Google AdWords Checklist

Consider a few elements before you embark on a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign. Actual SEO Media, Inc. is a talented online marketing company that uses Google AdWords checklists to help optimize your online presence as a business. Google developed Google AdWords as an advertising platform that will reach your target audience on the web.

Our talents with PPC ad campaigns can provide you with ad copies that help you expand your online presence and increase your popularity, trustworthiness, and reputation. Digital marketing is more important than ever for business as we move into the modern age of the Internet. Follow along with this checklist to understand where our priorities lie as we customize the perfect PPC ad campaign for each client through the use of Google Adwords.

Forming the Initial Campaign Plan

Follow these steps to get your PPC ad campaign started and create a Google Ads account. Google ads work by attracting your target audience through relevant search queries. PPC ads operate on a cost-per-click basis.

Fine-Tuning Your Ads

Once you set up your ads, we can monitor their success rate and make changes as needed.

• 6. Use Variations of Ads
  Having at least two variations of your ads in each of your ad groups will ensure you achieve better results. Creating multiple options will allow you to see which is performing better. Even when you end an underperforming ad, you should create another one to test how you can change and improve your campaign constantly.
• 7. Test Your Ads With Headlines
  Testing your ads is essential to the process of securing the best results on Google. The two different variations you should have on your ads are headlines and descriptions. Headlines represent the most clickable and significant part of your ad and must be tested for effectiveness. When coming up with a headline, you need to keep your selling points in mind. The competitiveness of your prices, awards you have earned, advantages you have over your competitors, and acclaim in your field can all be used to shape your headlines.
• 8. Test Your Ads With Different Descriptions
  Descriptions can serve to give your potential clients and customers an idea of what you have to offer. The descriptions you write can further expand on your selling points. They should be designed to capture the attention of your target audience and encourage clicks. Keyword relevance is an essential part of your descriptions. Great writing and keyword relevancy will surely convince potential clients to trust your business and be interested in your products and services. We create ads to show off what you have to offer.
• 9. Testing Expanded Text Ads
  With this sort of ad, you can test anywhere from one to three headlines at the same time. You will also have the option of displaying one to two descriptions. All of the most significant information in your ad needs to be written in the first two lines to ensure a proper fit and effectiveness.
• 10. Testing Responsive Search Ads
  Responsive search ads have the technology to create a list of headlines and descriptions pulled from your existing ads. This kind of ad allows you to test as many headlines as you need to at once. You will be able to test the best combinations of headlines and descriptions against various outside factors, such as the device they are viewed on.
• 11. Reasons to End an Ad Campaign
  A/B testing with ads is an experimental technique that allows you to determine what aspects of your ads will perform the best. Measuring the performance of an individual ad can be accomplished by looking at the conversion rate and Click Through Rate (CTR). You should be ruthless in eliminating ineffective ads and replacing them with alternatives. This will allow you to continuously test the effectiveness of your ads and the techniques you are engaging in. It can be difficult to decide which ad is underperforming when you have to balance both conversion rate and CTR, but it is up to you to decide which matters more.
• 12. Using Dynamic Search Ads
  Dynamic Search Ads will target Internet users who are specifically looking for the products and services you are looking for using web content. These kinds of ads can save you time and fill in any gaps that are left by ad campaigns focused on using keywords. This kind of ad can earn you a place in relevant searches while preventing you from having to make an individual ad for all of your products and services yourself.
• 13. Using Callout Descriptions in Your Ad
  Callout extensions are a tool we use to highlight and promote certain aspects of your business. They’re words or phrases that appear underneath your ad description that provide more information about your business or the product or service being promoted. This is a particularly useful tool because they don’t cost anything extra to implement. Callout extensions can be used on a number of levels, big to small, from the overall campaign to ad groups.
• 14. Testing Callout Extensions
  We can help you test out different callout extensions and see how they affect your conversion rates and CTR. A high CT rate lets you know that you are finding relevancy within your target audience as they discover you on Google. Testing callouts can improve your CTR.

