Google Ads op­ti­miza­tion – how to perfect your Google Ads campaign

The success of a Google Ads campaign can often be decided by the pre­de­ter­mined bid settings. As we’ve already mentioned, there are many different ways to per­son­al­ize your strategy using certain advanced Google Ads tips. But before all this, the first step is to define your­cam­paign’s goal. There are four basic goals available:

• Max­i­miz­ing clicks: best used if the campaign is geared towards gen­er­at­ing visitors – with con­ver­sions playing a secondary role. This is why many af­ford­able keywords can be used to increase traffic, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to encourage a user to complete an action.
   
• Max­i­miz­ing con­ver­sions: this is useful if you’re looking to prompt a user into com­plet­ing an action, like pur­chas­ing from an online shop. User tracking is equally as important in this case, as it allows you to align your maximum average bid to meet your defined con­ver­sion.
   
• Max­i­miz­ing profits: this scenario is also about con­ver­sions. But in this case, the trick is to find keywords that promise a par­tic­u­lar­ly high profit, instead of simply finding all the keywords with con­ver­sion potential.
   
• Increase brand awareness: a less common but equally worth­while goal is to run a Google Ads campaign to increase brand awareness. In this case, the bid strategy viewable CPM (cost-per-mille = cost-per-thousand im­pres­sions), whereby your bid is dependent on the number of delivered im­pres­sions, is a perfect choice. But this is only available if you opt for a Display Network campaign.

The ap­proach­es listed here demon­strate why a blanket bid strategy isn’t possible. Nor is there a universal eval­u­a­tion method for Google Ads op­ti­miza­tion. If the focus is on click op­ti­miza­tion, then the number of clicks should be set in relation to payment (CPC), but if max­i­miz­ing con­ver­sions is the goal then con­ver­sions should be the central element. Should you be aiming to maximize profits, then ROI is the best strategy. In order to control the bids manually, don’t forget to select manual bidding when creating the campaign.

When creating your Google Ads campaign, you’re presented with a range of settings that can have a big influence on the success of your ad. First, you are asked to select a campaign type. The two most common types (the Google Search Network and the Google Display Network) are combined as the default setting. Given that these networks are dras­ti­cal­ly different, combining them isn’t rec­om­mend­ed. Instead, it often makes more sense to choose just one, typically the Google Search Network, and then select the option ‘All features’. Other options you have before beginning your campaign are:

• Device settings: all ads will run on all supported devices. But you can specify whether your ads are to be optimized for mobile devices. You can also define in­di­vid­ual bid strate­gies for different device types.
   
• Location and language in­for­ma­tion: to ensure that your ads only appear in the SERPs of relevant users, language and location in­for­ma­tion is very important. You should run an analysis in advance to decide whether a regional focus in a par­tic­u­lar city or zip code might be better than a state or na­tion­wide target. This can be optimized in Google Ads thanks to the location settings.
   
• Ad ex­ten­sions: if it fits your web project, you should add features to your ad­ver­tise­ments. Google Ads offers features like ad­di­tion­al links, the company location, snippets, or reviews.
   
• Schedule: ad sched­ul­ing is a powerful ally when trying to optimize your daily budget. By defining the day(s) and time(s) that your ad will appear, you stand a much better chance of reaching your target audience.

With the in­tro­duc­tion of the Keyword Planner, Google Ads presents one of the most important tools in keyword research. Putting together certain keyword sets and including them in your ad lays the foun­da­tion for reaching the right audience. As time-consuming and detailed as this initial research may be, it’s still only the first step – keywords must be regularly analyzed and improved in order to optimize Google Ads. So be sure to explore data and sta­tis­tics on your keywords regularly (cost, im­pres­sions, average position, etc.) and filter out the ones per­form­ing poorly.

The keyword match types also require regular care. While you should choose the match types ‘exact match’ and ‘phrase match’ at the beginning of the campaign or when faced with a very limited budget, in the long term, the types ‘broad match’ or modified broad match’ will prove to be a more in­ter­est­ing choice. The latter types mean that your ads are also displayed on searches that are only roughly the same as your keyword phrases. In this case, it’s critical to define negative keywords that will be excluded from the search.