Internet users strongly rely on search engines to provide them with the content they’re looking for. Google in particular is not only noted as the largest search engine, but statistically also accounts for over 85% of search traffic on desktop and mobile devices, globally.
As marketers, we’re constantly having to stay on top of industry changes to have a clear understanding of these components and how they can positively or negatively influence advertising.
We sat down with our in-house Google specialists, who collectively have more than 20 years’ experience in Google advertising and got some valuable insight. While they deem Google a worthy investment that can yield excellent results, they raised some key mistakes to avoid.
Low quality score on your landing pages
Who you are speaking to and the relevance of your ad to its specific audience are crucial factors in advertising. Knowing who you are speaking to and showing them what they want to see has a major impact on your quality score.Quality score, in a nutshell, consists of: your ad quality, keywords and landing page experience. The better your quality score, the better your ads will perform. This results in a better clickthrough rate, better ad ranking and paying less for clicks.
Broad geo-targeting
The more specific you are with the area and keywords you’re wanting to target, the less likely you are to waste budget. Broad geo-targeting will reach people who are either not interested or not close to where you’re based.
Not doing conversion tracking
In a world that is rapidly advancing in terms of tech and internet usage, all marketing efforts should be centred around conversion tracking.You need to know and understand what works and what doesn’t. You may, for instance, find that you’re getting lots of clicks from mobile users, but they aren’t converting. On a laptop however, the conversion rate is better. This means your efforts and budget is better invested where your conversion rate is better. A better conversion rate = a better ROI.
Not implementing negative keywords
The keywords you’re looking to target or rank for are important, but so are the keywords you should be excluding (negative keywords). When you add keywords unrelated to your product or service to your negative keyword list, you’re essentially telling Google to not show your ad for any searches containing the negatives.
Bidding broad
Lets say you’re selling leather shoes, your focus should be the audience specifically looking for leather shoes. When you bid broad and include the keyword “shoes”, you’re likely to waste budget as “shoes” is a broad and general keyword that could include people looking for “sports shoes / running shoes / hiking shoes” etc.For businesses, Google advertising is a means of marketing that effectively allows you to capitalise on the thousands of searches that take place daily. Through targeted ads and avoiding some of these common mistakes, you can reach and advertise to your intended audience within your budget.