There’s no magic in Google Ads, and success comes from data-driven decisions. To get users, you need to follow Google Ads’ best practices in your ad campaigns and optimize and analyze your online advertising strategies. Understanding Google Search Ads best practices is crucial for enhancing ad performance in 2024. Good Google Ads can get conversions and ROI. Following best practices will help your Google Ads perform as consumer behavior changes and the digital landscape gets more competitive.

You can get attention and engagement by targeting the right audience with good ad copy and data analysis. This means creating ad groups, exact, phrase, broad match keywords, and negative keywords to target. Also well optimised landing pages and ad extensions will help increase conversions.

This guide will cover 13 ways to optimize your Google Ads in 2024 and beyond. Follow these Google Ads best practices to get the most out of your ad spend and campaign performance!

1. Build Your Core Campaigns Around Your Goals

Once you have your goals defined, like get more sales for your service-based business via high intent leads or get more sales to your e-commerce store, make sure you have your core sales or lead-driven campaigns. Having a tidy Google Ads account is key to optimizing ad performance across different campaign types. Following google search ads best practices will help you target your audience effectively and adjust your budget for better results.

Main Google Search Ads Campaign

Your main search ads campaign is the foundation of your Google Ads strategy. It targets users who are actively searching for products or services like yours. Implementing Google search ads best practices can significantly enhance ad performance for 2024, providing strategies for marketers to optimize their Google Search ads and achieve better results.

To get the most out of your campaign start with keyword research. Identify high intent keywords that match your business goals.

Use a mix of broad, phrase and exact match keywords. This will capture a range of search queries and keep your ads relevant.

Good ad copy is also important. Highlight your USP to get clicks and improve your ad score.

And finally, monitor performance metrics like click-through and conversion rates so you can tweak and make data-driven changes that work.

Shopping Ads and Performance Max Campaigns

Shopping Ads and Performance Max campaigns will get you more sales and more reach across Google’s inventory. These campaigns use machine learning to automatically optimize for conversions so you can show your products. Incorporating Google search ads’ best practices is essential for optimizing these campaigns and achieving better performance. Google Discovery ads are also great for targeting users who are browsing their interests on platforms like YouTube, Gmail, and Discover.

With ads displayed across Google’s platforms like Search, Display, YouTube and Gmail businesses can get more reach. To build a successful Smart Shopping campaign, you need to have a tidy product feed with high-quality images and product descriptions.

Performance Max campaigns offer dynamic creative combinations based on user intent. This personalization will get more engagement and higher conversions.

For both strategies, monitoring and adjusting is key. Being proactive will get you the best results and stay ahead of the game in the ever changing digital landscape.

2. Craft Your Ad Copy to Talk to Your Target Audience

Responsive Search Ads that Convert

Crafting responsive search ads that talk to your target audience is key to getting attention and conversions in Google Ads. To get more out of your ad performance in 2024, focus on Google search ads’ best practices for crafting responsive search ads that convert. Start by understanding the needs, wants, and pain points of your potential customers. Use ad copy that speaks directly to them, with keywords that match their search intent.

Benefits in Your Ads

When creating ads, you need to highlight the benefits of your products or services. Incorporating Google search ads best practices can significantly enhance your ad performance for 2024. This will not only create an emotional connection with your audience but also improve your position in paid search. Also, make sure your landing page matches your ad group to get more conversions.

Testing Multiple Ad Variations

The question for advertisers is how many ads to run at once. Testing multiple variations of your responsive ads will give you valuable insights. Following google search ads best practices, especially for 2024, involves testing multiple ad variations to optimize performance. A/B testing different messaging and tone will tell you which combinations work best and you can refine your strategy based on actual performance data.

Video Ads

As you’re running Google Ads consider adding video ads to your text ads. Incorporating google search ads best practices, especially for 2024, can significantly enhance the performance of your video ads. Diversification will get more users engaged and grab their attention in a crowded space. By spending time crafting good ad copy that follows Google Ads best practices you’ll get more user engagement and more conversions. Understanding how Google Ads works will help you create campaigns that deliver results.

Stay Ahead of the Game

To stay ahead in the search advertising landscape, you need to test new features before they become mandatory. Incorporating Google search ads best practices, especially in the context of testing new features, can significantly enhance your ad performance for the year 2024. By adopting features early, you’ll get a head start and optimize your campaigns for better performance.

Key Features

Recent features like enhanced conversions and auto-generated assets are key to explore. Understanding Google search ads’ best practices is crucial for exploring enhanced conversions and auto-generated assets to optimize ad performance in 2024. Enhanced conversions will allow you to track customer interactions across devices, so no potential lead slips through the cracks. Auto-generated assets will simplify ad management by giving you fresh variations that match current trends and user preferences.

