Google Ads can be an amazing service for your business, it can directly provide more leads and/or sales for you, increasing your revenue, no matter the size of your company. Even more so, running Google Ad campaigns means that you will get quick results. But how well do you know Google Ads? We have put together the 10 most important questions that we get asked that can help you with your online advertising on Google.
If you’re a new company or an already established business, this service can put you at the top (literally). In its simplest form, Google Ads is a form of online paid search advertising that allows you to pay to have your website’s page at the top of Google for different search terms. For example, if you sell scented candles, and someone searches for “scented candles” you can show your website at the top of Google where it will most likely be clicked on.
By having your ad at the top of Google, you are likely to receive almost 50% more clicks than the ad in the second position, and this percentage increases as the ad placement are further down. Basically, you want to be at the top. But running Google Ads takes a good amount of planning, research, understanding and continuous optimisation.
The worst thing you can do is spend money on advertising and not see the return you are looking for, that’s why we have put together the 10 most important questions that we are commonly asked by clients and other people. We hope that these answers can help you in your future ad campaigns.
1. Where are Google Ads displayed?
So, you’ve set up your account, you’re tracking your conversions, you’ve added in your keywords and your ad campaigns are up and running, now what?
Well, your ads will start being shown at the top of Google for their search terms, right?
Unfortunately, there is more to it. When you run a Google Ads campaign you are essentially paying to place your ads at the top of Google, hopefully in the first 3 positions. But, in order for this to happen 2 things need to fall into place.
Firstly, your potential customer searching needs to search using a query/term that is close to or the same as the keywords you’ve set up. Great, ok, so once this happens my ad will be at the top of Google? Not quite…
The second and most important factor is the bid, for every term you wish to show on Google you have to bid for it against other companies that are also trying to get their terms to the top. Therefore, clicks on popular keywords that a lot of companies are using will cost higher than long-tail specific keywords.
So, in short, Google Ads are displayed at the top of Google, indicated by the little black text that says “Ad”. But this also requires users searching for that term (or a similar term) and it requires your keyword bid to be higher or high enough compared to your competitors that your ad is shown at the top.
Note, the Google ads discussed above are concerning Google Text Ads, as opposed to Google Display Ads. Google Display Ads are shown across the Google Display Network, featuring on partner sites, articles and more.
2. Is Google Ads PPC?
PPC stands for “Pay Per Click” so this means when someone clicks on your online ad you must pay. This is how Google works, you bid to have your terms at the top of Google, and if you “win the bid” so if you are shown at the top when a user clicks on that link, you then pay via your Google account.
So, yes, Google Ads is PPC.
3. How to Run Google Ads
In order to run a Google Ads campaign, you need to make sure you have a variety of factors and strategies in place, such as:
- A website or landing page – the end point of your ad.
- We need somewhere to send the users who are clicking on your ad, preferably towards a product page to get a sale, a phone number or a form to collect leads for lead generation.
- Analytics & Tracking
- You need to make sure you have analytics and conversion tracking set up so you can track and measure your campaigns and results. Otherwise, you will have no idea how it’s doing, or how to make it better. So, you need to track how many sales are coming from your Google Ads campaign or how many phone calls you received etc…
- Research
- One of the most important factors of any Google Ads campaign is research. At this stage, you will find the keywords you need, ultimately, the keywords your customers are searching for.
- Bidding research is important for understanding how much you should bid on each keyword, how important certain keywords are to you, and how much are you willing to pay to rank at the top of Google. You can use the Google Ads Keyword Planner to help guide your bidding amounts for each keyword.
- Ad copy research is the text that your potential customers will see on your ads, the text can determine if a user will click on your ad or not.
- Setup
- Once you have your website/landing page ready, your conversion tracking is in place and your research is finalised, we are ready to set up the campaign.
- Campaign setups include adding your keywords, adding your bids to your keywords, and writing the text for your actual ads that users will see.
- You then set a timeframe for your campaign and a maximum amount of cost per day or month you want to spend.
- You can also choose what country you wish to run your ads in and see an estimated audience number per country.
Once all of these are in place, you should be ready to launch your campaign.
4. Google Ads vs Facebook Ads
Personally, I do not think you can say one is better than the other, it really does depend on your audience, your market, and your business as to what is better, Google or Facebook advertising.
So, for this common Google Ads question I will answer with “it depends”. Yes, I know it’s an answer that no one likes to read, but it really does depend. But I will try to help you understand what it depends on, so you can make the decision yourself and for your business.
What does depend on? Below are a few factors that can help answer this question.
a. User Intent
If you wish to sell to a user and at a certain stage of their journey, then Google Ads will be your best friend. Because of the keyword targeting, Google Ads allows you to list actual intent to buy that will help you show ads to your users who are ready to take action. For example, a search term such as “buy Christmas scented candle” if people are clicking on your ad from this keyword, you know they are looking to buy.
Whereas Facebook can show your ad to people regardless of if they are looking to buy or just “shopping around” which can be a waste of time and money.
b. Audience Targeting
How well do you know your audience? Google allows you to target users based on search intent, as discussed above, however, if you have a very specific idea of your audience, ie. between the ages of 30-45 and females who live in Limassol, Cyprus. Then you can place ads directly in front of your specific audience.
