How to Improve your Google Ads Ranking

Google Adwords has become the bread and butter of digital marketing for thousands of businesses across the globe in numerous industries. After all, who does not use Google?

Paid advertising, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC), helps your business rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for the targeted popular search keywords that you have selected.

Whenever a user performs a Google Search using one of your preselected keywords or search phrases, Google will display your advert either at the top or bottom of the SERPs.

But does this mean that your ad will be displayed every time? Google Adwords uses a special auction algorithm that determines your ad ranking and placement.

Want to earn those higher rankings? Here is how you can improve your Google Ads Ranking.

Entering the Google Auction

Before you can improve your Google Ads ranking, you need to understand how the Google Ads Auction algorithm works.

The Google Ads Auction takes place between the keywords that you have preselected to determine the ranking of your search ad using the maximum bid you have specified. However, it is not the maximum bid alone that determines if you win the auction or not.

The ad ranking is also influenced by the relevance of the ad text as well as the Quality Score.

Ultimately, Quality Score and ad relevance work hand-in-hand. Google assigns a specific score to popular keywords classifying these keywords as more valuable, thus, granting them a higher Quality Score. But it is not enough to select the appropriate search terms, you need to include these keywords in your ads and on your landing pages.

In doing so, Google Ads works with SEO to improve your ad quality and overall Quality Score resulting in lower CPC (cost-per-click) and better ad positions.

To the Highest Bidder

While having higher bidding amounts will definitely increase your chances of winning the ad auction, as mentioned above, it is not the only factor. However, if you are constantly been overbid it could indicate that you do not have enough budget allocated to bid with.

Increasing your maximum bid can help you to get the clicks with those high Quality Score keywords. After all, these words have been ranked as popular for a reason – they get the clicks.

Increase your Quality Scores

Just as keywords are allocated Quality Scores, your ads are too. Google allocates a score from 1-10 for the Expected Click Through Rate (CTR), the Ad Relevance and the Landing Page Experience.

If all three of these factors have an ‘above average’ rating, your ads should have a high Quality Score.

Improving Click-Through Rate

Your Click Through Rate is determined by the number of clicks your ads received after been displayed. By improving your Click Through Rate, you will improve your overall Quality Score.

Just because your ad is being displayed does not mean that the person viewing it is interested in what you are advertising. Sometimes specific keyword results can bring up search items which are not relevant; such as job opportunities.

This can particularly happen with a broad match search. If this is happening, you can easily reduce this unwanted traffic by creating negative keyword matches. This tells Google that when “job” is included in the broad search, the ad should not display.

This allocates your budget to keyword searches that are actually relevant to your campaign.

Improving Ad Relevancy

As explained above, you want to avoid your ads been displayed to the wrong viewers. Similar to allocating negative keywords, you can view the search terms that triggered your ad to include some new keywords to your campaign.

You can also improve your ad relevancy by sticking to a single keyword per ad group. In this way, the ad will trigger to the relevant parties particularly if the keyword is a phrase or exact match.

This will help to develop a tighter audience for your ads, which will not only improve your Quality Score, but ensure that your budget is spent on generating real leads.

Improving Landing Page Experience

The landing page experience is influenced by general SEO. Your ads can score high on Click Through Rate and Relevancy, but low on Landing Page Experience which can result in a lower ranking.

If your landing page, the page which your ad directs to, meets Google’s standards you will receive a good Quality Score. What factors does Google look at?

• Your content should be original, relevant and useful to the viewer.
• The content should be accurate and trustworthy.
• The landing page should be easy to navigate on both mobile and desktop platforms.
• Improve page load time to avoid viewers closing your page before it has even loaded.

When writing content for your landing page, it is also important to include the keywords from your campaign in the content. This also applies to your Meta Data. This way, SEO in conjunction with Google Ads, will make your ads more relevant and clickable.

Use Ad Extensions

Google Ad Extensions are additional experts of information expanding onto your advert to make your advert more useful to the viewers. Ad Extensions can include phone numbers, additional links from your website and reviews amongst others.

By using Ad Extensions, you are not only encouraging viewers to visit other areas of your website but you are also expanding the total space taken up by your ad on the SERPs.

This is the same rule that applies to larger adverts in a newspaper or magazine: the more space the ad takes up, the more likely the viewer is to see it.

Ad Extensions can help you to create more targeted campaigns, provide the views with important information to encourage clicks and to encourage your viewers to get in touch telephonically or electronically.

Ultimately, you cannot go wrong with Ad Extensions. Just make sure you do not detract attention from the original purpose of your campaign.

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Google Adwords is the perfect digital marketing tool to increase traffic to your website and generate potential leads. With the right campaign and a high Quality Score, you can hit those top rankings in no time.

If you would like to start marketing your business online with Google Adwords, contact the digital marketing team at Online Innovations for assistance in Google Ads marketing. Call us on 041 365 4919, email [email protected], or visit our website at www.onlineinnovations.com to find out more.