Expand Your Search Campaigns & Increase Conversions Using Relevancy

 

Are you struggling to find more ways to expand your search campaigns, orchestrate conversions, and generate positive results for your business or clients? If so, you are not alone. Many business owners and marketers struggle to understand why their ad campaigns are not working and what needs to be done to improve them. In this blog post we break down some of the common ways to identify what isn’t working in a PPC campaign, and tactics to improve ad relevance so you can turn your pay per click campaign around.

For example, let’s say you are a sporting goods company and you are advertising your running shoes in a search ad campaign. You could very well be showing up for all the “running shoe” keywords you wish, however people are not clicking on your ads and therefore, not converting.

 

1. Audit Your Campaigns

The first step in improving a PPC campaign is an audit, and there are a few essential questions you should be asking:

• Do your campaigns have a clear focus?
• Are you advertising more than one product or service?
• How relevant are your keywords and ad groups to one another?
• How is the budget affecting my campaign?

Answering these initial questions will help you determine your overall campaign objectives, understand the common themes throughout your campaign, and help you to make strategic decisions for how you should organize your ad groups, within the campaign.

 

Ad Relevance

One of the most important things to review is ad relevance, which is one of the primary factors in how your ad groups and keywords interact with each other. In short, ad relevance is how well your keyword (user query) matches your ad copy.

As you review your campaign, think about categorization and how it would apply to people that are searching for your product or service. In a perfect scenario your ad completely answers the user query, the user clicks your ad, lands on your page and then buys your product. But things aren’t always perfect, and there are many ways a user will search for your products. This means your ad won’t always be relevant to that specific query.

 

Organize and Expand

Think about the path a user may take to find the product they want. Starting with a general idea/category, and getting more specific as you move further down the purchase funnel, is great practice. Maybe you go from running shoes, to types of running shoes (general running shoes, running trail shoes, motion control, stability, etc.). This is how you should think about the ad groups in your search campaigns, categories that get more granular as you go along. Your campaign should have one overarching topic with ad groups that focus on specific categories of the topic. If we were to use the same example from above, here is how we would segment the campaign into categorized ad groups:

 

Example Ad Group Setup

Campaign: Running Shoes

• • Ad Group #1: General Running Shoes
    • Keywords: running shoes, shoes good for running, etc.
  • Ad Group #2: Running Trail Shoes
    • Keywords: running trail shoes, shoes for running trails, etc.
  • Ad Group #3: Motion Control Running Shoes
    • Keywords: motion control shoes, cushioned motion control shoes, etc.
  • Ad Group #4: Stability Running Shoes
    • Keywords: stability running shoes, mild stability running shoes, etc. 

Increase Your Relevancy Score

By segmenting our keywords into these separate groups, our relevancy score will be much higher. The biggest reason campaigns fail is that keywords are not properly segmented, and ads are more relevant to some terms compared to others when in a single ad group. Think about it this way. If you had a “general running” ad group and had keywords for both “running shoes” and “motion control shoes” with an ad that highlights running shoes, the motion control shoes keyword would not perform as well because it is not as relevant to the ad copy. If a separate ad group was created with “motion control shoes” specific ads, the keyword would then be more relevant.

 

Budget Your PPC Better

Another thing to consider as you audit your campaigns is your budget. If you have more than one focus or your sub-focuses (your ad groups) have a ton of search volume around them, look at your budget and search impression share. If you are “Limited by Budget”, you may want to consider segmenting your campaign into multiple campaigns to increase your visibility and your relevancy. If your one ad group is using up all your budget, not providing any impressions for your other ad groups, it may make sense to lower bids within the most expensive ad group or, move the most expensive ad group out to its own campaign with a separate budget, providing more impressions to be allocated to your other ad groups.

 

2. Move Relevant Keywords to Proper Ad Groups

Now that you got your ad groups squared away, it’s time to move any existing keywords into their new proper ad group. Take a look at each keyword and ask yourself where it should truly live. For most of your keywords, ad group placement should be self-explanatory, but you may come across a situation where it’s a toss-up. For example, you may want to target a keyword such as “motion control running trail shoes”, which could fall within either of your two ad groups. When it comes to questionable keywords such as these, it’s best to look at your ad copy to see where it will best fit.

• Which ads seem more relevant to your keyword?
• What headlines are you using?
• What descriptions are you providing to explain your company?

 

3. Expand on Your Keywords

Now that you have clear focuses for each ad group and move around your existing keywords where necessary, try expanding your keyword portfolio and explore other terms that may be relevant. By using Google Keyword Planner, Google will provide you with average monthly search volumes around your potential keywords. Start by entering keywords, or a website, to find relevant keywords that could help your campaign. Google will then provide you a list of keyword ideas with average search volumes. By reviewing these terms and making sure to keep in mind relevancy, you can determine which keywords fit best in your campaign. You can find Keyword Planner by logging into your Google Ads account and clicking “Tools & Settings” in the top right of your screen. You’ll find it under the Planning column.

 

4. Modify or Replace Your Old Ads with Keyword-Focused Ads

Once your keywords for your segmented ad groups are finalized, it’s time to modify your existing ads to set your keywords up for higher quality score, and lower search impression share due to rank percentages. By using relevant/targeted keywords in your headlines and descriptions, you will be able to increase your relevancy. Also, adding any promotions you have running in your headlines can help attract new users. By reviewing the metrics Google provides for your keywords, you can see where you are missing out on quality score and what terms should be focused on in your ads.

In conclusion, relevancy is crucial to your campaign’s performance. By making relevant ad groups and finding/replacing relevant terms to your campaign, you will set your campaign up for success and see relevant conversions improve for your business.

Would you like more help with your PPC campaigns? Our Pay Per Click Advertising service can help. Get a free digital marketing evaluation today.