Therefore, in this scenario, Facebook can be good for you to promote your business and services, especially if you wish to increase awareness.
c. Placement
Google placements can be found on Google and via their partners such as Amazon, The Washington Post, The NY Times and other areas.
However, on Facebook, your ads can also be shown on Instagram, the Marketplace, in Stories and Feeds and even on their messaging app.
So, depending on your ad placement preference, you can decide if you should be using Facebook or Google Ads.
d. Ad Type
Depending on the type of ad you wish to show, you can decide whether Facebook or Google is the best advertising platform for you.
On Google, the only ad types are “text ads”, “call ads”, “display ads” and “shopping ads”.
While on Facebook you can have “image ads”, “video ads”, “slideshow ads”, “messenger ads” and “carousel ads”
The difference? Well, although Google does offer display ads, most of the success from advertising on Google is from their text ads, which are, as implied, just text-based (sometimes with a small picture in the corner of your text).
However, Facebook offers the possibility of advertising with a lot more visuals, whether you are showcasing a product or showing an influencer video.
Therefore, if you want to take a more visual approach, then Facebook is better, otherwise, Google Ads is your go-to.
5. Why aren’t my Google Ads Showing?
In many scenarios you have your ad campaign running and you go to search for your terms, and to your surprise, you do not see your ad. What has happened?
Well, your ad may not be showing for numerous reasons, let’s dive in:
a. Ran out of Ad Budget
Yes, because you have a daily ad budget, which is determined by people clicking on your ads, if you get a lot of clicks in one day and your budget is all used up, then you can no longer bid for ad spots and will no longer be found.
For example, your candle company is running ads at €10 per day, your keywords cost around €1 per click and by 4pm you’ve had 10 clicks. What does this mean? You’ve now run out of budget, your daily spending has finished, and you can no longer fight for ad spots with your bids, so your ads will not show anymore.
b. You’re not Bidding High Enough
Bids are extremely important when running Google Ad campaigns, for each keyword you wish to show your ad for, it comes with a “bid”. This bid is you setting a value to say, “I will pay ‘x’ amount to have my ad show on Google.” In hope that it’s high enough to show above your competitors who are also paying for their ads.
Bids are either set manually or automatically (determined by historical data and currently collected data to find an average bid value).
Therefore, if your bid is lower than your competitors, for example, if I have the keyword “scented candles” and I bid €1 for this keyword, but I have 10 competitors and they are all bidding €2 for this keyword, then when I search for this keyword, my ad will not show. My competitors, who are bidding more, will show.
Therefore, you need to make sure you are bidding high enough to show your ads amongst your competition.
c. New Keyword, Group or Campaign
When you set up your Google Ads campaign, you create your ad groups and set your keyword, there is a small period at the start where your ad is essentially “under review” therefore until accepted, your ad will not show, so you will have to wait, usually within 1 business day.
6. How much is Google Ads?
The beauty of Google Ads is that you can spend however much you like, or however much you can afford to spend. Whether you can afford €10 per day or €100 per day, you can run your Google Ads campaign.
The amount you spend will depend on your keywords and your bids for them, of course, the less budget you have, the fewer results you will get. But this doesn’t mean you can’t start off with a small budget and build up.
However, if you do spend too little, you may not like the results and feel like you’ve wasted your time with advertising on Google, so we recommend, if you have a constrained budget, really focus on specific keywords you wish to show your ads for, bid for them and understand that you won’t get too much traffic, but you can still generate leads.
7. SEO vs Google Ads
This is a common and very important question many of our clients ask us when discussing Google Ads. What is better, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Google Ads?
In short, it is like saying, how long is a piece of string? Why? Because similar to the Google Ads vs Facebook question, the answer will be determined by your business’s goals and objectives.
Google Ads is a fast, results-driven, online advertising platform, where you compete against competitors to show your website’s pages first on Google. You have to pay to play, outbidding your competition and getting clicks and traffic by paying for it.
In contrast, SEO is an organic method of getting more customers and traffic to your web pages. What do we mean by organic? Well, organic traffic is the users who find your website by searching a term on Google and clicking not on an ad but on a link of yours that is showing on the first page.
For popular search terms, this is a highly competitive market, with every business competing to show on the first page, but why? Having a good SEO score and strategy is like running Google Ads, with the key exception that you are not paying for your website to show at the top, it shows there organically.
Having a lot of organic traffic is (or it should be) the long-term goal of every business, in my opinion. Why? Because this means the more you rank at the top for organic keywords, the less you pay by getting that same keyword to the top via Google Ads.
If I have a webpage that is very optimised for SEO and when someone searches “scented candles” I am at the top organically, then if I am running Google Ads, I do not need to bid for this search term, as I am already at the top.
If you are at the top for major keywords for your business, then you can generate a lot of traffic and leads without anything for them.
However, SEO is a long-term approach as it takes time, strategy, content building and a lot of other reasons to get your website on the first page, especially for popular search terms.
