Tips to Optimize your Google Adwords Ads

As we have mentioned in previous posts, Google Adwords (now it is Google Ads) is the most valuable tool provided by Google for online advertising.

It enables small and large businesses to increase their online visibility and of course their sales.

Below are best practices for campaign optimization in Google Adwords.

1. Text Ads

Ads should contain the keywords we are interested in in the title so that there is more relevance between the ads and the search terms. This increases the quality index of the ads and consequently their ranking.

As Google recommends, it is good to have at least 2-3 different ads in each ad group. Ads like: “Big deals on sunglasses -40%” or “Sunglasses in stock -40, hurry!” induce the user to click on our ad.

Moreover, the same ads can run on mobile without any problem.

2. Keywords

A good technique when starting adwords is to use broad match keywords in order to get a larger audience for our ads.

For example if we have added the keyword sunglasses, then if someone searches for “sunglasses” or “men’s glasses” or “women’s glasses” our ad will appear.

After a few days, we drill down to the actual search terms that triggered our ads and add more precisely the keywords we care about.

For example, suppose the search terms displayed are: sunglasses (300 clicks/700 impressions), men’s sunglasses (50 clicks/200 impressions), men’s sunglasses deals (10 clicks/170 impressions), rayban sunglasses (20 clicks/150 impressions), ray ban sunglasses (15 clicks/110 impressions). Because the search term sunglasses has the highest CTR, it would be a good idea to enter this keyword as an exact match term, [sunglasses], meaning only for those searching for sunglasses.

For the term men’s sunglasses, we can use the modifier + in front of each word, +men’s +sunglasses, limiting searches to those looking for men’s sunglasses or men’s sunglasses or men’s sunglasses offers, etc.

Note that if we see a keyword and we don’t want our ad to appear, we can set it as a negative keyword. For example if we saw the search term callithea sunglasses, then callithea would have to be defined as a negative keyword.

3. Ad Extensions

We should set text, call, location and message links in each ad group to increase the quality score of the ads.

By increasing our ad quality score, we increase our ad rank while lowering our cost per click (cpc). So we can with the same budget have more clicks and consequently more sales.

4. Ad Scheduling

Google Ads, by default, distributes the frequency of ad display across regular time intervals of the day, in order to display ads at all times of the day.

However, if you believe that interested buyers place orders at certain times of the day, it’s a good idea to schedule your campaign to run during certain times, for example: from 10am to 4pm.