Rules to Better Google Ads and SEM

Do you know what the best practices are for Google Ads?

Here are the below are the best practices you should know:

• Time and pricing – Ensure time zone and currency are set up correctly!
• Define target location – choose a city, a region or a country according to your demographics. Try to avoid overlapping with the locations. Let's say you have two offices/stores in the same state, first, you will need to figure out what is the most relevant to define your targeted location. This will ensure better analytics for your campaigns
• Campaign name – Choose a name that clearly describes the focus of your campaign so that you can easily find it in your account Note: Your campaign name isn't visible to your customers. Keep your campaign names consistent.
• Budget – Set a budget for each campaign based on needs
• Connect your account to Google Analytics. The Google Ads Conversion Tag should be the primary source for bidding data.
• Conversion – Utilise Value-Based Optimisation by tracking Dynamic Conversion Values. Implement Enhanced Conversions and Transaction IDs to ensure data durability and prevent over-counting.
• Keywords - aim for 5-20 keywords to avoid keyword stuffing Note: You can start out with more keywords, then narrow it down to the best performing ones. Also don't forget to use a negative keyword strategy to save budget spend.
• Use ALL ad extensions available!
• Match type ad group strategy – Use similar & segmented keywords! Build small, tightly focused ad groups with a few (5-10) keywords
• Make sure you use enough headlines and good descriptions to improve the strength of your ad
• It's also a good idea to make an A/B test ad copy (split testing)
• Focus on clicks and impressions with CPC bidding
• A/B Testing – The AI system automatically runs thousands of creative "micro-experiments" by testing various asset combinations. Your role is to make the right call and maximise performance.
• Focus on Value with Smart Bidding – The gold standard is Maximize Conversion Value with Target ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend). Avoid Manual CPC, as AI-guided Smart Bidding is overwhelmingly superior for real-time, value-based optimisation.
• PMax - When running Performance Max (PMax), you must apply Exact Match negative keywords (especially for branded terms) to the PMax campaign to protect and prioritise high-value traffic in your traditional Search campaigns.

Google Ads are one of the leading online Pay Per Click (PPC) platforms, with Google searches in the billions daily, allowing for a wide potential reach and results.

Audiences, in general, will allow you to try pulling up your ads to different groups of people based on tons of different criteria!

Ad extensions are additional pieces of information about your business, like a phone number or a link to a specific page on your website, that we can add to your ads . Keep in mind that ad extensions can improve the visibility of your ads, which can lead to more clicks and improve your ROI. It’ll give the ad greater visibility/prominence, so you tend to get more value from your ad. These are the possibilities:

Selecting the right keywords can be hard when you're completing your campaigns. Google have thankfully taken some of the guesswork out of the equation with the Keyword Planner tool.

The Keyword Planner allows you to get keyword ideas that can help you reach people interested in your product or service. You can also see roughly how much keywords will cost you per click, as well as the frequency each keyword is searched. Simply enter words, phrases or the URL related to your campaign and the planner will come back with additional keyword suggestions and data on each keyword.

There are several 3rd party solutions to keyword planning that should be used in addition to Google's Keyword Planner. SEMrush, Ahrefs and SERanking are some examples that have excellent keyword tools to help you identify what's best for your campaign.

Here’s a little thing to keep in mind, as Google Ads has a limitation in characters. The Ads character limits are as follows:

Your focus when bidding is dependent on your campaign goal.

Focus points to consider:

You might ask yourself – Why should I bid on my own brand name when I am already ranking number 1 organically for my brand? It might make sense to say "no" naturally (because you’re already ranking on the first page!) but the real answer might surprise you....

Google Ads can be a useful and successful marketing platform when actively monitored and optimized. The biggest key to a successful Google Ads campaign is optimization. Optimizing your campaign will allow you to reach your target audience effectively and efficiently.

This should be done daily, where possible, to ensure that ads are not running and spending money ineffectively. There are 3 important steps to do:

Before you look at negative keywords, make sure you cover the essential steps of optimising Google Adword campaigns.

Any unrelated search terms that takes people to your website costs you money. Maintaining this regularly can save you a lot of $$$ in the long run and be used on essential keywords that bring in business.

It's important to create specific negative keyword lists depending on your business. You can have different lists named “cheap" or “career" related. Or you can have a global list that would be applied to all of your campaigns (recommended)