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Hi, Mike Mancini here with PPCVideoTraining.com. Today we are talking about how Google Ads Mistakes and how to figure out what’s going on with your Google Ads. Alright, stay tuned.
Alright, so today we are going to show you exactly how to find out what is going inside your campaigns, especially right after you get started.
You can do this obviously after a campaign has been running for a while, but early you kind of want to keep an eye on some specific numbers that will tell you exactly where the problems are in your account.
Now, they won’t always come up with the solutions for you, but with said they will at least show you where you need to start figuring out what’s wrong with it.
So, I’m not going to show you the names of these accounts, these are client campaigns, but the information that I will show you is really all you need.
You don’t need to see the key words or campaign names, or anything like that.
Step 1 – Check Your Keywords
The first place you need to always make sure that your campaigns are running really, is to go in and go check your keywords.
Once you’re in your keywords area of your campaign click on status, and make sure that these keywords are running. You can see that this one is below the first page bid, because these change all the time.
Now, this ad is showing now, but it is below the first page bid, and for this particular keyword we are going to up this bid.
Now just, once again, just because you agree, say that you’ll pay that amount, does not mean you’ll have to, but in this particular case we need to go through and update these. Now, this is a brand-new account, so we expect this to happen a lot more, especially in the beginning.
But these always change, I would suggest checking these quite regularly, just to make sure that they’re running.
Step 2 – Check Your Ad Status
The second thing you need to check is your ads. Once you click on your ads, and make sure you’re at the campaign level so you’re looking at all your campaigns, go through here and say click on status again. Now, these are paused, but what we want to do is we want to make sure that all of these are approved.
If they are not, they will show that they’re not approved, and you might even see something like this.
Here you could see it says approved, but it’s limited because there are trademarks in the ad text, so that means that your ad may show up at certain times, it might now show up at others, but is probably something you need to address.
Otherwise, you will see that they’re disapproved, and it should give you a reason when you hover over this, it should give you a reason of what’s going on, and the reason for the disapproval.
Now, let’s say that all your ads are running, and your keywords are good to go.
Step 3 – Check That You Have the Correct Keywords
The next step is, let’s make sure that you have the right keywords, or that your keywords are getting clicked. Now here’s some.
Now, I want to show you this one for a reason. This is a body shop, an auto body shop, and so, essentially, they paint cars, they fix dents, things like that.
But we turned this on, and we have body shop as a keyword, not thinking, just because my head space is not in the fashion and beauty area right now, but The Body Shop is actually a place that sells, is like a beauty place. It sells lotions, and bath stuff. Lip balms, and different things like that.
What ended up happening was we saw a lot of impressions, and you can see it right here. We saw a ton of impressions right out of the gate, but nobody was clicking it. So right away we looked in here, and we saw that there were 170 impressions, and there were four clicks, which is a click-through rate of 2.35%.
With a new campaign on click-through rates we like to minimum of 4%, if not more. Usually we have five, six, or seven, but I’m willing to take four on a brand-new campaign. But, I notice it was really low, it was 2.35%, so I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
So, I went to Google, and I typed in the word body shop, and sure enough the first thing that comes up is The Body Shop, which is the makeup or beauty place.
So, we took that keyword out of there and just kept in auto body shop, truck body shop, car body shop, different things like that. But that was a keyword where we were like, “Alright, there’s a problem here.”
As you can see there are some other ones in here, car painting. So, car painting class, car painting salary, different things like that.
And so, basically, we were getting a lot of impressions, hardly any clicks, our click-through rate was really low, so we went in there and we added those negative keywords to the campaign. So, you can start looking at your click-through rates.
So, number one, I would go back and make sure that everything is running correctly, your ads, your keywords, that they’re all eligible to show. Number two, I would start looking at my click-through rates. Now, some people will use that, if you like, “Well, click-through rates don’t mean anything.”
Well, they mean if you’re ads are getting clicked or not. And we use it to start diagnosing a problem. It’s not the be all, end all. We have some that are in very competitive industries, where the click-through rates are not as high as we like them to be, but those keywords are still very profitable.
The next thing is, if your keywords are not getting clicked, meaning, so you’ve got auto body shop as a keyword, and there are a ton of impressions but there are no clicks.
Meaning your click-through rate is just dropping out, it’s below that 3% or 4%. You can go in and type … Once again, I always start with Google, just go to Google and type in auto body shop, and take a look at what’s going on, what’s showing up.
Now, if it’s other competitors and legitimate searches, or things that, you’re like, “Alright, these should be here,” then by all means, your problem isn’t probably with your keywords, or necessarily your bids, because if you see your ads show up, or you see your average position is good, then what you’re probably talking about is your ads, meaning you have a problem with your ads.