New Tools

Marketers should also look into responsive search ads and Performance Max campaigns, which adapt to user behavior and preferences to get more engagement and conversions. Incorporating google search ads best practices is crucial when testing responsive search ads and Performance Max campaigns. By testing these new tools early, you’ll stay relevant and get better results in the fast-paced digital world.

3. Test New Google Ads Features Early

Staying ahead in the competitive landscape of Google Ads requires testing new features before they become mandatory. By embracing functionalities early, marketers can gain a significant advantage and optimize their campaigns for improved performance.

Recent updates like enhanced conversions and auto-generated assets are key features to explore. Enhanced conversions enable advertisers to track customer interactions more effectively across devices, ensuring no potential lead slips through the cracks. Auto-generated assets, on the other hand, streamline ad management by providing fresh variations that automatically align with current trends and user preferences.

Marketers should also look into features like responsive search ads and performance max campaigns, which adapt to user behavior and preferences, further boosting engagement and conversion rates. Advertisers can maintain relevance and drive better results in a fast-paced digital market by testing these innovative tools early.

4. Get More Results with Advanced Targeting

Custom Intent Audiences are a great way to target users based on their recent online behavior. Incorporating Google search ads best practices, such as using custom intent audiences, can significantly enhance your ad performance for 2024. This feature will refine your targeting.

By using Website Visitor Lists or App User Lists you can create very specific segments. These segments will help you connect with potential customers who are most likely to engage with your brand.

For example if you’re a real estate agent you could target people who use IRA financial management apps. This will allow you to target investors who are already using financial planning tools, so you’ll get more high intent leads.

By targeting this audience, you can promote your real estate opportunities. This targeted approach will get you more meaningful conversions and more from your marketing.

5. Review Automated Suggestions

As you’re running Google Ads, you need to continually review and refine your strategy to achieve the best performance and reach.

Incorporating google search ads best practices, especially in the context of reviewing and refining automated suggestions, can significantly enhance your ad performance for 2024.

What are Automated Suggestions

Automated suggestions in Google Ads are recommendations from the platform’s algorithms to improve your ad performance. These suggestions can be changes to your bids, targeting, or ad copy and are based on historical data and current trends. While these features are great, they may not always align with your business goals or audience preferences.

Why Review and Customise Suggestions

Reviewing and customizing these automated suggestions is key to making sure they align with your marketing goals. Relying solely on Google’s suggestions will get you generic strategies that won’t resonate with your target audience. By taking the time to review these suggestions and customize them to your brand’s voice and needs, you’ll get more from your campaigns and better results.

How to Sanity-Check Recommendations

To sanity-check automated suggestions, evaluate the reasoning behind each suggestion. Consider your campaign goals, budget, and target audience. Also, test recommendations on a small scale before rolling them out to the whole campaign so you can measure the impact without risking your whole campaign. Monitor performance metrics after you make changes to see what works and refine your approach over time.

6. Create and Use First-Party Data

Integrating Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with advertising platforms, especially Google Ads is becoming more and more important for your marketing strategy. Understanding and implementing Google search ads best practices can significantly enhance the performance of your ads in 2024. These integrations will give you a seamless flow of data between your marketing efforts and customer interactions so you have a single view of customer behavior. By combining customer data, you can create targeted paid ads that resonate with your audience and increase engagement.

As privacy regulations get tighter and third party cookie tracking disappears first party data is becoming a valuable asset. Collecting data directly from your audience will give you valuable insights into their preferences, behaviour and purchase patterns. This will not only refine ad targeting in search results but also build deeper trust with your customers.

To create a first party data strategy you need to identify the key data points that align with your marketing goals. This may be tracking user behaviour on your landing page, analysing email campaign metrics, collecting customer feedback through surveys. Having current and accurate data is key to making informed marketing decisions.

Using first party data for targeting and personalisation requires segmenting your audience by shared characteristics or behaviour. By creating a customer match list you can tailor your messaging and offers to each group. Also refining your bidding and adding dynamic content to your Google Ads will give a better user experience by showing relevant products or services to individual customers and drive engagement and conversions.

7. Create Theme Based Ad Groups For Your Campaigns

Creating theme based ad groups for your campaigns is a great strategy to supercharge your targeting and messaging in your Google Ads account. Incorporating google search ads best practices, such as creating theme-based ad groups, can significantly enhance your ad performance for 2024.

How to Supercharge Your Advertising with Theme-Based Ad Groups

By updating your ad groups to single theme-based categories, you can massively improve the relevance and performance of your campaigns. By aligning your ads to specific topics or services, your audience will be able to find exactly what they are searching for on the search engine results page. Let’s get into how to do this Google Ads best practice.

