Google Ads is one of the most popular and effective online advertising platforms, allowing businesses to display ads on Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and across the web. With Google Ads, advertisers can target specific audiences and demographics, track conversions, and adjust campaigns to optimize results.
This article will provide a checklist of key ways to audit and optimize Google Ads campaigns to improve performance and results. Monitoring campaigns should be an ongoing process, but this list covers some of the most important areas to focus on. By following these optimization best practices, you can gain valuable insights into your account and make adjustments to lower your cost-per-click (CPC), increase relevance, reduce wasted spend, and ultimately get more out of your ad budget.
Review Campaign Structure
When reviewing your Google Ads campaigns, it’s important to start by looking at your overall campaign structure and organization. Your campaigns and ad groups form the backbone of your account and can have a major impact on the performance of your ads.
The most important decision is choosing between having one single campaign or multiple campaigns. Here are some best practices to consider:
- Use multiple campaigns if you have distinct products/services, brands, or customer segments you want to track separately. This allows more targeted ad copy, landing pages, and bids for each audience.
- Use a single campaign if you have one primary offering or want to promote your brand as a whole. This simplifies management and coordination across keywords and ads.
- Within each campaign, organize tightly themed ad groups around specific products, services, or keyword themes. This grouping allows highly-relevant ad copy and landing pages for each ad group. Keep an eye on search query reports to identify new potential ad groups as needed.
- When structuring your ad groups, it’s also important to choose either broad, phrase, or exact match keywords. Using a healthy mix of match types allows you to control bids and traffic more granularly. Too many broad-match keywords may drive irrelevant traffic, while too many exact-match keywords can limit visibility for other relevant searches.
- Set campaigns to target either search or display network placements as appropriate. Use observation and testing to refine your campaign types over time. With a thoughtful structure and organization, you’ll have the foundation for successful Google Ads results.
Analyze Keyword Performance
Understanding how your keywords are performing is crucial to optimizing your campaigns and driving more conversions at a lower cost. Here are some tips for analyzing keyword performance:
Review search terms report – This report shows how often your keywords trigger ads and allows you to identify low-performing keywords that should be removed or adjusted. Look at impressions, clicks, CTR, average CPC, and conversion rate for each keyword.
Evaluate match types – Examine the match type (broad, phrase, exact) for each keyword. Broad-match keywords often have low relevance, so they may need to be switched to a phrase or an exact match. Check search query reports to identify irrelevant queries triggering broad match keywords.
Compare match types in ad groups – Ad groups with broad and phrase match keywords tend to have lower Quality Scores than exact matches. Consider splitting keywords into different ad groups by match type.
Analyze impression share – A low impression share indicates your keyword bids are too low and you’re missing out on potential impressions. Increase bids selectively on high-value keywords with lower impression share.
Identify low search volume keywords – Keywords with extremely low search volume are unlikely to convert and end up costing you money. Prune low-volume keywords periodically.
Review metrics over time – Check how metrics like CTR, conversions, and cost per conversion change week over week. Look for positive and negative trends to identify optimization opportunities.
Regularly analyzing keyword performance will reveal opportunities to improve relevance, increase conversions, and reduce wasted spend. Focus on refining your keyword list to maximize results.
Evaluate Ad Copy
To evaluate your ad copy performance, segment your ads into different ad groups and create multiple versions of your headlines and descriptions. You can then A/B test these different variations to see which ones result in higher click-through rates and conversions.
When writing effective ad copy, focus on highlighting your key benefits and features in the headlines and using emotional triggers and urgency in the descriptions.
Your headlines should be short, attention-grabbing, and descriptive. The description should elaborate on the headline and explain exactly why users should click on your ad.
Check Ad Extensions
Ad extensions allow you to append additional information to your Google Ads, giving users more context about your business. This can help increase your ad’s prominence and performance.
Review Bidding Strategies
When running Google Ads campaigns, one of the most important elements to optimize is your bidding strategy. The bidding strategy determines how much you pay for clicks and impressions. Choosing the right bidding strategy can help you maximize conversions while staying within your budget.
Analyze Conversions
Evaluating the conversion path and making optimizations is crucial for improving campaign performance.
Check Audience Targeting
Defining your target audience is one of the most important parts of a successful Google Ads campaign. There are several targeting options you can use to reach your ideal customers:
Monitor Ad Performance
Regularly monitoring and analyzing your ad performance is crucial for optimizing your Google Ads campaigns. Keep a close eye on key metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost-per-click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS) to identify opportunities.
Conclusion
Optimizing your Google Ads campaigns is crucial for getting the most out of your ad spend and driving better results. By regularly auditing and improving your campaigns, you can increase their effectiveness over time.
The checklist provided in this article outlines important steps every advertiser should take to keep their campaigns performing at their best. By reviewing your campaign structure, analyzing keywords, evaluating ad copy, adding extensions, adjusting bids, tracking conversions, refining targeting, and monitoring metrics, you can spot opportunities for improvement.
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