Sitelinks and More

Our incredible team uses many tools, including sitelinks, to improve the performance of ads.

• 15. The Benefits of Using Sitelinks
  Sitelinks are a tool we use to direct your potential customers to another web page that can provide them with more information. You can track the conversion rates when you link to landing pages. There will also be detailed data about the clicks you receive. It is also easy to update the links without having to change the entire ad.
• 16. Drawbacks to Using Sitelinks
  Unfortunately, sitelinks have the potential to distract a user from the web page they are currently viewing. That isn’t ideal since your goal should be to capture their attention. At least two sitelinks will be needed in the ad. This tool won’t work well for websites that contain only a single page.
• 17. Perfecting Your Sitelinks
  Each sitelink you add should have a description to go with it. The most effective way to use sitelinks is to include at least four in your ad campaign, and you need at least two sitelink extensions. Google will only be able to show four sitelinks at one time.
• 18. Evaluate the Sitelink Performance
  Once the sitelinks have been created and implemented, you need to pay attention to what your conversion and CT rates look like. You can locate that information under the “Ads & Extensions” tab. If your sitelinks are underperforming, you can easily replace them with better ones.
• 19. Set Up a Structured Snippet Extension
  A Structured Snippet Extension can be used to help your potential clients and customers identify what products and services you have to offer. It will allow you to provide more information to your customers and will improve conversion rates and CTR. This is a tool that is easy to tailor to your specific business and will provide information that is sure to entice members of your target audience. We can help you no matter what category your business falls under.

• 20. Creating a Location
  If your business is tied to a specific physical location, we can create a location extension for you by linking Google Adwords with your Google Business Profile. The purpose of a location extension is to make it easy for your potential clients to be able to contact you. Local services will require a location extension.
• 21. Setting Up a Call Extension
  It will be easy for us to set up a call extension for you in your ad campaign if phone calls are an important part of your business. Call extensions allow web users to call you directly from the ad, especially those using a mobile device. We can also assist you with the use of a tracking number to see the phone calls you receive as conversions.
• 22. Creating a Message Extension
  A message extension will allow you to receive SMS text messages directly from your ads. This type of extension is especially useful for clients with no time to waste. With this tool, they won’t have to go to your website, make a phone call, or fill out a form to get a quote from you. However, this type of extension is only useful for users accessing it from a mobile device.

Things to Consider About Keyword Lists and Your Brand

Keywords are one of the most important tools to focus on when optimizing the performance of ads. We use them to develop a brand identity for you.

