5 Common Issues in Google Ads Accounts (and how to solve them)

Google Ads are one of our favourite forms of paid media, as they can drive an incredible ROI for businesses (when managed properly!). However, with so many changes to the platform, particularly over the past year, it’s easy to see how accounts can quickly fall behind the competition. 

By dedicating just a few hours a month to ensure you’re keeping on top of the best practices for Google Ads, you can avoid running into the following common issues.  

Here are the top 5 most common issues we find in client accounts when we take them on, and some tips on how to solve them, taken from Google Partners with over 15 years of practice. 

1. Infrequent Audits and Optimisations

So you started your campaign using Google’s smart campaign set-up, just like all of your competitors or you’ve spent hours building up your Google Ads campaigns manually and you’re finally happy for them to go live! This is great, but with so much competition on Google and daily changes to the Google Ads algorithm, your ads will likely become unprofitable within just a few months if you don’t spare a few hours a month to review what’s working. 

Be sure to regularly review the campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords that are working, recognise why they’re working and pause the ones that aren’t to avoid wasting budget. 

It’s good to remember that if you’re not taking advantage of the various updates to Google Ads, such as automated bidding allowing for more efficient uses of budget, your competition will be.  

Similarly, if you’re not A/B testing different headlines or extensions and reviewing the data – you should be, as once again, it’s highly likely that your competition will be.  

Want to know how to audit your Google Ads account like a pro? We’ve put together a free and comprehensive easy-to-follow guide for auditing your Google Ads. Get your free guide here. 

Don’t fancy doing the audit yourself? We’re offering a Free Google Ads Audit, offering professional insights into how to maintain the most profitability from your account. 

2. Too many keywords

When you first start creating your ad groups, it might be tempting to add as many keywords as you can think of, as this will appeal to as many of your customers as possible, right? Well, not necessarily. Ads tend to be higher converting when the headlines and landing pages match the search term almost perfectly.

For example, if you own a car repair shop you might be tempted to try and rank for the keyword “car scratch removal”. The issue with this is that you might attract people searching for car scratch removal products, in order for them to do it themselves. In this case, you might be better off only targeting “car scratch removal services” or “car body repairs”.

Remember, Google’s close variants now allow for your ads to appear for implied words and searches with the same search intent, so your targeting of “car body repairs” can also allow your ads to appear for broader search terms. You can then use the search terms data to add any converting keywords to your campaign.

As well as keeping keywords to a minimum, you should try and put different terms into different ad groups in order to serve them a super relevant ad and landing page. For example, you could have specific ads and landing pages for “scratch repair services”, “dent repair services” and “bodywork repair services” instead of putting these all into the same ad group and hoping for the best.

Not only does bidding on too many keywords reduce the level of relevancy, but it also eats up your budget and spreads your budget too thin. You’re much better off prioritising higher converting keywords initially and then expanding out once you have data on which search terms perform well.

3. Not keeping on top of negative keywords

Google keyword targeting used to be simple, exact match meant one thing, the keyword had to match the search query, exactly. This has steadily changed over the years to include plurals, misspellings and similar variants, however, the biggest shift was the change to include implied words and paraphrases.

This means that even if you only have exact match keywords in your account, you need to be reviewing the search terms people are using and add negatives that aren’t relevant.

For example, your “car scratch removal” keyword might be wasting your budget with people searching for “car scratch removal products”. In this example, by adding negative keywords such as “how to”, “products” and “DIY”, you’ll avoid showing up for people that want to do it themselves.

We’ve found with some of our accounts that their ads are showing up for competitor brand search terms. For example, people searching for “Kwikfit car repairs” might be served with your ad for “Topnotch car repairs”.

For accounts with a strong budget, this can be a really great way of stealing customers from the competition. However, if you’re trying to conserve your budget (or your competitors have huge budgets such as Amazon), you’re often best to add competitors as negative keywords to avoid wasting spend by having someone click on your ad accidentally.

4. Neglecting automation

Whenever Google introduces a new form of automation many people are skeptical (including us!), but ignoring the potential benefits of using automation within your Google Ads account often means that your campaigns are lagging behind the competition.

Google has vast amounts of data on all of its users and it knows which users are more likely to complete a conversion.

For example, your competitors might be using an automated bidding strategy that can spend more for customers with a strong interest in similar products or services and less for customers with less interest in that product or service. This helps to conserve the budget when it’s less likely to convert and spend slightly more when there’s a higher chance of the user converting, meaning, they are likely to outbid anyone not using Google’s AI when it comes to the clicks that are more likely to lead to conversions.

To fix this, it’s worth starting by going through your conversion goals, ensuring they are accurately set up, and then switching to a bidding strategy that prioritises your campaign objectives. An example of these strategies might be ‘Target Impression Share’, where you aim to always be the highest on search results for brand awareness, or ‘Maximise Conversions’ where you aim to get the most conversion goals possible for your budget.

It’s worth noting that automation should only be used when you have enough data in your account and are certain that your landing pages are well organised for conversions.

5. Poor landing pages

Although this is technically outside of your Google Ads Account, poor landing pages can be one of the most expensive ways to run your Google Ads.

It doesn’t matter how long you spend on highly relevant keywords and enticing adverts, if people feel compelled to click on your ad, you need to make it worth your investment in that click with an engaging landing page.

One way of knowing if you have a poor landing page is if you have a high click-through-rate, but a low conversion rate.

To help solve this issue, ensure that your landing pages have a value proposition within the headline (that is similar to your ad copy), clear call-to-actions (such as “contact us” or “book appointment”), and testimonials if possible.

These are only some of the main ways that you might be able to improve the conversion rate of your landing page, for more tips and tricks on building a high converting landing page, see our ‘High Converting Landing Pages Best Practices’ article for a full, in-depth guide.

Conclusion

Google Ads have changed significantly over the years and we’ve been around long enough to see the accounts that have adapted and the ones that haven’t. With the influx of automation at every update from Google, the days of setting up an account and letting it run with no changes for months on end are over.

Frequent optimisations and audits of your account are essential to ensure you’re making the most of the incredibly useful new features that are on offer before your competitors do!

Free Google Ads Audit