The Complete Guide to Google Ads (Adwords) 2020
When starting your first Google Adwords campaign it can be a little overwhelming or when you hire your first marketing company they may be using terminology that you may not understand or be aware of.
The team at SEO Empire has put together for you the complete guide to Google Adwords for 2020. We will go into detail and break down a full Google Adwords campaign and walk you through the process of listing your first adverts and understanding how to make the most of it.
Although Google does make it very easy for you to develop your own adverts and get up and running in minutes, we do recommend that you use professionals for any serious campaign. Our number 1 complaint when talking to new clients is that they have “tried that and it doesn’t work”. As you know there are many ways to build a house also. The way master builders make one is very different to a new apprentice. It’s all about the foundations and the strategy behind it over looking and sounding good.
Many millions, if not billions get wasted on Google Adwords every year. We have worked with many companies that spend upwards of 50k a month and once our team create their new campaign we have reduced their conversion costs by up to 60 or 70% by stopping the waste and setting up the campaigns correctly.
This article will teach you about PPC campaign terminology, bid strategies, and best practices for creating great content on Google Adverts.
Well let’s get to it..
Introduction to Google
If you plan to invest in paid advertising campaigns to reach your target audience, be sure to leverage the platform that has more than 246 million unique visitors and 3.5 billion daily interactions while providing feedback. investment estimated at 700%.
In other words, don’t miss the potential of Google Ads.
Launched in October 2000, two years after the Google.com search engine went online, the advertising platform was first known as Google Adwords, before being renamed Google Ads in 2018.
It is based on the pay per click advertising model, where the cost of an advertisement is billed to the advertiser per click (PPC) or per impression (CPM). The opportunities to generate clicks and new leads or customers arising from the quality of your campaigns, this guide aims to help you optimise them thanks to Google Ads.
Google Ads allows the delivery of advertisements through various channels, such as Google, YouTube, Blogger, and millions of websites on the Google Display Network.
In this guide, you will learn how to get started with Google Ads and learn how to use the full potential of some of its features to optimise your advertising campaigns and the results they produce.
The power of Google Adwords
The following statistics provide a first positive answer to this question.
The platform’s click-through rate is around 8% and the banner ads it hosts generate 180 million impressions each month. In addition, the advertisements displayed there are responsible for 65% of clicks by customers ready to conclude a transaction, and 43% of customers acquire a product or service which they have seen advertised on YouTube.
In other words, an advertising campaign with optimised contextual forms is likely to generate a high ROI.
Why advertise on Google
Google is based on a simple principle: to offer responses in the form of paid advertisements and natural results to searches carried out by users living around the world. With 3.5 billion searches per day, it is the most used search engine in the world. In addition, the advertising platform having been launched almost twenty years ago, it enjoys a certain seniority in the paid advertising sector. According to platform statistics, a Google Ads campaign can generate a ROI eight times greater than the initial investment.
In addition, thousands of companies use Google Ads to promote their business, and among them are most likely many of your competitors, who are potentially targeting the same keywords as you. So even if your business appears naturally in the results of a specific search, it will not be among the top positions, which are reserved for paid campaigns.
If you are creating PPC campaigns to promote your products or services, Google Ads should be one of the tools on which your strategy is based.
Over the years the paid or sponsored posts and advertisements have slowly taken over the search engine results page (SERP). If you go back as little as 4 or 5 years, the first organic spot was still seen without scrolling down and used to show 10 organic results. Today you will have to scroll down 1 or 2 pages to start seeing organic results and may see as little as four to 6 results depending on the term.
What are the reasons why a Google Ads campaign is not achieving the desired results?
We recommend if you have tried Adwords in the past and thinking of giving up, to reconsider your position. Like many things in life, there are many ways to do things and then there are the right and wrong ways. Many companies outsource their adwords to overseas where there are less qualified staff members or their training is just outdated. From our experience if your business is the type of business people search google for then it more than likely work very well with adwords. Some other companies that are sold on gimmick style products or something people need to see to want, then maybe Facebook or YouTube is the place to be for you.
