7 Mistakes in Google AdWords PPC to Avoid

In this blog I am gonna be going over 7 Mistakes in Google AdWords PPC to avoid so there are a lot of Google AdWords mistakes you can make because it’s such a massive piece of software and such a massive product for advertisers.

So there’s so many different things you can go to I mean even just clicking on the settings screen here you can see all these different things here.

There’s different you know down the left side you have ad groups ads and extensions landing pages keywords audiences so I can’t cover every single mistake that you know you can make within your account.

But these are kind of the major mistakes that I see frequently and the things that you should do with your campaigns really some best practices kind of.

So let’s just get right into it the first one is going to be

1. Search Network campaigns

You have the option of choosing search Network Display Network or both so I could include Google Display Network and get rid of the search Network or just search Network or just Display Network or both.

What you want to do is just search Network because the Display Network is completely different from the search Network nobody goes on to the Display Network and searches anywhere to target your ads.

So basically what happens is If I’m targeting the keyword “PPC advertising” agency in the search Network all only my ad will only appear when someone goes to Google or a search partner and typeset in on the Display Network they’re gonna try to find websites that match.

PPC advertising agency so maybe my ads show up in places that are relevant but for the most part, I’m not reaching people in real-time I’m not reaching people as they’re typing it in so when you’re using a search Network campaign you just want to use search Network and search partners because it’s just completely different.

Display Network search queue or keywords on the Display Network are contextually based so they’re based on the website they’re based on you know what the websites about the website content.

So with the Search Network, you’re only targeting people when they’re typing it in and that’s kind of what you want to do so when you’re using search Network campaigns only target the search Network and search partners so that’s number one number

2. Not using negative keywords

The next thing in our 7 mistakes in Google Adwords PPC to avoid is “Not using negative keywords”.

So as we move into here you can see I have my campaign here newsletter and free ebook so we’re trying to target people who are looking for business marketing ideas on how to promote your business.

Free business ebooks different things like that we’re trying to target people who are looking for some ideas and growing their business it’s kind of a broad campaign it’s not the best campaign but one of the main things we need to do is add negative keywords.

So if we click on negative keywords you can see we already have some so we always upload a list of negative keywords to get started with most of our campaigns I find that list on this website here so it’s techwise.com and it’s there 75 negative keywords so if you just search a negative keywords list this is their article here it’s kind of a long URL.

What we’re gonna do is you go to your all-time results or you go to you know last month’s results or last week’s results and you go into your campaign and keywords and you click on search terms so and you just click on search terms from the drop-down and so what it’s gonna do is pull up search terms that people have typed in to find your ad.

So for us, we have some pretty good ones here so “how to market your small business” perfect “how to promote your business on online meetings” so that doesn’t really help me too much you know “how to promote your MCA business” so sometimes you might have to Google.

I’m not sure what “MCA business” is so I’d have to look that up it might be like a “YMCA” I’m not sure “how do you use LinkedIn to promote your business” so I might want to add LinkedIn as a negative keyword.

But I’m gonna look at the one here “how to market small business woodwork” so my landing page has nothing to do with woodworking it has nothing to do with specific industries so I might want to just add “woodwork” as a phrase match negative keyword so if I add that as a negative keyword that means that any search that includes woodwork is not gonna show up for my keywords.

So that’s not gonna help me too much but maybe I want to add LinkedIn because I don’t want people specifically looking for LinkedIn opportunities I have a page on my website about LinkedIn strategy so I’d rather find that page then come to my page and download my free ebook.

Maybe I use LinkedIn as a negative keyword so you come into negative keywords there you click the plus sign and I always put my negative keywords in quotes so we’re just gonna do add negative keywords or create a new list to add to the campaign so you could do the campaign or ad group level keywords.

For us, LinkedIn will work for the entire campaign so we just put it in quotes so this makes it a phrase match negative keyword so anytime someone types us in and any phrase any anything they type into Google if LinkedIn is in that word it’s not our ad is not going to show up.

So we click on save that helps us avoid some search results that aren’t necessarily that relevant I mean the LinkedIn ones are not too bad but it’s not really what we’re looking for I’d rather find my LinkedIn page for that one so I’m just trying to you know go through your search keywords.

If you see search terms if you see popular search terms that never convert you want to add those ones right away other search terms you just have to use your discrepancy I could leave it open to LinkedIn but for me, it probably doesn’t make much sense because landing page has really nothing to do with it so our next common error.

3. Not optimizing for conversions

If we come into the conversion section of Google Adwords what you can see here is we can upload some of our different conversions we can actually optimize for them in Google Adwords with our campaigns.

What you want to do is when you come to your Google AdWords account you click on the icon up here on the top and you click under measurement and conversions.

What you can do is add a conversion from your website based on you know something someone views if someone drives a sale something like that you can do conversions on your app so someone installs your app maybe someone’s playing a game in your app.

Whatever it is you can solve or you can create phone call conversions so if someone clicks on your ad and calls you and they’re on the phone call for more than two minutes or one minute or something like that.

