Top 5 Google AdWords Mistakes That You Can’t Ignore! [Step by Step Google Ads PDF]

An under-performing campaign is the biggest nightmare of every marketer who deals in online advertising.

If you’ve ever been in Digital Marketing, or PPC is part of your daily routine, you can clearly understand the role of Google Adwords in your marketing because it is the most important method of directing highly targeted traffic to your website.

For every $1 spent on Google AdWords, the average business generates $2 in revenue.

If you type your query on Google – What is the biggest mistake of Google Adwords, that I’m overlooking? The one thing which is sure to pop-up in Google would be Quality Score. But, it entirely depends on you, how you are utilizing your efforts in bringing your Adwords Strategy back on rails.

Among them, only a few have elaborated the factors that affect the Quality Score of your Ads.

There can be several reasons why you might not be making money from your Google Ads? For this, you need to know the parameters that are affecting the quality score of your ads?

Is it Click-Through Rate, Keyword Relevancy, Adwords Account Performance, or anything else which is ruining your website conversions?

If you are not satisfied with your marketing efforts and genuinely want to lift up your Google Ads PPC campaigns, let’s get started with the most common Google Adwords Mistakes and their quick solutions.

Top Google Adwords Mistakes To Avoid This 2020

1. Flooded My Ads with Keywords
2. Underestimated Power of Negative Keywords
3. Missed the demographic targeting
4. Bad Bidding Strategy
5. Didn’t look up for Search Terms Reports

Mistake 1 – I have flooded my Ads with Keywords

Too Many Keywords Spoil The Broth

If you are using too many keywords in your ads, the signal is red for you. By doing this, you would be having too many ad groups, create multiple ad copies, landing page optimizations, bla.. blaa.. blaaa.

As a result, you will get deviated from your actual goal. You should check, aren’t you giving lots of attention to those Ads campaigns that are not worthy, which are not only ruining your efforts but also doubling your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) on Google.

How to Fix it?

Instead of targeting so many keywords in a single ad, try to become choosy. Pick specific keywords according to their relevancy and optimize those keywords as per Ad Campaign requirements.

In general, Google says, you should add 5-20 keywords in your AdWords group. Anyways, it depends on the search volume of those keywords you are picking.

I would suggest choosing a SKAG (Specific Keyword per Ad Group) strategy, it helps you to create more unique ads with headlines and descriptions, that helps you target better.

Mistake 2 – I have underestimated the power of Negative Keywords

Positive Results of Being Negative

Moreover, why invite irrelevant clicks, that are eating your budget like hell? Have you thought of adding negative keywords in your ads? If you’re getting as many clicks and impressions in your Google Ads campaign, but conversions are not seen anywhere, know that there’s something that’s definitely wrong.

Negative keywords help you get the right traffic onto your site because it eliminates all the possible. Let’s suppose you’re an eCommerce store owner and running an ad campaign for “running shoes”.

I expect you don’t want those people who want “party shoes” or “sneakers” or “court boots”. In this case, what would you do?

How to Fix it?

Save your money by trimming your PPC Google Ads Campaign by avoiding all the irrelevant search queries. You can add negative keywords right from your Google Adwords dashboard. In simple words, you are telling Google not to show your ad, on such keywords, you are mentioning.

When it comes to versatility, Negative Keywords are not very much different than regular keywords, they can be used as an exact match and phrase match modified broad match and broad match.

Interested to learn How to Add Negative Keywords in your Ads?

Mistake 3 – I have missed the demographic targeting

How Well Do We Know Each Other

Don’t force a boy to buy dolls, that doesn’t suit him. Or don’t sell a designer comb to the person who’s bald. Most of the times, it’s observed that demographic targeting is neglected. This affects your conversions negatively.

If you’re new to demographic targeting, you must know, what is it? When you are targeting users based on their gender, location, interest, or nature of the business, it comes under demographic targeting. You often ignore, whom you are targeting and whether he/she is interested in your stuff or not?

How to Fix it?

Blindfold Targeting can cost you dollars. You can fix this Google Adwords Mistake by following a simple procedure. You can change your bids based on demographic details (gender, interest, etc.) of your users.

Go to the Audience Tab, and move to sub-tab demographics, where you need to calculate the bid modifier by using the formula used below –

Once, you are done with the bid modifier calculation, mention that figure into the dialogue box shown –

Mistake 4 – I’m not getting enough traffic from the ads. What shall be the reason?

Have you ever heard about an instance which is known as ‘PPC Brand Bidding’? This can be the cause of your concern. In this, the marketing person plays very smart and attract direct traffic from the competitor’s ad to yours.

This defines as- “Brand Bidding is also known as PPC Brand Bidding which is a practice of bidding on branded terms or keywords of a third party ( i.e. your competitors). This way, your ads appear when that brand name is entered as a search term. The goal is direct traffic away from the competitor’s site”. This definition is shared by ryte.com

How to fix it?

Just keep track of your keywords and thus maintain a market watch on which keywords were grabbing pace. Your marketing strategy should be vigilant enough and understand the 360 power view of the digital market where your competitors also exist.

Mistake 5 – I didn’t look up for Search Terms Reports

I Am Like You, You Are Like Me

These reports are highly profitable for your business, as it not only shows the keywords you are bidding but also the search queries, which are bringing traffic to your site. Heard this term for the first time? Search Term Report is very much similar to Search Query Reports. When you are involved in online advertising, Search Query Reports are an extremely important data source for audience targeting.

When you dig deeper into these reports you’ll find those keywords which you’ve used in different ads in multiple campaigns. In Ads industry, we call them duplicate keywords.

In case you are targeting different geographical locations, they are okay. But otherwise, it’s a wise decision to remove duplicate keywords. Because bidding on the same keywords more than once is of no use.

In Google Adwords, these duplicate keywords can be identified using the “Find Duplicate Keywords” tab under the “Tools” section.

How to Fix it?

1. Firstly, Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. From there, go to the page menu and click Ad groups.
3. Click an ad group name to see the keywords in that ad group.
4. You can also funnel keywords alphabetically. There you can click the Keyword column header and Match Type, so to get keywords can get sorted in terms of the keywords column header and match type respectively.
5. There, you can review your keywords to see if any of them are duplicates.
6. If you have a duplicate keyword, pause or remove the one that performs worse.
7. To remove the duplicate keyword, select the checkbox next to the keyword. Then click the Edit drop-down above the table and select Remove.
8. To pause the keyword, click the status icon drop-down next to the keyword. Then select Pause.

Learn more about Select and Fix Duplicate Keywords here.

I promise, I won’t do this again!

With this, we’ve come to the end of this article. Anybody can commit mistakes while working with Google Ads. There are many other mistakes that I’ve not mentioned in this blog. I have picked those, which are very common and can be easily avoided by running the Right Ads strategy.

Remember, in this cut-throat competition, one mistake can ruin your entire business. So, a mistake is what you can’t afford. Also, note that only knowledge isn’t enough. You should know the tips and turns of each concept you are using in your online business strategy.

Turn to Google Ads Hacks, or get towards Google Ads Trends, to get a clearer understanding of what’s running and how you can update yourself with the latest advancements.

If you like the zest of my article.. share your views in the comment box below. If there are mistakes which you’ve made too and learned from them, do share your experience with us.