Today, I’m answering the question that I get quite a bit where people will say, “What do you do? What is the absolute minimum that you do when you go in and optimize your Google ads?”
So, when I go in to optimize Google ads for myself or my clients, we have a system that we follow. And, when I’m doing it for my clients, we stick to that system.
So if I get interrupted, I know where I’ve been, I’ve got kind of a checklist, to keep me on track.
However, when it’s my ads, sometimes I just get so focused on doing other things that I sometimes will skip over some of the steps. Sometimes I’m just too busy optimizing everybody else’s ads, and it’s kind of the old saying, a carpenter usually lives in the cardboard box.
The guy who works all day building houses, goes home and his house is always in shambles because he does it all day and sometimes he just doesn’t want to do it when he gets home. Kind of the same thing.
So, if I absolutely just need to get in there and I need to make some changes, but maybe I only have a few minutes.
This is the absolute minimum that I will do inside to optimize my Google Ads accounts. And now I’m going to take you inside an account right here, and show you exactly what I’m talking about.
Okay, so here we are inside of campaign. There are times when, in our client accounts, we are in there every week or sometimes several times a week depending on the campaign.
However, sometimes with my own stuff, I might only get in there every couple of weeks. I hate to say that, but I want to be honest with you guys.
But what I will do is, I usually keep stats from the time periods that I’m in there to the last time period. So, for instance, if it’s January 15th, I’ll go in.
And the last time I was in the campaign was January 1. I’ll go back, and I’ll put the stats here, January 1 to 15. So, I’m only going back to the last time period I made adjustments in the account.
Because if I go back before that, there are chances are that, if there were any mistakes, I’ve already corrected them. So, I want to see what’s going on with the campaign since the last time I touched it.
So, let’s just say I was in the campaign 14 days ago, I’m going back. I’m setting the date to the last 14 days. And remember, there are a lot of different things that you can do to optimize your campaign.
But this is the absolute minimum that I will do, because it only takes a few minutes. Okay?
So, I will go into the campaign itself. I will check on the keywords, because this is actually a cost per click campaign.
This is a manual cost per click campaign, and I will check on the status, and I will see if there are any keywords here that are not showing because they’re below the first page bid.
And I just switched to another account here, because I wanted to show you what that looks like. If you log in and you see, below first page bid. So for instance, this max cost per click is $4.11 cents.
It says you’re below the first page bit of 417. Then, I obviously want to adjust that bid. Okay? So, I’ll make sure that this status is, that the keywords are eligible to show.
Quality Scores Are Always Changing
The next thing is, I’ll go down and I’ll look at rarely shown low quality score. So, something might be happening with that app. Perhaps we changed an ad ,it’s no longer working.
Maybe there’s something wrong with the landing page. The quality scores are always changing. So, sometimes you might have an ad that’s or a keyword that’s not triggering this.
And then, the next time you log in there it says, a low quality score. Obviously it’s something you want to take care of. So, we’ll take a look at that.
Do Your Keywords Have Any Clicks?
Lastly, when it comes to keywords, I’ll look at low search volume. So, if I see this, and I see it on a consistent basis, what I want to look at is impressions and clicks.
Has this had any impressions or clicks since the last time I was in the account? No, that means it’s not showing.
Sometimes you will see low search volume there, but you’ll see a ton of impressions and clicks, and that just means that maybe it’s influx. Maybe it’s starting to become a trending search.
Maybe it was a trending search, and it’s going downhill now. Whatever it might be, I’ll take a look at those keywords.
If I haven’t had any impressions and clicks for a while, maybe two months, three months depending on how much money our campaign is spending, I will pause those keywords, because I don’t want them weighing down my account.
Google tells us this for a reason. If nobody is searching it, don’t put it in there, but a lot of people are like, “But I want those keywords. I don’t want to miss out.”
Well, if your keywords are tightly knit what happens is. Let’s say, this is up for a hot tub moving company.
If people are not typing in hot tub moving, over time, if they start to type it in, Google knows that, and they’re going to show your ads, and we’ll go into the search terms and show you where you find that.
So, don’t necessarily worry about that because Google will show our ads even for keywords that other people are typing in that we might not have in our campaign.
So, take a look at that. All right? Make sure the status of your keywords is active.
Make Sure All Your Ads Are Approved
Next, check on your ads, and extensions. Just make sure all of your ads are approved.
This is one of those things that sometimes Google may change their terms of service, something may happen, maybe you change an ad, and the landing page wasn’t hooked up correctly, or whatever it might be.
There’s so many different things that can happen. Sometimes, this will be one of them and you would be like, “Why are we not getting clicks? Or why are our ads not converting anymore?” It could be something very simple.
Go in here, and just click on ads and extensions, click on ads, and then make sure that your ads are all approved.
