Google Ads For Beginners

Imagine this: you're looking for a financial advisor, so you search the term "financial advisor" on Google. Before the regular search results, you notice a few posts about financial advisors that say "AD" next to them. Why are they there? Why do they look better than the rest of the search results? The answer is simple: Google Ads.

Google Ads are a key factor in creating traffic, gaining leads, and getting phone calls to your business. Whether you're a store looking to sell merchandise, a financial advisor looking for new clients, or a new company simply trying to get your name in front of people, Google Ads is the perfect way to get in front of people searching for what you offer. So, how does it work? Keep reading to find out!

Ad Groups, & Campaigns

To start creating your Google Ads, you have to create a campaign. The campaign heavily relies on what type of conversion you're looking for, such as phone calls, website traffic, form fills, etc. From there, you'll create your ad group. Each ad group focusses on a different topic or service you provide. For instance, if you're a financial advisor, your ad groups could be "Retirement Planning," "Financial Planning," and "Insurance". You'll be prompted to type out keywords.

Keywords

You may be wondering why keywords have a large section in this blog, but they're actually a huge part of creating Google Ads, and come in different types. Your first instinct when adding keywords might be to type each one out as it is. However, doing that means you're using a Broad Match for keywords. What does this mean? This means that if anyone searches a phrase that has at least one of the words in your key phrase, it could be included in the search. This means that if your key phrase is financial advisor, then it could be included in the search for "business advisor."

Broad Match Keywords

A way to get around your ads showing in front of people who are searching for something other than what you offer is to try Broad Match Modified. This match type uses the plus sign (+) before certain words in your key phrase to make sure that word is included in the person's search. For instance, if your key phrase is +financial +advisor, your ad could show up in a search for "financial advisors near me" or another search using both of the words with plus signs next to them.

Phrase Match Keywords

The next match type is Phrase Match. Phrase Match is signified with quotation marks ("") to indicate that every word in that phrase is included in the search, in the order you put it. For instance, if you use "financial advisor" as a key phrase, your ads could show up under the search for "financial advisor near me," but it could also show up under the search for "financial and retirement advisor."

Exact Match Keywords

Last but not least, we have Exact Match. This is used when you want your key phrase to match exactly to the search, and it is signified by brackets ([ ]). For instance, if your key phrase is [financial advisor], your ads will only show up if someone searches for "financial advisor" or it could show up if there are words before or after the exact phrase, like "where can I find a financial advisor."

One more important thing to note about keywords is that you want to include both long-tail and short-tail keywords. A short-tail keyword could be "finance" or "financial advisor," it's something short. Long-tail keywords are long key phrases such as "retirement and wealth advisor in Dallas tx". Using both long-tail and short-tail gives your ad more of a chance to be seen. Basically, Google's bidding system focusses on the budget you're willing to spend and the popularity of the keyword. Long-tail keywords are less likely to be competitive because not as many people are trying to bid on a key phrase as specific as yours. However, using a key phrase like "financial advisor" is extremely competitive because so many people are trying to get their ads seen under that key phrase.

Understanding Google Ads

Under the umbrella of the ad group is where you'll start creating the actual ads. Let's dive into the basics of a Google Ad. Let's discuss the basics of a Google Text Ad. Text ads are comprised of a URL, three headlines, a display path, and two descriptions.

The URL is the webpage you want the traffic to go to. You can link to your homepage, a landing page created just for this purpose, or any relevant URL you own.

The three headlines are at the top of the ad, and each headline is comprised of 30 characters. This is the section to grab people's attention. Use these headlines to include keywords related to your company and the service you're trying to promote.

Next up, we have the Display Path. This section is shown at the end of the URL and should reflect what the ad group is. Keep in mind that the display path can only be 15 characters long. Make sure to keep it short and sweet. For instance, if your ad group is "personal finance," your display path could be www.example.com/finance. This way, whoever is clicking on the ad thinks they are going straight to a page on your website about finance.

Finally, we have the descriptions. Each description is 90 characters long and should be used as a way to influence the person reading your ad. Use catchy phrases and common phrases from your website. Once you've completed all of these sections, you can click "Save Ad" and move on to the next one!

Finishing Touches For Your Google Ads

Once you've created the ads (try to make at least three ads per ad group), your work isn't over! Make sure to set a location, specify your demographics, add conversion tracking, and add your extensions (like services offered, phone number for your office, etc.). These additions ensure that the ad is as eye-catching as possible to the people you want to see it!

Once your ads are approved by Google and you've set your budget, check back in a few days to see how well your ad is doing. Click on the "Campaigns" tab, and monitor the number of clicks and conversions your campaign is getting. Make sure your Optimization Score is as close to 100% as you can get it. Then, click the "Recommendations" tab on the left side of the screen to see suggestions from Google on how you can improve your ads!

This was only a very broad overview of how to use Google Ads, and we'll get into the nitty-gritty in the future, but for now, we hope this helped you understand the basics of creating Google Ads.

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