Keywords are the heart and soul of your Google
Ads accounts, and they play a pivotal role
in making sure your ads are showing up for
the right kind of searches.
Now, it would be great to think you can just
select a bunch of keywords and everything
is just going to work out perfectly.
But if you've been managing Google Ads campaigns
for a while, then you know, the Pareto principle
is in effect and about 20% of your keywords
on average are responsible for 80% of your
results.
In today's video.
I want to show you how you can optimize underperforming
keywords in your Google Ads accounts.
So you can generate more leads, sales, and
ultimately customers from your Google Ads
campaigns.
Let's get right into it.
Hey guys.
Silvio Perez here from AdConversion, helping
you solve your lead generation problems and
grow your business with digital advertising.
If you're new here, make sure to click on
that subscribe button and all the links and
resources that I mention you can find in the
description box down below.
The first step to optimizing underperforming
keywords in your Google Ads account is to
define what underperforming means to you.
Is it cost per conversion?
Is it conversion rate?
Is it quality score, whatever it is, just
choose the metric.
That really means the most to your business
and will have the greatest impact on your
business growth.
And really the, the importance with this step
is to define what underperforming is so that
you can set your baseline of where you're
currently at.
And then as you start to implement the changes
that I'm going to talk about, you can measure
against it and see if you're moving in the
right direction or not.
The second step to optimizing your underperforming
keywords in your Google Ads account is to
diagnose what the problem is.
So you need to understand your goal with every
keyword in your account is to have the highest
ad rank possible by having a high ad rank.
That means you're showing up on the top of
the page, the majority of the time, and you're
beating your competitors.
Now, ad rank is composed of your max cost
per click bid and your quality score, meaning
you need your bid to be as high as possible
just to remain competitive.
And you want your quality score to be as high
as possible.
That way you can limit the amount you're going
to have to pay per click.
Now, I actually created a full video on ad
rank and quality score, and you can check
that out in the description box down below,
and it'll go much more into detail if you're
not familiar with those concepts.
So if you go into your Google ads account
and you go into the keyword section, you can
just press G and then K on your keyboard,
or just click search keywords.
On the left hand side, you can go here into
your keywords tab.
And if you go to columns right here and you
click modify columns, you can add additional
metrics that you wouldn't necessarily have.
If you just had the default standard column
metrics that the keyword level provides you.
So when it comes to keywords and diagnosing
keywords and understanding whether or not
my keywords are actually underperforming,
there are some columns that I like to add
into the keyword report.
That way I can really understand how they're
doing.
The first one that I want to see is quality
score.
So I always make sure to have quality score
enabled.
And this is going to get you going to show
you how relevant your ads and keywords are.
And from that score from one through 10, and
you want this as high as possible.
So you can see in the case with this account,
it's four out of 10, which is pretty low.
Ideally you want 70% of your keywords in your
Google Ads account of your active enabled
keywords to be above seven.
So you're really aiming for seven plus.
The next one I like to see here is search
top impression share.
And this is just going to show me of my ads
for these keywords.
How often am I in the top three positions
on the page?
So this is going to tell you how visible your
ads are on the top of the page.
And you ideally want this as close to a hundred
percent as possible.
So for example, this one right here, less
than 10%, that's pretty bad.
You definitely want to increase that, but
this keyword is a broad match keyword.
This is an exact match keyword, and this is
a phrase match keyword.
So the more tight your match types are, the
more impression share you're going to have
versus it's basically the more targeted you
are, the more refined your targeting are,
the bigger impression share you're going to
have, but the broader you are, the less impression
share you're going to have, because you're
basically, you know, you have a much bigger
pool that you're trying to cover.
The next one I like to see is click share.
This is going to show me of all the potential
clicks I can receive.
What percentage am I receiving in relation
to the competition?
And then over here, I like to enable as well,
the different elements of quality score.
So for example, this number right here is
four out of 10.
And that doesn't really tell me anything,
you know, yes, I understand from a macro level
that I need to improve quality score, but
what part of quality score is hurting this
account the most, and these are the different
elements of quality scores.
You have landing page experience, ad relevance,
and expected click through rate.
So landing page experience is just basically
how relevant does Google think your ads and
keywords are to your landing page ad relevance
is how relevant are your ads to your keywords.
And then expected click through rate is just
basically Google's perception of how often
they think your ads are going to get clicked.
So this is the breakdown, and I actually created
a full video on how to improve quality score
and how to improve each one of these different
elements of quality score that you can definitely
check out.
