Google Search Network can help you reach potential customers who may have difficulty finding your website on the web, including those that aren’t as actively looking for your product or service.
We’ll talk about search network campaigns, text ads on the search results page, how to optimize these ads, and troubleshooting tips and suggestions.
Google Search ads can appear on the Google Search Network and other networks, like the Google content network or Google shopping network. This article covers how to manage your campaign when you advertise in the Google Search Network.
When you advertise on the Google Search Network, your ad can show near search results when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords.
In this article, I’ll find a complete guide to the world of Google Search Advertising. You’ll learn everything there is to know about Google Search Ads, to become a PPC Hero.
Google Search Ads Guide Quick Navigation:
- Step 1. Google Ads Conversion Tracking
- Step 2. Campaign Objectives: Choose the most appropriate goal
- Step 3. Targeting and audience: Choose who you want to reach
- Step 4. Bidding and Budget: Determine a bid strategy based on your goals
- Step 5. Set Up The Ad Group, Enter Keywords
- Step 6. Create Google Search Ads
- Step 7. Add Negative Keywords To Your Campaign
- Step 8. Remarketing: Create Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)
- Step 9. Google Search Network Ads Best Practices
1. Google Ads Conversion Tracking For Search Campaigns
Conversion tracking involves generating an HTML code in the Conversion section of the Google Ads account that you insert into your landing page on your website immediately after your lead reaches the conversion event (i.e. “Thank you page”, “Order Confirmation” or “Thanks for Your Email”).
Check out the complete tutorial on how to set up Google Ads Conversion Tracking
2. Create Campaign And Choose Objectives: Choose the most appropriate to your goals
Create New Campaign
2.0. Navigate to Campaigns section ➜ ＋ create NEW CAMPAIGN
2.1. Select the goal that would make this campaign successful to you
In order to run Google Search Ads choose one of the following campaign goals:
- Sales
- Leads
- Website traffic
2.2. Select a campaign type ➜ Search
2.2. Select the way you’d like to reach your goal ➜ Website visits
2.2. Give your campaign a name ➜ Select/Deselect networks
NOTE: I would suggest deselecting Google search partners sites and Display Network. This means that your ads will only run on Google Search Network.
The benefits of this are following:
- focus your budget in the right place
- knowing exactly where your ads are showing
- more control over click fraud
3. Targeting and audience: Choose who you want to reach
3.0. Enter your campaign name ➜ Choose the target location
❗ Make sure to check the option: People in or regularly in your targeted locations. Otherwise, your ad will be shown to all people from the globe who showed interest in your targeted location.
3.1. Select the languages your customers speak
3.2. Audience
You can skip this section whether you don’t want to retarget users who previously visited your website. This is basically known as Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA).
Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) is a Google Ads feature that allows advertisers to tailor their search campaigns based on whether a user has previously visited their website (or app), and the pages that the user viewed.
4. Budget and Bidding: Define how much you want to spend and how you want to spend it
4.0. Set your average daily budget for this campaign
4.1. In the bidding section select bid strategy directly ➜ Select Manual CPC
If you’re launching a brand new Google Search campaign I’d recommend starting with the Manual CPC bidding to have more control over your bids and spend.
After optimizations and sometimes of running you might switch your campaign bidding to Automated bid strategies as follows:
- Target CPA
- Target ROAS
- Maximize clicks
- Maximize conversions (be cautious with this type of bidding, cause it most likely overspends your budget)
- Maximize conversion value
- Target impression share
PRO TIP: A lower cost per click (CPC) isn’t always better.
Because Google Ads works in an auction system, the price fluctuates depending on how much advertisers are willing to bid.
When bids are higher it’s likely (not guaranteed) they can afford to bid higher because the ad is more likely to convert and turn into a sale – and therefore produce a good ROI.
4.2. Conversions ➜ Select which conversions are included in the “Conversions” column for this campaign
Select the earlier created conversion action
4.3. Ad rotation
4.4. Ad extensions
Get up to 15% higher clickthrough rate by showing additional information on your ads
For Google Search ads you can use the following extensions:
- Sitelink extension
- Callout extension
- Structured snippet extension
- Image extension. To use image extensions, make sure you have:
- A good history of policy compliance.
- A Google Ads account in an eligible vertical or sub-vertical. Sensitive verticals or sub-verticals—such as sexual content, alcohol, and gambling – aren’t eligible for image extensions.
- A Google Ads account that has been open for more than 90 days.
- A Google Ads account with active campaigns, and running Search campaigns so that there are active text ads.
- Call extension
- Lead form extension
- Location extension
- Affiliate location extension
- Price extension
- App extension
- Promotion extension
NOTE: Some of the extensions will not be available from the beginning, i.e. Image extensions will become available after some spend, 90 days activity and good history of policy compliance
5. Set Up The Ad Group
5.0. Ad group name ➜ Give a name to your ad group
5.1. Default bid ➜ Set a default bid that reflects what a click is worth to you
KeyWords
5.2. Keywords ➜ Enter relevant keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that are used to match ads with the terms people are searching for.
Keyword Match Types
The keyword match types dictate how closely the keyword needs to match with the user’s search query in order for the ad to be considered for the auction.
So you could use broad match to serve your ad on a wider variety of user searches or you could use exact match to hone in on specific user searches.
