The value of appearing at the top of search engines cannot be overstated. This is why the war to get landing pages, homepages, and other key web pages ranked can be tough. But no matter how hard businesses try, the majority of businesses fail to get there.
While you can get to the top of the search results organically if you have a website with a high domain authority, it’s not a luxury most businesses have. This is where Google Ads comes in.
The ad service by Google allows businesses to pay their way to the top of the search results, but this can get very expensive very quickly if you’re unclear about how to optimise your ad campaigns.
So, let’s take a closer look at some ways that you can avoid wasting money on Google Ads and improve your ROI by focusing on the world’s most valuable and utilised ad network.
Turn off auto-apply ad suggestions
In Google Ads, the auto-apply ad suggestions feature is enabled by default. If you don’t know about it, it’s plausible that you won’t turn it off. Even if you do know about the default setting, you may still choose to leave it on because you think that Google knows what it’s doing.
But, most often than not, this default setting targets irrelevant and very broad keywords, which will exhaust your ad budget without any noticeable results to show for it.
So there’s no time like the present to take back some of the control over how your ads budget is actually being spent. Knowing how to understand and work your way around Google Ads suggestions will give you the freedom to select the recommendations you want to include—and which ones you want to leave out.
This is a great way to make sure that your ads are generating high-quality leads and tangible sales without causing your budget to soar.
Eliminate click fraud
If you don’t keep an eye on click fraud, it can cause problems for your PPC budget. During the second quarter of 2022, 17% of all global impressions were fraudulent with marketers incurring an estimated cost of $44 billion.
You may have come across search engines that try to convince you they do everything they can to fight against click fraud and invalid traffic, but simply relying on their measures won’t do.
Perhaps one of the best ways to secure your budget is to proactively respond with tools that are designed to ensure that you have everything you need to combat click fraud.
With data from activity logs, Google Ads users can identify IP addresses, geographic territories, and websites where fraudulent activity may be running rampant and make the necessary changes.
Keep an eye on your results
One of the biggest errors that marketers can make when it comes to PPC—and a sure-fire way of burning through your budget—is failing to monitor your results. It’s important to remember that clicks don’t translate to results; conversions do.
There are many nuances to tracking your conversions—something which you have complete control over. There are many tracking mechanisms that Google has introduced that you can use to monitor and set up your tracking capabilities.
Tracking your ad campaign performance will also help you understand how Google is spending your budget on a daily basis. Having a good understanding of these can help you get the most out of your Google ads and improve your ROI.
Specify your keywords
Another key element of running a successful Google Ads campaign is selecting keywords that are most relevant to your audience. When you’re launching PPC ads it’s important to avoid using vague or broad keywords and phrases when preparing your campaign.
Using a search term or generic keyword can appear to be ideal at first glance, but it can cost you, quickly—especially if you’re in a highly saturated industry.
Additionally, when you’re using a generic or popular phrase in your campaign the cost can quickly rack up. This is why it’s advisable to consider specific and long-tail keywords that are personalised for your brand and website.
Make Google Ads work for you
Google Ads is a shortcut to getting your brand to top search engine results pages that can significantly contribute to your growth.
However, your PPC campaigns won’t get you anywhere if your investments aren’t paying off. You may start off with a hefty budget that gives you some time to get positive ROI, but the longer it takes, the more expensive it’s going to get.
If you truly want to cash in on one of contemporary media’s most profitable channels, then you need to learn how to avoid making expensive mistakes, reduce the cost of customer acquisition, and make Google Ads work for you.