Avoiding Common AdWords Mistakes

When you first start growing your small business online and delving into Google AdWords there are some common mistakes by digital marketers that can be easily avoided. These mistakes, when not avoided, can be quite costly and could ultimately hurt your business.

Poorly Written Ads

Good copy for an ad campaign is easy to understand, makes use of the character restrictions, and has a strong call to action. You only have so many characters to entice a person to your website, so make the most of you ad copies. You should take time to write out multiple options and see what copy is the most compelling.

Not Using Ad Extensions

Thanks to Google’s addition of Ad Extensions, you can add site links, call, and location extensions to your ads. Adding those will not include additional information into your AdWords Campaigns, but your ad will take up more real estate on the page making it more eye catching.

You can set up Ad Extensions by clicking on the Ad Extensions tab within your AdWords account. Most cases Ad Extensions will increase your CTR and also give you multiple chances to get a user to visit your site or call your business number.

Sending People to Your Homepage

When someone clicks on your ad they expect to be taken to a page directly dealing with what they searched for. When you send someone to your homepage you’re going to have a much higher bounce rate than if you send them to a landing page built specifically for the ad they clicked on. It is therefore important to have ads and landing pages that are relevant.

Not Paying Attention to Your ROI

After making your first ad campaign you’ll have no way of knowing how successful it is unless you took the time to set up conversion tracking. The first you need to do with Google Ads is to track your conversion rates. You set up conversion tracking by going to the “Tools and Analysis” menu and choosing “Add New Conversion.”

With conversion tracking set up, you can see which ads are performing and which need to be modified in your paid search campaign. This will also make sure your are maximizing the value of each cost per click.

Forgetting About Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are ones that stop your ad from showing if they are typed in the search bar along with your broad match or other relevant keywords. Using negative keywords will help weed out off the wall search inquiries that don’t fit your company. It also helps to increase the ad quality score for your ads, which, in turn, helps your ad show up more in Google search.

Ignoring Your Brand Keywords

Sometimes companies like to skip on branded keyword campaigns; branded keyword campaigns are ones focusing on their brand name. Branded campaigns help to provide customers with a consistent and positive experience across platforms. Branded campaigns also help stop competitors from showing up on your search results page. Also, branded keywords tend to have lower CPC rates than other keywords.