How to Improve Google Ads Performance
- Why are my Google Ads Spending so much?
- What is Ad Rank?
- What is Account Level Quality Score in Google Ads?
- Why are my Google Ads not showing?
- How to Improve Google Ads Conversion Rate?
- How to Improve Your Google Ads CTR?
There are many ways to improve your Google Ads performance. As someone who has evaluated thousands of Google Ads accounts. I’ve seen issues that are very common with accounts that cause advertisers to spend way too much. On the flip side of that, I also see advertisers whose quality score is so low it prevents them from showing up at all within Google Ads.
Issues can range from poorly chosen keywords and improperly set up campaigns to lack of ongoing management. When it comes to improving performance, you need to first uncover the cause of your problem before you can address it. I’ve taken the most common questions I am asked by business owners and provide guidance in where to locate issues and how to address them.
If you still have questions after reading this post please contact me for assistance.
There are many reasons why you may be spending too much with Google Ads. Open up your Google Ads account and take a look to see if some or all of these pertain to your account.
- Ad rank is low – Low ad rank will cause you to pay more per click or your ads may not show at all.
- Keyword quality score is low – If the keywords in the ad quality score is too low you will need to increase your bid which would cost you less if the quality score had been better.
- Your keywords are all set to broad match – Broad terms generate a lot of irrelevant searches. This may result in cheaper clicks however, it will take more of those cheaper clicks to generate sales / leads and therefore cost you more in the end.
- You're not adding negative terms - The keywords and phrases you use generate other related keywords. Many times the keywords generate for your ads are not relevant and will drive up costs. Adding irrelevant keywords as "negative" will prevent you from wasting money on clicks that aren't related and save you money.
What is Ad Rank?
Google’s Ad rank determines your ad position and if your ad will show up at all for a particular search query.
Ad rank is a combination of the keywords within your ad group to the relation of those keywords in your ad and on your landing pages. If your ad groups are too broad you can’t optimize your ads to be as relevant to the persons search results as possible.
If your ad rank is low it could also cause you to pay more per click in order to show your ad on the first page of Google. If your rank is too low (1-2) your ads may not show at all due to low relevancy.
Keyword performance is also tied heavily to Ad rank. If you’re targeting too many broad terms in an ad group this could cause your ad to be less relevant as the ads cannot be highly targeted to the searches query.
In order to improve ad rank you should...
- Pause keywords with a low CTR
- Pause keywords with that have low search volume
- Add phrase and exact matches
- Avoid using broad modified match when starting new ad groups.
- Create more specific ad groups with less keywords in order to create ads that match the queries.
What is Account Level Quality Score in Google Ads?
Every aspect of your account is based on a score. Keywords in relation to the ad group and the ads in combination of all ad groups within a campaign across an entire account.
Account-level quality score is the result of the overall historical data of all of the keywords and ads within your account. If you have a large number of low-quality keywords, low CTR and overall poor performance within your account will pull down other aspects of your account even if they are doing relatively well.
In my experience accounts usually are all poorly set up or all set up half way decent. I rarely come across an account that had some campaigns set up poorly while others ad groups were set up perfectly. New accounts have a “sandbox” phase where ads and keywords are rolled out slowly and increase over time as data and performance is collected. Old accounts that have had bad performance tend to struggle to perform well even after they have been “cleaned up”.
Some agencies who come across this issue tend to start over by creating a new account. However, this is against Google’s terms and will lead to both accounts being suspended. Google has stated that there is no such thing as an account level quality score
but those of us that have managed many accounts over the years know that account level quality score exists on some level even if Google denies this.
Why are my Google Ads not showing?
There are several reasons why your Google Ads may not be showing. I’ve listed out the most common reasons below. You could have more than one of these issues in your account.
- Low impressions - If there isn’t a lot of search volume for a keyword you should pause it as the poor performance can bring down the rank of the entire ad group.
- Low daily budget - If your daily budget is too small Google may not show your ads at all.
- Low bid on keyword(s) - If your keywords are bid too low they may not be showing up on the first page and therefor you will not receive many clicks.
- Landing experience is poor - If your landing pages have a high bounce rate, low time on page, little content that reflects the targeted terms, or has a low conversion rate this will impact your ads ability to appear.
How to Improve Google Ads Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate is a key metric. The higher the number of conversions you can generate the better your campaign will perform. However, in order to understand how to improve the conversion rate we need to conduct an audit of your current landing pages. While conversions rate is measured in Google Ads the actual conversion takes place on your site. Understanding what could impact your site’s conversion rate goes beyond just looking within the Google Ads interface.
➡️ The number of calls to action on a page
When sending visitors to a page it’s important that you have clear calls to action and there should only be one! If you ask visitors to make a purchase, follow you on social media and to subscribe to your newsletter they may take the wrong action or no action at all. When paying for traffic it’s important to have the most important conversion metric easily accessible from all pages. Which is usually the header of the site.