Vague keywords:
It is essential to define your keywords with the greatest possible precision and you must therefore prepare to test and modify them over time. If they are too vague, the search engine may present your advertisement to the wrong audience, resulting in loss of clicks and an increase in your advertising budget. Track them and modify them according to the results they obtain in order to optimise your advertisements for your target audience. You probably will not be able to define the best performing keywords at the first try and this is the reason why you must be obliged to test them, modify them and replace them.
Thee solution: refer to the section of this guide devoted to keyword strategies.
Lack of relevance of an advertisement:
If your advertisements do not correspond to the searches of your audience, they will not generate sufficient traffic to make a paid campaign profitable. To deliver results that meet your expectations, the titles and descriptions should refer to the keywords you are bidding on, while the solutions they promote should address the issues facing your audience. . You will therefore have to learn how to modify and adjust them by creating, for example, several advertisements for the same campaign or by using responsive ads from Google to identify those which obtain the best results.
The solution: refer to the section of this guide devoted to best practices for creating advertising content.
An insufficient level of quality:
The quality level of an advertisement is one of the factors that allows Google to determine its ranking. The higher it is, the better the ranking. Conversely, if it is low, the exposure and the conversion opportunities that advertising enjoys are also low. Google indicates the quality level of your advertisements with a quality score, but it is up to you to improve it.
The solution: refer to the section of this guide dedicated to optimising the quality level of your advertisements.
Poor quality landing pages:
Your efforts to create an advertisement are just as important as those for the rest of the user experience. The landing page associated with your advertisement must therefore be optimised for conversion and contain the same keywords. It is also essential that it provides a solution to the problem or question of the target audience. The user experience must be fluid throughout the conversion journey.
To make the most out of Google Adwords, you must have a high quality website. We commonly see clients with a website that was free, cheap or a template and then spend over ten thousand dollars a month on Adwords, to then complain that they are not getting sales or poor conversions. Getting traffic is one thing, keeping it and converting to sales is another. You MUST have a great website, great landing pages and a very high quality website that is not only mobile friendly but converts traffic well.
The solution: review your website starting with Google’s free website checking tool and speak to our team for a free website audit and review. We will make any recommendations we feel necessary or bring your current website up to the standard and speed that is needed.
Google Adwords Terms you need to know:
- Ad ranking
- Auction
- Campaign type
- Click rate
- CPC
- CPM
- Google Display Network
- Ad extensions
- Keywords
- PPC
- Quality level
These common terms will help you set up, manage, and optimise your Google Ads campaigns. Some are platform specific and others refer to the PPC model more generally, but they are all essential to building effective campaigns.
Ad ranking
This value, which determines the ranking of an advertisement, is calculated by multiplying your maximum bid by the score corresponding to your quality level. If it is high, the ranking, exposure and click-through rate that advertising receives are also high.
Auction
Google Ads is based on an auction system where the advertiser selects the maximum bid he is willing to pay for a click on his advertisement. The higher it is, the better the ranking of the advertisement. There are three different types of auctions: CPC, CPM and CPE.
CPC, or cost per click, is the amount paid for each click made on an advertisement.
CPM, or cost per thousand, represents the amount paid per thousand impressions, that is, when the advertisement was viewed by a thousand users.
CPE, or cost per commitment, refers to the amount paid when the advertisement is the source of a predetermined interaction.
Bid strategies are discussed in more detail later in this guide.
Campaign type
Before launching a paid campaign on Google Ads, you must select the type from the following three options: text ad, display or video.
Text ads are the text displayed on Google results pages.
Display ads typically revolve around an image and appear on the web pages of Google Display Network sites.
Video ads run on YouTube and last between 6 and 15 seconds.
Click rate
This rate corresponds to the number of clicks generated by an advertisement compared to the number of views it obtains. It is representative of quality, the ability to respond to searches from a specific audience and the ability to target relevant keywords.
Conversion rate
This rate defines the number of form submissions as a percentage of the total number of visits to a landing page. In other words, the more a landing page offers a fluid experience and in line with the offer offered in the advertising with which it is associated, the higher the conversion rate.
Google Display Network
Google Ads can appear on Google’s results pages or on the web pages of sites that are part of the Google Display Network. This network consists of websites, the pages of which provide display space for Google advertisements. These come in the form of texts or images associated with relevant content for the keywords you target. The most popular ad formats on the Google Display Network are Shopping ads and app ads.
