Google Ads Best Practices

Our team of Google Ads experts has a combined 30+ years of experience working in the Google Ads platform. As professionals in the space, we’ve discovered countless tips and tricks to make our clients’ ads successful. As a result, we’ve identified six Google Ads best practices that will help produce positive results from your campaigns.

1. Use Relevant Keywords That Align With Your Business Goals

One of the most important Google Ads best practices is conducting thorough keyword research. This will determine what words or phrases your desired website visitors and potential clients will be searching for in order to find your website.

Once you’ve developed your keyword list, you can begin to develop your ad groups and campaigns. Not only can you bid on your keywords, but be sure to utilize them in your ads themself. Google will then use these keywords, along with your targeting settings, to determine when the ads should show up for relevant searches. 

2. Add Negative Keywords to Decrease Unrelated Search Term Matches

Speaking of relevant searches, sometimes keywords can be misleading and Google places your ad in front of unwanted searches. If this happens, it may be time to consider adding negative keywords to your campaign.

For example, at Bytes.co, we want to rank for “web developer”. That being said, we don’t want to show up on a search results page of “web developer classes”. Therefore, our team will likely add “class” and “classes” to our negative keyword list on phrase match so our ads will no longer appear in these irrelevant search results.

3. Create Ads That Reflect Your Brand

You’ve already learned that it’s important to incorporate your keywords into your ad copy to improve your Google Ads quality score. Another very important aspect to ad creation is remaining on brand. 

When a potential customer clicks on your ad, the last thing you want is to confuse that visitor when they arrive on your website. Your ad should remain consistent with your website and branding guidelines to let visitors know that they’re in the right place.

4. Follow Google Ads Landing Page Best Practices

Now that you’ve created ads with strong quality scores and that are consistent with your brand, your visitor will know they’re on the right website upon first glance. The next thing your visitor will pay attention to is the content on the page they’ve landed on. A good landing page experience can generate leads or lose them.

“Does this content provide me with the answer or solution that I’m searching for?”

Creating a relevant landing page is essential to retaining your website visitors and eventually driving them to convert. Integrating your keywords onto your landing page will indicate that it has the answer or solution your visitor is looking for.

That being said, don’t make the common mistake of keyword stuffing. Google’s algorithm is averse to content that is stuffed with keywords. Place the keywords in areas of your content that make sense, and don’t overdo it.

Lastly, make sure you have calls to action on your landing page. Don’t make your website visitor go looking for ways to buy, donate, or sign up for your service or product. Ensure that calls to action (CTAs) are placed directly on your landing page so your visitors can’t miss them.

5. Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Unfortunately, Google Ads isn’t free. The price of your ad spend completely depends on your business and/or industry. Regardless of the cost, it’s essential to have the data that shows your ads are bringing you a positive ROI.

In order to gather that data, it’s imperative to set up tracking wherever you can, particularly on your calls to action. Whether your CTA is a phone number, a form, purchasing a product, or subscribing to a newsletter, there is a way to set up tracking so you can identify where the lead came from.

This data will show you not only if your Google Ads are providing you with a positive ROI, but they can also help you determine if it’s time to start allocating more funds because of their success.

To take it a step further, your Google Ads account can be linked to your Google Analytics account. Linking Google Ads to Google Analytics will not only allow you to measure conversion data at a deeper level but analyze the role Google Ads plays when compared to other traffic sources to your website.

6. Optimize Your Google Ads Campaigns After Gathering Data

Now that you’ve set up tracking and gathered your data, it’s time to determine what’s working, what isn’t working, and what adjustments you can make to your campaigns in order to improve your results.

Are your negative keywords taking away visitors you weren’t expecting? Do your keywords pull in relevant visitors to your landing page?

Maybe visitors are landing on your website and leaving immediately after. Can you revamp your landing page design and content? 

There are endless improvements one can make to their website and Google Ads campaign to get the desired results. There really is no such thing as “done” when it comes to Google Ads, so make sure you have a dedicated agency or employee who is constantly making adjustments and analyzing the data. 

What’s Next?

Our digital marketing team understands Google Ads through and through. Each of our digital marketing specialists is well versed in Google Ads best practices, and our team always works collaboratively to achieve the best results for our clients. 

If you need help managing your Google Ads campaigns or would like to start running Google Ads for the first time, contact our sales team for a free consultation today. We want to see your campaigns and business receive a positive ROI, so we pride ourselves in offering fair pricing.

Bytes Builds Businesses. We would love to work with you and help your business grow!