However long it is for your business you can track those as conversions and you can also import conversions from Salesforce, Google Analytics, Google Firebase all sorts of different CRM systems.

You can import conversions as well and there as you want to import conversions is because the whole goal of Google AdWords is to optimize for something.

If you’re running small business traffic to your website really doesn’t have a ton of value anymore but you need our conversion actions you need to drive new customers to your website you need to increase your email list you need to drive sales on your pages.

That’s the goal of Google AdWords if you don’t have a specific goal of what you want people to do if you’re just driving traffic to your website you’re driving traffic to your app or something like that and nothing’s happening you’re kind of just wasting your money.

So conversions help you optimize for your key performance indicators so that’s the whole reason you want to upload your conversions and optimize for them.

4. Poor keyword research

Unfortunately, people just don’t know how to do keyword research or they just don’t do it at all they just type in some keywords they think that people type in or you know they target a few keywords.

That really isn’t that great so one of the most important things you need to do is do keyword research, you can find some of the top keywords that people are targeting in addition to keyword research.

I never target broad match keywords I think they’re just a big waste of time you can’t really control anything so if I’m targeting pest control as a broad match keyword then what’s gonna happen is it’s going to show up for basically all these different types of keywords.

If I type in pest control up here all of these keywords are essentially broad match keywords to what Google AdWords believes so in the previous example I should for the negative keyword I showed you a phrase match keyword so understanding keyword match types is also an important part of keyword research.

Because I see a lot of advertisers just go in and they put in pest control exterminator termite control with no brackets no modifiers you know no phrase match symbols anything like that so understanding keyword match types are really really important.

So understanding keyword research, understanding keyword match types is really important for your success and is just a quick keyword tool.

I’ve been using it recently which I enjoy so Neil Patel probably one of the biggest people in online marketing, has this tool Ubersuggest if you go to neilpatel.com/ubersuggests great keyword research tool.

I think they use data from the Google Keyword planner and I’m not sure where else they use it from they but they use it from a couple of different sources so you can kind of really get you to know some more keywords for your business and things like that.

5. Using the wrong bidding strategy

The 5th thing in our 7 mistakes in Google Adwords PPC to avoid blog is “Not Testing Bidding strategies”

When I create a new campaign there’s I either usually use

Maximize conversions or

Manual CPC bidding strategies

I like to use manual CPC because it gives me more control and I prefer to set my own bids when I start any kind of test things out and then shift over to more automated bid strategies so all at the top here these are automated bid strategies so the two you really want to get to our

Target CPA & target ROAS but some of the other ones so

Maximize clicks

This will help you drive more and more clicks to your website within your budget but the whole negative to this is sometimes your campaign all goes through a few keywords that are the lowest cost to drive clicks to your website they’re not really valuable keywords to your business so that’s why

Maximize conversions works a little better with

Maximize conversions

What Google AdWords is gonna try to do is take your campaign and test so you have ten ad groups let’s say they’re gonna try to get some results from each and every ad group they’re gonna try to get some results from each and every keyword.

It might be a little bit costly at first but the whole goal for them is to try to find you know what the most optimal keywords are for your business to drive conversions for your business so maximize conversions it’s a great bidding strategy for you to use and test.

I like to use manual CPC a lot because It could use the keyword planner as we showed in the previous step and kind of find my own you know bids for each keyword you can see here they kind of range between about $5 and $8 for the low page bids and then the top range is pretty damn high.

What I would do is probably set my bids around four to five dollars to start and then just kind of go from there and increase them as I go so bidding strategies are so important and we’re gonna kind of go over target CPA and target ROAS later in the blog.

But they’re the most important thing for bidding strategies now one thing I don’t really use is target search page location or target outranking share this really I only recommend for if you’re in a highly competitive industry and you’re one of the leaders in that industry.

Then targeting outranking shares is not a bad idea because let’s say you’re Expedia and you want to outrank booking.com maybe you do target outranking shares and just say you know we’re gonna spend an unlimited amount of money and just try to outrank them because that’s what drives us.

You know new travel clients or new people to buy travel from us so bidding strategies are really important to understand we also have tutorials on our channel for bidding strategies but you really want to test different bidding strategies and ultimately you want to get it-get to target CPA or target ROAS here but we’ll go through that in a little bit.

6. Only creating one ad variation and not using extensions

Another mistake I see commonly, is we’re in our ad group “promote your business” so every keyword is you know “promote your business”, “how to promote your business”, or “how to promote your business online“.

You know different things like that so we have three different ads here so we have “how to promote your business free”, “online marketing ebook”, “ways to promote your business free”, “online marketing ebook”, “free online marketing ebook”, “how to promote your business”.

All very similar ads the copy at the bottom is all the same but what we’re doing right now is we’re able to kind of test you know which ads people are gonna interact with the most so once we start getting more data here for clicks impressions or click-through rate.

And really what’s driving conversions is Google can start optimizing your ads so let’s just say we have these three ads running and this one with a free online marketing e-book as the first headline outperforms these two by a mile.

