Paid Search Marketing (PPC)
Getting the most out of your Google Ads account isn’t always easy – it’s common to see companies wasting up to 60% of their budgets on keywords, ad copy and landing pages that aren’t performing. We’ve been working with Google Ads since its conception back in 2002 and have a great deal of experience providing the following G Ads services:
- New account setups
- Existing account optimization services
- Customized account services
- Creating high performing keyword lists & ad copy
- Landing page design & development
- Testing & optimizing landing pages
- Tracking setups, reporting & analytics
Contact us today and let’s see how Paid Search can help your business grow.
Adwords Optimization Process
Here we’ll share our typical Adwords optimization process – your more than welcome to give these changes a try yourself first before getting us involved. We’d be happy to answer any questions you might have, no charge, provided you limit your questions to issues that don’t require us to login and review your account.
First things first – you MUST have tracking enabled on your website. Without having tracking implemented you’re effectively flying blind. We can’t tell you anything about campaign performance other than what keywords and ads are getting clicked on, anything beyond that isn’t possible to analyze. Be sure to link your Adwords account to your Analytics account so you can easily access Analytics data.
Tracking Types: Goals, Event Tracking & Call Tracking
Goal Tracking
Goals are used for basic types of conversion tracking. Contact form submissions, phone calls (see call tracking below), newsletter signups, PDF downloads, etc… Goals must correspond to a measurable action performed by your website’s visitors, for example, a visit to a “thank you” page. This combination of a business objective and a measurable action make up a Goal.
Event Tracking
For more sophisticated ecommerce websites, or for businesses that need to track very specific user actions, Google Analytics provides Event tracking. Google Analytics lets you look at data at the page level, while event tracking lets you track performance of tools on your site that don’t link to a “page” per se, or that perhaps link to a page that can’t be tracked. Event tracking allows you to see how many people clicked the play button on a video, and lets you track individual link activity when the same links are repeated on a page.
Call Tracking
If you’re a service oriented business that receives most of it’s new business over the phone, then having call tracking in place is a must. The tracking tool we use provides you data to the traffic source level, so you can identify where your revenue is actually coming from. Forget trying to ask the customer, as it’s not an accurate and reliable method of call tracking for a variety of reasons.
With tracking covered, these are the areas within your Adwords account you’ll want to ensure are optimized:
Account Organization
This is very important as an account that’s well organized into various campaigns and adgroups will allow more flexibility than an account that just has everything lumped into one campaign.
Having organized campaigns (multiple) allows you to control settings by campaign, good for sale campaigns, etc… and also makes reporting more flexible since you can report on an individual campaign and see all your key metrics more clearly. Splitting things up in an organized fashion also allows you to better organize keywords into like groups and allows you to create unique ads for each.
Campaign Settings
Once you’ve laid out how you’ll organize your account, the setup process is where you’ll configure the functionality of your campaign. This includes:
- Language and Locations
- Networks and Devices
- Budget
- Bidding Options
- Delivery Method
- Advanced Settings
- Ad Delivery
Keywords
This is likely where you’ll see the biggest performance gains (or losses), since what keyword you’re bidding on impacts everything else. Start with as many keywords as possible given your products or services and leverage keyword modifiers wisely. Then by process of elimination, you’ll weed out non-performing keywords until you only have winners in your account.
Ad Copy
Creating compelling ads is vital to achieving high CTRs. Create 2-5 ad versions in each Adgroup and then cycle through them based on performance. Ad copy should be descriptive and accurately convey what the user will get when they click on the ad. If what you’re saying in the ad doesn’t line up with what they see on the landing page, the user will likely bounce back and you’ll have wasted a click.
Landing Pages
This is where the rubber meets the road and users either like what they see and convert to your desired outcome, or they bounce. While most advertisers use existing pages for ad landing pages, we always recommend taking the time to create multiple landing pages for every Ad group, as the more specific the landing page is, the higher the conversion rates will be.
Google Ads Editor
This is a must have for anyone working on an Google Ads account. It speeds up the process of adding keywords, creating ads, and general account management thanks to the ability to copy and paste from one campaign or ad group to another.
Be sure to download the latest copy of Google Ads Editor.
If you’re prepared to tackle this on your own – happy optimizing! If you think this might be a little overwhelming, contact us, we can help.