How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for SEO
This article was originally published in Search Engine Journal on February 18, 2021. Marketers considering an SEO initiative have a seemingly [...]
Every marketing dollar is precious. As business leaders, when we decide Google Ads are an effective way to build brand awareness, intercept the customer’s journey and entice them to convert, we want to ensure every ad is performing optimally and leads are coming into the sales funnel today. Wasted advertising budget is one thing, wasted time in business is quite another.
Oftentimes, clients come to Team RTOWN with questions and gut feelings about their current Google Ad Campaigns. Are they performing as well as they can be? Should I be generating more leads? Should I just stop?
The following are the top five missed opportunities we see within Google Ad Accounts.
1. Add as many Ads Extensions as possible.
Google Ad Extensions expand your ads with additional information, providing prospects more reasons to choose your brand and organization. Ad Extensions may increase an ad’s clickthrough rate by several percentage points. There are multiple extension formats including: call buttons, location information, product information, links to specific parts of your website, additional text, just to name a few.
2. Improve your Ad Strength to Excellent.
Google rates the strength of the overall ad ranging from “Incomplete”, “Poor”, “Average”, “Good” to “Excellent”. The higher the strength, the higher your ad will rank. Factors affecting your ad rating include relevance, quality, and diversity of your Ad Copy. The copy is all the words your audience will interpret and your chance to entice and convince them to click through on your Ad. It is important to understand your ad ratings so you know where to focus your optimization attention.
3. Add irrelevant search terms to Negative Keywords
Your Ad Campaign is a process. The Google algorithm learns how your audience is interacting with the ads and starts to adjust. The goal is for your team to continually optimize all aspects of each ad. One of the neverending exercises is keyword research including adding irrelevant keyword search terms to the negative keyword list. This helps Google learn more quickly which keywords do not represent your organization’s products and/or services.
Exclude these search terms from your campaigns and focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. Better targeting will present your ad to interested users and increase your return on investment (ROI).
4. Improve your Landing Page
Once your prospects click on your ad, they arrive at your Landing Page. This dedicated, targeted web page is just as important in terms of copy, keywords, and messaging as the ad itself.
The landing page experience is one of several factors that help determine the Quality Score. The experience of a landing page is represented by such things as the usefulness and relevance of information provided on the page, ease of navigation for the user, the number of links on the page, and the expectations users have based on the clicked ad creative.
The Landing Page is where the user will convert, where they enter your organization’s sales funnel. Optimizing the Landing Page for your ads is incredibly important.
5. Create multiple Ad Groups
Nine out of ten times, Team RTOWN sees opportunity within Google Ads Accounts to better organize campaigns, with multiple Ad Groups. Your Ads should be grouped to reflect common themes such as the types of products or service offerings, seasonal specials, stage of sales funnel, or verticals. The related keywords can then be focused on for improved targeting and ultimately conversions. The performance of Ad Groups can then be compared to understand which group is working best, which needs improvement and maybe which group needs to be paused.
Google Ads can be a powerful mix to a marketing program. There are however, many variables oftentimes overlooked and they could be standing between your organization and its next customer. If you would like to take a deeper look at the performance of your Google Ads download this worksheet: 30 Point Google Ads Inspection or Contact Us today.
