Fri, March 29, 2024

Free Access: Best practices for paid ads on Google

You’ve probably all heard the joke, “Where is the safest place to hide a body? The second page of Google.”

Think about the last time you clicked on page two or three of Google: It may have been weeks or months. Most of us search, click and go on the first two or three search results we see. In fact, according to Zero Limit Web, “On the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.6% of all the clicks.”

Page 2 and beyond can be so ineffective, that Sherlock Holmes may not find what he’s looking for. If your organic search rankings are not on page 1, one option is to look at paid search ads “to get you on page one” and, this is really important, while you work on getting your SEO up to snuff.

eoy CAMPAIGN HEADER

We do not recommend paid ads (in this case we are focusing on Google search only, not social ads or re-targeting) as a replacement for SEO but as a complement while you are building your web cred.

4 (OF MANY!) Things to Do Before Setting Up Your Google Ads

1. Decide if you need to hire a firm to run ads

Setting up a Google Ads account is not hard, but it just takes some time and experience. Your team will need to understand the basics of campaigns, keywords, bids, and more to effectively run a campaign.
There is a slew of items, like understanding different ad types, campaign structures, and keywords management that you can manage.

2. Decide if you have the budget to run ads

Google will measure your ad costs through cost per click. What you can afford is really a math problem. For example, you can see from the chart below that the current average cost per click is $8.67 for attorneys.

Let’s assume the attorney has a meeting fee of $300 for 1 hour and that it takes 20 clicks to get an appointment. The campaign would cost $173.40 for each appointment, clearly a win for the attorney.
If you have a low-ticket item, say a $5 retail product, make sure you do your calculations on what you need to make the campaign financially viable.

Source: Wordstream Benchmark Study
3. Know your audience

This is really about knowing how to target your audience in ads. Google has a quality score component that determines the effectiveness of ads placed. The three elements of the quality score are:

  • Ad relevance – how well the ad content matches the web page element
  • Landing page experience – how user-friendly the web page is for the customer
  • Expected click-through rate – how well the average click-through rates perform for your chosen keywords.

Each of the components impacts your ad success and cost. You’d do well to pay attention to them!

4. Optimize your Google Ads for NLS – Natural Language Search

This one directly relates to #3 above user-friendly searching. Voice search is growing increasingly popular, not just on smartphones but also on smart gadgets. According to eMarketer, “currently, around half of all internet users in the U.S. and over 40 percent of its total population are users of voice search.”

Natural language search is doing a search request in “every day speak” like you are talking to a colleague.

So what does it all mean?

In case you missed it, we have a quick (and free) audit report you can run at https://grouprb.com/get-your-free-online-audit-report/ that will help you understand where your business ranks in ads and paid search.

Until next time, remember that you deserve marketing that actually works.

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