different for each business, but is likely to be either a lead, a sale or a phone call.
• Check your Search Terms report regularly to identify the phrases people use to find your ads and add or remove them (add as negative) to make your targeting more refined. This is where a lot of advertising budget is wasted.
• Use Title Case for your descriptions – it’s Google’s best practice, helping your ads to stand out and be easy to read.
• Add negative keywords to refine your targeting. For example, to eliminate people just doing research (and not ready to buy), consider adding words such as “compare”, “review” and “comparison” as negative keywords.
• Set up remarketing to target people who have been on your website in the past. It’s only a small percentage of buyers that will convert of their first visit to a website, so this is where you can sometimes leave money on the table if you don’t actively re-engage your audience.

DON’T!

• Use broad match or generic keywords as you will attract a lot of irrelevant traffic and waste advertising spend.
• Send traffic to your home page. Instead, send traffic to specific pages related to the keywords you are bidding on. This will help you improve your Quality Score, improving your campaign’s performance and saving you money.
• Neglect your landing pages – landing page relevance and user experience (UX) play a part in your quality score and can influence the success of your campaigns. Think page loading speed, keyword placement and content – lots of content!
• Use excessive punctuation or capitalisation in your ads as they won’t be approved. It’s a good idea to make yourself familiar with Google’s guidelines to avoid any frustration in getting your ads approved.
• Leave your campaigns running without checking in on them each week. Depending on the size of your account, you may need to check in daily with your campaigns, although for many, once a week is sufficient. If you’ve just launched a new campaign, you’ll want to be checking in every day to begin with to avoid any surprises, but for established campaigns, that isn’t always necessary. You may, however, want to consider using automated rules if you have to leave your campaign running unsupervised for any length of time.

To summarise, it’s important to get some of the basics right for each campaign you set up to avoid any headaches in the future. We hope this Google Ads Dos and Don’ts list has helped!

If you’d like some extra help with your campaigns in the form of training or an account , simple get in touch (hello[@]skitti.sh) and we’d be happy to talk through your options.