Google Ads Optimization Checklist

What is Google ads optimization? How do I optimize the ads and achieve optimal outcomes? Here is the best checklist to achieve your goals!


Google Ads is an online program allowing marketers and companies to create ads and reach their target audiences interested in their products or services. The program or platform follows the pay-per-click or PPC advertising approach, meaning you pay every time an online user clicks the ad.

According to Search Engine Land, users perform more than two trillion searches annually. So, that’s over five billion searches per day. So, if you are a marketer or small business owner, you can use Google Ads in various ways.

For instance, you can directly reach out to people seeking similar products or services. Likewise, you can target consumers belonging to specific geographic locations or demographics. You can drive customers to your website’s landing pages and track real-time data to analyze the results.

According to Web FX, 65% of small-medium enterprises use Google Ads to improve their marketing efforts and achieve optimal results. However, Google Ads optimization is one of the most significant problems small businesses experience, preventing them from streamlining their advertising and other business-related operations. Today’s article will provide you with Google Ads optimization checklist.


Evaluate the Mobile Site Speed

About 50% of web traffic comes from smartphones or mobile devices. Still, PPC conversion rates are lower on smartphones than on PCs, laptops, and other devices. Do you know what the reason is?

Tarek Riman, a professional digital marketer with years of experience, has answered this question. Riman says mobile website speed is essential to optimal consumer experiences, particularly on Google.

Riman further adds that a slow website forces the consumer to exit the landing page before it even loads. While you spend money on the ad because the user has clicked on it, you won’t achieve an optimal outcome.

Therefore, The first critical thing to focus on is to improve your mobile website speed and achieve the desired results. You must have a well-designed, intuitive, fast website that loads quickly and grabs the customer’s attention.

Tarek Riman recommends modifying your landing page or making changes across the website. Although this will take time, you must do it to streamline the overall process—the more seamless the experience on your mobile site, the lower the chance of a bounce.

So, the visitor will trust your business website and take an interest in your products or services. Likewise, people will become more likely to buy from you and become loyal customers.

You can use different tools to check your website speed and optimize it accordingly. Some of the best tools are Google’s site speed tester and page speed insights. However, you can also use Google’s Master Mobile Web Guide to improve your website speed and achieve more optimal outcomes from PPC ads.


Search for and Use Relevant Keywords

Keywords are critical components of Google Ads optimization. For instance, if you choose keywords that people don’t search for frequently or don’t align with the target audience, they won’t get valuable traction. As a result, you will spend more money on ads and fail to achieve the desired results.

According to Tarek Riman, you must identify keywords that consumers use frequently. Likewise, Riman says that these keywords must align with your business content and users’ intent.

Select relevant and meaningful keywords with a decent search volume. You can use keyword research tools to discover the best search terms for your Ads optimization strategy. It helps you with a wide range of keywords and expands the list based on your needs.

Bid on keywords with different intent levels to strengthen different stages of your PPC strategy and marketing funnel. For instance, you can create a list of negative keywords to reduce irrelevant traffic to your business site and prevent paying more for clicks on the Ads.

So, go through the search terms at least once or twice weekly to identify new keywords that align with your business. At the same time, find negative keywords and exclude them from your Google Ads optimization strategy.


Run a Dynamic Ads Campaign

Running a dynamic ads campaign means generating headlines targeting relevant keywords and search phrases based on consumers’ needs. The purpose is to direct users to your landing page and increase the likelihood of selling your products or services.

While dynamic ad campaigns are similar to conventional marketing/PPC strategies, they forgo keywords and use your business website or product instead. So this allows Google to match the users’ searches with the product or service type on your website and create a customized ad.

However, if you are unsure how to start with keywords, you can hire Riman Agency to create a “dynamic search ads campaign” for your business. The purpose is to optimize ads for the best performance.

Our professional marketers will use your landing pages instead of keywords. Thus, you will see the type of searches consumers perform to access your website or landing page.


Review Your Bidding

Focusing on your Google Ads bidding is essential once you have achieved a faster website speed and grouped relevant keywords. Remember, your bid is the amount of money you wish to spend on the ad when someone clicks on it.

According to Tarek Riman, analyzing and reviewing your bid strategy based on your budget is critical to streamlining your campaign. If your bids are low, they won’t perform well and limit the ad’s visibility on Google SERPs.

In contrast, if you bid aggressively, it will increase the costs. Riman says there is no guarantee that the ads will generate optimal results. So, you have two options for bidding with Google Ads.

First, you can choose your own bids. Second, you let Google set bids for your ads campaign. Each strategy has its own pros and cons. You can manually bid for individual keywords, groups, and campaigns when placing your own bids.

