Don’t get me wrong. I love organic traffic. So much that I refused to use the coupons for Google Search Ads for almost a decade. Every month I received an email where I was asked to try advertising with Google. I even received several letters and postcards with coupon codes and all that.
I am pretty sure you have seen such offers too. They are a great way to start advertising on Google and try out their platform. Beware, you will need the free ad spend. Because there is a learning curve. Go ahead. It helps you understand your own business even better.
The day I launched a digital product I realized it will take some time before my SEO efforts will return visitors to my new web shop. Usually I am patient, but I needed this to work. To be able to optimize the landing page I was in urgent need of fresh visitors. So, I did it. I created my Google Adwords (now Google Ads) account in February 2018.
Today I regret I did not do so before. I have a feeling for it and soon got clients paying me for setting up and optimizing Google Search Ads campaigns. My first Google Search Ads campaign took off right from the start. Yes, it needed some adjustments to control the costs, but the conversions started coming in and I managed to get double digit Click Through Rates (CTR) on my ads.
Key Metrics in Google Search Ads
CTR is one of the key metrics in Google Search Ads. There are so many things to monitor, it can be overwhelming. Clicks, Views, Cost per Click (CPC), Conversions and variations of those expressed in percentages or dollars.
Then, there is the campaign structure. A Google Search Ads campaign consists of ad groups. Each ad group contains at least 3 different advertisements. For each ad group, keywords are assigned. Keywords have their own specific metrics to measure relevance and performance.
Quality Score is an important one, because it partly determines the price you pay per click. Google Search Ads’ Quality Score for keywords is a number between 1 and 10 and values the expected CTR, the relevance of the ads for the specific keyword in the ad group, and the user experience on the landing page.
Those are all things that can be optimized.
Another determining factor in the price you pay for website visitors are the results of the bidding strategy you choose, versus what the competition is doing. Anyway, you never spend more than your average daily budget. Sometimes it can be a bit higher when search volume peaks on certain days, but on average you will stay within a predetermined limit. Also, you can set maximum CPC.
Advanced Strategies based on Conversions
When enough conversions have been made, other strategies based on Costs per Conversion or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) can be applied. Personally, I prefer to stay in control and turn switches daily. That’s just me. If you want to hire someone to do this for you (let’s say that’s me) weekly or bi-weekly tweaks of your campaigns will be enough to improve results over time.
There is a whole lot more to it, like adding negative keywords. If you have already set up your campaign and managed it for a while you know that of course. At this time, I manage several campaigns, and foresee that in the near future I will need to hire people to help me manage some of my client’s campaigns. There is only so much one person can do in a day… However, I still have some time slots available to personally manage two or three additional Google Search Ads accounts. Let me know about your product or service and let’s talk!
Early Google Ads Work
