How to Improve your Google Ads Keywords

Running Google ads is anything but easy, even if Google tries to make it simple to set them up in the first place. I covered in my last blog what exactly a Google Ads manager does, but if you aren’t yet ready to take the leap, here is one simple way to improve your ads on Google and increase your clicks without straining your budget.

The best way to do this is by reviewing your keywords and making appropriate changes. My disclaimer is that with Smart Campaigns, you have almost no control over who your ads appear to or what keywords are used, so this applies to manual campaigns only. However, it is both a simple and necessary step to making sure your ads are creating maximum value for your business.

When you look at Google Ads reports, there are a variety of options. I recommend choosing ‘keywords’ on the left-hand side of your campaign dashboard, then sorting them by your top priority. If you have conversions set up, then sort the keywords by best-performing (either total conversions or conversion rate), or use a different metric like click-through rate or cost per click if you have not yet set up conversions (although I would HIGHLY recommend not running a campaign without doing that!)

You can either view the data within the Google Ads dashboard or choose ‘export’ and download the results to your file of choice. I personally download them as a .csv then further sort the options. My focus is conversions, conversion rate, click-through-rate, and cost per conversion. When you look at the best performing keywords, ask yourself a few questions:

1) Is this how you want your business to be found? Does this describe one of your primary offerings?

2) Does your ad copy match up with the keywords that people are searching?

3) Are your conversions (or clicks) worth what you’re currently paying to your business? Are you seeing actual customers through Google Ads, or does it seem to fall flat?

4) Are you spending a large portion of your budget on the Display Network?

Answering those questions will shed some light on whether your ads are effective, and if you need to make changes. Sometimes everything looks good and you can continue on, or sometimes you can make minor corrections like adding negative keywords, changing your target CPA (cost per acquisition), or turning off Display Network altogether.

Either way, if you choose to run Google Ads by yourself, do not neglect doing a bi-weekly or monthly review to make sure you are on the track! If you have any more specific questions than that, I’m happy to help.