Theme-Based Ad Groups Impact

For example if you are a law firm instead of having one ad group that covers all legal services break it down into theme based ad groups. You could have groups like “Personal Injury Law”, “Family Law” and “Estate Planning”. This will allow each ad group to focus on specific keywords, ad copy and direct users to specific landing pages. Make sure your landing pages match your ad messaging to improve conversion rates and overall ad performance and get more engagement.

Setting Goals for Performance Max Campaigns

When managing Performance Max (P Max) campaigns, you need to set clear goals based on themes. For a travel agency for example you could have separate P Max campaigns for “Luxury Getaways”, “Family Vacations” and “Adventure Travel”. This targeted approach will allow the algorithm to serve video ads and other formats across multiple Google channels, and your messaging will resonate with specific audience segments.

Thematic Organisation in Display Campaigns

The benefits of thematic ad groups also apply to Display campaigns. A gym could have separate ad groups for “Yoga Classes”, “Personal Training” and “Nutrition Coaching”. Each ad group can show visuals and messaging that will directly appeal to users interested in those specific services. This will increase not only the visibility of the Google Display Network but also user interaction.

Overall Advertising Strategy

By having theme based ad groups businesses can have a more cohesive and better advertising strategy. This will directly speak to your audience’s interests and make your campaigns more relevant.

In summary, single theme ad groups is a game changer for your Google Ads campaigns. Get organised, optimise your landing pages and watch your ads work!

8. Do Deep Customer Research for Your Google Ads

Customer research is a crucial part of any advertising campaign as it gives you insights into your audience’s needs, wants, and behavior. Incorporating Google search ads’ best practices in your deep customer research can significantly enhance your ad performance for 2024. By doing deep research businesses can make informed decisions that align their campaigns with what their customers actually want and get more engagement and conversions.

How to Gather and Analyse Customer Data

There are several ways to gather and analyze customer data. Surveys and questionnaires will give you direct feedback on customer experience and expectations. Social media analytics tools will help you track engagement and sentiment around your brand. Website analytics like Google Analytics will give you insights into user behavior and where users drop off. Focus groups will allow you to have in-depth discussions to uncover motivations and perceptions that may not surface in quantitative research.

Using Customer Research to Improve Ad Performance

Once you have gathered and analyzed customer data, the next step is to apply those insights to your advertising. This could mean segmenting your audience based on the characteristics you found during your research and tailoring your ad creatives and messaging. For example, if research shows demand for eco-friendly products, you can focus on sustainability in your campaigns. Analyzing the data will also guide the timing and placement of your ads to get maximum reach and resonate with the targeted segments. By iterating based on customer insights, you can improve your ad performance and build your brand with your audience.

Researching your competitors can give you valuable insights for your own advertising. Here’s a checklist to go through:

• Ad Copies: Review the messaging and tone of your competitor’s ads. What are the key phrases, calls to action, and unique selling points that grab the audience’s attention?
• Advertising Platforms: Which platforms are your competitors advertising on? Google Ads, social media channels, display networks? Knowing their approach will help you decide yours.
• Successful Keywords: What keywords are your competitors targeting? Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to get insights into their top performing keywords and find opportunities for your campaigns.
• Ad Creatives: Review the visuals and formats of your competitors’ ads. What imagery, video content or interactive features are resonating with their audience.
• Landing Pages: Analyse the landing pages of your competitors’ ads. What’s the design, content and user experience that drives conversions.
• Audience Engagement: Monitor the engagement on your competitors’ ads, likes, shares, comments and interactions. What’s resonating with the audience.
• Promotions and Offers: Note the promotions and offers your competitors are running in their ads. How are they getting clicks and conversions?

By going through these, you can get valuable insights for your own advertising.

9. Add to Your Negative Keyword List

Having a solid negative keyword list is a basic part of optimizing your Google Ads and overall performance. Incorporating Google search ads’ best practices, especially in building and refining your negative keyword list, is crucial for enhancing ad performance in 2024.

What are Negative Keywords, and Why are they Important

Negative keywords are terms or phrases that stop your ads from showing up for certain search queries. By using negative keywords effectively advertisers can filter out irrelevant traffic and get their ads in front of users who are actually interested in their products. This targeted approach not only makes your campaigns more relevant but also reduces wastage of ad spend and gives you a higher return on investment.

