Not Relevant Keywords

Misaligned keywords will lower your quality score which increases costs. Google is huge on relevancy and as a result, when keywords are not relevant to the ads and the landing page your quality score goes down. The only result from this is to pay too much for that keyword.

Wrong Keywords

It completely baffles us how many accounts bid on their own business name. This is usually a complete waste of money because you will be ranked #1 organically for your own name and people will find you for free instead of clicking on your ad. The only time we recommend bidding on your name is if it’s generic enough to cross over into regular keywords or your competitors are bidding on your name (which happens). We have had over a dozen audits that we found clients bidding on their own name which cost them $1500 to $3000 a year or more.

Majority Broad Match Keywords

Broad match keywords can be costly, as they usually yield more traffic but they are not hyper-qualified. We use more restrictive match types like modified broad, phrase and exact. While your volume may decrease, you’ll be showing your ads to more relevant users resulting in more clicks, conversions and higher Quality Scores.

Negative Keywords

This is truly a powerful way to save a ton of money on fraudulent clicks or clicks from people who are not prospects. We have found some accounts who have 30-40% of their clicks coming from people who are absolutely not looking to use their services. Examples are people looking for photos or pro bono or people trying to sell you something or looking for a job and they click your ad costing you money!

Account Management

Unfortunately for you but fortunately for us, there is no such thing as set-and-forget for Google Ads (or any other online marketing). The complexity of Google gives us job security. According to Google, almost 90% of all Google Ads accounts are not optimized on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, that applies to most agencies as well. Google Ads is an auction. And just like any auction, the astute people get a good deal and the rest pay too much. You must weekly (sometimes daily for competitive niches), scrutinize the bids, the ads, click thru rate and competitor influence (and about 37 other things). It’s common for someone across town to get a coupon from Google to try Pay Per Click Ads. They throw a couple grand out there to “try” Google Ads which jacks up everyone’s cost per click. If you are not watching, you can get strung along.

Poor Landing Pages

Most of the accounts we audit are sending their clicks to irrelevant landing pages or the home page. This is a costly, rookie mistake. Bad landing pages deteriorates conversion rates, typically by about half. Sending traffic to highly relevant landing pages can quickly double the effectiveness of the ad group.

Mediocre Ads

The ads themselves are a huge part of conversions. In most cases, there are no compelling reasons to put your business name in the headline. It’s a waste of premium copy real estate and most people don’t care, (otherwise they would have Googled your name). Do the ads draw attention? Is there a call to action? Is the phone number showing? The first conversion is to GET THE CLICK!

Schedule Your Free AdWords Audit today

Our Pay Per Click (PPC) management philosophy is simple, get the highest ROI possible for our clients! We understand that you work hard for your marketing dollars. We want you to feel confident that we do too. Call us today to schedule your free Google Ads audit, (850) 790-9993.