Okay? If not, obviously go in and fix those. 99.99% of the time, you’re going to have no issues with this. It’s literally just putting eyeballs on it.
After that, I will go back to the keywords, and I will take a look at the search terms just for those last 14 days.
Because if we go back beyond this, you’re going to have a lot of searches and it’s going to take you a long time to do this.
Take Out Negative Keywords
I will scroll down, and I will start taking a look at keywords, and I will basically pull out any keywords that are obviously, ones that we don’t want.
If you have a new campaign, or you’ve never done this, there might be a lot of keywords. What I usually do is, I will take, and I will open up a notepad, and I will just keep it right here.
And I will just say, “You know what? Let’s see if we can find some here.”
Lenox say spot pedicure chair use for sale. That’s obviously something that we don’t want. I don’t want pedicure in there. I don’t want Lenox, whatever that is.
I don’t want that in there. And some people will just say, “Well, why don’t you just click on this, and add it as a negative keyword?”
And the reason is, is that they might type in pedicures spot chair, and then the ad would show up at a later date.
I just, I pick and choose the keywords out of this. I don’t want those. I don’t want my ad to show up for those. So, there’s one. Let’s see, oh, this is hot tubs for sale in Hawaii.
So, somebody in this location where these ads are showing is probably from Hawaii, or they’re looking for a family member and they typed in the word Hawaii.
But that was my mistake. Hawaii shouldn’t have been in there and HI as the symbol for why Hawaii. I don’t want those in there.
A self point Las Vegas hot tub. I don’t know what that is so, I’m going to actually put those in there, and I’m going to put those in their individual keywords.
Spot covered depot, that’s a bad one. Hot tub gazebo. This company doesn’t sell gazebos, they sell hot tubs. So, you get the idea.
I will go through this, and I will pick and choose, and I will take these negative keywords, and I will go in and I will say, those are search terms.
I’ll go to negative keywords, I will click the plus and I will add all of those negative keywords that I just did.
So, anybody searching for anything where they type in one of those terms going forward, they will not see any of our ads anymore.
As I said, if this is the first time you’ve done this, or you haven’t done it in a long time, this is where you save or make a ton of money for your campaigns.
People don’t realize just how much wasted ad spend can be found in those negative or in those search terms.
It sucks looking at it because you’re like, “Oh my God, we just wasted three quarters of our budget on bad search terms.”
You can’t know that going in. I’m a professional, I do this every day, and I still go into campaigns and there’s always going to be wasted ads spend.
You just need to understand that you just have to minimize that. So, the more you add into those negative keywords, the better it’s going to be in the long run for you and your campaign.
Go Through The Search Terms
Lastly, I will go into the search terms again. Now, as you can see hot tubs Las Vegas, we already have that keyword added.
So, this is where you will get an idea, all of these search terms are not going to be keywords that you have in your campaign.
They used to be, where if you have these keywords in there, or if you, excuse me. If you did not have those keywords in your campaign, Google would not show your ads. That is not the case anymore.
Google will take a look at a search and be like, “You know what? Whatever this person searched for here is really related to what these guys are selling over here, and we’re going to match those up,” and they let us see the search terms.
So, if I will go through, and I’ll sort these by impressions and clicks.
Now, if hot tubs Las Vegas was one of the keywords in the campaign that I did not have in there, that I’ve noticed in the last two weeks there were 13 clicks, 78 impressions as click through rate is 16.67%. That keyword got to be in there.
I would go, and make sure I add that to the right ad group or make an ad group, and some ads for it if there’s not any that are really closely related.
So, let’s scroll down here. Hot tub. Somebody type that in. Hot tubs is pretty general because they may just be looking for pictures, they may be looking for service, or sales, or whatever it might be. Or they may just be, I don’t know.
Looking for whatever. I can’t even come up with it right now, but it’s too general. I don’t want to come up for that so, I’m not going to add that term.
Las Vegas hot tub. You know what? There were four impressions and one click.
I don’t know if I want to add it, our ads still showed up. I’m not sure if I want to add it at this time. So, I might keep an eye on that. I might make a note of it for next time.
But as you can see, most of the ones that have clicks, I’ve already added to my campaign. But I will go down, and start taking a look at, you know what?
This keyword has gotten a couple conversions for us, and we want to make sure and let’s add that to our campaign. Okay?
So, those are the absolute minimum I will do to my ad campaigns when I’m optimizing them.
I will go in, I will make sure all the keywords are active. I will go in, I will make sure all the ads are running and are active.
I will check out the search terms, and make sure that I those for any negative keywords that it should be adding, so we can minimize our wasted ad spend.
And then I will go through the search terms and be like, you know what? I’ll take a look and say, “Some of these will need to be added to our campaign, because these are profitable keywords, or they’re driving the right type of person to our business.”
All right, I hope that helps you out. If you have any questions, obviously, let us know in the comments below.
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