Here’s a collection of Google Ad tips and tricks that we’ve discovered after managing over £200,000 on Google Ads this year:
1) Turn off Google Partners for instant CTR gains
The Google Partner network typically has awful CTR compared with Google’s native network, disable the partner network to instantly boost your CTR (do check that the partner network isn’t converting well, before disabling of course.)
2) Turn off Auto-enabled recommendations to massively reduce wasted spend.
Go to All Campaigns > Settings > Account Settings. Make your Auto Enable recommendations are disabled, otherwise Google will automatically activate their recommendations such as adding irrelevant keywords to your campaigns.
3) Use Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) to boost CTRs swiftly.
Take advantage of Google’s automatic Ad Copy Testing by implementing Responsive Search Ads. Bonus tip: Fill in every available headline and description until your Ad hits the ‘Excellent’ score.
4) Change your Conversion Goals Attribution Model to Position based if relevant.
By default your conversion goals in Google Ads will use the ‘Last Click’ attribution model, this can be beneficial occasionally but we typically find position-based attribution tells a much better story of how much impact a keyword had in the conversion path.
5) Use 3 Ads per ad-group
We found 1 Responsive Search Ad and 2 Expanded Text Ads were the perfect setups in all cases.
6) Include a single CTA in your headline
Sounds obvious, but many ads don’t actually mention what they want you to do. Something as simple as ‘| Shop Now’ or ‘| Buy Now’ had a massive impact on CTR in our experience, if possible always try have one headline with a short Call to Action.
7) Take a look at your competition every month
Utilise Google’s Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to check how your Ad Copy compares to the rest of the competition and make sure your Ad is better in every area (Headline, Descriptions & Ad Extensions).fatigue.
9) Use All available Ad Extensions!
You should always use all available Ad extensions, at a minimum we utilise Call Outs, Structured Snippets, Locations, Calls & Sitelinks. Make your Ads take up as much screen space as possible.
11) Reduce the waste by using segments
Using Google’s pre-built segments you can see what’s wasting spend by checking Age, Device, Network & placements.
12) Check The Search Term report weekly.
This has the biggest impact on waste reduction in our experience, check what search terms are wasting spend and add them as a negative keyword.
13) Use Negative Keyword Lists
Many accounts seem to have inconsistent negative keyword usage, use Negative Keyword Lists to organise your negative keywords into themes such as Competitors or Locations.
14) Take advantage of Google’s Automated bidding strategies*
In most cases, automated bidding wins, *providing you have enough data to drive performance, which in our experience is at least 30 conversions in a 30-day period.
15) Get granular with your location targeting
In our experience, many accounts target broad locations and never optimise around the data Google provides on locations! Use the Location report to check what cities or postcodes drive conversions and optimise accordingly.
16) Structure your account with tightly themed campaigns & ad-groups
Make sure your account structure allows your Ad copy to be as relevant as possible. We make sure every keyword that isn’t extremely related has it’s own ad-group to get the highest available quality score.
17) Use Filters to find winning & losing keywords
Setup account wide filters such as filtering keywords with high clicks and no conversions, or vice versa to tweak budgets or pause budget burners!
18) Auction Insights tell the whole story
The Auction Insights report is a goldmine for checking performance vs your competitors. We typically check the past 3 months and segment by Week to get a good idea of account performance