Google Ads Search Certification
What factors contribute to Ad Rank?
Your bid, the impact of ads formatted enabled, the likelihood ad will get clicked, the estimated measure of how well your website gives users who click your ads a valuable experience and how relevant your ad is
Cost per conversion
Shows how much your ad cost you (CPA).
Where can you show ads?
Google Searches, Youtube, NYT, etc.
What would you do to prevent your ad from showing on searches for cleats, but still allow your ad to show on searches for "kids running shoes"?
1. Add cleats as a negative keyword 2. Change from broad match to broad match modifier by adding a "+" in front of shoes
Ads appearing + ranking
1. An advertiser bids on keywords 2. The search engine ranks the keywords 3. The best matched ads appears alongside search results
Match Types
1. Broad Match: Shows your ads based on keywords and close variations like synonyms and misspellings 2. Phrase Match: Shows your ads based on exact phrases and close variations 3. Broad Match Modifier: Shows your ads based on broad match. but excludes synonyms 4. Exact Match: Shows your ads based on exact keywords and close variations 5. Negative Match: Shows your ads based on searches and site visits that exclude keywords
Google Ads Auction Steps
1. Cast a wide net to find relevant ads 2. Pare down to eligible ads only 3. Show only ads that meet the Ad Rank threshold
Set up website conversion tracking
1. Create a conversion action — what it is that you want to track 2. Get your conversion tracking tag — a teensy bit of code that will track your users' actions on the source that you've set up to track 3. Add the conversion tag to your website, so all those user actions you've identified will actually be tracked 4. Finally, check that the conversion tracking is working as planned
Find the right performance solutions:
1. Define your campaign's primary marketing goal and potential KPIs 2. Understand who your target audience is and where they're located 3. Choose the ideal solution that drives your goals and targets your audience
Manual Extensions
1. Goal: All business, Sitelink Extension: Specific website pages, Callout extensions: Add additional text like "Free delivery", Structured Snippet: Highlights specific aspects of your products and services 2. Goal: Get customers to buy from your business location, Consider location extensions: Encourage people to visit your business by showing location, a call button, link to business page 3. Goal: Get customers to contact you, Call Extensions: Encourage people to call your business by adding a phone number or call button on your ads, Message Extensions: Encourage people to send text messages from your ad. 4. Goal: Get customers to convert to your website, Price Extensions: Showcase your services or product categories with their prices, so that people can browse your products right from your ads, Promotion Extensions: Highlight specific sales and promotions across your ads. 5. Goal: Get people to download your app, App extensions: Available globally for Android and iOS mobile devices, including tablets.
Writing Effective Text Ads
1. Highlight what makes you unique 2. Use a CTA 3. Include Sale Terms 4. Match your ads to keywords 5. Match your ads to your landing page
Goal: Optimize for conversions
1. Make improvements to ad quality — perhaps a site link extension to drive customers straight to the "Buy now" button 2. Test ads with different calls-to-action, so you know what works better to drive sales 3. Consider adjusting bidding and budgeting — you may be targeting an audience that is too broad
Improve the landing page experience
1. Offer relevant, useful, original content 2. Promote transparency and foster trustworthiness on your site 3. Make mobile and computer navigation easy 4. Be fast-decrease your landing page loading time 5. Make your site mobile friendly
What does the opportunities page do?
1. Optimize ad rotation 2. Add keywords 3. Change mobil bid adjustments
Best practices for effective text ads
1. Optimize your headlines 2. Think about your mobile audience 3. Use Ad extensions 4. Improve the landing page experience
Goal: Optimize for clicks
1. Perhaps a keyword review is in order 2. Consider your bidding and budgeting targets to expand your reach to a broader audience
Key steps to Search campaign setup
1. Select campaign settings 2. Create Ad Groups 3. Create Ads 4. Review Ad groups
Conversion Tracking
1. The advertiser adding a snippet of code to certain spots on their website and app (like a sign up or checkout page) to capture interactions. 2.When someone visits one of these places, the conversion tag fires capturing the user's non personally identifiable ID. 3.The ad server then takes a list of IDs and matches them against another list of IDs who have viewed or clicked an ad.
Conversion Sources
1. Website, tracking=completed customer actions on your website, example= a purchase, newsletter sign-up, a click on a button 2. Apps, tracking= completed customer action on your apps, examples= an app install, a completed in-app action 3. Phones, tracking= customer calls, examples= calls generated from calls in your app, website, or a click on your mobile website 4. Imports, tracking= when an ad click leads to a conversion in the offline world, examples= a click on an ad leads to a sale in your office or over the phone
Why use conversion tracking?
