Google Ads: Best Basic Practices

Morgan Moresco on March 24, 2023

Written By: Danielle Gazda

What Are Google Ads?

Promoting businesses and products through Google Ads is one of the most effective ways to increase conversions, revenue, and meet business goals. Google Ads, also known as Google AdWords, makes building campaigns easy through automation and machine learning, but there’s still some work you need to do first to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

From knowing what information to add to your client’s (or your company’s) website to understanding the nuances of Google Ads’ abilities, here are some best practices for optimizing your campaigns.

Read Also: Purchasing Popularity: Verification Subscriptions

Best Practices for Google Ads

The Website

Know that Google Ads has specific requirements for websites advertising on its platform. Some are fundamental, such as offering unique products or services, the website owner being over 18, working directly with the owner of a site (or the owner’s company), and not displaying any copyrighted material. A website must also be at least six months old and have a certain amount of traffic already going to it. 

Lesser-known Google Ads requirements involve having technical pages — such as an About page, a Contact page, and a Privacy page — included somewhere on the website. These pages need to be well-defined and hold appropriate information, including a refund and return policy (even if it just states that you do not give refunds or do returns) and information regarding using and selling customer information.

Conversion Tracking

By adding UA or GA4 tracking code to the pages of a website, you’ll be able to track all conversions from Google Ads, no matter the specified landing page.

Whether you add a UA code or GA4 code to a website depends on the platform you’re using. Google has step-by-step instructions on how to find the right tracking code for a site in the Google Ads account page.

Ad Tools and Assets

Google Ads offers a number of tools and assets that can increase the performance of your campaigns.

Keywords

Group keywords into ad groups by topic, feature, or item to help Google build comprehensive and relevant Responsive Search Ads. This type of ad automatically pulls relevant descriptions, headlines, and creative assets based on what you supplied and the search query that’s prompting the ad.

Landing Pages

Landing pages must make sense alongside the keywords to be served and drive conversions. Whether it is a website’s home page, an About Us page, a specific product, or a specific service, make sure they are correct for their ad group.

Ad Extensions

Utilize the tools available to you, including sitelinks, callouts, calls, prices, and promotions, that will provide the searcher with options and relevant information that can lead to a higher conversion rate.

Performance Metrics

Weigh performance and metrics against your industry’s benchmarks when starting new campaigns. These industry benchmarks will help you make adjustments to your campaigns by experimenting with everything from descriptions to ad extensions. You may also find that you’ve surpassed industry benchmarks with your campaigns.

For example, one of 270M’s real estate clients maintained a cost per conversion that was 64% lower than the industry benchmark throughout a campaign. The conversion was for a tenant application being filled out for an upscale new development in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Another example is a wholesale vendor client of 270M that maintained a click-through rate that was 75% to 100% higher than the industry benchmark for a hyper-targeted campaign for specialized produce wholesalers.

Read Also: How to Utilize Google Analytics for Your Business

270M is proud to be a Google Partner. We earned that distinction by proving that we consistently had at least a 70% optimization score for all of our clients’ accounts and managed at least $10,000 in ad spend over the course of three months. Additionally, 50% or more of our account strategists demonstrated proficiency in Google Ads by earning Google Ads certifications.

By following these best practices, you can optimize your Google Ads campaigns and achieve better results for your clients.

Tips on Improving SEO for Your Brand

info on December 2, 2021

By: Christina Healy

 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving your website to make it more visible during internet searches, with the goal of increasing traffic to your page. Having advanced SEO strategies for your brand is important because gaining visibility online is crucial for success. You can’t get leads if nobody can find you. During a search, the most relevant keywords will determine the order of results. The goal is to have your brand appear at the top of the results page, making it more likely that the consumer will click on your site. There are many strategies that can help make this happen.

Here Are Five Practices for Improving SEO for Your Brand:

  1. Choose the Right Keywords and Phrases:

    It is essential that the keywords chosen are relevant and created specifically to match your content. You want to use simple words that people are likely to use in their searches. It is also important to include phrases with three or four keywords that show a little more detail about your product or service in case of more advanced searches. Your site has a better chance of being ranked higher if your words match the search words exactly.

  2. Use a Program to Monitor Metrics:

    A program like Google Analytics is extremely helpful for understanding how your website is being used. You can then take that information and use it to improve SEO. Find out which search engines are leading users to your site, or learn what devices users are on when they visit your site. All of these small details are important when developing strategies of improvement.

  3. Find Out What’s Working for Your Competitors:

    Understanding who your top competitors are, and identifying the tactics they are using to be successful, can be beneficial for you. Take that information and figure out what your site needs or could improve upon.

  4. Put Out Quality Content:

    When people discover your page, you want to make sure that there is a good chance of them engaging with the content. Therefore, it needs to be of high quality. Be sure to constantly update existing content, as well as to produce new material regularly. Posts should be relevant and newsworthy. Search engines are always evolving to show the most relevant information first. Therefore, that’s what needs to be on your website. You want the consumer to spend a decent amount of time on your page, which improves the ranking of your site in a search.

  5. Have an Engaging Title and Meta Description for Your Site:

    The title needs to include the most exciting and important keywords. These few words need to spark emotion in the user. The meta description is a concise summary of the webpage located in smaller letters under the site’s title. It must be short and sweet, yet detailed and clear. Having a great meta description or title could just end up being the deciding factor of whether or not someone clicks on your site.

By improving your brand’s SEO little by little, there will almost certainly be an increase in traffic to your site. Paying attention to the small yet very important factors that make up a brand’s website can lead to great success.