Problem no.1 — Not researching keyword properly

Keyword research is absolutely essential in Google Adwords Search Network.Your account won’t perform well unless and until you are targeting the most relevant terms which you customers are searching linking them to the services and products offered by you. We have seen apparel companies who are very bespoke and offer the latest neck-cut women’s wear but only target the term ‘women’s wear’. Sure, it gets them some traffic to their site, but because it wasn’t relevant to what exactly they offered, they sold nothing.

Solution

There are so many tools available out there to research keywords such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool, WordStream & SEMrush etc. You first have to look at your products or services, then determine a base list of what you think is relevant terms and then understand what variations of them people are using when they search using any of these tools.

Using Google Console or using your own sites search reporting in Google Analytics, will give you an idea of what is more relevant to you and your target customers.

Problem no. 2– Only using broad match terms

You must have seen this alot, ad groups with only Broad Match keyword in them. It is because it’s the default match type that Adwords sets a keyword in unless directed otherwise. It means that your broad keywords would serve your ads; to anyone searching for your search phrase in any order whatsoever, or synonyms of your keywords or any other relevant search term.

As you must have guessed it from the name, it is broadly matching to your desired terms which means that your ads serve for much less relevant searches. This could cost money if at all you receive an irrelevant click or lower your click through as the user did not click your ad at all.

Solution

Either you or your hired SEO Specialist can include some Broad Match terms in your account. In cases where you either limited on budget or trying to drive highly targeted leads/sales, it’s less risky to target using Exact Match keywords, Phrase, Modified Broad Match. It is very transparent when it comes to measuring success.

Problem no. 3–Not using negative keywords

There are plenty of accounts not using the negative keywords, mostly because the current AdWords web platform does not specifies that you need it at the first hand.

AdWords allows you to use negative keywords as a way to exclude keywords that are not a good match to your product.

For example, if you sell designer women’s shoes but not athletic shoes, then you would not want you ad to show up when someone searches ‘women’s running shoes’, but at the same want it to show when a consumer searches ‘Women’s shoes’. Thus, you will add ‘running’ as a negative word.

Solution

Just as you research your keyword, you have to do research for your negatives. This will prevent you to spend money, which goes wasted on clicks for irrelevant terms and help to improve the account health overall. Negative keywords a=can be added to both the ad campaign and ad group level.

Problem no. 4– Too many adwords in an ad group

It all comes to one thing- targeting an ad to your user’s query, and for that you have to make sure that your ad groups are set up right. Yes, having many similar keywords in an ad group does sounds logical, but the trouble is, having too many adwords in a group can make you ad i the ad group match the user’s query. This will lower the CTR and harm the health of the campaign.

Not using ad groups is one another mistake people usually make. Instead of segmenting their ads into the groups based on similar type of keywords, they mix all the adwords into same ad group and show everyone the same ad.

Solution

Have a single, or at least two to three keywords ad groups, but certainly not more than 20 adwords per ad group. Through this, you can tightly control the ad copy which the user’s views and make it very closely relevant to the query they make. It will boost your CTR which in turn will help you lower your CPCs for the target terms, thus getting more conversions.

Problem no.5– Not considering ad scheduling

Ad scheduling on your campaigns is directly going to increase your performance. They are campaigns that are set live 24/7. This might constrain the account and limit its potential.

Some reasons to set up scheduling:

Business Hours: If you know that you are not going to offer your services at certain times of the day or know that the user might not search for your service at 3am, then there is no use of having your account live at that time.

Limited budgets: Set your campaigns time wisely especially when you have budget constraints. Reduce the time that it is live for only the prime search or buying ti es of the day for your business.

Solution:

Use Google Analytics and AdWords available to segment the best time of the day and the best day of the week to determine the best times to run your campaigns live. If you find a time or a day which is highly profitable and performs best then it would be appropriate to migrate that ad group.

Closing Thought

There are so many other mistakes that people make today but we these are the top five. Plan your campaigns, research you restructures and targeting, scrutinize your account and keep optimizing it.

If you have any questions after reading this article or need any help regarding any other issue that you might be facing in your adwords campaign, then leave a comment or reach out to us. We Crazy Hippos will be happy to assist you.