1. Which creative drives the most sales 2. Which users are most likely to sign up for lessons 3. When are people most likely to sign up for lessons or buy a board
Ad Extensions
A feature that shows extra business information with your ad, like an address, phone number, store rating or more website links
By using conversion tracking, you've recognized that a specific area of the world is generating the majority of lesson sign ups. What can you do to improve your campaign performance based on this information?
Buy more ad inventory in that region.
Structured Snippets
Can highlight specific aspects of a business i.e types of plants sold
What should he do to improve his ad's position?
Check the main factors that contribute to Ad Rank: bid, available ad formats, and components of ad quality, to identify what is bringing his Ad Rank down and then make adjustments accordingly.
Ideal Text Ad
Clear headline, intriguing descriptive Text, CTA
Benefits of a SEM platform
Consolidated data, single interface, optimization
Your boss liked your suggestion of tracking conversion rate and wants you to recommend a portfolio of metrics to track the company's ability to increase sales. Which metrics would you recommend?
Conversions, Conversion Rate, Cost Per acquisition
What's the best way to get their ads on each search engine?
Find a tool to manage the ads for me: Using a search engine management platform gives you a single interface to manage complex accounts across multiple search engines, analyze campaigns, and automate bidding.
To compare consumer interest for "how to contour" in today's market with that of a year ago, what tool should Cate use?
Google Trends: Uncover consumer interest over time — and find out if demand is going up or down.
Negative Keywords
Keywords that prevent an ad from showing up when specific terms are present.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Tells how effective your ad spend is by showing you how much return its bringing you.
Quality Score
The 1-10 ranking that is reported for each keyword in your account calculated by estimating the quality of your ads and their associated landing pages
What part of her search results page would share the store's telephone number?
The Text ad extension
When do extensions show up?
The extension (or combination of extensions) is predicted to improve your performance. Your ad's position and Ad Rank is high enough for extensions to show. To show extensions, Google Ads requires a minimum Ad Rank.
Search Engine Marketing
The general process includes: An advertiser bids on keywords with the amount they are willing to pay for a user to click an ad The engine ranks advertisers based on their bid and relevance to the search The best matching ad appears alongside the user's search results
Google Ads Auction
The system responsible for taking all these factors into consideration and ultimately deciding your ads position and whether it'll show up at all
Find potential customers online
Who, where, what
Call extension
With a single click, customers can call directly
Keywords
Words or phrases that help determine where and when your ad can appear **not case sensitive, includes variations like misspellings, includes synonyms
User Location Report
hows only your customers' physical locations (regardless of any locations they may have shown interest in). If customers in a certain region are gravitating to you, update your campaign to directly target them.
Search Terms Report
lists the searches and terms that people have used before seeing your ad and clicking it. If a term is getting you in front of customers, add it to your keyword list.
Geographic Report
shows your customers' physical locations and locations they had shown interest in through searches or content they had viewed. If customers interested in certain locations are finding you, update your campaign to directly offer something they're looking for.
Stephen would like to set up his ad so that users can jump right to the reservation page on his website — and book a stay at his beloved castle. What setting should he adjust?
Ad extension settings: By adding a sitelink extension to his ad, a click on either a call to action (like "Book now") or a "Reservations" link will launch users right to his site's reservation page URL so they can start the booking process.
Optimize: Keywords, Targeting and reach
Add keywords and even negative keywords Broaden your keyword matches to include "phrase match" or "broad match" Target Google Search partners Power up for mobile Add audiences
Sitelink Extensions
Add links to help people find what they're looking for.
What could he use to drive foot traffic to his local drone hospital?
Add location extensions to his campaign in Google Ads.
Google Ads
An online advertising tool that helps businesses connect with their customers
Making your ads seen: The influential factors
Bid: The maximum amount you are willing to pay for a user to click on your ad and visit your site. Expected CTR: is the prediction of how often your ad will get clicked when shown for a keyword. Landing Page: A positive landing page contains relevant/original content, easy navigable and articulates your business clearly Ad Relevancy: Calculated by analyzing the language in your ad to determine how well it relates to the search query Ad Formats: Using various ad extensions can help rank
John got the green light to loosen up on the bidding, to potentially reach more customers and get them to buy more surfboards. Before he pulls the trigger, what optimization option could he leverage so he could present his boss with data to make an informed decision as to the impact?
Call upon the bid simulator to try out campaign adjustments: By enlisting the help of the handy bid simulator, John can make adjustments to his bidding strategy (going up or down) and see what kind of estimates he gets back for key metrics: clicks, costs, impressions, conversions, and conversion value.
