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Google Ads Snags You Should Avoid in the New Year

Most marketers have been in situations where they feel like they’re going downhill.

One day, everything is going according to plan, and then the next moment, something goes wrong.

Terribly wrong, and you don’t know what to do!

Life throws us into situations we did not anticipate, making us struggle to survive.

In such incidents, you need to be strong and keep sight of your goal.

For those who are new to the Google Ads circle, life could be a bit tougher since you aren’t as accustomed to the ins and outs of how it works.

Snags could happen with literally anyone, but trying to figure them out could give you an upper hand.

Let’s get started with the central part of the article so we can clear things out for you.

1. Is it Really a Match?

  • In a time before this, Google Ads keyword was uncompromising in the sense that a keyword in the content had to be an exact match to the keyword search for it to show up in the SERPs.
  • A highly specific keyword search was a thing back then, can you believe it?
  • But then, Google decided to make changes, and it suddenly allowed a little variation in the order and spelling of the same.
  • If the meaning is similar, you should be fine.
  • Say:
    • beauty products for women (the use of “for”)
    • beauty products
    • women beauty products (variation in the order of words)
    • beauty products women
  • All of the keywords work toward looking for what you want.
  • But then for all of those who had been taking advantage of the exact keyword search to reduce the number of useless ad clicks, the progress is not worth it.
  • The solution? Adding negative keywords to your list might work.
  • And then you could also harness the energy of “phrase match” since it would help you with the variations that Google allows.
  • Lucky for you, the idea of close variants will now also be applied to phrase match keywords and brand match modifiers.
  • We think match types are soon going to become obsolete.

2. Not Using Metrics

  • For your Google Ads efforts to be showing in the right light, and not ending up in a dump somewhere, you need to keep track of the metrics.
  • If your ads aren’t working, figure out why not and try to fix it.
  • Just because you’re sitting in front of your computer, doesn’t mean you know what’s going wrong.
  • There are a few metrics that you absolutely need to be tracking to stay on top of your game:
    • Conversion Rate
    • Cost-per-Click
    • Click-through Rate
    • Quality Score on Google AdWords
    • Cost-per-Acquisition

3. Your Daily Budget is Messed Up

  • As you do in your life, Google Ads also binds you to a maximum daily budget that you have to follow.
  • For anyone who reasons, unlike me, would think that once they’ve spent their daily budget, they’d be done — no more spending money.
  • Here’s the catch, though. The calculation done by Google is applied throughout the course of the entire month.
  • So, of course, it’s clearly not a daily calculation.
  • Your monthly charging limit is the one that’s calculated. This comes down to the average of the number of days divided by your daily allotted budget.
  • Okay, here’s how that works:
google-add-snags
    • As an example, let’s consider the budget to have been set at $50.
    • Once the budget is set and we scroll down to the end of the page, we should be able to see the disclaimer note.
avoid-in-new-year
    • Essentially it would mean that you could have your campaign account checked in the middle of the month to find that your entire budget has already been spent.
  • To keep yourself safe from such a snag, make sure that you check your account on a daily basis.
  • Google Ads accounts should be managed by professionals who are capable enough of keeping track.
  • One of the things you need to consider is when you think about pausing the campaign mid-month. It doesn’t really work if you’ve already used up your budget.
  • A lot of people make the mistake of cutting their budget into half. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to waste even a dollar more where you could get things done for a lesser price, but does that really make sense?
google-ads
  • Instead, what you can do is give a particular campaign a set maximum budget. While it has been made possible to apply this strategy only on video campaigns, that time is not far when the rules shift.
  • Search campaigns allow you to set budgets per month.

4. Landing Page, who?

  • The main aim of Google Ads is that it will push all the new traffic to your website, correct?
  • When done right, you shall come to know what it is that your audience is really looking for.
  • If you were to send these visitors to your home page, ahem, big mistake, your home page is a generic place where everyone comes, but people who click on specific ads would expect to reach a page related to that.
  • Serving them with the correct and required information is necessary.
  • The concept of creating a landing page also works if your website has been built on WordPress.
  • Making standard landing pages is a mistake you want to avoid at all costs.

5. What Constitutes for Good Advice?

  • While most of the time, Google Ads reps are super good at giving advice and guidance, but there is a chance that they falter as well.
  • If you’ve been in the Google Ads scene for a while, then you’ll know that there are chances that you get assigned to a rep who doesn’t really understand what you need, and neither do they have the expertise of doing so.
  • Finding the right people to guide the lost can be tough, even for Google, and that’s okay.
  • There might be a period where you’d get some fantastic bits of advice that pull you up the ladder, and then somewhere you just can’t get things to work your way.
  • So do not follow these guidelines blindly. Think for yourself and analyze the situation according to you.
  • If you are unsure about yourself as well, then get in touch with your fellow employees and brainstorm a little.

So you see, most of the snags that you might fall into are avoidable just by paying attention.

In the year 2022, let’s decide to understand what we want to do and what we’re going to achieve out of it before we take the leap.

And even when it has already been done, keeping track is essential.