Ad extensions
Ad extensions allow you to enrich the promotional content of an advertisement at no additional cost. They are classified into five main categories detailed in the rest of this guide: sitelink extensions, call extensions, location extensions, promotion extensions and application extensions.
Keywords
When a user performs a search, Google offers him a selection of results related to the terms he entered. Keywords are words or phrases that can be used by, or answered, by your target audience. They must be defined according to the searches to which you wish to associate your advertisement.
For example, a user who enters the words “how to remove chewing gum under shoes” will see advertising content targeting keywords such as “chewing gum shoes” or “clean shoes”.
Negative keywords represent a list of terms to which you do not want to associate your advertising. Google automatically eliminates you from bids for these terms, which are similar to those that your target business is targeting, but which apply to offers that are outside of its area of expertise or for which it does not wish to be referenced.
PPC
Pay per click, or PPC, refers to an advertising model where the advertiser pays for each click on its advertisement. It is not specific to Google Ads and is even the most common type of paid advertising campaign. Understanding its mechanisms is essential to the success of a Google Ads campaign.
Quality level
This is one of the main factors taken into account when ranking your advertising. It measures the quality according to the click-through rate, the relevance of the selected keywords, the quality of the landing page associated with it, and your past performance on the search results pages.
How does Google Ads work?
Google Ads distributes your advertisements to potential customers interested in your product or service. Advertisers bid on the search terms or keywords, and those who win have their ads placed in the search results, on YouTube, or on appropriate websites depending on the type of campaign selected.
The creation of effective and profitable advertising on Google Ads revolves around many factors detailed below.
Ad ranking and quality level
The ranking of the ad determines the positioning of your advertisement in the search results. Its quality level represents one of two elements, the other being the amount of the bid, which defines the ranking of the ad.
Quality Score is based on the quality and relevance of your advertising, which Google determines based on the number of clicks it generates when displayed, which is the click-through rate.
This rate indicates, on the other hand, your ability to create advertisements that match the searches of your target audience. To optimise it, make sure to ensure:
- The relevance of your keywords.
- The transparency of the advertising text and the call-to-action, must provide the user with a solution related to the research he has carried out.
- The fluidity of the user experience offered on your landing page.
The higher the quality level of your advertising, the lower your acquisition costs and the better its ranking. You should therefore pay special attention to this when you set up your first campaigns on Google Ads before considering, for example, increasing your bid.
The type of campaign: text ads, display, and video
Google Ads offers three different types of campaigns: text, display, or video ads. Find out below the optimal conditions of use for each of them and the factors that will allow you to choose the one that will best meet your expectations.
Text ads
The correspond to the texts displayed on Google results pages. For example, if you search for “SEO Empire Melbourne”, Google offers you sponsored ads, in other words, advertisements (even if it’s your brand you are searching):
Responsive ads
They allow you to enter different versions of the titles and descriptions of your advertisements (15 and 4 respectively) so that Google selects and displays those which obtain the best results from users.
Traditional advertising represents a static creation whose title and description always remain the same. Conversely, a responsive ad is built around a dynamic structure, which analyzes the results of an advertisement until it finds the most relevant version for your target audience. For Google, that means until it gets the most clicks.
Display ads
Google has an impressive network of websites from various industries that reach a wide range of audiences. Among them, some agree to display Google Ads advertisements on their pages in return for remuneration based on the number of clicks or impressions they generate.
For advertisers, this type of advertising represents the opportunity to distribute their promotional content to audiences that match their personas. They are generally presented in the form of images which divert users’ attention from the content of the web page they are viewing.
There are different ad formats on the Google Display Network, including Shopping ads and app ads.
Video ads
They are broadcast before, after, and sometimes even during the videos offered on YouTube, which is also a search engine. The choice of relevant keywords will therefore allow your ad to be displayed at a sufficient time to grab the attention of users without appearing too intrusive.
The targeted geographic area
When you create a Google Ads ad, you must specify the geographic area it targets. If your store is on the street, it corresponds to a reasonable perimeter in its immediate vicinity.
In the case of an online company offering a material product, it includes all the destinations where it is delivered. If your product or service is accessible worldwide, then there is no point in limiting this area.
