Our Top 3 Tips for Successfully Utilizing Google Ads

09/15/2021

The text or search ads in Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, are very popular among online marketers. Many companies are interested in ranking high in Google search results to highlight their website or online shop for potential customers. We often receive inquiries from our customers about marketing measures with Google Ads. After all, 90% of internet users in Germany “google” things. It is said that approximately 60% of advertising expenses in online marketing are concentrated solely on Facebook and Google.

Tip 1 – The Right Campaign Structure: Properly Define Topics for Google Ads
Tip 2 – Choose the Right Landing Page for Your Google Ads
Tip 3 – Choose the Right Keywords for Your Google Ads

What Are Google Ads?

A Google text ad highlights your website or online shop in the search results of the search engine Google. When users enter specific keywords or key phrases on Google, they are shown up to 4 ads at the top or up to 3 ads from your company below the organic search results. These ads resemble organic search results and are marked with the label “Ad.” If this text ad is appealing and formulated effectively, it prompts potential customers to click on it, leading them to your website or online shop, where ideally they purchase your service or product.

Search engine advertising with Google Ads is an excellent complement to search engine optimization for most businesses. This allows you to quickly and effectively position yourself at the top of search results for your desired keywords.

During implementation, there are some mistakes you can make that can quickly turn promising Google Ads search ads into money-wasters. However, if you follow our tips below, you have a good chance of attracting the right users to your site.

Tip 1 - The Right Campaign Structure: Properly Define Topics for Google Ads

In the Google Ads accounts of our clients, we often see different services or products being promoted together in one campaign and ad group. In other words, various products are advertised with many different keywords under a kind of “standard search ad.”

This leads to the keywords in your Google Ads campaign receiving a poor quality score. They simply do not perfectly match your ad and landing page.

This means: The cost per click you have to pay for clicking on a keyword is comparatively higher than for a keyword with a good quality score.

And this results in:

The ads being displayed less frequently.
The ads having poorer chances of appearing in the good, top positions in Google search results.
The text ads being clicked on less by searchers because they do not precisely match the search query.

If you want to promote different products or services, then use a separate ad group for each of the different products and services. In the ad group, use keywords and ad texts tailored to the respective theme. This ensures that the content of the ads and your chosen landing page always perfectly match the search queries. And they will be clicked on more willingly. Google Ads rewards this with a higher quality score and better click prices. Because the landing page also contributes to the quality score.

But more on that in the following.

Tip 2 - Choose the Right Landing Page for Your Google Ads

What is a Landing Page?

In your Google Ads search ads, you specify a destination page. This is the landing page to which users are redirected after clicking on the ad. According to this definition, a landing page is simply the webpage or subpage where your potential customers “land.” In principle, this can be any page of your entire website.

Therefore, the homepage is not always the best solution as a landing page. Especially if interested users then have to navigate through the website to find the advertised offer. Because it often only provides an overview of all products or services. The more clicks interested users are away from the offer, the higher the likelihood that they will bounce before completing any action. This increases your bounce rate, potentially causing you to lose paid users immediately.

Furthermore, Google Ads compares the texts of your ads with the texts of the landing page. The better the alignment of both in terms of content, the better the quality score, and the more often Google will display your ad, and the lower the click prices will be. This potentially increases ad impressions, clicks, and the chance of more inquiries or orders.

Why is a Call-To-Action So Important?

Therefore, it’s crucial that every destination page used in your ads also includes a call-to-action. This destination page can also be referred to as an offer page or landing page. The call-to-action is a recommendation or invitation to take action. Essentially, any page of your website can be a landing page.

This is particularly important in organic search results (in search engine optimization) because searchers do not all arrive at your homepage. Instead, they land on the subpage of your website that best matches the keyword and has been matched in the search results. As an agency, we recommend adding a call-to-action to every page of your website.

Not every website visitor will become a customer, even if the Google ads are perfectly crafted and the landing page is optimally designed. It’s always possible that visitors may not make a decision and continue searching.

With a click-through rate (CTR) of approximately 3 to 5%, you can expect a good response rate to your Google ads. The conversion rate needs to be tested individually and varies depending on the offer/industry. Conversion rate refers to how many out of 100 website visitors will contact you or purchase your product through the online shop or website. There are many factors that influence the conversion rate. For example, the rate is usually lower for online shops, starting at around 2-3%, while it can be higher for regional service providers or niche providers.

Tip 3 - Choose the Right Keywords for Your Google Ads

Keyword Analysis

In Google Ads, everything revolves around the right keywords. With the keywords set in the campaigns, you control which search queries your ads will be displayed for. Therefore, when setting up Google Ads campaigns and deciding on the structure of the campaigns and ad groups, you start with comprehensive and thorough keyword research. A Google Ads agency can assist you with this. Because if you haven’t found all the keywords, you might miss out on important search queries where your ads could be displayed.

If you include keywords that don’t properly match your offerings, your Google Ads ads will be displayed too often for irrelevant search queries. This means you’ll get too many clicks for search queries that don’t match your product or service. Worse still, your daily budget may be exhausted too early, leaving you with no budget for the right search queries.

When creating an ad group, Google provides many suggestions for the keyword list. It’s important to choose carefully: Would my customers actually enter these words or search phrases to find my product? The right keywords are usually the obvious and specific search phrases that the general public uses, rather than technical terms. Broadly related keywords won’t help you much here.

Therefore, keyword options are crucial.

Keyword Options

It’s particularly important to use the so-called keyword options when entering your keywords into the Google Ads system. By default, Google Ads suggests the keyword option “broad match” for keywords. With this keyword option, your ads will be displayed by Google for all possible synonyms and broadly related search queries. This is a situation where your valuable daily budget is likely to be exhausted too early in the day without reaching relevant search queries.

Missing keyword options are the most common mistakes and cost drivers we see as an agency in Google Ads accounts. Usually, this occurs when a client complains that Google Ads haven’t produced any results so far or that too much budget is required for the ads.

In Google Ads, there are three keyword options to choose from, which I’ll also explain along with the characters to use in Google Ads:

Broad match
“Phrase match”
[Exact match]

This Google Help article explains how to use these keyword options correctly in detail.

Regular Optimization

Once your Google Ads search campaign is up and running, the first important step is done: Now begins the hard work: the regular monitoring, evaluation, and optimization of your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.

Regularly review your Google ads and monitor their performance, for example in Google Analytics or Matomo as a web analytics tool. Compare the click-through rates and conversions of your different ad groups, text ads, and keywords with each other, and continuously try out new alternatives.

Stay on Top

The requirements for search engine advertising change constantly, along with the opportunities in Google Ads marketing. New options are regularly introduced, while others are removed. Therefore, it is recommended to stay informed about updates in Google Ads and keep up to date.

The proper creation and ongoing maintenance of successful Google Ads campaigns require a lot of experience and time. See here our certification for “Google Ads Search Engine Advertising. This can quickly become overwhelming—especially if it’s not your core competency or daily business. To make the most of your campaigns in the future as effectively and efficiently as possible, we recommend seeking operational support from a SEA agency and Google Ads partner agency, such as us.

We, at Okon Schwarz Advertising Agency, look forward to getting to know you.

Our Top 3 Tips for Successfully Utilizing Google Ads

What Are Google Ads?

Tip 1 - The Right Campaign Structure: Properly Define Topics for Google Ads