Google AdS
Traffic Optimisations
Ultimately this is all about the data.
The First 6 Weeks
It’s so important to get everything pumping as quickly as we can and as efficiently as we can to ensure it drives revenue ASAP.
1. Be All Over It!
It’s important to be all over the campaigns like a really bad rash and make sure we’re adjusting course quickly, rather than waiting a month to see what’s working and what’s not working. This is all about being all over everything to ensure that we’re flying through the improvement process to get better and better and better, quicker and quicker and quicker.
This is all about how we capture more and more data to see what’s working and what’s not working. To do that, the first instance is all about getting a good volume of visitors through the campaign. A lot of the first six weeks is focusing on how we get more visitors through, so we quickly see what’s working and not working. However, we also have to keep a close eye on the outcomes (leads and revenue), to ensure we are we on track to generate the outcomes you want. Then we work on what we need to do to adjust accordingly.
2. Daily Checks
First thing we do, especially for the first two to four weeks, is implement daily checks on the campaign so that we know if we’re on track or not.
Day one, we’re live. How many visitors did we get? What did it cost? Is it working? Is it not? What do we need to do to adjust course quickly? We might need to increase bids ASAP to make sure we get more and more people through. We might say we’ve gone too hard with bids, so we need to cut them back. Are we getting enough visitors through?
3. Daily Optimisations
The daily optimisation process is really important and includes:
- Increasing or decreasing bids
- Checking on budget. Are we spending too much or too little?
- Are we getting enough visitors through?
- What is the quality of visitor coming through?
Once we’re starting to get more and more visitors through, then we start to look at the quality of that visitor. Once again, we’ll do this every couple of days for the first couple of weeks and then move into a more formal weekly routine over time.
4. Weekly SQA
Weekly ‘Search Query Analysis’ is super important and analyses the search query terms that people are typing into Google for your ad to show. We do this every week, giving a very good insight into the intent of the visitor that is clicking on your ad.
Negatives
We want to go through the SQA on a weekly basis. Depending on the size of the campaign, we might do it more regularly for larger campaigns, but definitely weekly as a minimum to see what negative things are in that search query that we don’t want your ad to show for.
For example: If we’re selling pens and somebody searches for “jobs with pen companies”, we don’t want your ad to display. We’ll negate out jobs, so anytime any search relates to jobs and pens together, your ad won’t show.
Intent
Second thing we’ll look at is the right intent. Going through the search query tells you a lot about the quality of what people are searching for and if they’re the right sort of person for us. We always check to see that most of the terms have the right intent. That they are the sort of customer we would like to come through. And equally important, we get to see what we’ve missed, if anything.
Whilst the strategy piece is quite in-depth, there’s times when you will miss things. It’s unfortunately just human nature. Search query analysis allows us to delve into some areas and ideas that we might have overlooked or missed or not seen as important. This then gives us some really good ideas on how we can grow and improve things.
5. Weekly Optimisations
Product/Service focus
Are we hitting the mark? Are the products and services we want to focus on getting traction or are some of the lower skewed keywords taking up too much budget? We want to keep a really close eye on that. The answer will be either ‘yes’, we are hitting the mark in terms of the keywords we want to perform (which is great and let’s continue) or ‘no’, we aren’t hitting the mark, so let’s adjust course.
Bid management
For the first few weeks we recommend doing daily bid management. As we get closer and closer to our ideal position, we’ll slow this down and do bid management a few times per week. Bid management is all about maximising the quantity and quality of visitors for the ad spend. We don’t want to be paying too much for each visitor and blowing cash. Equally, we don’t want to be bidding too little and getting poor volume and quality of traffic. It’s quite a balancing act!
We increase bids and decrease bids accordingly to make sure we’re getting a good volume of visitors. There’s a fine line here – we don’t want to pay too much and be higher up in position one, but we don’t want to be down below position four either. So the question is; how do we make sure that we’re not paying too much but not paying too little? Am I getting a good volume of visitors through who is a good quality of visitor?
Budget
How do we make sure that we’re spending the budget as best we can?
The answer to this will come in the next topic, which is Conversion Optimisation, but how do we make sure that the budget’s being spent well? That it’s covering the parts of service that we want to focus on? That we’re getting the learnings we need to so we see what’s working and not working. Over time we want to start shifting budget to better converting campaigns. The ones that are converting better need to receive more budget versus the ones that aren’t converting as well.
6. Weekly Conversions & Site Engagement
This is really a pivotal component in how we get better and better results.
Site engagement analysis
From the keywords and the visitors coming through, we can see how well they are actually engaging with your site. We tell that through a number of core metrics:
- Bounce rate - Do we have a high bounce rate or a low bounce rate? Bounce rate really refers to if somebody comes to your website, comes to the landing page but then leaves straight away. They don’t do anything, they don’t engage, they don’t convert. Obviously lower bounce rate is better for us, it just means people are engaging better with the site. The lower the bounce rate, the better.
- Time on site - Which keywords have people spending more time on your site and which ones have them spending less time.
- Pages per session - Which keywords have people looking at ten pages on your site versus which keywords they’re looking at one or two.
These are all very closely interrelated, which makes it a lot easier. You need to delve through the data to see which keywords are producing really good engaging visitors versus the keywords that aren’t. Then we need to either fix the ones that aren’t converting or aren’t engaging well, or get rid of them. Similarly you want to assign more budget and get more visitors from ones that are engaging well.
Conversions
We want to analyse which parts of the campaign are converting well and which ones aren’t. This allows us to add more budget and focus to the parts that are converting well, thus producing better results. And it identifies those parts that are converting poorly and what we need to do to improve.
7. Major Roadblocks and Opportunities
As with all other parts of your life and business, things just pop up. Both the good and the bad need to be addressed ASAP. It doesn’t do anybody any good waiting a month to see what happens, we want to know straight away.
Sometimes there are bad things and roadblocks. What are they? How do we overcome them? How do we improve them? For example: This part of the campaign has got a terrible bounce rate and no conversions coming through, how do we fix that? What are the ads we need to change? What’s the landing page doing? How do we build a new landing page to test and trial things?
Similarly you get some great opportunities. How do we maximise those ASAP versus having to wait? For example: This product campaign is converting like there’s no tomorrow, so you’re getting more and more leads or revenue. Let’s go hard with it. Let’s maximise, let’s make hay while the sun shines and grab those opportunities as they arise.
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