This setting plays an important role in positioning your advertising on search results pages. For example, if you have a yoga room in Lyon and a user searches for the terms “yoga room in Melbourne”, your ad will not appear in the results, regardless of their ranking.
Indeed, Google’s main goal is to deliver the most relevant results to users, even when your ad is part of a paid campaign.
Keywords
Keyword research is just as important for paid campaigns as it is for natural searches. They should match the searches of your target audience as much as possible, as Google uses them to select the ads that appear on its results pages.
Each set of ads created within a campaign should target one to five keywords on which Google relies to deliver it at the right time.
Types of Keyword Matching
This option adds a degree of precision to your selection of keywords and allows you to indicate to Google whether you want your ad to be displayed for searches that reproduce them identically or for those that offer a similar variant.
There are four types of correspondence:
Broad match refers to the platform’s default match type, where an ad is triggered by all of the relevant variations of your keywords. The search for “Dentist Wantirna will therefore generate results containing the keywords “Cosmetic Dentist Wantirna” and “Dentist in Wantirna”.
The broad match modifier allows you to target a specific word within an expression by prefixing it with a “+” sign to trigger ads that contain at least that word. Thus, the expression “+ dentist Wantirna” may result in the dissemination of advertisements containing the terms “Wantirna”, “cosmetic dentist” or “dentist and Wantirna”.
The exact phrase associates your advertisement with searches that include your keyword in the order in which you formulated it. It can however be preceded or followed by additional terms. For example, “dentist Wantirna” may result in the display of advertisements containing the terms “good dentist Wantirna” or “the best dentist wantirna”.
The exact keyword allows you to broadcast your advertisement only for searches that contain exactly the same keyword as yours. For example, your ad will not appear in the results if the search contains the terms “Chinese dentist Wantirna” and not “dentist Wantirna South Melbourne”.
If you work in a company that does not yet know exactly the search habits of its personas, first opt for a wide correspondence, in order to refine it as you analyse the searches generating the best results. However, as your advertisements will initially be displayed in response to numerous searches, which will sometimes be irrelevant, you must monitor them in order to optimise them.
Titles and descriptions
The text that describes your advertising is one of the main elements motivating the choice of users. It must therefore correspond to their research, contain the keywords you target, and provide a solution to the problem they encounter.
Here is an example :
By searching for the term “Dentist Hawthorn East“, you can get the above result. The description is concise and takes into account the character limit to present the offer and establish a link with the target audience.
The keyword appears in the title of the ad so that users know it matches their search. The description highlights the relevance of the offer of this company, which offers an adequate solution to his persona, namely a person looking for a dentist in Hawthorn East. Furthermore, the terms chosen aim as much to reassure users as to establish the merits of the offer.
This example shows the type of descriptions that can generate clicks. However, to optimise your conversion rates, you will need to use the same application when writing the landing page text associated with your advertisement.
Ad extensions
Additional information that is intended to encourage more interactions with your brand, these extensions are classified into five main categories:
Sitelink extensions extend the reach of your advertising and allow it to stand out from your competitors by providing more opportunities for users to interact with your brand.
Call extensions allow you to add your company’s telephone number to your advertising to facilitate communication with users. If you have customer service trained to drive engagement with your audience, then you can include their phone number in your ad to optimise your conversion rates.
Caller-extensions-google-ads
Location extensions allow you to integrate your company’s geographic location and phone number into your advertising. This option is particularly useful if you have a physical presence, as well as in searches that include the term “near”.
Extensions-of-place-google-ads
Promotion extensions are effective when one of your promotional offers is in progress. They can then encourage users to click on the link if the pricing is more advantageous than that of your competitors.
Extensions-to-promote-google-ads
Application extensions provide a link to a downloadable application on mobile media in order to streamline the user experience on all the devices they are likely to use.
Remarketing according to Google Ads
Thanks to the retargeting functionality of the platform, or remarketing, you can create campaigns intended for users who have already interacted with your brand but who have not carried out any conversion action. The use of cookies allows you to follow their online activity in order to broadcast your advertising at the most opportune times. This is a proven marketing tactic since it is established that a prospect must be in contact with your brand at least 7 times before becoming a customer.