On the other hand, you can take advantage of Google’s bidding system to determine how much you wish to pay for an ad click. It optimizes your bids for ads based on your campaign’s goal and saves you time.

Riman argues that the ultimate choice to use manual or automatic bidding depends on your preferences and budget. So, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to streamline the process. However, you can hire Riman Agency and let our experienced professionals do the job adequately, reliably, and cost-effectively.


Reach Your Target Audience

Every marketer and small business wants to optimize their Google ads for higher returns on investments (ROIs). If you have the same goal, you must define and reach your target audiences.

Tarek Riman recommends location targeting to reach specific demographics or consumers with unique online behaviors. The purpose is to collect real-time data and modify your ads strategy that aligns with your ideal customers.

Thus, you can reduce low-quality clicks and irrelevant website traffic. You can set up different audiences to build awareness, improve communication, influence consideration, and drive action.

Riman Agency has a team of qualified and skilled marketers with extensive knowledge of Google Ads optimization. Our team optimizes adverts based on your target audience’s demographics.

In addition to age and gender, we also consider other factors, including interests, affiliations, and ideologies from historical data. The objective is to identify your target audience and their interest in your business, products, or services.

Moreover, we use cutting-edge tools to optimize your Google ads and align them with your target audience’s interests. Thus, you can reach out to people, engage them with valuable content, and turn them into loyal customers.

Furthermore, Riman recommends site targeting for specific placement of the advert. What kinds of websites should run the ads? It is an essential question asked by marketers and small businesses.

Tarek Riman gives an example to clarify the concept. For example, if you run a café in Montreal, your ads must show on websites that discuss different aspects of Montreal’s French culture. Riman Agency can make this happen efficiently and reliably. We use advanced analytics to control ad placement on sites.


Optimize the Landing Page

Aligning your landing page with Google ads is essential to streamlining the process and achieving the desired results. Simply put, your landing page must match the ads and keywords.

For instance, you can include a bold, attractive headline matching your offer in the Google ad. Remember that you must entice potential customers and meet their expectations.

In addition, a “good” offer includes a reliable “call-to-action (CTA)” on the landing page. So, when a potential customer arrives on the landing page, they must know what to do and how to redeem the special offer.

Tarek Riman recommends avoiding too many links to prevent customers from browsing different pages. Otherwise, customers will get bored and may leave the website without purchasing your product or service.

Therefore, create simple, reliable, easy-to-use CTAs on your landing page. Moreover, your landing page must explain the product or service’s features and benefits. We suggest including positive or 5-star customer reviews on the landing page. Likewise, optimize the content and ensure everything you post on the page is authentic and meaningful information.


Leverage Retargeting for Optimal Results

Retargeting is an excellent way to optimize Google ads. It re-engages your target audience and encourages them to revisit your website. Studies show that 98% of people revisit the website and take practical actions, such as purchasing a product or leaving a positive review.

So, not only does retargeting improve your brand recognition, but it also helps you acquire the most loyal customers. Retaining customers is directly proportional to increasing sales and improving the business’s overall bottom line.

According to Tarek Riman, retargeting, also known as remarketing, tracks your online visitors and drops cookies in their browsers. Bear in mind that the goal of retargeting is to use these cookies to encourage users to visit the website when they are online. Some of the most prominent advantages of retargeting are:

  • Increased ROIs
  • Affordable strategy
  • Customization
  • Quality traffic
  • High conversion rates
  • Brand exposure
  • Brand visibility
  • Custom ad designs

Final Words

Google ads optimization is integral to your marketing strategy because it allows you to create relevant ads for users. The purpose is to let online users see your ads and click on them to purchase a product or service.

Riman Agency has been in the digital marketing business for years. We have a team of experienced digital marketers with in-depth knowledge of targeting the right audience, crafting tailored content, and messaging, using the best tools, and reducing customer acquisition costs.

Our team can streamline the Google ads optimization process to reduce costs and increase investment returns. Contact us today for more information on our PPC ads services. Until Next Time!

What makes a quality website? What brings quality results?

Whenever I start working with a client, I can almost guarantee that the biggest hurdle standing between them and the results they want, is the quality of their website.

The conversation usually starts by “Tarek, we did SEO and it didn’t work, We did SEM and it didn’t work, we did social media and that didn’t work, can you help?”

My answer is almost always, I need to have a bigger picture, I need to understand what you have done, audit your campaigns, your site, user behaviour, speed, performance. After I do so 90% of the time I come back with an action plan, and almost always on the top of the list is the website.

