Paid Search Do’s and Dont’s

Jun 27, 2022 | 3  min
author Bonnie Horner
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Paid advertising is a complex beast, with tons of rules, approaches, and “gurus.” There’s a lot of terrible paid search advice out there and many inexperienced people dispensing it. But getting it right is worth it. Effective paid to advertise enables you to not only reach massive new audiences—it allows you to nurture and reengage your existing audience, often at a relatively low cost. The key is effectiveness. Just launching campaigns to have something going, or following the advice of an amateur, is the equivalent of flushing money away. Whether you’re launching paid advertising of your own or working to find a vendor who can help,

Use this ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ guide to help you discover an effective solution. 

Don’t

Use Search Partners – We’ve never found it helpful, and it always spends money on less qualified traffic that results in low CTRs. Plus, it’s never budget-friendly.

Do

Break up campaigns for important keywords – Instead, different big-spending keywords from other campaigns for a Single Keyword Campaign (SKC). At a minimum, put keywords into a Single Keyword Ad Group (SKAG) to spend on them better.

Don’t 

Throw every keyword into the same ad group – You need to organize your keywords with other related words and put them into an ad group for those related keywords. Doing this will make for easier budgeting, bidding, and optimizing.

Do

Break out your campaigns into either intent-based categories (Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, etc.) or keyword categories: Broad Match Modified campaign (BMM campaign) – Exact Match campaign (EM campaign) etc.

Don’t

Maximize clicks – Google will use it as an opportunity to drive up your CPCs and not give you a great return on conversion (unless you don’t have conversions).

Do

Set your bid strategy to align with an overall goal, like target CPA – However, utilizing manual bidding with ECPC is one of the best ways, especially when starting, to control bids, acquire data, and make the most of your budget while maintaining control.

Don’t

Set your bid too low – You will fall off the SERP, land on the second page, and be there with all the other hidden dead bodies.

Do

Set your bid at a reasonable level for your daily budget and your keyword intent – Sometimes, paying more for a higher purpose, higher quality keywords will give you fewer but more qualified clicks that might result in more conversions.

Don’t

Target audiences in Search – This assumes you know who will be searching for your keywords and limits your keyword searches to only people who belong to the audiences you’ve picked – remember, Search is for keywords, not necessarily audience.

Do

Observe audiences in Search – This could help make informed decisions on which audience segments you should target in Display or Social and allow you to pick keywords better.

Don’t

Use only broad match keywords.

Do

Use broad match modifiers while negating their exact match term from them (in a different ad group or campaign) so you only get traffic that comes through their non-exact variables.

Do

Set up a campaign or ad group for your BMM’s Exact Match keyword counterparts so you can still bid on those words and get them for a better price.

Don’t

Just go after impressions.

Do

Gain impressions while keeping a good CTR and a strong level of clicks by optimizing your daily bids and budgets.

Do

Set up your ad groups with keywords relevant to each other – That way, you can bid at the ad group level if you have a lot of campaigns and ad groups to manage, instead of having to bid at the individual keyword all the time.

Don’t

Neglect ad extensions.

Do

Make sure to set up as many ad extensions as possible. That way, you can take up as much SERP real estate as possible and show the user as much helpful information possible to convince them to click your ad.

Don’t

Just write ads to be creative.

Do

Write ads with keywords, price points, and enticing reasons to get someone to click on your ad.

When it comes down to it, the most important things are to set your goal, create a solid campaign structure to build and optimize off, and let Google help you optimize while putting up safe-guards so your budget isn’t blown. Of course, if you want to make your Search skillset, there’s no substitute for testing and learning, so get out there and start Googling. It also helps to train, take the certification test, and become Google Ads Certified.

Interested in learning more about paid advertising? Get in touch with us to start a conversation about what’s best for your organization. Let’s talk!

Updated: Jun 27, 2022

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