Optimize: Ad and Ad Groups
Change your ad to get a longer, more noticeable headline Create more ads Add ad extensions (call, site link, or callout) Create new ad groups from existing ones Optimize your ad rotation
Clicks/CTR
Clicks: How many clicks an ad gets CTR: Shows the % of people who see your ad and clicked on it
Benefits of Google Ads
Connect with customers when it matters, Control your cost, Improve performance
How Google Search is used
Consumers online constantly, search in moments of need, they use devices on the go
Your boss is interested in how often clicks on your ads are leading to sales and wants you to put together a report to address this question. Which Google Ads metric would you analyze?
Conversion Rate: Conversion rate will tell you what percentage of those who clicked on your ad actually ended up purchasing.
You want to understand how your campaigns are driving surfboard sales and lesson sign ups.
Conversion Tracking
Which of the following features would help you manage spend and avoid showing your ad too broadly?
Create a maximum budget, pause campaign if need to re-evaluate, control who sees your ad with targeting controls
Landing Page Experience Report
Estimates the quality of your landing page — which is part of your AdWords Quality Score and strengthens or weakens your ad position. If you have a weak landing page, a link is provided with tips to make it better
Ad Rank
Even if your competition bids higher than you, you can still win a higher position — at a lower price — with highly relevant keywords and ads. Auctions are ongoing for every search on Google — and each one can have potentially different results depending on the competition at that moment. So you may see fluctuation in your ad's position on the page and even whether your ad shows at all.
Identifying the appropriate conversion source
Phones: Which mobile ads are encouraging a phone call to our therapy hotline? Websites: How many clicks on my soccer ball ad are leading to an actual purchase on my website? Apps: How well is my app campaign leading to downloads of my latest workout app?
Optimize: Bids and Business
Raise your budgets to keep your ads running on your busiest days Use standard ad delivery to stretch out your limited budget Adjust bids in oh so many ways: Raise or lower your bids; use estimated top or first of page bids; change your keyword bids; set location, mobile, ad scheduling, or audience bid adjustments; change product group bids in your Shopping campaign; or even use Target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding
Google Correlate
Use Google Correlate to... Find queries that follow a similar search pattern, thereby uncovering insights that might not otherwise be visible.
3 R's of Google Search
Reach: Engaging with new customers in moments of need Relevance: Having the right message that answers someones search Results: Focusing on outcomes and optimizing with full transparency into what's working then improving your campaign's performance over time
You want to make sure people who've already visited your website are completing purchases. Which type of audience targeting could you use to achieve this goal?
Remarketing: The way to target people who have already visited your website or completed an action on your website, like adding items to a shopping cart.
3 main elements on a results page
Shopping Ads: Appear based on search terms (attention grabbing) Text Ads: Catchy headline, a distinguishable identifier, a variety of ad extensions Organic Results: The set of ads following text ads, these results are offered free of charge but appear do to relevance of the search
Conversions
Show how many people clicked from your ad to your site and did something you valued, such as a purchase, sign-up, phone call, or download.
Conversion Rate
Shows how many conversions on your site resulted from an ad click.
Paid and Organic Report
Shows how people got to you - comparing Google's free organic search results to your paid adwords ads
Sharla wants to compare how well her refreshed call-to-action ad is helping to encourage other cow-friendly soccer enthusiasts to sign up for her newsletter. In Google Ads, what category should she select that best fits this conversion action?
Sign-up
Google Surveys
Use Google Surveys to... Probe for audience thoughts on existing or past campaigns Test consumer insights Uncover customer mindsets **Fast Focus Group Data**
Google Trends
Use Google Trends to... Answer key brand questions Gauge consumer search behaviors Confirm hypotheses about audience interests Share audience interest over time **For In-Depth Customer Insights**
Top reasons for ad disapproval
Typos Extra punctuation marks e.g., Buy Now!!! or Ready to start??? Unnecessary use of symbols e.g., &%^* Symbols used incorrectly e.g., "+" used to represent "and" GiMmIcKy CAPITALIZATI0N and spelling Emojis and emoticons Don't include "Click here" in your ad Don't include your phone number in ad text, instead use a Call extension Image ads must be clearly branded with things like a company name, logo, and display URL
Google Shopping Insights
Understand consumer awareness and mindshare for a product, from national down to city-level insights; Insights is currently available for the US market only
Approved (limited)
Your ad is currently eligible to run in particular countries and is restricted from others. What you can do: Do nothing and your ad will continue to run in the countries for which it's currently approved. Request authorization from the trademark owner to use the trademark in the countries you desire. Remove the trademark from ad text.
Disapproved
Your ad was disapproved for using a trademark in a restricted way. What you can do: Remove the trademark from your ad so it can be re-reviewed and start running. Revise your ad and landing page to comply with the Reseller and informational site policy in certain regions. Request authorization from the trademark owner.
Attribution Reports
show you the paths customers took to complete a conversion, and attribute the conversion to different ads, clicks, and factors along the way.
Impressions
the number of times the ad appears in front of the user