In some cases, it’s better to use landing pages without a main navigation in order to force visitors into making a purchase, calling or filling out a form and leaving. It’s important to note that if your conversion metric is a call you’ll need to have a call tracking code that can tie calls to keywords and report it back into Google Ads as a conversion.
This will help not only improve your quality score but will as provide you insight as to which keywords are producing calls. You can take this one step further by scoring calls from good to bad. You may start to realize that some key terms produce better conversions than others. This will help you fine tune your campaigns to get better quality leads.
When it comes to capturing leads it’s always easier to have a form pop up on the page a user is on then sending them to another page. It’s also better to have as few fields on the form as possible. Every field after the common, name, email and message increasing your chances of losing the lead.
➡️ Cost of the product or service
If your product is more expensive than the competition you need to be able to justify the reason for the increase in costs. If the increase in cost is because shipping is included be sure to mention that on the site. (Free Shipping) If it is more expensive because of the quality or the effectiveness of the product this needs to be stated clearly on the product pages. The same can be said for service / consulting business who place pricing on their sites.
You should know what your competitors charge. Visitors will most likely look at multiple sites to gauge pricing and you should be prepared to justify the higher cost – if there is one.
➡️ Enable Express Checkout
How easy or complicated is your checkout process? Many PPC managers never even look at the checkout process. Are you requiring shoppers to create an account? There should always be an express checkout process.
Allowing to ship to the billing address also speeds up the checkout process and increases conversions. Be sure to add trust signals such as; secure checkout icons, reviews and any guarantees directly on the product pages. These have all been tested to improve conversions and should be considered when designing a product page.
➡️ Set Up Conversion Funnels
If your checkout has multiple steps it’s a good idea track the checkout process using conversion funnels within Google analytics. This will allow you to discover where in the checkout process people are abandoning.
This will provide insight into where customers are running into issues with your checkout process. You can then adjust and change things up in order to push more people into checkout.
Is the page in the checkout process where shipping and taxes are added where people drop off? Is it the checkout process too long and needs to be broken out into smaller sections or have certain fields removed? Tracking the process will provide you with information as to how far shoppers are in the checkout process when they drop off.
How to Improve Your Google Ads CTR?
Having a good Click Through Rate (CTR) is a good indication that your keywords and ads are relevant to each other. A poor CTR will impact your ability to show up for certain keywords. You can improve your Google Ads CTR by doing the following;
- Create specific tightly niched ad groups. You can get as specific as Single Keyword Ad Group (SKAG).
- Ensure that the keywords in the ad group are represented in your ads
- Using extensions and sitelinks to expand your ads
- Increase your bids to the first position in order to increase the chances that sitelinks will be visible.
Improving the click through rate (CTR) on ads requires that your ad be clear as to what the message is as well as a clear call to action. You must tell searchers what to do. Get A Free Quote, Call Now, Buy Now, Order Now etc. Just having text without tell people what to do will cause less people to click on ads as they will just read the ad.
Creating specific ad groups around very specific keywords will let your ad keywords in your ads. This improves relevancy to the ad, keyword and ad group. This will also resonate with the searcher. Seeing some or all of the keywords in the ad helps confirm that what they are seeing is relevant to their search.
The screenshot below is from a Google search for “Handyman Services”. As you can see by the green arrows where in the ads that phrase is repeated.
Add site links (blue arrows) will expand your ad and take up more real estate increasing your click through rate.
The tan arrows show that are code of the phone numbers are local. This conveys to the search the company is local to their area.
The best way to keep your ad costs down is to manage your campaigns performance as frequently as possible. Some performance metrics will take time to collect before making changes.
Google ad accounts that tend to waste the most money are ones that are poorly managed above all other reasons followed by improper set up. A properly managed account will catch problems sooner and catch underperforming ads and keywords. It will also ensure that irrelevant keywords are caught sooner which will save money on wasted keywords.
Still unsure on what’s most important to tackle? The best way is to hire a professional who has experience improving campaigns. I offer a free Google Ads audit for the purpose of identifying where issues lie and to create a strategy the gets you generating revenue as quickly as possible.
Account management is the key to success
The best way to keep your ad costs down is to manage your campaigns performance as frequently as possible. Some performance metrics will take time to collect before making changes.
Google ad accounts that tend to waste the most money are ones that are poorly managed above all other reasons followed by improper set up. A properly managed account will catch problems sooner and catch underperforming ads and keywords. It will also ensure that irrelevant keywords are caught sooner which will save money on wasted keywords.
Still unsure on what’s most important to tackle? The best way is to hire a professional who has experience improving campaigns. I offer a free Google Ads audit for the purpose of identifying where issues lie and to create a strategy the gets you generating revenue as quickly as possible.
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