8 Simple Google Ads Tips for More Money

A well-executed PPC campaign is critical to an advertiser's overall conversions and revenue. What better way than a potential customer to do a search on Google or Bing and tell exactly what customer you're looking for?

However, since you're paying for every click you get from your ads, a poorly managed PPC campaign can cost more than it generates (and sometimes much more). Target audiences and messaging are unique to your business, but no matter the industry, there are some basic strategies that will always work in a PPC campaign.

There is no magic bullet for a healthy and productive PPC campaign, but there are many levers you can adjust to maximize results.

Here are eight of the most important (but often overlooked) elements when optimizing a PPC campaign.

Some of these features are more advanced than others, but if you implement these elements into your paid search efforts, you should see great improvements and make your business more money!

1. Make Landing Pages Relevant

This is one of the most overlooked aspects of paid search.

On a paid search platform, it’s easy to get lost in adjusting bids, testing ad copy, and concentrating all of your energy into the platform itself.

But after a user clicks on an ad on that platform you follow, something important happens: they land on your website!

The ultimate goal of PPC marketing is to make a sale. A successful PPC ad can drive qualified leads to a landing page, but that's only the first half of winning. Then, the job of that landing page is to convert potential customers into paying customers. You should optimize your landing pages for PPC conversions by aligning your ad information with your landing page information.

Maintaining consistency between keywords, ad copy, and landing pages can increase click-through and conversion rates while reducing cost-per-click.

2. Optimize for Negative Keywords

One of the most powerful tools to ensure the integrity of your Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns is to utilize negative keywords. Both platforms allow you to specify which keywords are not suitable for your product or service.

By telling Google what your product isn't, you can prevent your ads from showing on keyword searches that don't match the customers you want.

3. Use the right keyword match type

PPC advertising is a direct attribution marketing channel, while Google Ads rely on user intent through keywords.

Whenever someone enters a search query into Google, ads are displayed based on how much the auction system considers the search term and displays ads accordingly.

The keywords used in a PPC campaign and the type of modifiers those words use are important.

4. Change Keyword Match Types Over Time

When launching a brand new Google or Microsoft Ads campaign, I usually start with a few keyword-heavy ad groups with similar themes.

I often start out with "broadly modified" match types because they provide a good level of control to show when my ad is showing, but also provide enough opportunity for the ad to show so I can collect data.

Over time, as the data begins to show what is actually converting, the emphasis tends to be more of a mix of modifier broad, phrase match, and exact match words.

Winning search queries can be "escalated" to "exact match" or "phrase match," and my "modified broad search" remains a wider web that helps me find new content to bid on.

5. Fill in all available ad content

Since its launch in July 2016, Extended Text Ads (ETAs) have had a major impact on the world of Google Ads.

By providing additional space for relevant content, ETA provides PPC managers with a great way to tell the story of a product or service.

If you want your ad to perform better, be sure to fill in all available information fields.

6. Use all relevant ad extensions

Many PPC accounts focus primarily on the title, path, and description of the main ad.

However, ad extensions are an important part of the customer experience and can greatly improve the performance of your ads. Ad extensions can help you better tell your brand story while providing valuable information to your customers.

There are several ad extensions to choose from, but below are the most commonly used ad extensions.

7. Adjust your location targeting bids

Regardless of your market or industry, you can benefit from focusing your marketing dollars on specific geographic locations.

See where your engagement is coming from to prioritize media spend in these areas.

Local industries such as apartments, hotels, and lawyers often identify ideal clients based on their proximity to a brick-and-mortar office, but geotargeting doesn't stop there.

Even if your products and services don't depend on the actual geographic location of your customers, you can still use geo-targeted bids to optimize your PPC campaigns based on season, weather, and user needs.

For example, if you sell snow plows, you should bid negatives in warmer states like Florida and Alabama because people in those states may not need your product and you're wasting money every time you click on those states . However, you'll increase your geo-targeted bids for cities with increased snowfall due to a cold front.

Many Google Ads beginners forget to consider the need for different customer types and other qualifiers based on the geographic location of the audience. You can save a lot of money by preventing ads from showing in certain areas while increasing the likelihood of conversions and bid adjustments in other locations.

You might also notice that big cities like New York and Los Angeles eat up their budgets quickly, but are expensive and don't convert well.

These types of problems can also be addressed with geo-based modifications.

8. Look for opportunities to push budgets to mobile

Many of your future customers are on mobile, and more and more users are converting on mobile. A mobile-focused campaign has the potential to give you the best chance of reaching mobile customers on your preferred device in the right format.

Separating campaigns is an easy way to drive more qualified clicks.

How do you decide if a campaign should have a mobile-only component? View conversions by device.