A few simple but important things you can optimize in Google Ads
Undoubtedly, it is one of the areas where natural selection is the hardest in the marketing world. While studying anthropology at university, I did a lot of reading on human evolution and natural selection. The fittest would survive, others would not have the chance to perpetuate their own kind ruthlessly. Natural selection definitely works in the PPC world, too. I will explain why.
As I said last week, I continue CXL training. In CXL’s Google Ads course, the instructor talked about opening a faulty Google Ads account and making updates and why. I also want to write something on this subject.
There are 5 key areas we need to look into when we enter a Google Ads account. These are:
Name testing
Bid adjustment
Negative keywords
Keywords expansion
Automatic places
After entering the Ads & extensions section, we take a look at last week’s ads with the most clicks and the highest CTR. This is where natural selection comes into play. Even with low CTR and high clicks, closing ads with very low conversions one by one is good for ad budget.
Of course, in order to do this, conversions must be defined in the account. In other words, Google needs to detect something as a conversion and show which ad set has better performance accordingly. Conversion was not defined in the example account we reviewed, so we made all decisions through CTR.
We need to continue optimizing on one or two ads that are performing the best. We right-click on the best performing ad and click on the “Copy and edit” button. After doing this we will not close the current ad. He will now continue as the control group in our scientific experiment. Because its performance is already at a good level. We don’t want to mess up something that works, do we?
After making these arrangements, we can move on to the “Keywords” section. After coming to this section, I want to remind you something.
People who are new to the world of PPC or who start advertising campaigns without much knowledge on this side usually do not know much about Keyword Matches.
Exact match
Phrase match
Broad match
Broad match modifier
Negative match
If you want your keyword to reach only the people who made that search, you should add [] to the beginning and end of your keyword.
If you want your keyword to be close to that search but still somewhat flexible, you can put a “” sign at the beginning and the end.
If you want your keyword to be matched with everything related by Google, you can write your keyword directly. Here, Google acts according to which searches your keyword is associated with.
If you want your keyword to stay the same but add to your keyword according to the searches of the users, you can use the + sign.
If you do not want a keyword to appear in your ad, you can use the — sign.
Exact match: [pc games] — Shows ads only in search “pc games”.
Phrase match: “pc games” — also appears in searches like “best pc games”, “pc games 2021”.
Broad match: pc games — may even appear in searches like “best headset for pc gamers”.
Broad match modifier: “+pc +games” — Your ad will also appear in searches such as “online pc games”, “pc online games”.
Negative match: pc games -best — does not appear in searches such as “best pc games” or “best online pc games”. Your ad will not appear in any search with “best” in it.
Keep applying natural selection to keywords. “Cost / conv.” you can see in the column. According to the information in this column, you can calculate which keyword is more profitable for the advertisement. It would be a good option to turn off ads that give bad results and find new keywords and new combinations.
Negative
Instead of turning off keyword ads, you can change the “bid”. For example, let’s say you will be profitable if you earn $20 per conversion. You can fix a keyword that costs $30 per conversion to $17–18. Thus, after a while, you can see how the performance of that keyword will change. If you get the same performance at 17–18, you should lower it again. You are negotiating with Google. =)
Select a keyword and click the “search terms” button from the top menu.
You will see with keywords associated with that keyword. You may not want some keywords here. For example, if you are a website that writes “pc games” news, you do not want your site to appear in a keyword such as “pc games torrent”. The user coming from here will both increase your bounce rate and cause you to spend more money.
You should also consider what you should do in searches for your competitors here. You will either add your competitor’s name as a negative keyword or add that name as a “keyword” and try to convince its customers. If your budget is low, I recommend not to enter a bid race with your opponent. Even if your budget is low, you should try to attract a competitor’s customer to your own brand. Maybe you’ll get a good conversion rate on that side.
It may also be good to know the reason for the user’s call. It would be logical to think like a user and determine whether the reason for his search matches your brand and send some keywords to the negative section accordingly.
You can delete these keywords from your ad by selecting the keywords you want from the keywords menu that opens and clicking the “Add as negative keyword” button from the menu above. When you press the “Add as negative keyword” button, Google Ads asks you where you want to delete this keyword or send it to. You can choose “Ad group”, “Campaign” or “Negative keyword list” whichever suits you best.
This week I wrote a few topics that you can optimize in Google Ads. I will continue to learn new things and pass on what I have learned. See you next Sunday!
