Jun '23 in General
Warning Signs - Common Google Ads Issues
In Google Ads management, there are a few warning signs that can let you know when to make changes. Some of them indicate a big problem that requires major changes, while others just act as a nudge in the right direction for regular optimization work.
Let's take a look at some of them here, in no particular order:
- No Impressions
This is a frustrating issue that you don't always catch right away. If you don't have impressions in the first week of launching a new ad group, you'll want to check for:
1. Policy violations - You may need to change your keywords, ad copy, landing page, etc
2. Keyword search volume (if search) - You may need to try Broad match, DSA, or different keywords
3. Image quality issues (if display) - You may need to try new images with higher resolution.
4. Bidding strategy (the tricky one!) - You may need to change or remove CPC, CPA, or ROAS targets.
5. Audiences (if GDN) - You may need to remove certain restrictions or add more audience signals.
- Low CTR (5% or lower for high volume searches, 10% or lower for mid volume)
A lot of people say that you shouldn't optimize for CTR, and they're right. However, it is still important and a low CTR can warn you of a few possible issues:
- Your ad copy is not resonating with searchers. - If people search for "Holistic Medicine" and your ad says "Acupuncture Clinic", you may be giving some of them what they want, but missing the majority of them. Understand what your market wants from each search and try to speak to that with your ad copy.
- Your keywords are pulling in irrelevant search terms - Sometimes the ad copy is fine, but the keywords are being matched to too many different search terms. Spend some time going through the search terms report and adding negatives. If you find that you can't keep up with the negatives, consider pausing some keywords.
- Low top Impression Share - If your ads are losing significant amounts of impression share due to budget or rank, you may see your CTR drop. You're still getting impressions, but you're not showing in the top 3 results. Abs. top IS Lost (rank) is a big one, as serving ads in the #1 position will net you more clicks from those who click the top result without reading, or upon seeing that it's relevant. If the above 2 are dialed, consider increasing bids.
- Impression Share Lost
As a segue from the third point of the Low CTR warning sign, if you see your impression share dipping you may need to make some changes. At the campaign level, you can see whether your impression share is being lost due to budget constraints. If this is the case, the only solution is to increase the campaign's budget or pause ad groups or keywords that may be driving up costs.
At every level from the campaign level down to the keyword level, you can see whether ad rank is the culprit. This is a sign that you need to look into ad group segmentation (keyword grouping), bidding strategy (bids too low), or quality score (ad relevance, landing page experience, expected CTR). Higher IS isn't always necessary, but it doesn't hurt and may lead to better performance.
- Low Conversion Rate
This one is a big deal. If you're tracking the right things as conversion actions, a low conversion rate correlates to increased cost per conversion and a decrease in profits.
There are a lot of things that affect conversion rate, the biggest of which is the offer. If people don't want what you're advertising, you'll never get a reasonable conversion rate. You may not have control over the offer, but you can suggest to your client that they offer something else (possibly a lead magnet that people want, which would allow email marketing to take on the heavy lifting of selling people on something they don't want, but could benefit from).
The next biggest factor is the landing page. If the landing page looks awful, doesn't function, or requires miles of scrolling to reach a CTA, you'll see a lower conversion rate. If it's not immediately clear what the user should do when they land on the page, you may see a lower conversion rate. To fix this one, seek to align the page with the expectations of the searcher and remove as much friction as possible between the ad click and the conversion action.
The third biggest factor that affects conversion rate is an overlap of volume and relevance of search terms. Getting tons of clicks from irrelevant search terms? Expect a low conversion rate. Getting tons of clicks from relevant search terms and your negative keywords have filtered out the majority of the irrelevant search terms? Expect a healthy conversion rate with a nice volume of conversions.
There are plenty of other warning signs that you may come across in Google Ads, but these metrics can give you a quick idea of the account's overall health and what to do about it.
Happy optimizing!
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Warning Signs - Common Google Ads Issues
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