6 Tips To Keep your Google Ads In Shape

Mateo Alessio

Mateo Alessio is a Digital Marketing Specialist focused on Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), he is really keen about results with a data-driven profile. Currently working at Alexanders Digital Marketing as a Digital Marketing Specialist.

All,Google Ads |

August 26, 2019

In this article, we are going to review 6 monitoring strategies to improve the performance of your campaigns and keep them in the best possible shape.

Remember, the main goal of the monitoring is to improve the results of your campaign and keep up with monthly maintenance.

Let’s start with the recommendations!

General performance review

Review Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like clicks, click-through rate and conversions to give you a general idea of the campaign performance.

This general checking is very important because it allows you to quickly identify any budget, quality or conversion problems as well as understanding if there is a technical issue on the website such as a broken form.

This is also a good opportunity to review your cost per click and overall expenditure.

Search term cleaning

Keywords are the key for search campaigns.

Each keyword can generate different search terms, especially if you are using broad and phrase match. So, review the search terms every month and exclude all the non-relevant search terms as a negative keyword.

Keep in mind that the search term relevance should be defined by you based on the term intention.

Have a look at this Google document about keyword and how to access to the search terms report.

Bidding review and bid strategy

This is an integral part of Google Ads because your bidding can define your ad position, quality, and cost per click.

When you are using a manual bid strategy, review if your keywords have the necessary budget to be on the first page, if not, raise the bid for the relevant keywords.

Review this complete guide about the different keyword status and how to fix a status.

If you are using smart bidding (automated bidding), check that the automated bid has all the necessary data to perform in the right way.

Automated bids normally need at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days to work properly.

Click here to learn how to access your bid strategy report.

It’s really important to understand which bid strategy is right for each campaign.

Your decision should be based on your campaign’s goals. For example, choose “maximize clicks” if you are keen to generate more traffic on your website or “maximise conversions” if you want to generate more conversions (sales, forms completions, or phone calls).

Review the ad performance

Ads play a key role in defining the CTR, quality score, and cost per click, consequently it’s important to understand which ones are working better.

Identify the low-performing ads on each ad-group, pause them, and create a new one with better composition and message.

The main ads KPIs to analyse are: % served, CTR, clicks, and conversions.

This is a never-ending process but it’s going to help to identify relevant key messages and lead you to a better understanding of your target audience.

Keywords opportunities and new ad groups

Search terms can easily help you to identify new relevant keywords and even new relevant ad groups.

Review the search terms carefully. Identify the best performing based on cost, conversion, and CTR. Make a list of high-performance search terms and consider if you can add those new search terms as keywords in the existing ad groups or if you need to create a new ad group.

This is one of the most cost-effective ways to expand a campaign and assure good performance.

Google Ads recommendation tab

Google Ads has a very useful recommendation tab where you can find lots of recommendations like scheduling ads, new extensions, and keywords.

Review the recommendations and check which one is actually relevant or could improve your existing campaign performance. It’s not a good practice to accept and apply all of them, take your time and read through each recommendation before you give it a go.

Read the full Google recommendations manual to gain a better understanding before you implement them.