What I can do is pause those two ads and create a new one a variation on this ad that’s very similar maybe I change it to you know “free online marketing ebook”, “promoting your business for growth” or something like that, and just chain me I could even change down a little bit you could just keep optimizing your ads.

As you go so one of the problems is if you only create this one ad then Google can’t really optimize anything they can’t say okay these ads stink and this ad is good because if you only have one ad they don’t know it’s if it’s good or bad they don’t know.

If it’s better than an alternative because you only gave them one ad to test so along with that is an extension so if we come over to extensions.

You can see we have a couple here for site links and call-out extensions but we have to add more here what you want to do is click on the plus here so they have site link extensions you can actually show different links on your website and send people to relevant pages call-out extensions.

You can kind of show some of the unique offers you have some of the selling points you have structured snippets allows you to show different types of things you offer all sorts of things like call extensions obviously phone call message allow people to send a text message directly to you.

Location can show the actual location of your business affiliate location is just the same thing as the location but if you have separate locations as well as price extensions.

You could show a specific price for your product services if you’re a plumber that offers a service for 250 dollars you can put it on there so 250 dollars show up fee or whatever it is app extension.

If you have a mobile app on mobile devices when people search for your business you can actually show your app so people download your app and promotion extension if you have a special offer or limited offer you can show that promotion there as well.

So a ton of different ad extensions to choose from just to show you an example so if we come into Google I searched marketing software here you can see different ads so this one is just headline second headline URL and then one line of description coming down to act on coming they have you know kind of a similar headline here and then they have their description right there.

Our call-out extension so a great service and support for quick online quotes competitive pricing and services is a structured snippet so inbound marketing automation and outbound marketing so just all the different things they can offer I’m guessing all these have ad extensions on their ads.

But they only show for certain searches and sometimes when you’re in the top position you get a bunch of ad extensions sometimes when you’re in the bottom position you get no ad extensions.

So it’s just the kind of Google’s kind of constantly testing but your ultimate goal is to create multiple ads create multiple add extensions and allow Google to keep testing so you can optimize and find you know the results that you’re looking for.

7. Not understanding the goal of AdWords is probably the biggest mistake

I make the goal of AdWords to optimize for a conversion and to get your bidding strategy to the point where you’ve tested everything you can test and then you can switch to a target CPA or target ROAS bidding strategy.

You can start your campaign with these bidding strategies but the problem is Google’s not gonna be able to test as much as they want to test so that’s why I love using manual CPC.

Because what I do is I try to test for about 30 days different keywords I have multiple ads in each ad group and really anything that I can find the keywords that are any what relevant to what I’m offering.

I use manual CPC and then I set bids based on what I see in the keyword planner and then my whole goal for the next month is to drive conversions.

And once I get a certain amount of conversions the best practice is 15 conversions in a 30-day period I don’t think they still have that stipulation but once you have 15 conversions in a 30-day period witching to target CPA or target ROAS will make it much easier for you to allow Google to just keep your campaigns optimized and just use the data that you’ve given them so that they can keep optimizing.

And driving your conversions your goal with Google AdWords is to give them data about your business and for them to optimize your advertising campaigns.

The biggest mistake that people make is they come in here they don’t use organized ad groups they don’t use great keywords they only target broad keywords they use one AD per ad group they’re not optimizing for conversions they’re just driving traffic to their website.

They don’t have everything set up the way it needs to be set up and they don’t know why things aren’t working.

They Don’t know where the error is or what the error is and usually, it severs all errors sometimes it’s just someone created a campaign search network with display select and they’re their campaigns kind of go off the rails.

So your goal was to come in here test so you’re optimizing for a specific goal you might not have a positive return on investment for the first three-four months sometimes you spend two-three thousand dollars than Google AdWords before you can finally say okay this is what’s working for me.

So this is where we’re gonna put our budget and that’s the problem most advertisers have is they’re either unable or unwilling to test so the more you can test the more you can kind of give Google to learn and understand about your business.

Google can kind of get to the point where they say okay we can send target CPA or let’s just say we can send you target CPA a new acquisition for $5 apiece every single time so you come into your target CPA you do it for $5 apiece and for that entire month.

Google’s gonna send you conversions at $5 apiece or less so a lot of different things you can do once you start getting giving data to Google and the top advertisers in Google AdWords the competitive advantage they have over everyone else is understanding their data and testing and optimizing for years and years.

when you’re just starting you start behind them but eventually you want to catch up to them by testing what works for your business and continuously optimizing your business.

If you only have one landing page for example that can be a huge issue if you’re only creating one ad that could be a huge issue if you want to organize ad groups that could be a huge issue so just kind of continuously optimizing is really one of you where you want to get to.

To get started commend reading our Google AdWords Blogs it should help you create your first campaign and avoid some of these mistakes that we’re showing here because we kind of go through the step-by-step process that we use when we create new campaigns so a lot to learn in Google AdWord.

If you want to manage your Google Adwords Campaign from a Google AdWords expert then contact Softcrust.info to start today at very affordable prices

It’s hard to go through each and every mistake that people make I probably missed out on some huge mistakes honestly so if you have any questions if you’re having trouble with your own campaigns leave them in the comment.