Step 4 – Check Your Ads Relevance
So, go through and take a look in that specific ad group. Take a look at what your ads are saying. Are they focused on what that keyword is?
A good example would be, and this is going to be very simplified, but if you have auto body shop, and your ad only talks about semi-trucks, so maybe you have a body shop that specializes in semi-trucks and somebody types in auto body shop, and your ad says, semi-truck body shop, obviously your ad is not very focused to the keyword itself, and you might need to redo your ads.
That is a very quick way and a very simplified way of figuring out what’s going on. You have the right keywords, when you’re doing a search for those keywords the right businesses are showing up, but nobody is clicking on your ads, it’s time to start taking a look at your ad.
What does your ad say? Is there a bunch of misspellings? Is the ad very plain? Meaning, use some calls to action. Call today, schedule an appointment now. Just different things. Switch your ads up. Make sure that your ad is appropriate for that particular keyword.
Now, the last thing we’re going to take a look at is the next step. Let’s say your keyword’s in the right place, your ads are showing up, your ads are getting clicked, but you’re not getting any conversions. Then the next step is to take a look at your landing page.
Step 5 – Check Your Landing Pages
If everybody is getting all the way through the system but you’re not getting any conversions or any leads at all, then you know that the whole funnel itself is working, or your Google Ads system is working, but people are falling off at the end.
Meaning, they’re getting to your landing page, or are they? Make sure that your landing page is running correctly.
Sometimes when you’re building your ads, sometimes landing pages get messed up, or URLs get messed up, and Google, they’ll catch it eventually, but sometimes they don’t catch it right away.
People might be clicking on your ad and it’s going to a page that’s not functioning right, or the URL is broken. Whatever it might be, check to make sure that your ad is pointing to the right place.
Once it gets there, is your website really slow? If somebody clicks and ad, and they’re waiting for five seconds for that page to load, it doesn’t matter, you’re still getting charged for that click.
But, because on your end that website did not load quickly, and therefore, that person had to wait around for it, that could be happening as well. After that, make sure you go into your ads or, your landing pages, excuse me, and take a look at what’s going on on the page.
Once again, if somebody is clicking an auto body shop keyword, and they’re going to a landing page that says, semi-truck body shop, that’s a problem.
You need to take them, not to the front page of your website, not to a page that has something to do with something else but take them to a page that talks about exactly what they clicked on.
If it’s an auto body shop keyword you take them to an auto body shop page. And, make sure on that page there is a place for them to do a call to action, where there’s a form at the top to fill out there should be a call to action for a phone number, especially if you’re a service business.
Make sure it’s a tracking phone number so you can track where those leads are coming from. But if they can’t take action on that page then that’s also a problem.
So, just to recap, number one, take a look, make sure your ads and keywords are running. Make sure that they’re eligible to run, make sure they’re not paused, or that there’s any problems with it. Second, go to the keywords themselves.
Are they getting clicked on? If there are a ton of impressions and they’re not getting clicked on, go to Google to make sure you do a search for that particular area, wherever it’s at, for that right keyword. Make sure you do a search, see what’s going on with that keyword.
Once again, use the body shop reference. We’re advertising an auto body or a car body shop business, and The Body Shop, the gel and makeup store, whatever it might be, is the one that’s coming up. That’s obviously a bad keyword.
Take a look at your click-through rates, make sure that they’re an acceptable level. If not, take a look at what’s coming up on Google. Then, if everything is working okay, take a look at your ads themselves.
If the click-through rate is not as high as you want it to be there’s probably an issue with your ads. Make sure your ads are speaking directly to somebody that might click on that keyword.
Now, if you have a group of keywords, and there’s 50 or 100 keywords all in one ad group, and you’re just trying to attract everybody with one ad, that’s an issue. Then you need to start looking at keyword and ad group organization. You can look and do a search on our channel and find some videos about that.
If people are clicking your ad, you’ve got a great click-through rate, then it’s time to start looking at your landing pages. Are people able to get their correctly? Are they working? And if they are, are they relevant to what you’re talking about in the ad? Once again, use that example.
You’re talking about a car body shop, and you take them to a page that only works on semi-trucks, that’s an issue, that’s the next place you need to look at.
So now that you know what to look for, I did go ahead and created a cheat sheet, or basically a checklist for you that you can download. Go ahead, down below in the description, you can go ahead and download that checklist.
It’ll help give you an idea of what you want to look out for, and how to determine what’s going wrong in your Google Ads.
So, as we’re talking, did that help? Was there an aha moment? Or, did the light bulb go off?
Let us know exactly, like if there was an aha moment that you had, that you were just like “Oh! This has been going on in my campaign.”
Let us show some other people that, you know, there are a lot of people out there that are doing this that just feel like sometimes they’re stuck, and they can’t get by it. They’re never going to get it. But sometimes you just need these little ah-ha moments.
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