How to Build and Refine Your Negative Keyword List

1. Keyword Research: Start by doing keyword research to find terms related to your industry but not related to your products. These can be generic terms or unrelated products.
2. Search Query Reports: Regularly review your search query reports in Google Ads. These reports will show you the actual queries that are triggering your ads, and you can add irrelevant searches as negative keywords.
3. Competitor Analysis: Analyze the keywords your competitors are bidding on and see how their targeting is different. Find keywords that are consistently getting clicks for them but not for your business.
4. Customer Feedback: Leverage customer interactions and feedback to get insights on any misconceptions about your products or services. This direct feedback will help you to find negative keywords to avoid.
5. Iterative Refining: Refine your negative keyword list based on campaign performance. Regularly check which keywords are performing well and which ones are not, and adjust your list accordingly.

Examples of Improving Relevance and Reducing Spend

A well thought out negative keyword list can improve relevance and reduce costs. For example a luxury hotel chain can add “cheap”, “discount”, “affordable” as negative keywords so their ads don’t show up for users looking for budget hotels. This refinement means their ads will only show up for users interested in luxury experiences and they will get higher engagement rates and lower click costs.

Similarly, a retailer selling premium athletic gear can add “used”, “second-hand,” and specific brand names of competitors who offer lower-quality products as negative keywords. By filtering out these searches, they can get higher CTR, spend less on irrelevant clicks, and drive more valuable traffic to their website. In both cases a solid negative keyword strategy not only reduces ad spend but also makes overall advertising more efficient.

10. New Account Level Options for Performance Max Campaigns

What are Performance Max Campaigns and their Benefits

Performance Max campaigns are a new way of digital advertising where advertisers can use Google’s entire inventory across all platforms from one campaign. Incorporating Google search ads best practices can significantly reduce CPL and CPC, enhancing overall ad performance. This all-in-one solution uses machine learning to automate targeting and ad placement so ads show up to the right audience at the right time in their customer journey. The benefits of Performance Max campaigns are higher conversion rates, better ad efficiency, and real-time performance insights. By using Google’s algorithms, advertisers can get better results with less manual effort.

Define Asset Group Themes for Campaign Alignment

Defining asset group themes is important for Performance Max campaigns to be aligned with business goals. By identifying specific themes that resonate with your target audience, you can refine your messaging and creative assets. To define effective asset group themes, start by analyzing customer journeys and the keywords that lead potential customers to your products. This research will help you to group your ad content around and make sure ads are relevant and appealing to users at different stages of the buying process. Monitor the performance of these themes regularly so you can adjust as user behavior and preferences evolve. Tips to Optimize Performance Max Campaigns for Conversions

To optimize for conversions in Performance Max campaigns:

1. Value-Based Bidding: Use Google’s smart bidding features and bid on conversions or conversion values. This way, the algorithm will adjust bids based on conversion likelihood and spend efficiently.
2. Creative Asset Variety: Include multiple creative assets (images, videos, headlines, descriptions) so the algorithm can test and find the best-performing combinations. A bigger asset pool will reach more audience segments and maximize reach.
3. Regular Monitoring and Adjusting: Review campaign metrics regularly to see what’s driving results. Make data driven adjustments to budget, creative assets and targeting based on performance trends.
4. Audience Signals: Give Google strong audience signals (first-party data) to improve targeting. This will help the algorithm understand your ideal customer and serve ads to users who are more likely to convert.
5. Use Insights Tools: Google Analytics and advertising insights are used to track user behavior and campaign performance. These tools will give you valuable information on what’s working in your campaign and what to optimize next.

By following these tips, you can improve your Performance Max campaigns, get more conversions, and get better ROI.

11. Reduce CPL and CPC

Reducing CPL and CPC can make your campaign more profitable without compromising on quality or engagement. One way to do this is through bid adjustments. By looking at the performance data, you can increase or decrease bids based on device, location, and time of day. For example, if mobile conversions are higher during certain hours, increasing bids during those hours will drive more targeted traffic and optimize costs. Incorporating Google search ads best practices, such as using Google Tag Manager for conversion tracking, can further enhance your ad performance and measurement accuracy.

Ad scheduling is another option. By running ads only during hours when historical data shows higher engagement and conversion rates you can allocate your budget to times that perform better. For example a financial service provider may find that their ads perform better during weekdays and adjust their ad schedule accordingly.

Geographic targeting also helps to improve efficiency. By targeting areas where your target audience is most concentrated you can reduce wasted ad spend and increase relevance. For example, a local restaurant could target only specific neighborhoods within the city to attract local customers.

Google Ads Bidding Strategy and the Learning Phase

A solid bidding strategy is vital for maximizing the effectiveness of Google Ads campaign. Advertisers can choose from manual, automated, and smart bidding options, each suited for different scenarios. Understanding the Google Ads learning phase is key, as it occurs with new campaigns or major changes, allowing Google’s algorithms to collect performance data for optimal targeting and bidding.