• 23. Broad Match Keywords and Why to Avoid Them
  Broad-match keywords are the least useful kinds of keywords for ad campaigns. Instead, you should use exact match, broad match modifier, or phrase match keywords to get in contact with members of your target audience. Those techniques will drive the most effective web traffic rather than the wide, potentially useless range broad match keywords attract.
• 24. Bidding on Your Brand
  When one of your competitors bids on your brand name, it will cause their ad to appear whenever people try searching for results to your business name. That is undesirable, so you should bid on your band name to prevent it. Using this method, you can ensure your ad appears at the top of the search results page.
• 25. Bidding on Your Competitor’s Brand
  In contrast, you can bid on your competitors’ brands to drive extra web traffic toward your own. If you have a small business, this will be a good way to compete against larger businesses that are competing against you. Their larger search volume can be used to your benefit. However, it is important to remember not to breach trademark law while doing this.
• 26. How to Select the Most Effective Keywords
  When you are targeting a specific audience with your ads, it is important to use the most effective keywords. Find keywords that closely match your business, products, services, industry, or niche. Using exact-match keywords and broad-match modifiers will provide you with the best results. Depending on the types of keywords you focus on, you can get more control and flexibility with your ad campaigns.
• 27. Using Appropriate Keywords in Your Ads
  Each of your ad groups needs to be stocked with keywords that are highly relevant to the ad. That means placing the keyword in your description, headline, and URL to link the two things effectively. Google’s algorithm is always working to find the most relevant content for its searches, and creating a keyword-relevant ad will surely get it noticed.
• 28. The Use of a Negative Keyword Search
  Our company uses negative keywords as a tool to ensure irrelevant searches are filtered out and don’t activate your ad. Accordingly, the quality of your web traffic will improve. Preventing irrelevant searches will stop you from paying for people clicking on your ad who aren’t likely to buy a product or service from you. We have tools to determine what searches overlap with your keywords and mark them as negative keywords.
• 29. Using Your Search Term Report to Identify Negative Keywords
  Once your ad campaign has had time to take effect, you can review your Search Term Report. This report will tell you what terms people have searched to find your ad and which of your keywords matched those terms. Looking at that data gives you the opportunity to determine if those searches are relevant to your ad.
• 30. Handling Irrelevant Web Traffic
  Seeing negative keywords in your Search Term Report is easy enough to handle. All you have to do is mark it and ensure it is known as an exact match negative keyword in your ad campaign. If you keep seeing negative keywords pop up in your report over and over, you can target a common phrase within them to try and catch them all.
• 31. What to Do About Poor-Performing Keywords
  Sometimes, certain keywords will not hold up under your ad campaign. In that scenario, the ineffective keyword will need to be frozen. However, before you commit to that action, you should give the keyword a chance to perform and provide results that you can analyze. Moving on from keywords and ads that are not performing well enough is perfectly valid.
• 32. What to Do About Keywords With Poor Conversion Rates and Good CPA
  CPA is also known as Cost Per Action. It is a metric that keeps track of how much your business is paying to achieve a conversion. CPA measures many things, including the number of clicks your ad gets before a customer converts. When you increase the rate of your conversions, you should see your CPA go down accordingly. By keeping track of these things, you can extend how far your budget is able to go. We recommend that a keyword be given a month-long trial period before making decisions about its performance. If you still aren’t satisfied, you can freeze the keyword at any time.

More Ways We Can Improve Your Ad Campaign with Google Adwords and Google Analytics

In addition to all of the marketing tools we use, we also use programs like Google AdWords and Google Analytics to improve ad performance.

• 37. How Google Analytics Can Improve Your Google AdWords Campaign
  If you want to track and analyze the web traffic you receive on your ads, consider looking into Google Web Analytics. Google Web Analytics is a plugin that we use as a tool to grow your website. That plugin will grant you access to valuable data about the current results of your ad campaign. After you install the plugin, you will get a code that will be embedded in your website to assist with tracking. Some of the information you will be able to view with Google Web Analytics includes the ages and gender of your visitors, where they are from, how much time they spent on the site, and what platform they were directed to you from. You will also be able to see how many total visitors your site gets and what your most viewed web page is.
• 38. Keywords Relevant to Your Landing Page
  The purpose of website landing pages is to create conversions through the use of keywords and a call to action (CTA). We ensure the landing pages we work on are optimized and perfectly designed to accomplish those goals. It is important to ensure the keywords you use are relevant and compatible with your landing page. This will help you get a good experience score. To optimize this selection and your landing page as a whole, Google has a few recommendations. You need to have interesting content to entice people, have complete transparency about your methods to your clients, make your site easy to navigate no matter the device, and have a rapid loading speed for all of your web pages.
• 39. A CRO Audit
  It can be useful for you to perform a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) audit on your website. A CRO is a website review that can show you where you can make improvements that will benefit you. The way that information is gleaned is by paying attention to customer behaviors on your website. Some of those behaviors include conversion rates, purchase history, bounce rates, and how long they were on your site.
• 40. Tracking Phone Calls
  It is important for some businesses to generate leads from phone calls. A Google Adwords campaign can easily track calls for you. With that information, you can see how effectively your ads are at improving your conversion rates. Another way you can use that capability is by using Google forwarding numbers to see what exact things in your ad are influencing conversion rates.
• 41. Tracking All Clicks and Conversions
  When you track the conversion rate activity on your ad, you can figure out what techniques you are using that are providing the best results. Google Analytics is the main tool that we use to track your conversion rates. The type of information you can get from the tracking includes finding out if your website visitors are subscribed to your newsletter, have purchased a product, have your app, or have called your phone number.

