Google Ads: Master the Basics for Success

In Google ads, there are all sorts of advanced tactics that you can learn and implement. With that said, today we’re going to talk about mastering the basics. Staying on top of these strategies will lead you to success in Google Ads. Optimizing the foundational elements of your Google Ads campaigns is how you will get a return on investment and, ultimately, more conversions.

Implementing the advanced tactics is a great idea, however sometimes people forget to first master the basics.

A clean, simple campaign implemented properly is better than a campaign that has all sorts of advanced tactics in it but has holes in the foundational elements.

Keywords

Keywords are the bread and butter of your Google Ads campaign. Using Google’s Keyword Planner, as well as your own knowledge and experience, it’s crucial to put the right keywords in your campaigns.

What kinds of specific keywords and search terms are people using when they search for your product or service in the Google search engine?

These keywords will also act as the foundation for your ad text as well, as people tend to click on the Google ads that have the keywords they’re searching for.

The three types of keywords are broad, phrase, and exact. Broad keywords capture the most traffic, exact the least, and phrase somewhere in-between. In the earlier years of Google Ads, the use of exact keywords was more common. Now, with the updated algorithm of Google Ads, broad keywords are more effective.

With that said, all types of keywords are useful and it’s important to use the right ones at the right time.

Ad Groups

Put simply, ad groups are specific groups of keywords in a campaign around a specific theme or sub-theme. Your Google Ads campaign will usually have multiple ad groups in it. Google likes tightly themed ad groups, meaning that it’s good to keep each ad group specific.

While there are different approaches depending on the industry and the specific goal of running paid ads, companies will often reduce the effectiveness of the ad group and overall campaign when using keywords that aren’t connected.

This is one of those things that’s straightforward – and it is. But it’s easy to become lost in complexity. As the saying goes, there is genius in simplicity.

Negatives

Another building block of a successful Google Ads campaigns is “negatives”. These are the keywords you don’t want to show for. You may know some keywords you don’t want to show for right at the beginning of setting up your campaign. If you don’t, you can use the “Search terms” report once your ads start running to see what keywords your ads are showing for, and then begin creating a “negatives” list for keywords you no longer want your ads to be associated with.

It’s useful to monitor this over time and continue to build your “negatives” list. The more you signal to Google the keywords you don’t want to show for, the more likely it is you will show for the keywords you do want to show for.

Location Targeting

With location targeting, you signal to Google the locations you would like your ads to show in. Similar to keywords, you can also signal to Google the locations you would like your ads to not show in (by default, Google will not show your ads in a location unless you specify it, but sometimes there can be random or fraudulent clicks from other places; using a tool like ClickCease can help as well as far as the fraudulent clicks).

The good news is that you can be as broad or specific as you want with location targeting. You can choose to target a whole country, or you can choose to target specific regions, cities, towns, and zip codes. There’s also a target by “radius” option, where you choose a location and then target a certain radial distance around that center point.

You can also make bid adjustments by increasing bids for locations that perform and convert well, and decreasing bids for locations that don’t perform and convert well.

Getting your location targeting optimized is a powerful piece of Google ads success.

Ad Schedule

You can also set up an ad schedule, where you signal to Google when you want your ads to show, as far as days and times.

Are there certain times your usual customers are buying your products or services? Focus on showing your ads on these times, including using bid adjustments.

If you don’t know what days/times are best, you can set a default to have your ads run on all days and times, and then make adjustments depending on which times of the week work best.

To show how ad scheduling can be incredibly important, let's share an example coming from Typify’s in-house Google Ads specialist, Jeff Davis.

In the past, Jeff was working with a client whose products and services were oriented towards doctors. Everything in the Google Ads campaigns seemed to be set up perfectly, but the campaign wasn’t driving paid conversions.

Jeff went into the ad schedule and saw that the client’s ads were only running Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm (standard working hours). As an experiment to help the client, Jeff shifted the ad schedule and had the ads run throughout the night and on the weekends as well.

Conversions skyrocketed and the client became?incredibly happy! It turns out that doctors have different schedules due to the long hours they work, and they were searching for the client’s services in the middle of the night and on weekends, after getting off a long shift. This change in the ad schedule ending up making the client lots of money, and many doctors happily found the client’s services.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are many more optimizing techniques and strategies for Google Ads. Our goal here is to help you master the basics so that you can create a strong foundation and successful campaigns.

Are you too busy to set up Google Ads campaigns on your own due to all your competing priorities? Then please feel free to contact us for a consultation – we’d love to help.