Thus, Google Ads is a much faster process to get results, but you pay for them. While SEO is a long-term service to get results, but the clicks and traffic you get are free.
8. Is Google Ads Good for Small Businesses?
Now, this is an easy one, the answer is yes, of course. How could it not be?
- You can set your budgets and limitations,
- You can compete against established competitors,
- You get fast measurable results,
- It’s scalable,
- Builds your brand awareness,
- Drives more sales,
- Helps you optimise your website,
- Immediately gets you ranking for your brand name,
9. What are the Google Display Ads Specifications?
Google Display Ads is a feature on Google which displays your ads as images rather than text, these images are shown across Google’s Display Network and can be good for promoting awareness and increasing brand recognition.
Google’s recommendation for display ad sizes is:
- 300px x 250px (Medium Rectangle Size)
- 336px x 280px (Large Rectangle Size)
- 300px x 600px (Half Page)
- 320px x 100px (Large Mobile Banner)
- 728px x 90px (Leader Board)
- 250px x 250px (Square)
- 200px x 200px (Small Square)
Each of these sizes and formats is suited for different types of display ads. For example, bigger display ads, such as the ‘large rectangle size’ can perform well when it has embedded text and an image and can be shown in articles on Google’s Display Network.
10. How many Google Ads should I Run?
1, 10, 50, how many? This is one of those questions where “it depends” is the answer. Why? Because you can have success with 1 campaign, 3 campaigns or 10 campaigns, it is all about what is suited to you and your business.
First, it is best to understand the structure of a Google Ads campaign. When set up you can then create additional ‘ad groups’ these allow you to create different variations of ads, using different keywords and ad copy. The benefit of this is that you can test your ad groups within your campaign and see which one performs best, allowing you to focus on the high-converting keywords and campaigns.
For example, if you run a campaign for selling scented candles, you could set up multiple ad groups (all within the same campaign budget that you set) but each of these groups can target a specific focus.
Ad group 1 can focus on seasonal keywords ie. Christmas scented candles whereas your second ad group can focus on ‘intent to buy’ keywords ie. Buy scented candles or candles for birthday presents.
With these groups set up, you can see which ones are performing better and find your winning group.
Therefore, getting back to the original question, you can run multiple ad campaigns and/or multiple ad groups per campaign. This answer will just all depend on how you categorise your ad campaigns and how much budget you have to work with. A company with only 1 service may not need loads of campaigns, whereas if you have a lot of services, a big budget and many store locations, then running multiple campaigns can be great.
Summary
Ok, so there you have it, the 10 most important questions about Google Ads asked and answered. Yes, we know, there is a lot of information for each question, so this summary will break it down for those who wish to get straight to the point.
Q. Where are Google Ads displayed?
A. Google text ads are displayed at the top of Google while display ads are shown across the Google Display Network.
Q. Is Google Ads PPC?
A. Yes, for every click that someone makes on your ad, you will need to pay the amount it cost you to put the ad in that position.
Q. How to Run Google Ads?
A. You first need a webpage to direct traffic to, then add in your tracking to measure the results, do some research to know what terms to rank for and finally you need to set up your campaign, configuring the daily spend, bidding strategy, duration and more.
Q. Google Ads vs Facebook Ads
A. Both can be good; it depends on your audience and your business objectives (I would advise reading the full question above to get the best possible answer).
Q. Why aren’t my Google Ads showing?
A. You have either run out of budget, you are not bidding high enough on your keywords, or your campaign/keywords are new and need to be reviewed first.
Q. How much is Google Ads?
A. Google Ads is however much you can afford to pay, whether that is €5 per day, €10 per day or €100 per day, the budget will affect the results of your campaign.
A. SEO is a long-term approach that can help you save money by not paying for clicks. While Google Ads provides short-term instant results, but you must pay to play.
Q. Is Google Ads Good for Small Businesses?
A. Yes, every small business can run Google Ads and see great success, I would personally say it is especially good for small businesses.
- What are the Google Display As Specifications?
- 300px x 250px (Medium Rectangle Size)
- 336px x 280px (Large Rectangle Size)
- 300px x 600px (Half Page)
- 320px x 100px (Large Mobile Banner)
- 728px x 90px (Leader Board)
- 250px x 250px (Square)
- 200px x 200px (Small Square)
Q. How many Google Ads should I Run?
A. You can run as many ads on Google as you like, it all depends on the budget you have and the number of services you can offer.
Need help with your Google Ad Campaigns?
We understand that running Google Ads can be a bit complex and difficult to get right. The last thing you want to do is to run campaigns ineffectively and lose a lot of money.
If you’ve tried to run online advertising campaigns on Google, but haven’t seen much success, then we would love to help.
Absolute Websites has been actively helping companies around the world to improve their online advertising. We have run numerous successful ad campaigns across a variety of industries and work closely with our clients to generate great results.
If you have had bad luck with Google Ads or if you are just wanting to start out but are not sure where then give us a call at +357 96449680, we would love to help you make the most of such a great advertising platform where there are around 5.6 BILLION searches per day.
