10 Technical Mistakes in Google AdWords and How to Avoid Them

Google AdWords is a powerful platform for running online advertising campaigns. However, many advertisers make technical mistakes that can hinder the performance of their ads. In this article, we will discuss 10 common technical mistakes in Google AdWords and provide tips on how to avoid them.

1. Poorly Structured Campaigns

A poorly structured campaign can lead to inefficiencies and confusion. To avoid this mistake, organize your campaigns into logical groups based on product categories or target audience segments. Use separate ad groups within each campaign for better control over budgets and keywords.

2. Neglecting Negative Keywords

Neglecting negative keywords can result in irrelevant clicks and wasted budget. Regularly review search term reports to identify irrelevant search queries triggering your ads, then add those terms as negative keywords to prevent future occurrences.

3. Using Broad Match Keywords Only

Using broad match keywords without any modifiers may lead to displaying your ads for unrelated searches. Utilize modified broad match, phrase match, and exact match types strategically to ensure your ads are shown only when relevant user queries are made.

4. Ignoring Mobile Optimization

With the majority of internet users accessing content through mobile devices, ignoring mobile optimization is a big mistake. Ensure that your landing pages and ads are fully optimized for mobile devices to deliver an optimal user experience.

5. Overlooking Geographic Targeting Settings

Overlooking geographic targeting settings can waste budget by showing ads outside of your target market area or in locations where you don’t offer services or products. Review location data regularly and adjust targeting settings accordingly.

6. Not Utilizing Conversion Tracking

Without conversion tracking enabled, it becomes difficult to measure the success of your campaigns accurately or optimize them for better performance. Implement conversion tracking codes on relevant pages to track important actions such as form submissions or purchases.

7. Poor Ad Extensions Implementation

Ad extensions provide additional information and increase the visibility of your ads. However, implementing ad extensions incorrectly can lead to poor user experience and low click-through rates. Take advantage of various ad extensions available in Google AdWords and ensure they are properly set up.

8. Neglecting Quality Score Improvement

A high-quality score positively impacts your ad’s position and cost per click (CPC). Neglecting quality score improvement can result in higher CPCs and lower visibility for your ads. Focus on optimizing keyword relevance, landing page experience, and ad copy to improve quality scores.

9. Inconsistent Ad Scheduling

Inconsistent ad scheduling can cause your ads to display at times when your target audience is not active or likely to convert. Analyze data from different time periods to identify peak activity hours, then adjust ad scheduling accordingly for maximum impact.

10. Not Regularly Monitoring Performance Metrics

Not regularly monitoring performance metrics can lead to missed opportunities for optimization or identifying underperforming campaigns promptly. Keep a close eye on key metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on investment (ROI).

By avoiding these common technical mistakes in Google AdWords, you can optimize the performance of your advertising campaigns effectively.

You invest in contextual advertising, but sales are not growing?

There are 3 options: something is wrong with this campaign, with the text of advertisements or keywords in Google AdWords.

In this article, we help you deal with the most common errors when working with Google AdWords. This information will be useful for both beginners and those who already have experience in contextual advertising campaigns in Google AdWords.

1. Check the landing page

Why are you launching ads? To sell a product or service on Google AdWords. The announcement itself will not help you with this. It upset people with a landing or with the main page of the site. It all depends on your settings.

If you do not want to drain the budget, check: Does your site sell?

Open the page and honestly answer: do you understand what is sold here; is it interesting to read the text. If you answered one of these questions, “No,” rework the page. Do not limit your opinion, connect employees, friends, relatives, and loyal customers.

Does the page convert?

Launch trial traffic and see how many people buy your product. Connect services that record the actions of visitors to understand when a potential buyer closes the page. Run the tests several times, naturally before making changes. Try to cover different versions of available systems, browsers, phones, and tablet models. The “Buy” button is visible and easily clicked.

Does the site open quickly?

Visitors will not wait hours to load the site. Many will close it after 5 minutes and even earlier.

2. Use Google Analytics with goals and remarketing

Goals help you better track the performance of your ads and landing page. You can track the path to the visitor, for example: visiting specific pages, such as shopping carts or thank you pages; time spent on the site; the number of pages viewed per session.

All this helps to understand the potential buyer, improve conversion and increase sales. Especially if you connected remarketing and return visitors who were interested in your product.

3. Set up call tracking

In other words, it is tracking conversions on the site by phone calls. According to statistics, more than 70% of people place orders over the phone.

4. Set up ad rotation

For example, suppose you use multiple ads in your ad campaign. We need to conduct testing to identify the most effective. If you set up an ad campaign in Google AdWords by default, then the system independently chooses which ad to show on the principle of “who is more likely to get a click.”

Look at the options “All functions” and look at the options offered by the system. Indeed, Google AdWords does not recommend using the “Rotate without time limits” line item. The company is obliged to earn more, despite the effectiveness of the ads.

When you select this feature, ads in Google AdWords will start showing evenly. You can easily analyze which of them works better and prioritize.

5. Select an ad serving method

By default, the search engine offers to show ads during the day. Thus, you can skip valuable traffic and lose some money for an advertising campaign if your target audience does not respond to the advertisement, for example, in the morning or the afternoon.

To solve this problem, try to use the accelerated ad serving method.

6. Check destination URL

It often happens that the advertising campaign involves incorrect links that lead the user to the page with the error “404”. Be sure to check where your ads lead before starting. Otherwise, you just spend the money. Ads will “spin”, and the conversion in Google AdWords will be zero.

7. Remove duplicate keywords

If you download keyword reports from the Google AdWords service and copy them to your account, you may accidentally transfer the same designs. This error can cause competition between keywords, and as a result – a bid increase and the display of ineffective ads.

This can and should be fought. Be sure to download analytics and check for duplicates using the Google AdWords Editor application.

8. Use your company name

Why is it important? If you do not use the name, you lose cheap traffic, because users of search engines can purposefully search for your company. Besides, competitors may use your name in Google AdWords ADs.

9. Add ad extensions

The free functionality of the Google AdWords service includes the ability to expand ADs. Very often Internet entrepreneurs neglect this fact. But you can completely increase the effectiveness of your advertising in Google AdWords for free.

Just configure the following fields:

• location;
• site links;
• call;
• dynamic search ads;
• mobile applications;
• reviews.

10. Remember about negative keywords in Google AdWords

Without using negative keywords, you lose part of the advertising budget and get irrelevant clicks. The Google search engine registers more than 6 million new keywords daily.

This means that some of them can positively affect your advertising campaign, and some – negatively. If you start using negative keywords, you easily reduce the cost per click and increase your revenue.

Remember that proper campaign structuring, regular optimization efforts, utilization of advanced targeting options, mobile optimization, continuous monitoring of performance metrics will contribute significantly towards maximizing the success of your Google AdWords campaigns!

For expert assistance with managing successful Google Ads campaigns contact us at AdvertaLine Digital Agency.