Why is Google Ad Optimization Important

Despite what Google wants you to think, your ads are not perfectly automated.

Also, despite what most businesses new to Google Ads think, campaign setup is a mere 10% of the overall optimization needed to get the best Google Search Ads possible.

Optimizing your ads is 80% of the time & effort that agencies should be spending their time on.

Unfortunately, the advertising industry is plagued by fly by night agencies that take your money to setup your campaigns - then they turn around and forget them.

At Optimize, we optimize.

You like that ? ^

Anyway, let's get deeper into this.
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Key Takeaways

• Google Ads aren't automated despite what Google Ads tells you
• Google's Recommendations aren't always what's best for your account
• Google Ad Optimizations should be done daily for the first 7-14 days for new accounts, then move to 3 times a week after
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Why you shouldn't listen to Google Ads recommendations

Google's recommendations make the account more "automated" which is short for "less optimized."

This means they. make more money on accounts with the wrong bidding strategy, match types, ad scheduling, location targeting, and much more.

Don't get me wrong, I love Google Ads - I think they are highly effective at capturing the bottom of the funnel demand.

However, as with everything, something has got to give.

There is no automated solution to Google Ads management - and the reason for that is that it is all subjective to the company's goals and leading indicators.

So when Google suggests to automate your bid strategy to be "max conversions" it's not always best to do with new accounts with little to no data to work off of.

This being said, optimization scores are somewhat important, and we will get into that later.
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Metrics you should care about

The big metrics that we optimize around are these:
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Click Thru Rate (CTR)

This is because it's performance can be directly tied to ad copy & bid strategy.

So these are figurative "levers" we can pull to improve this if needed.
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Conversions (Leads)

We are primarily interested in qualified leads.

Leads in and of themselves are of no interest to us and shouldn't be optimized around if they are spam or low quality.
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Conversion Rate (CVR)

We are primarily interested in the rate at which a qualified lead fills out the form/buys on our landing page.

Usually this is calculated manually - segmenting the data can be done in other visualization platforms.

If you're interested in that, follow our blog for more.
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Competitive Metrics & Quality Scores

All of these are important because they influence our overall costs, as well as ranking in the advertising SEO world.

Advertising SEO, a coin that we have termed, refers to the ad spot order.

Just because you purchase ad space in Google doesn't mean that you will always be #1.

There are 3 ad spots on the top of the page, and 3 at the bottom.

This means that there is a virtual competition for Absolute Top Impression Share and usually your ad quality scores are a strong determinant in where you place.

We will cover competitive metrics more in another blog.
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How to Optimize Google Search Ads After Campaign Launch

The rest of this blog covers the process for optimizing your Google Search Ads.

This is the exact process we take with all of our clients - so rest assured the process itself is optimized in an of itself.

Please note, these are all really important to check and optimize daily for the first 7-14 days after a campaign launches.

Way to many agencies don't care about optimizing the ads they setup for their clients until 2-4 weeks later.

Anyways, let's get into this.
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Dismiss Recommendations

As I mentioned earlier, recommendations are not usually important.

Yes, they help with adding new trending keywords, or reminding you to fix an extension or two, but most of the time, hidden in the recommendations is wasted ad spend.

Google wants you to automate your account as much as possible which will allow them to take money from you when they please.

Now, it's still important to at least dismiss the recommendations so the account has 100% optimization score.

This directly affects the ad quality scores and thus the costs & advertising SEO.
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Add Negative Keywords

If you don't have time for the others in this list, but still want to try to improve your campaigns, then this is it.

Go to your Words & Searches and review the searches that your ads were showing for.

Despite setting up your account with exact match keywords, Google will still throw in other search phrases that closely match your keywords.

Most times, the meaning and intent behind the close match keywords are different.

Example -> My Keywords [Google Ads Agency] can actually trigger for someone searching for "Google Ads Advertising" - which as you can tell, is a different intent.

My keyword shows intent for finding an agency to run your Google Ads, whereas, Google Ads Advertising could just be someone trying to learn more about Google Ads. (And from the query, I would say they are very new to the space because they said Ads Advertising in succession 😂).

So ad negative keywords early and often.
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Set Advanced Bidding Adjustments on Devices, Locations, and Times

Probably the second most important optimization for your Google Search ads is to set advanced bidding adjustments.

Hidden deep in the insights panel, there is a tab that you can click that says "Where Your Ads Showed."

From here, you click into devices and see which devices are getting the most spend & conversions.

Generally we always set mobile to a negative bid adjustment of -50% or higher because we usually don't see great intent to fill out a form on this device.

Same for tablets.

But it's important to check this on your own and make sure you aren't wasting spend on a device that isn't driving qulaified conversions.

The same can be done for locations and times under that same panel.

Give these a look to ensure your spend isn't all being used up by one particular location.

Caveat: If it is, perhaps run a campaign AB test that runs geolocated ads to the location that is getting the most clicks to see if it influences qualified conversions.
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Review Audiences & Segments

You can learn a lot about the kinds of industries and people that are interested in your services by reviewing the audiences panel.

This can help inform strategy on other advertising channels, as well as help establish buyer personas for your business.

And, if one segment is consistently driving qualified conversions, it could be worth creating a campaign with that one segment in mind and narrowing your keywords based on that segment.

If you want to learn more about audience setup, we recommend you check out our Google Ads Setup guide.
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Check Headline Performance

It shouldn't be a surprise that although your ads are all text, that the text is still important.

In fact, with Google Search ads, you can check the performance of each term, as well as how they perform in certain spots.

As a rule of thumb, I like to remove underperformers and run AB tests with pinned High achieving ad headlines.

By doing this, you are improving the number of "qualified" people that click your ads.
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Check allocation of spend on Partner Sites

Google allows you to spend on the Google Search Partners, as well as on the Display network - even if you don't have images associated with your ads.

Generally speaking, I don't like 3rd party networks in general regardless of the platform you are running ads on.

This is because usually they make up a significant amount of your spend, AND generally the partner search directories are pretty low quality - meaning the search experience is awful and spending time on these search engines isn't in the users best interest.

So I usually uncheck these upon campaign creation - however there are always edge cases where the partner sites do drive qualified conversions.

So we recommend giving them a good test before turning them off completely.

But if you spend allocation looks like this, then turn those bad boys off.
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Wrapping Up

That's all folks.

If you do this every day for 7-14 days after your campaign launches you will have some insanely optimized campaigns that you can rely on to capture demand for your business.

Reach out to us if you have any questions about your account.

We offer account audits & strategy calls here.

Until next time.