Top 10 Tips For Monitoring Your Google Ads Campaign

A Google Ads campaign can work wonders for your online business, but you also need to work on it to ensure it maintains momentum and effectiveness.  And importantly, you need to ensure it delivers an ROI that meets your expectations.

Many people fall into the complacency trap when it comes to Google Ads, expecting results to simply happen.  But it’s not a ‘set and forget’ process.  Far from it.

A critical success factor is optimising the campaign on an ongoing basis.  Of course it’s important to spend time and effort planning and setting up your Google Ads campaign, but it’s equally as important to measure and analyse results in terms of your business goals.  You need to make sure your customers are getting what they want and that you are getting a good return on your investment – and ongoing management enables you to continually make improvements and adjustments to your campaign to achieve optimum outcomes.

So What Does Optimising and Monitoring a Google Ads Campaign Involve?

Things change rapidly and what you thought was the perfect set-up may quickly prove to be ineffective.  Your research may have produced what seemed to be the most relevant keywords and you probably spent hours creating ad copy that sounded sound spot-on , but it’s only when your ads go live that the truth will reveal itself.  And that truth may hurt.  No doubt you’ve got some things wrong, but there’s always opportunity to improve IF you monitor your campaign!

I’ve been in the digital marketing industry for decades and Google Ads has always been one of my favourite components of my clients’ SEO campaigns, but I know from experience how critical it is to manage and optimise the ads in order to extract maximum value.

So, once your Google Ads campaign is up and running, here are my top 10 tips for monitoring it and getting the most from it:

Tip # 1:  Check Your Spending

Crunching the numbers of your Google Ads budget takes a bit of doing, but a little effort can pay off big time.  You need to work out what you can afford to pay for a conversion (which could be an e-commerce sale, a phone call, a request for a demonstration or a quote etc) and then measure the conversion rate for each keyword with Google Ads conversion tracking.  Once you have information on how, which and when keywords are performing, you can tailor your spend accordingly and ensure you’re getting a good return on your investment.

Tip # 2:  Keep Click-Through-Rates (CTRs) Above 1%

You should look to make improvements wherever possible to improve conversions and decrease your cost-per-click.  Ideally, your CTR rates should be kept above 1%.  Compelling ad copy is key to maintaining adequate CTRs.

Tip # 3: Focus on Negative Keywords

People put a lot of effort into researching keywords for their ads, but you should also research keywords that will prevent your ad from being displayed in response to searches which include those terms.  If you don’t focus on negative keywords, you will simply be throwing money down the drain with wasted clicks that don’t generate income.

Tip # 4:  Keep Researching Positive Keywords

There are plenty of ways you can research and find keywords, starting with your search terms report.   You’ll only know how a keyword phrase is performing once it goes live, so it’s vital to fine-tune your selection on an ongoing basis.

Tip # 5:  Use Quality Scores to Find the Right Keywords

Google rates each of your keyword phrases in terms of the expected click-through rate, the relevance of your ad and how users behave when they arrive on the landing page.  They do this by with a Quality Score with ratings going from 10 (highest) down to 1 and you can find these scores by first clicking the ‘Keywords’ tab and then clicking the white speech bubble adjacent to each keyword.  Ideally, keywords with a Quality Score of three or lower should be removed and you should investigate the others to see where improvements can be made.

Tip # 6: Check Your Bounce Rate

Why aren’t users staying around?  Is it a keyword problem or perhaps the quality of your landing page isn’t up to scratch.  If your bounce rate at ad group level and/or keyword level is above 50%, you need to investigate the reasons why – and take action.  For example, the landing page content may need to be more focused on the targeted keyword in the ad, pages may be slow to load or there may be a technical issue.

Tip # 7: Use Google Analytics

Basically, Google Analytics is a valuable tool that tracks and reports website traffic, helping you understand how users are engaging with your site so you know what’s working and what’s not.  It   lets you measure your advertising ROI and will provide you with greater insights into your Google Ads performance.

Tip # 8:   Look at Campaign Performance in Terms of Device, Geographic Area and Time of Day

As you get further into your Google Ads campaign, you should investigate how it’s going in terms of specifics so that you can target keywords accordingly.  Things to consider include what type of device potential customers are using (eg mobile vs desktop), where traffic is coming from (what country, state, suburb etc) and how your campaign is performing at different times of the day or night.

Tip # 9: Check Out Your Competitors’ Ads

Review what your competitors are doing and look at your and their ads from a prospective customer’s perspective.  Whose would you choose and why?  Make sure your unique headline sets you apart from the competition (as well as being 100% relevant to the prospective customer of course!).

Tip # 10:  Review Your Ads for Special Offers

When you’re monitoring your Google Ads campaign, consider if there are special offers that you can add to make your ad even more compelling and enticing.  Giveaways, free gifts with a purchase, special discounts etc can all be effective ways of generating leads.

Bonus Tip:  Don’t Forget Your Landing Page

Even if your ads are correctly targeted and your ad copy is on point, your campaign won’t be cost-effective if your landing page isn’t properly optimised to convert traffic into leads.  Never use your home page as your landing page as it will be too general in nature, rather make landing pages the product/service specific pages which are highly relevant to the offer/keyword in your ad.   If you have multiple ads and offers, you will reap dividends if you spend the necessary time and effort into creating different landing pages which are congruent with what your ad has promised.  Things to consider include compelling headlines, the benefits of your product or service, details of the offer, testimonials and a call to action.

As mentioned earlier, a Google Ads campaign won’t deliver a ROI if you simply ‘set and forget’.  Ongoing monitoring and maintenance is required to get the most out of it.

If you want to optimise your Google Ads campaign or are struggling with your website’s visibility and need to go from being a secret to being an online success, my new step-by-step SEO course could be just the ticket.

Using my decades of experience as an SEO specialist in Perth, I designed The SEO School especially for small business owners who want to get searched online, get seen AND get sales.  The SEO School is a DIY step-by-step modular course, so you can do it in your own time at your own pace – plus you get exclusive FaceBook support from SEO experts if you need help. Find out more about The SEO School here.

Karen Dauncey

Karen Dauncey has been working in SEO since 2003. She specialises in helping businesses get found online through Google using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) She is the founder and creator of The SEO School an online SEO Course to help teach business owners how to do their own SEO. She regularly delivers educational programs for both Local, State and Federal Government and is an advisor for the ASBAS Digital Solutions Program. Karen’s passion and commitment to help small business owners get found online is the driving force behind her online school, making SEO advice accessible to all with free resources and online courses.

Karen's wealth of SEO knowledge and practical digital marketing experience comes from running her own SEO and Google Ads agency, Blue Cherry Online Marketing since 2008. Karen has optimised over 1000 websites, managed millions of dollars' worth of spend on Google Ads and has a solid understanding of the constantly shifting industry of digital marketing and SEO. This gives her a unique advantage when it comes to being able to recommend the right online marketing strategies for your business. This gives her a unique advantage when it comes to being able to recommend the right online marketing strategies for your business. She was recently recognised as an SEO Expert for the popular course creation platform, Kajabi as well as appearing on ABC Radio
for her expert opinion on the ACCC's investigation into search engines.

Karen has attended search engine conferences in London, Stockholm, Adelaide and Sydney, and was also invited to attend a pilot Business Coaching Course at Google’s Head Office. She has a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.

She is also the co-owner of the Digital Experts Directory, an online directory for female serviced-based businesses to promote their business (with a great backlink for SEO).

To keep up to date with the latest in SEO, join her Facebook group The SEO School Community or follow her on Facebook or LinkedIn.