Match types help control which searches can trigger your ads. Types of keywords matches:
- Broad match = keyword
- Phrase match = “keyword”
- Exact match = [keyword]
Broad match
The syntax for broad match is to simply input the keyword. Below is an example of how broad match will work:
Phrase match
The syntax for phrase match is to put quotes around your keyword, such as “tennis shoes”. Below is an example of how phrase match will work:
Exact match
Exact match is designated with brackets, such as [red shoe]. Below is an example of how exact match will work:
Check out Google Ads Keyword Research Guide for the best keywords research for your PPC campaigns.
6. Create Google Search Ads
Start with creating a Responsive search ad
With responsive search ads, you enter multiple headlines and descriptions and Google combines them into ads.
Why use Responsive Search Ads (RSA)?
- Responsive Search Ads were receiving 8 – 60 % more impressions than ETAs for most of the accounts I was managing.
- Working to reach a high ad strength for RSAs (higher than average) led to 74 – 400 % more conversions with 33 – 37% lower cost per acquisition (CPA).
- If the RSAs had an ad strength lower than average, the ads were less frequently triggered even though ETAs had higher priority and better KPIs.
Complete the fields all necessary information:
- Add the Final URL
- Display path
- Keyword insertion in Display path
- To use this feature in your ads, you insert a special piece of code into your ad text. For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign to advertise your candy store and you have an ad group that promotes your chocolate candy products. The snippet of code that you’ll insert in your ad text might look like the following: {KeyWord: Chocolate}. Doing this means that when a keyword can’t be inserted in your ad, we’ll insert Chocolate instead.
- You can also dynamically insert the user’s location in the Display path. To do so insert {LOCATION(City): United States}.
- Add up to 15 Headlines
- Add up to 4 Descriptions
Click SAVE and publish your campaign for review
7. Add Negative Keywords To Your Campaign
After you’ve created your Google Search campaign, it is a good practice to add negative keywords. It’s important to identify and exclude from your campaign keywords-searchers – that wouldn’t deliver a return on your investment.
The main reason to exclude negative keywords from your campaign is to prevent your ads from showing up alongside search queries that are irrelevant or offensive.
For example, an advertiser of a high-ticket offer that would like to target affluent customers would want to exclude such terms as “cheap”, “free”, “no deposit” from the Search Network campaign by adding them to the negative list. This action will prevent your ads from appearing alongside those terms.
7.0. Navigate to Keywords section ➜ ＋ Negative keywords ➜ Add negative keywords or create a new list
By avoiding paying for useless clicks, you save a lot of money by weeding out searchers who aren’t a fit for your business. You can also avoid bidding against yourself, cannibalizing impressions, and watering down your keyword-level data.
8. Create Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)
Remarketing of your previous visitors is effective since prospects need to see your ad at least seven times before they become a customer.
Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) is a Google Ads feature that allows advertisers to tailor their search campaigns based on whether a user has previously visited their website (or app), and the pages that the user viewed.
RLSAs can be used in two ways:
- Making bid adjustments on your ad groups for users (remarketing lists) who are searching on Google using the keywords you are bidding on
- Set up search ad groups to only be triggered and show ads if a user is on your Remarketing list, and is searching with the keywords you are bidding on
How To Set Up Remarketing Lists for Search Ads
In order to create RLSAs, you’ll need to set up the Google Ads Remarketing Tag first.
1. Navigate to the Tools & Settings icon in the upper right corner of your account ➜ Click Shared Library
2. Click Audience Manager ➜ Audience sources
3. Under the Google Ads tag section click Set Up Tag
Select how you want to install the Google Ads tag:
- Add the tag to your website code
- Email the tag to your webmaster
- Install the tag using Google Tag Manager
If you choose to Install the tag yourself, then copy the given tag and paste it in between the <head> </head> tags of every page of your website.
You only need to install the global site tag once per account, which can be used with both remarketing event snippets as well as conversion event snippets.
Setting up remarketing lists for RLSA
1. Go to the Shared Library ➜ Audiences Lists ➜ Remarketing
2. Click the plus icon ＋ Remarketing button to create a remarketing list
Select the type of visitors from which you’d like to create a segment (Remarketing list)
Remarketing Lists Best Practices
The most common practice of remarketing lists is to retarget people who visited check-out page but didn’t purchase your product (thus, haven’t reached your Thank You Page).
To do so:
- select Visitors of a page who did not visit another page
- in the Visited page section insert your product’s check-out page tag
- in the Unvisited page, section insert your thank-you page tag
Adding a remarketing list to a search campaign ad group
These instructions assume you’ve already created your search campaign and ad groups that you’d like to use with your remarketing lists.
- To add Remarketing List to your Google Search campaigns navigate to the Audiences section of your campaign and click plus icon ＋ Add Audiences
- Click Browse ➜ Select Remarketing and similar audiences
- Go to Website visitors ➜ Choose your created list
9. Google Ads Search Network Best Practices
1. Keywords ➜ Search terms report
Keep an eye on your search terms reports. This is a great way to find out what searchers are looking for when Google serves your ad.
If you see words in your search terms report that you know are not a good fit for your account, set them as negatives before you run the risk of showing for them again.
And wise verse, if you find queries that fit your campaign’s targets add them as keywords.
2. Keywords ➜ Auction insights
The auction insights report lets you compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are.
This information can help you make strategic decisions about bidding and budgeting by showing you where you’re succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities for improved performance. Thus you might be able to adjust (increase or decrease) your bidding and budget accordingly.
The auction insights report is available for both Search Ads and Shopping campaigns.
P.S. I’d sure love to hear what you think about this post! Just drop a line in the comment section below and share your thoughts or questions.
Cheers 👋
