This month, Andy is going to talk more about Google search terms in his PCIM podcast episode.
Andy has received a lot of messages from business owners who were annoyed by the Google search term report update. They’re frustrated by the fact that they can’t really see where a lot of their money is going.
It has already been nearly two months since Google’s official announcement. Andy has found some creative ways you can go around this change, and try to make sure that you have enough data to build your negative keyword list and try different strategies.
During this time, Andy has been experimenting with a few strategies that he is going to share with his listeners in the episode. He is going to go through what he has learned, and what works and what doesn’t.
As a quick refresher, Google announced in early September that they’re going to be limiting the number of search terms that you can view on your account.
So for example, if you’ve got a hundred clicks, you only see 60% of that, when the other 40% Googled search terms you cannot see because there wasn’t enough volume. But these were bad search terms that you paid for, and you want to build a negative keyword list towards.
Andy had already provided a few strategies in his previous podcast episode, so if you’ve missed it, you may go ahead and listen to it first here.
But in short, Andy was explaining that you must start thinking outside the box to search more, put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer and see what comes up, look at Google suggest, and add those search terms as negative keywords.
Also, if you find a negative keyword, find its synonyms, go open the thesaurus and just add them all in. Andy has also talked about how Google laxed on what they deem as a close variant.
You need to understand what the changes are, try to adapt, and use all the strategies available. Thus, Andy has researched and found a couple of great solutions.
Microsoft Ads
You can import directly from Google Ads into Microsoft Ads, formerly known as Bing. You can easily import it right away or schedule an import. That’s very helpful because you don’t have to build the program again, you simply just import it into Microsoft Ads, and you can keep a low budget, or keep your eye on everything and let it run. This is an additional, good-quality lead source for you.
Andy believes that you can get great search terms data from Microsoft Ads. Look at your search terms in Microsoft Ads as well, and get the same negative keyword list and pop it into Google Ads. Remember that the import is from Google to Microsoft, and if you add it into Microsoft Ads, it won’t be automatically imported into Google.
This is a great tip because you’ll able to add different negative keywords that were bad search terms from Microsoft into Google.
Google Analytics
Andy is not a big fan of Google Analytics because the data that he needs to see as a Google Ads manager is already there in Google Ads. However, if you’re looking at an overall holistic approach, and you’re doing SEO, Google Analytics is essential. It is very surprising that when you link Google Ads with Google Analytics, you can see all of the search term data.
You will obviously need to link these two together, which is not hard to do. Essentially, if you link Google Ads with Google Analytics, it pulls all the data and you will actually be able to see all of your search terms. And this is a great solution to the issue.
Exact Match Keywords
Andy prefers using a broad match modifier. However, if you try a campaign that uses strictly exact match and you’ll be surprised that you’ll filter out a lot of bad search terms that way. After testing this approach, Andy admits that the quantity obviously goes down, but the quality stays pretty good. Ultimately, you will see a better ROI.
So, switch your keywords from the broad match or phrase match, or broad match modifier to the exact match (which is the brackets). Andy had an episode on this before in the past, so feel free to go back and check it out here if you haven’t already.
Smart Campaigns
Trying a smart campaign strategy is another tip that Andy wants to share with you.
We know that Google is moving towards a direction where they really don’t want you to have to think about anything. You just pop in some information, enter your website, and they will do the rest, i.e., they will build and write your ads, do the keywords, etc.
And has experimented with this strategy and it’s been a hit and miss for him. First of all, you have to set up conversion tracking if you haven’t already, which is crucial here. Make sure Google knows which clicks are turning into leads or, as they call it, conversions. And then, Google will take that data and kind of manipulate the program to try and get more of those conversions.
In theory, it makes sense, but the fact that Google is taking away search terms, that they have the close variance and other issues, you might be skeptical about the quality of these clicks.
However, when Andy tested it out, he realized that the leads did come in. And surprisingly, he found them to be a lot more expensive.
So if you feel like your program is not up to par, you haven’t had enough data in terms of building a negative keyword list, you don’t really know your search term information, or how many clicks are turning in sales, try testing out smart campaigns. Run it for a month, and then look at the data accordingly and see whether it’s going to work for you or not.
If you have certain pests and critters that are high dollar value for you. running a smart campaign is a way to ensure that you get a good number of leads. Even though you pay more for those leads, they will convert at a high rate. Thus, smart campaigns can work in those cases.
From now on, Andy will address one or two of your questions in his monthly podcast episodes, so please keep them coming!
Also, feel free to listen to Andy’s PCIM podcast episode here.