To navigate this phase effectively, advertisers should give campaigns time to gather data before making significant changes. This patience helps the algorithm learn user behavior, leading to better long-term results. Utilizing automated bidding options like Target CPA or Target ROAS can also enhance performance by adjusting bids in real time. A strategic approach to bidding during the learning phase can make campaigns both competitive and profitable.

Here are some examples of cost reduction strategies: a SaaS company segmented its audience to find high-value leads, adjusted their bids, and got a 25% decrease in CPC while maintaining lead quality. An e-commerce retailer ran ads only on weekends, as that’s when their customers shop, and reduced CPL by 30%. By doing these you can save cost and drive quality traffic to your offer.

12. Tracking

Cookies are still here. Just need to be mindful of cookie consent. Accurate tracking is key to measuring campaign performance as it gives you insights into user behavior and conversion actions. Knowing how users interact with ads, landing pages, and other touchpoints will help you make informed decisions on where to allocate your budget and which strategies to optimize. Incorporating Google search ad best practices is essential for adapting ads for SGE placements. Without proper tracking, you will lose valuable data and end up with misguided marketing and suboptimal ROI.

Use Google Tag Manager for Conversion Tracking

Google Tag Manager (GTM) makes it easy to manage and deploy marketing tags (code snippets) on your website without needing to know how to code. By managing tags, GTM allows you to implement tracking and marketing tools efficiently and get accurate data.

Steps to Set up Conversion Tracking and Analytics

1. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Set clear KPIs that align with your business goals. This could be conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS).
2. Implement Tracking Codes: Make sure all tracking codes (Google Ads tags and Facebook pixel snippets) are implemented correctly on relevant web pages to collect data accurately.
3. Test Tracking: Before you launch campaigns test the tracking codes to make sure they are firing correctly and data is being recorded accurately in analytics platforms.
4. Link Accounts: Integrate advertising platforms with analytics tools to collect data and report seamlessly across multiple channels.
5. Review Settings: Make sure conversion goals and event tracking are set up correctly and updated regularly to reflect changes in business goals or marketing strategies.

Troubleshooting and Optimizing Tracking

• Check for Discrepancies: Compare data from different platforms to find discrepancies in reported conversions or user actions.
• Use Debugging Tools: Use browser tools like Google Tag Assistant to troubleshoot tracking issues. These tools will help you find problems with code implementation.
• Monitor User Behavior: Use session recording and heat mapping tools to see how users interact. This qualitative data will give context to your quantitative metrics and help you optimize campaigns.
• Stay Up to Date: Keep yourself updated with tracking platform updates and changes as new features or policies can affect how data is collected and reported.
• A/B Testing: Test different landing pages and ad creatives regularly and use tracking data to decide which one performs better.

By having accurate tracking and following these steps and tips you will have more visibility into campaign performance and get more out of your marketing.

13. Google Ads in Search Generative Experience

The Search Generative Experience (SGE) is a big change in how search results are displayed, blending traditional search results with AI-generated content to enhance user interaction and engagement. This affects how ads are displayed and interacted with, so advertisers need to adapt their strategies. Understanding and implementing Google search ads best practices is crucial for achieving success in Google Ads. In the SGE environment, ads are integrated with informative snippets and can change user behavior and reduce the visibility of traditional ad placements.

To monitor and adapt your ads for SGE placements use Google Ads insights and analytics to track SGE specific metrics. Keep an eye on engagement rates, click-through rates and conversion rates to see how your ads are performing in this new environment. Update your ad copy to match user queries that may now be influenced by AI generated results and make sure your message is relevant and appealing.

Looking forward, we need to stay on top of the SGE trends. As AI technology evolves, ad placements will change, and we need to adjust our strategy. Regularly review your ad copy, targeting, and bidding to stay competitive and relevant in this ever-changing digital world. Be flexible and proactive and you can make the most of the Search Generative Experience and your advertising.

Conclusion

In summary, the key takeaways from our best practices in Google Ads are to track accurately, place ads strategically, and be responsive to market trends like SGE. As the digital landscape changes, we need to have a mindset of continuous testing, learning, and adapting. Be innovative and stay informed, and you will be competitive and responsive to customers. In 2024, those who refine their campaign approach will not only increase their conversion rates but also get a head start in this new environment. Be agile and committed to improvement, and you will be successful in digital advertising.

Take the next step in optimizing your Google Ads strategy by implementing these best practices and adapting to the evolving landscape to maximize your campaign performance. Contact us to get a Free Consultation.