I start the conversation, by saying that we can’t fix an issue by throwing money on it, we need to address it heads on, and this is what I usually do.

As a web developer and a marketer myself, I am able to link the marketing with development aspects of websites, which tends to be very helpful for the client, in phases of redesign, development, etc…

After running into this situation with multiple clients, I realized that it is best to put together 10 points that clients should remember when building a site, migrating a site, or redesigning one.

  1. Speed and performance matter, they matter not only from a user experience standpoint but also from an SEO standpoint.
  2. User flow is extremely important, a website should be easy to navigate and easy to flow through. Make sure that you are interlinking properly on the site, make sure that all the pages that you want your visitors to see are one click away.
  3. Content is very important, avoid having weak and thin content pages. You are here to make an impression and show value and the best way you can do so is by providing an abundant amount of content. Fact: the number of words on the highest-ranking pages on Google is 2000+.
  4. Websites are like cars, and are like our bodies, if we don’t constantly maintain them they will get broken, and eventually out of service. Always maintain your site. I tend to update and fix my client’s websites on a biweekly basis.
  5. Constantly update the content, having fresh content is valuable for users and search engines. The fresher your content the higher your chance of ranking and converting.
  6. Time on site is very important, when you are building your site always ask yourself if you would read the page you are creating, ask yourself if you would stay on the site for more than 2 minutes if you saw it for the first time.
  7. Value, always think value. If you are not answering a client’s question or bringing them value, then why would they trust you. I insist on embedding Q&As and FAQs on almost every page of my client’s site, which allows them to should up on top of search results.
  8. Get a good server, all my client’s sites are on dedicated servers. The advantages are massive, from speed to security to performance and peace of mind.
  9. Security matters more than ever, always watch your site’s security and performance, always update your site. This is important now more than ever. I tend to run security updates every week for all the sites I manage.
  10. Think holistic, never think that social media alone works or SEO alone works. Marketing is holistic, make sure that you are doing your best and driving traffic from all fronts.

I hope this list will help you in updating our site and improving its performance on all fronts.

If you have questions or are interested in learning more, let’s have a chat. t@rimanagency.com

The NextGEN of Google Analytics is Here

Google has just launched their new and improved Google Analytics 4.0, extending beyond Universal Analytics. The New GA relies on AI and machine learning to create predictions for traffic, conversion, products, etc. What does this mean for businesses? Read on for 10 key things to know, as well as a deeper dive into this exciting update to Google Analytics.

10 Key Things to Know About GA 4.0:

  1. It no longer requires coding or GTM for event tracking.
  2. You can access 4.0 from your current Analytics account by going into Admin 🡪 Property (Create new property) 🡪 Select (Web and app) 🡪 where you can track your website,  mobile app or both.
  3. It is moving away from cookies and will no longer use third-party cookies to track performance. 
  4. GA 4.0 is where AI meets data for marketers.
  5. You will have access to predictive metrics and customer lifecycle metrics.
  6. It provides more granular data control.
  7. It allows improved cross-device measurement & tracking.
  8. It allows deeper integration with search efforts on Google Ads.
  9. Google will be investing more in Analytics 4.0, and will stop updating the older version. 
  10. While GA  in the past was divided into Acquisition, Behavior, Audience, and Conversion reports, the new platform is divided into Life Cycle, User, Events, Explore, and Configure.

 

What This Means for SEM & Google Ads

As we know, Google Analytics is the backbone of a strong SEM strategy, enabling us to make data-driven decisions and immediately adapt to market changes, test results, trends, etc.

With GA 4.0, we now have better audience integration, empowering better exclusion and audience selection based on actions taken across devices and platforms. This means you will be able to see, for example, if someone came from the web, but ended up converting from desktop, which could open up whole new channels for understanding the customer journey.

From a user behaviour standpoint, Google has introduced more user-centric metrics such as LTV (Life Time Value) and expected average churn rate, empowering more informed long term strategies.

GA 4.0 will also allow you to set up enhanced measurements to automatically measure interactions and content on your site, in addition to standard page view measurement.

Additional Measurement in Google Analytics 4.0

In this example, you can see on the dashboard right after being set up where GA captures the Page View + Video Progress + Video Start as part of the enhanced measurement features. See below: 

Event tracking GA 4.0

This means, you will no longer need to code or use GTM to track specific actions on-page, making it easier and possibly faster for marketers. This is especially beneficial for marketers who do not have the know-how or access to make code changes, or in organizations where code changes need to go through approvals or a potentially lengthy ticketing process. 

