13.02 – Optimising Your SEO with Google Ads
Google Ads, Google’s online advertising platform, is an essential component of SEO for any business, whether in the business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) sector. Most searches for any topic or product are done on Google, which lists URLs associated with the highest paid ads first, followed by those resulting from organic algorithms like blogging, linking, and keyword alignment.
Creating and maintaining a presence on Google Ads is necessary, but it doesn’t have to drain a small business’s marketing budget. You determine your budget by setting a daily rate you’re willing to spend. Google serves your ads to relevant visitors according to that budget.
Here are some tips and tactics for getting started with Google Ads.
Setting Up Your Google Ads Account
Setting up a Google Ads account requires an email address and a URL if you want to drive traffic to a website. Having a Gmail account makes it easier to get started and manage your ads down the road.
To set up your account, go to the Google Ads website. You will be prompted to set up an account name, a payment method, and more. Google Ads offers two types of accounts: Smart Mode and Expert Mode. Smart Mode, the default setting, is easy to use no matter your skill level and experience. Expert Mode is more complex and something you can switch to once you understand how the platform works. Google Ads guides you through your account setup by allowing you to choose your marketing objectives from options like Sales, Leads, Website traffic, and more. After selecting a goal or creating one of your own, you select a campaign type. Options include Search text ads, Display ads that show up across the web, Shopping ads, Discovery and Video ads on YouTube and Gmail, and more.
When setting up your account, you have to create an ad campaign, so have a list of keywords and a goal for your first ad in mind. For help with keywords, refer to the “Curating Keywords” section.
Creating Your First Google Ads Campaign
Setting up Google Ads campaigns is straightforward. The platform walks you through each step of the process and offers suggestions to optimise your search results. You can create campaigns with multiple ads and only pay for what you activate. You can pause or delete campaigns at any time, helping you execute affordable testing and save your budget for ads that work.
To set up your first Google Ads campaign, you need the following elements:
- A goal for your campaign: Such as driving web traffic or generating inquiries.
- A business name and website.
- Copy for your ad: Including a headline, description, and phone numbers.
- Keyword themes: Including keywords, search terms, and long-tail phrases.
- Locations: Where you want your ad served.
- A budget: To spend daily toward reaching your goals.
Google Ads offers various formats to help you achieve your goals. The most common formats include:
- Text Ads: The most common format, consisting of a text block that includes your URL.
- Image Ads: This format allows you to include an image in your ad and appears on Google’s display network, which consists of over two million websites that reach more than 90 percent of internet users worldwide.
- Display Ads: These are ads with images that look like banner ads and are served throughout Google’s display network.
- Responsive Ads: These automatically resize to fit the devices on which they are being viewed. Google will rotate headlines and copy that you provide to create various ad combinations of your content.
Google Ads no longer manages extended text ads, which were retired in June 2022. All ads now have to be formatted as Responsive Search Ads, involving multiple headlines and descriptions that Google combines into multiple ads. This format has been proven to achieve higher results, prompting the change.
Setting Up a Campaign
The first step is to set up a campaign, which will consist of several ads you create. You can create campaigns around a time period, a product, a promotion, and so on. Including the time and purpose of your campaign in the name you select will help you easily identify and compare your campaigns.
Next, you will be prompted to enter your keywords. Focus your keywords on one product or service per ad to be most effective. Google will give you suggestions based on the words found in your website copy and the tags you set up (refer to the “Playing Tag” section). You can also get suggestions by entering the products or services you offer. It’s important to review and manage Google’s suggestions, as some may be irrelevant.
Remember to use keywords that match the search query terms associated with your category. For example, if you’re selling log furniture, include product categories and special features in your keywords like beds, tables, desks, nightstands, picture frames, handcrafted, rustic, and so on.
Establishing Your Bidding and Cost Per Click (CPC) Parameters
You can set up your campaign to focus on clicks, impressions, views, engagements, or conversions. For example, your conversion goal may be to get a percentage of your visitors to complete a Contact Us or a Request a Demo form. Setting up your initial campaign for clicks is a good starting point because you’ll get an indication of the efficacy of your keywords.
When setting up for clicks, you’ll be asked to establish a bid limit for your cost per click (CPC). Decide what each click to your website is worth, which can range from a few cents to several dollars. Once you set a bid limit, Google will not serve up your ads to more people than the cost of your budget allows. For example, if you set $10 as the limit you want to pay for each click, Google will adjust how it serves your ads accordingly.
Setting Your Location
Google Ads will prompt you to set a location for your ads. If you sell only to consumers in the UK, select the United Kingdom. If you sell only to consumers in a specific city, region, or postal code, fine-tune your selection for location.
For example, the total addressable market for a veterinary clinic may be consumers within a 30-mile radius of its physical location. Having your ad served up by Google to consumers searching for “dog dental care” throughout the UK would be a waste of money. Fine-tuning your search to a city or postcode will target people searching for related terms in your immediate service area.
Choosing Your Audience Segments
Google Ads allows you to choose segments within the broader target audience you define as you set up your campaigns. If you sell a software product, you can choose audiences looking for software related to your business category, be it marketing, transportation, business services, accounting, and so on. You can adjust your CPC bids per segment as well.
Writing Your Ad Copy
You will craft 15 headlines for your ad copy, which Google Ads will rotate with the descriptions you create. Be sure to use your keywords in your headlines as much as possible to optimise your results. Each headline can be only 30 characters, so choose your words wisely.
For example, if you’re selling log furniture, a good headline may be “Top handcrafted log furniture.” This headline uses the maximum 30 characters. You’ll be able to write 14 more headlines, which may include the following:
- Best Colorado log furniture (27 characters)
- Handcrafted log beds all sizes (30 characters)
- Log furniture Colorado-style (29 characters)
Using words like best, top-rated, leading, or Top 10 will help your URL align with common searches.
After writing your headlines, you’ll write four description blocks of 90 characters each. These descriptions can vary in style and should include phrases that align with searches. Many searches use phrases like “Apple vs. Dell” or “Are Macs better than PCs?” If these are common for your industry, use similar phrases in your ad copy. Google will randomly match your headlines with your descriptions to create multiple ads for your campaign, enabling you to discover what headlines work best with what copy.
Be as descriptive as possible about what makes your product stand out. For example, for log furniture, a 90-character description might look something like this:
- Top-selling handmade log beds, tables, dining sets at best-in-Breckenridge prices.
- One-of-a-kind handcrafted log furniture for every room in downtown Breckenridge CO.
Google Ads will provide suggestions for your headlines and descriptions. You can click on suggestions for keywords and see how many times a given term or phrase was searched in the last 30 days. Paying attention to this information will help ensure your ad headlines and description copy are relevant, making your campaign successful.
Google will allow you to review your campaign before publishing it. You will be alerted when terms or keywords have a low response rate so you can refine your ads with insights from real data. You can edit and delete your ads after publishing them and change the dollar amount of your bids and daily budgets at any time.