How to set up a Google Ads campaign
Configuring the parameters of a paid campaign on Google Ads is relatively simple and quick thanks to the platform assistant, which guides you through the process. First access the Google Ads site, then click on “Start”, then follow the instructions of the configuration wizard to create and distribute your advertisement. If you already have the texts and images you want to use, the whole process shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.
However, after this initial simplicity, you will still have to follow certain less obvious steps to optimise the creation, distribution, and monitoring of your advertising.
Link your Google Ads account to Google Analytics
If you’ve already installed Google Analytics on your website to track traffic, conversion rates, goals, or any other metric, be sure to link your Google Ads account to it. By doing so, you will centralise and simplify the monitoring, analysis, and reporting of the different channels on which you distribute your campaigns.
Add UTM parameters
These settings are used by Google to track activity associated with a specific link. They correspond to the part of a URL that follows a question mark and allow you to identify the offers or advertisements generating conversions in order to help you focus your efforts on the most profitable areas of your campaigns. In other words, they facilitate the optimisation of your advertisements by allowing you to identify those which are really carrying.
If you don’t want to have to manually add UTM parameters to all URLs created for your ads, integrate them at the campaign level. Otherwise, you can use the Google UTM settings creation tool.
Set up conversion tracking
This optional step allows you to identify the exact number of leads or customers generated by your campaigns. Without this, you will not be able to define their ROI precisely. Conversion tracking also helps you keep track of sales, or any other activity, on your website or apps, as well as tracking calls made through ads.
Integrate your Google Ads account with your CRM
There is an undeniable advantage in centralising all of your data to ensure monitoring, analysis, and reporting. You may already be doing this with your CRM to track your contact data and from pop-up forms. By integrating your Google Ads account, you will be able to follow all of your campaigns and identify those that produce the best results in order to continue to offer relevant offers to your target audience.
Bid strategies on Google Ads
Once your campaign and tracking are set up, it’s time to place your first bids because they are one of the two factors determining the ranking of your ads. If the amount actually depends mainly on your budget and your goals, there are nevertheless various parameters and strategies that you must know before launching your campaign.
Automatic and manual auctions
Google Ads offers two different types of bids: automatic bidding and manual bidding.
Automatic bidding lets Google adjust your bids based on your competitors’ bids and the budget limit you set, to maximize your chances of winning without you having to manage them.
Manual auctions allow you to select the amount of your bids yourself and therefore reduce them for advertisements generating few results.
Bidding on search terms associated with your brand
These terms, like “SEO Empire PPC”, contain the name of your business or one of its products. The question of whether this kind of auction is relevant is debated. On the one hand, they can amount to a loss of money if you consider that the terms associated with your brand are covered by natural research.
On the other hand, bidding on these terms gives you an advantage in the search results by allowing you to reach less advanced leads in your conversion journey. For example, if you are researching PPC and consider SEO Empire’s PPC to be a serious solution, entering the words “SEO Empire PPC” will trigger this precise ad in the first results so you don’t have to scroll down to find it.
In addition, if you do not bid on terms associated with your brand, your competitors are likely to do so and therefore rank higher in search results.
Cost per acquisition
If you’re not interested in allocating a budget for converting users to leads, you can set a cost per acquisition, which applies only to conversions from users to customers. This auction strategy is potentially more expensive than the others, but you will only be charged for the paying customers generated by your advertisements. It also has the merit of allowing you to justify the sums invested in your advertising campaigns while facilitating their monitoring.
Launch your campaign
Given its scope and authority, Google Ads should be one of the tools you use for your paid campaigns. Use the tips and advice given here to launch your first campaign and be sure to analyse its performance to optimise it over time. If it does not generate the expected results, refer to the strategies and information discussed in this guide to modify it and allow it to get more clicks and convert more leads.
Summary
Now you know the basics of Google Ads, have ads set up, and are off and running. With the above information, you are off to a good start. Make sure you do every step and ensure your remarketing is working. Pixels are a big part of PPC and will be your best friend for most campaigns. If you want to speak with us to manage your businesses PPC campaign contact us.
Read here as to why you should audit your Google Adwords campaign each year.