 

Why You Should Set Up 4.0 (aside from the benefits)

In their update, Google noted that they will be investing in the new platform moving forward and, therefore, moving away from the old one. Your current GA account will still be fully functional, but this likely means that things like support, bug fixes and updates will be phased out, so it’s a good idea to upgrade now.

Learn more: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10089681#start

 

How To Get Setup

The first step is to know what account type you currently have. If you were part of the GA 4.0 beta program, your account would have been known as “App + Web properties”. If you were not part of the beta, your account type would now be known as “Universal Analytics”. 

If you have a Universal Analytics account, you can easily create your new GA 4.0 property from your existing one, meaning you won’t lose your current data. The link above will give you the information you need to do this.

Note: If you did not previously have a GA account, GA 4.0 is now the default, so you would automatically get it upon setting up your account.

Tagging 

When it comes to tagging, you can continue to use existing on-page tags or add new on-page tags. Currently, there are no benefits or downsides to either choice, this is a matter of preference.

Tagging in Google Analytics 4.0

Here is a sneak peek into the new GA experience look and feel:

Real-Time Reports 

Google Analytics 4.0 Real Time Reporting

New Categorization

As mentioned earlier, the previous categorization of Acquisition, Behavior, Audience, and Conversion reports has been updated to Life Cycle, User, Events, Explore, and Configure. Here’s what that looks like:

Google Analytics 4.0 New Navigation

The Bottom Line

Love it or hate it, Google Analytics 4.0 is here to stay, and there’s no question that the platform is getting more powerful with each iteration. What are your thoughts on the new GA?

Sources:

https://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-4-adds-new-integrations-with-ads-ai-powered-insights-and-predictions-342048

https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/new_google_analytics

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9445345?hl=en

What should managers know about SEM/PPC before launching a campaign?

What should a client or a brand manager be aware off when it comes to an Ad Words campaign?

Let us start by explaining what is PPC advertisement; PPC stands for Pay per Click, the most popular method of PPC is on search engines, on platforms such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc…

The most popular tools used to manage the PPC on these search engines are

  • Google AdWords
  • Bing Ads (manages both Bing and Yahoo ads)

What do you do on these platforms?

  • Buy listing
  • And these listings will appear as sponsored/paid results

How do you buy listings and ads?

  • Ads are bought using an auction
  • The higher you bid, the more you increase your chances to rank. This is not the only determining factor, there is also a quality score
Adwords and Bing ads all you need to know as a client

Pay Per Click – SEM

What is quality score?

Quality score is a variable used by Yahoo, Bing and Google that can influence your ad rankings; it accounts for the quality of your landing pages, ads and keywords. Most importantly, it accounts to how relevant your keyword is to your ad, and how relevant the content in the ad is to the landing page.

What makes a successful PPC account?

  1. Proper Geo targeting, whether local, international or national
  2. Proper Demo-graphical targeting
  3. Clarity
  4. Backing your ads with something to offer – ensuring that whoever is looking for you, will find value
  5. Using the right keywords
    1. The most successful keywords are the ones that have a high search volume and low competition.
    2. As a marketer, you are required to utilize all the tools that you have at hand to ensure that you are providing the most relevant keywords, with the right amount of completion based on the client’s budget.
  6. Have clear KPIs and proper conversion tracking
    1. PPC is not only about getting traffic, it is about getting the searcher to click, stay and buy.
    2. It is important that you integrate all the tools that you have at hand, such as google analytics and google tag manager with your AdWords campaign, to ensure that you are optimizing not only based on your visits, but on your conversions.
  7. Creating ads with proper calls to actions – CTAs
  8. Use the right time frame
  9. Bid properly
    1. Base your bidding on the right time, area, CTA, ad, keyword, landing page.
    2. Make sure that all your bidding whether automatic or manual yields the best results for the clients.
Increasing Businesses ROI with SEM

Creating opportunities and ROI for Businesses and Clients

As a business owner, or a brand manager, you need to know some basic terms.

  1. Campaigns
  2. Ad groups
  3. Campaign types
  4. Keywords
  5. Impressions
  6. Ad rank
  7. Mobile ads
  8. Ad extensions
  9. CTA
  10. CTR
  11. Optimization
  12. Landing pages
  13. Bid strategy
  14. Daily budget
  15. CPC
  16. CPM
  17. Headline
  18. Display URL
  19. Destination URL
  20. Side ad and Top ad

All of which are provided explained in this great article by wishpond.com : http://blog.wishpond.com/post/77287406414/google-adwords-25-glossary-terms-you-need-to-know

 

Sources/References:

http://blog.wishpond.com/post/77287406414/google-adwords-25-glossary-terms-you-need-to-know

http://www.portent.com/services/ppc/pay-per-click-explained