Bidding on Your Brand

Consider using bidding to target potential clients and customers with your ads.

• 42. A Good Strategy for Bidding on Your Own Brand
  We can break down the best ways to bid on your brand into two strategies. The first is the return on investment strategies, and the second focuses on vanity metrics. When you use an ROI strategy, it will be centered around money and how you can increase your revenues based on paid searches. In contrast, vanity metrics are concerned with your visibility and how to maximize the impression you make on your target audience.
• 43. Optimizing Bid Based on Device
  It is important to be informed about the optimizations you can make regarding your bids. The type of device your visitors are using to explore your site can greatly affect that. We can change your campaign to accommodate different devices on the ad group level.
• 44. Adjustment of Your Bids
  We can adjust your bid in several ways to see improved results. Changing the frequency of your ads is a major way to see changes in your results. The time of day your ads are seen, devices used to access them, certain operating systems, and specific wireless networks can all be targeted to positive effect by a Google Display ad campaign.

• 45. Change the Bid For a Specific Location
  You should analyze a few reports to figure out how to improve your bid. Distance, geographic, and location reports are all crucial to this process and will let you precisely analyze the performance of your ad campaign in regard to specific factors. No matter how many locations you are advertising to, this is a useful consideration. Analysis of your Google Adwords campaign at the state level can be accomplished with Google Analytics.
• 46. Change Bid to Accommodate Cost Per Action
  When you have an average amount of money you would prefer to pay to achieve a conversion, that is what is known as your target Cost Per Action or CPA. Setting a maximum CPA will allow you to use that metric to measure how well your ad campaign is performing. Giving your ad campaign some time to take effect is the best way to see accurate results. Once you see the results, you can decrease your bids on the keywords that are going over the CPA you want.
• 47. Change Bids Based on the Time of Day
  The times people see your ads have a huge effect on your bid. You can pay attention to what times of day produce the highest conversion rates. When you know that, you can lower the bids you have at the times you have the lowest conversion rates. Scheduling your ads around the times of day your business is open, and operating can benefit you.
• 48. How to Decide If and When to Schedule Ads
  Creating an ad schedule can allow you to control the exact dates and times your ads are shown to people. Optimization of your ad bids based on the time of day they are shown can help your business succeed and maximize the amount of web traffic you get. You can find out what times of day your ads perform best by looking at Google Web Analytics.
• 49. Change your Bid Based on Volume
  Smart bidding is a technique we use to optimize your bidding strategy. Google can define it as automated bid strategies used to optimize conversions and conversion values. This tool can analyze millions of signals at once and is able to make adjustments as needed in real-time. When the volume of your web traffic declines while you are using smart bidding strategies, Google can create more conversions if you make the parameters on your smart bidding less limited.
• 50. Optimize Your Bidding Strategy
  PPC ad reports are your key to tracking the success of your ad campaign. You can receive these reports on a weekly or monthly basis so you can stay up-to-date with your results and figure out the impact any changes you have made to your campaign are having. This information will help you make more successful changes in the future. Excel spreadsheets are a great tool your company can use to track the data involved in your Google Ads campaign efficiently. Although you could handle your Google Adwords campaign yourself, sometimes a third party can help you pinpoint what you’re missing and free your hands from the trouble. If you have completed your PPC ad campaign and still feel your online presence as a business could see improvement, call us at Actual SEO Media, Inc.