Google Ads: Stop Paying for Clicks You Cannot Serve

Google Ads: Stop Paying for Clicks You Cannot Serve

Most underperforming Ads accounts are not badly optimised. They are aimed at searches the business was never going to win.

When an account is spending steadily and producing nothing, the cause is usually targeting rather than bidding.

Negative keywords are the actual work

A property developer selling apartments does not want "rent", "PG", "hostel", or the names of six other cities. A B2B manufacturer does not want "job", "salary", "training". Building the negative list is unglamorous and it is where the money is saved.

Match the landing page to the search

Sending every campaign to the homepage guarantees a poor conversion rate. If someone searched for one specific thing, the page they land on should be about that thing and nothing else.

Track something that means money

Form submissions are a proxy, not a result. Push the conversion definition as close to revenue as you can reach — a booked site visit, a qualified call, a completed order. Optimising toward a proxy optimises the proxy.

Review weekly, not monthly

Search terms drift. A weekly fifteen-minute pass over the search terms report catches waste while it is still small.

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