And that'll be in the description box down
below, but to go ahead and enable these different
columns, just click here on columns, modify
columns, and then when it comes to quality
score, you'll find all the quality score metrics
right here, under quality score, and then
competitive metrics that I was talking about.
You'll find right here, and then all the performance
metrics that you want, you can find up here
as well.
So you'll be able to get access to all these
different metrics.
You can just save this as a custom column.
That way, every time you go into your keywords
tab, they're here for you.
And this is what it looks like on the right
hand side.
If you want to pause the video, take a screenshot
of it, feel free to, this is how I have my
keyword column set
up.
Once you have that setup, you're going to
be able to see and understand and diagnose
what's hurting you the most from a quality
score perspective.
If it's quality score, then you know, to improve
that.
If it's not quality score, maybe it's your
bids.
Maybe your bids are too low.
You can raise them, but having the proper
columns in place, you're going to be able
to diagnose your keywords and truly understand
whether or not your account is actually underperforming
the third and final step to optimizing your
underperforming keywords in your Google ads
account is to implement your optimizations.
Now, when you were diagnosing your Google
ads account, if you noticed that 70% of your
keywords have a below average quality score,
meaning 70% are below seven, then that means
you really need to focus on optimizing your
quality score.
So go ahead and modify your columns and add
those three elements of quality score.
So you can see which one is hurting you the
most.
Again, that's ad relevance landing page experience
and expected click through rate.
So whichever one is hurting you the most,
make sure you focus on improving that one
element so you can improve your overall quality
score as a whole, because you want high quality
score, because that's going to make your ad
rank higher and reduce your average cost per
click.
And again, if you're not familiar with quality
score and ad rank, and do go check out that
video and I'll have it linked in the description
box down below.
Now, when diagnosing your Google ads account,
if you notice that your bids were below that
first page bid recommendations for the majority
of them, then I highly recommend that you
raise those bids at least to the first page
estimates.
If you have those errors from Google saying
that you're below that first page bid, you
really want to make sure you're raising it
to that first page bid estimate.
And the reason being is you need your bid
to be competitive enough to compete against
everyone else in the auction place.
Yes, you want to focus on improving that quality
score.
So you don't have to pay as high with that
bid, but you do need it to be set at a high
enough threshold where you're still remaining
competitive because Google Ads at the end
of the day is still an auction place.
Now, if in the case you have great quality
scores, your bids are high enough to be competitive,
and you are showing up for the right kind
of searches the majority of the time.
And if you're not build your negative keyword
list, but assuming you have the bids in place,
your quality score is good and you're showing
up for the right kind of searches, but you're
still not getting the performance you want.
Then this is where you really need to focus
on testing your ad copy and improving your
landing page conversion rates.
Because by doing tests on your ads and your
landing pages, if you can improve your conversion
rates and get more visitors to convert more
frequently, that boost in conversion rate
might just be enough to offset your acquisition
costs and to make that keyword now profitable
for you.
Lastly, if it's just not realistic for you
to get the conversion rate that you would
need in order to make this keyword work, then
you're most likely going to have to pause
that keyword.
And you're better off trying to find new keywords
that you have the potential to make work,
or perhaps you might even have to consider
pivoting your strategy and finding other platforms
that you can leverage that just have a better
cost per click, and that you can make the
numbers work.
That is it for this video.
I hope you got tremendous value from it just
to quickly recap when it comes to dealing
with underperforming keywords in your Google
Ads account, first and foremost, you need
to define what underperforming is set that
baseline.
So you can start to measure against it.
Number two is you need to diagnose, go into
your Google Ads account and modify your columns
like I showed you so you can see what is hurting
you the most.
And then step number three is to implement
your optimizations.
Again, if you have low quality scores focused
on improving that first second, if your bids
are just too low, consider raising them so
you can remain competitive.
And then third, if you have good quality score,
you're showing up to the right kind of searches.
Your bids are high enough.
Then focus on testing ad copy and improving
your landing page conversion rate.
So you can make the metrics work for that
keyword.
And then last but not least, if it's just
not realistic for you to get the conversion
rates you need for that keyword to make it
work, just consider pausing it, finding new
keywords, or even pivoting your strategy altogether.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you want to learn more about Google ads,
I highly recommend you join my new Facebook
group on Google Ads lead generation.
You can find that in the description box down
below and as well as links and resources to
other Google Ads, trainings, and anything
that I think can help you on your Google Ads
journey.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next one.
Take care.
